The Best Of The Year - Medical Romance

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 highlights, 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!

Dear Reader,

Sigh …

I completely loved writing this book. The only down side to loving my hero, Dr Guy Steele, so much is that he has spoiled any future relationships—because I will for ever be thinking Steele wouldn’t have said that … or Steele wouldn’t have done that … Yes, he’s really that delicious—just so assured and sexy, yet nice.

I’m actually jealous of my own heroine!

Happy reading!

Carol x

Praise for Carol Marinelli

‘A compelling, sensual, sexy, emotionally packed, drama-filled read that will leave you begging for more!’

—Contemporary Romance Reviews on NYC Angels: Redeeming the Playboy

CHAPTER ONE

Before

‘YOU PAGED ME to see a patient.’

‘No, I didn’t.’ Candy, holding an armful of sheets, smiled when it would have been far easier to stand there and gape. He was stunning—tall, slender, wearing a suit and a tie. His dark brown hair was cut short and his voice was so deep and commanding that it stopped Candy in her tracks. She met his chocolate-brown eyes fully and it took a moment to respond normally. ‘Who are you here to see?’

‘A Mr Thomas Heath.’

Candy walked over to the board. Emergency at the London Royal Hospital was quiet this afternoon but as she was in Resuscitation Candy didn’t know which patients were in the cubicles. After a quick scan of the board, she located Mr Heath. ‘He’s in cubicle seven. Trevor’s the nurse looking after him. He must be the one who paged you.’

‘Thanks for that. By the way I’m Steele.’

‘Steele?’

He watched as her very blue eyes moved to his name badge. ‘Well, Dr Guy Steele, if you’d prefer to be formal,’ he said.

‘Steele will do.’ She must look like a dental commercial, Candy thought, for she simply couldn’t stop smiling at him. He must be thirty or mid-thirties, which was a lot more than her twenty-four years, and he was also way older than anyone she had ever fancied, yet he had this impact, this presence, that had Candy’s heart galloping in her chest.

‘And you are?’ he asked.

‘Candy. Candy Anastasi.’ She watched a smile twitch on his lips as she said her name. ‘I know, I know, I should be tall, leggy and blonde to carry off a name like that!’ Instead, she was short and a bit round with long black ringlets and piercing blue eyes. ‘There’s a story there.’

‘I can’t wait to hear it, Nurse Candy.’

He had the deepest voice that she’d ever heard. Like a headmaster, he was stern and bossy, yet it was all somehow softened by a very beautiful mouth that she could barely drag her eyes from. ‘You’ll never hear the story of my name,’ Candy said.

‘Oh, we’ll have to see about that.’

Had they been flirting? Candy wondered as sexy-as-hell Steele walked off.

‘Who’s that?’ Kelly said as they started to strip one of the resuscitation beds.

‘Steele!’ Candy said in a deep low voice, making Kelly laugh. She continued speaking gruffly while they bent over and tucked the sheet in. ‘Or Dr Guy Steele if we want to be formal and, young lady, I’m going to make your eardrums reverberate with my deep—’

‘Nurse Candy?’

Candy froze when she realised that Steele was behind her.

‘Could I borrow your stethoscope?’ he asked.

She laughed at being caught impersonating him and turned around and took her stethoscope from her neck and held it out to him, yet pulled back as he went to take it. ‘You can,’ she said, the stethoscope hovering. ‘Just so long as you stop calling me Nurse Candy.’

He just took the stethoscope, smiled and walked off.

They made up all the beds and checked the crash trolleys and then gave up pretending to be busy, given that Lydia, the manager, was in her office. Instead, they took a jug of iced tea to the nurses’ station, where Steele was tapping away on the computer. It was a lovely early summer day but the air-conditioning was struggling and it was nice to sit on the bench and gossip, though Steele had a couple of questions for her.

‘How do you get into the pathology lab to check results?’ he asked, not looking around.

‘You’ve got your password?’ Candy checked.

‘I have and I’ve got into …’ He tapped again. ‘Got it.’

