Emergency Doctors

Where passions run high and lives are on the line!

Irresistible Dr. Elliot Mathieson has dated most of the female staff in St. Stephen’s hospital. And it’s Jane Elliot he turns to when he discovers he has a daughter! But is he just looking for a temporary nanny, or does he really want a wife?

Join the dedicated team in St. Stephen’s emergency room, where the pace is hectic, tempers flare and sexual tension is in the air!

Dear Reader,

I’ve always thought working in an emergency room must be one of the most exciting, terrifying and challenging medical jobs in the world. When my own mother was whisked into an emergency unit recently, I found myself wondering what motivated the people who chose to work there. They’d have to be very special people, of course—knowing every day could bring life-threatening situations—but surely these people must be like you and me, with their own fears and hopes and dreams. It was these thoughts that inspired me to create Robert Cunningham and Hannah Blake, the characters in my first book of the EMERGENCY DOCTORS DUO, A Wife for Dr. Cunningham.

As for Dr. Mathieson’s Daughter? Well, I couldn’t possibly leave blond, blue-eyed Elliot Mathieson with no one in his life—now, could I? I thought he should find happiness too, but not in a way he could ever have imagined!

Maggie Kingsley

Dr Mathieson’s Daughter

Maggie Kingsley

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CONTENTS

Cover

Dear Reader

Title Page

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

ELLIOT MATHIESON gazed blankly at the solicitor for a second, then shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, but there has to have been some mistake. I have no daughter.’

The solicitor sifted through the papers on his desk and selected one. ‘We have a birth certificate with your name on it, Dr Mathieson—’

‘I don’t care if you have a hundred birth certificates with my name on them. I have no daughter. No children at all, come to that!’

‘Your wife—’

‘My ex-wife—’

‘Was quite adamant in her will that Nicole is yours,’ the solicitor declared calmly. ‘I can, if you wish, instigate court proceedings to dispute paternity, but…’

It would be a waste of time, Elliot finished for him silently. Whatever else Donna might have been, she hadn’t been a fool. She would have known Nicole’s paternity could be easily established by means of a simple blood test.

Which meant he had a child. A six-year-old daughter he’d known nothing about until he’d stepped into the solicitor’s office this morning, but how?

He and Donna had been divorced for five years. They hadn’t even spoken to one another since that disastrous attempt at a reconciliation in Paris almost seven years ago. A reconciliation which had ended in heated words and angry exchanges.

But not at first, he suddenly remembered, his blue eyes darkening with dismay. There’d been no angry words on that first night when they’d gone out to dinner, she’d invited him back to her flat for coffee and somehow they’d ended up in her big double bed.

Oh, hell, but it must have happened then. Nicole must have been conceived then.

‘I realise this has come as something of a shock to you, Dr Mathieson,’ the solicitor continued, gazing at him not without sympathy, ‘but I’m afraid there really wasn’t any easy way of breaking the news. If you wish to dispute paternity—’

‘Of course I don’t,’ he interrupted brusquely. ‘I accept the child is mine.’

The solicitor smiled with relief. ‘Then Nicole will be arriving from Paris tomorrow—’

‘Arriving?’ Elliot’s jaw dropped. ‘What do you mean, she’ll be arriving?’

‘She can hardly remain in France now her mother is dead, Dr Mathieson.’

‘What about my wife’s sister? Surely she—’

‘I’m afraid we haven’t even been able to inform Mrs Bouvier of her sister’s death. She and her husband are on an archaeological dig in Iran where communications are very poor. And you are the child’s father, Dr Mathieson.’

‘Yes, but I can’t possibly look after a child,’ Elliot protested. ‘I’ve recently been promoted to special registrar in St Stephen’s A and E department. I work long hours—never know when I’m going to be home—’

‘You could employ a nanny or a housekeeper,’ the solicitor suggested. ‘Or what about boarding school? Many professional people send their children to boarding schools.’

They did, but he’d have to be the biggest louse of all time to send a six-year-old kid who had just lost her mother to a boarding school. A nanny or a housekeeper might be the answer, but where on earth did you get people like that in twenty-four hours?

‘Look, it’s not that I don’t want Nicole living with me,’ he declared, raking his hands through his blond hair in desperation. Like hell it wasn’t. ‘But I don’t know anything about raising a child.’

‘Nobody does initially,’ the solicitor said bracingly.

Which was all very well for him to say, Elliot thought when he left the solicitor’s office some time later, but where did that leave him?

He hadn’t even got used to being special registrar at St Stephen’s yet, far less the two new members of staff who’d replaced Robert Cunningham and Hannah Blake when they’d got married and left to work for Médecins Sans Frontières. The last thing he needed was a child on top of all his other responsibilities.

Oh, cut the flannel, Elliot, his mind whispered as he strode down the busy London street, heedless of the falling sleet and biting March wind. You wouldn’t want this child no matter what the circumstances. You wouldn’t want any child who reminded you of your marriage to Donna.

‘Hey, watch where you’re going, mate!’ a plump, middle-aged man protested as Elliot collided with him on his way to the entrance to the St Stephen’s Accident and Emergency unit.

Watch where he was going? A couple of hours ago Elliot Mathieson had known exactly where he was going, but now…

Now he had a daughter arriving from France tomorrow. Now he was being forced to remember a time in his life he’d tried for the last five years to forget, and he didn’t like it. He didn’t like it at all.

‘I thought Elliot was only going to be away an hour?’ Floella Lazear protested, her round face looking distinctly harassed as she crossed the treatment room. ‘What on earth can be keeping him?’

Jane Halden tucked a wayward strand of thick black hair back under her sister’s cap and wished she knew. Elliot had told them of his ex-wife’s death in a car crash in France, and her London solicitors’ urgent request to see him, and she’d assumed—they all had—that he must be a beneficiary in Donna’s will, but two hours was an awfully long time for the solicitor to tell him so.

‘Maybe his ex-wife’s left him a fortune,’ Charlie Gordon observed, joining them at the whiteboard. ‘She was a successful fashion designer, wasn’t she? Maybe she’s left him so much money he’s handing in his resignation even as we speak.’

‘I wish somebody would leave me a fortune,’ Floella sighed. ‘I’d be off to the travel agent’s before you could say enema.’

Charlie laughed. ‘What would you do if somebody left you a lot of money, Jane?’

Check into a health farm and lose twelve kilos, she thought. Treat myself to every beautifying facial known to womankind, then throw out all my chain-store clothes and buy designer labels.

‘I haven’t the faintest idea,’ she replied.

‘Got everything you want, huh?’ The SHO grinned.

‘Something like that.’ She nodded. And she did. Well, almost everything. She had a job as senior sister in A and E, which she loved, a flat that might be a shoebox but at least it was hers, and if there was no man in her life, well, two out of three wasn’t bad. ‘How about you, Charlie?’ she asked. ‘What would you do with a windfall?’

‘Send a bottle of champagne and a huge box of chocolates to my girlfriend in Shrewsbury every day to make sure she doesn’t forget me.’

‘And in six months she’d be a twenty-stone alcoholic, you idiot!’ Floella laughed.

A deep blush of embarrassed colour spread across the SHO’s face and Jane quickly came to his rescue. ‘I think it’s a lovely idea, Charlie, and your girlfriend’s a very lucky girl.’

And she was, too, Jane thought as the SHO hurried away, the colour on his cheeks even darker. They were lucky to have him. Big, bluff, and hearty, Charlie had settled in well into Elliot’s old SHO job. It was just a pity the same couldn’t be said for their new junior doctor, she thought with a groan as she noticed the man in question bearing down on her. Richard Connery might be bright and enthusiastic, but he was also abrasive and far too self-confident for his own good.

‘My patient in 6 has a fractured right arm, Sister Halden,’ he declared without preamble. ‘Please, arrange for him to go to X-Ray.’

