Mario was already holding out a syringe to her, and she smiled. It was so good to be back. She hadn’t been exaggerating when she’d said she’d been mind-numbingly bored at home. No matter what she’d done—whether it had been watching TV, reading or surfing the net—she’d found herself constantly thinking about the unit, wondering what was happening, what she was missing, and to be back was heaven, pure heaven.
‘If you could put your son down on the floor for me for a few minutes, Mrs Lowell,’ she said, ‘I promise all you’ll feel is a tiny pinprick in your hand and then, once the anaesthetic has taken effect, I’ll be able to stitch your thumb and you’ll be on your way.’
‘If you say so, Doctor,’ the young mother muttered, gazing apprehensively at the syringe, and Mario smiled encouragingly at her.
‘Hey, relax. We haven’t lost a patient yet.’
‘Maybe not, but there’s always a first time,’ Judy Lowell observed. She put her son down and fixed him with a stern gaze. ‘Be a good boy for Mummy, Jack, and don’t touch anything.’
‘He’ll be fine,’ Kate said reassuringly, as she inserted the anaesthetic into the young woman’s hand. ‘There’s not a lot in here he can find interesting.’
‘That’s what I thought when I took him to Inverness on the train last week,’ Judy Lowell replied, ‘and he still managed to lock himself in the train toilet. They had to take the door off to get him out.’
Kate laughed. ‘He sounds like a real livewire.’ She prodded gently at Mrs Lowell’s hand, and nodded. ‘That looks nicely numb to me. Nurse Volante…?’
She hadn’t needed to ask. Mario was already holding out the needle and suturing thread to her, and with a smile of thanks she took them from him.
‘You don’t have an Aberdonian accent, Mrs Lowell,’ she declared, deliberately making conversation to help put the young mother at her ease while she sutured her thumb. ‘Where are you from?’
‘Yorkshire, originally,’ Judy Lowell replied, ‘but my husband works in the oil industry so we had to relocate here.’
‘Does he work offshore?’ Kate asked, and Mrs Lowell nodded.
‘Quite what he’s going to say about my hand…Jack, put that bottle cap down. Jack, no—not in your mouth.’
Kate whirled round quickly, but she was too late. The bottle cap had disappeared and Jack was smiling up at them, completely unconcerned.
‘Spit it out, Jack,’ Mario declared, his voice deliberately casual, his hand outstretched, but Jack didn’t.
In fact, Jack was beginning to gulp, and choke, quite alarmingly. ‘Oh, my God,’ Mrs Lowell shrieked, sending the tray of instruments which Mario had left beside her flying. ‘Do something!’
Mario did. Quickly, he put his finger inside the child’s mouth.
‘Can’t feel it,’ he muttered, then knelt down, put the little boy across his thighs, and administered five firm blows to the middle of the toddler’s back.
Nothing happened. The bottle top was clearly wedged tight in Jack’s windpipe and his breath was coming in increasingly wheezy gasps.
‘Oh, my God,’ Mrs Lowell cried. ‘He’s choking—he’s choking!’
Again, Mario hit the toddler squarely in the centre of his back and, to Kate’s relief, with a cough, and a splutter, the bottle cap suddenly shot out of Jack’s mouth and landed on the floor.
‘We have a result,’ Mario declared, smiling up at Mrs Lowell, and she promptly burst into tears.
‘I don’t know what to say,’ she sobbed. ‘How to thank you, Doctor—’
‘Nurse, actually.’
‘You were wonderful—just wonderful,’ Mrs Lowell continued. ‘If I weren’t a married woman, I’d kiss you.’
‘Well, I won’t tell, if you don’t,’ Mario said, his eyes gleaming, and Kate laughed, and Mrs Lowell laughed, and Jack looked thoroughly confused.
‘Well done on the quick reflexes,’ Kate said once she’d finished stitching Mrs Lowell’s hand and the young mother and her son had gone safely on their way.
‘All in a day’s work,’ he replied airily. ‘Mario Volante, leaper of tall buildings in a single bound, rescuer of cats stuck up trees, saviour of small children in distress.’
