The Good Father. Maggie Kingsley

I was eighteen, a student nurse—’

      ‘Until he went off on that archaeological dig and came back married to a pneumatic bimbo with the brain size of a pea.’

      ‘OK, OK, you’ve made your point,’ Maddie said with a shaky laugh. ‘I have lousy taste in men, but Gabriel—’

      ‘This is all my fault, isn’t it?’ Nell said. ‘I asked you to loosen him up, to make him more human, but, Maddie, I didn’t mean you to do this, to get hurt again.’

      ‘Nell, I’m not going to get hurt because nothing is going to happen between Gabriel and me,’ Maddie said with exasperation. ‘We’re chalk and cheese, oil and water, chocolate cookies and the Atkins diet.’

      ‘You’re sure?’ Nell said uncertainly, and Maddie laughed.

      ‘Nell, we’d kill each other within a week.’

      They would, too, Maddie thought, when her cousin had gone. She and Gabriel had nothing in common. OK, so people were always saying that opposites attract, but she wasn’t even attracted to him.

      You thought he was sexy yesterday in the canteen.

      Yes, but that had just been a momentary aberration, and she would never be foolish enough to act on it.

      You did with Colin and Andrew, her mind whispered. It was Colin’s green eyes and air of complete helplessness that first attracted you to him, and with Andrew you took one look at his thick blond hair and his apparent total inability to deal with everyday life and you were sunk.

      Maddie sighed as she opened the database on her computer. Even she could see there was a pattern here. Maybe she belonged to a group of women who had been invisibly marked with the word ‘Sucker’. Maybe women like her would be better off actively seeking out the biggest bastard they could find rather than deluding themselves into believing that the next man they met would be a prince. At least then the heartbreak wouldn’t come as any surprise.

      ‘Problem?’

      She looked up quickly to see Gabriel standing in her office doorway, and felt her cheeks darken.

      ‘Nothing you can help me with,’ she said brightly, and he came forward a step.

      ‘You may not believe it, but I’m actually quite a good listener.’

      He was right: she didn’t believe it. If she’d been a preemie with bronchopulmonary dysplasia and he could have put his stethoscope on her chest and listened to her breathing, she would have believed it, but listening to a fully grown twenty-nine-year-old adult? Nope, not a chance.

      ‘If you’re looking for the graph sheets on the incidence of jaundice in babies of twenty-eight to thirty-two weeks gestation, I’ll have them ready in about an hour,’ she said.

      ‘Actually, I’m here because the new girl on the switchboard transferred a call meant for you through to me by mistake. There’s a mechanic from McAllen’s garage down in Reception waiting to collect your car, but you haven’t left your keys.’

      ‘Oh, damn.’ She half rose to her feet. ‘I’ll take them down now.’

      ‘If you give them to me, I’ll get one of the porters to take them down for you.’ He glanced at her overflowing in-tray. ‘It looks as though you’ve got more than enough on your plate at the moment to have time to ferry car keys about.’

      And whose fault is that? she thought as she delved into her handbag and began hunting for her keys. If he would only stop sending her off on pointless errands she might actually be able to get on top of her work instead of constantly feeling as though she was running very fast simply to stand still.

      ‘You know, I read in an article somewhere that the contents of a woman’s handbag reveal her true personality,’ Gabriel observed, as she gave up on the delving and emptied the entire contents of her handbag onto her desk with a muttered oath of exasperation.

      ‘Sounds like an article written by somebody with too much time on their hands,’ she said. ‘Oh, damn it, where are they?’

      ‘Why in the world do you keep a screwdriver in your handbag?’ he asked in fascination. ‘I can understand the make-up, the spare tights, the hairbrush and the diary, but a screwdriver…’

      ‘At last!’ she exclaimed as her car keys surfaced. ‘In case I need to unscrew something, of course.’

      ‘To unscrew something,’ he repeated, taking the keys she was holding out to him. ‘Now, why didn’t I think of that?’

      He was laughing at her, she could hear it in his voice, and it was amazing how very different he looked when he laughed. Maybe it was because the laughter eradicated the arrogance which all too often marred his face. Maybe it had something to do with his oddly crooked smile, which made him seem strangely vulnerable, but whatever it was she couldn’t deny that when he laughed he definitely looked younger, more human and decidedly—in fact, quite disturbingly—attractive.

      Red alert, Maddie, red alert. You’ve started to feel sorry for him and you’re finding him attractive. All you need is to start propping him up and you’re in big trouble.

      Swiftly she gathered up the contents of her handbag and stuffed them back in. ‘I really must get back to work. As you said, I have masses to do. There’s the graph sheets you need, and I have letters to do, forms to fill in…’

      She was babbling, she knew she was, and with an irritated shake of her head she started inputting data, but when she risked a quick glance up he was still there.

      ‘What’s wrong with your car?’ he said.

      ‘There’s an odd clinking sound coming from one of the back wheels.’

      ‘Sounds like it could be a wheel bearing or a brake pad needing to be replaced.’

      She didn’t care what it sounded like, she just wished he’d go away. The longer he stood there the more she was noticing things about him—silly things, stupid things—like his hair wasn’t actually completely black but had little threads of silver in it. Like his eyes were such a very dark grey they looked almost like granite, and like the fact—the very big fact—that he looked tired again, and she could feel an overwhelming urge to say, ‘Come on, put your feet up, I’ll make you a cup of coffee’.

      Ignore him, she told herself. Ignore him and he’ll go away.

      ‘Incidence of jaundice in premature babies of twenty-eight to thirty-two weeks gestation,’ she read, staring fixedly at her computer screen until her eyes watered. ‘Worldwide studies suggest a marked increase in the number of male children who are…’

      Faintly she heard a door shut and looked up. He’d gone. Finally he’d gone, but that didn’t mean the danger was over. From now on she was going to have to avoid looking at Gabriel’s hair, or his crooked smile. She’d vowed when Andrew had left never to get involved with anyone again, and she’d meant it. This weekend she was going to buy a dog. No, not a dog. It was cruel to have a dog and then be at work all day. She’d buy a hamster. She could relate to a hamster. They spent all their days running round in circles, too.

      ‘Oh, Maddie, thank goodness you’re here!’ Lynne exclaimed, putting her head round her door, looking red-cheeked and flustered, and Maddie smiled.

      ‘Where else would I be?’

      ‘Well, Gabriel always seems to be sending you off places.’