was neat but not as fastidiously so as he might have expected; it was very much a working girl’s flat.
There was a gorgeous arrangement of flowers in the window and Victoria smiled to herself when she returned to the lounge to find him surreptitiously trying to read the card.
‘They’re from Lewis’s parents,’ she told him. ‘The neck injury from Westbourne Grove.’
‘Good.’
‘I don’t have a secret admirer.’
‘No, you have a blatant one,’ he said. ‘You look beautiful.’
He made her feel just that.
Whether in boots and baggy green overalls with a messy bun, or dressed up, which tonight she was, he had always made her feel beautiful. This evening she had on a velvety, aubergine-coloured dress and black heels, and her hair was worn loose and down.
‘Where are we going?’ Victoria asked.
Bed, he wanted to say.
Bed, she hoped he would say.
Yet, there was so much that needed to be sorted first and it would possibly be easier to do that with a table between them.
‘There’s a nice French restaurant that I’ve heard about but have never been inclined to try,’ Dominic said.
‘That sounds lovely.’
Everything sounded lovely with his rich accent. He could have said they were going out for fish and chips and she’d have smiled.
She was putting in her diamond studs and she smiled as she saw him watching.
‘They got us into this mess.’
‘It’s not a mess, Victoria. It’s a baby and it will sort.’
But it still felt like a mess to her as she was so jumbled in her head. She wanted his kiss and his touch and to be just a couple going out to dinner, or deciding to hell with it and ringing for pizza later in bed. Yet they were so back to front, and he hadn’t wanted to go out with her until he’d known she was pregnant.
It was a hurt that she knew, if they got closer, would only grow along with the baby.
Yes, there was an awful lot to sort out.
‘Come on,’ he said.
The restaurant was gorgeous and intimate and they were led to a lovely secluded table; it was so small that their knees touched, though neither minded that.
The menu was gorgeous and Victoria groaned when she saw all the lovely cheeses and raw egg sauces that she’d been told to avoid.
‘When I’m not pregnant I’m coming here again and having everything on here that I can’t have now!’
‘Bad choice?’ Dominic asked because he hadn’t really given the menu a thought beforehand.
‘Oh, I’m not complaining.’
She ordered coq au vin and he ordered steak béarnaise. Conversation was awkward at first, but then the food arrived.
‘This is delicious,’ Victoria said as she tasted her chicken. ‘I make it sometimes but mine doesn’t come close to this...’
‘Well, it wouldn’t, would it?’
She looked up. ‘Why not?’
‘You’re not a French chef, Victoria.’
And he made her smile because he stood up to her; he challenged her. ‘I could have been, had I put my mind to it—well, apart from the French bit.’
They chatted a little about the campaign to save the hospital and the fundraising ball and then she asked if he missed his old hospital in Scotland.
Dominic paused to think about it. He had been happy where he was, but working at Paddington’s he was stretching his skills and really starting to settle in and enjoy it. ‘More than I expected to,’ he admitted. ‘When I left Edinburgh, I wasn’t planning on making a career move as such, yet I have. It’s a great position and I doubt it would have opened up if there hadn’t been the threat of closure.’
‘A lot are leaving?’
Dominic nodded. ‘They’ve just recruited a new cardiologist but I know a lot of departments are being held together with locums.’
‘Was it hard to leave Edinburgh?’
‘Of course,’ Dominic said.
‘Do you still miss it?’
He didn’t really know the answer to that. Going back while on annual leave he had asked himself the same, but the fact was, he was enjoying work and had looked forward to returning to London.
He glanced over to Victoria, who had given up on her main and was waiting for his response. ‘In part.’
She was scared to ask which part?
There was so much she wanted to know.
But some conversations were best had over chocolate crepes and vanilla ice cream.
Lorna and Jamie was one of them.
The food was delicious, the topic not so, but they chewed their way through both.
‘Did you ever suspect there was something between them?’ she asked.
‘No, they only met the once...’
He swallowed and carried on.
‘Every couple of years I go for a stint of working in India. I first went when I was in medical school and a few of us have kept it going. The week before I was due to go we had a get-together, and Jamie, my brother, came along. Until then he and Lorna had never met. He’d been overseas and had just got back. Well, they got on really well...’
‘Clearly!’
She had spent too long chatting on the road to be shocked, Dominic guessed. And it was actually refreshing just to let it out in the open with someone who wasn’t shy or coy.
‘Apparently they met a few days later by chance.’
‘Do you believe that it was by chance?’
She was asking the same questions that Dominic had asked himself. ‘No.’
‘Does it matter?’ Victoria asked.
‘It did to me at the time, but no, not so much now.’
And instead of saying he didn’t want to speak about it, this lone wolf shared.
Once upon a time, he had discussed things with family. Not everything, of course—Dominic did not readily share his emotions—but for the most part, he and his family
