Knight on the Children’s Ward
Carol Marinelli

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Dedication

Dear Reader

About the Author

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Copyright

For Helen Browne, thank you for your friendship, Carol x

Dear Reader

A couple of years ago I wrote about two brothers from the Kolovsky family. But you don’t need to have read about them to enjoy their sister Annika’s story. They are a rich, fascinating family, with lots of scandal and secrets, and after two years away from them I was looking forward to visiting the Kolovsky family again—especially as I had worked out Annika’s story.

I forgot that in two years people can change a lot!

Naively, I had expected to pick up where I had left off—but while I had been busy getting on with life, so too had Annika. She had grown up and made a lot of changes in the time since I last met her, and all the neat plans I had for her soon fell by the wayside!

It was fun getting to know her all over again—and working out a hero who would suit such a complex woman. I have to say—I do like her taste.

Happy reading!

Carol x

Carol Marinelli recently filled in a form where she was asked for her job title and was thrilled, after all these years, to be able to put down her answer as ‘writer’. Then it asked what Carol did for relaxation. After chewing her pen for a moment Carol put down the truth—‘writing’. The third question asked—‘What are your hobbies?’ Well, not wanting to look obsessed or, worse still, boring, she crossed the fingers on her free hand and answered ‘swimming and tennis’. But, given that the chlorine in the pool does terrible things to her high-lights, and the closest she’s got to a tennis racket in the last couple of years is watching the Australian Open, I’m sure you can guess the real answer!

PROLOGUE

‘CAN I ask what happened, Reyes?’

Ross didn’t answer his mother for a moment—instead he carried on sorting out clothes, stray earrings, books, make-up, and a shoe that didn’t have a partner. He loaded them into a suitcase.

He’d been putting the job off, and when he’d finally accepted his mother’s offer to sort Imelda’s things, he had accepted also that with her help might come questions.

Questions that he couldn’t properly answer.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Were you arguing?’ Estella asked, and then tried to hold back a sigh when Ross shook his head. ‘I loved Imelda,’ Estella said.

‘I know,’ Ross said, and that just made it harder—Imelda had loved his family and they had loved her too. ‘She was funny and kind and I really, really thought I could make it work. I can’t honestly think of one thing that was wrong…It was just…’

‘Just what, Reyes?’ His mother was the only person who called him that. When he had arrived in Australia aged seven, somehow his real name had slipped away. The other children, fascinated by the little dark-haired, olive-skinned Spanish boy who spoke no English, had translated Reyes to Ross—and that was who he had become.

Ross Wyatt.

Son of Dr George and Mrs Estella Wyatt. Older brother to Maria and Sophia Wyatt.

Only it was more complicated than that, and all too often far easier not to explain.

Sometimes he had to explain—after all, when he was growing up people had noticed the differences. George’s hair, when he had had some, had been blond, like his daughters’. George was sensible, stern, perfectly nice and a wonderful father—but it wasn’t his blood that ran in Ross’s veins.

And he could tell from his mother’s worried eyes that she was worried that was the problem.

Estella’s brief love affair at sixteen with a forbidden Gitano, or Romany, had resulted in Reyes. The family had rallied around. His grandmother had looked after the dark baby while his mother had worked in a local bar, where, a few years later, she’d met a young Australian man, just out of medical school. George had surprised his rather staid family by falling in love and bringing home from his travels in Europe two unexpected souvenirs.

George had raised Reyes as his own, loved him as his own, and treated him no differently from his sisters.

Except Reyes, or rather Ross, was different.

‘It wasn’t…’ His voice trailed off. He knew his mother was hoping for a rather more eloquent answer. He knew that she was worried just from the fact she was asking, for his mother never usually interfered. ‘There wasn’t that…’ He couldn’t find the word but he tried. He raked his mind but couldn’t find it in English and so, rarely for Ross, he reverted to his native tongue. ‘Buena onda.’ His mother tensed when he said it, and he knew she understood—for that was the phrase she used when she talked about his father.

His real father.

Buena onda—an attraction, a connection, a vibe from another person, from that person.

‘Then you’re looking for a fairytale, Reyes! And real-life fairytales don’t have happy endings.’ Estella’s voice was unusually sharp. ‘It’s time you grew up. Look where buena onda left me—sixteen and pregnant.’

Only then, for the first time in his thirty-two years did Ross glimpse the anger that simmered beneath the surface of his mother.

‘Passion flares and then dims. Your father—the father who held you and fed you and put you through school—stands for more than some stupid dream. Some gypsy dream that you—’ She stopped abruptly, remembering perhaps that they were actually discussing him. ‘Imelda was a good woman, a loyal and loving partner. She would have been a wonderful wife and you threw it away—for what?’

He didn’t know.

It had been the same argument all his life as his mother and George had tried to rein in his restless energy. He struggled with conformity, though it could hardly be called rebellion.

Grade-wise he had done well at school. He had a mortgage, was a paediatrician—a consultant, in fact—he loved his family, was a good friend.

On paper all was fine.

In his soul all was not.

The mortgage wasn’t for a bachelor’s city dwelling—though he had a small one of those for nights on call, or when he was particularly concerned about a patient—no, his handsome wage was poured into an acreage, with stables and horses, olive and fruit trees and rows of vines, and not another residence in sight.

Just as there had been arguments about his attitude at school, even as a consultant he found it was more of the same. Budgets, policies, more budgets—all he wanted to do was his job, and at home all he wanted to do was be.

There was nothing wrong that he could pin down.

And there was no one who could pin him down.

Many had tried.

‘Should I take this round to her?’ Ross asked.

‘Put it in the cupboard for now,’ Estella said. ‘If she comes for her things, then at least it is all together. If she doesn’t…’ She gave a little shrug. ‘It’s just some clothes. Maybe she would prefer no contact.’

He felt like a louse as he closed the zipper. Packed up two years and placed it in the cupboard.

