Caroline Anderson, Sara Morgan, Josie Metcalfe, Jennifer Taylor

by Brides of Penhally Bay Vol. 01 (lit)

  Lucy couldn’t believe it was Ben.

  Of all the people to be coming, why did it have to be him?

  Although she had to see him some time, and preferably soon. Unless she just wasn’t going to…

  No. That wasn’t an option. She just wanted time to think it through, to work out the words, to find a way of introducing the subject.

  Ridiculous. She’d had months to talk to him, months to think up the words. She was just a coward—a coward with a patient who was staring at her a little oddly, waiting.

  ‘Right, Mrs Jones, I’m sure you’ll be all right. I’m confident that as I first thought it’s just a little bit of fluid on your lungs from your heart problem, so I’m juggling your pills a little and we’ll see if you improve. Here’s your new prescription, but in the meantime the injection I’ve just given you should start to shift it soon, and the extra frusemide should do the trick in the long term.’ She clipped her bag shut with a little snap, and picked it up. ‘If I don’t hear anything from you, I’ll come back and see you next week to make sure it’s cleared up, but if you’re at all worried, you call me, OK? No being stoic.’

  Edith Jones nodded. Recently widowed, she was struggling to cope with her new independence, and Lucy worried about her. Her heart condition had been fine until her husband’s sudden and traumatic decline, and since then she’d been neglecting herself. Not any more, though. Lucy simply wouldn’t let her. Edith was still a little breathless, but even in the short time since Lucy had given her the diuretic injection, she’d noticed an improvement.

  ‘I’ll be fine, Doctor,’ Edith said with a smile. ‘Thank you so much for coming.’

  ‘My pleasure. You stay there, I’ll let myself out.’

  ‘No, that’s all right, I’ll see you to the door. I have to get up to go to the toilet anyway. That’s one of the problems with your medicine!’

  Good. More evidence of the drugs working, but just to be on the safe side, Lucy warned, ‘Don’t forget to keep drinking. I don’t want you thinking you can keep the fluid off your lungs by dehydrating yourself. That’s not how it works. Cut down on your salt intake, and have lots of water and fruit juice, and not too much of that mega-strong tea you like to drink, or you’ll be getting problems with your waterworks to make life even more interesting! And don’t forget—if you aren’t entirely convinced it’s working, ring me.’

  ‘I will, Doctor. Thank you.’

  She waved goodbye, got into her car and drove the short distance back to the surgery. It was ten past two, and Ben would be arriving in twenty minutes. Just time for a bite of lunch and a little hyperventilation before she had to see him again…

  He was early.

  He hadn’t meant to be, but the morning had gone badly and he hadn’t stopped for lunch in case the roads were busy, then they’d been clear and he’d found himself at the practice at five past two. So he was sitting in his car and killing time, staring out over the harbour and wondering whether he should go in and what kind of reception he would get from Nick Tremayne.

  Hopefully better than the reception he’d got in May when he’d come to the barbeque here. Still, Nick had agreed to their meeting, so presumably Lucy had finally talked him round. Not that he expected miracles. A chilly silence would be more like it, but even that might be better than outright hostility.

  A vessel caught his eye, a little fishing smack coming into the harbour, running in on the waves. The sea beyond the harbour mouth was wild and stormy today, the water the colour of gunmetal. It looked cold and uninviting, and he was glad he didn’t make his living from it.

  He turned his head and studied the cars in the car park, wondering which one of them was Lucy’s. The silver Volvo? No. That was most likely to be Nick’s. The little Nissan? Possibly. Not the sleek black Maserati that crouched menacingly in the corner of the car park, he’d stake his life on it. That, he’d hazard a guess, was Marco Avanti’s.

  He was just psyching himself up to get out of the car and go inside when a VW turned into the car park and drove into one of the spaces marked ‘Doctor’.

  Lucy. His pulse picked up, and he took a slow, steadying breath to calm himself. After all, the last time he’d seen her had been in early May, and they’d both made it clear it wasn’t going anywhere. He was sure they could be adult about this—even if it had taken weeks to get her out of his mind again.

