She opened her mouth to reply, then closed it again, and stared at him indecisively. How honest could she be with him? She supposed he’d been honest with her, so maybe it was time for her to be honest with him. At least up to a point.
‘Would it reassure you to know this is the first time I’ve been sent out on an assessment?’ she said. ‘I’ve done all of the training, of course, but you’re my first case, so the one thing I can promise is I won’t be comparing you to anyone.’
He met her gaze in silence for a full five seconds and then, to her dismay, he suddenly burst out laughing.
‘Dear heavens, if it’s not bad enough to be stuck with a number cruncher, I have to get stuck with a rookie number cruncher!’
‘Now, just a minute,’ she protested, two spots of angry colour appearing on her cheeks, ‘you were the one who said we should be honest with each other, and now you’re laughing at me, and it’s not funny.’
He let out a snort, swallowed deeply, and said in a voice that shook only slightly, ‘You’re right. Not funny. Definitely not funny.’
‘Thank you,’ she said with feeling, and he nodded, then his lips twitched.
‘Actually—when you think about it—you’ve got to admit it is a little bit funny.’
She met his eyes with outrage, and it was her undoing. If the laughter in his eyes had been smug, and patronising, she really would have slapped him, but there was such genuine warmth and amusement in his gaze that a tiny choke of laughter broke from her.
‘Did you just laugh?’ he said, tilting his head quizzically at her. ‘Could I possibly have just heard the smallest chuckle from you?’
Brontë’s choke of laughter became a peal. ‘Okay, all right,’ she conceded, ‘it is funny, but it’s not my fault you’re my first victim. Someone has to be, but I promise I won’t bring out any manacles or chains.’
‘Actually, I think I might rather like that.’
His voice was liquid and warm and, as her eyes met his, she saw something deep and dark flicker there, and a hundred alarm bells went off in her head.
No, Brontë, no, she told herself as her heart rate accelerated. Just a moment ago you wanted to hit him, and now he’s most definitely flirting with you, and any woman who responds to an invitation to flirt with Elijah Munroe has to be one sandwich short of a picnic.
‘Shouldn’t…’ She moistened her lips and started again. ‘Shouldn’t we be hitting the road? Our shift started at ten-thirty, and—’ she glanced desperately at her watch ‘—it’s already ten-forty.’
‘We can certainly go out,’ he agreed. ‘But, strange as it might seem, we don’t normally go looking for patients. Normally we wait for them to phone us, but if you want to go kerb crawling with me…’
Oh, hell, she thought, feeling a deep wash of colour stain her cheeks. Of course they had to wait for calls, she knew that, but did he have to keep on looking at her with those sun-kissed, Mediterranean-blue eyes of his? They flustered her, unsettled her, and the last thing she needed to feel in Elijah Munroe’s company was flustered so, when the radio on the dashboard crackled into life, she grabbed the receiver gratefully.
‘ED7 here,’ she declared, only to glance across at Eli, bewildered, when she heard a snicker of feminine laughter in reply. ‘What did I do wrong?’
‘This station is ED7,’ he said gently. ‘We’re A38, remember?’
Great start, Brontë, she thought, biting her lip. Really tremendous, professional start. Not.
‘Sorry,’ she muttered. ‘A38 here.’
‘Pregnant woman,’ the disembodied voice declared. ‘Laura Thomson, experiencing contractions every twenty minutes. Number 12, Queen Anne’s Gate.’
Brontë had the ambulance swinging out of the forecourt and onto the dark city street before the dispatcher had even finished the call.
‘Should I hit the siren?’ she asked, and Eli shook his head.
‘No need. We’ll be there in under five minutes despite the roads being frosty but, with contractions so close, I wonder why she’s waited so long to call us?’
Brontë wondered the same thing when they arrived at the house to discover the tearful mother-to-be’s contractions were coming considerably closer than every twenty minutes.
‘I’ve been trying to get hold of my husband,’ Laura Thomson explained. ‘He’s working nights at the supermarket to earn us some extra money, and this is our first baby, and he’s my birthing partner.’
‘I’m afraid he’s going to miss out on that unless he arrives in the next five minutes,’ Eli replied ruefully as the young woman doubled up with a sharp cry of pain. ‘In fact, I’d be happier if you were in Maternity right now.’
‘But my husband won’t know where I am,’ the young woman protested. ‘He’ll come home, and I won’t be here, and he’ll be so worried.’
Brontë could see the concern on Eli’s face, and she felt it, too. A quick examination had revealed Laura Thomson’s cervix to be well dilated and, if they didn’t go, there was a very strong possibility she was going to have her baby in the ambulance.
Quickly, she picked up a discarded envelope from the table, scrawled, ‘Gone to the Pentland Maternity’ on it, then placed the envelope on the mantelpiece.
‘He’ll see that, Laura,’ she declared, and the woman nodded, then doubled up again with another cry of pain.
‘Okay, no debate, no argument, we go now,’ Eli declared, and before Brontë, or Laura Thomson, had realised what he was going to do he had swept Laura up into his arms as though she weighed no more than a bag of flour. ‘Drive fast, Brontë,’ he added over his shoulder as he strode out the door, ‘drive very fast!’
She didn’t get the chance to. She had barely turned the corner at the bottom of Queen Anne’s Gate when Eli yelled for her to stop.
‘This baby isn’t waiting,’ he said after she’d parked, then raced round to the back of the ambulance and climbed in. ‘How much maternity experience do you have?’
‘Not much,’ Brontë admitted. ‘We didn’t tend to get mums-to-be arriving in A and E.’
‘Well, welcome to the stork club,’ he replied. ‘The baby’s head is already crowning, and the contractions are coming every minute.’
‘I want…my husband,’ Laura Thomson gasped. ‘I want him here immediately.’
‘Just concentrate on your breathing,’ Eli urged. ‘Believe me, you can do this on your own.’
‘I know,’ Laura exclaimed, turning bright red as she bore down again. ‘I just want him here so I can kill him because, believe me, if this is what giving birth is like, this baby is never going to have any brothers and sisters!’
A small muscle twitched near the corner of Eli’s mouth.
‘Okay, when your son or daughter is born, you have my full permission to kill your husband,’ he replied, carefully using his hand to control the rate of escape of the baby’s head, ‘but right now work with the contractions, don’t try to fight against them.’
‘That’s…easy…for you to say,’ Laura said with difficulty. ‘And…I…can…tell…you…this. If there is such a thing as reincarnation…’ She gritted her teeth and groaned. ‘Next time I’m coming back as a man!’
‘You and me both, Laura,’