‘He’s not available?’ Dani’s heart sank like a stone. ‘I hadn’t heard that he was going out with anyone. Has the hospital grapevine actually missed out on some gossip?’
‘Oh, it’s not that he’s going out with anyone so much as the fact that he rarely seems to go out with anyone more than a couple of times,’ Nadia explained. ‘That man is seriously dedicated to his job.’
‘As if you aren’t,’ Dani countered, deliberately changing the direction of the conversation. ‘You could almost be agoraphobic, because you never seem to leave the unit, let alone go outside the hospital.’
‘So, I’m committed to my profession,’ she said with an attempt at a dismissive shrug, obviously uncomfortable now that the focus was on her. ‘I haven’t noticed you racing for the door at the end of your shift either, but perhaps that’s because you don’t want to leave the gorgeous Mr Weatherby behind?’
If only she knew! Dani thought.
She’d never been one to clock-watch and had actually found herself lingering on the unit when she’d first joined Josh’s team, just in the hope of seeing him or speaking to him. Now that she was sharing his flat, she’d become so aware of his presence that she was becoming afraid that she might inadvertently let him know exactly how she felt about him, and that wouldn’t do. If she were to tell him that she loved him and wanted to spend the rest of her life with him, he would probably react in exactly the same way he had when she’d been eighteen, and that would destroy any headway she’d made in proving to him that she was now a grown woman who knew what she wanted.
No, she was going to have to take things slowly. This was a six-month placement and if she was patient, the idea of having her in his life permanently would grow on Josh until he couldn’t bear for her to leave.
CHAPTER NINE
‘CAITLIN, have you any idea where he’s hiding?’ Dani demanded, having wasted nearly half an hour trying to track Josh down before she resorted to speaking to his secretary.
‘Your guess is as good as mine, on a Friday,’ she said wryly. ‘You know how manic it gets, with two separate clinics either side of lunch. All it needs is a couple of calls for consults down in A and E and everything goes to pot.’
‘And there have been more than two today,’ Dani admitted. She’d taken two herself, and had been grateful that neither of them had resulted in an admission to their unit. Unfortunately, she’d heard that Josh hadn’t been so lucky, and the patient who had needed to be admitted for inpatient care had provoked another hasty round of musical beds while they’d tried to create a free cot.
‘Have you tried paging him?’ Caitlin asked distractedly, her hand already reaching for the phone that hardly ever seemed to stop ringing. ‘He’s usually pretty good about responding to that.’
Dani waved her thanks for the suggestion as she left the woman to her own particular chaos, but she really didn’t want to page Josh. That would mean that she would probably end up speaking to him on the phone, and in spite of the fact that her query didn’t honestly require a face-to-face conversation, it had been nearly three days since she’d last seen the man, and she was suffering serious withdrawal symptoms.
At least she could console herself with the fact that Josh obviously trusted her to be able to work without constant supervision, but that wasn’t enough for her. It was a serious boost to her ego, this soon in her six-month placement, but quite apart from the fact that she was missing him, if she was ever going to rival him for excellence in this field, she wanted far more time working beside him so that she could benefit from his excellent teaching methods.
It wasn’t until she was collecting her belongings and bundling herself up against the sudden storm that was dumping inches of rain over the area that she remembered that she had a means of contacting him that wouldn’t raise any eyebrows around the hospital.
DaniD: Has BB turned into the Invisible Man?
She typed into the computer in his office once Caitlin had left for the day, having thought for several minutes before she could come up with a suitably light-hearted message.
She’d sent the message before another thought came to her, and she felt a grin spread over her face.
‘Why didn’t I think of that before?’ she muttered as she set her fingers to the keys again.
DaniD: Am making world famous lasagne tonight. See you at eight?
He’d never be able to resist, she thought smugly, especially as he knew that she made his all-time favourite dish to his mother’s recipe.
‘Oh, help!’ She’d just caught sight of the time. If she was going to be able to fulfil her boast, she was going to have to get her skates on. There was shopping to do before she could even start cooking, and as for dessert, she could make a decision about that while she was going round the shop. There definitely wasn’t enough time to make panna cotta, or crème brûlée, but she might just be able to get her own version of lemon posset to set if she put individual bowls in the freezer while the lasagne was cooking.
It was lucky that she’d set the timer on the oven so that it would switch itself off at the end of the cooking time, otherwise, by the time she heard Josh’s key in the door just before ten that night, the lasagne would have been burnt beyond salvaging.
Dani had spent the first hour waiting impatiently, wondering if she’d overdone her own preparations when she’d donned the silky lounging pyjamas that Meredith had given her for Christmas. She’d nearly gone and changed into her usual off-duty scruffs, except she hadn’t wanted to be in her bedroom, half in and half out of her clothes when Josh walked through the door.
After that, it had been sheer stubbornness that had her sitting there waiting for him to come home before she had her own meal, determined that she would make him feel guilty that he hadn’t at least phoned to let her know he was going to be late.
‘Something smells good,’ he said as he automatically turned to set the security lock on the door. ‘Have you been cooking or did you resort to takeaway?’
