worry, I won’t do anything to risk the babies,’ she reassured him. ‘They’ve had enough trauma already.’
She was tired by the end of the day but it was a good tiredness that came from doing a worthwhile job to the best of her ability, and just before Dan appeared to offer her a lift back to her flat, she was given official permission to turn up the next day, too, so the precedent was set.
‘I’m still not sure that you should be doing it,’ Dan grumbled as he steered around the road that circled the whole of the hospital grounds and aimed for the exit. ‘You’re entitled to paid sick leave.’
‘I know I am, but I really don’t see the point of being paid to go mad when I can make myself useful. Go on, admit it. It worked well today, having me restricted to the needlework department. I already know the system and the staff, and everybody’s been willing to help me, doing things like fetching more supplies.’
He stopped arguing after that, obviously deciding that there was little point as she had permission, and she was grateful that he would never know the real reason why she’d wanted so much to come back to work so ridiculously early.
‘Because that’s the only place where I can legitimately spend time with Dan,’ she whispered as she watched from her window while he climbed back into his car and drove away.
She’d only had to see the longing on his face when he’d looked at her belly just a few minutes ago to know that he was yearning to feel the babies move again … probably as much as she did. But their situation as nothing more than the genetic parents of those babies made the relationship between them too strained for such intimacy to take place again.
As for the possibility that Dan would wrap her in his arms again and cradle her all night long, she may as well cry for the moon.
THE wretched woman was driving him mad.
It wasn’t enough that she was back at work long before she should have been, and that the whole of the rest of the department had welcomed her with open arms, or that she’d made herself virtually indispensable as she’d beavered away in minors.
Her bright idea was almost single-handedly responsible for the ‘new initiative’ that the bean-counters had come up with. This meant allocating one member of the medical team per shift to do exactly what Sara had been doing—clearing the department of the vast numbers of niggling minor injuries that, in the strict rotation of normal triage, would ordinarily clog the place up and ruin the hospital’s performance figures.
If he were honest, he would have to admit that the new organisation had certainly raised morale among the A and E staff, with far fewer instances of abuse hurled at them from members of the public who had been forced to wait unacceptable hours before there had been anyone free to sort them out.
Not that their department manager was going to allow medical protocols to be buried by upper-echelon diktats. He was far too experienced a man not to know that there were times when victims brought in with major injuries took absolute priority over everything else, and he wouldn’t have it any other way.
No, the thing that was driving him completely off his head was the careful distance that she’d been keeping between the two of them ever since that morning when he’d woken up in her bed.
It felt as if he’d been trying to speak to her for weeks but there was never a moment when she was alone. Each time he’d had a moment to go looking for her she’d either been with a patient or in the staffroom surrounded by other colleagues willingly fetching and carrying drinks or food for her, or asking about the progress of the pregnancy, or, worst of all, putting their hands on the rapidly swelling bump to feel the increasingly visible movement inside it.
Oh, he’d been so jealous of the fact that she was letting them do that, and his only consolation was that he’d been the very first one to feel that miraculous quickening.
Zara had left the hospital now, with Mr Shah’s final words—telling her that she’d been far luckier than she deserved after doing something so stupid—still ringing in her ears. She had also packed up a substantial amount of her belongings and returned to the welcoming arms of her parents to complete her convalescence. As far as the rest of the world was concerned, this was because her mother would be available to keep her company, whereas he would be out at work for long stretches at a time.
In reality, there was another very different reason and he needed to talk to Sara about it …
Of course he’d thought about turning up at her flat, but all the while she was wearing that cast he’d felt too guilty about the idea of forcing her to climb all those stairs in both directions to let him in. He smiled wryly when he remembered the way she’d tossed her keys out of the window to him. If he’d known then what he knew now he’d have put them in his pocket and kept them. It would have made what he was trying to do so much easier if he could just let himself into the old Victorian house and corner her in her little eyrie. Then she would have to listen while he explained, apologised, did whatever he had to while he tried to persuade her to give him a chance to get close to her, because only if he could get close would he be able to judge if there was a possibility she would give him a second chance.
He was very aware that time wasn’t on his side as far as her pregnancy was concerned, and he had so much to achieve before that day arrived … And then the brainwave had struck and here he was, standing on her front doorstep and ringing the bell on the ground-floor flat.
‘Sorry to disturb you,’ he apologised when the elderly lady cautiously opened the door with the safety chain firmly in position, ‘but could you let me in so that it saves Sara coming down all those stairs?’
‘Why doesn’t she drop her keys down to you … like she did before?’ the sprightly woman asked with a definite twinkle in her eye, and when she saw his surprise gave a chuckle. ‘I don’t seem to need as much sleep these days, lad, and it’s amazing what I see happening outside my window.’
‘I wanted to surprise her,’ Dan admitted, knowing that it was nothing less than the truth. Whether Sara would see it as a good surprise he had yet to find out.
‘And you brought her flowers,’ his inquisitor said with a nod of approval before she released the catch. ‘That’s always a nice touch.’
‘How did you know they were here?’ he asked as he brought the bunch of freesias—Sara’s favourite flowers—out from behind his back.
‘The rest of me might be sagging and crumbling by the minute, but my nose is still working perfectly,’ she said wryly, then a look of sad reminiscence crossed her face. ‘Besides, they’re my favourites and I haven’t been given any since my Dermot died.’
While she stepped back and pulled the door wide, it took no more than a couple of seconds to slide several stems out of the large handful he’d brought.
‘My name’s Dan, not Dermot, but at least it starts with the right letter,’ he said with a smile as he presented her with the sweetly scented blooms, hoping that one day Sara would have such lovely memories.
‘Oh!’ A shaky hand came up to cover her mouth and she blinked rapidly as though fighting back tears. ‘Oh, my dear boy … Thank you so much, but you didn’t have to …’