‘Have you told your parents about Hawaii yet?’ Kelly asked Candy, resuming the conversation they’d been having in the kitchen as they’d made their drink.

‘No.’

‘You go in four weeks’ time,’ Kelly pointed out.

‘They might not notice that I’ve gone,’ Candy said hopefully, then let out a sigh. Her parents were Italian, strict and very prone to popping over to her flat unannounced. They also spoke every day on the phone. ‘I know I’ll have to tell them or I’ll be listed on Interpol as a missing person.’

Candy had, on a whim, booked a holiday to Hawaii. Well, it hadn’t been purely on a whim—she had already been aware that she needed to get away when the infomercial had appeared on her screen with a very special offer for the first ten callers. She’d been tired, a bit jaded and upset over a stupid fling with Gerry, one of the head nurses here. Thankfully he was in Greece for a couple of months, which spared Candy her blushes, but when she’d reached for the phone and, lucky her, been amongst the first ten callers, she’d known she needed this break.

She couldn’t wait for two weeks in which to lie on a beach and explore the stunning island at leisure while she attempted to sort out a few things that were on her mind.

‘They’re going to freak when I tell them,’ Candy admitted. ‘They know that I can’t really afford it.’

‘It’s all paid for?’ Kelly checked, and Candy nodded.

‘All except for spending money, but I’ve just spoken to the hospital bank and I’ve got loads of shifts. Actually, I haven’t got a single day off until I fly.’

‘Where are your shifts?’

‘In the geriatric unit.’

Kelly pulled a face. ‘Yuk.’

Candy didn’t mind. She had enjoyed working in the geriatric unit during her training and was really grateful for the extra work. Even if she was exhausted at the prospect of nearly four more weeks without so much as a day off.

As her parents would point out, when she finally got around to it and told them about her holiday, it was foolish to be working extra shifts because you were so tired that you needed a break—but Candy just wanted to get away for a while.

‘When do you start working there?’

‘The weekend. I’m working Friday night and then I’ve got a four-hour shift on Sunday morning, then back here Monday.’

‘Okay.’ Steele turned around. ‘I want Mr Heath pulled over to Resus. He needs to be monitored while I start him on some medication. His bloodwork’s dire.’

‘Sure.’ Candy jumped down from the bench and she and Trevor brought Mr Heath over.

Candy wrote his name on the whiteboard and turned to Steele. ‘Sorry, what specialty is he under?’

‘Geriatrics,’ Steele said, then he gave her a thin smile. ‘Yuk!’

Candy’s cheeks went pink; she wanted to point out that she hadn’t been the one who had said that.

‘It’s okay,’ Steele relented when he saw her uncomfortable expression. ‘You hit a nerve—I hear that sort of thing a lot.’

‘So are you a new geriatric consultant?’ Kelly asked, but Steele shook his head.

‘No, I’m only here temporarily. I’m covering for six weeks while Kathy Jordan is on extended leave.’

‘Just six weeks?’ Kelly asked shamelessly.

‘Yep,’ Steele said, and walked off.

‘Wow, talk about bringing the schmexy into geriatrics,’ Kelly said. ‘And you’re going to be working there, you lucky thing. I bet you’re not complaining now.’

She hadn’t been complaining in the first place, Candy was tempted to point out.

They soon paid for the lull in patients because, not an hour later, the department had filled and she and Kelly were busy in Resus, Kelly with a very ill baby and Candy attempting to calm down Mr Heath. He was rather shaky from the medication and was getting increasingly distressed and trying to climb down from the resuscitation bed.

‘The medicine makes your heart race, Mr Heath,’ Candy tried to explain to the gentleman. ‘It will settle down soon …’ But he couldn’t understand what she said and kept trying to climb off the bed so Candy tried speaking louder. ‘The medicine—’

‘You do it like this.’ Steele saw that she was struggling and came over. ‘Mr Heath!’ he boomed.