‘And cleaner up of cubicle 4 which now looks as though a bomb has hit it,’ Kate replied, her lips twitching, and he looked outraged.
‘Superman never got this,’ he protested, and she laughed and shook her head and shooed him, still grumbling, back into cubicle 4.
What was it about him that she liked so much? she wondered as she erased Judy Lowell’s name from the whiteboard. OK, so he was good-looking, and he made her laugh, but she’d met other men who had been able to do the same and none of them had ever been able to reach her in quite the way Mario had. What was it that was so different about him? She was damned if she knew, and, with a sigh, she turned to see who was next on the list only to frown slightly as she watched a middle-aged man walk slowly towards the treatment room door, then turn to stare back at her, looking distinctly disgruntled.
‘Terri,’ she said slowly as the sister passed her. ‘That man who’s just leaving—hasn’t he been in before?’
‘You examined him about ten days ago. His name’s Stewart Bolton, and he came in with food poisoning on the same day as all those other people with food poisoning. Paul reckons he’s a bounce-back.’
Maybe he was, Kate thought, as she watched the man leave, but bounce-backs didn’t usually come in complaining of food poisoning. They presented with much vaguer, woollier symptoms that could have fitted any amount of conditions.
‘Did he come in with the same symptoms?’ she asked. ‘Sickness, vomiting, diarrhoea?’
‘Yup, but now he’s added dizzy spells, and feeling “just plain odd” to his list. He also seemed less than pleased to have Paul examining him.’
Kate’s frown deepened. That was unusual, too. Bounce-backs were normally delighted to see as many different doctors as possible because then there was less likelihood of them being told there was nothing wrong with them, but this man hadn’t been happy.
‘If he presents again, I want to see him,’ she said. ‘He probably is just a bounce-back, but I’d like to take another look at him just to make sure.’
‘Not a problem,’ Terri declared, then leant forward, her eyes sparkling. ‘Now, you were going to finish what you were telling me about Mario.’
Was she? Kate couldn’t remember promising she would, but she couldn’t see any way out of it. Terri wouldn’t give her a minute’s peace until she told her the truth, and while Mario had forbidden her to tell anybody anything she was certain—OK, make that ninety-nine per cent certain—that he hadn’t meant to include one of her oldest and closest friends.
‘OK, I’ll tell you the truth,’ Kate declared, glancing over her shoulder to make sure no one was listening. ‘But you mustn’t tell anybody what I’m going to tell you because it’s very hush-hush, and you most definitely mustn’t tell Mario that you know.’
‘OK—OK,’ Terri said impatiently. ‘Now, give.’
‘Mario…He used to be a doctor,’ Kate said, ‘but now he’s a policeman. An inspector to be exact, in the drugs squad. He’s working undercover on a case here, but I can’t tell you any more than that.’
‘Oh, wow,’ Terry breathed, her eyes round. ‘Frank is never going to believe this. When I tell him—’
‘Terri, you can’t tell your husband—you can’t tell anybody,’ Kate interrupted quickly. ‘As I said it’s top secret.’
‘Well, he can’t be investigating somebody in our department,’ Terri murmured as though Kate hadn’t spoken, ‘because I check the drug cupboard every day, and nothing’s ever been missing.’
‘Terri—’
‘It’s Duncan Hamilton, isn’t it?’ Terri said with sudden triumph. ‘Mario’s here because of that body-packer, isn’t he?’
‘You didn’t hear that from me,’ Kate declared, beginning to panic. ‘I never said—’
‘Oh, Kate, this is so e
xciting.’
You don’t know the half of it, Kate thought grimly.
She fervently wished she didn’t either as the evening wore on and every time she looked up it was to find either Terri staring at her, clearly still agog with what she’d revealed, Paul looking as though somebody had just stolen his favourite toy, or their new porter’s eyes boring into her. In fact, the only person who didn’t seem to feel the need to stare at her was Mario, and she wasn’t altogether sure whether that was a good thing or not.
‘Tired?’ Mario asked when their shift was eventually over and Kate wearily went into her office to retrieve her handbag.
‘A bit,’ she admitted.
‘Just as well we’re going home, then, isn’t it?’ he said, and she smiled back only for her smile to slide slowly sideways as the implication of his words sank in.