Like he couldn’t arrange it himself? she thought as he strode away again before she could reply. No, of course he couldn’t. It was obviously too far beneath his dignity to speak to anyone as lowly as a porter so he expected her to drop everything and do it for him.

‘And what—pray tell—did his last servant die of?’ Floella exclaimed angrily. ‘Honestly, Jane—’

‘I know, I know,’ she interrupted, ‘but just leave it right now, Flo, OK?’

‘But he has no right to talk to you like that,’ the staff nurse protested. ‘You’re the senior sister in A and E. You’ve at least six years more medical experience than he has—’

‘And if you say I’m old enough to be his mother I’ll hit you!’ Jane declared, her grey eyes dancing, and a reluctant smile curved Floella’s lips.

‘Yeah, right. Like you’re old Ma Moses. But you know what I mean. It’s just not on.’

It wasn’t, but working in A and E was difficult enough at the moment, what with Elliot still finding his feet as special registrar and Charlie Gordon learning the ropes as SHO, and the last thing they needed was a full-scale row.

‘Try to be patient with him, Flo. I know he can be difficult,’ she continued as the staff nurse shook her head, ‘but he’s only been with us a month, and I’m sure a lot of his abrasiveness is due to him finding the work a lot harder than he imagined.’

‘Rubbish!’ Floella retorted. ‘He just enjoys treating nurses like dirt!’

She didn’t need this, not right now, Jane thought as the staff nurse stalked off. Teamwork was important in every department in the hospital, but in A and E it was vital. Without teamwork they couldn’t function, but it was going to take time to create a new team, and time, as Floella had just so forcefully revealed, was the one thing they didn’t have.

With a sigh she went into cubicle 6 where Richard’s patient was still waiting.

‘My arm is definitely broken, then?’ the elderly man queried, wincing slightly as she helped him into a wheelchair. ‘The young lad who saw me earlier said he thought it was, but I wasn’t sure whether he was fully qualified to make the diagnosis or not.’

Jane hid a smile. ‘Dr Connery’s pretty sure your arm’s fractured, but to make one hundred per cent sure we’re going to send you along to X-Ray. Hey, look on the bright side,’ she added encouragingly as his face fell, ‘you’ll get lots of sympathy from your female admirers.’

‘I hope not or my wife will break my other arm,’ he observed, his faded brown eyes twinkling. ‘Oh, well, I suppose it could have been worse, and at least it’s given me the opportunity to meet a very pretty and charming young lady.’

Jane chuckled. She knew very well that she wasn’t pretty, and she supposed that at twenty-eight she wasn’t exactly young any more, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t nice to hear a compliment.

Right now, she could have done with hearing a lot more. It might have cheered her up. In fact, ever since Hannah had married Robert—and it had been a lovely wedding despite the bride’s leg being in plaster—she’d been feeling oddly down.

Probably because it’s the fourth wedding you’ve been to in as many months, her mind pointed out, whereas you…

No, she wasn’t going to think about her love life. Actually, her completely non-existent love life.

And whose fault is that? Her little voice asked. OK, so Frank was a rat, and you wasted two years of your life believing his protestations of undying love, but what happened after he dumped you? You promptly fell in love with Elliot Mathieson. A man who’s had more girlfriends since he got divorced than most other men have had hot dinners. A man who could hurt you a hundred times more than Frank ever did if he found out how you really feel about him.

‘Jane, we’ve got trouble!’

With an effort she turned to see their student nurse gazing at her in dismay. ‘What’s up, Kelly?’

‘We’ve got that man back in again—the one who thinks his brain’s been taken over by aliens. I’ve phoned Social Services but—’

‘They said it’s our pigeon,’ she finished for her wryly. Social Services always said psychiatric cases were their pigeon unless someone was so bad they had to be sectioned. And Harry’s delusions weren’t nearly frequent enough yet to have him compulsorily detained in a psychiatric ward. ‘Has Charlie seen him?’

‘He’s given him a tranquilliser, and he seems pretty quiet at the moment, but you know what happened last time.’

Jane did. Before the tranquilliser could take effect Harry had practically wrecked one of their ECG machines, thinking it was an alien life form. ‘OK. I’ll sit with him—’

‘RTA on the way, Jane!’ Floella suddenly called from the end of the treatment room. ‘Three casualties, and two look really serious!’

Jane bit her lip. Damn, this would have to happen right now with Mr Mackay, the consultant in charge of A and E, off on his annual break and Elliot not back from the solicitors yet.

‘Kelly—’

‘Yeah, I know.’ The student nurse sighed. ‘Make the alien a nice cup of tea, and do my best.’

‘Good girl.’ Jane nodded, but as she hurried down the treatment room a sigh of relief came from her when Elliot suddenly appeared.

‘Now, that’s what I call perfect timing,’ she said with a smile.

‘Perfect timing?’

‘We’ve an RTA on the way,’ she explained, ‘and I was just wondering how on earth we were going to cope with the casualties.’

‘Oh—Right. I see.’

She glanced up at him, her grey eyes concerned. ‘Everything OK, Elliot?’

‘Great. Fine,’ he replied, but he was anything but fine she decided as he walked quickly across to Charlie Gordon.

He looked…Not worried. Elliot never looked worried no matter how dire the situation, but he most definitely looked preoccupied. Preoccupied and tense, and still quite the handsomest man she’d ever laid eyes on.

In fact, there ought to have been a law against any man being quite so handsome, she thought ruefully. His thick blond hair, deep blue eyes and devastating smile would have been quite potent enough, but when you added a six-foot muscular frame, a pair of shoulders which looked as though they’d been purpose-built for a girl to lean her head against…

It was an unbeatable combination. The kind of combination which turned even the most sensible women into slack-jawed idiots whenever he was around. Herself included, as Jane knew only too well, but she’d always had sense enough not to show it.

Not that it would have made any difference if she had, of course, she realised. Elliot’s taste ran to tall, leggy women. Women like Gussie Granton from Paediatrics whose figure would have made a pin-up girl gnash her teeth.

Nobody would ever gnash their teeth over her figure, she thought wistfully, unless it was in complete despair. She was too short, and too fat, and a pair of ordinary grey eyes and stubbornly straight shoulder-length black hair were never going to make up for those deficiencies.

‘You have a wonderful sense of humour, Jane,’ her mother had told her encouragingly when she was growing up. ‘Men like that.’

Yeah, right, Mother. And Frank’s admiration for my sense of humour lasted only until a red-haired bimbo with the IQ of a gerbil drifted into his sights, and then he was off.

What on earth was wrong with her today? she wondered crossly as she heard the sound of an ambulance arriving, its siren blaring. All this maudlin self-pity. All right, so she was in love with Elliot Mathieson, and had been ever since he’d come to St Stephen’s two years ago, but he was never going to fall in love with her. She was simply good old Janey and it was high time she accepted that. Time she realised it was only in the movies that the plain, ordinary heroine got the handsome hero, and this wasn’t the movies—this was real life.

‘OK, what have you got for us?’ Elliot asked as the doors of the treatment room banged open and the paramedics appeared with their casualties.

‘One adult, plus a seventeen-year-old boy and fifteen-year-old girl. The youngsters suffered the worst damage. They were in the back seat and neither was wearing seat belts.’

Elliot swore under his breath. ‘Are they related in any way?’

‘The adult’s the father. He has a fractured wrist, ankle and minor lacerations.’

‘Richard, Kelly—you take the adult—’

‘But what about my alien?’ the student nurse exclaimed.

‘Oh, Lord, he’s not back in again, is he?’ Elliot groaned. ‘Has anyone given him any tranquillisers?’

‘I have,’ Charlie Gordon said, nodding.

‘Then get one of the porters to take him up to Social Services.’

