* * *
She didn’t show.
He almost rang her, but stopped himself in time. She was bound to have seen the text. Maybe she just wasn’t interested? Although she’d seemed pretty interested last night.
He waited until ten, dragging out his third coffee to give her time, then admitted the obvious and gave up.
It was probably just as well, he told himself, and crushed the ludicrous feeling of disappointment. He got into his car and checked his phone again. Maybe she just hadn’t seen the text? But still there was nothing.
Telling himself not to be a fool, he deleted the call history and the text, threw down the phone and drove home, disappointment and regret taunting him with every mile.
* * *
It was eight that night before she finally climbed the stairs to her flat, and one glance at it made her glad they’d gone to his hotel.
Today was the day she’d set aside for cleaning it and blitzing the laundry, but that had turned out to be an epic fail. Tough. She wasn’t doing it now, she was exhausted, and it would keep. She stripped, trying not to think of the way she’d undressed for Sam last night, trying not to think of all the things he’d done to her, the things she’d done to him, the way he’d made her feel.
She’d never had a night like it in her life, and it hadn’t just been about the sex, although that had been amazing. It was him, Sam, warm and funny and gentle and clever. He’d made her feel special. He’d made her feel wanted.
Until she realised he’d just been using her.
And she couldn’t really have fallen for him. Not in—what? Nine hours?
Was that all? Just nine hours? She’d wanted it to go on for ever, but it hadn’t. Like all good things, it had come to an end all too soon, and he hadn’t even had the decency to tell her.
She pulled her phone out of her pocket to put it on charge and saw she had a message from an unknown number.
Meet me for breakfast? Café by the restaurant at nine? S
‘No-o!’ She flopped back on the bed and shut her eyes, stifling a scream of frustration. How could she not have seen it?
Because she hadn’t had time, was how. She literally hadn’t stopped, and when she had, for twenty minutes that afternoon, she’d fallen asleep in the staffroom. She should have rung him—sent him a text, at least, to let him know she’d had to work, but she hadn’t even known he’d messaged her, never mind how he’d got her number.
By ringing himself from her phone, she realised, scanning her call log.
Damn. So he hadn’t just left without trace. And all day, she’d been hating him for his cowardice.
But maybe it was as well. He didn’t live here, he’d only been visiting friends, so nothing would have come of it. She didn’t need to fall any further for a man she’d never see again. She would just have tortured herself that bit longer.
And anyway, she was sworn off men for life, remember? No more. Never again. Even if he hadn’t just done a runner.
She hesitated, then deleted the text and the call history.
There. Sorted.
Except it didn’t feel sorted. It felt wrong, leaving a hollow ache inside, but it would pass. She knew that from long and bitter experience.
Too tired to fret over it any longer, she crawled into bed and fell asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow.
An hour later she woke to a wave of nausea, a raging headache and stomach cramps, and the depressing realisation that she had the bug that had swept through the department...
* * *
It was five days before she went back to work—days in which she lost weight, grew to hate the sight of her flat and finally tackled the laundry as she waited the statutory forty-eight hours after symptoms subsided before she was allowed to return to work.
She was straight back in at the deep end, as one by one the team were hit by the virus, but after a few challenging weeks the worst of the crisis seemed to be over. It was just as well, as she hadn’t really recovered her appetite and kept feeling light-headed and queasy. She staved off the light-headedness by eating endless chocolate, but she couldn’t do anything about her dreams.
Too much chocolate? It had never given her any problems before, but now Sam was haunting her every night.
At first she’d been too ill to think about him, and then too busy, but it clearly wasn’t as easy as all that to put him out of her mind. He was there every time she got into bed, reminding her of those few short hours she’d spent with him, making her ache with regret because she hadn’t phoned him to apologise and explain.
But she hadn’t, and she’d ditched his number, so regret was pointless and she was grateful when they were so busy that she was too tired even to dream about him.
And then, at the beginning of April, just over two months after her night with Sam, she went into Resus to restock and found Annie Shackleton slumped over the desk with her head in her hands.
She and the consultant often worked closely together on trauma cases and they’d become good friends, so right from the beginning she’d been privy to the blow-by-blow development of Annie’s pregnancy. Because of her husband Ed’s inherited Huntington’s gene she’d had IVF, so Kate had been one of the first to know the wonderful news that both embryos had taken, then that both of them were boys.
But this morning Annie had gone for a routine antenatal check, and now Kate knew something was wrong.
‘Hey, what’s up?’ she asked softly, and Annie looked at her, her eyes red-rimmed and tight with strain.
‘I’ve got pre-eclampsia,’ she said, her voice uneven, and Kate tutted softly and crouched down beside her.
‘Oh, Annie, I’m so sorry, that’s such tough luck. What are they doing about it?’
‘I’ve got to stop work. Like—now.’
‘Well, of course you have, but you’ll be fine! You just need to rest. Are they going to admit you?’
‘Not immediately, but it’s going to be so hard to take it easy. Who’s going to look after the girls? I can’t expect my poor mother to do any more, she’s been helping me since the girls were born because I was on my own, but I only work three days a week. This’ll be all day, every day, because it’s the Easter holidays—and because it’s the holidays Ed can’t take any time off, either, because of the staff with their own children to think about. The timing just couldn’t be worse—’
Her voice cracked, and Kate reached out and hugged her.
‘Annie, your mum will be fine with it. She’s lovely, she adores the girls and they’re no trouble. They’ll be falling over themselves to look after you, and Ed’ll be around to get them up and put them to bed, and you know he thinks of them as his own and they love him to bits. It’ll be OK, Annie. Really. You and the babies have to come first and the rest will sort itself out.’
Annie nodded slowly. ‘I know that, I know it’ll be fine, but it’s not just Mum and the girls I’m worried about. I’ll be leaving the department in the lurch. Andy Gallagher’s on holiday next week with his kids, and I have no idea how they’re going to get a consultant-grade locum at such short notice—I was going to work till I was thirty-six weeks, and I’m only thirty-two.’
‘So? They’ll find someone. It’s not your problem, Annie. It’s James Slater’s problem. He’s the clinical lead, let him sort it out, and you look after yourself and the babies. Have you told him yet?’
She pushed herself to her feet. ‘No, but I have to. You’re right, the