by Sarah Morgan
Chloe smiled as she hung her own version of a reindeer next to the star. ‘It was fun,’ she said shyly, ‘making our own decorations. Thank you, Lara. And I love my new bedroom.’
‘Good.’
Lara glanced at Chloe, puzzled. She was just too polite. She was twelve years old. Almost a teenager and yet she never did anything wrong. She didn’t fight with her sister. She didn’t argue or stamp or even roll her eyes. What was going on? Suddenly Lara wished that the child would do something that required at least a mild rebuke. Anything that would make it seem less likely that she was bottling up something enormous. ‘I’m going to heat up those mince pies we made. Will you help me, Chloe?’
‘Of course.’ Chloe hung the last of the decorations on her side of the tree and walked towards the kitchen with Lara. ‘Just mince pies?’
‘I think so. We only had lunch a few hours ago.’ Lara stooped to lift the mince pies out of the oven. ‘So when is the school disco, Chloe?’
‘It’s next Saturday.’ Chloe took a plate from the cupboard. ‘But I’m not going.’
‘Why aren’t you going?’
‘Because it doesn’t finish until ten o’clock. That’s too late.’
‘Too late for what?’ Lara slid the mince pies onto the plate. ‘You’re not usually asleep until then and it’s the holidays. What’s the problem?’
‘I don’t want Dad to have to come and pick me up.’
‘Why not?’ Lara put milk on to boil and placed mugs on a tray. ‘He wouldn’t mind.’
Chloe shook her head. ‘It’s too much to ask.’
Lara stood still. ‘Chloe, he’s your father. His role is to ferry you everywhere at all sorts of inconvenient hours. You’re not supposed to be this thoughtful!’
‘I don’t want to be a bother. He’s had a lot to cope with.’
‘Does he look as though he’s struggling?’
‘No, but he only ever thinks about work and us. Never about himself.’
Lara rescued the milk from the hob and made the chocolate. ‘Stop thinking about him and think about yourself. Would you like to go to the disco?’
Chloe didn’t look at her. ‘No. I’ll stay here.’
No, you won’t, Lara thought to herself as she lifted the tray and carried it through to the living room. One way or another, Cinderella, you will be going to the ball.
* * *
Christian checked that both girls were asleep and then strolled downstairs to the sitting room.
The Christmas tree lights glowed brightly and the log fire flickered and crackled in the grate. The remains of the game that Aggie had been playing was still strewn over the rug.
The room felt lived in and cosy.
Lara was lying on the sofa, her eyes closed, but she opened them when he walked into the room. ‘Sorry.’ She gave a faint smile. ‘Just feeling mildly exhausted.’
‘Full-time employment and children aren’t a relaxing combination.’
She gave him a long look and then sat up. ‘Absolutely. Well, I suppose I’d better go to bed.’
‘Running away, Lara?’ Part of him hoped that she was. It would make things so much easier.
Her gaze slid to his. ‘Perhaps I am. I don’t know what else to do and I’ve tried all the other alternatives. The tension is making my stomach churn and I’ve never felt like this before. I don’t want to feel this way about you. I need you to reveal a really major flaw very quickly.’
‘I have dozens of major flaws.’
Lara looked at him with something close to desperation. ‘I can’t see any of them.’
Christian examined the contents of his glass. ‘My ex-wife called me a cold-hearted bastard who was incapable of making an emotional connection. Does that help?’
‘No. Because I’ve seen you with your girls. You’re wonderful with them. And you’re great with worried children in the ED. Not cold at all.’
‘Children are different,’ he said softly. ‘They have no artifice, no hidden agenda.’
‘Did your wife have a hidden agenda?’
He stilled. ‘I couldn’t give her what she wanted. You need to remember that, Lara. It might be just the flaw you’re looking for.’
‘So because the two of you were incompatible, you’re never going to get involved with a woman again? Has it occurred to you that it isn’t a good example to set? Just because it went wrong once in the past, it doesn’t mean it can’t go right in the future.’
‘From that comment I take it that your parents are extremely happily married.’
