downstairs before that, she said.’
‘Did she? Well, that doesn’t work, either, which might explain the bowl.’
‘Not having much luck, are you?’ She shifted and smiled at him, ridiculously aware of his strong, muscled body just a foot or so away. ‘I was going to come and see you later to find out how you got on. I’ve got your suit and a little something to try and compensate for the horrendous start. Come on in.’
He followed her, and she handed him the bottle and the card. ‘It’s nothing special, but I thought it might help to balance things out.’ He gave a quizzical smile, and shook his head slowly. ‘Ah, Daisy, I think you’ve done far more than a bottle of bubbly ever could. I just can’t thank you enough for today,’ he said softly. ‘You’ve been amazing. Bless you.’
She felt her cheeks heat, and flashed him a quick smile before turning away and heading for the kitchen. ‘It was nothing,’ she said, grabbing the kettle like a lifeline and shoving it under the tap. ‘You’re welcome. To be honest, I’m hugely relieved you aren’t a property developer or crazy DIY-er who’s going to do something awful to devalue my house! Well, at least I hope you’re not.’
He chuckled. ‘Well, I’ll try not to, but I’m not having much luck so far! This is a lovely house, though. It gives me hope for mine.’
‘They’ve both got most of their original features. That’s really rare. I hope you’re going to keep them?’
‘Oh, definitely. That was one of the reasons I bought it. Luckily I’d budgeted for the kitchen and bathroom.’ His mouth quirked, and she felt her heart hitch. It was ridiculous! They’d been working together all day without a problem, but here, in the intimate setting of her kitchen …
‘So—how’s Clare now?’
‘Fine,’ she said, clutching the change of topic like a lifeline. Work she could deal with. ‘She’s settling, her blood pressure’s already coming down, her urine output’s up and she’s feeling a lot better. And the baby’s doing well.’
‘Good. For what it’s worth and off the record, I would have delivered her on Friday, too, looking at the notes in more detail. Just in case she’d flared up at the weekend. She was lucky.’
She spun round, eyes wide, and stared at him. He agreed with her? ‘Really?’
‘Really. You were justifiably cautious.’
She felt something warm unfurling inside her, and she smiled. ‘Thank you,’ she said softly.
‘My pleasure. Have you eaten?’
‘No. I picked up a ready meal on the way home and I’m just about to cook it, but it’s only enough for one or I’d offer to share. Sorry.’
‘Don’t worry. I was going to take you out. I owe you dinner, remember?’
She flushed again. ‘Ben, I was joking.’
‘Well, I wasn’t, and you’d be doing me a favour. I’ve got no food in the house, my kitchen’s destroyed and I’m starving. I haven’t eaten anything today except that sticky bun, and low blood sugar makes me grumpy.’
‘Oh, well, we wouldn’t want you grumpy,’ she said, going belly-up with a grin, and tried to tell herself she was only doing it as a favour to her boss and her pathetically easy submission was nothing to do with those gorgeous blue eyes, or the rippling muscles she’d seen as he’d pulled off his scrub top on the way through to the changing rooms after he’d delivered Clare.
Nothing to do with that at all …
They went to the bistro on the waterfront.
It had uninterrupted views of the sea, good food and it was close enough to walk to.
Not that they could see the sea, really, this late in the evening, but they could hear it as they walked along the prom, the soft rush of the waves surging up the shore, the suck on the shingle as the water receded, and they could smell it, the tang of salt sharp in the moist air.
‘I love the sea,’ she told him. ‘I don’t think I could live anywhere landlocked.’
‘You want to try the Yorkshire Dales. It takes a good hour or more to get to the coast.’
‘But it’s worth it when you get there, surely? Doesn’t Yorkshire have lovely beaches?’
‘Oh, yes. Gorgeous. And Lancashire, on the west coast. It’s just a bit of an expedition. London wasn’t any better.’
‘Is that where you’ve just come from?’ she asked, trying not to be nosy but failing.
He grinned, his teeth flashing white in the streetlights. ‘For my sins. How about you? Are you Yoxburgh born and bred?’
‘No. I’ve only been here two years. I’ve got a friend working here, and she persuaded me to come.’
‘Good move?’
‘Oh, yes, for all sorts of reasons. Nice town, and the hospital’s great, much nicer to work in than my previous one, and—well, further from someone I needed space from.’
Now why had she brought that up? Idiot! She could see the question forming in his eyes, but she was saved from having to explain by their arrival at the restaurant, and by the time they were seated and the waiter had given them menus and water and a basket of warm, squashy bread, they’d moved on.
Thankfully.
‘So why obstetrics?’ he asked her, reaching for the bread.
‘I love it. Less keen on the gynae, except some of the surgery’s quite interesting and technically challenging, but mostly it’s the babies. Making a difference, saving such vulnerable little lives—I’m a sucker for it. The friend I told you about’s a midwife, and I guess she influenced me a bit. You?’
He shrugged. ‘All sorts of reasons, really. My father’s a vet and my brother and I used to go out with him on calls sometimes when we were kids. We helped with the lambing and the calving, and sometimes there’d be a foal, and I just loved it. And of course all the cats and dogs had litters, and we always watched them giving birth, and my mother’s a midwife, so when I went into medicine it just seemed the obvious choice. My brother’s an obstetrician, too, but he’s a bit more focussed on his career than me.’ He gave a wry smile. ‘It’s been a bit difficult recently. Life sort of threw a spanner in the works.’
‘That’s divorce for you,’ she said without thinking, and could have bitten her tongue off, but he just shrugged again and smiled sadly.
‘Yes, it is. Are you divorced?’
‘Me? No! Single and proud of it,’ she lied. Well, not about the single part, because she was, profoundly, since Mike had walked away, but she wasn’t proud of it. She was more—well, lonely, really, she admitted, but she’d rather be single than in the situation she’d been in. And for all the difference it would have made, in many ways she felt divorced. Would have been, if Mike had ever got round to asking her to marry him instead of just stringing her along for years. She scraped up a chirpy grin. ‘Mad spinster lady, that’s what I am. Didn’t you notice the cat?’
