Читать книгу Paddington Children's Hospital Complete Collection - Kate Hardy - Страница 25

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

AND VICTORIA WANTED to be in his bed too.

‘I’m very tired,’ she warned with a smile as they drove away from Paddington’s.

‘Victoria,’ he said, ‘I’ve been on call all weekend and you look like hell.’

She looked at him all unshaven and with dark circles under his eyes. ‘So do you.’

‘Good,’ Dominic said, and glanced over to her, ‘so you’ll be able to keep your hands off me, then.’

God, but he turned her on.

His home was a large apartment, close to the hospital. They took the stairs up to his floor and, as he let them in, there were all the signs of a family in residence. Victoria was very used to coming home to her flat alone and finding it exactly as she had left it, but Dominic read a note that had been left on a table in the hall.

‘I just saw them back at the hospital,’ Dominic told her. ‘But it says that they won’t be back till this evening.’

She was too tired to look around but there was a nice feel to the place and, as she glanced in the living room, she saw two heavy-looking leather sofas with rugs over the back of them.

A stint of nights, then hanging around for the ultrasound and all the emotion of before, had left Victoria so tired that she felt cold despite the warm day.

They stepped into his bedroom and she looked at the large bed and wanted to sink into it.

‘I am so going to enjoy sleeping with you,’ Dominic said as he closed the drapes and turned on a bedside light, and she laughed.

‘And I am so going to enjoy sleeping with you.’

She slipped off her clothes and got into bed. It had the wonderful, soapy, fragrant scent of him that was now familiar. Victoria suddenly realised that she had never seen him naked. But she was about to get that pleasure now, and she couldn’t wait.

Dominic took off his shirt. She saw his pale skin and the dark hair of his chest and she just lazily watched. He undid his belt and as he undressed she saw strong thighs and then his tumescent male beauty.

‘We are going to sleep,’ he promised, yet Victoria wasn’t so sure because she was starting to change her mind. There are moments so special that they have to be marked in some way, and this was one of them. So she stretched and sighed as he climbed into bed and turned off the light, and they lay there as a siren went past.

‘Thank God it’s not you out there,’ Dominic said, and he pulled her closer into him. ‘Every time I hear a siren I think of you, even before I found out that you were pregnant. I’ve been so worried about you out there.’

‘I will be again,’ she warned, because her career was incredibly important to her and she definitely would be going back.

‘I know that you will,’ Dominic said, ‘but you shan’t ever be out there again without knowing that I love you.’

And then she looked at Dominic and saw right down to his soul, and found out that she resided there and that she had ever since their first kiss.

She lifted her face towards him and he kissed not, at first, her mouth but her cheeks and eyes and then he kissed her lips long and slow.

A goodnight kiss, even though it was morning.

The kind of I’m not going anywhere kiss that she had never known, and then he held her tight in his arms as they drifted off to sleep together.

For the first time they lay together to the sounds floating up from the street and the bliss of being in each other’s arms. They needed no more than this right now.

It was a sleep like no other.

The end of nights and their first together ensured that it was the sweetest, deepest sleep for them both.

Victoria rolled onto her side and he wrapped around her and peace was made.

* * *

It was Victoria who stirred first. Dominic was curved into her and she was disorientated as to place and time, for the room was dark and the direction she faced unfamiliar, but she was blissfully certain of the man in whose arms she lay.

Who knows how we awaken together? she thought.

That moment when you realise someone else is present and by your side.

When respite has been taken and you awake peaceful, and there is no need for a frantic examination for you to know it is a better world.

And it was.

His hand was on her stomach and she lay with eyes open to the darkened room, half asleep, half awake and completely content. Then Victoria closed her eyes as his hand roamed the curve of her hip and he moved in closer.

Dominic kissed her bare shoulder and his hand toyed with her breast. She felt the pinch of his finger and thumb on her nipple and the nudge of him between her legs. She turned her face to him and they shared a kiss that was slow, but then both wanted more and so she rolled in his arms for just that. As she did so Dominic moved too. He held himself over her and halted her on her back, resting his elbows by her head and pushing up on his arms. She had never felt so deliciously trapped, yet so safe in love.

On so many occasions Victoria had looked down when he silently demanded that her eyes meet his, but now she looked up to his gaze. Her hand came to the back of his head and she levered herself up to meet his mouth. But it was his kiss this time and so he pressed her back into the pillows and claimed her mouth as below she parted her legs for him.