‘Elliot, they’ll throw a blue fit if we dump him on them!’ Jane protested.

‘Let them,’ he replied grimly. ‘It’ll give them a chance to see that care in the community means more than simply leaving psychiatric cases to fend for themselves. Charlie, you and Flo take the boy. Jane, I’ll need your help with the girl.’

He was going to need his skill a whole lot more, she thought when she helped the paramedic wheel the girl into cubicle 2.

The teenager was a mess. Countless lacerations to her face and arms, compound fractures to the right and left tibia and fibula which would require the services of both orthopaedics and plastics, but it was her laboured, rasping breathing that was the most worrying. If she wasn’t helped—and quickly—not enough oxygen would reach her brain and she’d be in big trouble.

‘ET, Jane,’ Elliot demanded, though in fact there had been no need for him to ask. She was already holding the correct size of endotracheal tube out to him, and gently he eased it past the girl’s vocal cords and down into her trachea. ‘IV lines and BP?’

‘IV’s open and running,’ she replied, checking the drip bags containing the saline solution which was providing a temporary substitute for the blood the teenager was losing. ‘BP 60 over 40.’

Elliot frowned. Too low, much too low, and the girl’s heartbeat was showing an increasingly uneven rhythm.

Quickly he placed his stethoscope on the injured girl’s chest. There were no breath sounds on the left side. She must have been thrown against one of the front seats in the crash and her left lung had collapsed, sending blood and air seeping into her chest cavity.

‘Chest drain and scalpel?’ Jane murmured.

He nodded and swiftly made an incision into the upper right-hand side of the teenager’s chest, then carefully inserted a plastic tube directly into her chest cavity. ‘BP now?’

‘Eighty over sixty,’ Jane answered.

Better. Not great, but definitely better. The chest drain had suctioned the excess air and blood out of the girl’s chest. She was starting to stabilise at last.

‘You’ll be wanting six units of O-negative blood, chest, arm and leg X-rays?’ Jane asked.

Elliot’s eyebrows lifted and he grinned. ‘This is getting seriously worrying.’

‘Worrying?’ she repeated in confusion.

‘Your apparent ability to read my mind.’

Just so long as you can’t read mine, she thought, and smiled. ‘It comes with working with you for two years.’

He was surprised. ‘Has it really been that long?’

‘Uh-huh.’

He supposed it must have been, but Jane…Well, Jane just always seemed to have been there. Skilled, intuitive, able to instinctively predict whatever he needed whenever he needed it.

But even she couldn’t get him out of his current predicament, he thought, watching her as she inserted another IV line to take the O-negative blood they would use until they’d made a cross-match. Nobody could.

If his mother hadn’t just left for Canada to stay with his sister Annie for the next three months to help her through what was proving to be a particularly difficult first pregnancy, she would have taken Nicole like a shot—he knew she would. Or if the agencies he’d phoned could have provided him with a nanny or a housekeeper immediately, but none of them could supply anybody until the beginning of April, and that was a month away.

Which meant that not only was he up the creek without a paddle, he was sitting in a leaking boat as well.

How could Donna have done this to him? She’d known the hours he worked, that everything could alter in an instant if a bad accident like this came in. What had she expected him to do with Nicole, then? And what about after school, at weekends?

It probably hadn’t even occurred to her, he decided bitterly. Live for today—that had always been Donna’s motto. Live for today, and don’t think about tomorrow.

Which was what attracted you to her in the first place, his mind pointed out. Her vitality, her lust for life, not to mention a husky French accent and a face and figure that had done irreparable damage to his libido.

But it hadn’t lasted. Within three short years the marriage had been over, leaving him bitter and disillusioned. And now Donna was dead, killed in a car crash. And he had a daughter arriving tomorrow and no earthly idea of how he was going to cope.

‘Elliot, are you quite sure you’re OK?’ Jane said, her gaze fixed on him with concern when the teenager was wheeled out of the treatment room towards the theatre after Radiology had confirmed that the patient did, indeed, have compound fractures, but no other major damage. ‘You seem a bit, well, a bit preoccupied this afternoon.’

‘Perils of being a new and very inexperienced special reg,’ he replied, managing to dredge up a smile. ‘Too much to think about.’

She didn’t press the point, though he knew she wasn’t convinced, and with relief he strode quickly down the treatment room to check on the other casualties. He didn’t want to talk about his problem—didn’t even want to think about it. All he wanted to do right now was to bury himself in work and forget all about his daughter, and he managed to do just that until late in the afternoon when the sound of children crying caught his attention.

‘What on earth’s going on in cubicle 8, Flo?’ he asked curiously. ‘It sounds like somebody’s being murdered in there.’

She sighed. ‘It’s a case of child neglect. Two girls and a boy, aged between one and four. The police brought them in ten minutes ago for a medical assessment before they contact Social Services. Apparently their dad’s in jail, their mother is God knows where and a neighbour phoned the police because she hadn’t seen them out and about for a week.’

‘Medical condition?’ Elliot demanded, his professional instincts immediately alert.

‘Excellent, considering they’ve been living in an unheated flat for the past week, and the oldest child told the police they haven’t had anything to eat for two days.’ She sighed and shook her head. ‘Honestly, some people should never have children.’

People like him, Elliot decided, but it was too late to think about that now, too late to regret that night in the hotel in Paris. ‘Who’s with them?’

‘Jane. Charlie’s checked them over, and there’s nothing we can do for them except clean them up and give them some food, but…’ She shrugged. ‘It’s better than nothing, isn’t it?’

He supposed it was as he strode into the cubicle to find Jane sitting on the trolley, holding the youngest of the three children in her arms while the other two clung to her, wide-eyed and clearly terrified.

‘Need any help?’ he asked.

She shook her head and smiled, apparently completely oblivious to the overpowering smell of dried urine and faeces emanating from the trio. ‘No, thanks. I’ve sent down to the kitchens for some food, and Kelly’s organising a bath for them all.’

‘What about clean clothes?’ he suggested.

‘Flo’s phoned her husband and he’s bringing some of their twins’ old things over.’

There was nothing for him to do here, then, Elliot realised, but still he lingered, watching in admiration as Jane managed to eventually coax some smiles from the children.

She was good with kids. Actually, she was quite amazing with kids. He’d seen her get a response from even the most traumatised of children simply by sitting with them, holding them, murmuring all kinds of nonsense.

And suddenly it hit him. He had the answer to all his problems sitting right in front of him. Jane. Jane would be perfect for Nicole, just perfect.

But would she do it? Would she be prepared to move into his flat to help him out until he could get a nanny or a housekeeper in a month’s time?

Of course she would. Jane helped everybody, and it wasn’t as though he was asking a lot. Not much, he observed sourly. Just for her to take over your responsibilities, that’s all. Nonsense, he wasn’t asking her to do that. He wasn’t even thinking about himself at all. He was simply thinking about Nicole.

And Jane clearly thought he was, too, when he whisked her into his office and explained what had happened after the police had collected the three abandoned children and taken them off to Social Services.

‘Oh, the poor little girl!’ she exclaimed, her eyes full of compassion. ‘Why on earth didn’t Donna tell you about her before?’

He’d wondered about that, too, but all he could think was that she must have been so angry with him when they’d parted that this had been her way of punishing him.

‘You’re going to have to go very carefully with her,’ Jane continued, her forehead creased in thought. ‘Not only has she lost her mother, but coming to a strange country, to a man she doesn’t know…She’s going to need lots of love and attention.’

