knew he was just trying to irritate her as he started humming, knew he was just trying to prove he was completely unbothered working alongside her.
And then she realised what he was humming.
A little song that was familiar, a little song about a little runaway, and when he looked up at her furious face he had the audacity to laugh.
‘You’d better go,’ Jed said. ‘It sounds busy out there.’
There were maybe five patients it the department.
‘Or do you need to pop up to visit your mum?’
He teased her with every excuse she had ever made over the last couple of days whenever he had tried to talk to her.
‘Or is it time to pick up Simon?’
And then he got back to humming his song.
‘I’m not avoiding you or running away.’
‘Good,’ Jed said. ‘Then I’ll be over about eight.’
‘I don’t want to argue.’
As soon as she opened the door to him, Jasmine said it. ‘I don’t want raised voices …’
‘I didn’t come here for that,’ Jed said. ‘And I wouldn’t do that to Simon and I certainly wouldn’t do that to you.’ He saw her frown of confusion as she let him in. ‘You are right, though—I didn’t fight fair.’ He said it the moment he was inside. ‘And I’m not proud of that. I didn’t give you a chance to explain. I didn’t give us a chance.’
He took a seat. ‘And I get it that there were things that you couldn’t talk about easily. I’ve thought about it a lot and I can see how impossible it was for you—after all, if you and Penny had agreed not to tell anyone …’ He looked up at her. ‘You could have told me—I would never have let on.’
‘Perhaps not,’ Jasmine said, ‘but when I thought you two might have been seeing each other …’ She looked at him. ‘Penny insists nothing ever happened.’
‘It didn’t.’
‘Apparently Greg walked in on you two once?’ She wanted to believe her sister, but deep down she was still worried that it was Penny protecting her all over again.
‘Greg walked in on us?’ Jed gave a confused shake of his head, raked his fingers through his hair and pulled on it for a moment, then he gave a small smile as realisation hit. ‘We had words once.’
‘Words.’
‘A lot of words. It was a couple of months ago,’ Jed said, ‘before you were around. In fact …’ he frowned in recall, ‘… it was the same day as your interview. We had a busy afternoon and there was a multi-trauma that I was dealing with and Penny just marched in and tried to take over.’
‘I can imagine.’ Jasmine gave a tight smile.
‘And then she questioned an investigation I was running—Mr Dean was there and I think she was trying to …’ he shrugged, ‘… score points, I guess. I don’t do that.’ Jasmine knew already that he didn’t. ‘And I don’t mind being questioned if it’s merited, but, as I told Penny, she’s never to question me like that in front of a patient again or try and take over unless she thinks I’m putting a patient at risk.’ Jed looked up at her. ‘Which I certainly wasn’t and I told her that.’
‘Oh!’
‘And I asked her to explain her thought process, her rationale behind questioning me,’ Jed said. ‘Which Penny didn’t take to too well.’
‘She wouldn’t.’
‘Your sister’s lousy at confrontation, too.’ Jed smiled. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Oh, she is,’ Jed assured her. ‘She only likes confrontation when it’s on her terms. You should remember that next time she starts.’
And Jasmine found she was smiling.
‘Greg walked in on us, actually, we were in the IV room, and, yes, I guess he picked up something was going on, but it certainly wasn’t that.’
‘So why wouldn’t you answer me that day?’ Jasmine asked. ‘Why couldn’t you just say that there was nothing going on between the two of you?’
‘Because I’ve spent the last two years convincing myself I’d be mad to get involved with anyone at work.’
‘Especially a single mum?’
‘You could come with ten kids,’ Jed said. ‘It was never about that.’
‘Then why?’
‘Jasmine, please.’ He put up his hand. ‘This is difficult.’ And she knew then he had something to tell her, that she was as guilty as he’d been that night, because she was the one now not letting him speak.
‘I left my last job, not because …’ He really was struggling with it. ‘I got involved with a colleague,’ Jed said. ‘And there’s no big deal about that, or there wasn’t then. She worked in the labs in research and, honestly, for a couple of months it was great.’ He blew out a breath. ‘Then she started talking about children …’
Jasmine opened her mouth and then closed it.
‘I wasn’t sure. I mean, it was early days, but it wasn’t even on the agenda. I told her that. She got upset and that weekend I went out with some friends. I was supposed to go over to hers on the Sunday and I didn’t, no excuse, I just was out and got called into work and I forgot.’ Jasmine nodded. She completely got it—she forgot things all the time.
‘She went crazy,’ Jed said. And it wasn’t so much what he said but the way that he said it, his eyes imploring her to understand that this was no idle statement he was making. ‘I got home that night and she was sitting outside my flat and she went berserk—she said that I was lying to her, that I’d met someone else.’ He took a long breath.
‘She hit me,’ Jed said. ‘But we’re not talking a slap. She scratched my face, bit my hand.’ He looked at Jasmine. ‘I’m six-foot-two, she’s shorter than you and there was nothing I could do. I could have hit her back, but I wouldn’t do that, though, looking back, I think that was exactly what she wanted me to do.’
‘Did you report it?’
He shook his head. ‘What? Walk into a police station and say I’d been beaten up? It was a few scratches.’
‘Jed?’
‘I thought that was it. Obviously, I told her that we were done. She rang and said sorry, said that she’d just lost her head, but I told her it was over and for a little while it seemed that it was, but then she started following me.’
‘Stalking?’
Jed nodded. ‘One evening I was talking to a friend in the car park, nothing in it, just talking. The next day I caught up with her in the canteen and she’d had her car
