He smiled. ‘They both want her middle name to be Natalie, after me.’
Only a few hours ago, Mr Brown had been yelling that he didn’t want Nathaniel anywhere near his wife, and now he wanted to call his daughter after their male midwife?
And then it hit her: she’d steamed in and assumed he needed help to defuse the situation. He could’ve done it perfectly well himself.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
He frowned. ‘Why?’
‘When I came in earlier, during the shouty bit. Of course you could handle things.’
He smiled at her, then, and a tingle ran down her spine. A tingle she suppressed ruthlessly; even if he wasn’t involved elsewhere, as a single mum she wasn’t interested in dating.
‘Mike Brown was disturbing the ward. I can see where you were coming from,’ he said.
‘All the same, I think we might have got off on the wrong foot.’
He gave her an assessing look. ‘You must be due a break. Let me buy you a coffee.’
‘Thanks for offering,’ she said, ‘but there’s really no need. We’re a team on this ward and we support each other.’
‘All my midwife colleagues are either with a mum or they’ve finished their shift and gone home. I’ve just delivered a baby and right now I really want to babble about how amazing it is, to someone who actually gets it.’
‘And I’m the only one around?’
‘Pretty much.’ He gave her another of those smiles that made her stomach swoop, and it unsettled her. She wasn’t used to reacting like this to someone.
‘Coffee and cake. My shout. And you can let me babble about babies.’ He gave her another of those incredibly winning smiles.
Part of her resisted. This man was charming—and she knew from personal experience that charming was fun for a while and then slid into heartbreak. On the other hand, he was her new colleague, they’d started off on the wrong foot and she wanted to smooth things over between them. ‘OK, but only if I buy.’
‘Dr Hart, it’s coffee. No strings,’ he said gently.
Which made her face feel hot with embarrassment. ‘Sorry,’ she mumbled.
‘By the way, what did you say to Mike Brown?’ he asked, sounding curious.
‘I pointed out that if I was a GP looking at a lump on his testicle, I’d see him as a worried patient, not a sex object, and you wouldn’t be leering at the business end of his wife because your job was to deliver the baby safely and make sure she was OK during labour. Or something along those lines.’
He grinned, his dark eyes crinkling at the corners, and Rebecca noticed how long his eyelashes were. ‘I wish I’d seen his face when you said that.’
‘Patient confidentiality,’ Rebecca said, knowing how prim she sounded but unable to stop it.
‘He really squirmed, didn’t he?’ His grin broadened. ‘To be fair, I would’ve squirmed, too. Let’s go get that coffee.’
She saved the file, logged out of the computer system and walked with him to the canteen.
‘How do you like it?’ he asked.
Coffee. He was talking about coffee. For pity’s sake, why was she reacting to him like this? She never flirted. Not since Lucas. And she wasn’t going to start flirting now. ‘Skinny cappuccino, no chocolate on top, please.’
‘OK. Cake?’
‘I’m not really a cake person,’ she said. ‘Though thanks for the offer.’
‘Something savoury?’
‘Just coffee’s lovely, thanks.’
Once he’d ordered their coffee—and cake for himself—they found a quiet table.
‘I was away when you joined the team. How are you settling in?’ Rebecca asked.
‘Pretty good—the staff are all lovely, here,’ Nathaniel said. ‘I trained at the London Victoria, but I’ve always liked this part of the city, so when the job came up I applied for it.’ He paused. ‘How about you? Have you been here long?’
‘Two years. I trained at Hampstead,’ she said. And she’d loved it there. Until Lucas had crashed his motorbike three and a half years ago, leaving her a widow with a year-old baby. Riding too fast—but not to get home to her. He’d been going too fast because he’d loved the thrill of speed. Because he’d liked taking risks. And either he hadn’t seen the icy patch, or he’d thought himself invincible, or maybe both. The end result was the same.
They’d had to airlift him to his own emergency department.
Losing a patient was always tough. But when that patient was a colleague as well, one who was charming and popular with everyone no matter what their qualifications or status... The accident had broken his team as much as it had broken Rebecca. And she hadn’t even had a chance to organise the funeral before Fate added another nasty twist. She’d assumed her missed period was because of the stress of the situation; she hadn’t even considered she might be pregnant. Being rushed into the same emergency department where Lucas had died and learning that she’d had an ectopic pregnancy—losing one of her fallopian tubes as well as the baby—had been almost too much to bear.
