Victoria said.
‘This image is on all the channels...’
Both Dominic and Victoria did their best not to catch each other’s responses as Robyn told them that they had just become the poster picture for the campaign to save Paddington’s.
Robyn had to get on, and so it was Victoria and Dominic with Glen by their side who walked back through the hospital.
Glen was asking about all the injuries and Dominic was doing his best to reply, but of course his mind wasn’t really on the conversation.
It was also moving on from the disaster and back to a few moments before the major incident alert had been put out.
He thought of Victoria sitting in the Imaging Department waiting room, and then he thought of her sitting slumped and pale on the floor outside the theatres.
Anyone would be feeling a bit faint, Dominic told himself. Victoria had been pushing on Lewis’s neck for ages.
Then he looked over to her and he could see her staring fixedly ahead.
Once outside they walked over to the press area and Victoria spoke with her supervisor where she was given a brief.
The police would speak first, then the firefighters, followed by Dominic, and then Victoria was to speak briefly about the ambulance response.
‘The last child pulled out was Ryan Walker,’ she was informed. ‘He’s six years old.’
‘Okay,’ Victoria said, and she deliberately did not look over to Glen.
He had a son called Ryan and she knew he would get upset at the link.
She went and took her place in the line-up.
Yes, her mind was busy working out ways to get the angle she wanted included, but she was also acutely aware of the man who now stood next to her.
The cameras were on them as they stood side by side and she could feel his tension.
Though, this time, it was not of the sexual kind!
‘We need to talk,’ Victoria said as she looked straight ahead. ‘Though not here.’
‘Obviously,’ came Dominic’s rather scathing response.
She turned and looked at him, and wasn’t sure if he was annoyed that they were going to be forced together as the poster image of Save Paddington’s as Robyn had suggested.
Or if, somehow, he knew.
DOMINIC KNEW.
Or, at least, he was starting to!
He was trying very hard not to believe she might be pregnant by him, and was very determined that history would not repeat itself, and he would not be made a fool of twice.
The press conference went well. Dominic said that it had been a multifaceted effort. Victoria got in her little plug about the potential closure by pointing out that the most urgent cases had needed the proximity of Paddington’s to have the best chance for a positive outcome and then they all went their separate ways.
The department was terribly busy and there was soot everywhere and the smell of smoke in the air. As well as injured children, there were staff and firefighters too but, by evening, the department was clearing and they were taken off bypass, which they had been placed on so that they could deal with the sudden influx of patients.
Dominic had been working since seven that morning, and after twelve eventful hours he should perhaps be heading for home.
Instead Dominic showered and changed into black jeans and a shirt and walked over to the Frog and Peach pub where the Save Paddington’s meeting was being held tonight.
On arriving, he soon found out that the meeting had been abandoned due to the Westbourne Grove crisis and would be held in a couple of days in a lecture theatre at the hospital.
Tonight, there was too much energy for sensible conversation.
The major incident meant that the staff all needed to unwind and debrief and so it was a very noisy pub that he found himself in.
There was Victoria.
She was wearing the jeans and rust-coloured top that he had seen her wearing at the Imaging Department, and he saw she was chatting with Rosie, one of the paediatric nurses.
And... Victoria was drinking soda water.
Not that that meant anything.
He had no idea if Victoria would normally be having a drink.
The fact was, he knew nothing about her except what had taken place that night.
‘Hi, Dominic, how was your holiday?’ Rosie asked as he came over.
‘Fine,’ Dominic said.
‘Where did you go?’
‘Scotland.’
‘Visiting family?’ Rosie asked.
Dominic gave a small nod. It was easier to do that than admit that while he had hoped to go and visit his family and let bygones be bygones, he hadn’t felt ready.
Dominic didn’t even want to attempt another relationship until he had dealt with the rather large items of baggage left over from the previous one. But the thought of asking Victoria out had spurred him on at least to try and so he had headed for home, but in the end he hadn’t been able to see it through.
It wasn’t that he was being stubborn, more that he was honest and could not simply walk in as if nothing had happened until he had dealt with it in his head.
Dominic wanted a real relationship with his brother and nephew—and yes, Lorna too—and he would not be pushed, for the sake of family peace, into a false one.
So, while he had hoped to visit family and the new baby, the hurt was still there. So he had stayed in a hotel and taken some time to drive around the land that he loved, and in that time he had done a whole lot of thinking.
A lot of his thinking had been about her.
Victoria.
And now she met his eyes.
‘We decided not to hold the meeting tonight,’ she started to explain. ‘We’re going to—’
‘I already heard,’ Dominic said, and when Rosie drifted off to join another conversation, it was just them.
‘Do you want to get something to eat?’ he offered.
‘I’ve already had something. Do you?’
‘No.’
No,
