A Family for His Tiny Twins

by Josie Metcalfe

  ‘What happened?’ She had to drag her thoughts back to what he’d said. She had no right to feel regrets that she’d never see those precious babies growing up. All she had was a duty to do her part to try to get them strong enough to leave the unit.

  ‘Two of my patients were in A and E longer than the permitted time, so some pencil-neck paged me to rap me over the knuckles!’ he exclaimed in evident disgust. ‘He was totally uninterested in the fact that it was in their best interests not to be moved in the middle of potentially lifesaving procedures.’

  ‘Perhaps he is only doing his job?’ she suggested, even as she revelled in the fire of his commitment towards his patients. This was one way in which the two of them were equals.

  ‘He would do better if he spent his time chasing the subcontractors they employed to do the cleaning,’ he said darkly. ‘Better still, he should get down on his hands and knees and clean the muck that accumulates in the corners when they do nothing more than flop a glorified dry duster around a room. Then he could make a start on disinfecting and scrubbing all the hidden nooks and crannies in the trauma rooms. You wouldn’t believe the infectious muck that can build up…Ah, hell, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t rant at you like that. It’s hardly your fault that the politicians made a complete mess of everything when they started sticking their noses into things they don’t understand.’

  ‘So, you think the politicians should just keep providing more and more public money? You don’t think they have a duty to the people who elected them to oversee whether it’s being spent properly?’ She fought a grin as she posed the questions most calculated to heat up the discussion, suddenly realising that it was possible to enjoy the fact that she was arguing with a man.

  ‘Of course they should have some system in place to make sure that the money isn’t wasted,’ he conceded swiftly, ‘but that certainly doesn’t mean that they should censure a doctor for doing his best for his patient.’ His eyes flashed fervently green from under those straight dark brows. ‘They do not—and cannot—have the right to go against a doctor’s clinical decision…and certainly not just because it doesn’t fit in with their tick-box mentality.’

  Suddenly, he seemed to realise just how heated he’d become and he pulled a rueful face.

  ‘Sorry about the rant,’ he apologised, and she felt quite guilty that she was grateful that the topic had apparently made him forget his previous question.

  ‘I don’t know very much about the hospital politics, especially in the way it affects a department such as A and E,’ she admitted. ‘I know there is sometimes a problem with the standards of the cleaners supplied by the contractors, but I was told that some companies try to cut corners and make the cleaners hurry through their work far too fast to do a good job. Not that it would happen in this department,’ she added quickly. ‘Mr Weatherby would never allow that.’ She gave a brief laugh at the thought. ‘I think he would prefer to throw them out and do the job himself rather than risk the lives of our little patients.’

  ‘And you’d probably be there right beside him with a scrubbing brush,’ Gideon said, and for a moment she was surprised how accurately he’d guessed, almost frightened that he seemed to be getting to know her so well that he could predict how she would respond in such a situation. She was frightened, too, that the expression of approval she saw in his eyes should mean so much to her.

  It wasn’t supposed to matter to her. It had been years since she’d decided that the last thing she needed or wanted was the approval of some man…any man. And it had been so easy to stick to that decision ever since she’d managed to get away from Laszlo.

  So, how was it that Gideon seemed to have managed to slip inside her defences? How was it that a warm expression in those gorgeous green eyes could make her quiver like a puppy when its master praised it for performing a clever trick? Had she learned nothing that she could stand here and feel gratitude that he approved of what he saw in her?

  ‘I must get back to the nursery,’ she said, and only realised just how abrupt she must have sounded when he blinked and frowned at her. Well, she thought as she exited the room rapidly, feeling his eyes burning into her back as she went, it was too late to change the tone of her voice now, but if she was lucky it wasn’t too late for her to shore up her defences again.

  It was lonely behind the wall that separated her from danger…so very lonely…but if she stayed where it was safe, kept her silvery blonde hair dyed this unflattering shade of brown and wore the contact lenses that darkened her blue eyes to a hazel brown, then Laszlo wouldn’t be able to find her again and take her back to the life she’d hated so much.

  ‘I wonder what that was about?’ Gideon muttered under his breath as he watched Nadia walk swiftly away from him. For a moment it seemed almost as if she would break into a run in her effort to leave the room as fast as possible, but she had that nurse’s swift gait down perfectly.

  Everything inside him wanted to follow her…to demand some answers…but there had been something in her eyes…something as wary as a wounded animal that warned him that he would do better to back off for a moment and think out his strategy.

  ‘Strategy? What strategy?’ he scoffed, suddenly realising how ludicrous his thoughts had become. Nadia was the specialist nurse caring for his vulnerable babies, not someone he should be seeing as a woman he was interested in and wanted to pursue and who therefore needed placating if he had upset her in some way.

  Except…

  Except, without him realising how it had happened, he suddenly realised just how much he was interested in her.

  That took the wind out of him and he felt strangely breathless as he lowered himself into the nearest chair.

  Surely he was mistaken.

