Читать книгу Dr Mathieson's Daughter - Maggie Kingsley - Страница 6

ELLIOT MATHIESON gazed blankly at the solicitor for a second, then shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, but there has to have been some mistake. I have no daughter.’

The solicitor sifted through the papers on his desk and selected one. ‘We have a birth certificate with your name on it, Dr Mathieson—’

‘I don’t care if you have a hundred birth certificates with my name on them. I have no daughter. No children at all, come to that!’

‘Your wife—’

‘My ex-wife—’

‘Was quite adamant in her will that Nicole is yours,’ the solicitor declared calmly. ‘I can, if you wish, instigate court proceedings to dispute paternity, but…’

It would be a waste of time, Elliot finished for him silently. Whatever else Donna might have been, she hadn’t been a fool. She would have known Nicole’s paternity could be easily established by means of a simple blood test.

Which meant he had a child. A six-year-old daughter he’d known nothing about until he’d stepped into the solicitor’s office this morning, but how?

He and Donna had been divorced for five years. They hadn’t even spoken to one another since that disastrous attempt at a reconciliation in Paris almost seven years ago. A reconciliation which had ended in heated words and angry exchanges.

But not at first, he suddenly remembered, his blue eyes darkening with dismay. There’d been no angry words on that first night when they’d gone out to dinner, she’d invited him back to her flat for coffee and somehow they’d ended up in her big double bed.

Oh, hell, but it must have happened then. Nicole must have been conceived then.

‘I realise this has come as something of a shock to you, Dr Mathieson,’ the solicitor continued, gazing at him not without sympathy, ‘but I’m afraid there really wasn’t any easy way of breaking the news. If you wish to dispute paternity—’

‘Of course I don’t,’ he interrupted brusquely. ‘I accept the child is mine.’

The solicitor smiled with relief. ‘Then Nicole will be arriving from Paris tomorrow—’

‘Arriving?’ Elliot’s jaw dropped. ‘What do you mean, she’ll be arriving?’

‘She can hardly remain in France now her mother is dead, Dr Mathieson.’

‘What about my wife’s sister? Surely she—’

‘I’m afraid we haven’t even been able to inform Mrs Bouvier of her sister’s death. She and her husband are on an archaeological dig in Iran where communications are very poor. And you are the child’s father, Dr Mathieson.’

‘Yes, but I can’t possibly look after a child,’ Elliot protested. ‘I’ve recently been promoted to special registrar in St Stephen’s A and E department. I work long hours—never know when I’m going to be home—’

‘You could employ a nanny or a housekeeper,’ the solicitor suggested. ‘Or what about boarding school? Many professional people send their children to boarding schools.’

They did, but he’d have to be the biggest louse of all time to send a six-year-old kid who had just lost her mother to a boarding school. A nanny or a housekeeper might be the answer, but where on earth did you get people like that in twenty-four hours?

‘Look, it’s not that I don’t want Nicole living with me,’ he declared, raking his hands through his blond hair in desperation. Like hell it wasn’t. ‘But I don’t know anything about raising a child.’

‘Nobody does initially,’ the solicitor said bracingly.

Which was all very well for him to say, Elliot thought when he left the solicitor’s office some time later, but where did that leave him?

He hadn’t even got used to being special registrar at St Stephen’s yet, far less the two new members of staff who’d replaced Robert Cunningham and Hannah Blake when they’d got married and left to work for Médecins Sans Frontières. The last thing he needed was a child on top of all his other responsibilities.

Oh, cut the flannel, Elliot, his mind whispered as he strode down the busy London street, heedless of the falling sleet and biting March wind. You wouldn’t want this child no matter what the circumstances. You wouldn’t want any child who reminded you of your marriage to Donna.

‘Hey, watch where you’re going, mate!’ a plump, middle-aged man protested as Elliot collided with him on his way to the entrance to the St Stephen’s Accident and Emergency unit.