‘Imelda wanted to decorate the bedroom.’ Task over, he could be a bit more honest. ‘She’d done the bathroom, the spare room…’ It was almost impossible to explain, but he had felt as if he were being slowly invaded. ‘She said she wanted more of a commitment.’

‘She cared a lot about you, Reyes…’

‘I know,’ he admitted. ‘And I cared a lot about her.’

‘It would have hurt her deeply, you ending it.’

It had. She had cried, sobbed, and then she had hit him and he’d taken it—because he deserved it, because she had almost been the one. He had hoped she was the one and then, when he could deny no longer that she wasn’t…What was wrong with him?

‘She loved you, Reyes!’

‘So I should have just let it carry on? Married her…?’

‘Of course not,’ Estella said. ‘But it’s not just Imelda…’

It wasn’t.

Imelda was one of a long line of women who had got too close—and, despite his reputation, Ross hated the pain he caused.

‘I don’t like it that my son hurts women.’

‘I’m not getting involved with anyone for a while,’ Ross said.

‘You say that now…’

‘I’ve never said it before,’ Ross said. ‘I mean it; I’ve got to sort myself out. I think I need to go back.’ It took a lot of courage to look at his mum, to watch her dark eyes widen and her lips tighten. He saw the slight flinch as he said the words she had braced herself to hear for many years. ‘To Spain.’

‘What about your work in Russia?’ Estella asked. ‘All your annual leave is taken up with that. You said that it’s the most important thing to you.’

It had been. As a medical student he had taken up the offer to work in a Russian orphanage on his extended summer break, with his fellow student Iosef Kolovsky. It had changed him—and now, all these years on, much of his spare time was devoted to going back. Even though Iosef was married now, and had a new baby, Ross had been determined to return to Russia later in the year. But now things had changed.

‘I want to go to Spain, see my abuelos…’ And that was a good reason to go—his grandparents were old now—but it didn’t quite appease his mother. ‘I’m going back next month, just for a few weeks…’

‘You want to find him, don’t you?’

He saw the flash of tears in her eyes and hated the pain he was causing, but his mother, whether she believed it or not, simply didn’t understand.

‘I want to find myself.’

CHAPTER ONE

‘THERE is room for improvement, Annika.’ Heather Jameson was finding this assessment particularly difficult. In most areas the student nurse was doing well. In exams, her pass-rates had been initially high, but in her second year of study they were now merely acceptable. In her placements it was always noted how hard she worked, and that she was well turned out, on time, but there were still a couple of issues that needed to be addressed.

‘It’s been noted that you’re tired.’ Heather cleared her throat. ‘Now, I know a lot of students have to work to support themselves during their studies, but…’

Annika closed her eyes, it wouldn’t enter Heather’s head that she was amongst them—no, she was a Kolovsky, why on earth would she have to work?

Except she did—and that she couldn’t reveal.

‘We understand that with all your family’s charity work and functions…well, that you have other balls to juggle. But, Annika, your grades are slipping—you have to find a better balance.’

‘I am trying,’ Annika said, but her assessment wasn’t over yet.

‘Annika, are you enjoying nursing?’

No.

The answer was right there, on the tip of her tongue, but she swallowed it down. For the first six months or so she had loved it—had, after so much searching, thought that she had found her vocation, a purpose to her rich and luxurious life. Despite the arguments from her mother, despite her brother Iosef’s stern warning that she had no idea what she was taking on, Annika had dug in her heels and, for six months at least, she had proved everyone wrong.

The coursework had been interesting, her placements on the geriatric and palliative care wards, though scary at first, had been enjoyable, and Annika had thought she had found her passion. But then gradually, just as Iosef had predicted it would, the joy had waned. Her surgical rotation had been a nightmare. A twenty-one-year-old had died on her shift and, sitting with the parents, Annika had felt as if she were merely playing dress-up.

It had been downhill since then.

‘Have you made any friends?’

‘A few,’ Annika said. She tried to be friendly, tried to join in with her fellow students’ chatter, tried to fit in, but the simple truth was that from the day she had started, from the day her peers had found out who she was, the family she came from, there had been an expectation, a pressure, to dazzle on the social scene. When Annika hadn’t fulfilled it, they had treated her differently, and Annika had neither the confidence nor the skills to blend in.

‘I know it’s difficult for you, Annika…’ Heather really didn’t know what else to say. There was an aloofness to Annika that was hard to explain. With her thick blonde hair and striking blue eyes, and with her family’s connections, one would expect her to be in constant demand, to be outgoing and social, yet there was a coldness in her that had to be addressed—because it was apparent not just to staff but to the patients. ‘‘A large part of nursing is about putting patients at ease—’

‘I am always nice to the patients,’ Annika interrupted, because she was. ‘I am always polite; I introduce myself; I…’ Annika’s voice faded. She knew exactly what Heather was trying to say, she knew she was wooden, and she didn’t know how to change it. ‘I am scared of saying the wrong thing,’ Annika admitted. ‘I’m not good at making small talk, and I also feel very uncomfortable when people recognize my name—when they ask questions about my family.’

‘Most of the time people are just making small talk, not necessarily because of who you are,’ Heather said, and then, when Annika’s eyes drifted to the newspaper on the table, she gave a sympathetic smile, because, in Annika’s case people would pry!

The Kolovsky name was famous in Melbourne. Russian fashion designers, they created scandal and mystery and were regularly in the tabloids. Since the founder, Ivan, had died his son Aleksi had taken over the running of the business, and was causing social mayhem. There was a picture of him that very morning on page one, coming out of a casino, clearly the worse for wear, with the requisite blonde on his arm.

‘Maybe nursing is not such a good idea.’ Annika could feel the sting of tears behind her eyes but she would not cry. ‘At the start I loved it, but lately…’

‘You’re a good nurse, Annika, and you could be a very good nurse. I’m more concerned that you’re not happy. I know you’re only twenty-five, but that does mean you’re older than most of your group, and it’s a bit harder as a mature student to fit in. Look…’ She changed tack. This wasn’t going the way Heather had wanted it—she was trying to bolster Annika, not have her consider quitting. ‘You’re starting on the children’s ward today. Most of them won’t have a clue about the Kolovsky name, and children are wonderful at…’

‘Embarrassing you?’Annika volunteered, and managed a rare smile. ‘I am dreading it.’

