Her last stop had been the room immediately opposite the nurse’s station. Kiera Flannigan was an eighteen year old who had been involved in a serious road-traffic accident six months earlier that had left her paralysed from the neck down. Like Jake, she had initially refused to have anything to do with the rehab programme that had been devised for her. Colleen had spent hours by her bed, cajoling her, talking to her, refusing to let the teenager give up. And her efforts had paid off. Kiera was still paralysed—there was no hope of an improvement—but she was able to use a special computer that allowed her to use her breath to type on to a screen as well as guide her wheelchair around the ward.
‘Hey, Colleen,’ Kiera had typed. ‘Are we going dancing tonight?’
‘Too tired, Kiera. Need my beauty sleep,’ Colleen had replied. ‘What have you got planned for the day?’
‘School work. Ugh,’ Kiera had typed. ‘Exams soon. Would rather go dancing.’
Colleen ached for the pretty girl. She’d been with them for four months and, like Jake, she’d be going home soon. The staff on the unit had done a charity bungee jump to raise money so that Kiera would be able to take her computer home with her. The rehabilitation unit—the only one of its kind in the south of Ireland—was funded entirely by charitable donations and, although people were generous, there was always a need for more money to buy specialised equipment such as Jake’s motorised wheelchair and Kiera’s computer. At the moment the coffers for equipment was running very low.
‘And the blog? How’s that doing?’ Colleen had asked.
‘A hundred hits a day,’ Kiera had typed. When Kiera had mastered the computer she’d complained of being bored. There was only so much she could do to keep herself occupied. Colleen had suggested she start a blog for other spinal-injury patients. Kiera had eagerly taken to the idea and it had been an immediate success.
Thirty minutes later, having changed in to her civvies, Colleen was ready to leave. In reception, Frobisher was still pacing up and down and looking at his watch with barely concealed impatience. She’d forgotten that he was waiting to see her.
‘I’m Colleen McCulloch,’ Colleen said. ‘You wished to see me?’
Frobisher stopped his pacing and glanced at his watch pointedly.
‘Sorry for keeping you waiting,’ she said, slipping on her jacket.
He held out his hand. His grasp was firm. ‘Daniel Frobisher. Look, is there somewhere we can talk?’
He was so tall she had to tip her head back just to meet his eyes.
‘I’m afraid you’ve wasted your time coming here. The answer is still no. I already told your Mr Haversham I can’t take on the care of your son. I’m sorry, but as you can see, I already have a job. I did give him a couple of other names to try.’
‘I’ve taken time I could ill afford to come here, so I think you could at least hear me out.’ There was no mistaking the impatience in his voice and Colleen felt herself prickle.
Before she knew what was happening, Frobisher grabbed her by the elbow and was steering her out of the ward. ‘I can’t stay in this place,’ he said tersely. ‘I’ve had enough of hospitals to last me a lifetime. Is there somewhere else we could go to talk?’
‘As I said, there’s nothing to talk about.’ Colleen tried to pull her arm out of his grasp, but his grip was too strong. Was he planning to abduct her? From the grim look on his face she wouldn’t put it past him.
She told herself not to be ridiculous. He was hardly going to bundle her into a car in full view of half of Dublin.
But that was exactly what he did. His car, all sleek black and chrome with darkened windows, was waiting right outside the front door of the hospital, where nobody, absolutely nobody, not even Mr Sylvester, the head of the unit, was allowed to park. She was in the back of the car alongside Frobisher so fast she hadn’t even had a second to call for help.
He was really beginning to annoy her, sick son or no sick son. She tried the handle of the door as the chauffeur-driven car moved off.
‘Would you please stop this car and let me out. This minute!’ Colleen tried to keep her voice steady. ‘Driver! Stop the car. Immediately.’ She scrabbled in her bag looking for a weapon, but all she could find in the jumble of used tissues and coins was a notebook, a pen, her purse and a bottle of perfume. She pulled it out and brandished the bottle at him. ‘If you don’t, I’ll spray you.’
Instead of letting her out, Frobisher pressed a button and a glass screen swished up between them and the driver. ‘You’re going to disarm me with perfume? Then what? Do the same to my driver?’ Amusement flickered in his green eyes and softened the severity of his angular face. ‘All I need is thirty minutes of your time.’ His eyes grew solemn. ‘I promise I’ll bring you back as soon as we’ve talked. All I want is for you to hear me out before you make up your mind.’
Something in the way he said the words, the unexpected timbre of sadness in the tone, made her pause and look more closely at him.
Despite his astonishing good looks there were lines around his eyes and a tightness to his mouth as if he were unused to smiling. Instinctively she knew that this man was in pain. A whole lot of pain. Not that it excused his high-handed behaviour, but she could at least spare him a few minutes.
‘Very well,’ Colleen conceded reluctantly. ‘I’ll listen to what you have to say—not that I think it will make much difference, mind. But I’m not going to do it here. I’m starving. I missed my tea break and if I don’t have something to eat soon I’ll probably pass out on the floor of this car. There’s a café I go to all the time just around the corner. Tell your driver to stop there.’
‘You promise you won’t try to run away?’
Colleen smiled at the image of her running down the streets of Dublin with this man hot on her heels. If there was a more unlikely scenario, she couldn’t think of one. ‘I promise. I’ll give you as long as it takes for me to eat. But that’s it.’ She held out her hand. ‘Do we have a deal?’
Cool fingers pressed hers. Yikes! Did the man have a buzzer in his hand? Something had to have caused the electric shock that ran up her arm. Quickly she pulled her hand away.
When he saw the café a look of astonishment crossed his face. Admittedly, the café wasn’t much from the outside, but inside it was warm and cosy and sold the best Irish breakfasts this side of Dublin. Colleen often stopped there on her way to or from home or work—not least because her best friend, Trish, owned the place.
‘Are you sure you want to eat here?’ Daniel said doubtfully. ‘I could suggest somewhere else.’
There was no way she was going to drive any further with this man.
‘It’s either here or nowhere,’ Colleen said firmly. ‘It’s only a five-minute walk home for me from here. And I need my bed.’
As soon as the words were out of her mouth she regretted them. She didn’t want to give him any clues to where she lived. She had the uneasy feeling that he would have no compunction about staking out her flat once she had made him realise that she was serious about not taking the job.
‘Okay, you’re the boss.’ Then he smiled. It was only the briefest smile, vanishing almost before Colleen was sure she had seen it, but in that millisecond his face was transformed, making him look younger and, if possible, even more devastatingly good looking.
The