‘You remember things I don’t remember saying. And anyway, people can change, can’t they?’
He put his knife down and turned kind eyes towards her. ‘Not that much, Izzy. You can’t give up on a dream because of one knockback. You help women achieve that dream every day—you can’t tell me that things have changed so irrevocably for you?’
The food was tasteless now, a lump in her throat. ‘A knockback? Is that what you call it?’
‘No. That’s not what I meant.’ His voice grew darker. ‘I could call it a lot of things. And I’m trying to deal with it…but damn it—’
‘I’m sorry, Sean.’
‘I know you are and so am I.’ He shook his head, his fists tightening around his crystal wineglass stem. ‘I promised I wouldn’t hark back to it because just thinking about it makes me angry.’
He probably would never get over it—she hadn’t, not really. But he had to deal with her lies as well as the loss. ‘I’ve given you my reasons.’
‘I’m trying hard not to be angry with you. I understand why you kept it from me. I’m angry about the whole sad scenario, Izzy. But you can’t let it scar you for ever.’
‘I’ve told you, I’m not Izzy, not any more.’
‘And I don’t know who you’re trying to kid, but I’m not buying it. Older, yes. Wiser, definitely. More confident in lots of ways…apart from intimacy, which is a shame. Because that would be cool—you deserve to have that in your life. I’m betting that inside you’re still the same girl who desperately wanted a family. A husband. The things everyone wants. And I bet that it’s worse now that Isla has it. You’re Izzy the girl, in here where it matters.’ Touching just above her heart, he seemed to resettle himself, shake the demons away, and she envied him that. Or maybe he was just better at sorting his head out? ‘Don’t think for one moment that I’m belittling anything. I’m not. I know what you went through. I can’t imagine what it was like to have it happen so young…so alone.’ His hand covered hers now and the feel of him there…just there…made everything seem so much better. ‘You said yourself, it happens. You have to look forward.’
She didn’t want to be that frightened girl any more; she’d worked hard to be someone else. But yes, he was right about the intimacy—she didn’t know how to let herself go, not on many levels. She hadn’t dared. As far as she was concerned intimacy led to heartbreak. She knew it because she’d lived it. ‘As it happens, I am trying to move forward and let go…that’s the real deep-down reason I came to England in the first place. I needed to get out and breathe a little. Get away from you.’ She nudged him playfully. ‘But then you keep turning up like a bad penny and bringing me right back to the beginning.’ Creating the same wild feelings she’d had when she was a teenager. Only this time they were more intense, more enduring. More potentially painful.
‘You think? A beginning?’ He frowned. ‘Is that what you want to do? Start again?’
She rubbed her fingers across strong, skilled hands that had brought so much life into the world. ‘I have no idea. I haven’t dared want anything. It’s too painful to risk going through all that again.’ But he almost made her feel as if she could take a chance. She looked up into eyes that seemed so understanding and she felt as if she could pour her heart out to him. But that would surely send him running to the hills. So she deflected. ‘What do you want?’
She didn’t know what she wanted him to answer. She just hoped it was somehow in sync with what her heart was telling her. That maybe, just maybe, she could work things out with Sean. Start afresh. If they both had enough courage. At least for a little while, they could have some fun and then she’d be gone and so would he.
He laughed. ‘Hell, Isabel, it’s messed up. I’ll be honest with you and say I’ve gone round in circles. I’ve worked back and forth across the world, travelling thousands of miles just to get you out of my head and each time I end up back with you. I can’t tell you straight up that I’m one hundred per cent okay with any of this. But I do know what I want right now, right this second. That’s the best I can do.’
‘Oh, yes? What do you want?’ But she had a feeling she knew already. Just one look at the gleam in his eyes…
He paused as a gentleman stepped up to the stage and said something in French. The room hushed. There was applause while another man walked up to the microphone, all big smiles and wide arms as if giving the room a warm hug. She looked across to the woman opposite her and laughed when she laughed. Hopefully at some point there’d be a translation. But all Isabel was aware of was Sean next to her. The heat. And her unanswered question.