‘I thought you might be. But children are a great leveller. I think this might be just the ward for you. Try and enjoy it, treat it as a fresh start—walk in and smile, say hello to your colleagues, open up a little, perhaps.’

‘I will try.’

‘And,’ Heather added in a more serious tone, because she had given Annika several warnings, ‘think about managing your social engagements more carefully around your roster. Request the weekends off that you need, plan more in advance.’

‘I will.’ Annika stood up and, unlike most other students, she shook Heather’s hand.

It was little things like that, Heather thought as Annika left the room, which made her stand apart. The formal handshake, her slight Russian accent, even though she had been born in Australia. Heather skimmed through Annika’s personal file, reading again that she had been home tutored, which explained a lot but not all.

There was guardedness to her, a warning that came from those blue eyes that told you to keep out.

And then occasionally, like she had just now, Annika would smile and her whole face lifted.

She was right about one thing, though, Heather thought, picking up the paper and reading about the latest antics of Annika’s brother Aleksi. People did want to know more. People were fascinated by the Kolovsky family—even Heather. Feeling just a touch guilty, she read the article and wondered, not for the first time, what someone as rich and indulged as Annika was trying to prove by nursing.

There was just something about the Kolovskys.

There was still half an hour till Annika’s late shift started and, rather than walk into an unfamiliar staffroom and kill time, unusually for Annika she decided to go to the canteen. She had made a sandwich at home, but bought a cup of coffee. She glanced at the tables on offer, and for perhaps the thousandth time rued her decision to work at Melbourne Bayside.

Her brother Iosef was an emergency doctor at Melbourne Central. His wife, Annie, was a nurse there too, but Iosef had been so discouraging, scathing almost, about Annika’s ability that she had applied to study and work here instead. How nice it would be now to have Annie wave and ask to join her. Perhaps too it would have been easier to work in a hospital where there were already two Kolovskys—to feel normal.

‘Annika!’

She felt a wash of relief as one of her fellow students waved at her. Cassie was down for the children’s ward rotation too and, remembering to smile, Annika made her way over.

‘Are you on a late shift?’ asked Cassie.

‘I am,’ Annika said. ‘It’s my first, though. You’ve already done a couple of shifts there—how have you found it?’

‘Awful,’ Cassie admitted. ‘I feel like an absolute beginner. Everything’s completely different—the drug doses, the way they do obs, and then there are the parents watching your every move.’

It sounded awful, and they sat in glum silence for a moment till Cassie spoke again. ‘How was your assessment?’

‘Fine,’ Annika responded, and then remembered she was going to make more of an effort to be open and friendly ‘Well, to tell the truth it wasn’t great.’

‘Oh?’ Cassie blinked at the rare insight.

‘My grades and things are okay; it is more to do with the way I am with my peers…’ She could feel her cheeks burning at the admission. ‘And with the patients too. I can be a bit stand-offish!’

‘Oh!’ Cassie blinked again. ‘Well, if it makes you feel any better, I had my assessment on Monday. I’m to stop talking and listen more, apparently. Oh, and I’m to stop burning the candle at both ends!’

And it did make her feel better—not that Cassie hadn’t fared well, more that she wasn’t the only one who was struggling. Annika smiled again, but it faded when she looked up, because there, handing over some money to the cashier, he was.

Dr Ross Wyatt.

He was impossible not to notice.

Tall, with thick black slightly wavy hair, worn just a touch too long, he didn’t look like a paediatric consultant—well, whatever paediatric consultants were supposed to look like.

Some days he would be wearing jeans and a T-shirt, finished off with dark leather cowboy boots, as if he’d just got off a horse. Other days—normally Mondays, Annika had noticed—it was a smart suit, but still with a hint of rebellion: his tie more than a little loosened, and with that silver earring he wore so well. There was just something that seemed to say his muscled, toned body wanted out of the tailored confines of his suit. And then again, but only rarely, given he wasn’t a surgeon, if he’d been on call he might be wearing scrubs. Well, it almost made her dizzy: the thin cotton that accentuated the outline of his body, the extra glimpse of olive skin and the clip of Cuban-heeled boots as she’d walked behind him in the corridor one morning…

Ross Wyatt was her favourite diversion, and he was certainly diverting her now. Annika blushed as he pocketed his change, picked up his tray and caught her looking. She looked away, tried to listen to Cassie, but the slow, lazy smile he had treated her with danced before her eyes.

Always he looked good—well, not in the conventional way: her mother, Nina, would faint at his choices. Fashion was one of the rules in her family, and Ross Wyatt broke them all.

And today, on her first day on the paediatric ward, as if to welcome her, he was dressed in Annika’s personal favourite and he looked divine!

Black jeans, with a thick leather belt, a black crewneck jumper that showed off to perfection his lean figure, black boots, and that silver earring. The colour was in his lips: wide, blood-red lips that curved into an easy smile. Annika hadn’t got close enough yet to see his eyes, but he looked like a Spanish gypsy—just the sort of man her mother would absolutely forbid. He looked wild and untamed and thrilling—as if at any minute he would kick his heels and throw up his arms, stamp a flamenco on his way over to her. She could almost smell the smoke from the bonfire—he did that to her with a single smile…

And it was madness, Annika told herself, utter madness to be sitting in the canteen having such flights of fancy. Madness to be having such thoughts, full stop.

But just the sight of him did this.

And that smile had been aimed at her.

Again.

Maybe he smiled at everyone, Annika reasoned—only it didn’t feel like it. Sometimes they would pass in the corridor, or she’d see him walking out of ICU, or in the canteen like this, and for a second he would stop…stop and smile.

It was as if he was waiting to know her.

And that was the other reason she was dreading her paediatric rotation. She had once let a lift go simply because he was in it. She wanted this whole eight weeks to be over with, to be finished.