Dani sat there with her mouth open, the angry words that had been boiling up in her for the last two hours completely forgotten when she caught sight of his drawn, ashen face. He looked so grim that she couldn’t even feel disappointed that he hadn’t so much as blinked at her slinky outfit.
‘What’s happened?’ she demanded, leaping to her feet, her concern for him totally outweighing her pique that he hadn’t bothered to contact her. ‘Is it Meredith? Has something happened to Mum?’
‘What? No!’ he exclaimed. ‘As far as I know, the two of them are still blissfully honeymooning.’
‘So, what happened to make you look so…so grey?’
‘Old age?’ he quipped wearily. ‘Or it could just be tiredness after a day of pointless meetings?’
‘Or?’ she prompted. ‘I’ve seen you when you were so tired that you could barely put one foot in front of the other.’
‘Or it could be the fact that we lost Marcus.’
‘What?’ Dani gasped in disbelief. The little boy hadn’t been on the unit for very long, but had quickly stolen her heart. ‘But he was responding to the antibiotics.’
‘Apparently responding,’ he countered dully as he slumped into the corner of the settee, the weight of the world on his shoulders. ‘It must just have been his body’s last desperate rally because his kidneys packed up completely, his temperature shot up through the roof and the infection in his lungs…’ He didn’t bother continuing, just shaking his head before he dropped it back against the upholstery and closed his eyes.
Dani didn’t need him to say the words. She could all too easily picture the way poor little Marcus would have been struggling for every breath as the infection in his lungs had swiftly overwhelmed him, filling the spaces that should have held air with sticky, pervasive mucous so that in the end no life-giving oxygen would have been able to reach his struggling heart.
‘What a waste!’ Dani whispered, her throat clogged with tears. ‘He was a beautiful, healthy little boy and he was absolut
ely perfect.’
‘Sometimes life just doesn’t seem to make much sense, does it?’ Josh said, his voice rough with his own suppressed emotion. ‘The whole situation was almost a carbon copy of what happened with Rosie, but in spite of the chaotic home birth, she recovered in a matter of days. Marcus was born in hospital and should have been safe, surrounded by all the latest high-tech equipment. Except there was a sudden influx of mums in labour and there just weren’t enough midwives on duty.’
‘Those poor parents,’ Dani murmured, then remembered the inevitable consequence of such a death. ‘Not only have they lost their son but they’ll have to go through an inquest, too.’
‘And the fact that we did everything possible to save him won’t make any difference to the hospital’s statistics—it will still put the unit’s mortality rate up.’
‘As if you care anything about statistics,’ she scoffed. ‘The only thing that matters to you is that Marcus died when his parents should be taking him home to the start of a long happy life.’
He opened his eyes just far enough for her to see the golden gleam, like catching a glimpse of candlelight through vintage brandy.
He looked at her for such a long time that Dani started to fidget, almost as if she was still the little girl who had found and eaten the last of his Easter egg but didn’t know she had the chocolate smears around her face to give her away.
‘What?’ she asked when the silence stretched a little too long for comfort, knowing that this time he couldn’t be looking for chocolate while he gazed at her face.
‘You’ve always known,’ he said finally, the words so quiet that she wondered if he was even aware that he’d said them aloud.
‘Known what?’ she prompted softly, something deep inside her responding to the strange feeling of awareness that stretched between them.
‘Known what makes me tick,’ he said cryptically, then, in response to her frown, continued, ‘You knew without me having to say anything that, in spite of the importance of those statistics to my unit, it would be the loss of the baby that would matter more.’
‘It’s how you’ve always been,’ she said simply. ‘That’s why you spent so much time visiting me, when you could have resented me…rejected me, even…for taking Pammy away from you.’
‘The thing I did resent was the fact that you were a girl,’ he said gruffly. ‘I’d convinced myself that Pammy was going to give me the little brother I wanted. Danny was going to be someone I could teach to play football and ride a bike.’
‘While the Dani you got instead pestered you until you learned how to do plaits in her hair and how to put bandages on her dolls,’ she said with a chuckle. ‘And I’m sorry if you were disappointed with what you got, but I wasn’t in the least.’
‘The best big brother in the world?’ he suggested with a smug grin, but there was an unexpected edge to his voice when he said the familiar words, an edge accompanied by a strangely watchful expression that made her pulse take a sudden leap.
‘Of course,’ she agreed, because it was true, ‘but not just that, because you were also a friend, a guide, a mentor, a bully, a tease—’
‘Hey! I was quite enjoying the testimonial up to that point,’ he complained, but she’d had to lighten the topic before she found herself voicing the thought that had just struck her—the fact that almost the only role he hadn’t played in her life was that of lover.
She felt a wave of heat spread through her just at the thought of Josh as her lover.
While her classmates and friends had been going through the roller-coaster rides of first infatuations, first serious relationships and first sexual relationships, she’d been caught up in something entirely different…guilt-inducing daydreams about the man who had been her big brother for the whole of her life; impossible dreams, but they meant that there had never been anyone else who could measure up.
Of course, she’d tried to make herself forget him, to convince herself that it had all been nothing more than a childish infatuation that had got a little out of hand. Once or twice she’d even gone out with someone who wasn’t him but it just hadn’t worked.
