A wife for the baby doctor

by Josie Metcalfe

  Enough! He cut off his spiralling thoughts fiercely, wondering how on earth he was going to survive the next six months. Now that she’d actually started on his team, it would be impossible to transfer her out of his sight without making some very embarrassing explanations, and…well, apart from seriously blighting her career, it would totally destroy his credibility as the leader of this team, to say nothing of injuring his standing within the medical community.

  If it had been nothing more than the obvious age difference between the two of them, that would be bad enough as far as the gossips were concerned, but it wouldn’t be something that would cause him any major problems with his colleagues. No, it was the fact that she was a junior member of his team that could potentially leave him open to accusations of sexual harassment, and while the powers that be were fully aware of the connection between the two of them, if the scandalmongers were to find out that Dani was his sister…

  ‘You look dreadful,’ he said sharply when her blotchy tear-stained face finally appeared in the doorway to his office. He was becoming more afraid by the hour that this specialty would be too much for her, and his harsh tone was the only way he could cover up the sudden ache around his heart. She’d only been on his team for a matter of days but the busy unit would seem almost empty without the possibility of finding her sunny presence around every corner.

  She gasped at his words as if he’d physically struck her, then a familiar mulish expression crossed her face, followed by, ‘Well, excuse me for momentarily giving way to my emotions, Mr Weatherby. Not all of us have had the operation to remove them.’ And the door closed behind her with a pointed, well-controlled click that spoke more than a slam ever would.

  ‘That went well.’ He sighed harshly and rubbed both hands over his face. ‘The next six months are going to be an absolute nightmare.’ Especially if he was going to have to watch every word around her. ‘So, what’s different about that?’ he grumbled. ‘You’ve been having to watch yourself around her ever since…ever since that kiss she gave you on her eighteenth birthday.’ And that was an image he didn’t need to have inside his head the next time he saw her.

  Thank goodness they would only be interacting in a professional capacity over the next few months. With his mother finally taking the long-delayed trip to meet her new Kasarian relatives, he wouldn’t be forced to hide his feelings in a social or family context.

  CHAPTER THREE

  DANI watched Josh bend over the delicate little wrist, one lean-fingered hand positioning it just right while the other directed the fine surgical steel of the needle into the thread-like vein at the first attempt.

  ‘I’m sorry, sweetheart,’ he murmured when his little patient wailed fitfully. ‘I didn’t mean to make you cry.’

  Dani couldn’t help the warm feeling that spread inside her chest because she knew that he meant it. He really didn’t like making his little charges cry, even when the things he was doing to them were for their benefit.

  ‘At least she can cry now,’ she pointed out. ‘When she had that tube down her throat she couldn’t even let you know she wanted to complain that you were making a pincushion of her.’

  ‘It’s a strange sort of progress when you track it by the baby’s ability to cry,’ he said darkly, but she could tell from the golden gleam in his eyes that he was happy with little Leonie’s latest milestone.

  Happy enough to accept an invitation to go for a drink this evening? she wondered, but didn’t fancy her chances. She’d actually thought that working with him might go some way towards helping him to see that she was a grown woman…an attractive adult who was ready, willing and able to have a relationship with him. As if that was going to happen when he spent most of the time at the other end of the department, or at least the other side of whatever room she happened to be working in.

  Well, as long as he wasn’t staying out of her way because she wasn’t good enough to be on his team…No. If that were the case, he certainly wouldn’t be taking himself off to the other end of the unit. He would be finding the fastest way to shift her into another specialty altogether. So, it must just be that she’d seriously calculated wrongly if she’d thought he was going to change his mind about her, and the important thing to do now was damage limitation. She was going to have to find some way of sitting him down to talk, and then she was going to have to find the right words to let him know that all she wanted from him was to pass on his medical expertise…

  Ha! And what a lie that would be. For the last nine years every man she’d met had been measured against Josh and been found wanting, so it was highly unlikely that making a decision to become…what?…friendly colleagues would work?