‘Thirty years last June. Why? Are yours divorced now?’
‘Oh, no. Nothing so civilised.’ He drained his glass, feeling the warmth from the alcohol spread through his veins. ‘They preferred to stay together and fight.’
‘Oh. Well, I suppose that helps explain why you’ve managed to create such a lovely stable home for your children.’
‘Have I? They have one parent.’
‘One loving parent.’
‘It isn’t what I wanted for them.’ He hesitated, unsure just how much to reveal. ‘When Fiona left, the girls were torn apart with insecurity. She hadn’t ever even spent much time with them but that seemed only to make things worse. They believed that they were the reason that she left. They knew she hated being a mother.’
Lara winced. ‘She couldn’t have hated it that much. She had two children.’
Christian stared into the bottom of his glass. ‘I don’t think she ever thought it through. People don’t, always. Society expects a woman to be maternal. The last thing she said to me before she left was something like, “You wanted these children, well, it’s your turn to look after them.”’ He gave a short laugh. ‘The irony was that she never had looked after them. She employed nannies all the way through and I accepted that because I could see that she needed her work.’
‘Do you miss her?’
Christian felt the tension across his shoulders. ‘I feel bad for the girls. When your children are hurting, it’s impossible not to ask yourself if you could have done something differently.’
‘Like what?’
‘I don’t know.’ It was the first time he’d ever spoken his thoughts aloud. ‘But there must have been something more I could have done to have stopped her leaving.’
‘You obviously loved her very much.’
Christian stared at her, wondering how she’d managed to come to that conclusion. ‘There was no love between us at all,’ he said flatly. ‘And that was the problem. Love is the one thing you can’t manufacture. Everything else can be bought if the money is there. Houses, nannies, good schools—they’re all available for a price, but love—no.’
‘You didn’t love her?’
Was he supposed to deny the truth?
Christian nursed his empty glass, wondering whether to fill it again. ‘I thought I did,’ he said finally. ‘But I was wrong. I married her for the wrong reasons.’
‘Did she love you?’
Why the hell was he telling her this? With a determined effort he put the glass down on the mantelpiece. He didn’t need a headache and he didn’t need to indulge in maudlin confessions. ‘She loved my money.’
‘I’m sure there was more to it than that,’ Lara said softly. ‘You have a lot of very special qualities, Christian.’
‘I thought you were searching for flaws.’
She gave a weak smile. ‘Yes. Thanks for reminding me. Did your wife stay at home when the children were little?’
‘Fiona was working on her laptop in the delivery room, thirty minutes after Aggie was born.’ While he’d been busy falling in love with his daughter.
‘But if she didn’t want to be a mother…’
‘Why did she have the children?’ He gave a twisted smile. ‘For me. She knew I wanted to create a stable family. If she’d confessed that she didn’t want children, I never would have married her.’
‘They must have been in a state when she left.’
‘For six months Aggie slep
t in my bed because she was afraid that, if she didn’t, I’d leave, too, when she was asleep.’ His voice was gruff. ‘And Chloe—well, she said less but she was hollow-eyed and listless. We stumbled on together and eventually we somehow managed to form ourselves into a family again. It’s starting to work. I can’t risk destabilising that.’
Lara looked at him. ‘You’re assuming that they’d be hurt if you had another relationship. But maybe they wouldn’t be.’
There was a long, difficult silence while Christian struggled against the masculine instincts that threatened to drive common sense out of his brain. ‘Maybe not.’ His tone was rough. ‘But that’s a risk I’m not prepared to take.’
CHAPTER NINE
‘HOW high was the wall, Eddie?’ Lara checked the young man’s observations and recorded them on the chart.
‘Higher than I thought it was, thanks to the contents of a bottle of champagne.’ The young man shifted on the trolley, the pain making him wince. ‘Must have been about four metres, I suppose. I feel as though my entire body has snapped in half.’
‘Hopefully it won’t be that bad—’ Lara’s smile was sympathetic ‘—but we will need to take some X-rays. I’ll ask a doctor to come and see you now.’