  His feelings must be mixed up in the gratitude he felt for the dedication she showed towards caring for his babies, not for her personally.

  Except…

  Except all he had to do was picture her quiet smile and his heart gave a stupid extra beat, and when he remembered the awful dark emptiness he’d seen in those strangely hypnotic hazel eyes, all he’d wanted to do was banish whatever memories had put it there and keep her safe.

  As if she’d let him, he realised with a wry smile. Nadia had to be one of the most independent women he’d ever met, as well as one of the most secretive.

  He cast his mind back over the few weeks he’d known her and had to admit that she’d told him absolutely nothing about herself. He knew nothing more about her than he had when he’d been introduced to her on the day of Adam and Amy’s birth—that her name was Nadia Smith and she was a specialist nurse. He didn’t even know what country she’d been born in or the name of the language that had given her speech that exotic lilt.

  But he would like to know, he realised with bone-deep certainty. For some unexplained reason he found himself fascinated by her and was struck by an urgent need to know everything there was to know about her.

  Where had she been born? Did she have family there? What had prompted her to choose to leave her homeland to come to London? Did she intend staying here or…or was there someone waiting for her to return?

  That last thought made him feel as though a fist had suddenly tightened around his heart.

  Was that why she didn’t tell him anything about herself…because there was a man who loved her waiting for her return? Was her love for this unknown man the reason why she seemed to deliberately maintain a careful distance between the two of them?

  Everything inside him wanted to deny the very idea, but then he just had to remember the sudden edginess between the two of them a few minutes ago to realise that it was all too possible.

  Had she felt that he’d encroached on the invisible boundary she’d erected around herself? Was that why she’d hurried away—because she didn’t want to have to spell things out for him?

  For several minutes he sat there staring blankly into space while he tried to come to terms with the strange empty feeling that had just opened up inside him.
It was a shock to discover that the idea that he had lost Nadia before she was ever his could hurt him more than the ending of his marriage.

  ‘That’s crazy!’ he whispered.

  And it was crazy, if he thought about it logically. He and Norah had known each other for nearly a year before they’d married, and once they’d realised that they were never going to be able to have the family they’d wanted as easily as they’d expected, things had grown tense very rapidly. With the clear vision of hindsight, he could see that the fact that it had been her body that was failing her that had caused the almost frenetic desperation to take hold of her, but at the time he’d come to resent the way she’d begun to treat him as little more than a means of providing the sperm she’d needed for her next attempt at achieving the all-important pregnancy. Even before they’d embarked along the route towards surrogacy he should have realised that their marriage had been in serious trouble…or perhaps it was because he had realised that it would take something that desperate that he’d agreed to the idea. In the event, Norah’s demand for a divorce had coincided exactly with the confirmation of a pregnancy in which she’d no longer wanted any part.

  So, after such a harrowing end to something that had started with love and hope, how could he possibly think that he might be ready to find another woman desirable enough to want to begin the whole process again?

  He felt his eyes widen as the words formed inside his brain.

  Was that really the way his mind was working? After such a short time, was he really so attracted to the quiet, self-contained Nadia that he was actually considering pursuing her as a potential…what? A potential bed partner? A wife? A mother for his children?

  Whoa, he thought in sudden panic. This was getting uncomfortably heavy, especially when she’d just cut him off at the knees.

  He drew in a deep steadying breath to try to force his racing pulse to slow down, but it was a waste of time because every time he thought about the possibility of having Nadia in his life it started to gallop again.

  Be calm and logical about it, he counselled himself.

  For a start, he didn’t know anything about the person Nadia was outside the unit, so how could he possibly know whether she was someone he wanted as part of his and his children’s lives? Of course, he knew just how dedicated she was to her job, and that her protective instincts were strong enough that she’d been willing to stop and help when she’d witnessed that RTA the other day.

  But since he’d seen the shadows in her eyes, he also knew that she had a past that he knew nothing about, secrets that could mean that any relationship between the two of them was impossible, no matter how much he might want it.

  So, what was he going to do about it?

  He stifled the urge to laugh at that thought, knowing that it was totally against his nature not to try to do something to achieve his aims.

  First, he was going to have to get Nadia to open up to him, and to do that he had a feeling that he was going to have to find some way to get her to trust him enough to tell him her secrets.

  ‘Well, you could hardly expect to have a long-term relationship with someone you didn’t know well,’ he muttered reasonably, then grimaced at the irony of that thought. He’d believed that he’d known Norah well, once upon a time. Otherwise he wouldn’t have proposed to her. But how could he have known that being thwarted in her desire to carry a child would have come to dominate her every waking thought so that nothing—not him, their love or their marriage—had mattered to her any more when she hadn’t been able to achieve it.

  Did Nadia’s reticence hide such a secret? Or perhaps there was something about him that attracted women with hidden agendas.

  ‘You don’t even know whether she’s hiding anything,’ he reminded himself with a swift return to logic. The shadows he’d seen might be nothing more than the memories of a love affair gone wrong. That could even be the reason why she’d left her own country and come to London to nurse.

