Accidental Rendezvous

by Caroline Anderson

  ACCIDENTAL RENDEZVOUS

  Caroline Anderson

  Audley Memorial Hospital – Book 24

  An emotional emergency

  In the seven years since their breakup, Sally has had to come to terms with some strong emotions. When Nick Baker suddenly turns up at the Audley emergency department, Sally cannot face having him in her personal life again.

  But Nick has been searching for her, and now that he's found her he's not going to let her go. He expects Sally to be angry with him; he discovers that she's also angry with herself. Because all those years ago they had a baby daughter and Nick never had the chance to be her dad.

  CHAPTER ONE

  She would have known that laugh anywhere.

  It rippled down the corridor, bringing smiles to the faces of the people who heard it, raising a chuckle here and there, leaving no one untouched. It was a rich, warm laugh; a deep laugh, spontaneous and generous, the laugh of a man who knew how to enjoy life.

  It nearly brought Sally to her knees.

  Heart pounding, her mouth dry, the strength in her legs vanishing by the second, she propped herself up against the nearest wall and sucked in a slow, steadying breath.

  Not Nick. Please, God, not Nick. Not here, not now. Not ever! Seven years hadn't made it any easier to think about him, and if she imagined she'd got over him, well, now she knew that lie for what it was.

  She could hear footsteps approaching, and the low murmur of masculine voices, and before she could prise herself from the wall and run for cover Ryan O'Connor, the senior A and E consultant, appeared around the corner with another man at his side—a man that Sally had longed for and yet had hoped never to see again—and she was trapped.

  'Ah, Sally! Just the person I was looking for,' Ryan said with a broad smile. 'Meet Dr Nick Baker, my new specialist registrar.'

  Reluctantly, her throat working convulsively to swallow the huge lump that had appeared as if by magic, she let her eyes move from Ryan to Nick.

  How odd, she thought with the small, distant part of her brain that still seemed to be functioning. He's changed, and yet he's exactly the same.

  Her eyes, greedy for him, took inventory. Solidly built, a shade under six feet, his mid-brown hair shorter than it used to be but still rumpled and untidy, his eyes the same astonishing blue behind the character lines that bracketed them now, his mouth mobile and expressive, the smile every bit as sexy as it had ever been—

  'Hello, Sally,' he murmured, and the voice like dark chocolate slithered over her nerve endings and brought her hormones snapping to attention.

  'Hello, Nick,' she said automatically, and then Ryan's words sank in. New specialist registrar? she thought frantically. He's working here? Belatedly she noticed the white coat, the stethoscope slung casually round his neck, the name badge on his pocket.

  Thank goodness she was still propped up against the wall, because at that moment, without it, she would have fallen over with the shock.

  'Sally's a tyrant,' Ryan was saying with a hint of laughter in his soft Canadian voice. 'Stay on the right side of her and you'll be OK, but she runs a tight ship and she doesn't suffer fools gladly. Her temper's legendary.'

  'That hasn't changed, then,' Nick murmured, his eyes scanning her, and she felt the touch of his gaze like fingers of fire over her body.

  'Hey, Sally, your reputation seems to have preceded you,' Ryan said with an amused chuckle, but Nick shook his head, his eyes never leaving her.

  'No. We're old buddies—aren't we, Sal?' he replied, and his eyes challenged her to defy him.

  'Absolutely,' she said, still groping for a coherent thought. She dredged up a smile, hopefully not too inane, and switched her gaze pointedly to Ryan. 'Well, to be exact, we were old buddies. We worked together, many years ago—'

  'Seven,' Nick said softly.

  And she thought, He remembers. How odd. I'm surprised he can even be bothered to remember my name. She cranked up the smile.

  'Is it really? Good heavens.'

  A strong brow twitched sceptically, but he let it go, his mouth tipping in an answering smile more genuine than her own. 'It's good to see you again.'

