It felt good to see him fighting laughter as he announced to the room, ‘She said yes!’ in both languages, and to be a part of the happy cheers that greeted the announcement.
And it wasn’t just the memory of Leela’s satisfied little face that had her feeling good when it was time to take her leave. This time she’d spent with Zayed had convinced her that underneath the driven professional persona he showed to the rest of the world, there was a gentle, generous man who would make a wonderful husband and father.
‘Are you sure you don’t want a cup of coffee before you leave?’ he offered, as he stood with her by the front door.
The house behind them was largely silent now, with all the children safely tucked up in their beds even if they weren’t all asleep yet. Most of the staff and parents had either gathered in the kitchen for a restorative cup of tea or coffee or had retired to their rooms, too, knowing that the morning would bring another exhausting, activity-filled day.
‘I’d better not,’ she said, even as a large part of her was aching to spend even a little more time with him. ‘I wouldn’t want to be late for work in the morning or my boss wouldn’t be very happy.’
‘He is a slave driver?’ Zayed asked, and the smile in his voice told her he’d quickly understood that she was teasing him.
‘Actually, no, he isn’t,’ she said honestly, keen to give credit where it was due. ‘He’s an excellent boss and works harder than anyone on his team.’
Emily caught her breath and bit her tongue sharply, suddenly conscious of the extra warmth that had infused the words. She’d only recently become aware of the feelings that had been growing since the first time she’d seen him. Had she betrayed too much?
‘Well, now that he knows about your home situation, you can be sure that he will not have a problem if you should have to leave suddenly to be with your grandmother.’
If there was anything he could have said that would have been more calculated to bring tears to her eyes, Emily didn’t know what it was.
‘Thank you for that,’ she said, and had to blink hard. ‘But the oncologist was fairly certain of the course that her illness would take and how long…’ Her throat closed up, filled with the huge lump of misery that was never far away.
‘Ah, Emily, you know as well as I do that with any disease process there are no certainties,’ he reminded her, and reached for her hand just as he had when they had been sitting side by side not long ago. ‘Just know that I will understand if you need extra time to be with her. She is a lovely lady.’
‘Thank you,’ she managed to whisper, and had to force herself to retrieve her hand from his warm strength and step away. It was far too tempting to stay where she was and hibernate within the cocoon of his consideration. ‘I’ll see you in the morning,’ she murmured as she opened the car door and slid into her seat, when all she wanted to do was walk back to him and wrap her arms around him in the hope that he would wrap his around her.
‘Idiot!’ she berated herself as she made her way down the hill, passing the turning that would have taken her towards Penhally Bay Surgery and the lifeboat station until she came to her grandmother’s cottage.
She switched off the engine then realised that she would far rather turn round and drive back up the hill than go into the darkened house that had been a haven for most of her life. It seemed somehow sad and abandoned now that she knew Beabea wasn’t in there waiting to hear about her day; now that she knew that her grandmother would never be coming back to her little cottage again.
Zayed made one last soft-footed tour through the house as everyone settled down for the night, wondering idly what its wealthy former owner would make of the place.
The basic structure was unchanged, but where the rooms had looked spacious and luxurious before, now some of them almost resembled a cross between boarding-school dormitories and an old-fashioned hospital ward, albeit one with all the latest high-tech gadgetry.
The kitchen where he’d helped himself to a last cup of wickedly strong coffee could have rivalled the best in any of the local hotels and…
‘Stop wasting time,’ he growled into the silence of the one room that was exclusively his as he leant wearily back against the door. ‘There is no point in trying to picture the place through her eyes. She has already told you that she is impressed. And as for the way she was with the children…’
That was the biggest problem, he admitted honestly. The children.
There had been something that had felt so right when the two of them had been sharing the storytelling this evening. It had felt to him almost as if they had been playacting at being parents, and he could see that it had been affecting her every bit as much. And when he had sensed how reluctant she had been to leave…
‘That cannot be allowed to happen,’ he growled fiercely as he kicked off his soft shoes and padded barefoot across the emptiness of the sparsely furnished room towards the bed. ‘She is a talented doctor who could go far. She does not need any involvement in my life, except as a member of staff.’
But even though he said the words aloud, it didn’t stop the thoughts from circling inside his head. Like the intriguing fact that she might be a highly intelligent and dedicated doctor with a lovely rapport with children of all ages, but it almost seemed as if in other ways she was an innocent.
It was all too easy to remember the smiles she’d bestowed on Abir and their other little charges at St Piran’s, and Leela and the others this evening, but it was also dangerously easy to imagine them being directed his way as he discovered exactly what it would take to make her pulse race and the stunning green of her eyes darken with arousal.
‘As if that could ever happen!’ he scoffed bitterly, dismissing the impossible image of Emily Livingston cradling a dark-haired baby against the pale skin of her breast and smiling up at him as the greedy mouth suckled her.
‘Been there, done that,’ he whispered, with a pang of renewed agony for everything he’d lost, knowing that he could never replace it.