  It would only work if he could somehow metamorphose into someone who didn’t set her pulse racing with nothing more than the sound of his voice.

  ‘But I have to work with him for the next six months, so I’ve got to get it under control,’ she muttered through gritted teeth, even as her hackles rose at the sight of Josh smiling at one of the nurses. And that was just plain stupid. She had no right to feel jealous when it was nothing more than one of the hundreds of smiles he showered around in the course of a day…wasn’t it?

  Of course it was. And to prove that it didn’t mean a thing to her, she was finally going to speak to the man and get their new relationship on an even footing, once and for all.

  ‘Josh…ah, Mr Weatherby…’ she corrected herself as she approached the two of them, wishing that her own legs were as long as the leggy beauty who was laughing prettily at something Josh had said. ‘Excuse me, but would it be possible to have a word with you?’ she asked, feeling almost like a child speaking to two grown-ups as they towered over her. It was bad enough that the top of her head barely reached Josh’s heart, but to have the other woman looking down her nose at her as well….

  ‘Thanks for this, Gillian.’ He held up some sort of binder. ‘I’ll let you have it back as soon as I can.’

  ‘Let me know when you’re bringing it over and I’ll cook you a meal…it’s the least I can do to show you how grateful I am,’ the stunning redhead purred before she undulated her way out of the unit on legs that seemed to reach all the way up to her armpits.

  ‘You wanted to speak to me?’ Josh said, and she couldn’t help noticing that the easy smile that had hinted at the dimples he’d always despised as a teenager had completely disappeared now that he was talking to her.

  Dani glanced around and cringed at the number of members of staff within earshot of the two of them. This was hardly the venue she’d hoped for when she’d decided this conversation was necessary, but as the likelihood of Josh agreeing to meet her for a drink at the end of the shift was slim to non-existent, it would have to do.

  She drew in a bracing snatch of air and began in a rush. ‘I wanted to apologise. I realise it was completely unprofessional but I can’t absolutely guarantee that it won’t happen again because even though they warned us right through our training that we shouldn’t get too emotionally involved with our patients, I just couldn’t help it…He was such a tiny little thing and his parents were just so…’

  Josh held both hands up, palms towards her, and shook his head.

  ‘Dani, breathe,’ he said, and her heart lifted when she heard the hint of humour in his tone. ‘Come into my office, because I haven’t got a clue what you’re talking about.’

  He led the way, his long-legged stride forcing her to trot to keep up as he detoured through his secretary’s cramped space rather than accessing the room from the door in the corridor.

  ‘Drat! I’d forgotten that Caitlin wouldn’t be here,’ he muttered as he dropped the glossy folder he was carrying on her desk and reached for a block of bright yellow sticky notes. For a moment there was silence while she watched his familiar slashing handwriting filling the available space, then he peeled the note off the block and stuck it on the folder. ‘Drugs reps,’ he growled in the same tone of voice he would use to speak about an outbreak of MRSA, and sc
owled darkly before leading the way into his own room. ‘It doesn’t matter how many times they’re told to make an appointment, they still try to waylay me to persuade me that their latest wonder drug will solve all my problems.’

  ‘Perhaps it will,’ she suggested sweetly in a replay of several such conversations over the years, then had to fight the urge to grin when he turned the scowl on her.

  ‘It might,’ he admitted, ‘but I’m not willing to let my fragile patients be used as guinea pigs in an unproven drugs trial just because they send a scantily clad female to offer me an all-expenses-paid holiday.’

  ‘Very high-minded of you,’ she agreed, and saw those golden eyes narrow ominously in her direction.

  ‘Wretched girl!’ he complained as he dropped wearily into the chair he’d occupied when he’d broken the bad news to Max’s parents, and waved her to take one, too. ‘You always did know how to wind me up. So, tell me what all that was out in the corridor just now.’

