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CHAPTER SIX

DOMINIC KNEW.

Or, at least, he was starting to!

He was trying very hard not to believe she might be pregnant by him, and was very determined that history would not repeat itself, and he would not be made a fool of twice.

The press conference went well. Dominic said that it had been a multifaceted effort. Victoria got in her little plug about the potential closure by pointing out that the most urgent cases had needed the proximity of Paddington’s to have the best chance for a positive outcome and then they all went their separate ways.

The department was terribly busy and there was soot everywhere and the smell of smoke in the air. As well as injured children, there were staff and firefighters too but, by evening, the department was clearing and they were taken off bypass, which they had been placed on so that they could deal with the sudden influx of patients.

Dominic had been working since seven that morning, and after twelve eventful hours he should perhaps be heading for home.

Instead Dominic showered and changed into black jeans and a shirt and walked over to the Frog and Peach pub where the Save Paddington’s meeting was being held tonight.

On arriving, he soon found out that the meeting had been abandoned due to the Westbourne Grove crisis and would be held in a couple of days in a lecture theatre at the hospital.

Tonight, there was too much energy for sensible conversation.

The major incident meant that the staff all needed to unwind and debrief and so it was a very noisy pub that he found himself in.

There was Victoria.

She was wearing the jeans and rust-coloured top that he had seen her wearing at the Imaging Department, and he saw she was chatting with Rosie, one of the paediatric nurses.

And... Victoria was drinking soda water.

Not that that meant anything.

He had no idea if Victoria would normally be having a drink.

The fact was, he knew nothing about her except what had taken place that night.

‘Hi, Dominic, how was your holiday?’ Rosie asked as he came over.

‘Fine,’ Dominic said.

‘Where did you go?’

‘Scotland.’

‘Visiting family?’ Rosie asked.

Dominic gave a small nod. It was easier to do that than admit that while he had hoped to go and visit his family and let bygones be bygones, he hadn’t felt ready.

Dominic didn’t even want to attempt another relationship until he had dealt with the rather large items of baggage left over from the previous one. But the thought of asking Victoria out had spurred him on at least to try and so he had headed for home, but in the end he hadn’t been able to see it through.

It wasn’t that he was being stubborn, more that he was honest and could not simply walk in as if nothing had happened until he had dealt with it in his head.

Dominic wanted a real relationship with his brother and nephew—and yes, Lorna too—and he would not be pushed, for the sake of family peace, into a false one.

So, while he had hoped to visit family and the new baby, the hurt was still there. So he had stayed in a hotel and taken some time to drive around the land that he loved, and in that time he had done a whole lot of thinking.

A lot of his thinking had been about her.

Victoria.

And now she met his eyes.

‘We decided not to hold the meeting tonight,’ she started to explain. ‘We’re going to—’

‘I already heard,’ Dominic said, and when Rosie drifted off to join another conversation, it was just them.

‘Do you want to get something to eat?’ he offered.

‘I’ve already had something. Do you?’

‘No.’

No, he did not want to try and find them a table in a crowded pub. Already Robyn was making her way over, no doubt to discuss how the interviews with the press had gone.

‘Come on,’ Dominic said to Victoria, because there was no chance of having an uninterrupted conversation here in the pub.

They stepped out into the street but that wasn’t the ideal location either.

‘We could go to mine,’ Victoria offered, but Dominic shook his head.

Given what had happened with Lorna he did not want to get closer to Victoria in the least. He did not want to see where she lived and sit and have a cosy chat. ‘There’s no need for that,’ Dominic said. ‘We can say everything we need to here.’

Victoria frowned. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Quite sure.’

So she went ahead and told him in her usual succinct way. ‘I’m eight weeks pregnant.’

And what had taken place between them was six weeks ago, but she guessed, given his qualifications, that she didn’t have to tell him that they added on two weeks.

Or maybe she did, because he was giving her a somewhat quizzical look, and so she clarified things in order that there could be no doubt.

‘It’s yours.’

Dominic said nothing.

What was there to say?

He hadn’t even thought to have that discussion with Lorna.

Dominic had trusted his girlfriend completely and look how that had turned out.

How the hell could he even come close to believing someone with whom he’d had sex with on impulse, who carried condoms and who, by her own revelation that night, had just finished with someone else.

No, he would not be fooled twice.

‘I’ve got to reschedule my ultrasound,’ Victoria said. ‘I wasn’t sure if you might want to be present.’

He gave a snort as he recalled the last time he’d been at an ultrasound and all that had transpired then—listening as the doctor gave the dates and asking her to repeat them, then trying to catch Lorna’s eyes as she turned away.

And Victoria saw the look he gave and interpreted it correctly. ‘I don’t need you to hold my hand, Dominic. I meant, I accept it might be hard to believe it is yours but the ultrasound will confirm the dates for you.’

