you don’t need me any longer I have a mass of paperwork to catch up on,’ she said. ‘Not to mention my antenatal clinic in an hour.’
She was already heading for the door, and Tom quickly followed her. ‘Thanks for holding the fort for me, love. I really appreciate it.’
She smiled up at him, but she didn’t even so much as glance in Mark’s direction as she left, and Mark’s eyebrows rose.
‘Whoa, but did it suddenly get distinctly chilly in here, or what?’
‘I’m not surprised,’ Tom observed tightly. ‘Criticising our department and its equipment wasn’t exactly the smartest thing in the world to do.’
‘Just telling it like it is,’ Mark replied. ‘It’s not my fault if Helen is hypersensitive to criticism. In fact…’ He came to a halt as he encountered a look in Tom’s eyes. A look he’d never seen before. A look that held neither warmth nor amusement, and he held up his hands defensively. ‘Hey, no offence meant, mate. Look, I’ll apologise to her, OK?’
‘Do that,’ Tom declared, his grey eyes hard, cold. ‘I don’t like my wife upset, and I won’t have her upset. Not by you, not by anyone.’
Mark stared at him for a second. ‘Tom the protector. Tom the defender. You’ve changed since our med days, haven’t you?’
‘If you mean I’ve grown up—realised what and who is important in my life—then, yes, I’ve changed,’ Tom replied. ‘Helen is more important to me than my job, this hospital and our friendship, and you’d be well advised never to forget that.’
Mark grinned. ‘Whoops, but I’ve suddenly got that chilly feeling again. Look, I’ve said I’ll apologise,’ he continued as Tom’s eyebrows snapped together. ‘I’ll even grovel if I have to. Satisfied now?’
Tom nodded. ‘Mark, listen—’
‘Helen doesn’t seem to like me very much, does she?’
Helen didn’t appear to, but there was no way Tom was going to agree. ‘Helen likes everyone,’ he said evasively.
‘OK, let’s just say I’m not feeling the love,’ Mark observed, and Tom couldn’t help but laugh.
‘The trouble with you, my friend, is that far too many women have been bowled over by your charm over the years, and it’s a blow to your ego when one isn’t.’
‘You reckon?’
‘I reckon,’ Tom confirmed. ‘In fact, I think it’s high time you settled down.’
‘And deny all the lovely women out there the pleasure of my company? No way.’
‘Maybe that kind of attitude is OK when you’re in your twenties,’ Tom said, horribly aware that he suddenly felt very old, ‘but you’re thirty-four—’
‘So I should be looking for a woman to settle down with,’ Mark completed for him in a mock-sonorous tone. ‘Perhaps I would if all the best ones weren’t already taken.’ One corner of his mouth turned up. ‘Women like your Helen. Now, if I’d met her before I went to Oz—’
‘You wouldn’t have stood a chance.’ Tom laughed. ‘It was love at first sight for Helen and me.’
It had been, and the love was still there, he thought as he began labelling the X-rays and putting them into Rhona Scott’s file. Even now she could still make his pulses race simply by smiling at him. Even now he felt a tightness round his heart when he saw her coming out of the shower, her hair all tousled, her skin pink and glowing.
He glanced thoughtfully across at Mark. When they’d been students he’d always envied Mark his good looks and easy charm, but he didn’t envy him now. Flitting from woman to woman, moving on when he got bored or if some other female caught his eye. It was an empty sort of a life, rootless and ultimately unsatisfying.
No, he didn’t envy Mark. He had a wife who loved him, two wonderful children, whereas Mark…Mark had absolutely nothing that he wanted any more.
‘He’s gorgeous, isn’t he?’ Liz Baker said dreamily as she switched on the staffroom kettle. ‘His thick black hair, his tan, those eyes…’
‘Looks aren’t everything,’ Helen interrupted tersely. ‘In fact, give me an honest, ordinary-looking man any day of the week.’
‘Hear! hear!’ Annie agreed.
‘Mark Lorimer,’ Liz continued, as though neither of them had spoken. ‘Even his name sounds romantic, don’t you think? Like something out of a story book.’
‘Grimm’s Fairy Tales, perhaps?’ Helen suggested, and Liz looked momentarily startled, then laughed.
‘Oh, come on, Helen, you’re not telling me you don’t think he’s seriously attractive?’
He was, but that didn’t give him the right to waltz into the Belfield and criticise the way they worked, Helen thought, unwrapping her sandwiches with more vigour than was strictly necessary. Neither did it give him the right to imply that she and Tom were a pair of old stick-in-the-muds with no ambition because they’d never worked anywhere else. They had children, for heaven’s sake—obligations. Something that Mark Lorimer clearly knew nothing about.
‘Madge in Paediatrics thinks he’s handsome,’ Liz continued. ‘So does Phyllis in Radiography—’
‘Madge and Phyllis should stop behaving like a pair of silly moon-struck schoolgirls,’ Helen retorted, then bit her lip when Liz’s mouth fell open.
Oh, Lord, but that had been an incredibly bitchy thing to say. Even Annie clearly thought it was, judging by the way she was staring at her, but she was sick to death of everybody giggling over Mark Lorimer like he was a film star or something.
Yes, he was quite unbelievably good-looking. Yes, he had a voice that could melt butter, and eyes that seemed to gaze down deep inside you, but anyone with half a brain should also have been able to see that he was also an unprincipled flirt. Good grief, put him in front of any female between the ages of eight and eighty—herself included—and he instantly switched on the charm.
Well, she wasn’t some naïve schoolgirl who could be impressed by a few slick words, a few finely tuned compliments, she thought with irritation as the staffroom door opened, and Mark came in, deep in conversation with Tom and Gideon. She was more interested in whether he was any good as a doctor.
‘Good news, Helen,’ Tom declared, coming over to sit beside her. ‘Gideon’s agreed to slot Rhona Scott in for surgery as quickly as possible, and we’ve got two possible dates. One for Monday the week after next, and the other for the end of May.’
‘Rhona would come in this afternoon if you asked her,’ Helen murmured, taking a bite out of her sandwich and trying very hard to ignore the fact that Mark was flirting quite outrageously with Liz.
‘You don’t think she might feel both dates are too soon?’ Tom said. ‘We’re talking major surgery here, and she’ll be in hospital for at least a week. As she’s a school-teacher she might prefer to wait until the long summer holidays.’
‘Trust me,
