Nick gave a short huff of laughter. Ryan was altogether too smart.
‘Wasn’t it just?’ he said noncommittally. ‘But since you ask, no, there’s no woman in my life.’
‘And what about all the ghosts you’ve got behind you?’ Ryan probed. ‘Is it going to make it difficult for you two to work together?’
‘No,’ Nick said firmly. ‘There won’t be a problem.’
‘I hope not,’ he said, his voice mild but the warning there for all that. ‘I don’t want the department grinding to a halt because two of the main players are at each other’s throats or weeping in the toilets.’
Nick’s mouth kicked up in a grin as he crossed his fingers behind his back. ‘I think you’re safe—I’m not given to weeping in the toilets, and would you challenge Sally’s temper?’
‘Not knowingly,’ Ryan admitted with a chuckle, and to Nick’s relief the conversation moved onto safer topics. It had given him plenty to think about, though, and one thing in particular.
Ryan, despite the mild tone of his enquiries, was fiercely protective of Sally.
Fine. So was Nick. Just so long as Ryan didn’t want her for himself …
‘Nick was asking questions about you yesterday,’ Ryan said quietly as they paused between patients.
Startled, Sally looked up and met his eyes. ‘He was?’
Ryan nodded. ‘I told him to ask you himself. I didn’t want to tell tales.’
She shrugged, her heart thumping. He was asking about her? Was that good or bad? She picked up the next set of notes and glanced down at them, pretending interest.
‘He was probably only being curious. We haven’t seen each other for years,’ she said, and Ryan nodded.
‘Yeah, he said that. It could have been just idle curiosity.’
She shot him a quick glance. ‘You don’t think so, do you?’ she asked, and Ryan shrugged.
‘I don’t know the man. You don’t think he’s a threat to you, Sally, do you?’
‘A threat?’ Oh, yes, he was a threat, but not in the sense Ryan meant. ‘No,’ she told Ryan. ‘He’s not a threat.’ Not much. Her mouth dried, and she stared blindly at the notes. Only to her sanity—
‘Sally? Those notes you’re studying so avidly? They’re upside down.’
She felt the colour run up her cheeks, and she turned on her heel and walked away from Ryan, cutting through to the waiting room to retrieve her next patient. Just by the door she paused, gathering her wits, and tried to put thoughts of him out of her mind.
It didn’t matter that he was here, she told herself sternly. He was bound to ask questions about her, but it was irrelevant. Their affair was finished, over. She wasn’t going to allow him to talk her into anything—not ever again.
‘I’ve made coffee.’
Sally’s hand flew up to cover her pounding heart, and she whirled on Nick. ‘Will you not creep up on me!’ she snarled furiously. ‘You’re going to give me a heart attack!’
His grin was unabashed. ‘You’ll get over it, you’re made of sterner stuff than that.’ He bent closer. ‘I brought some really good Colombian coffee in—it’s gorgeous. Come and have a cup.’
His voice was coaxing, and she could almost taste the coffee. She was parched, and they were fairly quiet, and she was overdue for a break …
‘I’m only offering coffee,’ he said in a gently teasing voice, and she felt soft colour brush her cheeks.
‘I was just trying to work out if I’d got time,’ she ad-libbed weakly.
‘Liar. Come on, Sal, I’m not going to jump your bones. If you don’t get in there soon the vultures will have descended on the pot and drained it.’
She summoned a smile. ‘I’d better come now, then, hadn’t I?’
‘Dr Baker?’
They turned towards the voice of the young SHO, who was looking hopelessly out of his depth. ‘Yes, Toby?’
‘Um—I wonder if you could look at this X-ray for me, sir. I’m not sure if it’s a fracture.’
Nick turned back to Sally and gave her a wry grin. ‘Now you’re definitely safe,’ he murmured, and went into the cubicle, leaving her heading towards the staffroom with a sense of lingering disappointment that she was totally at a loss to understand.
There was still half a pot of coffee, and there was nobody in there, so she filled a mug, curled up in one of the chairs near the corner of the little room and rested her head against the back of the chair.
Bliss. The coffee smelt wonderful, and for a moment she was content just to inhale the aroma and relax. She hadn’t slept well—too many painful memories churning, too much turbulent thought to be able to escape to oblivion. Seeing Nick again had stirred up a whole hornet’s nest, and she felt edgy and restless and unhappy.
Still, for a moment she could relax. She opened her eyes, and jumped, almost slopping her coffee in her lap as she focused on him lounging against the worktop on the far side of the room.
‘You’ve done it again!’ she snapped, and he gave a wry grin.
‘Sorry. I thought you were asleep. I was just contemplating my options.’
‘Options?’ she said suspiciously. ‘What options?’
The smile was lazy. ‘Foregoing the coffee and leaving you in peace, removing the cup so you didn’t drown yourself in it when it tipped over, or waking you up. You’ve saved me from doing the wrong thing—unless just existing is enough to put me in your bad books?’
He looked so crestfallen she had to smile, even though she knew it was all an act.
‘I’m awake,’ she assured him, and he grinned and filled a mug, sitting down at right angles to her on the other side of the corner.
‘How’s the coffee?’ he asked.
‘I haven’t tried it yet. I was getting high just smelling it.’
‘You’ll be glue-sniffing in a minute. Just drink it.’
She buried her nose in the mug, breathed again and tasted. ‘Oh, gorgeous. You always could make good coffee.’
‘Yours was always lousy, if I remember,’ he said softly, and she could have kicked herself for bringing up the past.
‘I’ve got better,’ she said, firmly switching to the present, and he let it go. Not for long, though, she was sure. She had a feeling Nick was headed for memory lane with her in tow, whether she wanted to go there or not.
And she didn’t. The past was buried, her memories and her happiness and everything she cared for with it, and the last thing she needed was Nick dredging it all up again and throwing her life into chaos.
She drained her coffee, almost scalding her tongue and throat and not caring. ‘Lovely,’ she lied, not having tasted it in the end, and she unfolded her legs, stood up and tugged her dress straight. ‘I have to fly. We aren’t that quiet. Thanks for the coffee.’
She put her mug down and made her escape, leaving Nick to drink his coffee alone.
An hour later she was kicking herself. She shouldn’t have said that about being quiet. They were never quiet, not this quiet, eerily so, as if the world had ground to a halt.
She grabbed the chance to do some teaching with her new nurses, told them to do a totally unnecessary stock-check of the stores and went round the waiting room, ripping