Miracle Christmas: Dr Romano's Christmas Baby

‘Couple of hours.’ Gabe shrugged.

‘Why don’t you go and keep him company? We’ll be another fifteen minutes or so,’ Beth suggested.

Rilla’s pulse reverberated through her entire body, her heart banging against her ribs as if it was trying to escape her chest as she approached Bridie’s room. She was more nervous seeing him now than she had been the other morning at work with an audience of colleagues.

She drew level with the doorway to the isolation room and stopped short. Luca was stroking Bridie’s head and murmuring to her in his native tongue, calling her his little bush bambina. He was looking at her with such compassion it sucked Rilla’s breath away.

Was he thinking about their baby as he stroked Bridie’s downy wisps? As she was? Wondering how different it could have been had she managed to carry their baby to full term. As she was? Fantasising about dribbly smiles, early-morning cuddles and soft baby skin? As she was?

Why had they let things go so cold between them?

Bridie’s nurse spotted her in the doorway and told her to come in. Luca raised his head and she held her breath, unsure of what she would see in his eyes.

‘Hello, Rilla.’

Rilla saw the same wariness she knew was reflected in her gaze. Did he regret their impulsiveness too? ‘You should have woken me, Luca,’ Rilla chided, as she walked to the other side of her niece’s cot.

He was looking devastatingly casual in a polo shirt and jeans, and she wondered if they were the ones he’d been wearing last night. The ones she’d helped him out of.

Luca watched her approach, trying to gauge her state of mind. He noticed she’d showered and changed her clothes. Her hair was still wet and pulled back into a sleek ponytail. A sudden memory of him brushing her newly washed hair for her on their honeymoon reared up at him and he looked down at Bridie, unprepared for the mix of emotions it evoked.

‘You were exhausted,’ he dismissed.

She hadn’t been too exhausted to cross a line that had been decisively drawn seven years ago.

Rilla also averted her gaze to her niece. Bridie was awake and looking around, her breathing tube and the brown tape holding it secure marring her cherubic features. Her tiny fingers grasped Luca’s forefinger and Rilla was pleased for the distraction.

‘Hello, sweetie,’ Rilla crooned at her niece, because it was easier to talk to her than to face Luca.

After a few minutes of babbling to Bridie, aware of their pregnant silence, Rilla said, ‘Beth was saying she had a good night.’

‘Yes. They’re talking about extubating her tomorrow.’

They made awkward small talk for the next ten minutes, talking to the nurse and to Bridie to avoid having to talk to each other.

‘We’re back,’ Beth announced, entering the room holding Gabe’s hand.

Rilla envied her sister’s relationship. Gabe and Beth hadn’t been together that long either, but Bridie’s crisis had only strengthened their union. They were leaning on each other. Unlike them. First sign of a problem in their marriage and they’d fallen apart.

‘Why don’t you guys go and have lunch at the cafeteria?’ Beth suggested. ‘It’s a beautiful day and I bet you raced to the hospital without eating anything, Rilla.’

It was true—she’d showered, changed and then bolted over. And she was starving. She chanced a glance at Luca. He shrugged and raised an eyebrow at her and she nodded. There were things that had to be said. Next week they’d be working together again and they couldn’t work as an effective team, crucial to emergency medicine, with last night dangling between them.

Luca waited until they were seated at one of the shaded outside tables before he launched straight into the speech he’d been practising.

‘I’m sorry … about last night … It shouldn’t have happened,’ Luca said. ‘I take full responsibility. I should have shown more restraint.’ It was then he realised that he hadn’t even thought about contraception. Hell.

‘Don’t,’ Rilla said, holding up her hand and refusing to let him shoulder the blame. It was typical of Luca to want to protect her, but she was just as accountable. ‘I wanted it as much as you did.’

‘No.’ He shook his head vigorously. ‘You were tired. Your niece was ill. It was a … mistake.’

Rilla felt strangely miffed by his critical summation of their spontaneous passion. She knew he was right, that their relationship didn’t need the complication, but as far as mistakes went, Rilla had made a few in her life and none of them had ever made her feel quite that good.

