Nurse, Nanny...Bride!

How weird to be offered a handshake. Except when Alice accepted her hand wasn’t shaken. Andrew took it in both of his and clasped it firmly.

‘There are no words,’ he said softly, ‘that could tell you how grateful I am.’

He didn’t need words. Alice could feel it. Like a miniature version of the circle his arms had created earlier. And she could feel her eyes widening with the wonder of it. The power.

She couldn’t hold his gaze because it was too much. The longing that stirred deep within her was so sharp it was unbearable. She had to break the contact. To look away and pull her hand free.

Alison Roberts lives in Christchurch, New Zealand. She began her working career as a primary school teacher, but now juggles available working hours between writing and active duty as an ambulance officer. Throwing in a large dose of parenting, housework, gardening and petminding keeps life busy, and teenage daughter Becky is responsible for an increasing number of days spent on equestrian pursuits. Finding time for everything can be a challenge, but the rewards make the effort more than worthwhile.

Recent titles by the same author:

HER BABY OUT OF THE BLUE

HOT-SHOT SURGEON, CINDERELLA BRIDE

THE ITALIAN SURGEON’S CHRISTMAS MIRACLE

MARRYING THE MILLIONAIRE DOCTOR*

*Crocodile Creek

CHAPTER ONE

SO THIS was what it felt like to faint.

As if a plug had been pulled out of your brain and all the blood was disappearing in a rush to leave a curious buzzing sensation in its wake.

Alice tried to move her feet but they were lead weights. Just as well she could still move her arm. Catching hold of the metal rail along the side of one of the few empty beds in this emergency department was her best chance of remaining upright.

‘Are you okay, Ally?’ The voice of the nurse lowering the rail on the other side of the bed seemed to be coming from a very long way away. ‘You’ve gone as white as a sheet.’

‘I…’ Alice was gripping the rail as if her life depended on it. The black spots interfering with her vision were starting to fade. Any second now and she would be able to take a second look. She must have been mistaken, surely? It couldn’t possibly really be Andrew Barrett standing on the other side of this department. He was a world away. In London. A world she’d been only too happy to leave behind in the end.

‘Sit!’ Strong hands were guiding Alice towards the chair beside the bed. The one the patient’s relatives usually sat on. ‘Sit down and put your head between your knees.’

Alice resisted the pressure. ‘I’m okay, Jo.’

She was. The buzzing was gone. Blood was reaching her brain again almost as fast as it had left, thanks to the increase in her heart rate. ‘I’m just a bit…’

Shocked. Slapped by a reminder of a past she had worked very hard to escape from. It probably wasn’t even him. Just someone who looked a bit like him from the side. Tall and well built with slightly scruffy dark blond hair and the weathered skin of a man who loved to be outdoors. A figure familiar enough to push a lot of old buttons.

Bright ones like desire.

Much darker ones such as envy.

‘Exhausted?’ Jo supplied. ‘I’m not surprised. What time did you get back home last night?’

‘About eleven, I guess.’

‘And how long was the drive?’

‘More than ten hours. Mostly thanks to the radiator boiling with my old truck trying to pull a horse float over the pass.’

‘Oh, no! You poor thing. I’ll bet it took an hour or more to offload Ben and get things sorted when you got home, too. You probably haven’t had more than a few hours’ sleep and that’s on top of a week of having to sort your gran’s property and everything.’ Jo’s arm came around Alice in a swift hug. ‘Have you even had any breakfast, hon?’

‘No.’ In fact, it was hard to remember when she’d last had a proper meal. No wonder she’d nearly fainted. Or was imagining things. The swirl of disturbing emotions was still there. Making her stomach feel a shade queasy.

‘Go into the staff room right now and make yourself some toast. And hot chocolate. I’ll tidy up in here.’

Again, Alice shook her head. The route to the staff room would mean having to brush past the two men who were peering at one of the wall-mounted X-ray screens on that side of the department. And maybe she hadn’t been imagining things. Maybe one of those men was someone she hadn’t expected and really didn’t want to see. Ever again. It would be too hard going down that particular road again. Negotiating painfully bumpy terrain that led absolutely nowhere.