She shook herself. Not now. She’d had three and a half years to get used to being a widow. Three and a half years of learning not to wrap Jasmine completely in cotton wool, not to worry every second they were apart, and not to overcompensate and try to be both parents. Moving to Muswell Hill had really helped her, and Jasmine loved her nursery school. ‘Being a male midwife is a fairly unusual career choice,’ she said. ‘What made you pick midwifery?’
‘I used to be a building site manager,’ he said.
Site manager to a midwife? That was quite a career change. ‘Just as well Mr Brown didn’t know you worked on a building site, leaning down from the scaffolding and whistling at every passing woman,’ she said. ‘He’d have worried even more about letting you near the business end.’
Nathaniel laughed, a rich, deep sound that set those tingles off again. ‘That’s horrible stereotyping.’
‘A bit,’ she agreed. ‘But whenever I’ve walked past scaffolding that’s what the builders always do.’
‘You’re blonde and you’re pretty. Of course they’ll whistle at you.’
She felt her face go pink. ‘I wasn’t fishing for a compliment. I meant they whistle at every passing woman.’
‘Not all of them do. Some builders prefer men,’ Nathaniel said.
Was that an oblique way of telling her that he was gay? ‘OK,’ she said carefully. ‘So what persuaded you to change careers?’
* * *
It was a story Nathaniel was used to telling. ‘Fell off a roof,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Broke my back. I spent four months in hospital.’
‘Ouch,’ she said. ‘And I imagine you must’ve needed a ton of physio when you left hospital.’
He nodded. ‘It gave me a long time to think about what I really wanted to do with my life. Whether I had the nerve to work on a site again, whether I could make myself go up a ladder to check something.’
‘Did you?’
‘Let’s see. Work in an air-conditioned hospital; or be on a site in all weathers, from frost and snow to rain or blazing sun, knowing I’d maybe make it to forty before arthritis started making my job a lot more difficult every day?’ He spread his hands. ‘It was an easy choice.’
Though not all of the choices had been his. It had been Angela’s choice to end their engagement. It had taken him a long time to come to terms with the fact that the love of his life hadn’t stuck around when he’d needed her most. Eventually he’d worked out why: she’d agreed to marry Nathaniel the site manager, the man whose career was doing nicely. She hadn’t signed up to nurse him through a broken back, not knowing if he’d ever be able to walk again and they’d spend their entire marriage with her as his carer. Even though he understood it, he still found it hard to forgive. And even now he resented the fact that she’d ended their engagement so
fast, not even waiting a couple of weeks to see if there were any signs of recovery.
To dump him so swiftly: had she ever really loved him in the first place? Was he that hopeless a judge of character when it came to relationships? The whole situation had really knocked his confidence in himself, and he hadn’t had a serious relationship since, not wanting to get close to someone else and risk discovering that he wasn’t enough for her, either. He kept his heart under wraps and his relationships short.
Not that he was going to tell Rebecca Hart anything about that. It wasn’t relevant to his job. Or to what she’d asked him.
‘I wanted a job where I’d make a difference,’ he said. ‘Where I’d make people’s lives better. The nurses on my ward got me through those first rough weeks, and it made me realise how amazing they were. I wanted to be able to do that for someone, too.’
‘Nurses are amazing,’ she agreed. ‘So did you start training as soon as you were back on your feet?’
He nodded. ‘I left school at sixteen, so despite having my site manager’s qualifications I had to do a year’s access course at the university before they’d accept me to do a BSc in nursing.’ He smiled. ‘I loved the course. I was going to work in the Emergency Department, because that was my favourite placement. But then, in my final year, my best friend’s wife was pregnant. Jason was away on business and Denise’s family was in Paris, celebrating her aunt’s sixtieth birthday—they thought it would be fine to go because all first babies are late and take ages.’
‘Right,’ Rebecca said, rolling her eyes because she clearly knew how much of a myth that was. ‘So I’m guessing she went into labour early?’
