a woman fight harder than ever and that was one symptom of pregnancy she could get on board with.
* * *
Izzy could have kissed the tarmac when the helicopter touched down back at their Belfast base after transferring their patient into the hands of the emergency staff at the hospital.
‘Are you okay, Fizz? You’re looking a little green around the gills there. Don’t tell me you’ve developed a sudden fear of flying? We’d have to ground you and then who would I have to wind up on a daily basis?’
She rolled her eyes at a grinning Cal. He knew she hated that nickname he’d foisted on her when they’d first met at air ambulance training and she’d let her temper get the better of her, striving to prove she was better than any of the men there.
At least, she used to hate it. In the five years of working together it had grown on her and she’d missed it of late when things between them had become awkward, to say the least. Things weren’t going to get any easier between them once he heard her news.
They’d both been hurt by people who’d purported to love them. Cal’s pregnant fiancée, Janet, had run out on him with the man who was apparently the real father of the baby she was carrying, leaving double the void in his life and double the hurt.
Izzy knew the heart-stabbing pain of betrayal, thanks to Gerry, the man she’d thought she’d spend the rest of her life with. She’d put all her hopes and dreams into their relationship, believing he was the one who was going to give her the family and stability she’d never had growing up in the foster system, only to have everything cruelly snatched away from her when he’d been killed in a motorcycle accident.
The only thing worse than losing someone she loved had been discovering he hadn’t been who she’d thought he was at all. A parade of nefarious debt collectors and loan sharks who’d bankrolled a gambling addiction she’d been oblivious to and a bank account emptied as a result of his addiction had merely fuelled the notion that she would never have anyone in her life who loved her unconditionally. The realisation that had sent her running to the one person in her life she knew she could trust.
In Cal she’d found a kindred, wounded soul and she’d needed him to comfort her. They’d shared that one incredible night together but they both knew it could never be more than that when they were too raw to even think of getting involved in any sort of relationship. It was difficult enough going back to work as though nothing had happened between them when every erotic memory of sharing his bed was still so vivid in her mind.
And that one night of seeking solace in Cal’s arms had ended in the life-changing consequences she was yet to tell him about. She didn’t know how he was going to react to the news he was going to become a father so soon after his break-up and, to be truthful, she didn’t want to lose his friendship if he resented the fact she was pregnant with his baby instead of Janet.
‘I’m perfectly fine,’ she bristled, as they ducked under the still spinning blades of the air ambulance.
This pregnancy might have come as a shock, but she wasn’t going to let it get in the way of doing her job. The time would come soon enough when her bump would encroach on the limited space inside the chopper and prevent her from being as physically involved in the rescues as she was used to. At which point in time she’d probably have to become more involved in ground operations and hospital transfers, but not before then.
She was sure the odd bout of nausea would pass soon now she was reaching the end of her first trimester. Although she’d been unaware of the little person growing inside her belly for most of that time. Since she and Cal had agreed to put their indiscretion behind them, it hadn’t entered her head that she might be pregnant and had blamed the stress of finding out about Gerry’s secret vice as the cause for her missed period. Now everything was going to change between them.
Those tears, which never seemed far away, blurred her vision once more and she rested her hand on the slight swell of her belly to reassure her little bean it still had her, even if Cal decided he didn’t want to be involved. She needed to confide in someone and the closest she had to family was Helen, her childhood friend and the only person she’d had growing up who had seemed to genuinely care for her.
Helen still lived in the Donegal area, where Izzy had spent the last of her teenage years before moving to Belfast to study nursing. She was a shoulder for Izzy to lean on when she needed one and though there was a vast geographical distance between them, hearing her voice would be enough to comfort her. Once she got over the shock herself, Izzy resolved to make that phone call. There was just one other person she had to inform first.
‘Seriously, though, are you sure you’re all right?’ Cal stepped closer, his frown wiping away all traces of joviality, his pale blue eyes full of concern.
Izzy dropped her hand, so he wouldn’t guess her secret.
‘Low blood sugar, I expect. I haven’t eaten all day.’ A complete lie. Her blood was probably ninety per cent sugar due to the number of biscuits she’d been wolfing down lately.
‘Why didn’t you say? I’m sure we can do better than a cup of tea and a stale bun in the canteen. After what we’ve just been through we could probably do with something a lot stronger. Pub?’ He began to unzip his bright orange flight suit and let the sleeves drop to his waist, revealing the lean frame encased in a tight black T-shirt beneath the bulky protective layers.
Izzy told herself it was pregnancy hormones making it impossible for her to drag her eyes away. That was the bonus side of her condition, being able to blame recent impulses, including an apparent spike in her libido, on the changes going on inside her body. Although her intimate knowledge of that hard body and the pleasures it could bring a woman was making her temperature rise steadily with every flashback of that night they’d spent together.
It was a loss to womankind that because one of their sisters had been blind to what a great man he was, all the rest would be denied the privilege of getting close to him. Except her, of course, but then they’d agreed it would never happen again, no matter how physically compatible they’d turned out to be. It was ironic that they hadn’t wanted to complicate their relationship by getting romantically involved when they were now going to be tied together for the rest of their lives.
Izzy watched him climb out of his suit and flash her that cheeky grin of his.
‘Enjoying the view?’
‘You wish,’ she shot back with just as much sarcasm before he realised how true his observation had been.
Given the physical nature of their work, it was important to keep up their fitness levels, but Cal was the type who could never sit still anyway. His trim, nicely muscled physique wasn’t the result of hours spent at the gym. He wasn’t the slightest bit vain enough to spend time staring at himself in the mirror whilst he hoisted weights. No, this perfect specimen of the male anatomy was a pleasant result of his busy life as a doctor in the field and the manual labour he did in his vast garden in his spare time.
She shivered as some particularly erotic memories sprang to mind of this handsome man with his tan, sun-bleached mop of hair and that mischievous glint in his eye, lying naked next to her.
‘Are you sure you’re all right? You’ve got that hungry look in your eyes again.’
Izzy blinked away inappropriate thoughts and images of her colleague, her friend, and the one constant she’d had in her life here in Belfast before she’d screwed up and potentially lost him for ever too.
‘Just