Watch where he was going? A couple of hours ago Elliot Mathieson had known exactly where he was going, but now…

Now he had a daughter arriving from France tomorrow. Now he was being forced to remember a time in his life he’d tried for the last five years to forget, and he didn’t like it. He didn’t like it at all.

‘I thought Elliot was only going to be away an hour?’ Floella Lazear protested, her round face looking distinctly harassed as she crossed the treatment room. ‘What on earth can be keeping him?’

Jane Halden tucked a wayward strand of thick black hair back under her sister’s cap and wished she knew. Elliot had told them of his ex-wife’s death in a car crash in France, and her London solicitors’ urgent request to see him, and she’d assumed—they all had—that he must be a beneficiary in Donna’s will, but two hours was an awfully long time for the solicitor to tell him so.

‘Maybe his ex-wife’s left him a fortune,’ Charlie Gordon observed, joining them at the whiteboard. ‘She was a successful fashion designer, wasn’t she? Maybe she’s left him so much money he’s handing in his resignation even as we speak.’

‘I wish somebody would leave me a fortune,’ Floella sighed. ‘I’d be off to the travel agent’s before you could say enema.’

Charlie laughed. ‘What would you do if somebody left you a lot of money, Jane?’

Check into a health farm and lose twelve kilos, she thought. Treat myself to every beautifying facial known to womankind, then throw out all my chain-store clothes and buy designer labels.

‘I haven’t the faintest idea,’ she replied.

‘Got everything you want, huh?’ The SHO grinned.

‘Something like that.’ She nodded. And she did. Well, almost everything. She had a job as senior sister in A and E, which she loved, a flat that might be a shoebox but at least it was hers, and if there was no man in her life, well, two out of three wasn’t bad. ‘How about you, Charlie?’ she asked. ‘What would you do with a windfall?’

‘Send a bottle of champagne and a huge box of chocolates to my girlfriend in Shrewsbury every day to make sure she doesn’t forget me.’

‘And in six months she’d be a twenty-stone alcoholic, you idiot!’ Floella laughed.

A deep blush of embarrassed colour spread across the SHO’s face and Jane quickly came to his rescue. ‘I think it’s a lovely idea, Charlie, and your girlfriend’s a very lucky girl.’

And she was, too, Jane thought as the SHO hurried away, the colour on his cheeks even darker. They were lucky to have him. Big, bluff, and hearty, Charlie had settled in well into Elliot’s old SHO job. It was just a pity the same couldn’t be said for their new junior doctor, she thought with a groan as she noticed the man in question bearing down on her. Richard Connery might be bright and enthusiastic, but he was also abrasive and far too self-confident for his own good.

‘My patient in 6 has a fractured right arm, Sister Halden,’ he declared without preamble. ‘Please, arrange for him to go to X-Ray.’

Like he couldn’t arrange it himself? she thought as he strode away again before she could reply. No, of course he couldn’t. It was obviously too far beneath his dignity to speak to anyone as lowly as a porter so he expected her to drop everything and do it for him.

‘And what—pray tell—did his last servant die of?’ Floella exclaimed angrily. ‘Honestly, Jane—’

‘I know, I know,’ she interrupted, ‘but just leave it right now, Flo, OK?’

‘But he has no right to talk to you like that,’ the staff nurse protested. ‘You’re the senior sister in A and E. You’ve at least six years more medical experience than he has—’

‘And if you say I’m old enough to be his mother I’ll hit you!’ Jane declared, her grey eyes dancing, and a reluctant smile curved Floella’s lips.

‘Yeah, right. Like you’re old Ma Moses. But you know what I mean. It’s just not on.’

It wasn’t, but working in A and E was difficult enough at the moment, what with Elliot still finding his feet as special registrar and Charlie Gordon learning the ropes as SHO, and the last thing they needed was a full-scale row.

‘Try to be patient with him, Flo. I know he can be difficult,’ she continued as the staff nurse shook her head, ‘but he’s only been with us a month, and I’m sure a lot of his abrasiveness is due to him finding the work a lot harder than he imagined.’