  Longer still to get her out of his dreams, but he’d done it, finally, by working double shifts and staying up half the night trawling the internet in the name of research. And he was over her. He was.

  So why was his heart racing and his body thrumming? Crazy. He shouldn’t be here. He should have let someone else do it—one of the other A and E guys…

  She was getting out of the car, opening the door, and in the rear-view mirror he could see her legs emerging, and then her…body?

  He was on his feet and moving towards her before he had time to realise he’d moved, before he’d thought what he was going to say, before he’d done anything but react. And then, having got there, all he could do was stare.

  ‘Ah, Mr Carter, welcome!’

  He realised Kate Althorp was beside them, talking to him, and over the roaring in his ears he tried to make sense of it. She was holding out her hand, and he sucked in a lungful of air, pulled himself together and shook it, the firm, no-nonsense grip curiously grounding. ‘Ben, please—and it’s good to see you again, Mrs Althorp. Thank you for setting this up.’

  ‘Call me Kate—and it’s my pleasure. Lucy, I’ve put tea and biscuits out in my office for you, so you won’t be disturbed. Dragan Lovak’s had to go out on a call—he’ll be joining you later. But since we’re here now, why don’t we have a quick guided tour before the clinics start, and then I’ll leave you both to it?’

  And he was led inside, Lucy bringing up the rear, her image imprinted on his retinas for life. He followed the practice manager through the entrance to Reception, smiling blankly at the ladies behind the counter, nodding at the patients in the waiting room, vaguely registering the children playing in the corner with the brightly coloured toys. He saw the stairs straight ahead, easy-rising, and the consulting rooms to the right, on each side of the short corridor that led to the lift.

  ‘It’s a big lift,’ Kate was saying as the doors opened and they stepped in. ‘Designed for buggies and wheelchairs and so on, but not big enough for stretchers, although we don’t have any call for them really. If people collapse and have to go to hospital in an ambulance, they’ve probably been in to see one of the doctors, and as most of the consulting rooms are downstairs anyway, that’s more than likely where they’ll be. If not, the paramedics usually manage to get them down in the lift without difficulty. The trouble is the building wasn’t designed to be a surgery, so it’s been adapted to make the best use of what we have.’

  ‘How long has the practice been here?’

  ‘Two years. After Phil died there wasn’t a practice here in Penhally Bay until two years ago. A neighbouring practice closed and they lost the last of the local doctors, and Marco Avanti and Nick set up the practice here where it is now to fill the gap.’

  The lift doors opened again and he found himself at the end of a corridor the same as the one downstairs, with rooms to left and right. ‘We’ve got the nurses’ room and a treatment room up here, and our MIU, such as it is. I’ll let Lucy show you that, she’ll know more about it than me.’

  ‘What about a waiting area?’ he asked, forcing himself to concentrate on something other than Lucy. She was going through a door marked ‘Private’, closing it firmly behind her. Damn.

  ‘We have a couple of chairs out here but we don’t tend to use them except in the summer when it’s busier,’ Kate was saying. ‘Usually they call the patients up one at a time from downstairs. Our staffroom and shower and loo are up here, too, as well as another public toilet and the stores, and this is my office.’

  She opened the door and ushered him in. ‘Have a seat,’ she said. ‘L
ucy won’t be a moment. I’ll put the kettle on.’

  He didn’t sit. He crossed the room, standing by the window, looking out. It was a pleasant room, and from the window he could see across the boatyard to the lifeboat station and beyond it the sea.

  He didn’t notice, though, not really. Didn’t take it in, couldn’t have described the colour of the walls or the furniture, because there was only one thing he’d really seen, only one thing he’d been aware of since Lucy had got out of her car.

  The door opened and she came in, and with a smile to them both Kate excused herself and went out, closing the door softly behind her, leaving them to it.

  Lucy met his eyes, but only with a huge effort, and he could see the emotions racing through their wary, soft brown depths. God only knows what his own expression was, but he held her gaze for a long moment before she coloured and looked away.

  ‘Um—can I make you some tea?’ she offered, and he gave a short, disbelieving cough of laughter.