  He was holding out his hand, and without a huge breach of social etiquette it would have been impossible to ignore it. Heart pounding, she placed her hand in his and felt the shock of that contact, the first in seven years, to the tips of her toes.

  His hand was hard and warm and dry, his fingers curling round hers. His thumb brushed against the outside of her wrist—by accident? It sent quivers of reaction up the nerves in her arm.

  She snatched her hand back as soon as was decently possible, but not before the impact of that everyday social gesture had played havoc with her blood pressure and turned her already weakened legs to jelly.

  Ryan grinned at her. 'Well, since you two know each other, why don't I leave you to show Nick round the department and catch up on old times? I have a couple of letters to dictate and some calls to make while we're quiet.'

  'Quiet? You do know how to tempt fate, don't you?' she said with what she hoped was her usual cynicism, struggling for a normal tone that didn't betray her shock. Not for the world did she want Nick to know he still had any effect on her—and especially not that effect! She turned to him as Ryan walked away.

  'I don't have long,' she said crisply. 'I'm briefing some new nurses in a few minutes, but I can give you a quick whizz round and show you the basics. The rest you'll pick up as you go along.'

  'I'm sure you'll put me straight if I don't,' he murmured, his voice tinged with irony, and she had a flicker of guilt. It was stupid to fall out with him over nothing. Whatever lay behind them, they still had to work together in the near future, and there was no point in them getting off on the wrong foot. And Ryan's remark about her temper hadn't helped at all.

  'I'm not really the dragon he made me out to be,' she told him, embarrassed by Ryan's summing up of her character.

  'I'm sure you're not,' he said mildly.

  She sneaked a sideways glance at him, but his face was bland and innocent of any expression. Huh! He always had been a hell of a poker player. She wondered if he'd known she was here. He hadn't seemed surprised to see her—or maybe she just didn't have the effect on him that he had on her. Even so, after all this time and after what they'd been to each other, she would have expected some reaction.

  She took him round the department, introducing him to people, showing him the layout, while her mind whirled.

  Coincidence, or not? Most people tended to stick to one particular part of the country for their specialist training, because it made for a less disrupted social life. It wasn't always possible, of course, and sometimes people were forced to move away for a rotation.

  The last time she'd known his whereabouts, he'd been in Manchester, well away from Suffolk, so maybe disruption wasn't something that worried him, or maybe he'd moved on long ago.

  Whatever, even if he'd been training within their region for some time, that covered umpteen hospitals scattered all across East Anglia. However, only so many had an A and E department of any size or note, so it was almost inevitable they'd end up together at some point. He would hardly have to engineer it. It could quite easily have been coincidence.

  What she didn't know, of course, and couldn't find out—short of asking him, which was totally out of the question—was whether he had deliberately chosen a rotation here at the Audley Memorial, or if it was an accident of fate. Absolutely the last thing she intended to do was sound even slightly interested in his personal life or his reason for doing anything— but she would like to know...

  Anyway, in her heart she knew the answer. After their acrimonious and bitter parting, and most especially after he'd fai
led to answer her plea when she'd needed him—really, really needed him—there was no way that he'd have come looking for her.

  Which left coincidence.

  All she had to decide now was whether she could survive it.

  'Sally, RTA coming in, several casualties, more to follow,' her young staff nurse, Meg, said as she hurried up to them. 'I've warned the front desk and they're clearing Resus.'

  'Thanks. You might dig Ryan out of his office - he's trying to do paperwork. He'll probably welcome you with open arms. And put those new girls with someone doing something routine, could you? I don't want to frighten them both off on their first morning.' Nick, on the other hand, was a different proposition altogether. She turned to him and gave him a grim smile. 'OK, then. Let's see how .the boy wonder shaped up, shall we?'

  His answering smile was equally grim. 'Why do I get the feeling I'm on trial here?' he murmured, and, dropping a casual hand on her shoulder, he turned her round and headed back towards Resus.

  She could hear sirens in the distance, and she hurried to prepare everything in readiness for the influx. Patients were shuffled, reassured and soothed, equipment was checked, Ambulance Control quizzed again as to the exact number and severity of their casualties.

