been the answer. He had probably grown up fighting violence with violence, and as soon as he was old enough had gone out and bought an aggressive dog as a kind of ferocious status symbol, supposed to demonstrate just how much of a man he was.
Kelly looked directly at the man. ‘Did you witness the attack?’
‘Nah.’
‘But it was your dog?’ persisted Kelly, her fountain-pen flying as she wrote on the casualty card.
‘That’s right.’
‘And you weren’t there when it attacked?’
‘That’s right,’ he said again.
Kelly had to bite back the incredulous question of how someone could leave a big, violent dog alone with a small child. ‘So where were you when the attack took place on Gemma?’
This provoked a raucous belly laugh. ‘In the bedroom,’ he leered, and his eyebrows lifted suggestively as his gaze dropped to Kelly’s breasts. ‘Want me to tell you what we was up to?’
‘That won’t be necessary, Mr Landers,’ said Kelly crisply. She turned to the woman and her totally vacant expression.
‘You do know, Miss Jenkins, that I’m going to have to call in Social Services?’
‘Do what?’ The grey-faced woman was on her feet at once. ‘And get some nosy-parker social worker sticking their oar in?’
Kelly looked at them both sadly. Didn’t they realise that if the child was deemed to be at serious risk she could be taken away from them? God forgive her, but in a way she wished that Gemma would be free of them, if she hadn’t also known that often children in care suffered from a different kind of neglect. ‘I am also going to have to report the injury to the police—’
‘What for?’ the man demanded belligerently.
Kelly put her pen down. ‘Because this category dog is supposed to be muzzled, Mr Landers—as I’m sure you know. It certainly shouldn’t have been left alone in a room with a toddler ...’ Kelly paused, recognising that, despite all her pep-talking to herself, she had done the unforgivable—she had sounded judgemental. But doctors were human too, and she wondered seriously whether anyone in their right mind could have stopped themselves from adopting a critical tone with a case of this sort.
But it was when the man stabbed an angry finger in front of her face that she realised that if she wasn’t careful, he really could turn nasty. She had better let him have his say. Even in her three short weeks in A & E, she had learnt that ‘verbalising your feelings’, as one of the social workers put it, also tended to defuse pent-up emotions.
Mr Landers’s face was contorted into an ugly mask. ‘You listen here to me, you little bitch—’
‘What’s going on in here?’ came a deep, aristocratic drawl.
The three of them looked at the door, where the tall, dark and rangy form of Randall Seton stood surveying them through narrowed eyes.
The man replied in time-honoured fashion. ‘Push off, you stuck-up git!’
There was a silence of about two seconds, and then Randall moved forward, his whole stance one of alert, healthy and muscular readiness. He radiated strength and he spoke with quietly chilling authority; but then, thought Kelly somewhat bitterly, that was the legacy of privilege too.
‘Listen to me,’ he said softly. ‘And listen to me carefully. Dr Hartley has just been caring for your daughter in Casualty. So have I. I’ve just stitched together the most appalling wound inflicted by an animal that I’ve ever seen, praying as I did so that it will leave as little scar tissue as possible. An anaesthetist is currently pumping air down into her lungs, because where the dog’s teeth ripped at her throat it caused such swelling that if an ambulance hadn’t been on the scene so promptly, her airway could have been obstructed and your daughter could have died from lack of oxygen.’
The mother gave an audible gasp of horror, as though the reality of what had happened had just hit her.
‘She is shortly going to be admitted to the children’s ward,’ he continued, ‘where she will be looked after by another series of staff. Now we’ve all been doing our job, because that’s what we’re paid to do and that’s what we chose to do. What we do not expect is to be criticised or insulted for doing just that. Have I made myself perfectly clear, Mr— Mr—?’ The dark, elegent eyebrows were raised in query, but there was no disguising the dangerous spark of anger which made the grey eyes appear so flinty. At that moment, he looked positively savage, thought Kelly, but he somehow managed to do it in a very controlled kind of way. But there again, Randall was the master of self-control, wasn’t he?
‘Landers,’ gulped the man. ‘Yes, Doctor. I understand.’
‘Good.’ Then the dark-lashed grey eyes swept over Kelly. ‘Can I see you for a minute?’
Nine years, she thought, slightly hysterically, and he asks can he see me for a minute. Breaking up with Randall—not that such a brief acquaintanceship really warranted such a grand-sounding title—had been the best thing which had ever happened to her. But she had often wondered, as women always did wonder about the first man who had made them dizzy with desire, just what would happen if they saw each other again. What would they think? What would they say?
She had never imagined such an inglorious reunion taking place in a tiny and scruffy little office in one of London’s busiest A & E departments, nor him saying something as trite as that.
He looked ...
Admit it, Kelly, she thought reluctantly. He looks like a dream. Every woman’s fantasy walking around in a white coat.
He was lightly tanned. Naturally, he was tanned; he was always tanned. In the winter he skied down the blackest runs in Switzerland, and in the summer he holidayed with friends around the Mediterranean on a yacht which he had owned since the age of eighteen. Nine years hadn’t added a single ounce of fat to that incredibly muscular body, honed to perfection by years of rigorous sport. The hair was as dark as ever, almost too black—a gypsy ancestor had been responsible for the midnight gleam of those rampant waves, he had once told her—sure!—and it curled and waved thickly around a neck which Michaelangelo would have died to sculpt.
She stared into eyes the colour of an angry sea, trying to equal his dispassionate scrutiny, trying to convince herself that it was just the shock of seeing him again which made her heart thunder along like a steam train. ‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid that I’m busy just now taking a history.’
He gave her a cool smile, the flash in the grey eyes mocking her. ‘When you’ve finished, then?’
It would never occur to him to take no for an answer. ‘I’m afraid that I may be tied up for some time.’
He shrugged the broad shoulders. ‘In that case, I’ll chase you up when I’m out of Theatre.’ His eyes glittered. ‘I can’t wait.’ It sounded awfully like a threat.
She wanted to say, Why bother? What was the point? Instead she shrugged her shoulders indifferently—a gesture which deserved to win her an Oscar. ‘If you like,’ she answered coolly. And picked up her pen again.
‘And
