Читать книгу Relative Ethics - Caroline Anderson - Страница 6

‘DR JONES? Bronwen? Are you all right?’

Bron lifted her shocked face to Jim Harris’s startled eyes and nodded faintly.

‘Yes—yes, I’m all right, Jim. Just a bit giddy. I think I stood up too fast.’

Oliver swore softly under his breath, and Bron felt her knees give way. She sat down abruptly before she fell.

‘I’ll get you a cup of coffee,’ Jim mumbled, and turned on his heel. Out of the corner of her eye, Bron could see Oliver, his face composed, only a muscle twitching in his jaw giving him away.

He sat beside her and covered her hand with his. ‘Bron? Are you OK? What happened?’

Was it her imagination, or was there a note of genuine concern in his voice? She snatched her hand away, but that only made matters worse because his hand then lay on her knee, and he made no attempt to remove it. Oh, lord, was she to be punished for that fatal attraction over and over again?

‘Here, drink this——’ Jim thrust a cup of coffee into her unsteady hands, and she tightened her fingers on the handle until her knuckles were white. ‘Did you have any breakfast?’

She nodded. ‘Yes, I was sat down and force-fed.’

‘So it’s not the hallucinogenic effect of hypoglycaemia?’ Oliver murmured drily, and removed his hand from her knee. ‘Just to be on the safe side, I’ll get you a bar of chocolate.’

‘Please don’t bother,’ she said curtly, and Jim looked from one to the other of them with puzzled eyes. ‘Do you two know each other?’

‘Yes.’

‘No!’

‘Yes, we do,’ Oliver argued gently. ‘We met on a conference on trauma, remember?’

How could she forget? It had been the most traumatic week of her life. ‘Yes, we have met, but I wouldn’t say I knew you—though I thought I did…’

‘Bron?’

Jim’s bleep went off then, so he excused himself with a worried look at his new registrar, and left the room.

‘Just what did you mean by that?’ Oliver asked.

Bron laughed, a thready, shaky little laugh that betrayed her tension. ‘I would have thought it was obvious.’

‘Not to me. Why didn’t you reply to my letters?’

‘Letters? What letters?’ Bron couldn’t quite meet his eye. There had been letters, three of them, addressed to her hospital, but not for two months, and by then she’d been so hurt that she’d thrown them away without reading them. And then nothing, just when she had been prepared to sink her principles and tell him that she was pregnant. She had wound up her courage to ring Guy’s and tell him about Livvy when she was born, and she was told he had left. Mail would be forwarded, she was told, but they had no address as yet. Her courage had failed before she could post the letter, and afterwards she was glad it had.

He sighed heavily. ‘I tried to contact you—several times. When you didn’t reply, I phoned the hospital and was told you had left with no forwarding address. I had to assume that what we had between us had meant nothing to you—but I was wrong, wasn’t I? You’re as shocked to see me as I am to see you——’

‘Rubbish,’ she got out, and he snorted.

‘Look at you. If you aren’t affected by seeing me again, why are you trying to throttle that cup?’

Surprised, Bron glanced down and made an immediate conscious effort to relax. The coffee slopped on to her skirt and she smacked the cup down on to the saucer with a defiant clatter. ‘Damn—now look what you’ve made me do!’

Unruffled, Oliver produced a clean handkerchief from his pocket and blotted her skirt unnecessarily thoroughly.

‘Thank you,’ she muttered through tight lips, and he chuckled.

‘Oh, Bron. Look, I have to go and start the afternoon list. What are you doing tonight?’

She closed her eyes. Surely he didn’t think she was going to let him pick up where they left off? Thinking of that gave her heart an unruly and unwelcome flutter, and she crushed the memory of his lovemaking with ruthless vigour. Lovemaking, indeed! Sex. A juvenile exercise in relieving hormones. So he was particularly good at it. So what? There were other things—like loyalty.

‘Going home, putting my feet up and telling someone very important to me how much I love them.’

His mouth thinned. Good. He had misunderstood, as she had intended.

‘OK. But we need to talk, Bron, because there’s a lot we didn’t say.’

‘You’re too late, Oliver.’ Years too late.

He stood up and sighed again, running his hand through his hair in that gesture she knew so well.

‘Nevertheless—I left abruptly, without time to say half of the things I wanted to say to you, and I want to apologise.’

‘So, you’ve apologised.’ Her voice softened. ‘I was sorry to hear about your brother-in-law. How was—Clare?’

‘Devastated, but the baby’s made a great deal of difference to her life, as you can imagine.’

Bron tried not to laugh. Oh, yes, she could imagine—only too well!

‘What was it?’ she asked, turning the knife.

‘A boy—lovely, healthy little lad. She called him after Tom, but he looks just the way I did as a child. The Henderson genes must be very strong.’

She could imagine that, too. Livvy was the spitting image of her father, from that startlingly direct blue gaze to the unruly tumble of golden hair. She squeezed back the tears that threatened, and rose to her feet.

‘I must get back to work. I’m glad Clare’s OK and the baby was all right. I’ll see you…’

She forced herself to walk away, and when she glanced back from the door she saw him watching her with a strangely unguarded expression in his eyes.

Oh, hell. That was all she needed. For two years she had told herself that he was an opportunist, an unscrupulous bastard—not her favourite word, she thought with a pang—but what if she was wrong?

No, she told herself firmly. Whether his feelings for her had been genuine or not, he was married, and he jolly well should have made that clear and remained faithful, even if only in body.