‘How do you know that?’ He raised the most perfectly shaped eyebrow, and if eyes could smile, his were. ‘I might have been here for years. Perhaps I did my training here…’ He was teasing her, with a question she was less prepared to deal with than a premature birth. ‘Why do you think I’m new?’
Because I’d have noticed you.
That was the answer and they both knew it.
Now there was no baby, now there was no emergency to deal with, now it was just the two of them, Izzy, for the first time in, well, the longest time, looked at a man.
Not saw.
Looked.
And as she did so, the strangest thing happened—the four months of endless chatter in her head was silenced. For a delicious moment the fear abated and all she was was a woman.
A woman whose eyes lingered for a fraction too long on a beautiful man.
His hair had dried now and she noticed it was long enough to be sexy and short enough to scrape in as smart. He was a smudge unshaven, but Izzy guessed that even if he met a razor each morning, that shadow would be back in time for lunch. Even in jeans and a T-shirt, even without the olive skin and deep accent, there was a dash of the European about him—his black jeans just a touch tighter, his T-shirt from no high street store that Izzy frequented. He was professional and he was well groomed, but there was a breath of danger about him, a dizzy, musky air that brought Izzy back to a woman she had once known.
‘Well,’ he said when the silence had gone on too long, ‘it’s nice to stand here chatting, but I have to get back.’
‘Of course.’
‘A porter took my bag. Do you know where I can find him?’
‘Your bag?’ Izzy blinked, because it was the sort of thing she would say, but rather than work that one out, she went and called the porter over the Tannoy.
‘Come up and see him later,’ Diego suggested.
‘I will,’ Izzy said, consoling herself that he would have extended that invitation to any doctor, that the invitation wasn’t actually for her, that it had nothing to do with him.
Except Diego corrected her racing thoughts.
‘I’m on till ten.’
What on earth was that?
She’d never been on a horse, yet she felt as if she’d just been galloping at breakneck speed along the beach. Izzy headed for the staffroom, in need of a cool drink of water before she tackled the next patient, wanting to get her scrambled brain into some sort of order after the adrenaline rush of earlier.
A premature delivery would do that to anyone, Izzy told herself as she grabbed a cup. Except, as a large lazy bubble in the water cooler rose and popped to the surface, she felt as if she were seeing her insides spluttering into life after the longest sleep.
She couldn’t have been flirting.
She was in no position to be flirting.
Except, Izzy knew, she had been.
They had been.
The lone figure in the staffroom caught her by surprise and Izzy had begun to back out when she saw who it was. Josh was sitting there, head in hands, his face grey, and Izzy was quite sure she was intruding.
‘Don’t go on my account,’ Josh said. ‘I was just heading back. How is she?’ he asked.
‘Upset,’ Izzy admitted. ‘I think she was only just getting used to the idea of being pregnant, but…’ Her voice trailed off, Josh nodded and stood up and walked out, but before that, even as she spoke, realisation dawned.
Josh hadn’t been enquiring how the mother was.
Instead he’d been asking about Megan.
Chapter Three
‘ARE you sure you don’t want me to stay and help clear the board?’ Izzy checked as the clock edged towards ten.
‘Go home and get some well-earned rest,’ Ben said. ‘You haven’t had the easiest start back.’
‘And I thought you’d break me in gently.’
‘Not my style,’ Ben said. ‘You did great, Izzy. Mind you, you look like you’ve been dragged through a hedge!’
The power dressing had lasted till about three p.m. when she had changed into more familiar scrubs, her mascara was smudged beneath her eyes and her mouth devoid of lipstick.
It had been Chest Pain Central for the rest of the shift and apart from two minutes on the loo, Izzy had not sat down.
‘One day,’ Izzy said, ‘I’m going to manage to stay in my own clothes for an entire shift. I am!’ she insisted as Josh joined them. She’d had a good shift. Josh had been lovely—as sharp as a tack, he had been a pleasure to work with, his strong Irish brogue already familiar to Izzy.
‘It will never happen!’ Josh said. ‘I thought the same—that maybe when I made consultant…I had some nice suits made, didn’t I, Ben?’
They had been friends for years, Izzy had found out, had both worked together in London, and as Izzy grinned and wished them both goodnight she was glad now about her decision to return to work.
It was good to be back.
The patients didn’t care about the doctor’s personal life, didn’t know the old Izzy, they just accepted her. Any doubts she might have had about the wisdom of coming back at such a fragile time emotionally had soon faded as she had immersed herself in the busy hub of Emergency, stretching her brain instead of being stuck in that awful loop of wandering around her home, thinking.
It was only now, as she stepped out of her professional role, that the smile faded.
She didn’t want to go home.
She stared out past the ambulance bay to the staff car park and she felt a bubble of panic. She could call Security to escort her, of course. Given what had happened, who would blame her for not wanting to walk though the car park alone.
It wasn’t even dark. It was one of those lovely summer nights in St Piran when the sky never became fully black.
It wasn’t just the car park she was afraid of, though, she decided as she turned and headed up the corridor to the stairwell.
She just wasn’t ready to go home.
Her fingers hovered over the NICU intercom, wondering what exactly she was doing. Usually she wouldn’t have thought twice about this. The old Izzy had often popped up to the wards to check on cases she had seen in Emergency, but her pregnant status made it seem more personal somehow and it wasn’t just the baby she had delivered that had drawn her there tonight. Still, despite more than a passing thought about him now as she neared
