spot to deal with a brain injury from an RTA.’ He opened the door. ‘Thanks for the lift but I’ll run the rest of the way from here. At least being on the move will keep me awake and hopefully by the time I get home the little critter will have gone to sleep. But I sure could do with something to eat first. I don’t suppose you know of a place between here and my street?’
Olivia hesitated. She really didn’t want to spend any more time in this man’s company than she had to. But she recognised a starving, exhausted doctor when she saw one. Whatever and however he made her feel, he was a colleague. He needed food—just as she did—and then bed.
‘Look, I was planning to grab some dinner at a place I know just along the road a bit.’ She pointed towards the bay. ‘How about joining me? I’ll give you a lift home after we’ve eaten.’
‘No one waiting for you?’ David replied, looking puzzled.
Olivia faltered. She hated having to explain about Richard’s death and how she had come to be pregnant with his child, so she’d become adept at sidestepping people’s curiosity. ‘No, not any more.’
David looked at her searchingly and for a moment she thought he was going probe further. She returned his gaze steadily, willing him not to ask her any more questions. Almost imperceptibly, his intelligent eyes flickered, as if he’d read her mind. And then his by now familiar, lazy grin was back.
He turned his gaze in the direction she had pointed. ‘Does this place do steaks? I could murder a T-bone.’
Of course he was a steak man. Could he really be anything else?
‘No steaks, but they do a mean chicken pie.’
CHAPTER THREE
OVER dinner, chicken pie for him and a salad for her, and with Bouncer snoozing at their feet, they chatted about Mark. David was optimistic that he would make a full recovery.
Finally, he leaned back in his chair. ‘Coffee?’
‘Not for me. I’ll have a herbal tea.’
‘Herbal tea! Does no one in this state eat normal food? The Californians don’t know what they’re missing.’ However, he called over the waitress who had been smiling and dancing attendance since they’d walked in the door—the very same waitress, Olivia noted sourly, who normally had to be summoned at least three times before she deigned to attend to her. Unsurprisingly, their drinks arrived only moments after David had ordered them.
‘Anything else?’ the waitress asked, placing her hand on her hip and smiling directly into David’s eyes.
‘Thank you, but no.’
Olivia hid a smile at the waitress’s obvious disappointment. No doubt she’d been hoping to be asked for her number. The look she gave Olivia was less than friendly.
‘So,’ Olivia asked, ‘what made you move from New York, seeing as you like your steaks so much?’
‘The job here. I’d have to wait a year for an attending post to come up in New York.’
‘This is your first attending position?’ She was surprised. He seemed so self-assured when dealing with his patients.
‘Yep. Thought I may as well work in sunny Frisco for a year.’ As he took a satisfied gulp of his coffee, Olivia couldn’t help but notice his long, slim fingers. For a split second she imagined those same hands skilfully dancing along her skin and was instantly horrified. What in God’s name was she thinking? She forced herself to concentrate on what David was saying.
‘You’re not from these parts either, are you? English, I’m guessing. So what brought you to the US?’
She shifted in her seat, still feeling slightly unbalanced by her thoughts of a few moments ago. ‘I still have the accent, huh? Even though I’ve been here for years. My folks came over from London when I was a little girl and settled in Boston. That’s where I went to med school.’
‘Good choice.’ He tipped his head to the side. ‘They’ve got some of the best teaching hospitals. And then you moved out West?’
‘That’s about it.’ Olivia made a show of looking at her wristwatch. ‘It’s getting late. I’d better get home and Bouncer fed.’
David leaned forward. ‘I’m sure Bouncer won’t mind waiting another five minutes. What happened after med school?’ His eyes held hers, all signs of his earlier fatigue completely gone.
‘It’s a long story.’
‘I have time, and I’d like to hear it.’
Olivia raised her eyebrows. ‘Sure you’re not stalling just so that you don’t have to go back to your friend’s apartment with the crying baby?’
‘Well, that’s part of it, sure.’ His lips twitched when she pretended to look shocked. ‘Look, if you don’t want to tell me, that’s fine by me.’
Olivia studied the man sitting opposite to her. Could he really be interested?
Yet the need to talk about Richard and their life together was strong. Maybe it was the intense way David was looking at her, as if she was the most fascinating woman he’d ever come across. It was dark outside and they were the only people left in the deli. The waitress had dimmed the lights and was huffily tidying up, making it clear that she thought it was time for them to go.
‘My husband—Richard—and I got together when we were both at college. We dated and then got married. I was doing my residency and, as you will know from your own experience, working all hours. As was he. He joined a large company and was put on the fast track. It meant we spent little time together, but we were happy. Richard, as expected, shot up the corporate ladder. I got a job at the hospital and I guess we continued as before. We moved to San Francisco when Richard was promoted to CEO of his company.
‘Then it became time to think about having a family. We had just started trying when Richard started getting these headaches. At first we put it down to pressure of work—he was busier than ever—but the headaches kept getting worse.’
David’s eyes were fixed on hers, his head tipped slightly to one side. She could see that his neurosurgeon brain was way ahead of her, but he said nothing. It was almost uncanny how still he was. Up until now he had been a mass of restless energy despite his evident exhaustion. This was no doubt the kind of focus he brought to surgery.
‘Eventually I persuaded him to see someone. You can imagine the number of tests he had to go through. And then, finally, the results.’
Her breath hitched as the memory of the pair of them sitting in the surgeon’s consulting room—the pity in his eyes as he’d told them his diagnosis. Imprinted on her memory was the look on Richard’s face. First the confusion then the disbelief.
‘He was diagnosed with a brain tumour.’
David shook his head. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘It was the fastest-growing kind. I knew that Richard had a year, two at the most. I didn’t want to tell him the prognosis, but he made me. Richard was the kind of man who had to know exactly what he was dealing with.
‘I