‘But that’s the trouble,’ he declared. ‘How can I give her lots of love and attention when I’m hardly ever going to be there? Janey, you know what our hours are like—’

‘We’ll all help out,’ she said quickly. ‘It’s a nuisance Mr Mackay being away, but when he gets back I’m sure he’ll agree to letting you work days for a while. In the meantime, we could ask Charlie if he’d mind doing most of your night shifts—’

‘I don’t want Charlie to do my night shifts!’ he snapped, then flushed as Jane’s eyebrows rose. ‘Janey, I’ve got to be honest with you…’

He paused. How to explain? How to say that it wasn’t just a question of the day-to-day complications of taking care of a child that was worrying him, but that he didn’t want this girl because she would remind him of a time in his life he preferred to forget. Jane would ask why. She’d ask questions. Questions he didn’t want to answer.

Better by far for her to think he was selfish, he decided. Better for her to believe he was the biggest heel of all time than for him to have to reveal the sorry details of his failed marriage.

He took a deep breath. ‘Janey, the thing is, kids…they’re not really me. I never wanted any—never planned on having any. I’m a loner at heart, you see, always have been.’

Oh, he was something all right, she decided as she stared up at him in utter disbelief. How could he be so unfeeling about a child? And not simply any child. His child. His daughter.

‘So you’re getting your mother to look after her, I presume?’ she said tightly.

‘I can’t. She flew out to Canada last Saturday to stay with my sister for the next three months. Annie’s been having a really rotten time with her first pregnancy—’

‘Then you’re hiring a nanny?’ Jane asked, her heart going out to his poor little motherless, unwanted child. ‘Or are you too damn mean to fork out the money?’

‘It’s not a question of money!’ he exclaimed, his cheeks reddening. ‘None of the agencies I contacted could get me anybody until next month, which is why…’ He quickly fixed what he hoped was his most appealing smile to his lips. ‘Janey, I need you to do me a huge favour. I want you to come and live with me, to help me look after Nicole.’

‘You want me to…’ Her mouth fell open, then she shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, but I think there must be something wrong with my hearing. I could have sworn you just said you wanted me to come and live with you to look after your daughter.’

‘I did—I do. Janey, listen, it makes perfect sense,’ he continued as she stared at him, stunned. ‘You’re a woman—’

‘I also like pasta but that doesn’t make me Italian,’ she protested. ‘If you’re so desperate for help, why don’t you ask Gussie Granton? She’s your current girlfriend, according to the hospital grapevine, and as a paediatric sister she’s bound to know more about children than I do.’ He had the grace at least to look uncomfortable and her grey eyes narrowed. ‘You’ve already asked her, haven’t you, and she said no.’

Gussie had. Oh, she’d been wonderfully understanding, her luscious lips curving into an expression of deepest sympathy, but, as she’d pointed out, the demands of her job simply didn’t give her the time to take care of a child.

‘Janey—’

‘So you decided that as your mother couldn’t do it, and Gussie wouldn’t, muggins here might fit the bill,’ she interrupted, her voice harder and colder than he’d ever heard it. ‘Well, you can forget it, Elliot. Forget it!’

‘But you’ve got to help me,’ he cried, coming after her as she made for his office door. ‘Surely you can see that I can’t do this on my own?’

‘You’re thirty-two years old, Elliot,’ she snapped. ‘Get off your butt and try!’

‘But you’re so good with kids—the very best,’ he said, his blue eyes fixed pleadingly on her. ‘And I’m not asking you to do it for ever—just for a month. Until I can get a nanny or a housekeeper. Please, Janey.’

She’d heard that wheedling tone in his voice before. It was the one he used on women when he wanted a favour, and it usually worked on her, too, but not today.

‘No, Elliot.’

‘Look, I’m not asking you to go into purdah for the next month,’ he said quickly. ‘I have a three-bedroom flat—you can have your friends round whenever you want, go out whenever you want. All I’m asking is for us to dovetail our shifts and personal commitments so at least one of us will be there when Nicole comes home from school.’

‘No, Elliot.’

‘Janey, please. I’m begging you. If you won’t do it for me, won’t you at least do it for Nicole?’

Blackmail. It was blackmail of the worst possible kind, and anyone who agreed to move in with him under those circumstances needed their head examined. Anyone who had secretly been in love with him for the last two years and agreed to do it needed that head certified.

Tell him it’s his problem, not yours, her mind insisted. Tell him to go fly a kite, preferably on the edge of a very high cliff in the middle of a howling gale. OK, so his little girl must be grief-stricken to have lost her mother, but it’s not your problem.

And she cleared her throat to tell him just that when an image suddenly came into her mind. An image of a little girl with big, frightened eyes. A little girl lost, and alone, and deeply unhappy.

‘Just for a month, you said?’ she murmured uncertainly.

He nodded, hope, desperation, plain in his eyes.

‘You’ll have to do your fair share, Elliot,’ she declared. ‘Nicole is your responsibility, not mine.’

‘Oh, absolutely—definitely,’ he replied, nodding vigorously.

Only an idiot would agree to this, she thought as she stared up into his handsome face. Only a fool would ever say yes. And yet, before she could stop herself, the words ‘All right, then, I’ll do it’ were out of her mouth.

And as a broad smile lit up his face, and her heart turned over in response, she knew that she wasn’t simply an idiot. She was completely and utterly out of her mind.

CHAPTER TWO

‘SHE’S arriving this evening, then, on the nine o’clock plane from Paris?’ Floella declared as she helped Jane carry a fresh supply of medical dressings out of their small dispensary into the treatment room. ‘Poor little soul. Losing her mother like that. My heart goes out to her, it really does.’

And I don’t know why MI5 doesn’t simply throw in the towel and hand over all its surveillance work to St Stephen’s in future, Jane thought ruefully.

How did they do it? She’d told nobody about Nicole, and she was pretty sure Elliot hadn’t told anybody either, and yet it had taken the staff less than twenty-four hours to discover not only that he had a daughter but what time her plane was arriving as well.

‘I bet Gussie’s spitting nails about you moving into Elliot’s place.’ Floella chuckled. ‘I hear she’s been itching to become his live-in girlfriend.’

‘I’m not exactly moving in with him, Flo,’ Jane said quickly. ‘Simply helping out until he can employ a housekeeper.’

‘Oh, I know that,’ the staff nurse said dismissively. ‘We all do.’

Which was another thing that was beginning to seriously annoy her, Jane thought, putting down the boxes of Steri-Strips she was carrying with a bang. The way everyone had instantly assumed there wasn’t anything personal about the arrangement.

OK, so there wasn’t, but that didn’t mean she had to like the idea that nobody thought there might be. She wasn’t that plain, and was it really so unlikely that she and Elliot could have become an item? Apparently it was.

‘Elliot, we were just talking about your little girl.’ Floella beamed as he strode down the treatment room towards them. ‘You must be really excited at the prospect of meeting her.’

Jane didn’t think he looked even remotely excited, but to his credit he managed to mumble something suitably enthusiastic in reply.

‘You must bring her into the hospital one day, so we can all meet her,’ the staff nurse continued. ‘And, don’t forget, if you ever need a babysitter, I’ll be only too happy to oblige.’

Elliot smiled and nodded but as Floella bustled away he shook his head wryly. ‘You know, this has got to be the worst-kept secret in the hospital.’

‘Do you mind everybody knowing about Nicole?’ Jane asked.

He shrugged. ‘She’s a fact of life. Whether I mind or not is immaterial.’

Which sounded very much as though he did mind. As though he’d far rather she didn’t exist.

She’d thought—hoped—that since last night he might have had time to see what a great gift he’d been given, how lucky he was, but nothing, it seemed, had changed. He still saw his daughter as a nuisance, an unwelcome intrusion into his life.

‘I’d better get back to work,’ she said abruptly, but before she could move he suddenly clasped her hands in his.

‘Jane, what you’re doing for Nicole—for me—I just want to thank you again. It’s really good of you to help me out like this, and I do appreciate it.’