The people in the Waiting Room surely heard him, Candy thought as he gave the same explanation to Mr Heath that she had been trying to give. The gentleman nodded weakly in relief and then lay back on the pillows. ‘Good man,’ Steele barked and smiled at Candy and, in a comparatively dulcet tone, added, ‘I have the perfect voice for my job.’

‘You do,’ she agreed.

‘So you’re going to be doing a few shifts up on the geriatric unit?’

‘Yep.’

‘For a holiday that you can’t really afford?’

‘I know,’ Candy groaned.

‘Well, good for you,’ Steele said, and Candy blinked in surprise. ‘Okay, once Mr Heath’s medication has finished I want him monitored for another hour down here. Then everything’s sorted for him to be admitted. We’re just waiting on a bed, which might be a couple of hours. I’ve spoken to the ward and they have said that they’ll ring down when they’re ready for him to come up.’

‘Ha-ha,’ Candy said, because there was no way that the ward was likely to ring down. Instead, she would have to chase them and push for the bed to be readied.

Steele well understood her sarcastic comment. ‘Well, I hope that they do ring down in a timely manner. I’m less than impressed with the waiting times for patients to get into a bed at the Royal.’

With that he stalked off, possibly to return to whatever fluffy white cloud he’d just drifted down from, Candy thought.

She’d never, ever been so instantly captivated by someone.

Candy left Kelly watching Mr Heath when she was told to go for her lunch break. She’d forgotten to bring lunch so she bought a bag of salt-and-vinegar crisps from the vending machine and put them between two slices of bread and butter. Sitting down in the staffroom, she smiled at Trevor, who was having his lunch too, and checked her phone. Yes, her parents had called, wondering why she hadn’t been over.

She’d tell them about Hawaii tonight, Candy decided. Just get it over and done with and then maybe then she’d feel better. Yet she was incredibly tired and really just wanted to go home, have dinner and an early night.

‘Here!’

That delicious voice tipped her out of introspection and she looked up at Steele, who was holding a stethoscope, which she took from him.

‘Thank you,’ Candy said, ‘though you didn’t have to rush to bring it back down. It’s only a hospital-issue stethoscope.’

‘Oh,’ Steele said. ‘I thought I’d pinched yours. Still, it doesn’t matter, I was coming down anyway. I’m waiting for a patient to arrive—a direct admission from her GP, though she’s refusing to go straight to the ward. She’s just agreed to a chest X-ray and some blood tests, and then she thinks she’s going home!’

‘Thinks?’ Candy asked as Steele sat down beside her and stretched out his long legs. It was nice that he sat down next to her when there were about twenty seats to choose from. She turned and smiled as he spoke on.

‘Her GP is extremely concerned about her. He thinks there’s far more going on than she’s admitting to. Macey has had the same GP for thirty years and if he’s worried about her then so am I. He thinks she’s depressed.’ He turned and looked right into her eyes and Candy felt her heart do a little flip-flop. ‘It’s a big problem with the elderly.’

‘Really?’

Steele nodded and looked at what she was eating. ‘That looks so bad it has to be good.’

‘It’s fantastic,’ Candy said, and ripped off half her sandwich and gave it to him. ‘The trick is lots of butter.’

‘That’s amazing!’ Steele said, when he’d tasted it.

‘I’m brilliant with bread,’ Candy said. ‘Toasted sandwiches, ice-cream sandwiches, beans on toast …’

‘I thought a nice Italian girl like you would be brilliant in the kitchen.’

‘Sadly, no,’ Candy said. ‘I’m a constant source of concern to my mother. Anyway, who said I’m nice?’

They smiled.

A smile that was just so deliciously inappropriate for a man you’d met only an hour or so ago. A smile she had never given to another man before and, really, she had no idea where it had come from.

Candy Anastasi! she scolded herself as she looked into those dark brown eyes.

Step away from the very young nurse, Steele told himself, but, hell, she was gorgeous.