‘Rubbish!’ Floella retorted. ‘He just enjoys treating nurses like dirt!’

She didn’t need this, not right now, Jane thought as the staff nurse stalked off. Teamwork was important in every department in the hospital, but in A and E it was vital. Without teamwork they couldn’t function, but it was going to take time to create a new team, and time, as Floella had just so forcefully revealed, was the one thing they didn’t have.

With a sigh she went into cubicle 6 where Richard’s patient was still waiting.

‘My arm is definitely broken, then?’ the elderly man queried, wincing slightly as she helped him into a wheelchair. ‘The young lad who saw me earlier said he thought it was, but I wasn’t sure whether he was fully qualified to make the diagnosis or not.’

Jane hid a smile. ‘Dr Connery’s pretty sure your arm’s fractured, but to make one hundred per cent sure we’re going to send you along to X-Ray. Hey, look on the bright side,’ she added encouragingly as his face fell, ‘you’ll get lots of sympathy from your female admirers.’

‘I hope not or my wife will break my other arm,’ he observed, his faded brown eyes twinkling. ‘Oh, well, I suppose it could have been worse, and at least it’s given me the opportunity to meet a very pretty and charming young lady.’

Jane chuckled. She knew very well that she wasn’t pretty, and she supposed that at twenty-eight she wasn’t exactly young any more, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t nice to hear a compliment.

Right now, she could have done with hearing a lot more. It might have cheered her up. In fact, ever since Hannah had married Robert—and it had been a lovely wedding despite the bride’s leg being in plaster—she’d been feeling oddly down.

Probably because it’s the fourth wedding you’ve been to in as many months, her mind pointed out, whereas you…

No, she wasn’t going to think about her love life. Actually, her completely non-existent love life.

And whose fault is that? Her little voice asked. OK, so Frank was a rat, and you wasted two years of your life believing his protestations of undying love, but what happened after he dumped you? You promptly fell in love with Elliot Mathieson. A man who’s had more girlfriends since he got divorced than most other men have had hot dinners. A man who could hurt you a hundred times more than Frank ever did if he found out how you really feel about him.

‘Jane, we’ve got trouble!’

With an effort she turned to see their student nurse gazing at her in dismay. ‘What’s up, Kelly?’

‘We’ve got that man back in again—the one who thinks his brain’s been taken over by aliens. I’ve phoned Social Services but—’

‘They said it’s our pigeon,’ she finished for her wryly. Social Services always said psychiatric cases were their pigeon unless someone was so bad they had to be sectioned. And Harry’s delusions weren’t nearly frequent enough yet to have him compulsorily detained in a psychiatric ward. ‘Has Charlie seen him?’

‘He’s given him a tranquilliser, and he seems pretty quiet at the moment, but you know what happened last time.’

Jane did. Before the tranquilliser could take effect Harry had practically wrecked one of their ECG machines, thinking it was an alien life form. ‘OK. I’ll sit with him—’

‘RTA on the way, Jane!’ Floella suddenly called from the end of the treatment room. ‘Three casualties, and two look really serious!’

Jane bit her lip. Damn, this would have to happen right now with Mr Mackay, the consultant in charge of A and E, off on his annual break and Elliot not back from the solicitors yet.

‘Kelly—’

‘Yeah, I know.’ The student nurse sighed. ‘Make the alien a nice cup of tea, and do my best.’

‘Good girl.’ Jane nodded, but as she hurried down the treatment room a sigh of relief came from her when Elliot suddenly appeared.

‘Now, that’s what I call perfect timing,’ she said with a smile.

‘Perfect timing?’

‘We’ve an RTA on the way,’ she explained, ‘and I was just wondering how on earth we were going to cope with the casualties.’

‘Oh—Right. I see.’

She glanced up at him, her grey eyes concerned. ‘Everything OK, Elliot?’