‘Yes. Her best friend was meant to be her backup birth partner, but she was a junior doctor and was in Theatre when Denise went into labour. Obviously she couldn’t just walk out of the op, so Denise called me in a panic. I thought I’d just be there for the first stage of labour and Jason would be back in time for the birth, but it was a quick labour and he didn’t make it to the hospital until Sienna was a couple of hours old. It was the most amazing thing in the world, being there when my goddaughter took her first breath.’ He grinned. ‘The first thing Sienna did after being born was an enormous poo, and my first job as her godfather was to change that nappy.’
Rebecca’s blue eyes twinkled. ‘Ah, yes, the joys of the first nappy. So even the meconium didn’t put you off wanting to be a midwife?’
‘Nope. In a weird way, that decided me. Looking at her face, seeing those first few moments, I knew Maternity was where I wanted to be. Which meant I was just about to graduate in the wrong subject.’ He wrinkled his nose. ‘Well, ish. My degree gave me good foundations for midwifery. After I graduated, I did the eighteen-month short course to become a midwife. I was the only man in my year group, but most people accepted me.’
‘Most?’
‘One of my tutors didn’t really take to me,’ he admitted. ‘In her view, men shouldn’t be midwives because they can’t have babies.’
Rebecca winced. ‘That’s unfair. And also not true—are you going to say heart surgeons can’t do their job if they haven’t had heart surgery themselves? And what about women who can’t have children? That’s not a valid reason for them not being midwives.’ She looked cross. ‘I hate that kind of prejudice.’
And that really gratified him, at the same time as it made him realise that he’d misjudged her. She hadn’t stepped in earlier to pull rank; she really had intended to help and be supportive.
He shrugged. ‘I guess it helped prepare me for any parents-to-be who thought the same as my tutor did. I learned to come up with some solid answers. But here I am. I qualified, I love my job, and it’s such a privilege to help women through one of the most intense and emotional experiences of their lives.’
‘Do you get many dads reacting to you the way Mr Brown did today?’ she asked.
‘One or two. A couple of women have said they didn’t want a man delivering their baby—ironically, they ended up with sections and a male surgeon,’ he added, rolling his eyes, ‘but normally, once people get over the surprise of me not being a woman, they’re fine about it. Not many go from nought to shouty in two seconds, the way he did.’ He smiled at her. ‘What about you? Why did you choose Maternity?’
‘It was my favourite rotation,’ she said. ‘That first moment after the birth, when all’s still, and the baby opens their eyes and looks at you, and you see all the wonder of the universe in their face.’
‘Those tiny fingers and tiny toes,’ he said. ‘I love babies’ feet. And the way babies grip your finger.’
‘The softness of their skin,’ Rebecca said. ‘Even if they’re a late baby and a bit overcooked, or an early baby covered in vernix—they’re just beautiful.’
And that look of joy on her face took his breath away, transforming her from the slightly starchy doctor he’d first met to the most gorgeous woman he’d even seen. His spine pricked with awareness of her.
‘I think,’ Nathan said, ‘we’re on the same page.’
‘I agree.’ She smiled. ‘Thank you for the coffee, Mr Jones.’
‘Nathaniel.’ He waited a beat. Was she going to stay all starchy and formal? Or would she...?
‘Rebecca.’
Only then did he realise he’d been holding his breath. Which was crazy.
‘I’m afraid I need to get going—but welcome to the team.’
‘Cheers,’ he said, and deliberately stayed to finished his own coffee.
He was so aware of the brilliant sky blue of her eyes, and the way her hair—even caught back in a ponytail for work—looked like sunlight on ripened cornfields. The shape of her mouth.
Although he’d dated a few times since the end of his engagement, there hadn’t been anyone serious and it had been a long while since he’d felt that instant zing of attraction. He’d just been going through the motions, doing what everyone expected of him.
He hadn’t been able to help himself glancing at Rebecca’s left hand as they chatted. No ring, though that meant nothing nowadays. For all he knew, she could be in a committed relationship but hadn’t formalised it. Though he wasn’t going to ask any of his colleagues if she was single; the last thing he wanted was to put either of them under the focus of the hospital rumour mill.
She hadn’t flirted with him; but he hadn’t been able to stop himself flirting a bit with her.
He was really going to have to be careful.
Copyright © 2020 by Pamela Brooks
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ISBN-13: 9781488066825
Mistletoe Kiss with the Heart Doctor
Copyright © 2020 by Marion Lennox
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Mistletoe Kiss with the Heart Doctor Page 19
