They got through the morning by keeping out of each other’s way as much as possible, avoiding eye contact, restricting conversation to a minimum and all work-related, but fun it wasn’t and her nerves were in bits, so the second the clinic was finished she made her escape.
* * *
He closed the door as Liv went out with the last patient, leant back against the wall and closed his eyes, letting his breath out in a long, slow huff.
Well, they’d survived, if you could call it that.
Not that it had been easy, but they’d got through it by sticking to business and getting on with the job, and they’d done that well, working together as a smooth, well-oiled team just as they had in the old days. Except in the old days they’d enjoyed it, and he was pretty certain neither of them had enjoyed it today, and the tension between them could have been cut with a knife.
It couldn’t go on like this, though, and he knew he had to do something to break through the icy politeness and careful distance between them or it wasn’t going to work. At all.
He shrugged away from the wall, picked up the last set of notes and left the room, scanning the clinic for Liv, but there was no sign of her.
‘Seen Liv?’ he asked at Reception as he handed over the file, and was told she’d gone for lunch.
Which meant, unless she’d changed her habits, she’d be in the café that opened onto the park.
Good. He could do with a nice, strong coffee, with caffeine in it for a change. It might help him get through what was sure to be a deeply awkward conversation.
‘MIND IF I join you?’
She might have known he’d find her here. She should have gone to the other café, or the restaurant—or even better, gone off-site.
Too late now. She looked pointedly at the two free tables, then up into those beautiful, unreadable eyes that were studying her knowingly. Too knowingly. She looked away.
‘Is this about work?’
‘In a way.’
He didn’t wait for her to invite him, just put his cup on the table and sat down, his gaze meeting hers again, but this time she didn’t look away because his eyes looked guarded and a little wary still, and she realised he was—nervous? No, not nervous, that didn’t sound like Nick. Uncomfortable, maybe. That didn’t sound like him, either, not the Nick she knew and loved anyway, but maybe he’d changed. Maybe she’d changed him by cutting him so brutally out of her life, but she’d been so hurt...
‘Liv, I realise this is awkward, but I do think we need to clear the air if we’re going to work together,’ he said quietly, ‘unless you being in the clinic this morning was just a one-off?’
She shook her head. ‘No, it wasn’t a one-off, but I wasn’t meant to be doing the clinic today and I didn’t realise you’d be starting work so early. I thought it would take longer with HR.’
‘Ah, well, that’s the file for you,’ he said with a slight smile that didn’t reach his eyes. ‘Answers all the questions in an instant. So, getting back to us, I’d assumed when Ben asked me that you’d still be in the midwife-led unit?’
She shook her head again. ‘No, I only moved there while you were working your notice, and after you’d gone there was no point in me staying there, so I switched back to the consultant unit when there was a vacancy. I’ve been back six months.’
He frowned. ‘I didn’t know that. I’m sorry, I would have talked to you first if I had. Obviously I knew we’d see each other anyway from time to time, but that’s not quite the same as having to work together. Are you going to be OK with that?’
Was she? OK with spending day after day bumping into him, working alongside him on deliveries, their hands, their bodies touching as they brushed against each other in the confines of the delivery room? OK with hearing his voice, catching endless glimpses of him around the maternity unit, hearing him laugh? He had a wonderful laugh, warm and rich and never, never unkind.
Would she really be OK with all of that?
She let out a soft, slightly shaky sigh. ‘Nick, it’s fine. We managed this morning and as I said to Ben, I’m sure we can be civilised.’
‘I’m sure we can, but that still doesn’t make it easy.’
The despairing little laugh escaped without her permission. ‘What, you thought you could come back into my life after a year and it would be easy? Get real, Nick. We’re not married any more, in case you hadn’t noticed. Of course it won’t be easy.’
He winced slightly—so slightly that anyone who didn’t know him as well as she did wouldn’t have spotted it, but when he spoke it was without emotion.
‘We are still married,’ he corrected, his voice carefully controlled, ‘but I haven’t forgotten for a single moment that we’re not together. That’s not what this is about. But we are going to have to work together, and we never had a problem in the past and I don’t want us to have a problem now.’
‘Did we have a problem today?’
‘With the work? No. With the atmosphere, definitely, and I’m not sure I can do it unless we can find some middle ground. We used to be such a brilliant team, and I want to find a way to get that back.’
‘Seriously?’ she asked, slightly incredulous, but he nodded.
‘Seriously. I realise it’s not going to be the same, but it needs to be better than it was this morning, and I just wanted to clear the air, break the ice a bit and get rid of the awkwardness, so that we’re more at ease next time.’
In his dreams. There was no way she was going to be at ease with him. She only had to hear his voice or catch a glimpse of him and her heart started racing, but he was here and she was stuck with it, for now at least, and he had a point. They did have to be able to work together, although she still had questions about that, so she went for the first one on the pile.
‘How come you were available to locum anyway?’ she asked without preamble. ‘I’d imagined you tucked up in a nice little consultant’s post somewhere picturesque.’
Probably with another woman. She didn’t add that, because he was trying to pour oil on troubled waters and it wouldn’t help at all if she threw petrol on the fire instead. And besides, it was none of her business any more who he chose to sleep with.
He glanced down, stirring his coffee on autopilot even though she knew it wouldn’t have sugar in it.
‘I didn’t want to tie myself down,’ he said, finally putting the spoon back in the saucer and meeting her eyes again. ‘After I left here, I just wanted to get away, let the dust settle, work out where I wanted to go. I thought maybe New Zealand, but my parents are still alive and they’re getting older, so I took a two-month locum post covering maternity leave fairly close to them while I worked out what I wanted to do, and then when that was coming to an end they asked me to cover the fertility clinic until it shut because the services were being centralised and the consultant had left, so I did. I saw my last patients two days ago, on the day Ben rang, and I had nothing else lined up, so I’m here.’
‘Why on earth did you say yes?’
‘To Ben? Because I need a job, so I can eat and keep a roof over both our heads.’
She felt another pang of guilt. ‘I didn’t mean that, Nick, but if the mortgage is an issue—’
‘It’s not an issue, Liv, it’s a fact, and I’m not going to make you homeless under any circumstances so let’s just ignore that. So what did you mean?’
‘I was talking about the fertility clinic job. I couldn’t