‘Great. Fine,’ he replied, but he was anything but fine she decided as he walked quickly across to Charlie Gordon.

He looked…Not worried. Elliot never looked worried no matter how dire the situation, but he most definitely looked preoccupied. Preoccupied and tense, and still quite the handsomest man she’d ever laid eyes on.

In fact, there ought to have been a law against any man being quite so handsome, she thought ruefully. His thick blond hair, deep blue eyes and devastating smile would have been quite potent enough, but when you added a six-foot muscular frame, a pair of shoulders which looked as though they’d been purpose-built for a girl to lean her head against…

It was an unbeatable combination. The kind of combination which turned even the most sensible women into slack-jawed idiots whenever he was around. Herself included, as Jane knew only too well, but she’d always had sense enough not to show it.

Not that it would have made any difference if she had, of course, she realised. Elliot’s taste ran to tall, leggy women. Women like Gussie Granton from Paediatrics whose figure would have made a pin-up girl gnash her teeth.

Nobody would ever gnash their teeth over her figure, she thought wistfully, unless it was in complete despair. She was too short, and too fat, and a pair of ordinary grey eyes and stubbornly straight shoulder-length black hair were never going to make up for those deficiencies.

‘You have a wonderful sense of humour, Jane,’ her mother had told her encouragingly when she was growing up. ‘Men like that.’

Yeah, right, Mother. And Frank’s admiration for my sense of humour lasted only until a red-haired bimbo with the IQ of a gerbil drifted into his sights, and then he was off.

What on earth was wrong with her today? she wondered crossly as she heard the sound of an ambulance arriving, its siren blaring. All this maudlin self-pity. All right, so she was in love with Elliot Mathieson, and had been ever since he’d come to St Stephen’s two years ago, but he was never going to fall in love with her. She was simply good old Janey and it was high time she accepted that. Time she realised it was only in the movies that the plain, ordinary heroine got the handsome hero, and this wasn’t the movies—this was real life.

‘OK, what have you got for us?’ Elliot asked as the doors of the treatment room banged open and the paramedics appeared with their casualties.

‘One adult, plus a seventeen-year-old boy and fifteen-year-old girl. The youngsters suffered the worst damage. They were in the back seat and neither was wearing seat belts.’

Elliot swore under his breath. ‘Are they related in any way?’

‘The adult’s the father. He has a fractured wrist, ankle and minor lacerations.’

‘Richard, Kelly—you take the adult—’

‘But what about my alien?’ the student nurse exclaimed.

‘Oh, Lord, he’s not back in again, is he?’ Elliot groaned. ‘Has anyone given him any tranquillisers?’

‘I have,’ Charlie Gordon said, nodding.

‘Then get one of the porters to take him up to Social Services.’

‘Elliot, they’ll throw a blue fit if we dump him on them!’ Jane protested.

‘Let them,’ he replied grimly. ‘It’ll give them a chance to see that care in the community means more than simply leaving psychiatric cases to fend for themselves. Charlie, you and Flo take the boy. Jane, I’ll need your help with the girl.’

He was going to need his skill a whole lot more, she thought when she helped the paramedic wheel the girl into cubicle 2.

The teenager was a mess. Countless lacerations to her face and arms, compound fractures to the right and left tibia and fibula which would require the services of both orthopaedics and plastics, but it was her laboured, rasping breathing that was the most worrying. If she wasn’t helped—and quickly—not enough oxygen would reach her brain and she’d be in big trouble.

‘ET, Jane,’ Elliot demanded, though in fact there had been no need for him to ask. She was already holding the correct size of endotracheal tube out to him, and gently he eased it past the girl’s vocal cords and down into her trachea. ‘IV lines and BP?’

‘IV’s open and running,’ she replied, checking the drip bags containing the saline solution which was providing a temporary substitute for the blood the teenager was losing. ‘BP 60 over 40.’