‘I’m fine now, really.’ Alice smiled. She was. She could move again. She lowered the rail on the bed and tugged at the sheet that needed changing. ‘And it was worth all the hassle. I couldn’t have left Ben for more than a week when there was nobody to keep an eye on him and the beach rides more than made up for the stress of having to clean out Gran’s place. The last tenants made a hell of a mess. It’s no wonder it barely sold for enough to cover the mortgage.’

‘At least it’s settled.’ Jo was moving back to the other side of the bed as Alice rolled up the sheet and stuffed it into the linen bag. ‘Having to pay that on top of your rent for the last year’s been a killer, hasn’t it?’

Alice nodded. There was nothing she could say. It had just been one of those things. It had to be done so she’d done it. The same way she had dealt with all the hard stuff that life had a habit of dumping her in. Head on. Standing tall. Fainting was definitely not an option. Alice took a deep breath and deliberately shifted her gaze. She was ready to get her bearings.

‘Who is that?’ she asked calmly. ‘Talking to Peter?’

Jo glanced over her shoulder. When she turned back to Alice, her eyebrows were a little higher and a smile tugged at one corner of her mouth. ‘Andy Barrett. New consultant. Cute, huh?’

Alice couldn’t say anything. Hopefully Jo wouldn’t interpret her stare as anything more than curiosity.

‘He’s English. Started work here the day after you left last week. We were all surprised. Turns out that Dave had health issues he didn’t want anyone to know about and finding his replacement had been kept well under wraps. Apparently we really scored getting this Dr Barrett. He’s been the head honcho at some big London hospital for years. Can’t remember which one. Hammersmith, maybe.’

Alice couldn’t trust herself to open her mouth. If she did she might tell Jo that it hadn’t been Hammersmith. It had been the same hospital she had worked in herself for over a year.

Until she’d been as good as fired.

By one Dr Andrew Barrett.

Jo didn’t know any of that story. No one here did and that was exactly the way Alice wanted it to be. No way was she getting pulled back anywhere near that black period of humiliation again. Not now. Apart from the death of her grandmother a year ago and the ten days leave she had just taken to sort out the eventual sale of the isolated cottage the only remaining member of her family had lived in, Alice’s life was finally on track again.

She was still staring at the profile of the man who presented a new and very unwelcome threat. Both professional and personal.

Why had he come all the way to the opposite side of the earth and picked the one place that was hers? It wasn’t as if New Zealand was that small. He could have picked one of the larger cities in the north island. Maybe they didn’t have as many ski fields or mountains to climb but they had plenty of water. He could have learned to sail. Or surf!

Maybe Pam would know why. Contact with the only friend she had kept from her time in London was well overdue and if what she was seeking was the kind of gossip she deliberately avoided, so be it. Knowledge was power and Alice certainly needed a boost.

Just making the decision to email Pam gave Alice the illusion of regaining some control. About to drag her gaze away from the new member of staff, she only just caught the movement as he raised his left hand to indicate something of interest on the image.

Unaware of the frown on her face, she turned to help Jo smooth and tuck fresh linen onto the bed. The last time she had seen Andy Barrett he had been wearing a wedding ring. A tight band of gold that had successfully suffocated any stupid fantasies she might have nurtured.

He wasn’t wearing it now.

The case in Resus 1 was a trauma. A thirty-five-year-old woman who was well known to emergency department staff: one of their ‘frequent flyers’. Her boyfriend had gang affiliations and was only too ready to use his fists and his feet when something displeased him, but Janine had steadfastly refused to lay any complaints against him on earlier visits. Maybe this time would be different, the triage nurse told the consultant. It was the worst punishment they’d ever seen her receive.

Janine lay, oddly quiet, on the bed, her face now so swollen it was obviously painful for her to speak.

‘No!’ she managed in response to Andrew’s careful suggestion. ‘No police. I told you. I fell down the stairs.’