Like hell you do, Elliot, she thought sourly, trying very hard not to notice the way her skin was traitorously reacting to the touch of his fingers. You just think you’ve got it made. You just think you’ve managed to offload your responsibilities onto someone else. Well, you’re going to find out very quickly that I’m not a complete pushover. You’re going to do your full share of taking care of your daughter, or my name isn’t Jane Halden.

Determinedly she extricated her hands from his. ‘I’d better go—’

‘Did you remember to arrange with one of the night staff to start a little earlier tonight so you can come out to the airport with me?’ he interrupted.

She nodded, though she still thought Nicole would probably have preferred him to meet her alone.

‘I thought we’d take her out to dinner,’ he continued. ‘A sort of welcome-to-London treat. I know this fabulous restaurant in town which not only does the most amazing lobsters but also the best prawns this side of the Channel.’

He had to be joking. One look at his face told her he wasn’t.

‘Don’t you think fish fingers and chips at home would be a much better idea?’ she said quickly.

‘Jane, she’s French—’

‘And she’s six years old, Elliot. Look, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she’s exhausted and a bit weepy when she arrives,’ she continued as he opened his mouth, clearly intending to argue with her, ‘so I really do think fish fingers and chips in your flat would suit her much better than dinner out at a fancy restaurant.’

He frowned uncertainly. ‘If you say so. I don’t think I’ve got any fish fingers in my freezer but I could easily buy some.’

Frankly she’d have been amazed if he’d had fish fingers in his freezer. Pâté de foie gras, quail and partridge eggs for sure, but not fish fingers and chips.

In fact, when she’d dropped off her clothes at his flat this morning her heart had quite sunk when she’d seen where he lived. Oh, his home was beautiful—all gleaming modern furniture and immaculate white walls—but not by any stretch of the imagination could it have been described as child-friendly. Indeed, its pristine elegance had intimidated her, so who knew what it would do to Nicole?

Flowers might soften the look, she thought suddenly, make it seem more homely, and she’d just opened her mouth to suggest it when two paramedics appeared, their faces taut, grim.

‘Twenty-three-year-old mum with bad burns to her face, arms and upper torso. Apparently she was frying some chips for her kids’ tea when the pan caught fire. She threw some water on it—’

‘And the whole thing went up like a torch,’ Elliot groaned as the paramedics wheeled the mother into cubicle 1. ‘Didn’t she know that oil and water don’t mix?’

‘Do you want me to page the burns unit?’ Jane asked, beckoning to Floella to assist him.

‘Please. You’d better alert IC as well. And, Jane…’ She turned, her eyebrows raised questioningly. ‘Make it fast, eh?’

She nodded. Shock was always the biggest hazard in cases like this. Shock and the danger of infection, and the sooner they could get the young mother stabilised and transferred to specialist care, the better.

And the sooner Richard Connery lost his high-and-mighty attitude the happier she’d be, too, she decided when she put down the phone to see the junior doctor snapping his fingers imperiously at her.

No wonder Floella’s temper was close to breaking point, she thought as she walked towards him. Her own was getting pretty wafer-thin as well, and it was getting harder and harder for her to continue believing that Richard’s high-handed manner was due to him finding the work in A and E a lot more stressful than he’d expected.

‘How can I help you, Doctor?’ she asked, determinedly bright as she joined him in cubicle 8.

‘Being here considerably earlier would have been a start,’ he declared irritably. ‘I’ve been waiting ten minutes for nursing assistance.’

‘We’re very busy this afternoon, Dr Connery—’

‘And I don’t have time to listen to excuses,’ he interrupted. ‘My patient is suffering from acute appendicitis and I need liver, pancreatic and guiac tests to confirm it before I send him up to Theatre.’

It wasn’t the only thing he needed, she thought grimly, but she managed to keep her tongue between her teeth and quickly took the samples he wanted.

‘Well, is it a ruptured appendix, as I said?’ he declared when she returned later with the results.

She cleared her throat awkwardly. ‘Could I have a word with you in private Dr Connery?’

‘I don’t have time for a chat, Sister,’ he retorted. ‘All I want is a simple answer to a simple question. Is it a ruptured appendix or not?’

Well, he’d asked for it, she thought, and as he’d asked for it he was going to get it. ‘I’m afraid it isn’t, Dr Connery. Your patient has gallstones.’

‘Gallstones?’ Richard’s normally pale face turned an interesting shade of pink, and he snatched the sheet of papers from her fingers. ‘Let me see those results!’

‘It can be very easy to confuse the two,’ she murmured for the benefit of the young man who was lying on the trolley, glancing from her to Richard with clear concern. ‘The symptoms—pain, nausea and sickness—’

‘Are you presuming to give me lessons in diagnosis, Sister Halden?’ Richard interrupted, his face now almost puce.

Of course I’m not, you big ninny, she thought. I’m simply trying to get you out of a jam. You should never have told your patient what was wrong with him until you were a hundred per cent sure, and making a diagnosis without having the results of your tests was just plain stupid.

But she didn’t say any of that. Instead, she said as calmly as she could, ‘Would you like me to make arrangements for your patient to be taken up to Men’s Surgical, Dr Connery?’

From his expression Richard looked as though he’d far rather have thrown her under the nearest bus, but he managed to nod.

But he wasn’t finished. The minute the young man on the trolley was wheeled out of the treatment room, he rounded on her furiously.

‘I do not appreciate being made to look a fool, Sister Halden! That man was my patient—in my care—and you deliberately undermined his confidence in me!’

‘I did no such thing,’ she protested. ‘I didn’t want to give you those results. I asked if I could discuss them with you in private, but you insisted on having them.’

He had, and he knew it. He was also plainly acutely and deeply mortified, and despite her anger she couldn’t help feeling a certain sympathy for him.

‘Dr Connery…Richard…Look, it’s no big deal,’ she said gently. ‘OK, so your initial diagnosis wasn’t correct, but you were sensible enough to order all the necessary tests—’

‘I am not a child so stop humouring me!’ he interrupted. ‘I am the doctor here, Sister Halden, and I suggest you don’t forget it!’

He stormed away before she could answer him, but to her dismay her troubles weren’t over. As she turned to go back into the cubicle to remove the paper sheet from the examination trolley and replace it with a fresh one, Elliot suddenly appeared and it was clear from his grim face that he’d heard every word.

‘Does he always talk to you like that?’ he demanded. ‘He does—doesn’t he?’ he continued, seeing the betraying flush of colour on her cheeks. ‘Right. It’s obviously high time I had a chat with that young man.’

‘Oh, Elliot, don’t,’ she said quickly, dreading the inevitable friction that such a course of action would create. ‘He knows he was wrong, but he’s very young, still finding his feet—’

‘And using them to walk all over you by the sound of it,’ he snapped. ‘Jane, it’s not on. There’s such a thing as staff courtesy, not to mention the fact that even a first-year medical student would know never to make a diagnosis before they’d done every test.’

‘I know that, but, please, won’t you leave it for now?’ she begged. ‘I’m sure when he’s had time to think about it he’ll realise he shouldn’t have behaved as he did.’

‘And if he doesn’t?’ he demanded. ‘If he continues to treat you like this?’

‘He won’t—I’m sure he won’t,’ she insisted, and for a second he frowned, then sighed and shook his head.

‘You know something, Janey, you’re far too soft-hearted for your own good.’

Too damn right I am, she thought, or I’d never have agreed to help you with Nicole, and she would have told him so, too, if she hadn’t suddenly noticed he was smiling at her. Smiling the smile that made grown women grow weak at the knees, and her own were none too steady at the moment.

Why in the world had she ever agreed to move in with this man? Her brain must have been out to lunch. Her common sense must have gone with it, too, she realised, feeling an answering smile being irresistibly drawn from her. To live with him. To see him at breakfast. Last thing at night…

Then remember why you agreed to do it, she told herself sharply. Remember that he’s simply using you until he can employ a housekeeper, and that he doesn’t give a damn for his daughter.

