by Joanna Neil
She put on clean underwear and then opened the window a fraction to let out the steam. What time was it? She laid her damp towels over the rail and padded, barefoot, into the bedroom, closing the door behind her.
The maid had been in and left clean towels on the bed while she had been in the shower, and Katie smiled. Everything about this place was so good, well organised and catered to the guests’ comfort.
‘Uh...I...’ From across the room, Ross coughed, and Katie spun round, startled to see that he was standing by the window, looking at her with an arrested expression in his eyes. She stared back at him in stunned surprise, and he said in a roughened voice, ‘I...uh...the maid saw me knocking at the door and let me in... I’d no idea you’d be...um...’ His mouth tilted at the corners. ‘Wow...what can I say?’
Belatedly, she pressed an arm to her lace-covered breasts and draped the other one awkwardly across her briefs. ‘She let you in? I didn’t... I mean... I fell asleep. I shouldn’t have... I... It was Jessie...we were up very late and I...um...’
She sucked in a deep breath. ‘I should get dressed,’ she said, backing up towards the bed.
He nodded. ‘Yes, I suppose you must, but...’ A ragged groan rumbled in his throat. ‘You look lovely, Katie.’ His gaze drifted over her as though he couldn’t bear to drag it away. ‘You take my breath away. It seems such a shame to cover up such a beautiful body.’
Katie stared at him, her green eyes wide, her lips parting a fraction. He thought she looked good? That gave her a warm glow that radiated all the way from her abdomen up to the very roots of her hair. Her whole body tingled in response to the searing lick of his gaze.
Returning that glance, she realised he didn’t look so bad himself. A tall, strong man, his features were hewn by the tough years he’d spent in the army, when he’d been helicoptered into troublespots all over the world. He was a man who could take care of his woman. He would protect her, keep her safe from all comers—but not from himself, a small inner voice warned.
He had started to come towards her, slowly, thoughtfully, giving her ample time to move away, and she knew exactly how much of a risk she was taking by standing still.
And yet she couldn’t bring herself to retreat. She wanted him to come near her. She wanted to feel his arms around her, to feel her body next to his, and he certainly wasn’t going to disappoint her. He drew her to him, his hot, dark gaze meshing with hers, and she was instantly lost, caught up in a swirl of chaotic emotions, her feminine curves crushed by his long, tautly muscled frame, his powerful thighs pressuring hers.
He bent his head, taking her mouth in a sweet, lingering possession, tasting her, slowly exploring the softness of her lips. Her arms curved up around his neck, her fingers tangling in the silky hair at his nape, while her body revelled in the heady sensation of his stroking hands seeking out the feminine contours of her hips, her waist, the smooth line of her thigh.
And then he gently nuzzled the soft skin of her throat, the creamy slope of her shoulder, and murmured raggedly, ‘Mmm. You smell so good, Katie. So perfect. You’re intoxicating.’ His hand lightly cupped the firm swell of her breast and she gasped, a soft sigh that hovered on her lips as his fingers began to gently trace the lacy edge of her bra.
Sensation piled on sensation as his expert hands caressed her, making her want what she should not have, making her long for something more, and then with one slick, breathtaking movement he reached behind her and unhooked the clasp of her bra.
Only then did she know a faint qualm of anxiety. Ought she to stop this here and now before things ultimately got out of hand? If they made love, where did it leave things between them? It was so hard to think straight while he was holding her like this.
She needed him, yearned to feel his hard body next to hers without the hindrance of clothes, but she knew there would be no going back from this point. She would lose herself in him and then, when he walked away, back to his home here on the mainland, she would mourn his loss as though it was a bereavement. Would he even look back and wonder how she was doing?
There was a knock at the door and she stiffened at the unwelcome intrusion. Who could it be—more hotel staff?
She looked up into Ross’s eyes, and he kissed her swiftly, a hard, demanding, achingly wonderful kiss, but a brief one also as she gently laid her hands on his chest.
‘Ross, the door, someone’s there.’
