The Pregnant Police Surgeon
Page 16
Her face had whitened and, taking hold of his arm, she begged, ‘Don’t go, Blair.’
He turned back to face her and in that moment all his frustration surfaced. ‘I thought that was how you preferred it…my company in small doses. Very small, if I remember rightly.’
Her hand fell away. She was getting the message.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said bleakly. ‘Just how much you’ll never know. I don’t blame you for feeling as you do.’ Now it was her turn to want to break up the disastrous reunion. ‘Goodbye, Blair. I hope that life treats you more fairly in the future.’ And before he had the chance to see the tears that were choking her, she left.
Late surgery was over and all the staff had gone when he got back to the practice, but Blair had no inclination to go home.
He’d treated Imogen shamefully back there at the law courts, he thought as he slumped into the chair behind his desk. Taken his hurt out on her like an immature adolescent, when all the time he’d been aching to take her in his arms and kiss her quivering mouth until it smiled again.
It was the moment he’d been longing for yet he’d been like a tongue-tied dummy, and when he had found his voice he’d said the most hurtful thing he could think of. What an idiot!
If their meeting today had been by chance, he would have been so enchanted to be with her again he would have swept her off her feet and worried about the consequences afterwards.
But knowing that she would be there because she had no choice, he’d had time to think about it. Warn himself to play it cool. Not to rush her. Give her time. And he’d certainly done that. Until no longer able to contain himself he’d lashed out.
Did he want to have to exist on the occasional postcard from Spain? He leapt to his feet. No! He did not!
When he got home, Simon was there. It was his night off and he immediately asked, ‘How did it go?’
‘Catastrophic,’ Blair told him absently.
‘What?’ his young brother exclaimed. ‘Don’t say they’ve let him off!’
That tuned him in.
‘Oh, you mean the trial.’
‘What else?’
‘Imogen was there. We’d both been called as witnesses. That was what was catastrophic. The trial went as we’d expected.’
‘But not the romance?’
‘Er…no. She’s talking about going to live in Spain.’
‘And you are going to let her?’ Simon hooted. ‘You, bro, are not the man I thought you were if you do. What are you doing here? Why aren’t you at her place, plighting your troth?’
Blair was smiling.
‘I’m on my way. I just stopped off to collect something that’s been lying in the drawer for quite some time.’
He rang Celia before he set off to ask if she knew where Imogen had gone after the court case. Brian had been admitted to hospital during the afternoon for the preliminaries of the operation, and Blair thought that she might be staying at his place, but Celia had said that Imogen was spending the night at her apartment as she had to go back some time and the sooner the better.
So she would have seen what he’d done to the nursery, Blair thought as he pulled up in front of the apartment block only minutes later. What would Imogen have to say about that? he wondered.
He wasn’t to know that after putting off the moment ever since arriving home, she was about to go into the nursery, but his ring on the doorbell brought her to a halt with her hand on the doorhandle of what would have been the baby’s room.
When she saw him standing outside the colour drained from her face. Opening the door slowly, she stepped back to let him in.
Accepting her invitation to enter, he strode over the threshold and stood observing her silently, knowing that this was one of the most important moments of their lives.
‘I was just about to venture into the nursery,’ she said jerkily, as if anxious to break the silence.
‘So you’ve not been in there yet.’
‘Er…no.’
‘Would you like us to go in together?’
She nodded with her head bent.
‘Yes. I would. I was dreading facing it alone.’
He took her hand in his and held it tightly.
‘Come along, then,’ he said gravely.
When she saw what he’d done, her face crumpled. ‘You did this for me, didn’t you? To save me pain.’
‘You’ve not asked me why I’m here. Don’t you want to know?’ he questioned gently.
‘Yes, of course I do.’
‘I’m here because I love you. Always have since the moment we met. I gave up when I should have had patience, the patience to let you find your way back to me in your own time.
‘Dare I hope that what you said to me outside the law courts means that you have found your way back? That we can start making plans of our own? That this time when I ask you to marry me you’ll know that it’s because I can’t live without you?’
The sparkle, so long missing, had come back to Imogen’s eyes while he’d been speaking. She had thrown off the mute mantle of despair. The woman beneath it had come back to him as she told him smilingly, ‘Yes, Blair, of course I’ll marry you. I’ve known all along that you loved me, when I was pregnant and when I wasn’t. But I hurt so much after losing my baby that I couldn’t think straight. I felt that the happiness I craved with you had somehow been responsible for the awful thing that happened to me, but once I’d given myself time to look deep down in my subconscious I accepted that it had been just a terrible accident.’
‘I know.’ he told her tenderly. ‘You’ve had a dreadful time, but the future is before us. You won’t ever be alone again.’ Taking her in his arms, he said softly with his mouth against the dark gloss of her hair, ‘Do you remember that we once went to choose a ring and you changed your mind about marrying me just as we were about to go into the shop?’
She nodded.
‘And how I said that diamonds weren’t right for you because they are cold and glittering? That emeralds or rubies were the jewels for you because they’re warm and glowing like you?’
‘Yes, I remember,’ she said wryly. ‘Though I haven’t exactly been warm and glowing of late, have I?’
‘Maybe not, but I still bought the ring all that time ago, so sure was I that one day you would wear it on your finger. Admittedly, of late I’ve had some doubts, but now they’ve all disappeared. So close your eyes, my darling.’
When she opened them a small circlet of emeralds lay on her palm.
‘Oh, Blair,’ she whispered. ‘I do love you so.’
Later, much later, Blair said, ‘There’ll be another nursery one day, Imogen, that will hold the babies that we make. And as they grow older, we’ll tell them about their small sister sleeping not far away.’
ISBN: 978-1-4603-5753-8
THE PREGNANT POLICE SURGEON
First North American Publication 2003
Copyright © 2003 by Abigail Gordon
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Abigail Gordon, The Pregnant Police Surgeon