  ‘Don’t you think there’s something we should talk about first?’ he suggested, and she hesitated, her hand on the kettle, catching her lip between those neat, even teeth and nibbling it unconsciously.

  ‘I intend to,’ she began, and he laughed and propped his hips on the edge of the desk, his hands each side gripping the thick, solid wood as if his life depended on it.

  ‘When, exactly? Assuming, as I am, perhaps a little rashly, that unless that’s a beachball you’ve got up your jumper it has something to do with me?’

  She put the kettle down with a little thump and turned towards him, her eyes flashing fire. ‘Rashly? Rashly? Is that what you think of me? That I’d sleep with you and then go and fall into bed with another man?’

  He shrugged, ignoring the crazy, irrational flicker of hope that it was, indeed, his child. ‘I don’t know. I would hope not, but I don’t know anything about your private life. Not any more,’ he added with a tinge of regret.

  ‘Well, you should know enough about me to know that isn’t the way I do things.’

  ‘So how do you do things, Lucy?’ he asked, trying to stop the anger from creeping into his voice. ‘Like your father? You don’t like it, so you just pretend it hasn’t happened?’

  ‘And what was I supposed to do?’ she asked, her eyes flashing sparks again. ‘We weren’t seeing each other. We’d agreed.’

  ‘But this, surely, changes things? Or should have. Unless you just weren’t going to tell me? It must have made it simpler for you.’

  She turned away again, but not before he saw her eyes fill, and guilt gnawed at him. ‘Simpler?’ she said. ‘That’s not how I’d describe it.’

  ‘So why not tell me, then?’ he said, his voice softening. ‘Why, in all these months, didn’t you tell me that I’m going to be a father?’

  ‘I was going to,’ she said, her voice little more than a whisper. ‘But after everything—I didn’t know how to. It’s just all so difficult…’

  ‘But it is mine.’

  She nodded, her hair falling over her face and obscuring it from him. ‘Yes. Yes, it’s yours.’

  His heart soared, and for a ridiculous moment he felt like punching the air, but then he pulled himself together. Plenty of time for that later, once he’d got all the facts. Down to the nitty-gritty, he thought, and asked the question that came to the top of the heap.

  ‘Does your father know it’s mine?’

  She shook her head, and he winced. ‘So—when’s it due?’

  ‘The end of January.’

  ‘So you’re—’

  ‘Thirty weeks. And two days.’

  He nodded. That made sense, but there was another question that needed answering. ‘You told me you were on the Pill.’

  She bent her head. ‘I was, but because it was only to regulate my periods I probably hadn’t been as punctual all the time as I should have been. I used to take it in the morning, but I didn’t remember till the Tuesday, by then it was too late.’ Because she’d been crying since the moment she’d closed her front door behind her on Sunday morning and retreated into the sanctuary of her little home, wearing his shirt day and night until she’d had to take it off to shower and dress to come to work after the bank holiday, and then she’d found the pills…

  ‘So why not take the morning-after pill just to be safe?’

  Why not, indeed? She shook her head. ‘I didn’t have any, and by the time I was able to get them from the pharmacy it would have been too late. And anyway, I thought I was safe,’ she told him, and wondered, as she’d wondered over and over again, if there’d been a little bit of her that had secretly wanted to have his baby. And when her periods had continued for the next two months, she’d put it out of her mind.

  Not for long, though. Eventually it had dawned on her that things were different, that the lighter-than-usual periods had been due to the hormones, and she’d kept it a secret as long as she could. Eventually, though, the changes to her body had become obvious, and her father had been shocked and then bossily supportive.

  And he hadn’t asked about the father, not once she’d told him that he was out of her life for good and she didn’t want to think about him any more. Not that she had wanted Ben out of her life, but he was, to her sorrow and regret, and she didn’t want to think about him any more. She’d been sick of crying herself to sleep, missing him endlessly, wishing he could be with her and share this amazing and fantastic thing that was happening to her body.