Lydia came in then and they both looked away from each other. Lydia was waving a postcard of a delicious aqua ocean and Candy found that she was holding her breath in tension as Lydia read out the card. ‘There’s a postcard from Gerry. It reads, “Glad that none of you are here.”’

Lydia gave a tight smile as she pinned it on the board and Candy just stared at the television.

Was that little dig from Gerry aimed at her?

‘When is he back?’ Trevor asked.

‘End of July, I think.’

Lydia’s voice was deliberately vague and Candy knew why. Gerry, the head nurse in Emergency, had been strongly advised to take extended leave.

Gerry was one of the reasons that Candy wanted a couple of weeks on a beach with no company.

Candy’s parents had freaked when, at twenty-two, she had broken up with a man they considered suitable and had declared she was moving out. They had been so appalled, so devastated at the prospect of their only daughter leaving home that Candy had ended up staying for another year.

She’d simply had to leave in the end.

Her mother thought nothing of opening her post. She constantly asked whom Candy was talking to on the phone and when Candy pointed out she was entitled to privacy they would ask what it was she had to hide.

Last year she had moved out and, really, she had hardly let loose. She’d had a brief relationship with Gerry when she’d first moved into her flat but that hadn’t worked out and she had been happily single since then.

A couple of months ago, aware that Gerry was having some problems, she’d agreed to go out for a drink with him.

It had resulted in a one-night stand that had left Candy feeling regretful. Gerry had been annoyed to find out that their brief relationship hadn’t been resumed.

It was all a bit of a mess, an avoidable one, though. Candy was just grateful that no one at work knew about that regrettable night and Candy wanted it left far behind.

‘You’ll be sending postcards soon,’ Steele said, but Candy shook her head.

‘I won’t be thinking about this place for a moment.’

That wasn’t quite true, though. She would be thinking about work—Candy was seriously thinking of leaving Emergency.

CHAPTER TWO

JUST AS SHE RETURNED from lunch she was informed that Steele’s patient was here but refusing to come inside the department and had requested, loudly, that the ambulance take her home.

‘I’ll come out and have a word with her,’ Candy said as Steele was taking a phone call. She headed out to the ambulance and was met by a teary woman who introduced herself as Catherine, Macey Anderson’s niece.

‘I knew that she was going to do this,’ Catherine said. ‘It’s taken two days to persuade her to come in. She used to be a matron on one of the wards here, and still thinks she is one.’ Catherine gave a tired smile. ‘She was in a few months ago and she was just about running the place by the time she was discharged.’

‘I want to go home,’ Macey shouted as Candy came into the back of the ambulance.

Macey was a very tall, very handsome woman, with wiry grey, curly hair, a flushed face and very angry dark green eyes. She had all her stuff with her, a huge suitcase, a walking frame and several other bags.

‘Mrs Anderson—’ Candy started, but already she was wrong.

‘It’s Miss Anderson!’

‘I’m sorry, Miss Anderson. I’m Candy Anastasi, one of the nurses in Emergency, and I’m going to be looking after you today.’

‘But, as I’ve told everyone, many times, I don’t want to be looked after,’ Macey retorted. ‘I want to be taken home.’

It was all pretty hopeless. The more they tried to persuade her to come into the department the more upset Macey became. The last thing Candy wanted to do was wheel her through when she was distressed and crying and so, instead, she tried another tack, wondering if, given that Macey had once been a matron, she might not want to get another nurse in trouble.

‘Dr Steele is already here to see you,’ Candy said. ‘He’s been waiting for you to arrive. Am I to go in and tell him that I can’t get you to come into the hospital?’

Macey looked at her for a long moment and then she looked beyond Candy’s shoulder and Candy knew, she simply knew, that it was Steele who had just stepped into the ambulance.

‘Is there a problem, Nurse? Only I’ve been waiting for quite some time.’ His low voice sounded just a touch ominous and Candy met Macey’s eyes for a brief moment.

‘No,’ Macey answered for Candy. ‘They were just about to bring me in.’

‘Good,’ Steele said. ‘Then I’ll come and see you shortly, Miss Anderson.’

