His eyes were thoughtful as he stared down at her from a very great, very disapproving height and it only then occurred to her that she had conducted the entire conversation with him whilst sitting on the floor, and that her long black-stockinged legs were all splayed out in the most inelegant position! She hastily clamped her knees together and his frown increased still further.
‘I am waiting to do a ward-round,’ he told her in a shiveringly soft voice. ‘So would you mind getting up?’
‘Not at all,’ Nicolette answered formally.
Two things happened simultaneously.
The first was that Nicolette automatically did as he asked, and rose awkwardly to her feet.
The second was that she was so overcome, whether by his presence or their heated little contretemps, that she failed to see the small puddle of water on the tiled floor, which she must have slopped there when she was cleaning the bath. And, given the two catalysts of a slippery surface and her own innate clumsiness, the inevitable happened.
Nicolette slipped, her legs and arms flying with all the lack of co-ordination of a newly born foal, and she would have fallen completely and hit her head on the side of the bath, to boot, had not the tall man beside her lunged out instinctively to save her.
Nicolette was a tall girl, and certainly not fat, but she was healthy and well covered, and her rescuer was obviously unprepared for the soft, warm weight that landed in his arms, because somehow she toppled him too, and the two of them slid in synchrony down the side of the bath, like two drunks at the end of a long party.
‘What the hell—?’ he snarled in angry disbelief.
Nicolette tried to brace herself, but it was difficult. Her nose was just inches away from his name-badge, which had been hidden by most of his lapel, and which proclaimed his name as Dr L Le Saux.
Of course.
Of course it was him! It would have to be, wouldn’t it? I mean, thought Nicolette with acid humour, if you were going to present yourself to the ward consultant, to a man who loved order, then how better to go about it than to rugby tackle him to the floor with all the grace of a dying duck?
But there was another reason, too, for her inability to catch her breath, or even to move, that was nothing to do with Nicolette’s embarrassment and everything to do with the man himself.
Because somehow, in the course of steadying her and saving her from possible concussion, he had firmly put one hand around her waist, and was still holding on to her, with all the assurance of a man who had had a lot of experience of holding on to women.
Although, she thought, looking at those craggy features, that didn’t surprise her one bit! And, close to, the eyes were even more devastating than she had originally thought.
‘Would you mind,’ he enunciated in the most tightly controlled voice she had ever heard, ‘getting your foot out of my trousers?’
Nicolette blinked and glanced down. Oh, heavens! She could see just what he meant: the elegant grey trousers had a turn-up, or a cuff, as some people called it. The top Italian designers that season had deemed such cuffs essential for every well-dressed man. Even she had read about that in the newspapers!
And her hefty black nurse’s shoe, with its extremely heavy-duty sole, had somehow lodged itself there, wedged inside it as securely as a sailor in a hammock.
With her customary enthusiasm Nicolette yanked her foot out, but the movement was accompanied by a distinct tearing sound and her eyes swivelled downwards in horror to discover that in the process of removing her foot she had ripped his gorgeous trousers!
‘Thank you,’ he said, in a chilly voice just dripping with sarcasm.
‘Oh, no!’ exclaimed Nicolette as she scrambled to her feet and automatically held her hand out to help him up as she would to a patient.
He studiously ignored the outstretched hand, managing to lever his long-legged frame up from the bathroom floor until he was beside her once more and towering over her again. Only this time there wasn’t just that look of poorly concealed irritation on his face, there was downright anger there, too, but that didn’t deter Nicolette from trying to make amends.
‘Oh, your poor trousers!’ she exclaimed in horror. ‘You must let me offer to repair them.’
There was a long, tense silence while he studied her face disbelievingly, and then he said, ‘I doubt whether you could afford to.’
Well! It was one thing to wear clothes that obviously cost a king’s ransom to buy, but quite another to then rub your wealth in someone else’s face! Nicolette stiffened and drew her shoulders back proudly. ‘I meant,’ she said deliberately, ‘that I could sew them for you.’
If she had suggested single-handedly flying a light aircraft across the Atlantic with him as the only passenger he could not have looked more horrified, or more appalled.
‘If you think,’ he said deliberately, speaking each word with distaste, as though he were being forced to swallow a particularly nasty dose of medicine, ‘that I would allow you anywhere near my trousers—’
It was just very unfortunate that Nurse Jones chose that particular moment to walk back into the bathroom, to find them face to face and glowering at each other. And it was unfortunate, too, that, from the look of profound and abject consternation on her face, she had completely misinterpreted the meaning of his words. ‘Oh, I’m s-so s-sorry!’ she stuttered, and, turning scarlet, she went straight back out again as if the hounds of hell were snapping at her heels.
The awkward silence which fell as they watched the student nurse go stretched and stretched until it was almost unbearable.
Nicolette looked helplessly up into his eyes.
‘I would now like to do my ward-round,’ he told her icily. ‘If you could find it in yourself to grant me the pleasure—’ this word was enunciated with devastating contempt ‘—of accompanying me?’ And he stalked out without another word.
Nicolette was always one to look on the bright side, and yes, OK, perhaps it wasn’t the most auspicious of beginnings, but that didn’t mean that they wouldn’t be able to get on in the future, did it?
She gulped, trying and failing to imagine a close, friendly working relationship developing with such an unbearable man.
She turned and went to follow him out, but as she did she caught a glimpse of herself in the bathroom mirror and flinched.
She looked so unprofessional!
Her uniform was very casual, which didn’t exactly help. She wore a simple short-sleeved dress, with a kind of tabard that covered most of it. This was a sleeveless white overall, brightly decorated with cartoon characters and which was unique to Southbury’s paediatric wards. Designed specifically to make young patients feel at home, at present it was only adding fuel to Nicolette’s conviction that she didn’t look fit to be in charge of the ward!
Her cheeks were as pink and as shiny as if she’d spent the morning out gathering hay, and her blue eyes were bright—two chips of dazzling sapphire in her square face. Puzzlingly, she looked so alive and so vibrant that it almost shocked her, but it was the state of her hair that most caught her attention.
Difficult to control at the best of times, the frizzy black curls had clearly been affected by the steam, the fall and the subsequent collision because it now looked as though a swarm of ebony snakes was protruding from her head.
There were tendrils threatening to escape everywhere, and, worse still, some which already had escaped and were lying on her cheeks and coiling down the back of her long neck.
It would be hopeless, she knew, to try to mend the damage; her hair needed completely redoing. And she couldn’t, she just couldn’t leave Dr Le Saux waiting for