There was a break in proceedings as the microphone screeched, a brief technical hitch, and an embarrassed smile from the compère. Suddenly Sean’s voice was in her ear, warm and deep. ‘I want to peel that dress off you…very slowly. I want you and me naked.’
‘Huh?’ She swallowed, with difficulty. Her mouth was suddenly very dry. If she turned her head she’d be mouth-to-mouth with him and the temptation to kiss him was overwhelming. Where Sean was concerned there were no half measures, no light feelings; it was intense and deep and raw.
‘I want to be inside you again. I want you, Isabel Delamere, with every ounce of my being. I want to kiss every inch of your stunning body.’ He withdrew his hand from hers and placed it on her thigh. The heat and tingles arrowed in waves straight to her belly as he circled his fingertips towards her core. ‘I don’t understand what that bloke’s talking about on stage. I don’t understand much of the stuff that’s in my head because it’s like a washing machine all churned up. But I do know that I want you. Now. And I don’t think that feeling’s going to go anywhere for a while.’
She turned and whispered back, barely able to form words. ‘It’s bad, isn’t it?’
Suddenly her heart began to thump in anticipation. Adrenalin surged through her veins and fired her nerves. Two people. That was what they were, just two people taking what they needed. No one was going to get hurt. She’d built that protective barrier around her heart over the last years; it was strong and sturdy; she knew what she was doing just fine. He was thinking of going travelling, she was thinking of going home. It was just two people taking what they wanted while they had the chance. They’d missed out on so much already. She dared to reach out and put her hand on his thigh too and felt the contraction of muscle at her touch. Heard his sharp intake of breath.
He growled. ‘It’s very, very bad. And yet somehow we keep ending up here. Maybe it’s time to stop pretending and accept reality. This isn’t stopping any time soon. There’s nothing either of us can do.’ He wrapped her hand in his and pushed it further up to his groin. Her fingers made contact with his growing erection. ‘Hell, Izzy, it’s bigger than both of us.’
‘Good lord, it’s very big indeed.’ She knew he was fooling around, but she didn’t want this to end. It was like a dream, a fantasy. ‘Maybe when you go back to Cambridge and I stay here for a few days things will get back to normal again.’
‘What exactly is normal? At each other’s throats? Not speaking? Shouting? Not seeing you for too many years? Not sure I want to go back to any of that. I do, however, want to go back to bed, with you. Or, not bed… I have an idea.’ He leaned in close and whispered, ‘How about now? A night together. Then, what say we play hooky tomorrow? Have some fun in Paris?’
‘We’re supposed to be working.’ Okay, so she said it out loud just for the record, but she didn’t mean it. The last thing she wanted was to be sitting in a stuffy conference room when she could be playing with Sean.
‘Who will know? You always were such a goody-two-shoes.’
He slid his hand up inside her dress, stepped fingers towards the inside of her thigh. Here in the middle of a gala. What the hell? Daddy would freak. ‘And you always were such a tearaway.’
‘No wonder your father didn’t like me. Miss Delamere, this is not how you behave at dinner.’
‘I was thinking the exact same thing.’ He was hot and hard for
her. ‘Besides, I don’t care what he thinks.’
‘I wish you’d said that seventeen years ago.’
‘Okay… I’m not apologising any more for stuff that happened a long time ago. Let’s plan forward.’ Her raging heart was thumping so hard she wasn’t sure she could breathe properly. Or make much sense past take me now. But for the benefit of others on the table—if they could hear—she tried to sound normal. ‘I’d really like to go on the field trip to the homeless perinatal clinic in the morning…but then? Maybe we could duck out after?’
He nodded. ‘I’d like to take you on a boat ride down the Seine—we could have lunch. Then visit the Louvre… Dinner in the ninth arrondissement, I know a place…’ As her hand wrapped around him he tensed, eyes fluttering closed. ‘Okay. I can’t take any more. Let’s duck.’
‘Now?’ His hand was still over hers as she stroked him.
He looked as if he was in pain, or at great pains not to show any reaction at all. ‘You want to spend the next two hours listening to a man droning on about maternal care in Limoges, that’s fine. But I’d like to get some hot sex. S’il vous plaît.’
She almost choked on her champagne. ‘Mais oui. Since you asked so nicely.’