‘Ignore it,’ he murmured huskily, frustrated by the distraction and eager to get back to that blissful state of mutual passion.
‘We can’t,’ she whispered. ‘If it’s the staff, they’ll use their room key if we don’t answer.’
‘I’ll tell whoever it is to go away.’ His arms circled her warmly, but she wriggled, easing herself away from him.
‘No.’ She hesitated, then said slowly, ‘I think it’s for the best that this happened. I should never have let things get this far. I’ve been hurt before, Ross, and I don’t want to go there again.’
‘Katie, are you in there?’ The knocking came again. ‘It’s Josh. I called on Ross, but he isn’t in his room.’
The breath caught in her throat. It was as though fate had stepped in and made the decision for her. ‘I’ll go and get dressed,’ she whispered. ‘Wait until I’m in the bathroom and then let him in.’
Ross’s expression was anguished, as though he was in some kind of physical pain, but he must have seen that she was determined and he reluctantly eased himself away from her a fraction. ‘I wouldn’t hurt you, Katie,’ he said, in a choked voice. ‘Believe me.’
‘Even so.’ She began to draw away from him. After all, he’d say anything she wanted to hear right now, wouldn’t he?
‘If that’s what you really want.’ His eyes darkened, becoming smoky with heat, urging her to change her mind.
‘It is. I’m sorry.’
He relinquished his hold on her, and she quickly turned away from him and went to pick up her dress from the bed. Pausing only to get her make-up bag from the dressing table, she fled to the bathroom.
A moment later, she heard Ross open the door. ‘Hi,’ he said in an even tone. ‘Come in, Josh. Katie’s getting ready. You know how women are. They take an age to put on their make-up.’
She didn’t hear Josh’s reply. By, then, she was too busy trying to control her breathing and telling herself that she’d had a lucky escape. She couldn’t give in to temptation. She wouldn’t let herself be hurt again, and that was bound to happen if she let herself fall for Ross, wasn’t it?
He was wrong for her in every way, and she’d meant it when she’d said she wouldn’t become just one more conquest. Being with him meant far too much to her. She needed it to be special between them, and there was no way that could happen. He would never commit to any woman.
He was an opportunist, and it was his good fortune that she’d happened to fall into his hands just now like a ripe fruit.
From here on she would have to be much more careful. There was just a week or so before he had to come back to his home here on the mainland—surely she could hold out for that short length of time?
CHAPTER FOUR
‘IT SOUNDS AS though the conference went well.’ The triage nurse checked their small patient’s notes and dropped the file back in the wire tray. She was a pretty young woman, with fair hair pulled back into a ponytail and bright, all-seeing blue eyes. ‘It’s probably a good thing you went along and gathered all that information. The boss was certainly pleased, anyway.’
‘It’ll be more to the point if management decides to put any of my ideas into practice,’ Katie murmured, ‘but I suppose I’ll have to get this new job if I want to see that happen.’ She glanced at the whiteboard where details of patients being treated or awaiting treatment were listed. ‘There’s no let-up today, is there? It’s as though children are having a last fling bef
ore they go back to school, and all kinds of accidents are happening.’
‘There’s been nothing too bad so far,’ Shona said, and then clapped a hand to her mouth as Katie sent her a mock-horrified look.
‘Are you inviting trouble?’ Katie asked. ‘You know what happens as soon as someone says that. Just wait for the siren to start howling.’
‘Och! I can’t think what’s the matter with me. It must be that lovely Ross McGregor who has put me in all of a dither. I’ve not been myself since I set eyes on him in the staffroom a wee while back.’
Katie’s brows shot up. ‘You mean he’s here, at the hospital? How has that come about? What’s he doing here?’
Shona shrugged. ‘I don’t know the ins and outs of it, only that he’s been chatting to all the folk he knows from way back. Perhaps he’s just come in for a while to renew old acquaintances. He can come and talk to me any time. I’m more than happy to spend time with him.’