And if that doesn’t bring you down to earth, she thought grimly when the doors of the treatment room swung open and Gussie Granton suddenly appeared, Elliot’s current girlfriend certainly should.

‘Hello, Gussie,’ Elliot said in clear surprise. ‘We don’t often see you down in A and E. Something I can do for you?’

Gussie wrapped one curl of her long blonde hair round her finger and threw him a provocative glance from under her impossibly thick eyelashes. ‘Not in public unfortunately, darling.’

Oh, barf. Barf, barf, and triple barf, Jane thought, deliberately beginning to edge away, but she didn’t get far. Gussie placed a beautifully manicured hand on her arm, and subjected her to a smile. A smile which had quite a struggle to make her eyes.

‘Don’t run off, Jane. At least not until I tell you how very sweet I think you’re being to help us out like this. I would have taken care of Nicole in a minute if I could, but being a senior sister in Paediatrics…’ She sighed heavily. ‘I just don’t have any time to myself.’

And I do? Jane thought waspishly. Like being a senior sister in A and E is a dawdle? Like I simply turn up every day, do my eight-hour shift, then go home and put my feet up?

For two pins she’d have liked to tell Gussie where to stick her thanks. Forget the two pins, she decided. She’d do it for free. And right now. ‘Gussie—’

‘Elliot, darling, it’s just occurred to me that you might like some company when you go out to the airport to meet your daughter,’ Gussie continued, completely ignoring her. ‘I could easily get one of my staff to swop shifts with me—’

‘There’s no need,’ Elliot interrupted. ‘Jane’s already agreed to come with me.’

‘Has she?’ Gussie’s large brown eyes narrowed slightly, then she smiled again at Jane. And this time her smile most definitely didn’t reach her eyes. ‘My word, but you are proving to be a little godsend, aren’t you?’

Elliot thought she was. In fact, after a sleepless night spent tossing and turning, he was all too aware of how very kind Jane was being, but he wished Gussie hadn’t said it—at least not in that particular way. There’d been a very definite edge to her voice. An edge which had made him feel uncomfortable, and if he’d felt like that he was sure Jane did as well.

‘Gussie, I’m afraid, can be a bit overbearing at times,’ he said the minute the paediatric sister had gone.

‘That’s one way of putting it,’ Jane replied tersely.

He coloured. ‘She does mean well, though, even if it doesn’t always sound like it.’

Oh, Gussie had made her meaning perfectly clear, Jane thought tightly, walking over to the thirteen-year-old boy and his mother who had come through from the waiting room into cubicle 8.

Hands off—he’s mine. That was what she’d said, and there’d been no need. Gussie was welcome to Elliot. In fact, right now the paediatric sister could have had him gift-wrapped with a bow round his neck.

‘Your son’s had this pain at the top of his chest for the last three days, you said?’ Elliot said, once Jane had got the boy and his mother settled.

‘At first I thought David had simply pulled a muscle, playing basketball,’ the boy’s mother replied, twisting her hands together convulsively, ‘but when the pain didn’t go away—’

‘Keen on sport, are you, David?’ Elliot asked as Jane helped the boy off with his shirt.

‘Only basketball,’ he replied. ‘The other boys at my school prefer soccer, but basketball…Basketball’s the best.’

Gently Elliot pressed on the boy’s chest. ‘Does it hurt when I do this?’

The boy shook his head. Not musculoskeletal pain, then, Elliot decided, or the pain would have increased under pressure.

‘Do you have any other aches and pains anywhere?’ he asked, taking his stethoscope out of his pocket and smiling encouragingly at the teenager.

‘I don’t think so.’ David frowned. ‘Sometimes I get an odd feeling in my back, but that’s all.’

Elliot’s ears pricked up. ‘Odd in what way?’

‘It’s hard to explain. It’s…it’s a sort of ripping feeling. I’m sorry but I can’t really describe it.’

He didn’t need to. The minute Elliot placed his stethoscope on the boy’s chest he heard a distinctive whooshing sound. A sound similar to that he’d heard in much older patients with leaky heart valves. But surely a boy of thirteen was far too young for that?

‘Jane, could you get me an ECG reading, please?’ he murmured casually.

She nodded.

‘So, you play a lot of basketball, do you, David?’ he said as Jane deftly applied the sticky electrodes to each of the boy’s arms and legs, then across his chest.

‘His school thinks he could play professionally when he’s older,’ his mother replied, clearly torn between maternal pride and concern.

‘My height helps a lot,’ her son said quickly, shooting his mother the speaking glance all boys used when they were deeply embarrassed. ‘You don’t have to jump up so far to reach the basket when you’re as tall as me.’

And he was tall—almost as tall as I am, Elliot thought pensively. Rangy, too, with extremely long fingers, and suddenly somewhere in the back of his mind a memory stirred. A memory of something he’d read in a medical journal a long time ago, and he hoped to heaven he was wrong.

‘ECG reading normal,’ Jane murmured.

‘Chest X-ray, please, Sister Halden,’ he said, then turned to the boy’s mother. ‘Has your son always been tall for his age?’

‘Not when he was a toddler, but when he hit seven…’ She shook her head ruefully. ‘It costs me a fortune every time he needs new clothes and shoes. Nothing in any of the ordinary kids’ shops fits him, you see.’

Because he wasn’t an ordinary boy, Elliot thought sadly, when Radiology had processed David’s chest X-rays.

He had Marfan’s syndrome, a rare, inherited condition which caused the aorta—the major blood vessel leading from the heart—to become abnormally enlarged, and one of the first indications of the condition was that sufferers were always extremely tall as children with unusually long fingers.

‘Historians think Abraham Lincoln might have had Marfan’s, don’t they?’ Jane commented after the boy and his mother had been transferred up to the medical ward where further tests could be performed.

Elliot nodded. ‘Thank goodness his mother brought him in when she did. With that enlarged aorta, he could have had a heart attack at any time, but at least now we can give him beta-blockers to control his heart problems, and get him fitted with an orthopaedic corset before his spine starts to become deformed due to the weight of his bones.’

‘No more basketball for him, though, I guess,’ Jane sighed.

‘No. No more basketball,’ he answered, and wondered why he should find that thought so deeply depressing.

Oh, he’d always cared about the patients who passed through his hands, had fought tooth and nail to save many of them, but this young boy…

Perhaps it was because he seemed so very young, scarcely more than a child, despite his height. Perhaps it was because all of his dreams to become a world-class basketball player were now lying in the dust.

No, it wasn’t that, he realised. It had been the look of total devastation on his mother’s face when he’d taken her into one of their private waiting rooms to explain what was wrong.

David’s mother would willingly have given everything she possessed to spare her son pain. Would even have given her own life if he could have been cured. That was love. Real love. And he felt none of that for his daughter.

You don’t know her yet—haven’t even met her—his mind pointed out, and unconsciously he shook his head. It wasn’t as simple as that. Even if he’d wanted to be a father—and at the moment he certainly didn’t—he didn’t know how to be one.

He could do Lover. Oh, he could do a great Lover, provided there was no talk of long-term commitment. He could even do Friend. A sympathetic, willing shoulder for any woman to lean her head on if she needed it, but Father?

There was no way he could do Father—no way—and a wave of panic washed over him.

Panic that didn’t get any less when a case of accidental poisoning came in a mere forty minutes before he and Jane were due to leave for the airport.

‘We’re really cutting it fine,’ Jane murmured, seeing his eye drift to the treatment-room clock while they waited for the results of the blood count and chemistry tests. ‘Thank goodness we brought a change of clothes into the hospital just in case.’

He nodded, but he’d hoped to have time to shower, to wash the smell of the hospital off him before he met his daughter, but now it looked as though he’d be phoning the airport to tell them to look after her until they could get there. It was a great start. A really great start.