And that was why there was absolutely no point in allowing himself to dream that Emily could ever be a permanent part of his life. There was no way he could ask her to give up her obvious natural desire for eventual motherhood, even if he could guarantee her safety, and there was no way he could ever allow himself to be the cause of her destruction.
He already had far too much blood on his hands.
CHAPTER SEVEN
SOMETHING had changed, but she had no idea why.
Emily clicked her safety belt in position and started the engine before she leant back in her seat and stared up at Zayed’s house thoughtfully, trying to pinpoint what was different and when it had happened.
It was nearly a week since that first visit to his house but the magical feeling of being somehow connected to the man may as well have been the last remembered wisps of a dream for all the evidence she’d seen of it since then.
Oh, she was made perfectly welcome by everyone else, and gave them all endless entertainment as she tried to learn enough of their language to be able to communicate in the simplest way with them. Her story-telling was much in demand, too, but, much to her disappointment, since that first day Zayed’s role as interpreter had been taken over by Reza or one of the other staff.
In fact, it was almost as if Zayed was deliberately distancing himself from her, just when she’d realised…
‘Oh, damn!’ Emily breathed when the enormity of her feelings suddenly overwhelmed her.
All she had to do was picture the first moment she’d seen Zayed—the handsome man she’d watched smiling down at Abir—or recall his delighted grin when he’d been submerged under a pile of wriggling children, or the gentle concern he’d shown for Beabea, to know that she had completely lost her heart.
‘I’m in love with him,’ she whispered, saying those special words aloud for the very first time in her life.
And now that she’d made the admission, simple honesty meant that she would also have to admit that the fe
eling had been growing with every day they worked together and with every new facet she discovered of this complex man’s personality.
Unfortunately, that same honesty compelled her to acknowledge that the emotion would be completely wasted on the man because there was so little chance that her feelings would be returned. It wouldn’t matter how much she loved him or for how long because it just wasn’t going to be reciprocated, not while he was haunted by shadows from his past.
Whatever had happened in his former life to drive him out of his own country seemed to have been dreadful enough to close off the essential part of him that would ever be able to love her in return.
Emily put the car in gear and set off down the driveway with a heavy heart.
It would have been wonderful if the realisation that she’d finally fallen in love could be accompanied with the knowledge that she was loved in return, but that wasn’t the case.
Zayed Khalil might be—was—the embodiment of everything she’d ever dreamed of in a life’s partner…hard working, honest, intelligent, handsome, caring…but the last few days had confirmed, without a word needing to be spoken, that he was interested in only one thing—operating on his little patients and seeing them returned to their parents whole and healthy.
Just this week, Emily had assisted while he’d done his utmost to correct clubbed feet that should have been dealt with years earlier, and had given a new cheekbone and eye socket, to replace one eaten away by disease, to a little girl who had believed she would always be too ugly to have any friends.
She’d been given an enormous boost in confidence when he’d offered a quiet word of approval when she’d closed at the end of a particularly harrowing mixed-discipline operation to repair the results of a child on a bicycle who had strayed into the path of a reversing tractor, but as she let herself into Beabea’s darkened cottage it was time for her to admit the painful truth.
She may be the important second pair of hands when she was with him at the operating table, and the second pair of eyes when they were checking on the patients in post-op and ICU, but she could just as well be a particularly sophisticated robot for all the response Zayed had to her on a personal level.
‘Did I do something wrong?’ she murmured as she stood in front of the fridge and tried to summon up some enthusiasm for eating.
If anything, she would have expected him to withdraw from her after she’d worked on his painful muscles and ligaments down on the beach. If he was going to distance himself from her, that would have been the one time that she’d obviously stepped over the boundaries between his exalted status and her far lowlier one.
And yet…She shook her head when she realised that he hadn’t completely withdrawn from all contact with her because Beabea had told her that he’d been back several times to visit her.
At first, Emily had wondered if the visits had been a figment of her grandmother’s mind under the influence of the strong painkillers, but when Nick Tremayne had mentioned bumping into her boss the last time she’d encountered him at Beabea’s bedside, she’d realised that it must be true.
So why would he visit an elderly lady in the final stages of terminal cancer while he avoided spending any but the most essential time with her granddaughter?
Unless…An awful thought suddenly made her feel so ill that she abandoned the sandwich she’d just constructed as though it was contaminated with deadly bacteria.
Had she inadvertently revealed the strength of her feelings towards him? Had he realised that she was falling in love with him before even she had recognised it? Had he been so horrified by the unwelcome thought that he’d immediately done the only thing available to him—put as much distance between them as possible?
Her face felt hot with embarrassment but her body was cold and clammy as though she was going into shock.
What could she do about the situation to make it less…uncomfortable?
‘Well, resigning isn’t an option,’ she said aloud, and found her determination bolstered by hearing the words. ‘I’m not doing anything that might make visiting Beabea any more complicated. And, anyway, I like the job and I know I’m learning so much from him.’