‘Okay, so stay close, no one needs to see this.’ He pulled her up and held her in front of him as they sneaked out the back way, then half walked, half ran to the lift. As he hit the down arrow he turned to her. His hand was on her thigh, warm through the thin layer of silk as he dragged the old-fashioned outer metal lift door to a close. Then the inner one. It jerked, then started to descend. ‘You have any preference in venue?’
‘None whatsoever.’ She threw her head back and laughed, feeling the rasp of his stubbled jaw on her neck. The lift smelt of old leather and Paris. Of daring and adventure. Of the exotic and sophistication. ‘How about here?’ So she wanted to get dirty with him in the lift. That was new.
‘Great minds think alike.’ He jabbed the lower-floor-car-park button then pushed her against the mirrored glass, kissing her deep and hard. She pressed against him, feeling his hardness between her thighs. His hands skimmed her body, palming her breasts, thumbs flicking gently against her nipples. Next thing, he’d untied her dress at the neck, it fell to her sides and his mouth took over from his hands, slanting over her hardened nipples.
When they hit the empty dark cavern he reached out and grabbed the metal car park sign and jammed it in between the lift doors so they wouldn’t shut. The lift wasn’t going anywhere. Neither were they. Pulling him towards her by his now unravelled black tie, she breathed, ‘Smooth move, Dr Anderson. Very smooth indeed.’
‘I like to think so.’
Then, feeling the most turned on she’d ever been in her life, she wrapped a leg round his waist. ‘So, come put that clever mouth to good use.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘THIS WASN’T QUITE what I had in mind as a date,’ Sean whispered to Isabel as he handed over the steaming plate of beef bourguignon to the eighteenth homeless man of the morning. But working side by side with her gave him a punch to his gut that was filled with warmth as thick as the heated cabin they were in. After the tour of the homeless shelter and perinatal outreach clinic she’d accepted the request to help out at the soup kitchen with grace and humility. Every day she surprised him just a little bit more. Not least last night with the lift escapade. He couldn’t help grin at the thought. ‘Still, this stuff smells delicious, if there’s any left…’
‘It’s for them, not us.’ She kicked him gently but smiled at the dark-haired, olive-skinned young woman in front of her, wrapped in layers and layers of tatty grey cloth and a dark red headscarf. She had a full round belly and was breathing heavily. Pre-eclampsia, probably, Sean surmised—needs assessment. A small boy dressed in clothes more suitable for summer perched on her hip, grubby, pale and with a drippy nose. ‘Pour vous, madame. Merci.’ Isabel turned. ‘Actually, no, wait…oh, never mind. I want to ask about the boy, I wish I could speak the language a bit better.’
‘Don’t worry, the smile says it all. She understands.’
‘And I want to take the tray over to the table for her, but she won’t let go of it. I think she’s so glad to get some food she won’t take a chance on losing it.’
‘Then let her manage if that’s what she needs to do.’ The kid looked feverish. ‘He’s not looking too great. When they’re done I’m taking them both over to the clinic.’
Isabel let the tray go. ‘It’s zero degrees out there and look at the poor state of them both. It’s Christmas in a week or so—what’s the bet he’s not going to have the best day?’
The boy coughed. Wheezed. And as he breathed out he made a short grunting sound. He didn’t smile. Or cry. Thick black rings circled sunken brown eyes. Mum didn’t look much better. Pregnant. Homeless. Sean pointed to the boy and made a sad face. Mum shook her head and jabbered in a language that didn’t sound French. Then she handed the child towards him.
Sean took him, noted his flaring nostrils as he struggled to breathe, and felt his forehead. ‘He’s burning up. He needs a good look over. I’ll take him through to the clinic now.’ He gesticulated to the mum to follow him, but she clearly didn’t understand. He tried again. Made another dramatic sad face and pointed to the boy. Mum shook her head again and tried to grab the tray of food and her son back.
‘Okay, okay.’ Sean held his palms up in surrender and let her take the boy. She clearly wasn’t going to let the kid out of her sight, regardless of where she was and the minimised risk. And she was determined to get that hot food in both their bellies before they went anywhere. Not such a bad idea, all things considered. But the child needed help and soon. ‘Eat first.’