He meant home, as in her home. Home as in the two of them sharing her tiny one-bedroomed flat for goodness knew how long. OK, so she’d agreed to it this afternoon, but she hadn’t really thought it through. Not properly.
‘Won’t you need to go back to your place first to collect some of your belongings?’ she said hopefully, and he shook his head.
‘I phoned Ralph when I got into the hospital this afternoon, and he nipped round to my flat, packed a bag for me, and brought it round to Reception about an hour ago.’
Which meant she wouldn’t even have a minute to herself when she got home. He’d be there, right from the start. In her flat. Her tiny little flat. Alone with him.
‘Kate, is something wrong?’
‘Not a thing,’ she said brightly. ‘Everything’s fine. Great. Terrific.’
Except that it wasn’t, she thought as she followed him out of the hospital and into his car. In fact, she must have been insane to ever have agreed to him moving in with her.
Not insane, her mind whispered. Just desperate to get back to work at any price, and now she was going to have to pay that price. She was going to somehow have to forget what Mario looked like, forget how he made her feel when he smiled at her, and definitely get her libido under control. He was staying with her purely and simply for her own safety, so she had to pull herself together or there was a very real danger that she could end up looking like the biggest idiot of all time.
‘So, that’s it, then,’ Kate said, all too aware that her voice had come out way too cheerleader bright but quite unable to prevent it. ‘Now you know where everything is, you shouldn’t get lost. Not that my flat is big enough to get lost in, of course…’ Oh, sheesh, shut up, Kate. ‘But if you ever did…’
‘Forgive me for saying this,’ Mario replied as he dumped his haversack in the middle of the sitting room. ‘But why does virtually nothing in your home look as though you bought it?’
‘Probably because I didn’t,’ she said. ‘The people who owned this flat before me didn’t want to take their furniture with them, so I sort of inherited it. I’ve been meaning to replace it, but…’ She shrugged. ‘I just haven’t got round to it.’
‘What you mean is, you don’t want to buy anything to make this flat your home, because you don’t feel as though it is.’
‘You know, your ability to read my mind is getting seriously spooky,’ she said with a nervous smile. ‘I guess I’ve always felt sort of temporary here—as though there was no point in doing anything—but I will, eventually, of course.’
‘You should live in the country,’ he observed. ‘In a grey granite house with little lattice windows, surrounded by an old-fashioned country garden.’
It sounded wonderful, but she shook her head.
‘The commuting would be a nightmare, and you know the kind of hours I put in. I’d hardly ever be there.’
‘Then work less hours,’ he protested, ‘learn to delegate. There’s a whole world out there, Kate, and you’re letting it pass you by.’
‘I bet you work just as long hours as I do,’ she protested and he smiled ruefully.
‘Guilty, I’m afraid, but you really should think about moving out into the country. I can just picture you there, wearing one of those big straw hats, weeding in the garden—’
‘News flash. I can’t tell the difference between a weed and a flower,’ she said, and he frowned at her.
‘Look, whose fantasy is this?’
‘You have a fantasy about me?’ she said, beginning to laugh, but she stopped very fast when his eyes met hers then shot away, fast.
Oh, hell. Why had she said that? OK, so she hadn’t meant it the way it had sounded, but she should never have said it. She should have said something casual, dismissive, innocuous, but, no. She had to go and suggest he had fantasies about her. Terrific, Kate. Really terrific.
‘Would…?’ She swallowed and started again. ‘I know it’s way past midnight, but would you like something to eat?’
‘I don’t want to be a nuisance—’
‘You’re not being a nuisance,’ she insisted. ‘I was going to have something myself, anyway, and there’s some cold ham in the fridge with salad, or—’
‘Cold ham sounds great,’ he interrupted, looking every bit as uncomfortable as she felt until his glance fell on the copies of La Bohème and Aida sitting on top of her stereo. ‘You lied about the heavy metal, Kate.’
‘Which you knew,’ she replied, without heat. ‘So, I like opera, so what?’
‘All those people singing at the top of their lungs, in a language most people don’t understand.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘Give me Johnny Cash any day of the week.’