‘Look, why don’t the pair of you just go?’ Charlie Gordon said. ‘It’s not like we need either of you here. Flo and I can look after your patient.’

Elliot shook his head. ‘It’s asking too much—’

‘Elliot, I’d bet money that your blood pressure is higher right now than your patient’s,’ the SHO said with a grin.

‘Probably, but—’

‘Charlie’s right, boss,’ Floella chipped in. ‘We don’t need you here, and it would be awful if your little girl arrived with nobody to meet her.’

She was right, it would. But still he looked across at Jane uncertainly. ‘What do you think?’

‘Who am I to disagree with the others?’ She smiled. ‘Come on. Let’s go.’

They made the airport with five minutes to spare.

‘Relax, Elliot,’ Jane said, seeing him scanning the Arrivals board anxiously for information about the 21.00 plane from Paris. ‘The plane might land at nine o’clock, but she’ll have to collect her luggage first, remember, so try to relax.’

Relax? How could he possibly relax when all his instincts were urging him to run, to leave town, to give no forwarding address? He glanced at his watch, then straightened his tie. ‘Do I look all right? I mean, this suit…?’

‘You look fine.’ Actually, she wished he’d brought a pair of casual trousers and a sweatshirt to change into at the hospital instead of a suit and tie, but now was hardly the time to tell him so.

‘Should I get her some flowers, do you think?’ he continued, seeing a man emerging from the florist opposite with an enormous bouquet. ‘Girls always like flowers, don’t they?’

‘Daffodils would be nice…’

‘Not roses, then?’ he queried. ‘You think roses would be too much?’

For sure they would be too much. Roses were for an adult, not a little girl, and she would have told him that if she hadn’t suddenly caught a glimpse of his face.

He looked tense. Tense, and taut, and grim.

Surely he couldn’t possibly be nervous at the prospect of meeting his daughter? Of course he wasn’t. The very idea was ridiculous. He was resentful, yes. Probably even a little bit angry at his ex-wife for doing this to him, but super-confident Elliot nervous about meeting a child? No way. Never. And yet…

Gently she put her hand on his arm. ‘Elliot, all she needs is to feel loved and wanted.’

‘Loved and wanted.’ He nodded, for all the world as though he were ticking off a mental check list of dos and don’ts.

‘Just be her father,’ she continued, ‘and she’ll adore you.’

Be her father? He couldn’t do it—he knew he couldn’t—but a voice over the loudspeaker had announced the arrival of Flight 303 from Paris, and Jane was pushing her way through the crowded concourse, leaving him with no choice but to follow her.

‘Do you have a photograph so we’ll know what she looks like?’ she asked, breaking into his thoughts.

It had never occurred to him to ask if the solicitor had one! Relax, he told himself, feeling a trickle of sweat run down his back. How many six-year-old kids can be travelling on the plane from Paris? Even if there are dozens she’ll have somebody from Donna’s French solicitors with her.

She didn’t. She was on her own. OK, so one of the air stewardesses was holding her hand, but she was still on her own, and somebody had pinned a label onto her coat for all the world as though she were a parcel to be collected, not a child, not a person.

A surge of quite unexpected anger flooded through him. Anger that was just as quickly replaced by an altogether different emotion as the stewardess led his daughter towards him.

She looked exactly like Donna. The same long auburn hair, the same large dark eyes, the same elfin features. The face that stared uncertainly up at him was the one which had loved and then taunted and mocked him during his marriage, and despite all his best efforts to prevent it he felt himself beginning to withdraw. Knew it was wrong, that she was only a child, but he couldn’t stop himself.

And Nicole sensed his withdrawal. He could see it in the clouding of her eyes, and though he managed to swiftly dredge up his brightest smile he knew the damage had been done.

‘Elliot….’

Jane’s hand was at his back, urging him forward, and he cleared his throat awkwardly.

‘Hello, Nicole. I’m…I’m your father.’ She gazed up at him without expression and a fresh wave of panic assailed him. What if she didn’t speak any English? Donna had been French. She might never have seen any need for her daughter—his daughter, he reminded himself—to learn English.

‘Nicole…I’m…Moi…Je…Je…’ He bit his lip. Oh, God, but he’d never been any good at languages. ‘Nicole…Moi…votre père?’

‘I know.’

The reply had been barely a whisper.

‘And this…’ He caught Jane’s hand in desperation. ‘This is my friend, Jane Halden. We…we’re…’

‘Flatmates,’ Jane said quickly, coming to his rescue. ‘Your father and I are flatmates.’

What now? Elliot wondered as the air stewardess disappeared, the loudspeaker announced the arrival of the 21.15 from Berlin and his daughter stared at the floor. What did he do and say now?

Jane had no such doubts. She simply got down on her knees, gave the little girl a hug and began talking about the flight from Paris.

Which is what he should have done, he realised bleakly as he retrieved Nicole’s luggage. But it was too late to think about that now. Too late for a lot of things.

All he could do was drive them back to his flat and listen to Jane and Nicole chattering away quite happily while he sat in silence, feeling as much use as a lamb chop in a vegetarian restaurant.

Dinner was no better. Nicole ate little, and said less. Jane—bless her—kept up a steady stream of conversation while Nicole valiantly attacked her fish fingers, but it was a relief when his daughter finally pushed her plate away and asked if she could go to bed.

Jane didn’t linger long afterwards. There was plenty she wanted to say. Things like ‘What happened to the famous Mathieson charm?’ And ‘Couldn’t you at least have tried to make some conversation?’ But it would keep.

A lot of things would keep, she decided as she took her pyjamas out of her suitcase and smiled ruefully as she looked at them.

Passion-killers. That’s what Frank had called the men’s red-and-white-striped pyjamas she liked to wear, and she supposed they were, but she liked them, always had. They were cosy on wintry nights, cool on hot summer evenings, and if they were as sexy as a pair of flannelette knickers then so much the better while she was staying with Elliot.

Not that she had anything to fear on that score, she thought wistfully as she changed into them. She was just Jane. Just good old dependable Jane.

And you should thank your lucky stars you are, her mind declared while she brushed her teeth. How long do Elliot’s girlfriends usually last—a month, six weeks? Gussie was doing well at two months. Actually, Gussie was doing incredibly well to have lasted two months.

Sleep, she told herself firmly. Get into bed and get some sleep. And she tried. She really did try, but two o’clock saw her no sleepier than before, and she’d just decided to get up and make herself a cup of tea when she heard it.

The unmistakable sound of a child’s muffled sobs in the silence.

She was out of bed in a second, tiptoeing quickly down the corridor so as not to wake Elliot, but her stealth was unnecessary. He was already awake, already heading in the same direction, and he came to a halt with clear relief when he saw her. She stopped too, but it wasn’t relief she felt. It was an altogether different emotion.

He only wore boxer shorts to bed. Nothing on top at all. Nothing to disguise the fact that his chest was even broader and more muscular than she’d ever imagined. And the boxer shorts…She swallowed convulsively, and resolutely shifted her gaze to his face and kept it there.

‘Nicole’s crying,’ he said unnecessarily.

‘She’ll be missing her mother,’ she managed to reply. ‘Feeling a bit lost.’

‘I guess so.’

‘I’ll leave you to it, then,’ she continued, half turning to go.

‘Leave me?’ he gasped. ‘But you can’t. I mean, I don’t know what to do!’

‘Elliot, all she needs is for you to hold her, cuddle her!’ she exclaimed, unable to hide her exasperation. ‘How hard can that be?’

‘Can’t you do it?’ he begged.

‘Elliot—’

‘Janey, I told you I wasn’t any good with kids. I’ll only muck it up if I go in there, say the wrong thing.’

‘But—’

‘And I have to get some sleep,’ he continued in desperation, seeing the shock and disapproval in her face. ‘I’ve got a meeting with Admin tomorrow about next year’s budget, and I must have my wits about me.’