  ‘But you won’t know unless you find some way to get her to open up to you,’ he said under his breath as his solitude was broken by two members of the unit coming in search of a reviving cup of coffee.

  And for that he was going to need patience, he realised as he made his way into the nursery, freshly scrubbed, gowned and gloved, and received not so much as the briefest glance in his direction.

  ‘Let me help,’ he offered when he saw that once more Nadia was concentrating on disentangling some of Adam’s vital lines from Amy’s grasping hands. He leaned forward over the crib to get a better view and almost stepped back again when he felt the way she stiffened when he accidentally brushed against her.

  At the last moment he realised that accustoming her to his proximity might be one way to persuade her that she didn’t have to be afraid to open up to him. Well, it was the best idea he’d come up with yet, he rationalised, deliberately shoving to the back of his mind the fact that he didn’t really need an excuse to want to be close to the soft fresh scent that surrounded her, or to relish the intermittent contact between her slender arm and his darker, hair-roughened one.

  ‘Can I hold one of them while you sort the other one out?’ he offered, and for a moment his preoccupation with their nurse was banished by the hope that he might be able to cradle one of his precious babies again.

  ‘Do you think you might be able to manage both of them?’ Nadia asked with what sounded suspiciously like a challenge in her voice.

  ‘Both at once?’ It was hard to force the words past the lump in his throat. He had held both of them, separately, several times, but it would be the first time that he’d had both of them in his arms simultaneously. Did this mean that they were finally making serious progress?

  ‘Sit down and make yourself comfortable,’ she ordered briskly, but he’d caught a hint of a smile before she’d controlled it.

  Then the only thing he was noticing was how impossibly small and fragile his two babies still were, in spite of all the care and attention that had been lavished on them since their birth.

  Even with both of them in his arms, they weighed practically nothing and still looked just like two baby birds that had fallen out of a nest.

  ‘Hello, Adam. Hello, Amy,’ he said, his voice barely above a whisper it was so full of emotion. ‘Your daddy finally got his hands on both of you at once.’

  He marvelled anew at the perfection of their little starfish hands and noticed that their eyelashes seemed to have grown longer and darker since the last time he’d held either of them.

  Selfishly, he was glad that they both seemed to have inherited their hair colour from him, rather than the birth mother who Norah had chosen partly because the woman’s hair and eyes had matched her own. It was too soon to be sure whether their eyes would stay the blue they had been at birth or would change to his own more unusual green. Not that it really mattered, because he loved them both just the way they were, grateful that they had come into his life, no matter how traumatic their arrival had been.

  The sudden flash of the camera wielded by Nadia was the only thing that stopped the sudden threat of tears of gratitude from falling.

  ‘I thought you ought to have a photo to mark this special occasion,’ she said as she checked the image she’d captured. ‘Perfect,’ she pronounced in a slightly more husky tone and he realised that there was something different in her expression…a softness that hadn’t been there just a short while ago.

  ‘May I see?’ he asked, wondering if it was something about the picture she’d taken with the camera kept specifically for such landmark moments that had wrought the change.

  He was almost disappointed when she angled the camera towards him and he saw nothing remarkable in the digital display. In fact, it looked like nothing more than the expected image of a new father holding two tiny premature babies, until he realised that she’d managed to capture the very moment when his heart had been in danger of overflowing with love for these precious children.

  He had to clear his t
hroat before he could speak, and even then he couldn’t meet her eyes, knowing that she’d recognised the fact that he’d nearly betrayed his emotions in such a public manner.

  ‘Could you print an extra copy?’ he asked, knowing that he still sounded choked by emotion in spite of his best efforts. ‘I’d like to take one home to put in the album I’m making…so they can see themselves when they’re older.’

  ‘Of course I can,’ she said immediately, and he dared to glance up just in time to catch a glimpse of tears sparkling in her eyes, too.

  Why was Gideon making it so hard for her? Nadia grumbled silently as she trudged towards the entrance of A and E.

  Ever since the day she’d seen him sitting there with those two precious babies in his arms for the first time, the expression of utter devotion on his face had never left her mind for a moment.

  She’d never dreamed that there could be a man who could feel things so deeply that he was moved close to tears. In fact, she’d never met a man who was in any way like Gideon West, and that made it harder than she would have believed to resist him.

  So, here she was, arriving nearly an hour early for her shift, having set her alarm to get up in time to make a batch of something he’d called flapjacks so that he could have a taste of a favourite treat from his childhood.

  Was this the way to maintain a safe distance between the two of them? Definitely not. But when the man was even invading her dreams with his smiling eyes, making her think of sunlight flickering through fresh green leaves, and when the rebellious curls at the back of his longer-than-ever hair were tempting her to run her fingers through them to feel if they were as silky soft as they looked, how could she resist him?

  Now all she had to do was find some way of giving him the treat she’d baked without his colleagues noticing. The last thing she wanted to do was cause him embarrassment in front of the people with whom he worked.