‘She was always good with children. That was our problem. All Stella ever wanted was children.’ And children were the last thing he wanted. Daniel stared at the row of photographs of his niece and nephew that Patrick had hung on the wall. Alfie and Posy giggling on a sledge. The two of them covered in ice cream at the beach. Posy in a backpack, grabbing Patrick’s hair. ‘Those two human beings are totally reliant on you. If you screw up, they suffer.’
‘Thanks for that vote of confidence.’
‘Doesn’t it terrify you?’
‘No. I love them. And I don’t intend to screw up.’ Patrick toyed with the pencil. ‘It doesn’t have to be the way it was for us, Dan.’
It was something they rarely mentioned and Daniel felt the filthy sludge of the past slide into his brain. ‘Christmas was the worst time, do you remember?’
The pencil in Patrick’s lean fingers snapped in two. ‘Yes.’
‘I counted the days until it was over.’
‘I counted them with you.’ His brother’s casual tone didn’t
fool him and suddenly Daniel wanted to know.
‘So how have you managed to put it behind you? With that grim example of parenting shining in your head, how do you do it?’
‘I love my children.’ A faint smile touched his brother’s mouth. ‘And I suppose I treat our childhood as an education in how not to parent. As long as I’m doing everything opposite, then I’m pretty confident that it will turn out all right.’
‘You’re divorced.’
‘Precisely. If Mum and Dad had divorced, they might have been happy.’ Patrick threw the broken bits of pencil into the bin. ‘I don’t subscribe to the school of thought that says a miserably unhappy couple have to stay together for the sake of the children. Why are we talking about this? What does this have to do with Stella?’
‘I’m reminding you why I don’t want marriage.’
‘I don’t need reminding.’
‘I did her a favour.’
‘You truly believe that, don’t you?’ Patrick gave a humourless laugh. ‘Dan, you proposed to her and then broke her heart. What I don’t understand is why you asked her to marry you in the first place, given your serious allergy to that condition.’
Daniel ran his hand over the back of his neck, remembering that night. ‘It was Christmas. I was crazy about her. It was what she wanted.’
‘But not what you wanted.’
‘For a brief moment I thought I did,’ Daniel confessed in a raw tone. ‘I thought maybe, just maybe, I could do it, but when your Carly—’ Breaking off, Daniel threw his brother a glance of apology but Patrick shrugged.
‘Don’t mince your words. When Carly walked out on me, it reminded you that relationships are difficult, fragile things.’
‘And Alfie cried himself to sleep at night for months!’ Daniel’s eyes slid to the photographs on the wall. ‘I never want to do that to a child.’
Patrick eyed the stack of work on his desk. ‘Could we talk about this in my kitchen over a beer later? Or was there something else you wanted to say?’
Daniel tried to clear his head. ‘You should have told me that she was coming back.’
‘I didn’t think you’d be interested. You’re dating that sleek, sexy solicitor, remember? You’ve moved on.’ Patrick closed the file he’d been reading and placed it in a tray at the front of his desk ready to be collected.
Glaring at his brother, Daniel wondered how it was possible to love a person and hate them at the same time. ‘Well, how long is she back for? Where is she living?’
‘As far as I know, she’s back for good.’ Patrick leaned back in his chair and looked his brother in the eye. ‘And she’s living with me.’
Chapter Two
STELLA walked into the treatment room and stopped the moment she saw Daniel. Her stomach flipped and her heart did a crazy dance. ‘Sorry, I just needed to pick up a dressing pack.’ Depressed by the effect he had on her, she backed towards the door and then noticed that he was putting an ice pack on his knuckles. ‘Have you hurt yourself? What happened?’
‘I hit my hand on something.’
Forgetting her own feelings for a moment, Stella stared at his profile, sensing his boiling anger. She knew him so well. Understood his moods, his volatility and his restless, brilliant mind. She remembered Patrick once telling her that if Daniel hadn’t suddenly decided to be a doctor, he probably would have ended up in gaol. ‘You hit your hand? Oh, God.’ Her stomach lurched as the truth hit her. ‘You’ve seen Patrick, haven’t you? Please tell me you didn’t—’
‘No.’ He growled the word angrily as he flexed his fingers. ‘I didn’t. Believe it or not, I have no intention of adding grievous bodily harm to my list of sins. I punched the wall.’
‘Oh.’ Relief poured over her. ‘What had the wall done wrong?’ But even while she was making a joke of it, her thoughts were spinning all over the place. This was because of her, she had no doubt about that. And part of her felt light-headed that her arrival had destabilised him because it meant that he still cared. And another part was angry with herself because that reaction was so infuriatingly illogical. She didn’t want him to care for her and she didn’t want to care for him.
She’d been there. Done that. Tested their relationship to the limits.
Watched it snap.
The glance he threw in her direction was dark and threatening. ‘This isn’t funny.’
‘I agree.’ If they couldn’t put the past behind them it certainly wasn’t going to be funny. Crisp and professional, Stella walked over to him and took his hand in hers, examining the bruising. But she found herself thinking about the strength in those fingers—the skill she knew he possessed. Skill in the resuscitation room. Skill in the bedroom. ‘That’s a nasty bruise.’ Taking the ice pack from him, she repositioned it so that it rested on the worst of the bruising. ‘I suppose I should be relieved that you’ve learned to hit the wall and not your brother, otherwise I would have had both of you in here and that would take some explaining. Are you going to have this X-rayed?’
‘What for? Nothing’s broken.’ There was a rough note to his voice that told her he was as aware of her as she was of him. ‘Who’s the doctor here?’
‘You are.’ She was tempted to slide the ice pack down the front of her scrub suit to cool her overheated body. ‘But you don’t appear to be thinking clearly.’ And she wasn’t thinking clearly, either, with him so close to her. Suddenly holding his hand didn’t seem like such a clever idea. The sight of those dark hairs shading his strong forearms was enough to make her think things she shouldn’t be thinking and the sudden flare of sexual awareness was like a punch to her senses. Stella let go of his hand. ‘I’ll get you a bandage.’
‘I don’t need a bandage.’
‘Then maybe you need an MRI to look at brain function,’ she said tartly, her tone reflecting her frustration with herself. ‘Going around hitting walls isn’t exactly the behaviour of a consultant.’
‘I wasn’t a consultant when I punched the wall. I was a man. Dammit, Stella.’ He caught her chin in his undamaged hand, turning her face to his, his movements strong and confident, his tone raw and demanding. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were coming back?’
The way he touched her rattled her self-control. ‘I didn’t think you needed to know.’
‘But