Elliot frowned. Too low, much too low, and the girl’s heartbeat was showing an increasingly uneven rhythm.

Quickly he placed his stethoscope on the injured girl’s chest. There were no breath sounds on the left side. She must have been thrown against one of the front seats in the crash and her left lung had collapsed, sending blood and air seeping into her chest cavity.

‘Chest drain and scalpel?’ Jane murmured.

He nodded and swiftly made an incision into the upper right-hand side of the teenager’s chest, then carefully inserted a plastic tube directly into her chest cavity. ‘BP now?’

‘Eighty over sixty,’ Jane answered.

Better. Not great, but definitely better. The chest drain had suctioned the excess air and blood out of the girl’s chest. She was starting to stabilise at last.

‘You’ll be wanting six units of O-negative blood, chest, arm and leg X-rays?’ Jane asked.

Elliot’s eyebrows lifted and he grinned. ‘This is getting seriously worrying.’

‘Worrying?’ she repeated in confusion.

‘Your apparent ability to read my mind.’

Just so long as you can’t read mine, she thought, and smiled. ‘It comes with working with you for two years.’

He was surprised. ‘Has it really been that long?’

‘Uh-huh.’

He supposed it must have been, but Jane…Well, Jane just always seemed to have been there. Skilled, intuitive, able to instinctively predict whatever he needed whenever he needed it.

But even she couldn’t get him out of his current predicament, he thought, watching her as she inserted another IV line to take the O-negative blood they would use until they’d made a cross-match. Nobody could.

If his mother hadn’t just left for Canada to stay with his sister Annie for the next three months to help her through what was proving to be a particularly difficult first pregnancy, she would have taken Nicole like a shot—he knew she would. Or if the agencies he’d phoned could have provided him with a nanny or a housekeeper immediately, but none of them could supply anybody until the beginning of April, and that was a month away.

Which meant that not only was he up the creek without a paddle, he was sitting in a leaking boat as well.

How could Donna have done this to him? She’d known the hours he worked, that everything could alter in an instant if a bad accident like this came in. What had she expected him to do with Nicole, then? And what about after school, at weekends?

It probably hadn’t even occurred to her, he decided bitterly. Live for today—that had always been Donna’s motto. Live for today, and don’t think about tomorrow.

Which was what attracted you to her in the first place, his mind pointed out. Her vitality, her lust for life, not to mention a husky French accent and a face and figure that had done irreparable damage to his libido.

But it hadn’t lasted. Within three short years the marriage had been over, leaving him bitter and disillusioned. And now Donna was dead, killed in a car crash. And he had a daughter arriving tomorrow and no earthly idea of how he was going to cope.

‘Elliot, are you quite sure you’re OK?’ Jane said, her gaze fixed on him with concern when the teenager was wheeled out of the treatment room towards the theatre after Radiology had confirmed that the patient did, indeed, have compound fractures, but no other major damage. ‘You seem a bit, well, a bit preoccupied this afternoon.’

‘Perils of being a new and very inexperienced special reg,’ he replied, managing to dredge up a smile. ‘Too much to think about.’

She didn’t press the point, though he knew she wasn’t convinced, and with relief he strode quickly down the treatment room to check on the other casualties. He didn’t want to talk about his problem—didn’t even want to think about it. All he wanted to do right now was to bury himself in work and forget all about his daughter, and he managed to do just that until late in the afternoon when the sound of children crying caught his attention.

‘What on earth’s going on in cubicle 8, Flo?’ he asked curiously. ‘It sounds like somebody’s being murdered in there.’

She sighed. ‘It’s a case of child neglect. Two girls and a boy, aged between one and four. The police brought them in ten minutes ago for a medical assessment before they contact Social Services. Apparently their dad’s in jail, their mother is God knows where and a neighbour phoned the police because she hadn’t seen them out and about for a week.’

‘Medical condition?’ Elliot demanded, his professional instincts immediately alert.

