there are all kinds of disciplinary options,’ Jared said.
‘But if we all give him the right support,’ Bailey added, ‘he won’t do it again.’
Archie went silent, clearly thinking about it. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll square it with Lyle. But I’m going to read young Darren the Riot Act and make sure he knows that if he puts a single toe out of line from now on, he’ll be out.’
‘Thank you,’ Bailey said.
‘Everyone deserves a second chance,’ Jared added. ‘I think he’ll make the most of it.’
Everyone deserves a second chance.
Could that be true for them, too? Bailey wondered.
Jared had clearly been thinking about it, too, because later that evening he called her. ‘Are you busy?’
‘I’m studying,’ she said.
‘Have you eaten yet?’
‘Yes.’ A sandwich at her desk. But it counted.
‘Oh.’ He paused. ‘I wondered if you’d like to have dinner with me.’
Was he asking her on a date? Adrenalin fizzed through her veins. Strange how Jared made her feel like a teenager. ‘As colleagues?’ she asked carefully.
‘No.’
So he did mean a date. Excitement was replaced by skittering panic. ‘I’ll think about it.’
‘Is my company really that bad?’ he asked.
‘No—no, it’s not that, Jared. Not at all.’ She sighed. ‘It’s complicated.’
‘I can take a hint.’
She would like to have dinner with him; it was just that the whole idea of dating again scared her. How could she tell him, without dumping all that baggage on him? Telling him what had happened to her, and why her marriage had ended? She couldn’t. She just couldn’t. ‘I, um, haven’t dated in a while,’ she said.
‘Me, neither,’ he said, surprising her. ‘I’m seriously out of practice, too.’
Something else they had in common. Who, she wondered, had hurt him?
‘I was thinking,’ he said, ‘we were a good team, this afternoon.’
‘Yes.’
‘And I was thinking,’ he said, ‘maybe we should give ourselves a chance to see if we could be a good team outside work.’
‘Maybe,’ she said.
‘I could,’ he suggested, ‘cook dinner for you.’
‘You can cook?’
He coughed. ‘Don’t be sexist. Especially as your brothers are both chefs.’
She smiled wryly. ‘Yeah, I guess.’
‘So—how about it?’
‘If I say yes,’ she said, ‘then it’s just between us?’
‘You want to keep it a secret?’ He sounded slightly hurt.
‘I want to keep life simple,’ she said. ‘Can I think about it?’
‘It’s just as well I’m a sports doctor. My ego could really use some liniment right now,’ he said dryly.
And now he’d made her laugh. He was the first man to do that in a long while. Maybe, just maybe, she should give this a try. Maybe everyone was right and it was time she learned to live again. And Jared might just be the man to help her do that.
‘All right. Thank you, Jared. I’d like to have dinner with you. I don’t have any food allergies and I’m not fussy about what I eat.’
‘That was a quick decision.’
And she still wasn’t sure it was the right one. Part of her really, really wanted to do it; and part of her wanted to run. ‘When do you want to do it?’ Oh, and that sounded bad. She felt her face heat. Worse still, that was a definite Freudian slip. Because any woman with red blood in her veins would want to go to bed with someone as sexy as Jared Fraser. ‘Have dinner, I mean,’ she added hastily.
‘Tomorrow night?’ he suggested.
‘That’s fine.’ Big, fat lie. Now they’d actually set a date, the panic was back. In triplicate. ‘I’ll need your address.’
‘Got a pen?’
‘Give me two seconds.’ She grabbed a pen. ‘OK, tell me.’ She scribbled down his address as he dictated it. ‘What time?’
‘Seven?’
‘Seven,’ she confirmed. ‘Can I bring anything? Pudding, maybe?’ She could get Rob to make something special. Then again, Rob would tell their mother, and Lucia would go straight into interrogation mode. OK. She’d cheat and buy it from a top-end supermarket instead.
‘No, that’s fine. Just bring yourself,’ he said.
And how scary that sounded.
Bailey was feeling antsy the next morning, and she was really glad that she was busy all day in clinic. There were the usual sprains and strains, although she did feel a bit sorry for the middle-aged woman who’d managed to give herself tennis elbow from taking her weightlifting training too hard and was horrified to learn it could take several months of rest before the tear in her ligament healed.
‘Rest, ice it every couple of hours, take painkillers and use a support bandage when you exercise and whenever it’s really sore,’ Bailey said. ‘And when you do go back to using weights, you’ll need to drop the weights right down and take it very steadily. And don’t do anything above your head before it’s healed fully, or your rotator cuff in your shoulder will overcompensate for your elbow and you’ll have to get over the damage to that, too.’
Mrs Curtis grimaced. ‘I knew I shouldn’t have done that last set. I just wanted to finish the last few reps, but I should’ve just admitted that I was tired and stopped there.’
‘You’ll know next time,’ Bailey said. ‘Come back and see me if it’s not any better within a couple of weeks. It should heal on its own, but if it doesn’t then a corticosteroid injection could help.’
‘Thank you.’ Mrs Curtis smiled wryly. ‘That’ll teach me to remember how old I am, not how old I feel.’
Bailey patted her shoulder. ‘We all do it. Don’t beat yourself up about it.’
She bought wine and chocolates on the way home, and changed her outfit three times before deciding that smart casual was the way forward—a little black dress would be way too much. Black trousers and a silky long-sleeved teal top would be better. She added her nice jet earrings to give her courage, put on a slightly brighter