She didn’t need any more distractions in an already complicated life—and Ross Wyatt would be just that: a huge distraction.

They had never spoken, never even exchanged pleasantries. He had looked as if he was going to try a couple of times, but she had scuttled back into her burrow like a frightened rabbit. Oh, she knew a little about him—he was a friend of her brother’s, had been a medical student at the same time as Iosef. He still went to the orphanages in Russia, doing voluntary work during his annual leave—that was why he had been unable to attend Iosef and Annie’s wedding. She had paid little attention when his name had been mentioned at the time, but since last year, when she had put his face to his name, she had yearned for snippets from her brother.

Annika swallowed as she felt the weight of his eyes still on her. She had the craziest notion that he was going to walk over and finally speak to her, so she concentrated on stirring her coffee.

‘There are compensations, of course!’ Cassie dragged her back to the conversation, only to voice what was already on Annika’s mind. ‘He’s stunning, isn’t he?’

‘Who?’ Annika flushed, stirring her coffee, but Cassie just laughed.

‘Dr Drop-Dead Gorgeous Wyatt.’

‘I don’t know him.’ Annika shrugged.

‘Well, he’s looking right over at you!’ Cassie sighed. ‘He’s amazing, and the kids just love him—he really is great with them.’

‘How?’

‘I don’t know…’ Cassie admitted. ‘He just…’ She gave a frustrated shrug. ‘He gets them, I guess. He just seems to understand kids, puts them at ease.’

Annika did not, would not, look over to where he sat, but sometimes she was sure he looked over to her—because every now and then she felt her skin warm. Every now and then it seemed too complicated to move the sandwich from her hand up to her mouth.

Ross Wyatt certainly didn’t put Annika at ease.

He made her awkward.

He made her aware.

Even walking over to empty out her tray and head to work she felt as if her movements were being noted, but, though it was acutely awkward, somehow she liked the feeling he evoked. Liked the thrill in the pit of her stomach, the rush that came whenever their paths briefly crossed.

As she sat in handover, listening to the list of patients and their ages and diagnoses, he popped his head around the door to check something with Caroline, the charge nurse, and Annika felt a dull blush on her neck as she heard his voice properly for the first time.

Oh, she’d heard him laugh on occasion, and heard his low tones briefly as they’d passed in the corridor when he was talking with a colleague, but she’d never fully heard him speak.

And as he spoke now, about an order for pethidine, Annika found out that toes did curl—quite literally!

His voice was rich and low and without arrogance. He’d made Caroline laugh with something he said—only Annika couldn’t properly process it, because instead she was feeling her toes bunch up inside her sensible navy shoes.

‘Back to Luke Winters…’

As the door closed so too did her mind on Ross, and she began concentrating carefully on the handover, because this rotation she had to do well.

‘He’s fifteen years old, Type 1 Diabetes, non-compliant…’

Luke Winters, Annika learnt, was causing not just his family but the staff of the children’s ward a lot of problems.

It was his third admission in twelve months. He was refusing to take his insulin at times, ignoring his diet, and he had again gone into DKA—a dangerous, toxic state that could kill. He had an ulcer on his leg that had been discovered on admission, though had probably been there for some time. It would take a long time to heal and might require a skin graft. His mother was frantic—Luke had come to the ward from ICU two days ago and was causing chaos. His room was a mess, and he had told the domestic this morning, none too politely, to get out.

He was now demanding that his catheter be removed, and basically both the other patients and the staff wanted him taken to an adult ward, though Ross Wyatt was resisting.

‘“Teenagers, even teenagers who think they are adults, are still children.”’ Caroline rolled her eyes. ‘His words, not mine. Anyway, Luke’s mum is at work and not due in till this evening. Hopefully we can have some order by then. Okay…’ She stared at the patient sheet and allocated the staff, pausing when she came to Annika. ‘I might put you in cots with Amanda…’ She hesitated. ‘But you haven’t been in cots yet, have you, Cassie?’

When Cassie shook her head and Caroline changed her allocation Annika felt a flood of relief—she had never so much as held a baby, and the thought of looking after a sick one petrified her.

‘Annika, perhaps you could have beds eight to sixteen instead—though given it’s your first day don’t worry about room fifteen.’

‘Luke?’ Annika checked, and Caroline nodded.

‘I don’t want to scare you off on your first day.’

‘He won’t scare me,’ Annika said. Moody teenagers she could deal with; it was babies and toddlers that scared her.

‘His room needs to be sorted.’

‘It will be.’

‘Okay!’ Caroline smiled. ‘If you’re sure? Good luck.’

Lisa, who was in charge of Annika’s patients, showed her around the ward. It was, as Cassie had said, completely different. Brightly painted, with a detailed mural running the length of the corridor, and divided pretty much into three.

There were cots for the littlest patients—two large rooms, each containing four cots. Then there were eight side rooms that would house a cot or a bed, depending on the patient’s age. Finally there were three large four-bedded rooms, filled with children of various ages.

‘Though we do try to keep ages similar,’ Lisa said, ‘sometimes it’s just not possible.’ She pointed out the crash trolley, the drug room, and two treatment rooms. ‘We try to bring the children down here for dressings and IV’s and things like that.’

‘So they don’t upset the other children?’ Annika checked.

‘That, and also, even if they are in a side room, it’s better they have anything unpleasant done away from their bed. Obviously if they’re infectious we can’t bring them down, but generally we try to do things away from the bedside.’

Annika was offered a tabard to replace her navy one. She had a choice of aprons, all brightly coloured and emblazoned with cartoon characters, and though her first instinct was to politely decline, she remembered she was making an effort, so chose a red one, with fish and mermaids on it. She felt, as she slipped it over her head, utterly stupid.

Annika started with the obs. Lunches were being cleared away, and the ward was being readied for afternoon rest-time.

The children eyed her suspiciously—she was new and they knew it.

‘What’s that for?’A mother demanded angrily as her first patient burst into tears when Annika went to wrap a blood pressure cuff around her arm.