  ‘You mean, when Miss Scanty-pants was trying to climb all over you?’ she asked with an attempt at innocence, enjoying the rare episode of light-hearted teasing between them too much to want to spoil it, even to get the necessary apology off her chest.

  He scowled at her but didn’t comment, opting instead to wait for her to come to the point.

  ‘I just wanted to apologise,’ she said simply. ‘I realise it wasn’t very professional for me to be standing around in a corridor, dripping, and I promise that it won’t happen—’

  ‘I would be most concerned if it didn’t happen again,’ he interrupted sharply. ‘If you aren’t the type of person who can empathise with what these families are going through, then you’re not the right person to be working in my unit.’

  ‘But…’ she tried to interrupt, confused by his apparent about-face.

  ‘That doesn’t mean to say that you should allow your emotions to get in the way of doing your job,’ he continued, totally ignoring her attempt at interruption, ‘and doing it to the very best of your ability. But shedding tears is almost an occupational hazard when you’re working here.’

  Now she really was confused.

  ‘Well, if you see crying as par for the course, why did you snap at me earlier if it wasn’t for crying after baby Max died?’

  He sighed heavily and ran his fingers distractedly through his hair, disturbing the professional-looking neatness and revealing the fact that it was definitely more than a week beyond its usual neatly barbered length. Any longer and it would start looking like a lion’s mane with those natural pale streaks in the dark blond thickness of it.

  ‘I’m sorry about that, but…’ He paused and shook his head, a frown of concern etched on his forehead. ‘If I snapped at you it’s because I’m not certain whether this is the right specialty for you. You’re so soft-hearted that you’ll probably end up breaking your heart over every one of the patients and—’

  ‘And you’re so hard-bitten that you don’t? Ha!’ she challenged with a disbelieving laugh. ‘Josh, I’ve known you too long to believe that eye-wash. Don’t forget, I saw you every spring when you tried to rescue the baby birds that fell out of their nests, and when you saw that cat hit by the car that day when you came to meet me from school. I walked all the way to the vet’s with you when you carried it there to see if they could fix its leg.’ Apparently, the poor creature had been so badly injured that there had been nothing the vet could do but put it out of its misery, but she could still remember the expression on Josh’s face and had known that he’d taken the animal’s death as a personal failure.

  ‘That was a long time ago,’ he said dismissively, but she couldn’t help seeing the hint of colour that washed up over his lean cheeks.

  ‘But you haven’t really changed in all the time I’ve known you,’ she countered. ‘You still need to take care of anything smaller and weaker than yourself…whether it needs taking care of or not.’ she added with a stubborn lift of her chin. ‘That’s the whole point of the next six months, isn’t it? So that I get a solid grounding on what you do in this sort of unit, and to see if this really is where my career lies.’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘But nothing,’ she snapped, wondering how she could still find him so attractive even when she was so annoyed with him. ‘Whether you like it or not, Mr Weatherby, I’m a bona fide member of your team for the next six months, and I will do my job to the best of my ability. And if I have to take a couple of minutes off to blow my nose and put cold water on my eyes when we lose one of the tinies, then you can dock the time from my pay, but you aren’t going to frighten me off by huffing and puffing…sir!’

  He gave an exasperated sigh. ‘Dani, I’m not trying to frighten you off. Heaven knows, we need all the top-notch doctors we can recruit, but this is a high-stress specialty and—’

  ‘And you don’t think I’m up to it, is that it?’ She could feel her blood pressure rising by the second.

  ‘No. It’s not that. It’s—’

  ‘Dammit, Josh, are you ever going to see that I’m not that little scrap hanging on to life by a thread?’ She barely stopped herself from shouting it at him, only just remembering in time that there was a whole busy department outside the door. ‘I’m all grown up now. I’m a qualified doctor, trying to decide what specialty to follow for the rest of my career. I’ve got a brain and I know how to use it. I don’t need you following me around to make sure I don’t fall down and skin my knees.’

