He hated having to do it, but there was no way he could untangle himself from her without disturbing her sleep. Besides, her cast had been resting over one of his ankles and he didn’t know whether he was even going to be able to walk on it. It felt as if the weight might have caused permanent damage to his circulation.
‘Sara?’ he called gently, hoping he might be able to rouse her just far enough to extricate himself. ‘Sweetheart, I’ve got to go,’ he said a little more firmly when she just tightened her hold on him. ‘I’m going to be late.’
‘Late?’ she repeated sleepily, and blinked … then blinked again and stared at him in disbelief. ‘Dan? What are you doing here?’
‘You invited me. Remember?’ He only meant to prompt her memory by stroking his hand over the curve of her belly but when he found himself stroking naked skin he pulled his hand away as swiftly as though he’d been burned.
‘Sorry,’ he muttered, mortified to feel the heat searing his cheeks as he rolled swiftly out of reach and leapt to his feet.
His shoes were scattered on the floor and his keys were … under the edge of her bed, and his brain was definitely lodged south of his belt while she was curled up in the middle of all those crumpled bedclothes like a sleepy cat.
‘I’m sorry but I’ve got to run or I’ll be late for my shift,’ he apologized, and let himself swiftly out of her flat, then nearly tripped on his way down the stairs when his hormones reminded him that he’d never seen a sleepy cat with such long slender legs … even though one of them was temporarily encumbered with a clumsy cast … or wearing such an outrageous scrap of underwear.
To lessen the danger that his preoccupation might cause an accident in the early-morning traffic, he forced himself to concentrate on the evidence he’d seen of how well her injuries were healing.
It hadn’t been many days since she’d cheated death by inches, but already some of the bruises were starting to fade, working their way through the colour progression that marked the body’s reabsorption of the various constituents in the blood.
He’d only caught a glimpse of her shoulder and most of the injured area was still covered by the strapping that was providing stability and support while the internal damage to the structures in and around the rotator cuff were repairing.
The grazes on her arm were much better than when he’d last seen them. Then, she’d been with Rosalie, the technician, having an ultrasound to find out if the pregnancy had been compromised, and she’d looked as if she’d been flayed raw almost from wrist to elbow.
It was all scabbed over now, evidence that none of the damage had gone very deep, and within a few more days she would be left with nothing worse than a deep pink mark on her skin that would probably be completely un-detectable in a matter of weeks.
The rest of her skin had looked silky-smooth and perfect and he’d longed to explore every inch of it in great detail and …
Whoa! That sort of thinking wasn’t the right way to keep his car safely on the road. For that, he needed to keep his thoughts on the straight and narrow, too, as befitted a married man.
And if that reminder wasn’t enough to take the shine off a morning that had started so sweetly, with the mother of his unborn children wrapped so trustingly in his arms, then nothing could.
Sara was cross with herself that she hadn’t remembered to set her alarm the previous night. This morning she’d intended getting up bright and early so that she could go in to the hospital to negotiate her partial return to work.
By the time she managed to get herself washed and dressed, she was going to arrive hours after the morning shift had started and was going to give the department manager grounds to doubt that she could cope with coming back to work so soon.
Ah, but she couldn’t really find it in her to regret the reason why her plans had become so disrupted. Feeling the babies move for the first time had been amazing, and it had been made even more magical when she’d been able to share it with Dan.
Waking up this morning to find that he was still with her and knowing that his body had been wrapped protectively around hers while she’d slept was a bonus she’d never expected, and she refused to feel guilty about it. To have heard that her sister had deliberately ensnared Dan purely out of spite and, worse, that she hadn’t even loved him when she’d married him—the whole situation seemed an utter travesty of everything that a marriage should be.
‘If he had married me …’ she whispered wistfully, then gave herself a shake. ‘“If wishes were horses then beggars would ride,” Granny Walker used to say, and I’m just wishing for the moon, too.’ And nothing could come of those wishes because even though Zara might not have loved Dan, he must have loved her or he would never have proposed to and married her.
‘And none of that will get this beggar a ride, but a phone call will,’ she declared when she was finally as ready as she could be. She reached for her purse and the business card of her own personal knight on a white charger … or in a black cab if she really wanted to be pedantic.
‘Sara! What on earth are you doing here?’ called one colleague when he caught sight of her.
‘You’re supposed to be on sick leave, darlin', taking it easy while the rest of us soldier on,’ added Sean O’Malley in his lilting Irish accent. ‘Have you just come to gloat?’
Everywhere she looked there was the usual morning chaos, except it seemed even worse than usual—or was that just wishful thinking? If everyone was being rushed off their feet, would that mean that she would be welcomed with open arms or would she be seen as a liability and shown the door?
There was only one way to find out.
‘Actually, Sean, I wanted to have a word with the department manager and—’
‘Oh. Admin stuff,’ he said dismissively. ‘Well, while you’re in those recently refurbished offices sitting on one of their ultra-expensive chairs, will you remind someone that they still haven’t scraped the loose change together to find us any replacement staff, not even part-timers? And we’re already two and a half doctors down. It’s getting beyond a joke.’
The staff in the human resources office reminded Sara of an ants’ nest that had just been given a vigorous stir with a big stick.
Not that any of them seemed to be moving with the same innate sense of purpose that you’d find among ants. In fact, as far as she could tell, there was interminable duplication of effort going on while they seemed to concentrate most of their efforts on finding reasons why things couldn’t be done.
‘Have you found the new staff for A and E yet?’ she asked sweetly, then gave the nest a deliberate extra stir. ‘I heard a rumour that if you don’t find them soon, it may have to be shut down because it’s dangerously understaffed, and all the patients will be diverted to other hospitals. Doesn’t the hospital get a massive fine if that happens?’
By the time she was shown in for her ‘chat’ with one of the more senior members of the department, the rumour she’d started seemed to have taken on a life of its own.
‘Have you any idea exactly how long you’re going to need to be on sick leave?’ the man asked from behind a desk that was laden with piles of paperwork nearly tall enough to hide behind.
‘That’s what I wanted to talk about,’ she said brightly. ‘The only thing wrong with me is this cast on my leg.’ After all, the strapping on her shoulder was invisible under her clothing. ‘And the wheelchair is only for show and to give my arms a rest from using crutches.’
It was such a long way from the truth that she almost expected to feel the searing heat of a thunderbolt from on high, but what she got instead was an administrator almost grovelling at her feet when she offered to pitch in to do an hour or two in minors to help clear the backlog. There