Lisa moved quickly to stop her.

‘We don’t routinely do blood pressure,’ Lisa said, showing her the obs form. ‘Unless it’s stated on the chart.’

‘Okay.’

‘Just pulse, temp and respirations.’

‘Thank you.’

The little girl wouldn’t stop crying. In fact she shrieked every time Annika tried to venture near, so Lisa quickly took her temperature as Annika did the rest of the obs. In the room, eight sets of eyes watched her every awkward move: four from the patients, four from their mothers.

‘Can I have a drink?’ a little boy asked.

‘Of course,’ Annika said, because that was easy. She checked his chart and saw that he was to be encouraged to take fluids. ‘Would you like juice or milk…?’

‘He’s lactose intolerant!’ his mother jumped in. ‘It says so above his bed.’

‘Always look at the whiteboard above the bed,’ Lisa said. ‘And it will say in his admission slip too, which is clipped to his folder.’

‘Of course.’ Annika fled to the kitchen, where Cassie was warming a bottle.

‘Told you!’ Cassie grinned when Annika told her all that had happened. ‘It’s like landing on Mars!’

But she wasn’t remotely nervous about a sullen Luke. She knew he had no relatives with him, and was glad to escape the suspicious eyes of parents. It was only when she went into the side ward and realised that Ross was in there, talking, that she felt flustered.

‘I can come back.’

‘No.’ He smiled. ‘We’re just having a chat, and Luke needs his obs done.’

‘I don’t want them done,’ Luke snarled as she approached the bed.

That didn’t ruffle her either—her extra shifts at the nursing home had taught her well, because belligerence was an everyday occurrence there!

‘I will come back in five minutes, then,’ Annika said, just as she would say to Cecil, or Elsie, or any of the oldies who refused to have their morning shower.

‘I won’t want them done then either.’

‘Then I will come back five minutes later, and five minutes after that again. My name is Annika; it would seem that you’ll be seeing a lot of me this afternoon.’ She gave him a smile. ‘Every five minutes, in fact.’

‘Just take them now, then.’

So she did.

Annika made no attempt at small talk. Luke clearly didn’t want it, and anyway Ross was talking to him, telling him that there was no question of him going home, that he was still extremely ill and would be here for a few weeks—at least until the ulcer on his leg was healed and he was compliant with his medication. Yes, he would take the catheter out, so long as Luke agreed to wee into a bottle so that they could monitor his output.

Luke begrudgingly agreed to that.

And then Ross told him that the way he had spoken to the cleaner that morning was completely unacceptable.

‘You can be as angry as you like, Luke, but it’s not okay to be mean.’

‘So send me home, then.’

‘That’s not going to happen.’

Annika wrote down his obs, which were all fine, and then, as Ross leant against the wall and Luke lay on the bed with his eyes closed, she spoke.

‘When the doctor has finished talking to you I will come back and sort out your room.’

‘And I’ll tell you the same thing I said to the cleaner.’

She saw Ross open his mouth to intervene as Luke snarled at her, but in this Annika didn’t need his help.

‘Would you rather I waited till children’s nap-time is over?’Annika asked. ‘When you feel a little less grumpy.’

‘Ha-ha…’ he sneered, and then he opened his eyes and gave a nasty sarcastic grin. ‘Nice apron!’

‘I hate it,’ she said. ‘Wearing it is a bit demoralising and…’ She thought for a moment as Luke just stared. ‘Well, I find it a bit patronising really. If I were in cots it would maybe be appropriate. Still…’ Annika shrugged. ‘Sometimes we have to do things we don’t want to.’ She replaced his chart. ‘I’ll be back to clean your room shortly.’

Ross was at the nurses’ station writing notes when she came over after completing the rest of the obs. He grinned when he saw her.

‘Nice apron.’

‘It’s growing on me!’Annika said. ‘Tomorrow I want to wear the one with robots!’

‘I can’t wait!’ he replied, and, oh, for a witty retort—but there wasn’t one forthcoming, so instead she asked Lisa where the cleaning cupboard was and found a bin liner. She escaped to the rather more soothing, at least for Annika, confines of Luke’s room.

It was disgusting.

In the short time he had been in the room he had accumulated cups and plates and spilt drinks. There were used tissues on the floor. His bed was a disgrace because he refused to let anyone tidy it, and there were loads of cards from friends, along with all the gadgets fifteen-year-olds seemed to amass.

Luke didn’t tell her to leave—probably because he sensed she wouldn’t care if he did.

Annika was used to moods.

She had grown up surrounded by them and had chosen to completely ignore them.

Her father’s temper had been appalling, though it had never been aimed towards her—she had been the apple of his eye. Her brothers were dark and brooding, and her mother could sulk for Russia.

A fifteen-year-old was nothing, nothing, compared to that lot.

Luke ignored her.

Which was fine by Annika.

‘Everything okay?’ Lisa checked as she finally headed to the kitchen with a trolley full of used plates and cups.

‘All’s fine.’ The ward was quiet, the lights all dimmed, and Ross was still at the desk. ‘Do you need me to do anything else, or is it okay if I carry on with Luke’s room?’

‘Please do,’ Lisa said.

Luke wasn’t ignoring her now—instead he watched as she sorted out his stuff into neat piles and put some of it into a bag.

‘Your mum can take these home to wash.’

Other stuff she put into drawers.

Then she tacked some cards to the wall. All that was messy now, Annika decided as she wiped down the surfaces in his room, was the patient and his bed.

‘Now your catheter is out it will be easier to have a shower. I can run it for you.’

He said neither yes nor no, so Annika headed down the ward and found the linen trolley, selected some towels and then found the showers. She worked out the taps and headed back to her patient, who was a bit wobbly but refused a wheelchair.

‘Take my arm, then.’

‘I can manage,’ Luke said, and he said it again when she tried to help him undress.

‘You have a drip…’

‘I’m not stupid; I’ve had a drip before.’

Okay!