That was one thing she could admit—Zayed was a generous and gifted teacher, probably one of the best she’d had since she’d started her medical training.
‘And I’m pathetic,’ she admitted softly, not liking the truth of those words quite so much. ‘He obviously doesn’t want any sort of relationship with me beyond our professional one, but I still want to be near him.’
So, how was she going to deal with the situation?
‘Well, I’m certainly not going to be skulking around in the shadows to stay out of his sight,’ she said firmly. ‘I am who I am, and if he doesn’t like it, tough!’
She would still be doing her work to the best of her ability and she had no intention of cutting back on her visits to the children and staff at his house. And as for her visits to the beach…?
‘Well, it was my beach before it was his,’ she said, then giggled when she realised just how childish that sounded.
But it was true. She’d been going to that beach ever since she’d come to live with Beabea, and no taciturn surgeon was going to drive her away.
‘Besides, if he insists on going swimming when there’s no one else about to keep an eye on his safety, then he’s just going to have to put up with me being there.’ And it would be her private, guilty pleasure to look at that taut, tanned body and dream of what might have been, if only…
Anyway, the trips to the beach would end soon enough. They were halfway through September already, and the evenings were starting to draw in. All too soon it would be dark by the time they finished work at St Piran’s and made the journey across to the coast to Penhally, and she didn’t think that even Zayed would be foolish enough to swim alone in the dark in winter.
‘And if he tries it, I’ll bring Beabea’s big torch down and use it like the lifeboat men’s searchlight,’ she declared, just before a jaw-cracking yawn overtook her.
It didn’t take long to get ready for bed, but even when she was comfortably ensconced with a large mug of hot chocolate and a fresh sandwich, her brain wouldn’t let the topic go.
All she had to do was think about seeing Zayed in the unit the next morning and a whole squadron of butterflies tried to steal her appetite.
‘Enough of this nonsense!’ she said, drawing on the determination that had got her through the first crippling weeks of loneliness when she’d left the cosy familiar world of Penhally for medical school, and had fired her to do her utmost to make her grandmother proud of her.
‘First of all, much as it injures my pride and my heart, I’ve got to accept that there’s never going to be anything personal between us.’ The bald words did hurt, but they were necessary if she was going to be able to do her job properly.
‘Secondly…what?’ She took a bite of her sandwich and savoured the tang of the locally made cheese complemented to perfection with slices of the last of Beabea’s home-grown tomatoes. The only thing that could have made it better was if it had been between two slices of Beabea’s home-made bread, but that was already a thing of the past.
Tears burned her eyes but she refused to let them fall. There would be plenty of time for that later, when the worst finally happened. For now, it was important that she work out what sort of relationship she could have with Zayed as the one she wanted was impossible.
‘Friends?’ she suggested tentatively, and paused while the idea grew like a plant from a single tiny seed. ‘Yes. Why not friends?’ The word wasn’t nearly so tentative the second time as she visualised a return of the fledgling camaraderie that had been such a good part of their first few days of working together.
Was it possible?
‘Well, I won’t know unless I try,’ she declared, and smiled when she heard an echo of Beabea’s voice in the words.
She was still smiling when she turned out the light and settled under the cover
s, comforted by the realisation that for the rest of her life there would be moments when advice her grandmother had given her or even just a turn of phrase would bring memories of the wonderful woman back to her.
It would never be the same as having her grandmother there in her life, but at least it wouldn’t feel as if she’d lost her completely.
The next morning Emily implemented her plan, breezing into the unit with a cheery greeting for each member of staff she encountered.
‘Shirley! I love the new hairstyle,’ she said to Zayed’s new secretary, meaning every word of it. The motherly woman was one of the old school, and had apparently been letting herself slide slowly towards retirement until she’d been sent at short notice to replace Nasima Osman, when her predecessor had been fired and sent back to Xandar.
It was amazing what difference a few days of working for someone who appreciated her meticulous approach to her job had made to her…or was it the fact that Zayed’s dark eyes lighting up his handsome face had reminded her that she wasn’t just a secretary but a woman, too?
‘Good morning, Zayed,’ she said equally cheerfully, even though the fact that he’d refused to meet her eyes had embedded the barb of disappointment a little deeper in her heart. ‘How was Reza’s migraine? Did the tablets work for her?’
She hardly left him enough time to confirm that Reza was back on form before she was off again and hailing the children’s favourite staff nurse. ‘Jenna, how did the birthday party go? Was Steve surprised when he found the whole family there?’
Emily was relieved when Jenna drew her along to the office to check some details in a file, chattering all the while about the surprise party she’d arranged for her husband’s birthday. She didn’t think she could have kept the ‘bright and breezy’ front up for very much longer knowing that a certain pair of dark eyes were boring into her back with an all-too-familiar intensity. She could almost hear his thoughts as he registered the fact that she was behaving differently, today. Perhaps he was trying to work it all out, to decide what she was up to.
Caroline Anderson, Josie Metcalfe, Maggie Kingsley, Margaret McDonagh Page 25