Yeah…right. Stairs that had knuckles and heavy boots. The lacerations on her eyebrow and upper lip needed extensive suturing. A cheekbone was probably fractured and Andrew didn’t like the ugly purple bruises already appearing on her ribs as a nurse cut away her clothing.

‘Can you take a deep breath for me?’ Andrew was using both hands to examine her ribs as gently as he could.

‘Ahhh!’ It was the first indication Janine had given of her level of pain.

‘Pretty sore, isn’t it?’ Her breathing was adequate but unsurprisingly shallow. ‘What score would you give it on a scale of one to ten, Janine? Ten being the worst.’

‘I’m all right.’ Janine sounded as if she was holding her breath now. She had her eyes closed and beads of perspiration mingled with the blood on her forehead. She was a long way from being all right.

‘Anything else hurting that much?’

A tear escaped puffy eyelids. ‘My…arm, I guess.’

The sleeve of a ragged jersey was being peeled away and the deformity of Janine’s wrist and lower arm was obvious. Another fracture. Almost open. Andrew could see the bone just under the skin. Checking limb baselines like movement and sensation and perfusion seemed inadvisable until the fracture was secured. Even trying to wriggle her fingers might be enough to break the skin and risk infection. He turned to the nurse and lowered his voice.

‘She didn’t come in by ambulance, did she?’

Jo shook her head. ‘Private car. She was left outside Reception to make her own way inside.’

Andrew’s mouth tightened as he shook his head in disgust. He had to bury the anger that might have made him storm out of here if the bastard was hanging around. He had to rid his head of the ugly words he would like to have said to the kind of man who could treat a woman like this.

And, most of all, he had to dismiss the memory of what it felt like to be suspected of being that kind of man. ‘Let’s get an IV line in and a splint on this arm,’ he ordered crisply. ‘We’ll get some pain relief on board and then do a thorough secondary survey before we start the X-rays.’

Another nurse entered the resuscitation area as Andrew slipped a tourniquet around Janine’s arm and tightened it. ‘I’m going to put a small needle in your hand,’ he warned his patient. ‘Then we can give you something for the pain. Okay?’

Janine nodded. The movement made her wince. In his peripheral vision, as he anchored a vein and slipped a cannula into place, Andrew could see the new nurse sliding a well padded cardboard splint under Janine’s broken arm and then starting to secure it. Her movements were sure and careful enough not to cause further damage or pain.

He taped the cannula and looked up properly this time, intending to let the nurse know that she’d done a good job. It was just as well he hadn’t done this a few seconds ago. He might have missed the vein completely.

Alice Palmer?

He’d known she came from New Zealand. Why had it not even occurred to him that she might be working in a hospital here again? Because the odds of it being the same one he’d been offered a job in by an old acquaintance were so small? Or was it because he’d been so determined to put any thoughts of her and the period of his life she’d been a part of completely behind him?

How ironic that he’d come this far to get away from it all. To start again and here it was, staring him in the face. Right beside a case that graphically represented most of what he’d been trying to escape.

He stared back.

How much did Alice know? Not much, presumably, because she’d lost her job before it had started. Unfair dismissal, as it had turned out. And he’d been responsible. He had had every intention of telling her, but when he’d gone to the address the woman in Personnel had given, he’d found an empty house with a ‘For Sale’ sign outside that had a cheerful ‘Sold’ sticker planted in the centre. It had been six months after the event, in any case, and someone in Emergency had suggested that Alice had left the country.

He couldn’t tell her now. It was ancient history and here she was, working in a senior position so it hadn’t affected her career. And if he did tell her, she’d want to know how he knew and that was what had had to be left behind.

For Emmy’s sake.

He held her gaze and kept his tone carefully neutral as his brain worked overtime, tossing up whether to acknowledge the fact that they knew each other.

‘I’d like some morphine drawn up, please,’ he said.