‘No, it won’t—you say that you’re eight weeks pregnant. Well, that means they can only give parameters between five to seven days...’

‘Thanks for that.’ Victoria sneered at the implication.

‘We used protection,’ Dominic pointed out.

‘I’m not about to try and convince you,’ Victoria said. ‘I know it’s yours but I accept that you might not believe that it is,’ she said. ‘Whatever way, I felt that you had a right to know and now you do.’

Dominic just stood there, for once unsure what to say. She was as factual and direct as always, but he had been let down so badly before that there was no way he would be letting down his guard again.

He would be keeping his distance until he was certain.

‘When the baby is born, arrange for a DNA and, if it’s confirmed as mine, then we’ll speak about things.’

‘That’s it?’ Victoria checked.

‘What else do you want?’

‘With that attitude I don’t want anything from you,’ Victoria said, and walked off.

He watched her hitch up her bag and cross the street, and she was about to disappear into the underground when Dominic found himself running after her.

‘Wait!’ he called out.

She didn’t.

Victoria stepped onto one of the escalators but she didn’t stand and let it carry her down. Instead she walked quickly but knew Dominic was fast and so he caught up with her at the bottom.

‘Victoria, wait.’

‘No.’ It was just as busy here as it had been in the pub and so it was a hopeless place for conversation and, given his attitude, she would not be asking him again to come back to her flat. ‘I’m tired, Dominic. It’s been a helluva long day and right now I just want to get home and go to bed.’

He could see that she was tired and he thought of the day she had had. And he recalled the anger he had felt when she’d raced forward to grab that child.

No, not anger.

It had been fear that he had felt.

He moved her aside and she stood straight rather than lean against the wall; he put up an arm that buffeted them from the people that passed.

‘Have you told work?’ Dominic asked, already guessing the answer.

‘Not yet,’ Victoria said. ‘My crewmate knows.’

‘Work needs to know.’ He thought of her today and the hell of that fire, and not just that—it was a dangerous job indeed. ‘Victoria!’

‘I’ll make that choice,’ Victoria said.

It wasn’t really a choice; as soon as she knew she was pregnant she should tell them, but Victoria was still unable to get her head around things and had been putting it off.

‘Look...’ Dominic started, but she shook her head and made to leave.

‘I’m not discussing this here. You were the one who chose to be told out on the street.’

He had been.

But to stop her from dashing off he told her some of his truth.

‘Do you know how I know about date parameters?’

‘Well, you’re a doctor...’

‘I know about them,’ Dominic interrupted, ‘because I’d been reading up on things in the baby books. A few months ago I sat in on an ultrasound with my ex and found out that the baby we were expecting couldn’t possibly be mine, because I was in India at the time it was conceived. That’s why I moved down to London.’

She looked at him, right at him, but instead of a sympathetic response Victoria told Dominic a truth. ‘I’m not your ex.’

And then she ducked under his arm and was gone.

CHAPTER SEVEN

NO, SHE CERTAINLY wasn’t his ex.

Two days later Dominic sat in the back of the lecture theatre and watched as a very efficient Victoria took to the stage.

She was wearing a grey linen dress with flat pumps and her hair was tied in a loose ponytail. She was petite, but her presence was commanding and despite stragglers arriving in the lecture theatre she started the meeting on time.

‘Let’s get started,’ Victoria said. ‘It’s so good to see such an amazing turnout.’

She paused as someone’s phone rang out and, Dominic noted, Victoria was far from shy—instead of putting the person at ease, she glared.

‘Can everyone please silence their phones?’

‘It might be kind of important, Victoria,’ someone called out, and Dominic smiled at the smart response, given the people who were in the room.

‘Then put it on vibrate,’ Victoria said. ‘We’ve got a lot to get through and if we have pagers and phones going off every two minutes we shan’t get very far.’

There was a brief pause as a lot of people turned their phones onto silent.

Dominic’s was already off.

He had started carrying it at work, though he kept it on silent. He still did not want his personal life intruding. But now, if his parents called, which they quite often did, he would let it go to message, then speak to them during a lull in his day rather than at the end of his shift.

There still wasn’t much to talk about. They opted to discuss the weather rather than face the unpalatable topic as to what their youngest son had done.

And, Dominic knew, he had taken out his malaise and mistrust on Victoria.

That was the real reason he was here tonight; he hoped to speak with her afterwards.

For now though, he listened to what she had to say.

Victoria kicked off the meeting. ‘The fire has really helped showcase to people how vital an institution the hospital is.’

Robyn’s hunch had proven right, and now Victoria and Dominic were the face of the Save Paddington’s campaign.