Josh had always been the only one she’d ever wanted, and she’d fantasised about their first kiss for so long that she’d been hyperventilating before her lips had ever met his on that fateful birthday.
‘Earth to Dani…!’ Josh’s voice was directed towards her through the makeshift megaphone of his hands. ‘I said, have you already eaten, and if that gorgeous smell is lasagne, you’d better have left some for me, or retribution will be swift and ugly.’
‘Oh! Lord! The lasagne!’ Dani exclaimed and leapt to her feet, quickly seizing on an excuse to get away from the intensity of those sharp eyes even though she knew that the timer on the oven had switched it off long ago.
What on earth was the matter with her that she could have let herself sit there in front of the man fantasising about him? The last thing she wanted was for him to guess that her feelings were totally unchanged, not before she’d had a lot longer to get him accustomed to having her around.
‘I knew it was lasagne!’ he exclaimed behind her, and she nearly dropped the dish. ‘Is it badly burnt? Can you just take the top layer off, or… Hey, it isn’t burnt at all! When did you put it in the oven?’
‘It was cooked and ready for eight,’ she said as she slid it back into the oven and turning the heat back on to heat the dish through. ‘I actually sent you a message to let you know, but things were obviously too hectic in the unit for you to see it in time.’
‘And knowing just how likely a doctor is to be held up beyond the end of his shift, you took the precaution of setting the timer, thank goodness. It would have been a crime to let that get spoiled,’ he said fervently. ‘Now, what do you want me to do to help? Make a salad? Set the table?’
‘How about having your shower while I get the rest of the meal ready?’ she suggested, wondering if keeping herself busy would help to distract her from thinking about the fact that he was going to be standing naked under the pelting water just feet away from her. If she made enough noise, she might even be able to drown out the sound of the water running. Maybe then she wouldn’t dream about him tonight.
‘Are you sure? It doesn’t seem fair that you should do all the preparations while I turn up late and take a shower.’
‘You really don’t think I’ve forgotten about the division of labour rule, do you?’ She wagged a finger at him. ‘The one who does the cooking doesn’t have to do clean-up duty, so off you go and have your shower. I’ll enjoy mine all the more after the meal, knowing you’re stuck with the washing-up.’
The lasagne was one of the best she’d ever made and she hadn’t been able to stop the stupid grin of satisfaction that spread over her face when Josh insisted on scraping the dish for any stray scraps.
It had been a lovely meal, and Dani was conscious that she was far more relaxed in his company than she’d been for a long time. Their conversation had ranged far and wide, inevitably circling back several times to events on the unit, but covering so many other topics that she’d probably never be able to recall half of them.
In fact, the whole evening would have been perfect if only she’d been able to stop her eyes constantly returning to his face, as fascinated as ever as she watched the expressions changing in his eyes as he spoke and fascinated, too, by his speed of thought and his command of language as he explained complicated medical concepts, inviting her to challenge his viewpoints even as he challenged hers.
She could have sat there hours longer, except she had work to do before she went to bed that night.
‘I’d better get myself moving or it’ll be the wee hours of the morning before I get to sleep,’ she said finally.
‘Why so late?’ he said with a puzzled frown. ‘It doesn’t take you that long to have a shower, surely.’
‘Hardly. It’s the hours of study I’ve still got to do if I’m going to stand a chance of passing that next lot of exams first time
.’
‘Are you having trouble fitting the study in?’ Suddenly he was the concerned consultant as well as the anxious big brother. ‘The unit has been rather manically busy since you joined us.’
‘I’ll get there,’ she reassured him as she stood and began to gather up the dirty plates and cutlery. ‘If you can remember that far back, rather a lot of medical training is done on far too little sleep. I’ve done it before and I can do it again.’
‘Cheeky madam!’ he complained, before he swiped the things out of her hands. ‘Leave that to me and go have your shower.’
‘Enjoy the clean-up,’ she said with a teasing grin as she made her way out of the room. ‘See you in the morning.’
Josh was nowhere to be seen when she made a quick foray into the kitchen for a glass of fruit juice and something to nibble on while she got her head down over her books.
‘So much for putting your skimpiest nightie on… “just in case” you happened to bump into him,’ she muttered under her breath as she grabbed a handful of grapes. Not that she was wearing anything particularly sexy. It wasn’t really anything more than a glorified T-shirt, but the fine cotton knit clung to every curve and barely covered the essentials, even on someone of her height.
She padded back into her bedroom, cross with herself that she should have thought about doing something so juvenile.
‘That’s really the way to make him realise that you’re all grown up now,’ she grumbled as she made her way towards the desk in the corner, then changed her mind and opted for the comfort of the bed.
It took a couple of journeys backwards and forwards to decide which books she was going to concentrate on this evening, and to switch on some Mozart, just in case it did increase brain power, then she realised that she’d left the grapes and the glass of juice on the desk and had to get up again to retrieve them.
Six Sexy Doctors Part 1 (Mills & Boon e-Book Collections): A Doctor, A Nurse: A Little Miracle / The Children's Doctor and the Single Mum / A Wife for ... / The Playboy Doctor's Surprise Proposal Page 42