So she left him to it, and she didn’t hover outside, asking if he was okay every two minutes, because that would have driven Luke insane. Instead she moved to the other end of the bathroom, so she could hear him if he called, and checked her reflection, noting the huge smudges under her eyes, which her mother would point out to her when she went there for dinner at the weekend.

She was exhausted. Annika rested her head against the mirror for a moment and just wanted to close her eyes and sleep. She was beyond exhausted, in fact, and from this morning’s assessment it seemed it had been noticed.

Heather would never believe that she was working shifts in a nursing home, and the hardest slots too—five a.m. till eight a.m. if she was on a late shift at the hospital, and seven p.m. till ten p.m. if she was on an early. Oh, and a couple of nights shifts on her days off.

She was so tired. Not just bone-tired, but tired of arguing, tired of being told to pack in nursing, to come home, to be sensible, tired of being told that she didn’t need to nurse—she was a Kolovsky.

‘Iosef is a doctor,’ Annika had pointed out.

‘Iosef is a fool,’ her mother had said, ‘and as for that slut of a wife of his…’

‘Finished.’

She was too glum thinking about her mother to smile and cheer as Luke came out, in fresh track pants and with his hair dripping wet.

‘You smell much better,’ Annika settled for instead, and the shower must have drained Luke because he let Annika thread his T-shirt through his IV.

‘What are you looking so miserable about?’ Luke asked.

‘Stuff,’ Annika said.

‘Yeah,’ Luke said, and she was rewarded with a smile from him.

‘Oh, that’s much better!’ Lisa said, popping her head into the bathroom. ‘You’re looking very handsome.’ Annika caught Luke’s eyes and had to stop herself from rolling her own. She sort of understood him—she didn’t know how, she just did. ‘Your mum’s here, by the way!’ Lisa added.

‘Great,’ Luke muttered as Annika walked him back. ‘That’s all I need. You haven’t met her yet…’

‘You haven’t met mine!’ Annika said, and they both smiled this time—a real smile.

Annika surprised herself, because rarely, if ever, did she speak about her family, and especially not to a patient. But they had a little giggle as they walked, and she was too busy concentrating on Luke and pushing his IV to notice Ross look up from the desk and watch the unlikely new friends go by.

‘Are you still here?’ Caroline frowned, quite a long time later, because, as pedantic as Ross was, consultants didn’t usually hang around all day.

‘I just thought I’d catch up on some paperwork.’

‘Haven’t you got an office to go to?’ she teased.

He did, but for once he didn’t have that much paperwork to do.

‘Annika!’ Caroline called her over from where Annika was stacking the linen trolley after returning from her supper break. ‘Come and get started on your notes. I’ll show you how we do them. It’s different to the main wards.’

He didn’t look up, but he smelt her as she came around the desk.

A heavy, musky fragrance perfumed the air, and though he wrote it maybe twenty times a day, he had misspelled diarrhoea, and Ross frowned at his spiky black handwriting, because the familiar word looked completely wrong.

‘Are you wearing perfume, Annika?’ He didn’t look up at Caroline’s stern tone.

‘A little,’ Annika said, because she’d freshened up after her break.

‘You can’t wear perfume on the children’s ward!’ Caroline’s voice had a familiar ring to it—one Ross had heard all his life.

‘What do you mean—you just didn’t want to go to school? You can’t wear an earring. You just have to, that’s all. You just don’t. You just can’t.’

‘Go and wash it off,’ Caroline said, and now Ross did look up. He saw her standing there, wary, tight-lipped, in that ridiculous apron. ‘There are children with allergies, asthma. You just can’t wear perfume, Annika—didn’t you think?’

Caroline was right, Ross conceded, there were children with allergies and, as much as he liked it, Kolovsky musk post-op might be a little bit too much, but he wanted to step in, wanted to grin at Annika and tell her she smelt divine, tell her not to wash it off, for her to tell Caroline that she wouldn’t.

And he knew that she was thinking it too!

It was a second, a mere split second, but he saw her waver—and Ross had a bizarre feeling that she was going to dive into her bag for the bottle and run around the ward, ripping off her apron and spraying perfume. The thought made him smile—at the wrong moment, though, because Annika saw him and, although Ross snapped his face to bland, she must have thought he was enjoying her discomfort.

Oh, but he wanted to correct her.

He wanted to follow her and tell her that wasn’t what he’d meant as she duly turned around and headed for the washroom.

He wanted to apologise when she came back unscented and sat at her stool while Caroline nit-picked her way through the nursing notes.

Instead he returned to his own notes.

DIAOR…He scrawled a line through it again.

Still her fragrance lingered.

He got up without a word and, unusually for Ross, closed his office door. Then he picked up his pen and forced himself to concentrate.

DIARREA.

He hurled his pen down. Who cared anyway? They knew what he meant!

He was not going to fancy her, nor, if he could help it, even talk much to her.

He was off women.

He had sworn off women.

And a student nurse on his ward—well, it couldn’t be without complications.

She was his friend’s little sister too.

No way!

Absolutely not.

He picked up his pen and resumed his notes.

‘The baby has,’ he wrote instead, ‘severe gastroenteritis.’

CHAPTER TWO

HE DID a very good job of ignoring her.

He did an excellent job at pulling rank and completely speaking over her head, or looking at a child or a chart or the wall when he had no choice but to address her. And at his student lecture on Monday he paid her no more attention than any of the others. He delivered a talk on gastroenteritis, and, though he hesitated as he went to spell diarrhoea, he wrote it up correctly on the whiteboard.

She, Ross noted, was ignoring him too. She asked no questions at the end of the lecture, but an annoying student called Cassie made up for that.

Once their eyes met, but she quickly flicked hers away, and he, though he tried to discount it, saw the flush of red on her neck and wished that he hadn’t.

Yes, he did a very good job at ignoring her and not talking to her till, chatting to the pathologist in the bowels of the hospital a few days later, he glanced up at the big mirror that gave a view around the corridor and there was Annika. She was yawning, holding some blood samples, completely unaware she was being watched.

