But Mark Lorimer was impressive. Tall, and tanned, with thick black hair, and green eyes. Not a wishy-washy anaemic green, but green like sparkling emeralds, and fringed by quite indecently long black eyelashes.
‘Helen, this is Mark,’ Tom said unnecessarily after he and his friend had indulged in that mutual backslapping routine which heterosexual males always seemed to feel obliged to perform whenever they met a friend they hadn’t seen for years. ‘Mark, this is my wife, Helen.’
‘It’s nice to meet you, Mark,’ she said, holding out her hand. ‘Tom’s talked such a lot about you.’
Which wasn’t exactly true. In fact, her husband hadn’t mentioned him at all until Rachel Dunwoody had taken compassionate leave, but it hardly seemed polite to say so.
‘You’ve come as a bit of a surprise to me, too.’ He grinned, clearly reading her mind. ‘Tom never said he was married, but now that I’ve met you…’ his green eyes swept over her ‘…all I can say is I hope he knows what a very lucky man he is.’
It was flattery, of course. Tom had always said she had the loveliest smile he’d ever seen, and the biggest brown eyes, but she knew her limitations. She wasn’t beautiful—not even particularly pretty—and she laughed and shook her head.
‘I bet you say that to all the girls.’
‘Actually, no, I don’t.’
He was still staring at her, still holding her hand, and to her acute embarrassment she realised she was blushing.
Oh, for heaven’s sake, pull yourself together, she told herself severely, quickly withdrawing her hand. You’re a thirty-two-year-old mother of two, and just because an absolutely jaw-droppingly gorgeous man is smiling at you shouldn’t mean that you should start behaving like a dumbstruck teenager.
‘The fog’s all gone from Heathrow Airport, then?’ she said. Oh, jeez, Helen. He’d hardly be standing here if it wasn’t, would he? ‘I mean—I meant—you must be really tired after all your travelling.’
‘Not at all,’ he replied. ‘But, then, I’ve always been able to sleep anywhere.’
He certainly didn’t look as though he’d just spent goodness knows how many hours on a plane, and then been marooned in an airport. He looked pristine, and immaculate, and she just knew she must look as though she’d been dragged through a hedge backwards, her hair coming loose from her scrunchy, her sweater the first thing that had come to hand that morning.
Not that it mattered, of course. She was a doctor, here to work, but…
‘I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse me,’ she said, beginning to back up the corridor. ‘I have blood results to chase up—’
‘Hey, you’re not abandoning me already, are you?’ he protested, and Tom smiled.
‘Of course she’s not. In fact, I’ll make sure Helen takes care of you, shows you the ropes.’
It made sense. Tom was hardly likely to expect Annie to do the honours when she was only a junior doctor, but Helen couldn’t help but wish her husband hadn’t suggested it.
She wished it even more when she got to the end of the corridor and glanced back. Mark and Tom were deep in conversation, but Mark must have sensed her gaze on him because he suddenly looked up and smiled. A warm, wide smile that sent a disturbing shiver of awareness racing down her spine.
A disturbing shiver that she didn’t want to feel.
CHAPTER TWO
GIDEON drummed his fingers absently on top of his desk, then frowned. ‘How long has Mrs Alexander been with us now?’
Tom glanced down at his notes. ‘A week.’
‘OK. As the venogram didn’t show any sign of the clot moving, we’ll keep her on the heparin until a week on Thursday, then induce her. I know it’s risky,’ he continued as Tom looked uncertain, ‘but to perform a Caesarean on a woman who’s had a deep-vein thrombosis…’ He shook his head. ‘Too much could go wrong.’
‘Which brings us to Mrs Foster,’ Tom observed. ‘She’s still complaining about her burst stitches.’
‘Mrs Foster should think herself damn lucky she’s not in Intensive Care,’ Gideon retorted. ‘What the hell was she thinking of, straining to pass a motion after major surgery?’
‘I know, but she’s driving Helen crazy, saying her burst stitches were due to negligence, sloppy surgery…’
‘I’ll have a word with her.’ The corners of the consultant’s lips quirked. ‘Better yet, why don’t I get Mark to have a word with her? He’s supposed to have quite a way with the ladies, isn’t he?’
Apart from with Helen, Tom thought with a slight frown. Obs and Gynae might have been inundated with nurses suddenly discovering an urgent need to visit the ward since Mark’s arrival a week ago, but Helen had remained strangely reticent whenever he’d asked how she was getting on with him.
‘He is a good doctor, isn’t he?’ Gideon continued, clearly misinterpreting the frown. ‘I mean, I’m not employing him simply to sweet-talk difficult patients…’
‘He’s one of the best,’ Tom reassured him. ‘He might be the most terrible flirt, but what he doesn’t know about Obs and Gynae could be written on a postage stamp.’
Gideon looked relieved. ‘In that case, I wish we could employ him permanently instead of for just six weeks. Oh, I know he wouldn’t accept a longer contract with us even if we could offer it,’ he continued when Tom made to interrupt. ‘Nobody in their right mind would swap a job in Canada for one at the Belfield, but—’
‘We need him.’ Tom nodded. ‘Even if Rachel was back we’d still need him. I take it Admin still won’t agree to us advertising for another member of staff?’
‘Admin says what it always says. Until the hospital gets more funding we’re to manage as best we can. It’s the old story. Live long enough, old horse, and eventually you might get hay.’
Tom laughed. ‘I’ve never thought of myself as an old horse, but now you come to mention it…’
‘Yup, beasts of burden, that’s us. And speaking of being overworked….’ Gideon picked up one of the files on his desk, then put it down again. ‘I don’t want you to think I’m being nosy, or interfering where I’m not wanted, but Annie was saying…’
‘Annie was saying?’ Tom repeated blankly as the consultant came to an obviously embarrassed halt.
‘Well, you know what women are like, Tom,’ Gideon said in a rush, ‘and she’s probably got it all wrong, but she was saying to me the other day that she thought Helen looked a bit down, a bit depressed.’
Annie had noticed? Annie, who had been at the Belfield for less than four months, had noticed? Tom bit his lip. Dammit, he should have been the first one to see there was a problem, and yet he hadn’t. Maybe women were better attuned to picking up on that sort of thing than men, or maybe he was just insensitive. It wasn’t a comforting thought.
‘Helen’s fine,’ he murmured. ‘Just tired, like the rest of us.’
Probably more so since he’d been helping out at home, he thought ruefully, but how was he supposed to know that the little round symbol with the cross through it meant, Do not tumble-dry?
‘Hell, I should have been in Theatre ten minutes ago,’ Gideon exclaimed, quickly getting to his feet only to pause, his eyebrows raised. ‘Unless there’s something else you want to discuss with me?’
For a moment