‘I thought all Italians liked opera?’ she said, and he gave her a hard stare.
‘That’s like saying all Scotsmen love the bagpipes, or all French people eat snails. It’s a cliché.’
She laughed. ‘I suppose so. I guess we’ll just have to accept that we have completely opposite taste in music, although you know what they say about opp—’ She came to a sudden halt, feeling her cheeks beginning to burn as she remembered, too late, what people actually said about opposites. ‘I mean…what I meant was…What I intended to say was—’
‘I think I might freshen up before dinner,’ he interrupted, picking up his haversack. ‘Get out of this uniform, if that’s OK with you.’
‘Oh, yes, definitely get out of your uniform!’ she exclaimed, then bit her lip with mortification when she realised how suggestive that had sounded. ‘I mean, you know where the bathroom is, so feel free to…to do whatever you want to do.’
And I want to die, she thought, when he walked out of the sitting room, and she sagged against the sofa.
What in the world was wrong with her? Half an hour—that was all the time he’d been in her flat—and every time she’d opened her mouth she’d managed to say something suggestive. He must think she was either a complete flake or coming on to him.
OK, when he came back from the bathroom she was going to stick to the weather, and the state of the NHS, she decided as she hurried into her kitchen and began pulling plates out of the cupboard. Nice, safe, boring topics that couldn’t possibly result in her putting her foot in her mouth. In fact, it might be better if she didn’t say anything at all. Just nodded, or shook her head, and gave up on conversation completely.
‘Kate, what’s this?’
‘What’s what?’ she asked, taking the ham out of the fridge, and glancing over her shoulder, only to freeze, slack-jawed, when she saw that he had changed into his jeans.
The jeans she’d once thought scruffy, and yet now they looked sexy. Very sexy when they were teamed with a blue checked shirt that he hadn’t bothered to button right up to the neck so she could see the deep V of olive skin at his throat. The throat she knew belonged to a broad muscular chest, a chest she’d been having X-rated dreams about for the past week.
‘…your bathroom.’
‘Sorry?’ she said, dragging her gaze up from his throat to his blue eyes which were frowning. ‘What did you say?’
‘I said,’ he declared, his eyes hardening as he held out a syringe to
her, ‘I found this in your bathroom.’
‘It’s…’ She blinked and regrouped quickly. ‘It’s Anapen. I have an allergy to almonds so I always keep a supply in my bag, and in the bathroom.’
‘Oh.’
A slight tinge of dark colour began to creep across his cheeks, and she stared at him in confusion, then the penny dropped.
‘You thought I was taking drugs, didn’t you?’ she said, fighting down a smile.
‘Suspicion goes with my job, Kate,’ he said, looking more awkward than she’d ever seen him, and she took pity on him.
‘The treatment for anaphylactic shock has moved on quite a bit since you were a doctor,’ she said, taking the syringe from him. ‘This isn’t a normal syringe, it’s an auto-injector. If I inadvertently eat some almonds, I just zap this into my thigh, and it immediately delivers a 0.3 milligram dose of adrenaline.’
He grimaced. ‘Sounds painful.’
‘It is, a bit,’ she admitted, ‘but it’s better than the alternative—a full-blown anaphylactic attack.’
‘How long have you had the allergy?’ he asked curiously as she began heaping some salad onto two plates.
‘Since I was seven. It’s a bit of a nuisance because it means I can’t eat out in restaurants. Just the tiniest trace of almond dust left on a spoon, and I go down like a stone.’
‘That’s scary,’ he said with concern, and she shook her head.
‘It’s not a big deal, honestly.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘Mario, it really isn’t a big deal, so relax, and eat, OK?’ And, when he snapped into a smart salute, she shook her head at him. ‘Oh, very funny. All right, I admit it. I’m bossy.’
‘Not bossy,’ he said as he sat down. ‘You just won’t be belittled, or put down, and those aren’t bad attributes.’
‘Perhaps not,’ she said wryly. ‘But they don’t exactly win you friends.’
‘And you want the kind of friends who would treat you like a doormat?’ he said, and she looked at him, startled for a second, then her lips curved.
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