She shrugged, trying to be nonchalant. Like she had head-banging sex against doors with men every day of the week. ‘People have sex with their exes all the time, Luca. I think it was probably inevitable. Now it’s out of our systems, we can get on with our lives. We’ve banished the lust demons, so to speak. Cleared the air.’

‘That was clearing the air?’ he asked incredulously. Seven years of denial had culminated in a hell of a climax and banished nothing. In fact, his libido, non-existent for years, had suddenly roared to life.

How were they supposed to put their past behind them, work together after that? Maybe he should have thought his impulse to apply for the position at the General through a little better. Maybe he should have ignored the urge and stayed in the UK. But the divorce papers arriving out of the blue after seven years of silence had thrown him, and he hadn’t questioned the whim to return.

Rilla blushed. OK, maybe that was simplifying it too much, considering her entire body still throbbed with his possession. Sitting opposite him now, his masculinity a potent aphrodisiac, she realised it had just whetted her appetite. Exacerbated the desire she’d kept a tight lid on for the last seven years.

‘I just think we should put last night in context. You said you came back for closure. I think we both got that last night. One last hurrah, so to speak. The important thing is we have to work together, Luca. I’ve worked hard to establish my career. I’m up for the NUM position and I can’t let anything derail my focus. Sign the papers, Luca. Let’s put an end to it so we can both move forward.’

Rilla paused, proud of her rock-solid delivery. Inside she was quaking but she knew it had sounded succinct and confident. They could analyse last night until the cows came home. It was what they did from now on that mattered.

‘You’ve changed,’ Luca murmured. She was decisive. Taking the lead. Confident. Not the Rilla who had been happy just being part of them.

Rilla shrugged. ‘I grew up, Luca. I had a miscarriage. We grew apart. You left.’

Luca winced at her ruthless but concise summation of their downward spiral.

‘Did you expect to come back and find me pining for you?’

Had he? Luca didn’t know. He would have been sorely disappointed if he had. She hadn’t even kept her wedding ring on. ‘I don’t know, Rilla.’

Rilla searched his face for a sign of his real motives. For something to make sense of his reappearance. She found nothing in his schooled features. His black eyes were unreadable, his face carefully neutral. So different from last night.

She’d seen that look too many times before. Even when she had told him to leave he had looked at her with that frustrating distance in his gaze. ‘Did you even think about me, Luca?’ she asked.

Every day. I picked up the phone to ring you every day for two years. ‘More than was good for my sanity.’

Rilla felt her heart stop in her chest before resuming at an erratic pace. She hadn’t expected to hear the wrenched admission.

‘And you?’ he asked.

‘You were my husband. I loved you. You were never far from my thoughts.’

Luca felt the husky timbre of her voice right down to his groin. ‘Am. Present tense. I am your husband.’

Rilla looked at him incredulously. Just because they’d had sex, it didn’t make them a couple again again. Too much time had passed. If it had only been two years or even five, she could have still held out hope. But his distance and his silence had gradually killed anything she’d ever felt for him.

‘No. Luca. You are my estranged husband. One signature and you’re my ex-husband. Let’s not kid ourselves that last night was any more than a unique situation fuelled by emotion and fatigue.’

‘And you think we can work together again with last night between us?’

They had to. She’d worked too long and too hard to jeopardise her chances at the top job now. ‘We’re not teenagers, Luca,’ she said, not bothering to disguise her annoyance. ‘With any luck I’m about to land the NUM position. Whether we like it or not, we’re going to have to get along. Do I think we can ever go back to the way we used to work together? No. But, then, we’re no longer lowly registrar and junior nurse. You’re the consultant and I’m pretty sure I’m going to be NUM. People will be looking to us to lead. I know we can treat each other with respect and collegial propriety. In fact, I expect it. Will that be a problem for you?’

Yes and no. Certainly he would show her the same respect he’d always shown her at work as an important and integral part of the team. Someone whose opinion he valued highly. But even now, sitting opposite her, despite her assertions they’d exorcised their lust demons, he knew he wanted her again. Would that get worse, seeing her every day?

‘No problem,’ Luca assured her.

Rilla expelled the breath she’d been holding when it had looked like he was about to argue. ‘Good.’ She swallowed the remnants of her coffee. ‘In that case I look forward to working with you again, Dr Romano.’

She offered her hand and was pleased when he encompassed it in a firm grip.