She squeezed into a chair at a small melamine table and in between greedy gulps tried to feed the boy some of the meaty gravy, but he slumped down and shook his head. She tried again, jabbering in a smoky voice, cajoling him. Pleading with him. And still the boy didn’t open his mouth.
Eat. Sean felt an ache gnawing in his gut. Eat, kid. For God’s sake, eat something. He watched fat tears slide down the mum’s cheeks and wondered just how awful it would feel not to be able to provide for your child. To not be able to make him better. To not be able to feed him. That ache in his gut intensified. How helpless must Isabel have felt to not be able to grow her baby, to lose their son? And he hadn’t been there for either of them.
Sean had never been helpless and he wasn’t about to start now. He was three steps towards them before mum looked up and shook her head.
He turned to Isabel. ‘His breathing’s laboured. Bluish lips. Exhausted. Won’t eat. He’s going next door, now.’
‘I’ll come with you.’ Obviously seeing the danger too, Isabel nodded, handed the plates over to some of the other volunteers from conference and between them they managed to get mum to follow them into the outreach clinic. As they tried to lay the boy onto a trolley he had a severe coughing fit, then went limp.
‘Quick. Oxygen. Come on, kiddo. Don’t give up on us.’ Sean checked the boy’s airway and grabbed a mask and Ambu bag, wishing, like Isabel, that he could speak the mum’s language. Or even the language of the health-care workers. But luckily they all spoke the language of emergency and in a flurry of activity anticipated what he needed, drew up blood, cleared secretions, put in an IV line—eventually. The boy was so dehydrated that finding a vein was almost impossible. ‘Come on, buddy. Come on, breathe for me.’
As he watched the kid’s chest rise and fall Sean blew out a huff of relief.
He caught Isabel’s eye as she stood waiting with an intubation tube. ‘I think we’re good. He’s settling a little. Pulse rate down from two twenty to one sixty. But we need blood gases and a blue light to the nearest hospital. Probably a bolus of antibiotics to be on the safe side. Who knows what the French is for that?’
Dr Henry, whom Sean and Isabel had met earlier on the clinic tour, appeared from the kitchen and explained in his very decent English that the paramedics had b
een called. The boy would be given the best care available at the public hospital and he thanked them very much for the help.
Mum, meanwhile, was another issue. As she stood and watched them working on her son a keening cry came from deep in her throat as if he were being ripped from her body. She refused to let go of the boy’s hand, getting in the way of the staff. They tried to encourage her to take a step back. She pushed forward. In her confusion and distress she became more and more distressed. In her world, control was key. One wrong foot and you lost what precious little you had.
‘It’s going to be okay. It’s going to be okay. Come with me, love. Let’s sit down, shall we?’ Isabel took her hand and gently pulled her away, wrapping an arm round her dirty clothes and walking her to a quiet corner of the room. The clinic was a prefabricated building with curtains delineating cubicles—the little fella’s crisis had stopped any other consultations from happening and all eyes were on the emergency. A perinatal care centre they might have been, but an emergency care facility they definitely weren’t. ‘They’re doing good. He’s sick, but he’ll be okay.’
Mum clung to Isabel and jabbed a finger towards the trolley. ‘Teo. Teo.’
‘The boy?’ Izzy smiled and pointed towards the child. Her calm demeanour seemed to have an effect on the woman as she stopped gesticulating quite so frantically. ‘His name is Teo? He’s beautiful. And he’s going to be okay. He’s with Sean, and Sean won’t let anything bad happen.’
Now that belief in him was another hard punch to his gut. She believed in him? She believed in him.
‘Oui. Teo.’ This was getting surreal. The woman was speaking French now to Isabel.
Isabel nodded, smiling, and pointed to the woman’s belly. ‘Another baby there?’
Mum rubbed her stomach and sighed, dejectedly. ‘Copil mic.’
Taking her hand, Isabel monitored the lady’s pulse. ‘Hey, Sean, hand me that sphyg, will you? I’ll take her blood pressure while I’m here. I have no idea where she’s from. Are there any translators?’
Her Doctor's Christmas Proposal Page 8