‘I’ve been waiting for these…’ Ross said when she turned the corner, and she jumped slightly at the sight of him. He took the bloodwork and stared at the forms rather than at her.

‘The chute isn’t working,’ Annika explained. ‘I said I’d drop them in on my way home.’

‘I forgot to sign the form.’

‘Oh.’

He would rather have taken ages to sign the form, but the pathologist decided they had been talking for too long and hurried him along. Annika had stopped for a moment to put on her jacket, and as his legs were much longer than hers somehow, despite trying not to, he had almost caught her up as they approached the flapping black plastic doors. It would have been really rude had she not held it open—and just plain wrong for him not to thank her and fall into step beside her.

‘You look tired,’ Ross commented.

‘It’s been a long shift.’

This had got them halfway along the corridor, and now they should just walk along in silence, Ross reasoned. He was a consultant, and he could be as rude and as aloof as he liked—except he could hear his boots, her shoes, and an endless, awful silence. It was Ross who filled it.

‘I’ve actually been meaning to talk to you…’ He had—long before he had liked her.

‘Oh?’ She felt the adrenaline kick in, the effect of him close up far more devastating than his smile, and yet she liked it. She liked it so much that she slowed down her pace and looked over to him. ‘About what?’

She could almost smell the bonfire—all those smiles, all that guessing, all that waiting was to be put to rest now they were finally talking.

‘I know your brother Iosef,’ Ross said. ‘He asked me to keep an eye out for you when you started.’

‘Did he?’ Her cheeks were burning, the back of her nose was stinging, and she wanted to run, to kick up her heels and run from him—because all the time she’d thought it was her, not her family, that he saw.

‘I’ve always meant to introduce myself. Iosef is a good friend.’ It was her jacket’s fault, Ross decided. Her jacket smelt of the forbidden perfume. It smelt so much of her that he forgot, for a second, his newly laid-down rules. ‘We should catch up some time…’

‘Why?’ She turned very blue eyes to him. ‘So that you can report back to Iosef?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Tell him I’m doing fine,’ Annika snapped, and, no, she didn’t kick up her heels, and she didn’t run, but she did walk swiftly away from him.

A year.

For more than a year she’d carried a torch, had secretly hoped that his smile, those looks they had shared, had meant something. All that time she had thought it had been about her, and yet again it wasn’t.

Again, all she was was a Kolovsky.

It rankled. On the drive home it gnawed and burnt, but when she got there her mother had left a long message on the answer machine which rankled rather more.

They needed to go over details, she reminded her daughter.

It was the charity ball in just three weeks—as if Annika could ever forget.

When Annika had been a child it had been discovered that her father had an illegitimate son—one who was being raised in an orphanage in Russia.

Levander had been brought over to Australia. Her father had done everything to make up for the wretched years his son had suffered, and Levander’s appalling early life had been kept a closely guarded family secret.

Now, though, the truth was starting to seep out. And Nina, anticipating a public backlash, had moved into pre-emptive damage control.

Huge donations had been sent to several orphanages, and to a couple of street-kid programmes too.

And then there was The Ball.

It was to be a dazzling, glitzy affair they would all attend. Levander was to be excused because he was in England, but the rest of the family would be there. Iosef and his wife, her brother Aleksi, and of course Annika. They would all look glossy and beautiful and be photographed to the max, so that when the truth inevitably came out the spin doctors would be ready.

Already were ready.

Annika had read the draft of the waiting press release.

The revelation of his son Levander’s suffering sent Ivan Kolovsky to an early grave. He was thrilled when his second-born, Iosef, on qualifying as a doctor, chose to work amongst the poor in Russia, and Ivan would be proud to know that his daughter, Annika, is now studying nursing. On Ivan’s deathbed he begged his wife to set up the Kolovsky Foundation, which has gone on to raise huge amounts (insert current figure).

Lies.

Lies based on twisted truths. And only since her father’s death had Annika started to question them.

And now she had, everything had fallen apart.

Her mother had never hit her before—oh, maybe a slap on the leg when she was little and had refused to converse in Russian, and once as a teenager, when her mother had found out she was eating burgers on her morning jog, Annika had nursed a red cheek and a swollen eye…but hardly anything major…

Until she had asked about Levander.

They had been sorting out her father’s things, a painful task at the best of times, and Annika had come across some letters. She hadn’t read them—she hadn’t had a chance to. Nina had snatched them out of her hands, but Annika had asked her mother a question that had been nagging. It was a question her brothers had refused to answer when she had approached them with it. She asked whether Ivan and Nina had known that Levander was in an orphanage all those years.

Her mother had slapped her with a viciousness that had left Annika reeling—not at the pain but with shock.

She had then discovered that when she started to think, to suggest, to question, to find her own path in life, the love and support Annika had thought was unconditional had been pulled up like a drawbridge.

And the money had been taken away too.

Annika deleted her mother’s message and prepared a light supper. She showered, and then, because she hadn’t had time to this morning, ironed her white agency nurse’s uniform and dressed. Tying her hair back, she clipped on her name badge.

Annika Kolovsky.

No matter how she resisted, it was who she was—and all she was to others.

She should surely be used to it by now.

Except she’d thought Ross had seen something else—thought for a foolish moment that Ross Wyatt had seen her for herself. Yet again it came back to one thing.

She was a Kolovsky.

CHAPTER THREE

‘SLEEP well, Elsie.’ Elsie didn’t answer as Annika tucked the blankets round the bony shoulders of the elderly lady.

Elsie had spat out her tablets and thrown her dinner on the floor. She had resisted at every step of Annika undressing her and getting her into bed. But now that she was in bed she relaxed, especially when Annika positioned the photo of her late husband, Bertie, where the old lady could see him.

‘I’ll see you in the morning. I have another shift then.’