The feel of him inside her made her shiver, though their bodies were warm and still loose from sleep. His kiss was deep and intense and they moved slowly at first, revelling in the feel of togetherness and the naked heat of their skin. They simply entwined into one as they forgot they were parents-to-be and found out the couple they had now become.

Each measured thrust he delivered brought her a little more undone.

And she was his.

For all the declarations Dominic had offered, when she had given none, with each building sob that she tried to hold in, she revealed herself to him some more.

He placed his hands on the bed, either side of her breasts, and he moved up onto outstretched arms. The separation between them allowed her to lean up on the pillows as he took her, in short rapid thrusts, as she clasped his face and took his lips in a deep kiss.

It was shockingly intimate for both of them—the kissing, the feeling, the watching each other so close to the edge.

Then she closed her eyes, not to him but because the feelings were intense. He moved faster despite the slow caress of his tongue and she searched for a headboard to cling to but settled instead for his solid arms. She couldn’t resist the urge to tilt her hips and take him in more deeply.

Everything gathered tight within and Victoria wanted to twist or to lift her knees, almost to shield herself from the throes of frenzy, but instead her hands moved up his arms and her fingertips pressed into his shoulders and she came hard.

And there was nowhere for her heart to hide any more.

Dominic sunk down from his arms and she accepted the weight like a raft, and for a moment they lay breathless.

She waited, but this time regret did not arrive.

‘Are you going to say you’ve made a mistake again?’ Dominic asked in that familiar wry tone.

‘Well, if it is a mistake, then I intend to keep on repeating it.’

She rolled to her side and they lay staring at each other for a while.

And the feeling remained.

So she told him something she never had said to anyone. ‘I love you.’

‘Good.’

‘And I’m sorry that I asked about Lorna.’

‘Don’t be, the air needed to be cleared there. We’re all going to be in each other’s lives. But know this—I’ve never felt the way I do about you with anyone else. And I tell you now, I know he wouldn’t but if my brother touched a hair on your head I would kill him.’

She smiled, because it would never happen, and his voice made her shiver with delight.

‘You don’t fight,’ Victoria pointed out.

‘My love for you is savage,’ he said, and as he looked at Victoria he decided that she deserved a savage kind of love.

He made her entire skin tingle, just with the stroke of his finger on her arm.

She looked deep into his eyes, and yes, he could be crabby at times, but she liked that. She liked that he did not fight and that the man she loved could never hurt another. Even when they had fought over Penny that day, he had still put the patient first.

She liked his strength and how he fought, not with fists but by holding on to what was right.

‘You’ve been sleeping on my side,’ Dominic said, and she smiled, because he made her believe in fairytales after all. ‘I mean it,’ he said, and he knelt up and leant over her. First he turned on the bedside light and then he opened a drawer.

From there he took out a little, dark, velvet box and offered her a warning. ‘This isn’t a ring.’

‘I would hope not, given that we’ve only had one date.’

‘Victoria,’ he said in that gorgeous brogue that had her toes curl beneath the sheets. ‘We are going to have many, many more. You’ll be getting a ring but, for now, I want you to have these. I really have been thinking of you all the time and I hope that these will show you how much.’

He opened the box as Victoria sat up in the bed and when she looked she saw a pair of beautiful earrings. Her heart squeezed and her fingers wanted to touch them but for now she simply looked at a gift from the heart.

‘They’re Scottish pearls,’ he told her. ‘I’m lousy at one-night stands and I wanted to get you something. When I was in Scotland I saw these and while I was talking to the jeweller I found out quite a bit about them—pearls are complex things,’ Dominic said. ‘The oyster tries to protect itself from intruders, and from that something very beautiful is formed.’

They were golden hued and the most beautiful pearls that she had ever seen, but more than that it was the care and thought with which they had been chosen that meant so much to her.

Yes, diamonds might be for ever, but they didn’t count unless they were given with love.

Those long fingers were nimble and he carefully put them in for her and, as he did, he asked her a question. ‘Do you know what daunts me when I think about a future with you?’

Victoria could think of many things that might.

An unplanned pregnancy from a one-night stand, her job, her independence, to name a few, but then he broke in.

‘Nothing daunts me,’ Dominic said. ‘I had sworn off relationships until I met you. I know we agreed to no more than what happened that night but I was always going to ask you out. I made up my mind in Scotland. I decided that once I had properly sorted things out with my family I would see if we could give things a try. If you said no, then these earrings were still for you, because what happened between us was amazing. I never thought I could trust anyone again, but I do. And the thought of a future with you thrills me.’