Katie gave a wry smile. ‘Not you as well? Ross always did know how to charm the ladies...’ She frowned. ‘Yes, it could be that he’s just dropped by to say hello, I suppose.’ After what had happened between them at the castle, though, she’d hoped she might avoid him for a while, but it seemed her luck was out.
But to have him here, now...it was too soon. When she’d finally dressed and put on her make-up that night, she’d wondered if things might calm down a fraction, and they could go back to being simply friends and colleagues, but it had been a vain hope. He’d devoured her with his eyes when she’d stepped back into the room, and suddenly she’d been conscious of every rounded curve she possessed, where the black dress had clung faithfully to her body.
It hadn’t helped that Josh had been attentive towards her, too, albeit only in a friendly, easygoing manner. But Ross had clearly decided he wasn’t going to give Josh the slightest chance to muscle in and, to her shame, that knowledge invigorated her. It had been clear he wanted her, and she had suddenly felt heady with a secret sense of power—only, she’d known she was playing with fire. Ross’s hot gaze had told her that every time she’d glanced his way.
But it wouldn’t do. It wouldn’t work between them—she needed someone steady and reliable, and from what she knew of Ross, he wasn’t that man. She needed time to put him out of her mind.
‘You go for your interview this afternoon, don’t you?’ Shona said, switching on the light box and looking at an X-ray film. ‘Hmm, that looks like a fracture to me,’ she murmured. ‘Am I right?’
‘Yes, my appointment’s first thing after lunch. And, yes, it’s a fracture. It’s a fairly straightforward one, so we’ll reduce it under anaesthetic and then send the child to the plaster room.’
Shona nodded. ‘I’ll go and get him ready. He’s been given painkillers so he shouldn’t be too unsettled. Will you be along in a minute or two?’
‘I will. I just need to check on a patient in bay three.’
By the time she’d dealt with both patients, the phone started to ring, and she knew with a sixth sense that it meant trouble was on the way.
‘A baby is coming in by ambulance,’ Shona said. ‘He’s just three weeks old, poor mite, suffering from a racing heart, unusual sleepiness and reflux vomiting. His GP has been treating him for congestive heart failure. He’ll be here in ten minutes. His records are being faxed through.’
‘Okay, let’s get ready to receive him.’ As she glanced across the room Katie saw that Ross had come into the triage area, and her heartbeat quickened in response. She had no idea how long he’d been standing there.
He was wearing pristine, dark grey trousers, teamed with a deep blue shirt and silver-grey tie, and she could see straight away why all the women drooled over him. Long limbed, flat stomached, he was strength and masculinity and cool confidence all rolled into one.
‘Would it be all right with you if I come and observe?’ he asked. ‘I heard what Shona was saying and I’d be really interested to see what goes on.’ He came to stand by the desk, and Katie sent him a quick, thoughtful glance. ‘I won’t get in your way,’ he promised.
She nodded. ‘I heard you were here. I expect it’s been good for you to meet up with old friends—you know quite a lot of the staff, I gather?’
‘I do. I’ve spent a pleasant morning looking around, catching up, but if there’s any way I can be useful here, let me know. Your boss is okay with me helping out, and I’m free for a few hours. I know you’re run off your feet today with a lot of the staff away on vacation or off sick.’
‘All right. But if you really mean it, you’ll need to put on some scrubs. I have to go to the ambulance bay.’
He smiled. ‘I’ll be booted and suited before you know it.’
The tiny baby was quickly wheeled into the resuscitation room, where Katie did a swift examination. ‘The veins in his neck are pulsing,’ she told Ross, who appeared at her side just as she was running a stethoscope over the infant’s chest. It was a bad sign, and she was concerned as she listened to his heartbeat and to the sound of his lungs. She handed the stethoscope over to Ross, so that he could confirm her diagnosis.
‘Congestive heart failure,’ he said, with a worried frown. ‘Poor little fellow. We need to find out what’s going on here. What do his notes say?’