‘And you, Sister Winters.’

She ignored the mad flutter of the pulse at her wrist as his low voice stroked her skin and his hand lingered. She extracted hers determinedly. There was no space in her life to indulge in fluttering pulses.

Rilla returned to work on Monday, knowing that Bridie was out of PICU and probably going to be discharged from the kids’ ward tomorrow. The fact that Hailey worked there and would be looking out for their niece doubled Rilla’s confidence.

All she had to worry about now was the fact that it was Luca’s first day at the hospital. A ball of nervous energy sat in the pit of her stomach as she worried how their first day back at work together would pan out. She’d only caught the odd glance of him over the last few days as he’d popped in to see Bridie each day, and knowing that she would be seeing him every day was daunting to say the least.

She was also acutely aware that too much of the space in her head in the last few days had been taken up by their explosive joining. It had replayed over and over in her mind. She’d looked at it from every angle, analysed it, berated herself over it and dreamt about it at night in surround-sound, giant-plasma-screen detail.

And she still wasn’t sure what to make of it.

But she was sure of one thing. Their unexpected intimacy complicated her determination to keep their relationship strictly professional.

The first person she saw as she walked through the door for her late shift was Luca. He was sitting at the central desk and their gazes locked. There was a brief flare in his eyes, a reaction that she recognised as purely physical, before he blinked and his gaze became warily neutral.

‘Rilla.’ He nodded his head. ‘How are you?’

‘Good, thank you,’ she said, fixing a smile on her face as she calmly walked by.

A few hours later a young man walked through the sliding doors as Rilla swept past on her way to greet an arriving ambulance.

‘Are you OK?’ she asked, gesturing to the young man to take a seat.

Both hands were grasping his neck, one on either side just below his ears. His fingers were splayed wide, his thumbs stretching to meet beneath his chin. He was holding his head very still and a frown knitted his brows together.

‘It’ll probably sound really silly,’ he said.

Rilla ruefully wished she had a dollar for every time she’d heard that in the emergency department. But the young man was abnormally still, barely even opening his mouth widely enough to be understood, and she could see a hint of fear in his gaze. She smiled encouragingly. ‘Did you do something to your neck?’

‘I don’t recall doing anything but …’ He paused. ‘This sounds so dumb … my head feels like it’s going to fall off.’

Rilla smiled again while every cell in her body grew instantly alarmed. ‘OK, right. Well, first things first. We’re going to get a collar on you and get a doctor to see you.’

Immediately.

She smiled at him again. ‘What’s your name?’ she asked as she gestured to Emily, the ward clerk at the triage desk.

‘Damien.’

‘Hi, Damien. I’m Rilla.’

Emily approached. ‘Ems, can you find a nurse and tell them I need a cervical collar, please?’

Rilla hoped she sounded calm and professional because somewhere deep in her gut she knew that Damien had probably fractured his neck and was a walking time bomb.

She turned back to her patient. ‘We’ll get you into a cubicle. You’re going to need some X-rays.’

Damien started to haul himself out of the chair. ‘Just tell me where.’

Rilla placed an urgent stilling hand on Damien’s arm as her pulse leapt. ‘Collar first.’ She smiled calmly.

A junior nurse appeared with a cervical collar and Rilla utilised her to keep Damien’s neck motionless while she applied it. She held her breath until it was firmly in place.

‘Hell. That’s really uncomfortable.’

Rilla smiled. ‘Good, it’s on properly, then.’ She placed an arm underneath his elbow, indicating for him to come with her.

‘There’s something wrong with my neck, isn’t there?’ Damien asked, resisting her pull.

Rilla looked down into his anxious gaze. She doubted he was even twenty. But his eyes looked intelligent and she knew he didn’t want to be placated. ‘Yes. I think so.’

She saw the panic take hold then and placed her hand over his. ‘Let’s get the tests done and get you seen by the right people first. We have the very best,’ she assured him, smiling with an air of absolute confidence. ‘OK?’

She saw some of the dread recede. One thing Rilla knew for sure, here at the Brisbane General, Damien’s injury couldn’t be in better hands.

Rilla was helping Damien onto a bed when Luca entered the cubicle.

‘What have we got?’ he asked.