  Through it all she could feel the imprint of his palm—could still feel it, hours later, when all the blood and mayhem had subsided and they were back to the usual level of pandemonium that passed for normality in the department.

  Well, Nick thought, as introductions to a job went, this one couldn't have been much tougher. They'd been working side by side, and if he hadn't known better he would have thought Sally had been keeping an eye on him.

  Checking him out, no less, making sure he was up to speed.

  Damn cheek! His mouth tipped into the faintest grin. It had its upside, though: He'd spent the morning hip to hip and shoulder to shoulder with her, locked together in the battle to save their patients.

  He hadn't had time to think about what he'd been doing and whether she'd approve of it. He'd just gone into autopilot, working flat out to save first one, then another of the casualties. He'd had to rely on her, and she'd been there, keeping pace with him every step of the way.

  She'd been amazing to work with—fast, efficient, precise—a real treasure. She would have been a brilliant doctor, and she was plenty clever enough, but as she'd told him all those years ago, it wasn't what she wanted to do.

  She wanted to nurse, and she was still doing it, although she was far enough up the ladder now to be in a nurse manager's post, instead of remaining on the shop floor so to speak, in amongst it.

  It was where she belonged, of course, working in a highly skilled and specialised post where her undoubted talents were exploited to the full.

  And they have been today, heaven knows, Nick thought. He pictured again the frightened young mother they'd had to stabilise, and Sally's gentle reassurance as he'd explored the full extent of her injuries. She'd kept the woman calm, focused her mind on the positive and all the time she'd been working beside him, assisting him and keeping him updated with the woman's status.

  And now it was lunchtime, his stomach told him, and if there was a God at all he'd get a few minutes off and time to talk Sally into a cup of coffee and a sandwich. After all, as Ryan had said, they had a lot of catching up to do.

  There was no God, of course, or if there was He was having lunch Himself. There was nothing drastic, just a steady stream of casualties ranging from the life-threatened to the frankly malingering, and it was ages before he saw her again.

  She accosted him as he went from the work station back towards a cubicle with an X-ray result.

  'Have you had a break recently?' she said almost accusingly.

  He shook his head, wondering if that was an unpardonable sin in her strictly run department or if she was about to proposition him. 'No, I haven't had time.'

  'Nor have I,' she confessed. 'Grab a moment and come into the staffroom when you've dealt with that—is it straightforward?'

  A proposition? Maybe there was a God after all. He nodded again. 'Yes—a query fracture that isn't. It just needs Tubigrip and advice.'

  'Right. I'll make you a coffee and guard the biscuits if there are any. I don't want you keeling over. Be quick.'

  He changed his mind. It sounded like the unpardonable sin option, to his disappointment. Ah, well.

  He was quick—as quick as he could be without neglecting the patient's interests—and then, reminding himself that he wasn't the only doctor on duty and he needed a break if he was to be of any real use for the rest of his shift, he walked determinedly past a crying child in the next cubicle, past a nurse carrying a set of notes who tried to hail him, and into the staffroom.

  Sally was in there with her back to him, bending over to retrieve something from a cupboard, and he was treated to the curve of her bottom and a peep of slender legs when her skirt rode up as she turned towards him.

  'The coffee's run out,' she said in disgust. 'Will tea do?'

  'Tea's fine,' he assured her, wondering if he was going to make a public disgrace of himself and dragging his eyes from the long sweep of her thigh. She straightened, to his simultaneous relief and disappointment, and started clattering mugs about.

  'So, how are things going?' she asked over her shoulder.

  He went closer, just to be near her, to stand within range of the scent of her skin and feel the warmth from her body.

  Not that he was cold—far from it. 'Things are going fine,' he murmured, and she jumped and whirled round.

  'Do you have to creep up on .me?' she said crossly, and to his delight she looked flustered—flustered and every bit as beautiful as she ever had. He smiled.