Just then the baby began to convulse, and Katie had to act quickly, injecting him with an anti-epileptic medication. A short time later, when the seizure began to recede, she stroked the downy skin of the infant’s cheek and said softly, ‘His doctor says he was diagnosed with a malformation of the vein of Galen in his brain. The consensus was that they didn’t want to operate on such a tiny baby, but then his heart started to fail and they tried to control the situation with medication. Unfortunately, it hasn’t worked.’ She pulled a face. ‘The outlook doesn’t look good, does it?’
Ross shook his head. The baby was struggling to breathe, and Katie carefully put a tube down his throat so that he could be given life-saving oxygen.
‘What do you plan to do?’
‘A cranial ultrasound to begin with, just to check the original diagnosis.’ She turned to Shona. ‘We’d better do an ECG, and a cardiac echo, too. Will you reassure the parents that we’re doing everything possible to find out all we can about Sam’s illness? Give them coffee, or tea, or whatever, and help them to feel comfortable while they’re waiting.’
‘I will. I’ll set up the ECG first.’
‘Thanks.’ In the meantime, Katie programmed the ultrasound machine and carefully moved the transducer probe over the infant’s head. The machine was connected to a monitor, and Ross frowned as the images began to show on the screen.
‘There’s definitely a vein malformation,’ he said.
Katie nodded. ‘Let’s get an MRI scan and find out exactly what we’re dealing with here. Things might have changed in the last couple of weeks.’
The MRI scan only confirmed her worries. ‘It’s a very rare type of aneurysm,’ she said, studying the films. ‘We can’t rely on medication to stabilise his condition, and I think he needs an immediate embolisation. The problem is that there aren’t that many neurosurgeons who can do this type of work. Certainly there’s no one at this hospital who would be able to do it.’ She frowned, thinking it through. ‘I’ll make some enquiries. In the meantime, we’ll have to get a cardiologist to manage the heart failure.’
‘As you say, I don’t think we can wait more than a few hours,’ Ross put in, ‘otherwise his outcome will be very poor. At the very least, he could suffer brain damage and organ failure, and at worst he might die.’
Katie nodded agreement. The blood vessels carrying nutrients to the brain had short-circuited, and were going via another route to the heart, causing it to pump faster in order to get blood and oxygen to the brain. The heart was overloaded with stress, and this tiny baby’s chances weren’t good at all.
‘I’ll go and make those phone calls,’ she said. ‘Will you take him back to Resus for me?’
‘I will.’
When she had finished making her calls and arrived back in Resus, the news wasn’t any better. ‘There are two specialists who could do the surgery, but they’re both out of the country right now. By the time either one of them manages to get back here, it will probably be too late. And our paediatric neurosurgeons are both in surgery, working on emergencies. We have locums here because of the holiday season, but they’re not skilled in this type of surgery.’
Ross pulled in a deep breath. ‘Perhaps I could help,’ he offered. ‘I’ve specialised in neurosurgery, and I trained intensively in paediatric neurosurgery quite recently when I left the army.’
She lifted a brow. ‘That’s a huge change of direction for you, isn’t it, from adult surgery to paediatrics?’
He shrugged. ‘I wanted to do something different, yet allied to what I’d been doing before. It’s always been in my mind that some youngsters suffer nasty accidents the way I did, way back, and I wanted to be able to do something about it—kind of to repay the surgeons for what they did for me, you know?’
She smiled, touched by his sensitivity. ‘Yes, I think I understand. But as to operating on Sam, this kind of surgery is highly unusual—this particular type of malformation is only seen around half a dozen times a year in this country.’
‘Yes—which is why I’m thinking that if we could rig up some kind of video link with one or both of the surgeons who are out of the country, they could perhaps talk me through the procedure. Couldn’t we get the technicians to work on that—if the doctors are agreeable to it, of course?’
Katie studied him, anxious and uplifted at the same time. She knew Ross well enough to know he was always up for a challenge, but he wouldn’t take undue risks where a child’s life was concerned, would he?
‘Are you sure about this?’