Rilla took a deep breath at the sudden jolt through her solar plexus. She hadn’t been prepared for him. Which was stupid. She’d known that consulting with Luca was bound to happen sooner or later. May as well get it out of the way early.

She listed Damien’s symptoms and her treatment to date, proud of her professional detachment. Luca nodded at each salient point but didn’t look at her and she was pleased to be spared the intensity of his black-velvet gaze.

‘What have you been doing to yourself?’ Luca asked. His tone was deliberately light, hiding the alarm at what he felt was almost certainly a potentially catastrophic injury. He glanced at Rilla, seeing her teeth sink betrayingly into her bottom lip, the way they always had when she was deeply concerned. She knew it too.

‘Just woke up with a bit of a sore neck this morning and it’s been getting worse all day.’ Damien shrugged. Or as much as he could with a collar that was applied so tightly it restricted shoulder movement as well.

‘What about last night?’ Luca probed. ‘Yesterday?’

‘Just some footy with my mates at a back-yard barbie last night. It was a bit of a late one. Didn’t get home till after four.’

‘Footy? Did you fall? Get tackled?’ Luca cut straight to the salient point.

Damien frowned. ‘Of course I did. No more than usual, though. You don’t feel anything after a few beers.’

Rilla felt sick. Had Damien been walking around with a fractured neck since last night? She glanced at Luca and could tell by the way his jaw clenched and unclenched that he was also very worried.

‘So you have pain in your neck?’ Luca asked.

‘Oh yeah.’

‘Any numbness, or tingling in your arms or legs?’ Luca persisted.

‘Nope,’ Damien replied.

‘Any difficulties swallowing, coughing or breathing?’

‘None,’ Damien said.

‘OK. Right.’ Luca nodded, relieved to see that there were no gross cord compression symptoms. ‘I’m sending you for an MRI.’ He took his stethoscope from around his neck. ‘Rilla, can you page the neurology team?’

Luca knew the moment she’d left and he felt the tension across his shoulders ease. He’d been acutely aware of her presence—even her lingering perfume interfered with his concentration.

‘Right, let’s get a full neuro assessment.’

‘Now you’re scaring me, Doc.’

Luca pulled up a stool, fairly certain that Damien’s life was about to change significantly. ‘I think you may have damaged your neck. I’m not sure of the severity yet. It may be nothing.’

Rilla watched Luca talking to their patient from the central work station through the partially open curtain as she waited for the neuro team to get back to her. She couldn’t hear what he was saying but she could hear the low rumble of his voice and noticed how he had placed a hand on Damien’s shoulder.

She watched as the frown between Damien’s eyes smoothed out and he actually smiled for the first time since walking through the doors. Luca’s bedside manner had always been second to none. She’d seen his quiet confidence, innate Latin charm and easy smile calm everyone from the most fractious child to the most frightened heart-attack patient. It had been one of the things that had attracted her most.

He’d always been a pleasure to watch in action and not even their complicated history could erase the fact. The phone rang and she answered it, relaying the details of Damien’s case to the neuro registrar.

Rilla re-entered the cubicle, efficiently flicking the curtain shut. ‘They’ll be here shortly,’ she said briskly.

‘Excellent,’ Luca said. He patted Damien’s shoulder. ‘Rilla will get your details and I’ll be back when the neurologist arrives.’

He turned to leave. ‘Well caught,’ he said in a low voice as he passed her on his way out.

Rilla turned back to Damien, smiling to herself. She couldn’t help it. Even after seven years, his praise still made her glow.

Just before her evening meal break Rilla was relieving an exhausted mother of her wheezy eighteen-month-old daughter so she could administer a ventolin nebuliser. The restless infant smelled like soap and sunshine and Rilla’s heart contracted as the little girl snuffled tiredly into her neck, the toddler’s hair brushing against her face.

She hugged the little one close. An overwhelming urge to have a baby of her own washed over her and she absently kissed the toddler’s head. How many babies would she and Luca have had by now?

As if by some extrasensory connection, Luca chose that moment to enter the cubicle and their gazes locked over the child’s head. Was he thinking the same thing? He looked tall and lean and sexy as hell, and her pulse leapt.

‘I thought you left at five.’ She blurted the first thing that came into her head in an effort to banish oestrogen-enriched fantasies.