As he headed back into the department the paramedics lowered the stretcher to the ground and Candy found out perhaps why it was that Steele was so sharply dressed. ‘At least he’s not twelve and wearing jeans,’ Macey muttered.

Candy smiled—yes, Steele’s appearance and authoritarian tone had appeased Macey.

They took Macey into cubicle seven, aligned the stretcher with the trolley, and Candy positioned the sliding board that would help to move the patient over easily. ‘We’ll get you onto the trolley, Miss Anderson.’

‘I can manage,’ the elderly lady snapped, ‘and it’s Macey.’

‘That actually means she likes you,’ her niece said, and gestured with her head for Candy to follow her outside.

‘I’ve got this,’ Matthew, a very patient paramedic, said, and Candy went outside to speak with Catherine.

‘It’s taken two days for her GP to persuade her to come in,’ Catherine said. ‘Honestly, I’m just so relieved she’s finally here. She’s got a temperature and she’s hardly eating or drinking anything. She doesn’t take her tablets or if she does she gets them all wrong …’

‘We’ll go through all of that.’ Candy did her best to reassure Macey’s niece.

‘She’s so cantankerous and rude,’ Catherine said, ‘that she puts everyone offside, but she’s such a lovely lady too. She’s always been on her own, she’s never had a boyfriend, let alone married, she’s so completely set in her ways and loathes getting undressed in front of anyone. You’re going to have a battle there …’

‘Let us take care of her,’ Candy said, ‘and please don’t worry about her saying something offensive. Believe me, we’ll have heard far worse.’

‘Thanks.’ Catherine gave a worried smile and they went back inside. The cubicle was pretty full, with Macey’s huge bag and walking frame, and Candy had a little tidy up. ‘Why don’t we first get you into a gown and then—’

‘Get me into a gown?’ Macey shouted loudly. ‘You haven’t even introduced yourself and you’re asking me to take my clothes off.’ Candy said nothing as Steele came into the cubicle. She had, in fact, introduced herself in the ambulance. ‘You’re not a nurse’s bootlace,’ Macey said to Candy just as Steele came in.

‘Hello, Miss Anderson,’ he said. ‘I didn’t introduce myself properly back there in the ambulance. I’m Steele, or Dr Steele, if you prefer to be formal.’

Candy smothered a little smile as he repeated a similar introduction to the one he had given her. He must have to say it fifty times a day.

He ran through a few questions with Macey as a very anxious Catherine hovered.

‘You had a heart attack three months ago?’ Steele checked. ‘And you were admitted here for a week.’

‘All they did was pump me with drugs,’ Macey huffed. ‘Where were you then?’

‘I believe I was in Newcastle,’ Steele said.

‘So how long have you worked here?’

‘Two days,’ Steele answered easily.

‘You’ll be gone tomorrow.’ Macey huffed. ‘You’re a locum.’

‘I am, though I happen to be a very good one,’ Steele said, completely unfazed. ‘And I’m here for six weeks, which gives us plenty of time to sort all this out.’

They went through her medical history. Apart from the heart attack it would seem that Macey was very well indeed. She had never smoked, never drunk, and at eighty still did all her own housework and cooking, with a little help from her nieces, Catherine and Linda. Macey had until a couple of days ago walked to the shops every day.

‘It’s quite a distance,’ Catherine said. ‘I offered to do her shopping weekly at the supermarket for her but Aunt Macey wouldn’t hear of it.’

‘I like to walk,’ Macey snapped.

‘It’s good that you do—exercise is good for you,’ Steele said. ‘Do you have stairs at home?’

‘Yes, and I manage them just fine,’ Macey retorted. ‘You won’t see me with bungalow legs!’

‘Right, Miss Anderson,’ Steele said. ‘I’m going to ask Candy to help you into a gown and do some obs and put an IV and draw some blood. Then I’ll come and examine you.’ He looked at two blue ice-cream containers that were filled with various bottles and blister packets of medication. ‘I’ll take these and look through them.’