‘I need to get dressed. There’s no point discussing this further. We made a mistake last night. We shouldn’t have overstepped the line. We work together and we should not have slept together. It won’t happen again. I’ll make sure of that.’
‘You’ll make sure of that?’ she repeated solemnly. ‘I’ll make sure of it.’
‘Juliet, I didn’t mean to hurt you; you have to believe me.’
‘I don’t have to believe anything.’ She climbed from the bed and began to gather her clothes. Angrily she pushed past him to the bathroom. She slammed the door shut and reappeared a few minutes later, dressed.
‘There’s just one more thing,’ he said, determined to distance himself from Juliet and her tiny daughter. He knew it would sound heartless but it would ensure she stopped trying to help him.
‘What?’ she demanded.
‘Would you mind telling Bea that the delivery she’s expecting won’t be arriving? The Christmas tree farm can’t deliver. I’m truly sorry.’
JULIET ARRIVED HOME to see there were no missed calls from Charlie. He hadn’t so much as sent her a text, let alone called to apologise or try to make it up to her. Her face was damp with tears she had shed but most of them had rolled down her cheeks on the short and painful drive home just before dawn. The road was dark and she felt more alone than she had ever done before.
It was her worst nightmare. A one-night stand with a man with whom she had thought she might possibly fall in love. If she wasn’t already a little. With a heart heavier than she had dreamed possible, Juliet had run out of his home when he’d told her about the tree. She’d known she had to leave. Without saying another word.
She’d had to turn her back on Charlie Warren just the way he had turned his back on her.
But before he’d seen the tears she had promised herself all those years ago that she would never shed for a man.
She had pulled into her driveway and crept into the house before the sun came up and slipped into bed beside Bea, feeling stupid and filled with regret. She hoped her daughter would never make the same mistakes she had, twice. She wanted so much more for Bea. She wanted her to feel real love, the kind that lasted for ever with the bells and whistles and everything a man could give and that neither had given to Juliet.
She could hear her father snoring in the other room and knew her mother would be wearing the earplugs that had saved their marriage. Her father’s snoring at times was like a long freight train rattling down the tracks, and, without the earplugs, she knew her mother would have gone mad from the sleep deprivation or divorced him. But she had found the solution in a pharmacy, popped them in her ears and had her happily ever after. For Juliet there was nothing in a pharmacy, no prescription or over-the-counter solution to her woes. She simply chose the wrong man and that was a problem that couldn’t be cured.
In her lifetime Juliet had only chosen two men and both were wrong for her. And both were nothing more than one-night stands.
There would be no happily ever after.
She was, in her mind, the poster girl for stupid decisions with her one hundred per cent failure rate.
* * *
Bea had left the bed while Juliet lay with her eyes closed. Now she could hear her daughter giggling over the sound of the television in the other room. She could also smell fruit toast that she knew her mother or father had prepared for their granddaughter.
While her irresponsible mother slept in after a drive of shame home.
They had been careful, so at least she had no fear of another pregnancy. No, this time she had only gained a broken heart and damaged pride. Not to mention shattered dreams that what she had shared with Charlie in his four-poster bed would amount to more than a night. Climbing from the bed, she headed for the bathroom. She needed to soak in the tub and try to wash the man out of her heart.
Only this time, she thought it would take longer and hurt more. Because this time she had believed in her heart it was real.
* * *
It was the weekend, and Juliet was not required at the hospital but she wanted to be there to see Georgina and Leo and also their babies. In general her role ended after the delivery, but the outcome of the Abbiatis’ procedure was not what she had clearly hoped for and she wanted to check in with them. Despite what Charlie had said post-operatively, and what she knew to be true, she still felt responsible for the babies’ pre-term arrival. It wasn’t logical, it was heartfelt, and that was linked very closely to the outcome of becoming involved with Charlie.
Spending the night in his bed was illogical and...heartbreaking.
She left Bea playing cards on the floor with her grandfather. Snap was their game of choice. The house was lovely and warm and Juliet’s mother was going to roast a chicken for lunch, then they thought they would all rug up in their winter best and head out for a walk through the town. Juliet wished she were in the mood to join them but decided to hide behind her work rather than pull them all down with her melancholy mood.
After parking in the hospital car park she made her way into the hospital. The chilly breeze seemed even colder that morning.
Juliet caught sight of Ella as she walked into Maternity. Worried that the midwife would sense immediately that she was upset, Juliet quickly realised that she had to avoid her. Ella had mentioned a few times how she was growing accustomed to Juliet’s sunny personality and that day Juliet knew she was anything but sunny. With her head down, she waved and rushed past Ella, hoping she would assume she was in a hurry and not think anything of it. But she wasn’t that lucky.
‘Juliet,’ Ella called to her. ‘Do you know where I might find Charlie?’
Juliet shrugged her shoulders. She didn’t want to be drawn into talking. She feared she might tell Ella that she hoped Charlie was rotting somewhere in hell. Or worse, burst into tears and confess how much she still felt for the man who had behaved so poorly. So she kept walking, offering Ella nothing. In Juliet’s mind, it was best if she was the only person who knew about her foolish behaviour. No one else needed to know that she had actually believed, when he’d pressed his hard body against hers, that a man like Charlie wanted more than a fling.
With a deep breath to steady her emotions, she knocked on Georgina’s door. There was another hurdle to face that day. Georgina and Leo and their questions about what went wrong.
‘Come in,’ came Leo’s voice.
Juliet stepped into the room that was filled with flowers and family members. She suddenly realised she also had to face their family.
‘Mum, Dad,’ Leo began, then turned to the other set of parents and repeated himself. ‘Mum, Dad, this is Dr Juliet Turner, the in-utero surgeon from Australia.’
Juliet attempted a smile. She was genuinely happy to finally meet Georgina and Leo’s parents but it would have been a nicer meeting if it had occurred the previous day. Before the surgery had brought about the pre-term delivery of the four babies...and before she had stupidly slept with Charlie and hated
