‘Morning,’ she said sweetly, aiming her smile at Anna, the senior sister, rather than their new medic, and slotted money into the chocolate machine.
The machine took her money and bleeped. The little coil of metal twisted round, but the chocolate bar stayed balanced at the end of its row.
Oh, brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Just when she needed the stuff, even more than she needed coffee. A square of chocolate and she could face the world.
Face David Neave.
‘Is it playing up again?’ Anna asked. ‘I’ll get Siobhan to call Maintenance.’
‘No point. She’ll spend all her time batting her eyes at Mitchell and forget to ask him to sort the machine. I’ll deal with it.’ Holly narrowed her eyes and looked at the machine. ‘Now,’ she said, her voice quiet but very authoritative. She tapped the glass opposite the chocolate bar she’d paid for. And it fell neatly into the tray at the bottom.
‘That’s better,’ she said, unwrapped the foil and broke off a square. Yes. The chocolate rush hit her, and she could cope again.
David wasn’t sure which bit he didn’t believe. The fact that the vending machine had given her the chocolate on her command—or the fact that he was in the same room as her again. The woman who’d broken his heart when he was eighteen. Holly Jones.
Or maybe this woman was her double.
‘Holls, let me introduce you. This is David Neave, our new senior reg. He started this morning and Sue got called away so she asked me to show him round,’ Anna announced. ‘David, this is the woman who scares the chocolate machine into submission. Our registrar—’
‘Holly Jones,’ he cut in. It really was her. Except that her dark hair was now cut in a short, functional style instead of being tied back at the nape of her neck, and her grey eyes were much, much harder.
Or maybe they always had been hard but he’d refused to see it.
Anna blinked in surprise. ‘You two know each other?’
‘We were at school together. A long, long time ago,’ Holly said quickly.
Was it his imagination, or was there a twinge of guilt in her eyes? She’d looked away again almost immediately, as if she was too embarrassed to face him. It was a bit late for an attack of conscience now. She should have thought about that twelve years ago.
And now it looked as if he was going to have to work with her.
Holly Jones was back in his life.
Hell. She was even wearing the same perfume. How could such a tiny thing as a spritz of scent take him spinning right back twelve years? The past, when Holly had been in his arms, kissing him and whispering, ‘I love you.’ Words that had meant everything to him—and absolutely nothing to her.
‘We lost touch,’ David said.
That was one way of putting it. Because the love of his life had walked out on him when they were eighteen. And her timing had been impeccably bad: she’d done it the week before his A-level exams.
Holly could hardly believe her ears. Lost touch? Yeah, right. It had been none of her doing. He’d been the one to lose touch. Deliberately. The first sign of trouble, and he’d been out of there. Hadn’t returned any of her phone calls, hadn’t replied to her letters. When she’d gone to his house to talk it over face to face, he’d been away on holiday. With another girl.
He hadn’t accepted responsibility back then, and he certainly wasn’t going to admit it now.
What a creep.
More proof—as if she needed it—that she was better off without him.
‘So you’re from Liverpool, too?’ Anna asked.
‘I moved away a long time ago,’ David said. ‘I trained in Southampton.’
Holly knew that. She’d been there the day his offer from Southampton had come through. The same day as hers. They’d been offered places for getting the same grades, even. And they’d planned to go to med school together.
Except she hadn’t made it.
And when she’d sat her A levels the following year—and got the straight A grades her teachers had predicted—she’d accepted the offer to train in London. No way could she have faced Southampton, knowing that he was there.
‘I worked in Newcastle for a couple of years, then came here,’ David said.
She knew he was looking at her. Knew he was expecting her to respond. And Anna expected it, too. If Holly followed her instincts and stomped out of the rest room, Anna would start to wonder. And although the senior sister didn’t gossip, the rest of the department did. It wouldn’t take long for rumours to fill in the blanks. The worst thing was, the wildest ones would probably be right on target. ‘I trained here,’ she said shortly.
Then she met his eyes, and wished she hadn’t. Because, for an instant, she’d seen a flash of yearning there. A yearning that was immediately echoed in her own heart.
She slammed the brakes on. There was no going back now. Working with David was going to be awkward, but she didn’t have a choice. Not unless she wanted them both to be the centre of gossip for an uncomfortably long time.
‘You two must have a lot to catch up on,’ Anna said.
Over my dead body! Holly thought. She couldn’t help looking at David, and was surprised to see questions in his eyes. Did he expect her to fill him in on her gap year—what had really happened? He hadn’t cared enough to find out at the time. Why did he want to know now, when it was much too late?
‘Years,’ David said, in answer to Anna’s question.
Though it underlined Holly’s thoughts. It was years too late for them.
‘It won’t take you long to settle in, then, seeing as you know each other. Sue put you on the same team,’ Anna said.
The blood rushed straight from Holly’s head and it was an effort to keep upright, her head was spinning so much. David was going to be working on her team? Given the new shift rotations they were doing, it meant she’d be spending every single moment at work near him. Forty-odd hours a week.
She tried to school her face into neutral and stared at his hands, hoping that she could think of some suitable response quickly enough to stop Anna asking questions. But looking at his hands was a bad, bad move—because she could still remember the pressure of his fingertips against her skin. Still remember what those hands had done to her. Why couldn’t she get him out of her head?
‘Holls? Are you all right?’ Anna asked.
‘Uh—yes. I hit traffic problems so I didn’t get back from Liverpool until pretty late last night. I, um, just need some sleep,’ Holly prevaricated. It was true, up to a point. What she really wanted was time to think, not time to sleep. She gave a huge yawn and hoped it didn’t look as fake as it felt.
Give me time. Give me space to deal with this, she begged. And, right on cue, her pager bleeped. She checked it. ‘Sorry. Gotta dash. Catch you later, Anna, David.’ She gave them both her best smile and left the rest room with indecent haste.
‘Fancy you two knowing each other. Still, at least we don’t have to warn you that Holls isn’t as scary as she seems,’ Anna said.
David frowned. Holly—his Holly—scary? Surely they couldn’t be talking about the same person. Holly had been the epitome of ‘sweet sixteen’. She’d been lovely. A little shy, but once David had got to know her he’d discovered her sense of fun.
Holly Jones, scary?
‘She tells it like it is, and God help you if you make a stupid mistake,’ Anna said, rolling her eyes.