Charlotte stiffened warily, cast him a curious look and then turned her attention back to the patient. ‘Katherine? Katherine, can you hear me?’
Katy lay with her eyes closed.
She could hear voices but she didn’t respond. It felt nice to hide in the darkness. There was a sharp prick in her arm and hands moving over her.
‘Katherine.’
A kind female voice was calling her name but it felt like too much effort to respond.
Then she heard a harsh, male voice and her body tensed. It sounded so familiar.
‘Her X-rays are fine but she’s got a laceration by her hairline that’s going to need suturing and she was knocked out so she’s going to have to stay in overnight for observation.’ Fingers touched her and then she heard the voice again. ‘She’s shivering. Get some blankets.’
Something soft and cosy covered her immediately but the shivering wouldn’t stop.
‘Any relatives?’
‘She was on her own in the car.’
‘Open your eyes, Katherine.’
Hands touching her, the prick of another needle.
‘OK, she’s stable.’ The familiar male voice again. ‘I’ll leave you to get on with it. Get her a bed on the ward and call me if anything changes.’
‘How’s that head?’
Katy lay in the bed, watching the nurse who was checking her blood pressure. ‘Aching, but I’ll live.’ She moved her head to look around her and then winced as pain lanced through her skull. ‘Which hospital am I in?’
‘St Andrew’s. We put seven stitches in your head but your hair will cover it so don’t worry about having a scar.’
St Andrew’s?
Katy closed her eyes and suppressed a groan. Having a scar was the least of her problems. She was due to start work in this very department in two weeks’ time. How embarrassing!
Should she say something?
Deciding to remain silent on the subject for the time being, she shrank lower in the bed.
‘They reckon you’re lucky to be alive.’ The nurse pulled a pen out of her pocket and scribbled on the chart. ‘What happened?’
‘I don’t know.’ Katy frowned as she tried to remember. ‘I was at a party at my parents’ house and then I left to drive home.’ Running from her past. ‘I saw a rabbit in the road so I slammed on my brakes and that’s the last thing I remember.’
The nurse made a clucking sound. ‘Anyway, your X-rays are clear so you should be able to go home in the morning. We found some details in your handbag and called your fiancé. He’s on his way over.’
Katy suppressed a groan. She didn’t want to see Freddie. Why couldn’t they have called Libby or Alex?
The nurse was looking at her in concern. ‘You look terrible. Is there anything I can get you? Do you need anything?’
Yes. She needed to know that the voice that she’d heard in A and E hadn’t been Jago’s.
Of course it wasn’t Jago’s, she told herself.
Jago was a super-rich banker. How could he possibly be working in A and E?
She had just been imagining things and it was no wonder after the conversation she’d had with Libby.
‘I don’t need anything else, thanks.’
She smiled at the nurse just as the door opened and Jago Rodriguez walked in.
The colour drained out of Katy’s cheeks and her breathing did an emergency stop. Her entire body was frozen to the bed, paralysed by the shocking reality of being confronted by Jago.
‘Mr Rodriguez.’ The nurse straightened nervously, went a deep shade of pink and dropped the chart she was holding.
Stunning dark eyes flickered to the nurse. ‘You can go.’
He held the door open in the manner of someone totally accustomed to having his every instruction obeyed instantly, and the flustered nurse retrieved the chart and hurried across the room, casting a final hungry look at Jago’s profile before slipping outside.
Suddenly the room seemed too small.
Jago closed the door and stood with his back to it, his long, powerful legs spread apart, his expression unsmiling. Dominant, confident and unapologetically male, not by the slightest flicker of those sinfully dark lashes did he acknowledge that they’d ever been more than casual acquaintances.
‘Hello, princess.’ He spoke in a deep, masculine drawl that made Katy’s pulse race. ‘Running again?’
Katy’s soft lips parted and she struggled to sit up. She was in total shock. The subject of all her dreams and nightmares was suddenly confronting her. Jago, whom she’d thought about every waking minute for the last eleven years.
Jago, whom she’d never expected to see again.
Somehow he was standing in her hospital room, frighteningly imposing and super-handsome, displaying not the slightest discomfort at seeing her. Nothing in his body language suggested that he felt the smallest hint of guilt or remorse for the way he’d walked away from her without a word of explanation, leaving her so badly hurt that for a while she’d thought she’d never recover.
She could see that he was waiting for her to speak but she was totally unable to think coherently.
Over time she’d managed to convince herself that her starry-eyed view of him had been coloured by a hormonally driven teenage imagination. She’d decided that he couldn’t have been as gorgeous as she remembered.
She’d been wrong.
Jago Rodriguez was strikingly good-looking. He wore his glossy dark hair so short that in any other man it would have accentuated the faults in his facial features. But Jago didn’t have any faults. He possessed a bone structure that made artists drool and a physique that would have driven athletes to a state of mindless envy. He was impossibly, staggeringly handsome.
And to set him apart from the average man still further, he wore an exquisitely tailored suit that skimmed his wide shoulders and just shrieked of designer label.
In a strange moment of distraction Katy found herself wondering what happened if a patient was sick on it.
Growing hotter and hotter under his steady scrutiny, she lifted a hand to her aching head.
‘Wh-what are you—?’ She broke off, totally unable to believe his presence by her hospital bed. ‘I-I didn’t know you were a doctor,’ she croaked, and a dark eyebrow swept upwards.
‘Why should you?’
Why indeed?
After all, he’d chosen to walk out of her life without a backward glance or giving a forwarding address. To him the relationship had been over and he’d moved on. Unfortunately it hadn’t been so easy for her.
She dug her nails in her palms. ‘I assumed you were still in banking.’
‘I lost my taste for banking,’ he said smoothly, his dark eyes fixed on her pale face. ‘I changed career.’
So that was why her feeble, childish attempts to track him down had failed. She’d used all her contacts at the various banks but with no success. It had never occurred to her that he might have changed profession.
Katy blinked