Luca’s breath caught in his throat at the sight of Rilla rocking the fretful child, trying to balance it and hold the misting mask in place as she clucked soothingly.

‘I was just on my way out. The regs looked snowed under.’

Rilla nodded. It had been crazy for the last two hours.

Luca turned to the mother. ‘How’s she doing?’ He smiled, consulting the chart at the end of the trolley.

‘Better, I think. But still wheezy.’

Luca nodded as he placed his stethoscope in his ears and turned his attention to the child. The toddler had a chubby hand on Rilla’s breast, squishing into the buxom roundness beneath Rilla’s shirt, and its cheek against the hollow of her shoulder. She looked so maternal that Luca gripped the stethoscope hard, sucked into a past that never was.

‘Hey, there, sweetie,’ Luca crooned, and rubbed the little one’s back.

The child turned her head towards his voice and Luca smiled at her. ‘It’s OK, it won’t take long,’ he said softly as he lifted her top so he could place the stethoscope against her chest.

The little girl settled a little, seemingly fascinated by Luca, and Rilla wasn’t surprised. She was finding him pretty fascinating herself. It was hard to believe that after seven years’ absence she could look her fill whenever she wanted. Even though it was a rather dangerous indulgence, considering their most recent episode.

She watched him as he fixed his gaze on the child’s back and concentrated on the lung sounds. She waited for him to finish and swapped the child to her other hip so he could listen to the front.

‘The wheezing is settling,’ Luca said, addressing the anxious mother. ‘We’ll see how it is after a few more nebs.’

The mother smiled her gratitude as her daughter drifted off to sleep in Rilla’s arms and then excused herself, using the moment to escape for a much-needed loo break.

Luca and Rilla were left alone in the cubicle, a drowsy child and all the missed opportunities it represented between them. Rilla rubbed her chin absently along the child’s head, excruciatingly aware of the intimate undercurrent.

Luca’s gaze followed the sweep of her hair tied back in a ponytail, the soft skin of her neck temptingly vulnerable. At another time he might have drawn her close and pressed his lips to it. But that time was long gone.

He roused himself from the clutches of the past, clearing his throat. ‘I actually came to tell you that Damien’s MRI showed he has a fractured C1. It’s stable but he’s going to Theatre to have a Halo fitted. He’ll spend a couple of days on the spinal unit then he should be able to be managed as an outpatient until it’s healed.’

Rilla blinked, dragging herself out of the mire of past emotions. It was good news for Damien and she was pleased to know he’d presented in time. Walking around with an undiagnosed neck fracture had disaster written all over it.

‘Thank you for letting me know,’ she said quietly.

Luca nodded. ‘No problem.’

Rilla continued to rock the toddler as the neb mask spluttered the last of the medication, hyper-aware of Luca standing watching her.

‘OK, then. I guess I’ll see you tomorrow,’ Luca said, edging towards the curtain. He flicked it open and halted, turning back to face her. ‘It’s been great working with you today. I’ve missed it.’

Rilla looked at him, startled by his admission. It had been just like old times but this little tête-à-tête was far from collegial. There was a most definite undercurrent. And that just wouldn’t do. ‘Go home, Luca. You’ve been here for twelve hours.’

Her low voice swirled around him and he stared at the flare of heat in her amber gaze for a long moment. She was right. He’d been there way too long. ‘Goodnight.’

Rilla watched the empty space where he’d been for a long moment, annoyed at the loud thump of her heart.

Damn him for coming back.

CHAPTER FIVE

THE next month flew by. Rilla was up to her elbows in collating two lots of research she’d been involved with, staying back most nights and coming in on her days off, shut away in Julia’s office, working on the computer. If she did get the NUM position, she wanted to be on top of everything.

Her nervousness grew as each day passed. Ever since the miscarriage and Luca pulling away from her, she’d thrown herself into work, dedicated her life to her career, and the NUM position had been firmly in her sights.

The odds were in her favour too. She’d acted in the position numerous times, covering for Julia’s annual leave, and had been second-in-charge for five years. She knew the job, the staff and the hospital back to front. But that didn’t mean that a better-qualified outside applicant couldn’t still snatch it from her. She knew they’d interviewed six people for the position over a period of a month.