had brought him to the ICU? There were usually only a couple of reasons why young men ended up here—accidents, usually involving vehicles, or serious illness. She turned her head, watching as he went past. Despite the oxygen mask covering his face, he looked too well to be seriously ill. His face was tanned and his colour was good and the one arm that she could see poking out from under the blankets was also tanned and well muscled. He looked robust and healthy enough.
She could see the outline of a cradle that was keeping the weight of the blankets off his leg and was suggestive of a lower-limb fracture. A motorbike accident, she decided before she ducked around the end of his bed to catch up with Scarlett and their mother.
They were hovering in the corridor, looking lost. They looked unsure what to do as they waited for the doctors to finish with Rose. Ruby was exhausted. It had been a crazy day—emotional, upsetting and stressful. She didn’t want to pace the hospital corridors, waiting for Rose’s procedure to be completed, she needed a shower and some fresh air to give her some strength to face what was yet to come.
‘Does anyone mind if I go and have a shower while the doctors are with Rose?’ Ruby asked.
She knew Lucy would wait and she knew Scarlett wouldn’t let her wait alone. Ruby also knew that she should offer to stay too. Hadn’t she just told herself she would need to be the one to offer support to her mother? But she couldn’t do it. She knew she’d go crazy with the tension of waiting and that would inevitably lead to her picking a fight with Lucy, something neither of them needed. She told herself it was best for everyone if she got away from the hospital and cleared her head before she exploded.
‘I’ll give you a lift to our place, if you like,’ Jake offered, when no one insisted she stay.
‘Don’t you want to wait with Scarlett? There’d be a shower in the hospital I could use, surely?’ She knew Scarlett would be able to organise a shower for her in the staff facilities at the hospital but she would prefer to get outside. She really wanted a chance to get some fresh air at the same time.
‘It’ll be nicer to shower at our house,’ Scarlett replied.
‘It’s only five minutes to home and your bag is still in my car,’ Jake said. The two of them were giving her permission to leave and she wasn’t going to argue further.
‘Are you sure you don’t mind ferrying me around?’ she asked him, as they left the hospital and returned to his car.
‘Not at all. I’m just doing whatever needs to be done at the moment—chauffeur, cook, liaison person.’
‘Liaison person?’
‘Between your family and the medical team,’ he explained. ‘It’s difficult for Scarlett and your mum to ask the right questions, they’re too close. It seems to work best if I do it.’
‘How can you do all that and go to work?’
‘I was already on holidays leading up to the wedding. I’ve quit The Coop.’
‘You’ve quit?’
Jake laughed. ‘In case you haven’t noticed, I’m about to become a husband and a father. I think my nights spent working in a strip club have been numbered for a while. It’s time to move on to the more responsible stage of my life. I start my internship in three weeks. Quitting The Coop now was supposed to give us time for a honeymoon. So I am at your service. Anything you need, just ask.’
Ruby appreciated the offer. She had come to think of Jake as the brother she wished she had.
Jake was a good man. It was lucky for Scarlett that when Ruby had met Jake it had been clear he’d only had eyes for Scarlett, otherwise who knew what would have happened? Only Ruby did know, Jake was cute and smart but far too conventional for her. She smiled to herself, not quite believing she would ever describe someone who worked as stripper in a male revue club called The Coop as conventional! In fact, his gig as a stripper was far more in keeping with the type of man she usually looked for. Her men were always a little bit edgy. She needed the excitement. But despite his old job Jake was basically a good person. He wouldn’t be able to handle someone like her.
Scarlett was perfect for him. As he was for her. Jake was cute and smart. Scarlett was clever and sensible and they made a good match. Plus it was obvious that he adored her and, most importantly, he allowed Scarlett to be herself instead of the person Scarlett thought she should be or the one she thought people wanted her to be. That had always been Scarlett’s undoing. She always wanted to please everybody.
The same thing could definitely not be said about her.
Jake pulled to a stop in front of Scarlett’s renovated cottage. Ruby grabbed her duffel bag from the boot of his dark green MG and followed him through the gate in the high brick wall and into the tiny front garden. She was travelling light, and hadn’t had time to do more than throw a change of clothes into her bag before racing to the airport. She had known that the phone call in the early hours of the morning would only be bad news. A phone call in the blackest part of the night was only ever bad news.
Now that she was here, she had no recollection of what she’d actually packed. She hoped she had at least one change of clothes, although if she’d forgotten anything she’d borrow it from Scarlett. She had none of Scarlett’s curves but, being summer, she’d get away with wearing her sister’s clothes. It didn’t matter if they were loose on her and in desperate times she knew Scarlett had several tops that could be worn as dresses.
Jake slid his key into the lock on the front door. A Christmas wreath decorated the door, jolting Ruby back to the present. Christmas was less than two weeks away but she had never felt in less of a festive mood.
‘You know where everything is,’ he said, as he held the door open for her. ‘Make yourself at home.’
Ruby always stayed with Scarlett when she visited. It worked best if she and Lucy had their own space, but she hadn’t thought about the ramifications of her earlier arrival. She’d originally planned to arrive two days before the wedding, timing her arrival with Jake’s temporary move back to his parents’ home, but now that she was here early she hadn’t considered that a change of plan might be needed.
‘Does it still suit you for me to stay? I’m not crowding you?’ she asked.
‘It’s fine,’ he assured her. ‘The spare bedroom is still yours to use.’
‘Are you sure? I can stay at Mum’s.’ She could manage a few days there if necessary.
‘Ruby, don’t worry about it. Have a shower and I’ll be back to pick you up in about forty minutes, okay?’
She nodded and stopped arguing and pushed open the door to the spare bedroom. She upended her bag on the bed and rifled through the contents. There were a few T-shirts, a couple of skirts and a dress in various shades of the rainbow, plus an old pair of cut-off denim shorts. She’d make do for a few days. She turned to the wardrobe to grab a clothes hanger. Tucked in the corner beside the wardrobe was a white wooden baby’s bassinette and hanging on the wardrobe doors were two long dresses in pale green silk. The bridesmaids’ dresses, one for her and one for Rose.
She wondered what Scarlett and Jake would do about their wedding. So much had changed in just twenty-four hours. It was more than just Ruby’s expectations of herself. Yesterday Scarlett and Jake had been counting down the days to their wedding and the birth of their first