Still Elsie didn’t answer, and Annika wished she would. She loved the stories Elsie told, during the times when she was lucid. But Elsie’s confusion had worsened because of an infection, and she had been distressed tonight, resenting any intrusion. Nursing patients with dementia was often a thankless task, and Annika’s shifts exhausted her, but at least, unlike on the children’s ward, where she had been for a week now, here Annika knew what she was doing.

Oh, it was back-breaking, and mainly just sheer hard work, but she had been here for over a year now, and knew the residents. The staff of the private nursing home had been wary at first, but they were used to Annika now. She had proved herself a hard worker and, frankly, with a skeleton staff, so long as the patients were clean and dry, and bedded at night or dressed in the morning, nobody really cared who she was or why someone as rich as Annika always put her hand up for extra shifts.

It was ridiculous, though.

Annika knew that.

In fact she was ashamed that she stood in the forecourt of a garage next to a filthy old ute and had to prepay twenty dollars, because that was all she had until her pay from the nursing home went in tomorrow, to fill up the tank of a six-figure powder-blue sports car.

It had been her twenty-first birthday present.

Her mother had been about to upgrade it when Annika had declared she wanted to study nursing, and when she had refused to give in the financial plug had been pulled.

Her car now needed a service, which she couldn’t afford. The sensible thing, of course, would be to sell it—except, despite its being a present, technically, it didn’t belong to her: it was a company car.

So deep in thought was Annika, so bone-weary from a day on the children’s ward and a twilight shift at the nursing home, that she didn’t notice the man crossing the forecourt towards her.

‘Annika?’ He was putting money in his wallet. He had obviously just paid, and she glanced around rather than look at him. She was one burning blush, and not just because it was Ross, but rather because someone from work had seen her. She had done a full shift on the children’s ward, and was due back there at midday tomorrow, so there was no way on earth she should be cramming in an extra shift, but she clearly was—two, actually, not that he could know! The white agency nurse dress seemed to glow under the fluorescent lights.

He could have nodded and left it there.

He damn well should nod and leave it there—and maybe even have a quiet word with Caroline tomorrow, or Iosef, perhaps.

Or say nothing at all—just simply forget.

He chose none of the above.

‘How about a coffee?’

‘It’s late.’

‘I know it’s late,’ Ross said, ‘but I’m sure you could use a coffee. There’s an all-night cafe a kilometre up the road—I’ll see you there.’

She nearly didn’t go.

She was extremely tempted not to go. But she had no choice.

Normally she was careful about being seen in her agency uniform, but she didn’t have her jacket in the car, and she’d been so low on petrol…Anyway, Annika told herself, it was hardly a crime—all her friends did agency shifts. How the hell would a student survive otherwise?

His grim face told her her argument would be wasted.

‘I know students have to work…’ he had bought her a coffee and she added two sugars ‘…and I know it’s probably none of my business…’

‘It is none of your business,’ Annika said.

‘But I’ve heard Caroline commenting, and I’ve seen you yawning…’ Ross said. ‘You look like you’ve got two black eyes.’

‘So tell Caroline—or report back to my brother.’ Annika shrugged. ‘Then your duty is done.’

‘Annika!’ Ross was direct. ‘Do you go out of your way to be rude?’

‘Rude?’

‘I’m trying not to talk to Caroline; I’m trying to talk to you.’

‘Check up on me, you mean, so that Iosef—’

He whistled in indignation. ‘This has nothing to do with your brother. It’s my ward, Annika. You were on an early today; you’re on again tomorrow…’

‘How do you know?’

‘Sorry?’

‘My shift tomorrow. How do you know?’

And that he couldn’t answer—but the beat of silence did.

He’d checked.

Not deliberately—he hadn’t swiped keys and found the nursing roster—but as he’d left the ward he had glanced up at the whiteboard and seen that she was on tomorrow.

He had noted to himself that she was on tomorrow.

‘I saw the whiteboard.’

And she could have sworn that he blushed. Oh, his cheeks didn’t flare like a match to a gas ring, as Annika’s did—he was far too laid-back for that, and his skin was so much darker—but there was something that told her he was embarrassed. He blinked, and then his lips twitched in a very short smile, and then he blinked again. There was no colour as such to his eyes—in fact they were blacker than black, so much so that she couldn’t even make out his pupils. He was staring, and so was she. They were sitting in an all-night coffee shop. She was in her uniform and he was telling her off for working, and yet she was sure there was more.

Almost sure.

‘So, Iosef told you to keep an eye out for me?’ she said, though more for her own benefit—that smile wouldn’t fool her again.

‘He said that he was worried about you, that you’d pretty much cut yourself off from your family.’

‘I haven’t,’ Annika said, and normally that would have been it. Everything that was said stayed in the family, but Ross was Iosef’s friend and she was quite sure he knew more. ‘I see my mother each week; I am attending a family charity ball soon. Iosef and I argued, but only because he thinks I’m just playing at nursing.’

This wasn’t news to Ross. Iosef had told him many things—how Annika was spoilt, how she stuck at nothing, how nursing was her latest flight of fancy. Of course Ross could not say this, so he just sat as she continued.

‘I have not cut myself off from my family. Aleksi and I are close…’ She saw his jaw tighten, as everyone’s did these days when her brother’s name was mentioned. Aleksi was trouble. Aleksi, now head of the Kolovsky fortune, was a loose cannon about to explode at any moment. Annika was the only one he was close to; even his twin Iosef was being pushed aside as Aleksi careered out of control. She looked down at her coffee then, but it blurred, so she pressed her fingers into her eyes.

‘You can talk to me,’ Ross said.

‘Why would I?’

‘Because that’s what people do,’ Ross said. ‘Some people you know you can talk to, and some people…’ He stopped then. He could see she didn’t understand, and neither really did Ross. He swallowed down the words he had been about to utter and changed tack. ‘I am going to Spain in three, nearly four weeks.’ He smiled at her frown. ‘Caroline doesn’t know; Admin doesn’t know. In truth, they are going to be furious when they find out. I am putting off telling them till I have spoken with a friend who I am hoping can cover for me…’

‘Why are you telling me this?’

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