For a second she stared at him speechlessly, then she drew herself up to her full five feet one, her grey eyes blazing.

‘Go, then!’ she snarled. ‘Go and get your precious sleep, and I hope you have nightmares. You deserve to, because you sure as hell don’t deserve a lovely little girl like Nicole!’

And he didn’t, she thought furiously when she went into Nicole’s bedroom and gathered the little girl into her arms. He didn’t deserve anybody’s love.

To think that at the airport she’d been stupid enough to wonder if his apparent callousness might be an act. An act he’d adopted because he was terrified that he wouldn’t be able to cope. But it wasn’t an act. He was just selfish to the core.

And as she cradled Nicole to her, holding the little girl tightly until she finally fell asleep, she didn’t know that Elliot remained outside the bedroom door, listening. Didn’t know that as he stood there, his hands clenched against his sides, his forehead leaning against the door, that he felt not only like the biggest heel of all time but also the world’s biggest failure.

CHAPTER THREE

‘HEY, Elliot, I know everyone says fatherhood’s tough, but don’t you think trying to cut your own throat is a bit drastic?’ Charlie Gordon grinned.

‘Oh, ha, ha, very funny,’ Elliot replied, gingerly rubbing his lacerated chin. ‘Jane’s been using my razor to shave her legs again, and it was blunt as a stone this morning.’

‘Don’t you just hate it when girls do that?’ Charlie laughed. ‘I mean, it’s bad enough when they hang their wet tights and underwear all over the shower rail—’

‘Not to mention all those creams and potions they stack along the bath.’ Elliot sighed ruefully. ‘Two weeks ago I had a bathroom to call my own, and now—’

‘It’s become a branch of your local chemist,’ Charlie finished for him. ‘Still, all that clutter’s nice in an odd sort of way. Makes a man’s flat seem more homely somehow.’

It did, Elliot acknowledged. Just as he also knew that he could never have got through this last fortnight without Jane, in spite of all her clutter. She was the oil that kept everything running. The cement without which everything would have fallen apart. Without her, Nicole’s arrival would have been even more of a nightmare than it actually was.

And it had been a nightmare, despite the fact that he’d tried really hard to involve himself in Nicole’s life. He’d had to, and it wasn’t just because he knew Jane’s watchful eyes were constantly on him. It was because he’d felt so guilty about the way he’d reacted when he’d first seen Nicole, the way he’d chickened out of comforting her on that first night, but nothing he’d done had worked.

With Jane his daughter was completely at ease, laughing and smiling, but the minute he tried to engage her in conversation all her animation disappeared. Oh, she was polite enough, answering all of his questions, dutifully telling him about her new school, but it had been a duty. A duty she’d got over as quickly as she could.

‘Nicole settling in OK at her new school?’ Charlie continued as they walked together towards the treatment room.

‘Very well, thanks.’ Elliot nodded.

And that had been because of Jane, too. He didn’t know how she’d managed to do it but somehow she’d contrived to make friends with the mother of one of the girls in Nicole’s class, and now invitations were starting to arrive for Nicole to come to tea.

‘You must find Jane a great help,’ Charlie said as though he’d read his mind.

‘Couldn’t do without her,’ Elliot admitted frankly.

‘Nice girl, Jane,’ the SHO continued, seeing her coming out of one of the cubicles. ‘Lovely smile, too. Sort of lights up her face, if you know what I mean.’

Elliot didn’t. To him, Jane was…Well, Jane was just Jane but, judging by Charlie Gordon’s admiring gaze, he clearly didn’t think so.

Actually, now he came to think of it, the SHO had no business to be thinking anything about Jane, Elliot decided irritably. Dammit, the man had a girlfriend in Wales or Norfolk, or some such outlandish place, and if he was planning on fooling around with Jane, breaking her heart…

‘Charlie—’

‘Good grief, what in the world have you done to your face, Elliot?’ Jane asked, smothering a chuckle as she joined them.

‘Somebody—somebody—has been using my razor to shave their legs again,’ he observed.

‘Sorry,’ she said guiltily. ‘I’ll try to get to a chemist some time today before I go home.’

‘Better buy some plasters while you’re about it,’ Charlie declared as he headed off towards Reception. ‘Those bits of toilet paper he’s currently got stuck to his chin aren’t exactly going to inspire much confidence in our patients.’

Elliot whipped the forgotten pieces of toilet paper off quickly, but not fast enough. Jane let out a peal of laughter, and as he stared down at her he realised that Charlie was right.

She did have a nice smile. Wide, and full, and generous. She had nice hair, too. Thick and black, it shone like silk when she took it down from its topknot back at his flat after work and brushed it out. And she didn’t do anything special with it. Simply washed, then blow-dried it. He knew that because he’d watched her doing it last night when she’d been helping Nicole with her homework.

‘S-sorry?’ he stammered, suddenly realising from her expectant expression that she must have asked him something. ‘What did you just say?’

‘I asked—I asked—if you remembered that Nicole’s going round to her new friend Stephanie’s house for tea tonight,’ she said tightly. ‘But as usual, when it comes to talking about your daughter, you weren’t listening!’

He groaned inwardly as Jane whirled angrily round on her heel and strode away. Damn Charlie Gordon. If the SHO hadn’t been wittering on about how nice Jane was, and what a terrific smile she had, he would have been paying attention to what she was saying, and not simply gazing at her.

It had taken him three days after the fiasco of Nicole’s arrival to get Jane to say anything to him beyond an abrupt ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ to any of his questions, and the last thing he wanted was to go through that again.

Swiftly he hurried after her, catching up with her beside the whiteboard. ‘Jane, I’m sorry. I wasn’t being uncaring but I was thinking about something else. I was wondering…’ Think of something fast, Elliot, he told himself, and make it good. ‘I…I was trying to figure out if I could afford another bathroom.’

‘Yeah, right,’ she said tartly.

‘It’s true,’ he protested, crossing his fingers behind his back. ‘One bathroom isn’t really sufficient for the three of us, and I was wondering whether the cupboard in the hall could become an extra toilet.’

She gazed at him suspiciously. ‘Why do I get the feeling you’re spinning me a line?’

‘Do I look like the kind of man who would?’ he exclaimed, opening his blue eyes very wide.

‘Absolutely one hundred per cent,’ she replied. ‘Elliot, I’ve known you for two years, seen how you operate, so cut the flannel. Were you really thinking about a bathroom?’

He stared at her for a second, then his mouth turned up at the corners. ‘Actually, I was thinking what a very nice smile you had.’

Her jaw dropped, then she began to laugh. ‘You’re impossible, you know that, don’t you? Expecting me to swallow a load of old baloney like that—’

‘It’s true—Scout’s honour.’

‘Elliot, you were never a Scout,’ she protested. ‘The kind of man every mother warns her daughter about, but never a Scout. Honestly, sometimes I don’t know why I put up with you!’

‘’Cos you like me?’ he suggested, his blue eyes sparkling.

Oh, I do, she thought, laughing and shaking her head. I do, but I just wish you would use some of that charm of yours on your daughter for a change.

To be fair to him, he’d certainly been making more of an effort, talking to Nicole about her new school, the things she was learning, but he was so stiff with her, so formal. It was obvious that all the little girl wanted was to be loved, and yet Elliot either couldn’t, or wouldn’t, see it.

‘Elliot…’

The rest of what she’d been about to say died in her throat as the treatment-room doors opened, and a young woman stood there, dishevelled, wild-eyed and panic-stricken.

‘Please! Please, can somebody help me? My boyfriend. He’s out in the car. He has an allergy to almonds, and I think he’s dying!’

Elliot reached for an Ambu-bag and was off at a run, with Jane and the young woman not far behind.

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