The child nodded gravely then hurried away. Nico turned back to the girl, checking her pulse once more as well as her breathing. Neither seemed to have improved but there again they didn’t seem to have got any worse either which was something to be grateful for.
‘Jacob said you needed help.’
The clear tones cut through the babble of voices and Nico felt his heart come to a dead stop. He looked up, squinting against the glare of the sun. It couldn’t be her, he told himself, his gaze resting on the slender figure standing over him, not here, not now, not on this ferry. It was too big a coincidence to imagine that fate had brought them together after all this time.
‘You!’
The word exploded from her lips yet she hadn’t shouted; it was said so quietly, in fact, that only he could have heard her. Nico rose to his feet, his breath coming in laboured spurts as he tried to make sense of what was happening. He regretted very little that had happened in his life simply because he had worked out what he had wanted and how he would achieve it too. Every decision he had made had been thought through and deliberated upon. Except one. He had never planned for her to get pregnant.
‘Amy.’
Her name flowed so easily from his lips that it shocked him all over again. It was years since he had seen her and yet there was no hesitation about recalling who she was. His eyes skimmed over her, taking stock of the light brown hair falling to her shoulders, the brilliant gleam of her green eyes, the slender curves of her body. She didn’t look a day older than the last time he had seen her, he realised in amazement. It was hard to believe that all those years had passed...
‘Do you know what’s wrong with her?’
The abruptness of the question brought him back to earth with a bump. Nico crouched down beside the girl again, doing his best to steer his thoughts in the direction they needed to go. He had a patient who required his help and this wasn’t the time to start thinking about how much he regretted what had gone on between him and Amy Prentice.
‘I suspect it may be a drug overdose,’ he said, relieved that he was still able to function on a professional level. He nodded towards the girl’s backpack. ‘Can you take a look in there and see if there’s anything that may give us a clue as to exactly what she’s taken?’
‘Of course.’
Amy knelt down and unzipped the bag, trying her best not to let him see that her hands were shaking. Meeting Nico like this had been a massive shock and she could feel the aftermath of it rippling through her like a series of seismic explosions. It was difficult to maintain her control but she had to do so for Jacob’s sake. There was no way on this earth that she wanted her son to guess that this man was his father!
A moan slid from her lips and she hurriedly turned it into a cough when she saw Nico glance at her. She turned away, focusing on the contents of the girl’s bag. There were all the usual items: T-shirts, underwear, toiletries. And then right at the bottom, tucked into a corner, she found what they were looking for. Holding up the small glass bottle, she showed it to Nico.
‘GBL if I’m not mistaken. The bottle’s half full though there’s no way of knowing how much she’s taken today.’
‘Right.’ Nico’s tone was grim. ‘At least we know what we’re dealing with although that doesn’t guarantee that we’ll be able to help her.’
Amy nodded. Gammabutyrolactone, GBL for short, had become increasingly popular with the student population. Even a small dose could have a powerful sedative effect and if mixed with alcohol could be extremely dangerous, often leading to unconsciousness or even death. The girl would need immediate treatment if she was to have any chance of pulling through.
‘What’s that, Mummy? Is it medicine to make the lady better?’
Amy tried not to show her dismay that Jacob was witness to what had happened. He was only eight and she wanted to protect him from things like this for as long as possible. She opened her mouth to explain that it was nothing for him to worry about but Nico beat her to it.
‘It’s not medicine. Medicine makes people better but this is something very different,’ he explained quietly. ‘Something she shouldn’t have taken.’
‘Oh, you mean drugs.’ Jacob nodded sagely. ‘They told us about them in school. I don’t know why anyone wants to take them when they make them ill, do you?’
‘No, I don’t.’
Nico smiled up at the boy and Amy felt her heart turn over in fear. The resemblance between them at that moment was so marked that she couldn’t believe Nico hadn’t noticed it. Although Jacob had her colour hair, he had inherited Nico’s olive skin and chestnut-brown eyes. Even his nose was a smaller, childish version of Nico’s, arrow straight without even the hint of a tilt to it. It was all she could do not to whisk Jacob away and hide him so that Nico would never guess he was his son. After all, he didn’t deserve a son like Jacob, did he? Not after what he had said when she had suffered that miscarriage.
It’s for the best, he had stated coldly when she had told him that she had lost the baby. They had never planned on having a child and the fact that she had lost it made things simpler.
Even though Amy had known from the outset that Nico hadn’t been overjoyed when she had realised that she was pregnant, she had been deeply hurt. They had met at the hospital where Amy was completing her nursing degree. She was in her final year while Nico was on the exchange programme. The hospital was a centre of excellence in the field of plastic surgery and Nico had taken up the offer of a consultant’s post there.
They had both attended a fundraising event one evening. It had been very well supported and the room had been crowded. She had, quite literally, bumped into him and managed to spill her drink all down the front of his jacket. She had been absolutely mortified but Nico had taken it remarkably well, brushing aside her apologies and insisting on fetching her another drink. They had got talking and one thing had led to another; he had asked her out for dinner, she had accepted. After a couple of months, she had been more than a little in love with him and had thought—hoped!—that he had felt the same way. However, his reaction first to her pregnancy and then to the miscarriage had soon put paid to that idea. Amy had realised that all she had ever been to him was a pleasant little interlude, someone to spend time with while he was in London, someone to sleep with. He definitely didn’t want to tie himself to her with or without a child.
That was why she had ended their relationship. She simply couldn’t bear to carry on seeing him, knowing how he really felt about her. It was also the reason why she had decided not to tell him when she had discovered a couple of months later that she was still pregnant, that she must have been carrying twins and had miscarried only one of them. Nico had finished his stint on the exchange programme by then and had left London and moved to Los Angeles to further hone his skills. Although she could have tracked him down if she had wanted to, there hadn’t seemed any point. Nico hadn’t wanted her or their child, and he had made it clear.
He probably still wouldn’t want them now either, Amy thought bitterly. Which meant that she would need to be very careful. Maybe she had coped with having her heart broken but she wouldn’t allow the same thing to happen to Jacob. She took a deep breath. She couldn’t afford to panic, not when she had to make sure that Nico didn’t find out that Jacob was his son!
NICO USED THE ferry’s radio to contact the clinic so an ambulance was waiting when they docked at Constantis’s tiny, picturesque harbour. He supervised the transfer himself, wanting to get the girl back to the clinic as quickly as possible. She was still unconscious and the longer she remained so, the greater the risk that she might not recover.
Once the ambulance was on its way he went to fetch his car, pausing when he saw Amy and the child disembarking. He couldn’t just drive off without speaking to her, could he? Even if they