No. He couldn’t acknowledge her. That would bring a flurry of interest from others. Questions he didn’t want to hear, let alone answer. His next words emerged before he’d had a chance to even think them through. A form of attack as a defensive shield.

‘If you have keys to the drug cabinet, that is.’

Heat scorched Alice’s cheeks.

She dragged her eyes away from his face. An olderlooking face. Thinner and far more distant. Had he changed so much from the man she remembered or was this coolness due to a determination to hide recognition? So this was how it was going to be. They were not going to acknowledge having worked together, let alone knowing what they did know about each other.

A warning shot had been fired. If she said anything about the rumours she’d been hearing before she left London, he would warn her superiors that allowing her access to restricted drugs might be inadvisable.

The unfairness of it added a new element to the emotional turmoil Alice was dealing with. Despite the traitorous reaction of her body earlier, she knew she wasn’t in love with the man any more. She’d got over that a very long time ago. About when she’d been standing in front of his desk and he’d said he couldn’t trust her enough to let her keep the job she loved.

She’d tried to hate him for that but hadn’t succeeded. Her heart had been incapable of flipping the coin to embrace the dark side of love. Especially when her head, coupled with an innate sense of fairness, had forced her to acknowledge that he’d only been doing what he had to do as head of department. Quite generously, really, when he’d offered her the opportunity to resign instead of launching an official investigation and a paper trail that would have haunted the rest of her working life.

What was really unfair was that she’d never believed the rumours about him. Even now, with the dark emotions sparked by seeing the poor battered woman they were treating at the moment and the cool distance he had placed between himself and an old colleague, she knew he was as incapable of hurting someone deliberately as she was of stealing and taking drugs. If Andrew had been interested enough to actually get to know her properly, he would have had—would still have—the same kind of faith in her.

Clearly, he didn’t. The implication beneath his request for morphine had been a deliberate reminder of the humiliating rumours she’d been unable to disprove. That he hadn’t trusted her. That he’d never really seen who she was. That hurt.

Quite apart from being an intimately personal slight, mud had a habit of sticking. Enough to ruin lives. Alice actually felt sick to her stomach as she pulled an ampoule of morphine from the cabinet and signed the register. She could feel Andrew watching her.

Jo did the drug check with her. The name of the drug. The dose. The expiry date. She watched as Alice snapped the top of the ampoule and slid a needle in to draw it up. Try as she might, Alice couldn’t disguise the subtle trembling of her hands.

‘You still need toast,’ Jo whispered.

Alice needed something a lot more than food. She needed to be a long way away from their new consultant. How could she possibly work with him when he was watching every move she made? Knowing that, despite the best of intentions and for very different reasons, she would have to fight the desire to watch every move he made? Looking for a reminder of the man she remembered. Hoping not to find one, possibly, so she could decide it had been a lucky escape and move on, once and for all.

She could switch departments, she thought wildly. Go into Cardiology. Or Paediatrics. Or Theatre. No. This was where she loved to work. Where she got a taste of everything and the adrenaline rush of helping to deal with major, life-threatening situations. This department was a big part of why her life was on track again.

She drew up the saline to dilute the morphine. She taped the ampoule to the barrel of the syringe to identify its contents and then she walked back to the bed to hand it to Andrew.

Watching Janine relax as the effect of the narcotic took the edge off her pain had a curiously similar effect on Alice. She eyed the bruised and swollen face of the woman again. The marks of brutality on the woman’s ribs and the misshapen arm now resting in a splint. The thought of someone enduring a beating like this was horrific. Sickening. Alice raised her gaze, knowing that her reaction would be evident in her eyes.

Deliberately capturing the gaze of Andrew Barrett before that reaction dimmed.

Maybe she hadn’t believed any of it but allowing Andrew to think she might have was possibly the only defence she had.

They both had something they didn’t want their colleagues to know. Things they didn’t want to lose. Alice was more vulnerable. She had something she didn’t want Andrew to know, as well. It was good that he’d chosen not to acknowledge her. Distance was safe and, if it stopped being safe, then she was prepared to fight, if that was what it would take to protect herself.