‘Excellent, considering they’ve been living in an unheated flat for the past week, and the oldest child told the police they haven’t had anything to eat for two days.’ She sighed and shook her head. ‘Honestly, some people should never have children.’

People like him, Elliot decided, but it was too late to think about that now, too late to regret that night in the hotel in Paris. ‘Who’s with them?’

‘Jane. Charlie’s checked them over, and there’s nothing we can do for them except clean them up and give them some food, but…’ She shrugged. ‘It’s better than nothing, isn’t it?’

He supposed it was as he strode into the cubicle to find Jane sitting on the trolley, holding the youngest of the three children in her arms while the other two clung to her, wide-eyed and clearly terrified.

‘Need any help?’ he asked.

She shook her head and smiled, apparently completely oblivious to the overpowering smell of dried urine and faeces emanating from the trio. ‘No, thanks. I’ve sent down to the kitchens for some food, and Kelly’s organising a bath for them all.’

‘What about clean clothes?’ he suggested.

‘Flo’s phoned her husband and he’s bringing some of their twins’ old things over.’

There was nothing for him to do here, then, Elliot realised, but still he lingered, watching in admiration as Jane managed to eventually coax some smiles from the children.

She was good with kids. Actually, she was quite amazing with kids. He’d seen her get a response from even the most traumatised of children simply by sitting with them, holding them, murmuring all kinds of nonsense.

And suddenly it hit him. He had the answer to all his problems sitting right in front of him. Jane. Jane would be perfect for Nicole, just perfect.

But would she do it? Would she be prepared to move into his flat to help him out until he could get a nanny or a housekeeper in a month’s time?

Of course she would. Jane helped everybody, and it wasn’t as though he was asking a lot. Not much, he observed sourly. Just for her to take over your responsibilities, that’s all. Nonsense, he wasn’t asking her to do that. He wasn’t even thinking about himself at all. He was simply thinking about Nicole.

And Jane clearly thought he was, too, when he whisked her into his office and explained what had happened after the police had collected the three abandoned children and taken them off to Social Services.

‘Oh, the poor little girl!’ she exclaimed, her eyes full of compassion. ‘Why on earth didn’t Donna tell you about her before?’

He’d wondered about that, too, but all he could think was that she must have been so angry with him when they’d parted that this had been her way of punishing him.

‘You’re going to have to go very carefully with her,’ Jane continued, her forehead creased in thought. ‘Not only has she lost her mother, but coming to a strange country, to a man she doesn’t know…She’s going to need lots of love and attention.’

‘But that’s the trouble,’ he declared. ‘How can I give her lots of love and attention when I’m hardly ever going to be there? Janey, you know what our hours are like—’

‘We’ll all help out,’ she said quickly. ‘It’s a nuisance Mr Mackay being away, but when he gets back I’m sure he’ll agree to letting you work days for a while. In the meantime, we could ask Charlie if he’d mind doing most of your night shifts—’

‘I don’t want Charlie to do my night shifts!’ he snapped, then flushed as Jane’s eyebrows rose. ‘Janey, I’ve got to be honest with you…’

He paused. How to explain? How to say that it wasn’t just a question of the day-to-day complications of taking care of a child that was worrying him, but that he didn’t want this girl because she would remind him of a time in his life he preferred to forget. Jane would ask why. She’d ask questions. Questions he didn’t want to answer.

Better by far for her to think he was selfish, he decided. Better for her to believe he was the biggest heel of all time than for him to have to reveal the sorry details of his failed marriage.

He took a deep breath. ‘Janey, the thing is, kids…they’re not really me. I never wanted any—never planned on having any. I’m a loner at heart, you see, always have been.’

Oh, he was something all right, she decided as she stared up at him in utter disbelief. How could he be so unfeeling about a child? And not simply any child. His child. His daughter.

‘So you’re getting your mother to look after her, I presume?’ she said tightly.

