beforehand, and Clare gratefully handed the distressed woman over to him while she went back to see Tina.
The girl had tears in her eyes, the first real tears Clare had seen, and in a way she was relieved. She drew the curtains quietly round and sat beside her, holding her hand.
‘I don’t want to be in a wheelchair for the rest of my life,’ she whispered, and then the great heavy tears came, running down her wan cheeks and trailing into her hair.
There was nothing constructive to say, so Clare held her hand, and gradually the sobs subsided, leaving her weary and shaken.
‘I don’t think I can face my mum again for a while,’ she told Clare, and she nodded.
‘I’ll suggest she goes and has a look round the shops and comes back later, shall I?’
Tina shot her a grateful look. ‘Would you? I just can’t deal with her as well.’
Clare squeezed her hand and went back to the office.
‘How is she? I didn’t mean to upset her, but she’s only seventeen—too young for all this——’ Mrs White buried her face in her hands and sobbed again.
Over her head Clare met Michael’s eyes. He jerked his head towards the door, and Clare nodded.
‘Mrs White, I’ll get you a cup of coffee. You stay here for a minute and I’ll be back.’
She followed Michael out and up to the ward kitchen.
‘How is she?’
‘Tina? Finding her mother hard to deal with,’ Clare told him.
‘I’m not surprised. She can’t cope at all. I think Tim will want to get her transferred to the spinal injuries unit at Stoke Mandeville—they have all the necessary social and emotional back-up as well as state-of-the-art technology for dealing with this sort of thing.’ He sighed heavily and ran his hand through his hair. ‘Are you doing anything tonight?’
She was caught off guard by the change of tack, because she had hardly seen anything of him since Monday night. He had been kept on the run by the events of the week, and there had been no opportunity to further their relationship—if indeed they had one, which after such a short time she doubted, but she admitted to herself that she hoped they could have. She met his eyes.
‘Are you planning to jump my bones?’ she said with a twinkle.
He gave a short, surprised laugh. ‘Now that’s a tempting idea!’
She blushed. ‘I didn’t really mean that the way it came out,’ she laughed.
His hand came up and grazed her cheek. ‘What a shame,’ he teased gently. ‘I’ve been invited to a party at the house of one of the consultants, and I hardly know anyone who’ll be going—I’ll be like a fish out of water.’
‘Is it the Hamiltons?’
He nodded. ‘Yes, that’s right—they’ve just got married and they’re throwing a party to celebrate. I gather they had a very quiet wedding and this is in lieu of a reception. Well, will you come with me?’
Clare smiled. ‘I’m going anyway—Lizzi invited me. We’re sort of friends—or as close to it as anyone is with her. She’s always been a very private person until now. I can’t believe the change Ross has made in her.’
‘People don’t change other people, they just give them the confidence to be themselves—or take it away.’ He cupped her cheeks. ‘So you’ll come with me?’
She nodded. ‘I’d love to. I wasn’t really looking forward to it because I don’t know all that many people there myself. They’re all a bit exalted, really.’
He laughed. ‘I thought you said there was no hierarchy?’
‘Well, there isn’t really, but most of the people who’ll be there are older than me or married——’
‘Not part of the singles set, you mean?’
She shot him a surprised look. ‘I’m not part of the “singles set”, Michael,’ she said reprovingly.
‘No, of course not, you don’t have a lover and you don’t want one.’
She met his laughing eyes. ‘Are you teasing me?’
He remained deadpan, except for the eyes. ‘Would I?’
‘Yes, you would!’
‘Perhaps a little.’ His face gentled into a smile. ‘What time shall I pick you up?’
‘I’m on a split, so I won’t be ready to go until after nine—does that matter?’
He shook his head. ‘That’s fine. I don’t imagine it will get off the ground much before then, anyway. Tell you what, I’ll go and get changed when I finish here, and I’ll come up to your flat and wait for you—how’s that?’
Too intimate, she wanted to say, but Sister O’Brien came into the kitchen and smiled cheerily at them.
‘Making coffee for that poor woman?’
Clare flushed guiltily, ‘Yes, I was, Sister.’
Michael winked at her over Mary O’Brien’s frilly cap. ‘We’ll leave it like that, then, Staff,’ he said and sauntered out, giving her no option but to agree.
She was just putting the finishing touches to her make-up when she heard the knock on her door at five past nine. ‘Come in,’ she called, and carried on with her face.
Glancing up in the mirror seconds later, she saw Michael lounging in her bedroom doorway, hands thrust deep into the pockets of his immaculate cream trousers. The cornflower-blue silk shirt he wore was the same shattering colour as his eyes, and in the V at the neck she could see a cluster of golden curls nestling in the hollow of his throat. He looked ruggedly male and devastatingly sexy. She blinked and smudged her mascara.
‘Damn.’ Picking up a tissue, she wiped the offending mascara off her lid and touched up the shadow.
‘Sorry—didn’t mean to startle you,’ he apologised with a grin. Her heart flipped and she had to make a conscious effort to steady her hand.
Giving up, she dropped the eyeshadow brush and stood up, smoothing down the skirt of her cotton lawn dress. It was a splashy floral print in warm pastel shades, the perfect complement to her pale gold hair and English rose complexion, and she loved it.
‘Will I do?’ she asked with a twirl, and was rewarded by the bright flare of interest in his eyes.
‘Oh, yes, you’ll do,’ he said with wry emphasis. ‘My blood-pressure must have gone up to over two hundred in the last thirty seconds. Come on, out of here before I do something you’ll make me regret!’
She scooped up her shawl and bag, and clicked her heels.
‘Ready when you are, sir!’
‘That’s