Andrew’s gaze was steady. So was he, it told her.

For the moment at least, this appeared to be a standoff.

This was a disaster.

Alice clearly knew a lot more than he would have expected. Was she still in touch with old friends in London? People who would be only too happy to gossip about a police investigation involving a consultant emergency physician? That she knew too much was as unfortunate as knowing he was perpetuating a lie by letting her think he still believed the worst of her. But what else could he do?

He’d come this far and had found what appeared to be the perfect place for himself and Emmy. They’d only been here for a little over a week but he’d never seen his daughter so happy. He knew he’d made the right decision despite how hard leaving had been. Running away from it all had gone against the grain so hard it had been painful. An admission of defeat that some would probably interpret as guilt, but he’d done it for his daughter. He wasn’t going to let his little girl grow up anywhere within reach of a tainted past.

He couldn’t keep running. The world of medicine was surprisingly small and, no matter where you went, someone always knew someone else. Look at the way Dave had contacted him about the possibility of this position when they hadn’t seen each other since a short stint in an American hospital together ten years ago.

Andrew was between a rock and a hard place, here. Damned by his conscience whichever way he turned. The unwanted distraction filled his mind as he waited for Janine’s X-ray views to appear on the screen in front of him. Should he follow his first instinct and simply talk privately to Alice? Tell the truth and then apologize? Lay his cards on the table and ask for her help?

Why would she want to do that? She’d not only lost her job. When he’d heard that she’d left the country, he’d also heard that the sale of her house had been forced by the bank. That she’d lost everything. He could have talked to her then. Tried to make amends, even, but nobody had seemed to know where she’d gone. And then the real trouble had started and he’d forgotten everything other than trying to survive. To keep Emmy safe.

What could he say now? An excuse that he couldn’t have simply taken her word for her innocence and an apology for any inconvenience caused was hardly going to clear the air. It might actually make her jump at the chance for revenge.

The notion was jarring. It didn’t fit with the Alice Palmer he remembered from five years ago. The attractive, competent nurse working in his emergency department. A young woman doing her O. E. who’d made friends with his fiancée. Who’d come to their wedding, in fact. She’d been good at her job. Caring. The evidence that she’d been stealing morphine and other restricted drugs had been shocking. Unbelievable, really, but you never knew with women. Look at how things with Melissa had turned out.

Oh, God…No! Andrew rubbed his temple and then raked his fingers through his hair. He didn’t want to think about Mel. Or London. Or any of what had been left behind and that was why working with Alice Palmer was a complication he didn’t know how to resolve.

Images began appearing on the wall-mounted computer screen. It was a relief to focus as he scrolled through them. The cheekbone probably needed wiring. The nasty fragmented fracture of the radius and ulna would require surgery. Orthopaedics were on the way and someone from plastic surgery should be contacted to deal with the facial suturing that could be done in Theatre as well. Andrew turned back to Resus 1. He had a job to do here. His patient needed care. And protection. A delicate situation when he couldn’t know whether it might make things worse for Janine by encouraging her to lay a complaint about her boyfriend.

Alice would be in Resus 1 as well. Another delicate situation and Andrew needed more time to try and figure out what he was going to do about it. Maybe he could buy time by putting some distance between them. Adjust his shifts, perhaps, so they spent as little time as possible in the department together?

No. Why should he have to do that? He was a senior consultant in this department now and he needed to start the way he intended to carry on. Alice was a nurse. A very good nurse, probably, but as far as a balance of power went, it was weighted firmly on his side. An advantage that Andrew couldn’t afford not to use. He needed to take control and make sure he kept it.

The department was relatively quiet for a long time after Janine had been taken to Theatre. Downright boring, really. Alice was looking after an epileptic man who was sleeping off the post-ictal phase of his seizure, a diabetic patient from a rest home who needed her insulin dose adjusted and another very elderly incontinent woman, Miss Stanbury, who was still suffering the effects of a gastric disturbance and needed rehydrating and frequent changing.