‘I can’t. She flew out to Canada last Saturday to stay with my sister for the next three months. Annie’s been having a really rotten time with her first pregnancy—’

‘Then you’re hiring a nanny?’ Jane asked, her heart going out to his poor little motherless, unwanted child. ‘Or are you too damn mean to fork out the money?’

‘It’s not a question of money!’ he exclaimed, his cheeks reddening. ‘None of the agencies I contacted could get me anybody until next month, which is why…’ He quickly fixed what he hoped was his most appealing smile to his lips. ‘Janey, I need you to do me a huge favour. I want you to come and live with me, to help me look after Nicole.’

‘You want me to…’ Her mouth fell open, then she shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, but I think there must be something wrong with my hearing. I could have sworn you just said you wanted me to come and live with you to look after your daughter.’

‘I did—I do. Janey, listen, it makes perfect sense,’ he continued as she stared at him, stunned. ‘You’re a woman—’

‘I also like pasta but that doesn’t make me Italian,’ she protested. ‘If you’re so desperate for help, why don’t you ask Gussie Granton? She’s your current girlfriend, according to the hospital grapevine, and as a paediatric sister she’s bound to know more about children than I do.’ He had the grace at least to look uncomfortable and her grey eyes narrowed. ‘You’ve already asked her, haven’t you, and she said no.’

Gussie had. Oh, she’d been wonderfully understanding, her luscious lips curving into an expression of deepest sympathy, but, as she’d pointed out, the demands of her job simply didn’t give her the time to take care of a child.

‘Janey—’

‘So you decided that as your mother couldn’t do it, and Gussie wouldn’t, muggins here might fit the bill,’ she interrupted, her voice harder and colder than he’d ever heard it. ‘Well, you can forget it, Elliot. Forget it!’

‘But you’ve got to help me,’ he cried, coming after her as she made for his office door. ‘Surely you can see that I can’t do this on my own?’

‘You’re thirty-two years old, Elliot,’ she snapped. ‘Get off your butt and try!’

‘But you’re so good with kids—the very best,’ he said, his blue eyes fixed pleadingly on her. ‘And I’m not asking you to do it for ever—just for a month. Until I can get a nanny or a housekeeper. Please, Janey.’

She’d heard that wheedling tone in his voice before. It was the one he used on women when he wanted a favour, and it usually worked on her, too, but not today.

‘No, Elliot.’

‘Look, I’m not asking you to go into purdah for the next month,’ he said quickly. ‘I have a three-bedroom flat—you can have your friends round whenever you want, go out whenever you want. All I’m asking is for us to dovetail our shifts and personal commitments so at least one of us will be there when Nicole comes home from school.’

‘No, Elliot.’

‘Janey, please. I’m begging you. If you won’t do it for me, won’t you at least do it for Nicole?’

Blackmail. It was blackmail of the worst possible kind, and anyone who agreed to move in with him under those circumstances needed their head examined. Anyone who had secretly been in love with him for the last two years and agreed to do it needed that head certified.

Tell him it’s his problem, not yours, her mind insisted. Tell him to go fly a kite, preferably on the edge of a very high cliff in the middle of a howling gale. OK, so his little girl must be grief-stricken to have lost her mother, but it’s not your problem.

And she cleared her throat to tell him just that when an image suddenly came into her mind. An image of a little girl with big, frightened eyes. A little girl lost, and alone, and deeply unhappy.

‘Just for a month, you said?’ she murmured uncertainly.

He nodded, hope, desperation, plain in his eyes.

‘You’ll have to do your fair share, Elliot,’ she declared. ‘Nicole is your responsibility, not mine.’

‘Oh, absolutely—definitely,’ he replied, nodding vigorously.

Only an idiot would agree to this, she thought as she stared up into his handsome face. Only a fool would ever say yes. And yet, before she could stop herself, the words ‘All right, then, I’ll do it’ were out of her mouth.

And as a broad smile lit up his face, and her heart turned over in response, she knew that she wasn’t simply an idiot. She was completely and utterly out of her mind.