  Her stomach rumbled, and she gave the biscuits a disinterested glance. OK, she could eat them, but she really, really wanted something healthy, and if Dragan was held up…

  ‘Have you had lunch?’ she said suddenly.

  ‘Lunch?’ he said, his tone disbelieving. ‘No. I got held up in Resus. There wasn’t time.’

  ‘Fancy coming back to my house and having something to eat? Dragan can ring when he’s on his way back and we can meet him here. Only I’m starving, and I’m trying to eat properly, and biscuits and cakes and rubbish like that just won’t cut the mustard.’

  ‘Sounds good,’ he said, not in the least bit hungry but desperate to be away from there and somewhere private while he assimilated this stunning bit of news.

  She opened the door, grabbed her coat out of the staffroom as they passed it and led him down the stairs. ‘Kate, we’re going to get some lunch. Can you get Dragan to ring me when he’s back?’

  ‘Sure,’ Kate said, and if Lucy hadn’t thought she was being paranoid, she would have sworn Kate gave her and Ben a curiously speculative look.

  No. She couldn’t have guessed. It had been months since she’d seen them together.

  Six months, one week and two days, to be exact. And Kate, before she’d become practice manager, had been a midwife.

  Damn.

  They walked to her flat, along Harbour Road and up Bridge Street, the road that ran alongside the river and up out of the old town towards St Piran, the road he’d come in on. It was over a gift shop, in a steep little terrace typical of Cornish coastal towns and villages, and he wondered how she’d manage when she’d had the baby.

  Not here, was the answer, especially when she led him through a door into a narrow little hallway and up the precipitous stairs to her flat. ‘Make yourself at home, I’ll find some food,’ she said, a little breathless after her climb, and left him in the small living room. If he got close to the window he could see the sea, but apart from that it had no real charm. It was homely, though, and comfortable, and he wandered round it, picking up things and putting them down, measuring her life.

  A book on pregnancy, a mother-and-baby magazine, a book of names, lying in a neat pile on the end of an old leather trunk in front of the sofa. More books in a bookcase, a cosy fleece blanket draped over the arm of the sofa, some flowers in a vase lending a little cheer.

  He could see her through the kitchen door, pottering about and making sandwiches, and he went and propped himself in the doorway and watched her.

  ‘I’d offer to help, but
the room’s too small for three of us,’ he murmured, and she gave him a slightly nervous smile.

  Why nervous? he wondered, and then realised that of course she was nervous. She had no idea what his attitude would be, whether he’d be pleased or angry, if he’d want to be involved in his child’s life—any of it.

  When he’d worked it out himself, he’d tell her. The only thing he did know, absolutely with total certainty, was that if, as she had said, this baby was his, he was going to be a part of its life for ever.

  And that was non-negotiable.

  What on earth was she supposed to say to him?

  She had no idea, and didn’t know how it could be so hard. When they’d worked together, he’d been so easy to talk to, such a good friend, and they’d never had any tension between them. Well, that was a lie, but not this sort of tension.

  The other sort, yes—the sort that had got her in this mess.

  No. Not a mess. Her baby wasn’t a mess, and she wasn’t ever going to think of it as one.

  She put the sandwiches on plates, put the plates on a tray with their two cups of tea and carried them through to her little living room. ‘Sit down, Ben, you’re cluttering the place up,’ she said softly, and with a rueful little huff of laughter he sat, angled slightly towards her so he could study her.

  Which he did, with that disconcertingly piercing gaze, the entire time she was eating her sandwich.

  ‘We could get married,’ he said out of the blue, and she choked on a crumb and started to cough. He took the plate and rubbed her back, but she flapped him away, standing up and going into the kitchen to get a glass of water.

  And when she turned he was right behind her, so close that she brushed against him, her bump making firm and intimate contact with his body. For a moment he froze, and then his eyes dropped and he lifted a hand and then glanced back up at her, as if he was asking her permission.

  She swallowed slowly and nodded, and he laid his hand oh, so tenderly over the taut curve that was his child. Something fierce and primitive flickered in his eyes, and then he closed them, and as the baby shifted and stretched she watched a muscle jump in his jaw.