Oliver pressed the button to release the front door lock, using the phone to tell the delivery person to come on up, Clare scuttled back across the landing, all but diving into the safety of her own flat.
Although as a refuge it was now severely lacking in serenity and peace, given who her neighbour was, and the wayward turns her mind was taking.
Back when he hadn’t replied to her letters, she’d put him out of her life, swearing never to think of him again.
But not thinking about him had proven difficult when their child had inherited his green eyes and curving, inviting lips.
* * *
Clare knew she needed a good night’s sleep, but how could sleep come when the huge, insurmountable problem of how to tell Oliver was cluttering up her mind and sitting like an elephant on her chest?
Earlier, when she’d gone in with the key excuse, she’d decided just coming out with it would be the best. Oh, by the way, my daughter, Emily, is your child.
But now that seemed impossibly, horribly flippant. She had to find some better way to say it.
Oliver, there’s something you should know?
No, that wouldn’t work. She’d lose courage after the Oliver part and ask about his mother or something equally inane.
Could she begin with self-justification? I did try to contact you; I phoned and wrote, then—
No, she couldn’t do that because it would mean explaining about Dad dying and even now thinking of that time still hurt too much for her to talk about it.
Finally, with herculean determination, she lulled herself to sleep, only to wake before dawn, tired, cranky and so uptight she thought her limbs might snap apart as she moved.
But move she did. Although she’d spent many hours at the hospital the previous week, getting to know the machine she would be operating, now she was anxious to get up to the theatre for one last check.
She showered and dressed, blotting everything from her mind except work, excited yet slightly apprehensive about her first day as part of the team.
Slightly apprehensive?
Understatement of the year, and although she was focusing on work, the other problem set aside, it had to be the thought of working with Oliver that had her twitching like a snake on drugs.
An image of him flashed across her mind—the now-Oliver with silver streaks in the tawny hair, and fine lines at the corners of his green eyes. More lines forming parentheses in his cheeks when he smiled, his lips still as mesmerising as ever, a pale line delineating their shape.
Em’s lips!
But it was better to think of Oliver’s lips than the problem of Emily right now. Thinking about Emily would put her mother into a panic again and a panicking perfusionist was of no use to anyone.
Unfortunately thinking of Oliver didn’t do her much good either. Look at it this way, she told herself. Yes, it was an unbelievable quirk of fate that had brought them together again, but they’d met as colleagues now, nothing more. Two professionals, working in the same team, working to save the lives of tiny babies.
Forget the fact you still feel an attraction to the man!
Forget Emily—well, not Em herself, but the problem she presented right now. Concentrate on work.
In the kitchen, she turned on the simple pod coffee machine that had been her treat to herself when she’d moved to Sydney, and dropped two slices of frozen fruit loaf into the toaster. Had Oliver found the shops? Did he have food to eat? Coffee?
The temptation to tap on his door and ask him was almost overwhelming, but it was barely six and their official working hours began at eight so it was likely he was still asleep. Besides, the more times she saw him outside of work hours, the more opportunities she would have had to tell him about Emily, and the angrier he’d be when she did tell him, that she hadn’t told him earlier.
Did that make sense or was her lack of sleep making her stupid?
She sipped her coffee, returning to the mental excuse of not knocking on the door in case he was still sleeping.
An image of a sleeping Oliver popped obligingly into her head—Oliver in boxer shorts, his back bare, lightly tanned, the bones of his spine visible as he curled around his pillow in sleep. An ache started deep inside her, and she left her toast half eaten, the coffee cup still half full, hurrying to the bathroom to clean her teeth, then fleeing her flat which was, she realised, just far too close to Oliver’s for her peace of mind. It was the proximity dogging her, reminding her, teasing at her body. If she moved—
But how could she when Alex had been kind enough to arrange the accommodation and she already felt settled here?
Or had done!
Although if she shifted…? No! her mind shrieked at her. Of course you have to tell him.
* * *
Oliver pushed his bedroom window to open it wider, sure there must be a breeze somewhere in the stillness of the summer morning. Below him the front door clicked shut and Clare strode into view, marching with great speed and determination up the path, then along the street, striding now—exercising or escaping?
But escaping from what? Not him, surely.
He laughed at the thought, a mocking laugh, but didn’t leave the window, watching until a slight bend in the road took her out of sight.
Clare!
He showered and dressed, reminding himself that both of them had changed in the ten years since the split. Now they were mature adults and could meet and treat each other as professional colleagues, nothing more, though the thought of her with a child niggled at him.
For one thing, where was the child now? She hadn’t had a child with her and there was no noise coming from next door.
Clare with a child.
Why did that hurt him?
The physical attraction he still felt towards her was probably nothing more than an emotional hangover from the past, some glitch in programming, possibly to do with the Italian revelations. And feeling this strong attraction, it was only natural that he’d been on the brink of taking her in his arms yesterday evening, when the front doorbell had sounded.
Saved by a pizza!
Think of food, not Clare.
Rod’s daughter had left some basic groceries in the flat—milk and butter in the fridge, coffee, tea, bread and spreads in the pantry. He’d have to find the supermarket and do some shopping, and until then he could eat at the hospital. In fact, if he left now he could have breakfast there; maybe that’s why Clare had left so early.
She wasn’t in the little coffee shop in the foyer, nor in the canteen, so he ate a solitary breakfast, then made his way not to the teams’ rooms but to the theatre, wanting to refamiliarise himself with the way Alex had it set up.
‘Oh!’