She put her fingers to her ears and felt the gorgeous pearls, and then she looked over to Dominic.

This beautiful, rugged man had offered her his heart and she had never been this close to anyone before.

And what he had said applied both ways, for as she looked to a future with Dominic, there was nothing that daunted.

Yes, it thrilled her, in fact.

And then as they kissed, as they lay with the world at their feet, they heard a noise. Victoria, on hearing the front door opening, pulled away and grimaced.

The day had run away from them and there were voices from the hallway. This was so not how she wanted to meet his family.

‘They won’t come in,’ he said.

‘And I can’t go out.’ Victoria groaned, having visions of herself being trapped hiding in his room all night.

‘Why ever not?’ he asked.

‘What will they think?’ Victoria asked, aghast at the prospect. ‘I can hardly just walk out of your bedroom and meet the family.’

‘Well, if you were the type for a one-night stand with a man you barely knew, then I get that it might be awkward...’

He made her laugh and she knew then that they would tease each other about their torrid tryst for ever.

He made everything fine.

Better than fine.

‘I’ll tell them that I’ve been seeing you for months,’ Dominic suggested, ‘which I have been.’

It was no lie. They had noticed each other right from the day they had met.

It was actually now bliss to lie in bed with him and to hear the sounds of his family outside.

‘Lorna’s here.’ It was Dominic who grimaced a bit when he heard her voice, because though he had meant it when he had said that she could come for dinner or stay here, he knew it might be a bit much for Victoria to deal with so soon. ‘Do you have a problem with that?’

‘None.’ Victoria grinned; after all, she was in his bed. But then she thought about it more seriously for a moment and the answer was still the same, so she shook her head. ‘None.’

‘Good,’ Dominic said, and he rolled out of bed and started to pull on some clothes. ‘Though we might keep it to ourselves about the baby for now.’

‘I know that it must all feel a bit rushed,’ Victoria said, thinking of how he had said he felt when he found out that Lorna was pregnant.

‘Hardly rushed,’ he said. ‘I’m thirty-eight.’

Dominic was pulling on his jeans and she would remember that moment for ever. The moment she knew, completely, that they were meant to be.

And then he looked over and smiled as he realised the difference in his feelings between now and the last time that he had thought he was about to become a father. Still there was no need to dwell for they had moved past all that now. ‘I’m just warning you,’ he said, ‘that when they find out they’ll make an awful fuss.’

‘I can’t wait for the fuss,’ Victoria said, and she thought of grandparents who would be thrilled at the news, and uncles and aunts and cousins and feuding brothers who had sorted things out. ‘As soon as William is more stable we’ll share the good news.’

She couldn’t wait to get out there, but was actually quite nervous when they finally did.

The MacBrides were all in the kitchen. Jamie and Lorna and Dominic’s father were sitting at the table, and his mother, a very small woman, was at the oven.

‘Well, hello,’ his mother said when together they walked in, and she looked a bit taken back when she saw that Dominic had company.

‘This is Victoria,’ Dominic introduced. ‘She’s been on nights too.’

‘You never said that you were seeing anyone!’ his mother scolded, though she smiled to Victoria.

‘Well, we haven’t exactly been speaking,’ Dominic reminded her. ‘But Victoria is very much in my life. Victoria, this is my mother, Katie.’

She met William and Katie, and Jamie and Lorna, who she had, of course, already met, but it was different this time because she was being introduced and integrated into all the main threads of this beautiful man’s life.

‘How is William doing now?’ Victoria asked Lorna, and felt very glad that she had been up-front about knowing Dominic when they were at the hotel.

‘He’s doing well. Rebecca, the surgeon, doesn’t seem to think surgery is necessary at this stage.’

As easily as that they chatted and Victoria understood what Dominic had meant about needing to be properly free from baggage, for there were no dark feelings harboured, no grudges and absolutely no jealousy at all.

‘He’s getting excellent care,’ Jamie said, and then looked over to his brother. ‘I can see why you want to work there—it’s a fantastic hospital.’

‘Is it true that it’s closing?’ Lorna asked.

‘Not if we can help it,’ Dominic said, and from the conviction in his voice, Victoria knew that she had him fully on board now in the fight to save Paddington’s.

And what were the best words in the world to hear when you’ve woken up having been on a stint working nights and just had really good sex?

Katie MacBride said them as Dominic put an arm around her and kissed the top of her head. ‘Take a seat at the table, you two. You’ll be wanting a proper dinner.’

And she was entered into his fold.

Victoria had found her family.

* * * * *