‘Only if you’ll promise not to needle me.’
‘I promise.’
Patrick snorted. She might as well have promised not to breathe.
Anna smoothed back the tumbled curls from the little face and smiled. ‘You go to sleep now, my darling.’
‘Night-night,’ the little cherub mumbled round her thumb.
‘Sleep tight,’ Anna whispered, bending to kiss the warm, smooth skin of her daughter’s cheek. Her lashes fluttered down, the busy day catching up with her, and Anna eased away from her and stood up, stretching her aching muscles.
She had been crouched over the bed reading to Flissy for nearly an hour, she realised in astonishment. She left the room quietly and went back into the sitting-room. Her coffee was cold, so she made another and curled up in front of the television.
It couldn’t hold her attention, though. Instead her mind strayed to a tall, smiling man with gentle hands and a stubborn streak about a mile wide. She reminded herself that he was married, and then allowed herself to admit that nothing he had done could be construed as flirting. Not unless you counted feeding her until she groaned.
Anna’s mouth tipped again, remembering the lunch. It had been wonderful, a real feast. She had eaten far too much, but it was just as well. The contents of her fridge had been scant to say the least. She had given Flissy the last egg and a bit of cheese in an omelette, but there had been nothing left for her apart from a couple of slices of stale bread. She’d had toast, smeared with a little honey, and was thankful that she wasn’t hungry.
Kathleen was right; she ought to take better care of herself, and Flissy too. Their diet was woefully inadequate. She made a vow to get to the shops tomorrow on her way home.
Ouch.’
‘Hmm.’ Anna, standing beside Patrick looking at the X-rays, couldn’t understand how their patient was still in such comparatively good condition. He’d been trapped by several tons of steel across his chest and pelvis, and when they had lifted it away his leg had been lying beside his arm, bent up courtesy of his shattered pelvis.
And shattered it most certainly was. A large part of his hipbone was detached and lying oddly, and the bones which formed the bowl of the pelvis were broken on both sides at the front and on the right at the back. As a result his whole pelvis was grossly unstable.
As if that wasn’t enough, both femurs were fractured, the right in two places, and his left hip was dislocated. In short, he was a mess.
Nick Davidson was on his way down from Theatre to see the plates, and it was likely the man would go straight there for emergency surgery to fix his pelvis and femurs. In preparation for such an event they had taken blood for cross-matching already, and were running in Haemacel to replace the massive blood-loss caused by his fractures. Whether there was any other damage was unclear as yet, but he was being closely watched. It was hard to tell from the circulatory loss alone, because fractures of that order caused such massive blood-loss that abdominal injuries could easily go undetected.
Nick wandered in as they stood frowning at the X-rays, and rested a hand on each of their shoulders. ‘Hi, folks. This my customer?’
‘Yup.’ Patrick filled him in, and Nick winced.
‘Sounds nasty.’
‘It is.’
He studied the plates quietly, then pursed his lips.
‘We can’t do it all at once. I’ll get a fixator on to hold it all a bit steady, but he’ll need plating and pinning once the bleeding has settled at the fracture sites. I’ll have to do the femurs today, though. Any abdominal damage apart from the pelvis?’
‘No evidence of any. He’s in very good shape really—in pain, of course. We’ve given him Entonox gas, because his circulation is too close to collapse to risk diamorphine, but it isn’t really anything like enough.’
‘It won’t be,’ Nick agreed. ‘We’ll soon knock him out. What about blood?’
‘He’s been cross-matched and we’re boosting his circulation as fast as we can. We’ll be able to do more when we get the whole blood.’
Nick nodded. ‘OK, I’ll have a word with him and then we’ll get him up to Theatre. Has he signed the consent form?’
‘He’s not in that good shape,’ Anna said drily. ‘His wife’s here—I’ll get her to do that.’
‘Thanks. Right, where is he?’
Anna left them with the patient and went into the office.
Nick joined her a few minutes later. ‘All done?’
She nodded. ‘His wife’s signed. She’d like to see him before he goes up to Theatre.’
‘I’ll go and find her. Give me the forms, I’ll take them with me.’
He headed off towards the waiting-room, X-rays and forms in hand, and Anna watched him go. Another gorgeous hunk, one that half the hospital were apparently in love with, including most specifically his wife Cassie, the only scrub-nurse he would tolerate and who would tolerate him, so rumour had it.
His temper in Theatre was legendary, but his results were astonishing and he was tipped for stardom. It made her laugh that Mr James had queried his competence. He was probably the most skilful and intuitive orthopaedic surgeon in the hospital, bar none.
And yet he left her cold. No, not cold, she acknowledged, just warmed with admiration and a genuine liking.
Whereas Patrick—!
How had he managed to break through her reserve and reach that part of her so carefully guarded that even she scarcely knew it existed?
But break through it he had, and now her skin shivered when he approached, her heart beat faster, and when he looked at her with those melting brown eyes her insides turned to mush.
And when he touched her …! Even an accidental brushing of his hand against hers made her heart race and her skin heat. She was like a teenager, anticipating her first kiss. Her breath caught in her throat at the image that provoked, and she rolled her eyes in self-disgust. If it hadn’t been so worrying it would have been laughable.
But she was worried. She was too vulnerable, too inexperienced to deal with a sexy, meaningless flirtation—or, worse still, a casual affair with a married man.
Her heart thumped at the thought, and her mind recalled with absolute clarity the vivid dream she had had the night before.
Her cheeks heated at the memory, and she quickly busied herself with the admission details for Nick’s patient, Clive Ronson. How she had managed such a provocative dream anyway, she didn’t know. She had no experience of any of the moves he had made, or any of the feelings she had quite definitely felt!
She cobbled up the form and tried again.
Patrick was cross with himself. He was trying to write up notes and all he could think about was the feel of Anna’s body beside his as they had worked together on Clive Ronson. She was too thin, he thought critically, but still she managed to stir him. The jut of her hip was still unmistakeably feminine, the brush of her thigh like the soft stroke of fire against his leg as she had leant across to cut away the patient’s trousers. He had been in her way, and yet a perverse part of him had refused to move.
He wanted her.
It shocked him, the realisation that she was capable of getting past the ice around his heart and setting his body on fire like this.
It was only physical, he knew that. It could never be anything more meaningful, but that didn’t diminish its power. Oh, no. Almost the reverse. Because it was just sex, just meaningless, hot, physical lust, his mind could allow it.
His body was