  She spun round on one foot and strode swiftly out of the door, suddenly afraid that she would break the habit of a lifetime and resort to physical violence if she had to stay in the same room as him one second longer.

  ‘This definitely wasn’t a good idea,’ she muttered under her breath as she filled a plastic cup with cold water, then downed it in one draught, hoping that it would cool her down.

  But working in Josh’s unit hadn’t only been the ideal professional step for her. She’d also seen it as a last chance to build on their former relationship, hoping that Josh would realise that they could be something very different than brother and sister to each other.

  So far, all the proximity seemed to be doing was driving a deeper wedge than ever between the two of them.

  Several hours later Josh was still alternating between anger that Dani had sounded off at him in such an unprofessional way and a sneaking sense of guilt that every word she’d said had been nothing less than the truth.

  The very last thing he needed was to have her tell him where to draw the line. He already knew he could be a rather overbearing big brother, but he came by those tendencies naturally—it felt as if he’d been watching over her for almost every moment of the first twenty-seven years of her life. The trouble was, he didn’t dare relax his guard or who knew where they would end up. That slip on her eighteenth birthday had left her wary of him for the first time in her life, much to his dismay, and he didn’t intend doing anything else to drive her away.

  The alternative—losing her presence even on the edges of his world—wasn’t something he liked to contemplate, so he had to keep any hint of his attraction to her buried out of sight.

  ‘And there’s no point in having her spend six months in the unit if she doesn’t learn as much as possible,’ he reminded himself when he contemplated locking himself away in his office for the duration. ‘You’re just going to have to treat her like any other new recruit to the team and get on with your job.’ And forget the fact that the very molecules of the air seemed charged with electricity whenever she was there; and that his heart beat faster and every sinew and muscle seemed to grow tense when they were in the same room; and that when they touched—even the most innocently inadvertent of brushes—his body responded with the embarrassing eagerness of a teenager on a hormonal overload.

  ‘You’re talking to yourself again,’ said a nearby male voice, and Josh’s cheeks heated in a very juvenile way when he saw his fellow paediatrician standing in the doorway.

  ‘Tim. I didn’t hear
you come in,’ he said shortly, hoping it looked as if he’d been muttering over the piles of paperwork on his desk rather than one aggravating pocket-sized junior doctor.

  ‘Caitlin said it was all right to come in as your new recruit had just left.’ Tim Nuttall collapsed bonelessly into the nearest chair and stretched his lanky legs almost halfway across the available floor space. ‘How’s she working out so far?’

  For several seconds Josh had no idea what to say. He certainly couldn’t tell an inveterate gossip like Tim that the next six months were going to be purgatory on earth, and he definitely couldn’t tell him why.

  Unfortunately, Tim didn’t need him to say a word. He was quite capable of reading meanings into even the briefest of pauses.

  ‘I’m not surprised you’re lost for words,’ he said with a meaningful chuckle and a lecherous waggle of his eyebrows. ‘I don’t know how you’re going to get anything done for the next six months with someone who looks like that on your staff.’

  Twenty-seven years of practice had his protective feelings rearing up in Dani’s defence.

  ‘You know as well as I do that I wouldn’t make any untoward advances towards one of my staff—not if I want to stay clear of harassment charges.’

  ‘As if it never happens,’ Tim scoffed. ‘Why, I could tell you of at least half a dozen “relationships” that have been going on in just the last—’

  ‘I don’t want to know,’ Josh interrupted curtly. ‘All that matters to me is that it won’t be happening in my unit.’

  ‘In that case, old man, if you’ll take my advice you’ll go out as soon as possible and get yourself thoroughly laid, because that’s the only way I’d be able to keep it zipped if I were going to be working with that gorgeous little doll. Do you know if she’s single or…?’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Tim. If you haven’t got anything better to talk about, I have. Was there a serious point to this visit or can I get on with what I was doing?’