She stepped towards the door just as Christian entered. ‘Did I hear you mention the fact that you need a doctor?’
Lara felt her heart rate double and quickly turned away from him. It was becoming harder and harder to work with him and act normally.
Flaws, she reminded herself. She needed to fall out of love with him and the only way to do that was to find his flaws.
‘Lara?’ His soft prompt brought her back from fantasyland to reality.
‘This is Eddie,’ she said, tucking her pen back into her pocket and trying to concentrate on her job. ‘He jumped off a wall.’
‘We were coming out of a restaurant after our Christmas lunch,’ Eddie groaned, lifting his hand to his head. ‘I’m in a lot of pain. I thought alcohol was supposed to numb the senses.’
‘We’ll give you something for that right now,’ Lara said, reaching for an X-ray form and swiftly filling in the blank spaces while Christian examined his patient.
‘Don’t move me around too much, my head is spinning. Why are you looking at my spine?’ Eddie grumbled as he followed Christian’s smooth instructions and moved on the trolley to facilitate a fuller examination. ‘It’s my feet that are killing me.’
Lara wandered back to the trolley. ‘If you land on both heels you can damage more than your feet,’ she explained. She turned to Christian. ‘Do you want him on his front so that you can examine his Achilles tendon?’
‘In a minute. I’ll just look at his ankles and feet first.’ He examined the man’s heels and Lara noticed the swelling and obvious bruising.
‘Ow, that hurts!’ Eddie flinched backwards and Christian murmured an apology.
‘You’ve very tender over the calcaneum.’
‘I don’t know my calcaneum from my cranium but I do know that I’m in bloody agony and I’m never drinking again. If I hadn’t had so much champagne I would have known that the wall was too high. It’s just that I thought I could fly.’
Lara caught Christian’s eye and tried not to laugh.
‘I need you to lie on your front, Eddie,’ he said, ‘so that I can examine your Achilles tendon.’
Lara helped Eddie manoeuvre onto his front. ‘Wriggle down a bit so that your feet dangle over the end. That’s it. Perfect.’
Christian gently squeezed the mid-calf, looking for normal plantar flexion of the ankle. ‘That’s fine. If you can turn over again, Eddie. I’m just going to send you for some X-rays. Can I have a form, Lara?’
Lara handed him the form that she’d already completed. ‘Sign on the dotted line.’ She grinned at him. ‘Calcaneal X-rays—both feet. Is there anything I’ve missed?’
‘I doubt it.’ He scanned the form and signed, a trace of humour in his eyes as he glanced at her. ‘You don’t usually miss anything, do you? I’m starting to think you’re a mind-reader, Staff Nurse King.’
‘It’s called anticipation and it just means that I’ve worked here for too long. If I hang around any longer I’ll be able to treat the patients before they’ve even had the accident.’ Lara took the signed form from him and put the side up on the trolley. ‘I’m locking you in, Eddie, just in case you get any more bright ideas about jumping and flying. Hold on tight. You and I are going to take a trip down to X-Ray.’
She left Eddie with the radiographer and went in search of Jane, who was checking the controlled drugs. ‘Emergency meeting needed.’
‘Not when I’m counting ampoules of morphine.’ Jane finished the task, dismissed the staff nurse who had been helping her and turned to Lara. ‘Well?’
‘I need a new flaw.’
‘What’s wrong with the old one?’ Jane locked the drug cupboard. ‘The man has two demanding children. I thought we agreed that they are enormous flaws.’
‘We did. But they’re not.’ Lara slumped against the wall. ‘I love them.’
‘You love his kids?’ Jane pinned the keys into her pocket. ‘Lara, you’re in trouble.’
‘I know, I know. But they’re so sweet. To be honest, it would be impossible not to love them.’
‘That’s because they’re still on their best behaviour and they don’t know you have dishonourable designs on their father. Once they work it out, they’ll turn into horribly, snivelling flaws,’ Jane predicted in a dark tone, but Lara shook her head.
‘I’m not sure that they will. You have to think of something else.’
