The Elusive Consultant. Carol Marinelli

Tessa said rather too forcefully. ‘It’s Emily you should be talking to about any problem you’re having with your relationship—she’s the one with your ring on her finger. And if it’s an impartial, feminine viewpoint you’re after, believe me, Max, you’re asking the wrong woman.’

      ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

      ‘Well...’ Tessa’s eyes darted nervously, wishing she could take back the words she had just uttered and frantically searching her mind for a way to diffuse them. ‘I’m not exactly an authority on the perfect relationship. Look how many dating disasters I’ve endured in my time.’

      ‘I’m not asking you out for a counselling session, Tessa, I just want to talk to you.’

      ‘Sorry, Max.’ Tessa gave a vague shrug. ‘I’m a bit tied up at the moment.’

      Never had the chimes of the emergency loudspeaker springing into life been more gratefully received and Tessa jumped up, grabbing her pager from the table as Max reluctantly joined her. ‘Come on, it looks like we’re wanted.’

      ‘Tessa?’ The question in his voice didn’t go unnoticed, but so innocent was the smiling face that turned to him, so wide her smile, that Max hesitated, his pensive expression shifting, his own face breaking into a wide smile that matched hers. ‘Come on, I’ll race you.’

      They sped along the corridor, laughing as they did so, Tessa’s long brown hair flying behind her as she tried to keep up with Max’s effortless strides, their pagers shrilling in their pockets alerting them to head to Emergency as other hospital personnel flattened against the walls to let them past.

      And to anyone watching, Tessa didn’t look as if she had a care in the world as she burst through the swing doors and headed straight for Resus.

      ‘Beat you.’ Max smiled before turning to Jane and getting the run-down of the trauma that was about to come through the doors.

      ‘You always do,’ Tessa grumbled as she ran through and set up the necessary equipment.

      ‘Ah, but I had an added incentive to stay ahead of you this morning.’ Max grinned as Tessa’s forehead creased. ‘How many eggs did you say you’d had?’

      It was a joke, a below-the-belt joke that nurses and doctors dished out almost by the minute, a brother-sister-type tease that normally Tessa would have shrugged off before it had even registered in her brain.

      But it wasn’t a normal morning, and there was nothing sisterly about the way Tessa was feeling. Max was leaving, there was no denying it now, she’d heard it straight from the horse’s mouth.

      It really was going to happen.

      All that talk, all that bravado about being friends had all been a lie—a lie she was so used to living. After five years it came as naturally as breathing. And her excuse to him about not being able to offer an impartial feminine viewpoint had been another one.

      Feminine she could readily manage, but impartial, well, it wasn’t even a vague possibility.

      Max, with his curly brown hair and teasing smile, had never, since the moment Tessa had first laid eyes on him, been just a friend. Max, with his crumpled clothes and banana-skin humour, who could make her cry with laughter one minute and suddenly be serious the next, was so much more than her work confidant, brunch buddy and sounding-board.

      There was nothing impartial about Tessa’s feelings.

      Max Slater was the man that she loved.