  'Sorry—just coming to get my mug from you,' he said innocently.

  She made a noise under her breath that could have been anything but was probably disgust, and stuck a mug in his hand. 'White, no sugar, not too much milk—that right still?'

  She remembers, he thought, and felt a stab of regret. 'Yes, that's right still,' he said softly. Grabbing a handful of biscuits from the tin she offered him, he retreated to the other side of the room, dropped into a comfy chair and crossed one ankle over the other knee to give his feelings a little privacy.

  He'd been too busy earlier to react, but now, with this little homely act, she'd brought back a whole host of memories he really didn't have the time to deal with.

  'So how've you been?' he asked in what he hoped was a level voice, and she shrugged and smiled brightly. Too brightly.

  'Oh, fine. Busy. You?'

  He shrugged. 'So-so. Busy, like you. Too busy, really.'

  'Is that why you're here, in the country, looking for a change of pace?' she asked, a touch of disapproval in her voice. 'If so, I hate to disappoint you but we ran flat out all day and all night. Even country bumpkins have accidents.'

  He gave a soft, wry laugh. 'Is that what you think? That I'm looking for a quiet life? I haven't altered that much.'

  Her eyes scanned him almost guiltily, and she looked away. 'No, I don't suppose you have,' she said, and her voice sounded gruff and a little taut.

  'Anyway,' he said, just to make the point, 'I've been working in country hospitals for years now, so it's hardly a change of pace.'

  'No.' She stood up, put a little cold water in her tea from the tap and drained it, then all but dropped the mug on the worktop in her haste. 'I have to get on. I'll see you later.'

  'What are you doing after work?' he asked impulsively, stopping her in her tracks.

  Slowly, as if she was giving herself time, she turned towards him. 'Nothing,' she said clearly. 'Either with you, or anyone else.'

  And she turned on her heel and walked away.

  He gave a slow smile. It was a putdown, without a shadow of a doubt, but it had failed. 'Either with you, or anyone else,' she'd said, and that left the smile on his face, because if there was one thing he didn't want to do, it was tread on someone else's toes and upset things for h
er if she'd got her life on track.

  And if she wasn't doing anything with anyone else, then from where he was sitting right now that was a definite plus.

  But progress, he thought with a laughing sigh, was clearly going to be measured in microns...

  'Why, oh, why, oh why—?'

  'Sally?'

  She looked up at Ryan, standing beside her and eyeing her quizzically. 'Hi, there,' she said brightly. 'Problem?'

  'Not me,' he said, his eyes all too perceptive. 'It was you I was worried about. Are you OK?'

  'Me? Of course,' she lied.

  'Just wondered. You looked a little poleaxed earlier. It just occurred to me that you and Nick might have had something going once..I hope it won't be a problem.'

  'No problem,' she assured him with false cheer, and wondered if it could possibly be true or if it was going to be, as she suspected, a living nightmare until he moved on again. Perhaps it was time to take some in-service training—in Alaska or somewhere. Maybe Ryan could recommend a nice, remote Canadian hospital—

  'Just wondering, that's all,' Ryan murmured. 'You want to talk to me, you know where to find me.'

  'Ryan, thanks, but I'm fine. It was over years ago, and it was nothing much anyway,' she assured him, and wondered why God didn't strike her down for such a whopper.

  Or maybe it was the truth, and it really had been nothing much, only she'd been too lovestruck and besotted to realise it.

  With a sharp sigh, she snatched up the next set of notes, shot through the cubicles and went out to the heaving waiting room. With any luck she'd be able to avoid him for the rest of the day. She scanned the crowd.

  'Mrs Johnson? Can you come through, please?'

  Luck wasn't on her side that day. A scant hour later, Sally stuck her head round the corner of the cubicle where Nick was working and beckoned him.

  'Could I have a quick word, Dr Baker?' she murmured.

  'Sure. Excuse me a moment.'

  He stood up and ducked through the curtain, raising a brow quizzically. 'Problem?'