a moment she just stood there with her hands resting protectively over the prominent bulge of her pregnancy, wondering why everything had gone so wrong. When she’d first met him she’d thought he was something so special. How could she have been so mistaken?
They had been working together for several months before the fateful day of her sister’s wedding, time in which she’d believed they’d been getting to know each other. Only she hadn’t known him at all. Hadn’t known that he’d been hiding such a monstrous secret until it had been far too late to stop herself falling in love with him.
She was still glaring at him after her outburst, but the longer she looked the more she began to notice about his appearance.
He’d changed since she’d seen him last. There was a sprinkling of grey at his temples that hadn’t been there before and he looked thinner, almost as if he’d been ill.
There was a subtle difference in the expression in his eyes, too. A year ago their polished steel had had the intensity of lasers where now they seemed almost…almost defeated.
He doesn’t look happy, she thought with a strange ache around her heart.
Startled by the burgeoning emotion she’d vowed to dismiss for ever, she suddenly realised that in spite of everything she was as much in love with him as she’d ever been.
Then to her utter mortification she burst into tears.
FROM the first moment she saw him, Ella felt as though a light had been switched on inside her.
‘Seth Gifford,’ she whispered as she walked away after their first introduction, loving the feel of the words in her mouth.
Somehow she just knew that she had met the man who was going to be the most important part of her life, and she was filled with an almost giddy excitement.
It wasn’t enough that she’d just landed the job of her dreams. After waiting twenty-seven years and nearly giving up hope, she’d met the man of her dreams, too. What was more, she was almost certain she’d seen an answering spark of attraction in his eyes that had nothing to do with the fact that she was a well-qualified midwife.
‘Is there anything else you want to see?’ her guide asked as they continued on their way along the light and airy corridor towards the delivery suites.
A swift sideways glance at her new colleague reassured her that Carol didn’t seem to have noticed anything amiss in her reaction to their obs and gyn consultant and she breathed a sigh of relief. That was not the way she wanted to start to build up a relationship in the department.
‘I’ll probably have dozens of questions,’ she answered with a laugh. ‘But you’ve told me so much in the last half-hour that I can’t tell what’s stuck yet.’
‘I know what you mean,’ Carol commiserated. ‘Every obs and gyn department does the same basic job but there are always differences in their routines when you move to another hospital.’ She paused to throw Ella a speculative look. ‘What do you think so far? Are you going to like us enough to stay?’
I’d stay just for the pleasure of seeing Seth Gifford every day, she heard a little voice say inside her head, and swiftly squashed it. ‘This is pretty much my ideal job,’ she admitted candidly, not seeing the point of beating around the bush. ‘I’ve always wanted to work somewhere that was at the forefront of all aspects of human fertility, and to come here, where there are so many inter-departmental links, is perfect.’
The understanding smile on Carol’s face encouraged her to continue enthusiastically.
‘I’ll be learning, too, because I’ll be able to see everything from perfectly straightforward deliveries of naturally achieved pregnancies to those that would never have happened without medical assistance. And then there’s the staff. I only met some of them when I came for my interview, but everyone’s been very welcoming, right up to the top man.’
‘Top man?’ Carol questioned. ‘Oh, you mean Mr Gifford. He’s not exactly the top man because we share Professor den Haag with St Augustine’s, and Mr Crossman, our other consultant, has about ten years’ seniority, but he is all our own.’
Ella suddenly found herself longing to ask Carol for details about Seth and that shook her. She’d never allowed anyone or anything to interfere with her job before, and she wasn’t going to let her hormones get in the way now. It might be the first time they’d really sat up and taken notice of anyone, but that was her own problem.
‘So, what is the atmosphere like in the department? Does everyone get on well?’ she asked as her guide finally took her into the comfortable atmosphere of the staff lounge to make them a coffee. Carol had warned, laughingly, that sitting down would probably be the signal for dozens of patients to turn up in complicated labour, but they’d deemed it worth the risk. Midwifery was definitely one of the less predictable specialties and they all learned early on in their training to grab the chance of a break with both hands.
‘Actually, we do all get on reasonably well,’ Carol confirmed thoughtfully. ‘You’ll always get those who don’t pull their weight quite as willingly as others but here they seem to be balanced by others who always do their share and more.’
‘Doesn’t that lead to friction?’
‘Oh, there’s the occasional flare-up to make the slackers pull their socks up, but it’s generally fairly good-natured.’
‘What about the bigwigs? What are they like to work with?’ She hadn’t been able to resist asking after all.
‘Professor den Haag is wonderful. He’s a big blond gorgeous teddy bear of a man who loves his work every bit as much as he loves his wife and family. They’ve got six children already. Three sets of twins!’
Ella blinked. She couldn’t imagine how any woman coped with one set, let alone three.
‘Wow! Gluttons for punishment!’ she exclaimed. ‘What about Mr Crossman? I met him briefly at my interview but he was called into theatre for an emergency Caesarean almost as soon as we shook hands.’
‘He’s a quiet man, not much older than the professor but seems much more middle-aged somehow. Steady and hardworking but doesn’t seem to have much rapport with his patients—the adult ones, that is. He adores babies, though. He’s just become a grandfather for the first time so he’ll probably trap you in a corner with the latest photos when he finds he’s got a new victim to show them to.’
‘I’ve been warned!’ Ella chuckled. ‘And what about Mr Gifford?’ Finally, she’d asked about the one person she really wanted to know about.
‘Well, what can I tell you?’ Carol said with a shrug and a roll of her eyes. ‘Obviously, he’s totally gorgeous. The archetypal tall, dark and handsome with those lovely velvety grey eyes, added to which he’s brilliant at his job and excellent with all his patients. But other than that, there isn’t much to tell. He hasn’t been here very long—probably nearly six months now. He seems to keep himself very much to himself outside his duty hours and that’s as much as we know so far.’
‘That’s quite amazing, knowing what hospital grapevines are like,’ Ella commented, unaccountably disappointed