‘No, you have to think of something else. Someone else, to be precise. Christian Blake isn’t for you.’ Jane’s voice was serious. ‘You’re going to get hurt.’
‘I can’t believe you’re saying that! You were the one who thought I should have a fling!’
‘A fling, yes. A lifetime of agony because you’ve fallen in love with a guy who isn’t interested in a relationship, no. That isn’t what I wanted for you.’
‘How do you know I’m in love with him?’
‘Because I know you.’
Lara breathed out heavily. ‘Why is it that I can never meet anyone I even remotely like and then finally when I meet someone that turns my whole life upside down, he’s got two children and he isn’t interested?’
‘And you have a ticket to Australia,’ Jane reminded her. ‘A month ago you were excited about going. You need to get away and stop deluding yourself. Go and sit on Bondi Beach and look at some half-naked Australian men. They should take your mind off Christian.’
Lara looked at her, unconvinced. ‘Yes. I’ll do that.’
What choice did she have?
* * *
‘There’s a reduction in Bohler’s angle.’ Christian stared at Eddie’s X-ray on the light box, trying not to be aware of Lara by his side. She smelt fantastic. ‘It’s a sign of compression.’
It took her a moment to respond and, when he glanced at her, he saw that her expression was vacant. What was she thinking? ‘Lara?’
She gave a little start and peered at the X-ray. ‘Oops. Well, I suppose that’s what you get when you drink a bottle of champagne and misjudge your landing.’
Eddie sighed. ‘Is it bad?
Christian turned away from the light box. ‘We need to refer you to the orthopaedic team. They’ll decide how best to handle you but they’re going to want to admit you.’
The man closed his eyes. ‘Merry Christmas, Eddie.’
‘It’s not as bad as all that.’ Lara walked across to him and gave him a sympathetic smile. ‘Hospitals are fun places to be at Christmas.’
‘Really?’
‘Actually, no. It’s a myth that hospitals are fun. Everyone who is well enough goes home so the only people left are very sick.’ Her eyes twinkled. ‘And then there are the patients…’
Eddie laughed but Christian found himself unable to drag his gaze from Lara, unable to look away from t
he dimple at the corner of her mouth. It appeared every time she smiled and that was most of the time. He loved her irrepressible sense of humour.
And she was wonderful with patients.
She had a natural feel for how to handle each case and modified her behaviour accordingly. When the patient was seriously injured she was calm and reassuring, but when the injuries were less serious she had a light-hearted touch that never failed to make patients laugh.
She was the most talented nurse he’d ever worked with.
And she kissed like a man’s hottest fantasy.
Was he doing the right thing, resisting the chemistry?
A thud of lust threatened to destroy his self-control and he gritted his teeth. He pulled the X-rays out of the light box and slid them back into the brown envelope. ‘The orthopaedic team are on their way down to see you now.’
‘Is there anyone you want me to phone?’ Lara took a pad out of her pocket. ‘Girlfriend? Mother? Boss? Santa?’
Eddie pulled a face. ‘Unfortunately for my promotion prospects, my boss was there when I jumped so you don’t need to call him. For goodness’ sake, don’t call my mother because I’ll never hear the last of it. I suppose you could call my girlfriend, although she won’t be too pleased, either. She had plans for Christmas.’
Lara grinned. ‘I’ll call your girlfriend now and with any luck she’ll arrive in time to hear what the orthopods have to say about you.’
Christian watched as she walked out of the room.
‘That nurse is gorgeous,’ Eddie said dreamily. ‘Is she married? Because I’m going to be looking for a new girlfriend once my current model gets wind of what I’ve done.’
Christian felt a sudden rush of heated anger envelop him. ‘I don’t think she’s married.’ Why did he care if another man was interested in Lara? It wasn’t as if he was in a position to have a relationship with her. He didn’t want to risk shattering his children’s fragile sense of security.
He walked back into the main area of the ED and immediately bumped into Lara. He reached out a hand to steady her, wondering why fate was so intent on tormenting him. Why couldn’t he have bumped into Jane or Fran?
