didn’t say the words ‘or else’, but they hung between them. Anna acknowledged them with a nod of her head. ‘Fine. But I don’t think I should go to the Christmas party with you.’
‘Miss McDonald will take good care of her. If she starts taking another turn tomorrow, we’ll both stay here. But it’s only for one night. We’ll be back the next day.’
She looked up, her hand still on the baby’s head. ‘Are you sure?’
Why he was so insistent on her going with him he had no idea. But these first few days at the hospital had been crazy. With the staff shortages, Annabelle had probably worked herself almost into the ground. A little Christmas cheer was in order. For both of them. They could count it as a celebration of Hope’s successful surgery.
He told her as much, and then added, ‘I’ll tell you what. As long as she’s holding her own, we’ll go to London. If we hear the slightest peep out of Sienna, we’ll come back immediately. It’s not that long a drive.’
Her thumb brushed back and forth over the baby’s tiny forehead. ‘Okay.’
She probably had no idea how protective she looked right now. As if her very presence were enough to keep anything bad from happening to that baby. If it worked like that, Annabelle might have three or four children by now.
His children.
Max’s throat tightened, a band threatening to cut off his airway. There would be no children. Not for Annabelle. And not for him.
That had nothing to do with this case. Or with either of them. Max needed to remember that, or the past would come back and undo all the progress he’d made over the last three years.
Progress. Was that what it was called? His stints in Africa seemed more like running away.
No. He’d helped a lot of children during those trips. Kids that might have had no chance had he not been there.
Like Baby Hope?
It wasn’t the same at all. Hope could have had any number of doctors perform her transplant. He’d just happened to be here at the time.
And he was glad he was.
His fingers gave Annabelle’s shoulder a squeeze. ‘She needs her rest.’
A ridiculous statement, since Hope was in a drug-induced sleep. He had a feeling his words were more to help Annabelle rest than the baby.
‘She’s just so...helpless.’
‘She might be. But we’re not. She’s got a great team of experts who are pretty damned stubborn.’
‘Like you.’
That made Max smile, the band around his throat easing. ‘Do I fall on the expert side or the stubborn side?’
‘Both.’ She tilted her head back and smiled up at him. ‘Hope is extremely lucky to have you on her team.’
‘Thank you.’
When she stayed like that, he gave in to temptation and bent down to give her a friendly kiss, hoping to hell no one was looking through the observation window at them right now.
He straightened, his fingers moving beneath her hair to the warm skin of her neck, damp despite the chilly temperatures in the room. From the stress of working to keep Hope’s a-fib from turning into something worse. She had to be absolutely exhausted. ‘You need to get some rest too, Anna. Before you collapse.’
‘I will.’ Her attention moved back to the baby. ‘I just want to sit here a little longer, okay?’
He had a feeling nothing he said was going to move her out of that chair, so he did something he shouldn’t have done. Something that would only test his equilibrium more than it already had been.
He pulled up a second rocking chair and settled in beside her.
* * *
‘How are the quads?’
Ella and Annabelle walked towards the front doors of the local café just like they did every Friday morning. Only today big flakes of snow were beginning to fall around them, sifting over the Christmas decorations that had been strung to the lamp posts. It should have felt festive, like something out of a postcard. But it didn’t.
She had too much on her mind for that.
She tightened the scarf around her neck, needing her friend’s advice today. The midwife hadn’t steered her wrong when she’d convinced her to move to the Cotswolds a year ago. The change in scenery had done her a world of good. At least until Max had come barrelling back into her life. But no one could have predicted that he would be the one taking Sienna’s place. Well, Sienna had known, but, from her reaction when she realised they knew each other, the cardiothoracic surgeon had had no idea who he was when the hospital had contracted him.
Annabelle just had to think about how to broach the subject. So she’d started with something work related until she could figure out how to bring up Max’s name.
‘They’re fine so far. Mum and babies all doing well. It’s very exciting.’
Ella had seemed distracted over the last couple of weeks. But every time Annabelle tried to gently probe to see what was bothering her, her friend clammed up. ‘I hope everything goes well for them.’
‘Me too.’ Ella pushed open the door to the café and got into line along with probably ten other people who were all ordering speciality coffees and breakfast sandwiches. ‘So what’s going on with Max?’
Whoa. So much for casually introducing the subject after an appropriate amount of small talk. But she should have known that wasn’t going to happen. Ella tended to jump right to the heart of the matter. Except when it came to talking about her own issues, evidently. But at least she seemed to be feeling better than she had a couple of days ago. Maybe she wasn’t catching the virus after all.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Are we really going to play this game, Annabelle?’
Her? Her friend had been pretty evasive herself recently.
‘I guess we’re not.’ She gripped the wrought-iron rail that kept customers headed in the right direction. ‘It’s no big deal. He asked me to go to a Christmas fundraiser with him. It’s in London.’
‘He did? When did this happen?’ Ella’s face was alight with curiosity. And concern.
Annabelle couldn’t blame her. Max had only been at the hospital a few days, but he’d already managed to turn her neat and orderly world on its head. Just as he always did. She’d sworn she was immune to him, that she could stay objective.
But just like with Baby Hope, it seemed that Max had the uncanny knack of being able to separate the fibres of her emotions and stretch them until Annabelle was positive they would snap.
He’d warned her about getting too emotionally attached to Hope. But who was going to warn her about him?
Max was