The image of them came up on the screen behind Victoria and she tried not to glance over at Dominic.

He hadn’t been at the other meetings, though she now knew he had been on leave. But even if she was glad of the big show tonight and for any support that could be mustered, there was one exception—Victoria rather wished he would stay away, for Dominic was a distraction that she did not need.

Then again, that’s what he had done since their night together—distracted her from her life.

Even before that, she had always found herself looking out for him whenever she and Glen brought a patient into the Castle.

‘The travel time is a vital point we should make,’ said Matthew McGrory, a burns specialist. He had been working around the clock with the patients from the school fire and looked as if he had barely slept in days. ‘Due to the sheer volume of casualties there were some patients that were taken to Riverside, but the most severely injured children came here and were treated quickly. That first hour is vital and a lot of that time would have been lost had Paddington’s not been here.’

‘Indeed.’ Victoria was up-front and well versed. ‘And we do need to push travel time and the difference it will make to locals. However, patients come from far and wide for treatment at Paddington’s. We need to promote both aspects and we need to start working out how best to do that.’

It was a call to arms meeting.

‘The press is onside at the moment,’ Robyn said, ‘but we need to keep up that momentum.’

Rebecca, a cardiothoracic surgeon who headed the transplant team, spoke about the real issue with doctors leaving and the problems the cardiology department were facing. ‘We’re only able to recruit on very short-term contracts. Paddington’s has always attracted world-class doctors and we can’t let that change. The campaign needs to showcase the hospital in its best light.’

Ideas were building and they were starting to run with them; it was decided that the first major event to be held would be a fundraising ball.

The meeting ran for a couple of hours and Dominic watched and listened.

He could only admire Victoria.

From an initial very scattered effort, the drive to save PCH was now starting to come together.

Certainly, with the fire and its aftermath still prominent in the news, the public were starting to understand the real implications of Paddington’s closing.

‘Right,’ Victoria said. ‘I think that gives us enough to be going on with for now. Anyone who wants to carry on the discussion can—I think most of us who are not working will be heading over to the Frog and Peach.’

Phones went back on and people started heading out. Dominic made his way over to the stage.

‘Well done,’ he told her.

Victoria simply ignored him and packed up her computer and things in silence.

She had been on days off since the fire and hadn’t seen him since the night she had told him about the baby. She certainly didn’t want to see him now.

There was no getting out of it though. Dominic waited till everyone was gone and, when finally they were alone, she turned to face him and hear what he had to say.

‘I want to apologise for my reaction the other night,’ Dominic said.

She understood it though.

Victoria had sat bristling on the Tube but, even as she had let herself into her flat, she had been able to see where he was coming from. Dominic, especially given what he had been through with his ex, had every right to be suspicious as to whether or not the baby was his, Victoria had decided.

And she was right to hold back, but for reasons of her own that she could not think about right now.

‘Dominic,’ Victoria said. ‘I’m pregnant from our one-night stand. Now, I accept, given what happened between us, you might assume that I drop my knickers like that...’ She snapped her fingers. ‘But actually I don’t. I broke up with someone before Christmas and since then...’

‘I don’t need your history. Victoria, I’m thirty-eight. I’m sure we’re both going to have had our share of past relationships.’

And that was perhaps the moment she fully realised just how very different they were.

Victoria was twenty-nine and as for relationships...

She hadn’t really had any of note.

Oh, there had been a couple of boyfriends who had lasted a few months, but she had never lived with anyone and, in truth, had never really been in love.

‘Well, you shouldn’t be so sure,’ Victoria responded. ‘I don’t do very well with relationships and so I tend to steer clear of them. As I said, I broke up with someone just before Christmas, and apart from a couple of first dates that went nowhere, there hasn’t been anyone since then.’ No wonder the condom hadn’t been up to much, Victoria thought; it had been in her purse for months. ‘This year, apart from one torrid tryst in a turret, there’s been no one.’ And she smiled at her little tongue twister. ‘I believe you were the said torrid tryst.’

‘Indeed I was.’

‘And I’m sorry your ex cheated and that you’re not over her, but that’s your issue and—’

‘It’s not that,’ Dominic interrupted.

She raised her eyebrows and Dominic had to concede a smile, because yes, it probably sounded to her as if he wasn’t over his ex. He guessed Victoria thought that he had run away to England because of a break-up, so knew he had to explain things a bit better than that. ‘The person that Lorna was sleeping with was my brother.’

‘Oh,’ Victoria said.

And he waited for her to avert her eyes or to do what everyone else did and move to quickly change the subject, but instead she gave a small grimace.

‘Well, that’s awkward!’

And he smiled a little and admitted, ‘Indeed it is.’

‘Are you and your brother close?’ Victoria asked.