‘Sure?’ James asked, maybe finally picking up on the tension running between them, and she nodded.
‘I’m sure. Go. Leave it to me.’
‘Thank you. I know you’ll do your best. I’ll see you on Monday, Ryan. I’m really pleased you’ve agreed to join us.’
‘So am I. I’ll look forward to working with you.’
They shook hands and she watched James go, then Ryan turned back to her with a wry smile that touched her heart.
‘Forget the guided tour. Is there somewhere quiet we can go and get a coffee?’
She felt a wave of relief and nodded. ‘Yes. There’s a café that opens onto the park. We can sit outside.’
The café was busy, but they found a little bistro table bathed in April sunshine and tucked out of the way so they could talk without being overheard, and he settled opposite her and met her eyes, his searching.
‘So, how are you?’
Her heart thumped. ‘Oh—you know.’ She tried to smile. ‘Getting there, bit by bit. You?’
That wry, sad smile again, flickering for an instant and then gone. ‘I’m OK.’
She wasn’t sure she believed him, but there was something else…
‘So, how come you’re here, in Yoxburgh? Is that deliberate?’ she asked, needing to know if he’d sought her out or just stumbled on her by accident, but he nodded slowly.
‘Yoxburgh? Yes, sort of. I needed a job, there was one here, and I know it’s a lovely place. But I didn’t know you were here, if that’s what you’re asking, not until I saw you.’
‘Would you have applied if you’d known?’
He shrugged. ‘Not without talking to you first to see if you were OK with it.’
‘Why? If you needed a job—’
‘There are plenty of jobs.’
‘But not here.’
‘No. Not here, and I wanted to be here, but now—well, that depends.’
Her heart hiccupped. ‘On?’
‘You, of course. If you’re working in the ED, we’ll probably be working together. I’m OK with that, we worked well together before, but us—you and me—that’s different. Much more complicated, and the last thing I want is to make things difficult for you, so I need to know if you’re going to be OK with me being underfoot all the time.’
Was she?
‘Just so long as you don’t expect to pick up where we left off. Well, not that, obviously, but—you know. Before…’
He frowned, his eyes raw. ‘I don’t expect anything, Beth. The way we left things, I’ve got no right to expect anything. For all I know you might be back with Rick.’
‘Rick?’ It startled a laugh out of her because after everything that had happened Rick was so far off her radar it was almost funny. ‘No way. He was a lying cheat, why would I be back with him, any more than you’d be back with Katie?’
He gave a startled laugh. ‘OK, I can see that, but—someone?’
‘No. It’s just me, and I’m happy that way. You?’
He laughed again. ‘Me? I haven’t had time to breathe, never mind get involved with anyone. Anyway, people get expectations and then it all gets messy.’
‘Not everyone’s like Katie.’
‘No. They’re not.’ He studied her, his eyes stroking tenderly over her face. She could almost feel their touch, but then he closed them and shook his head with a little laugh. ‘I can’t believe you’re in the ED. What brought that on? I thought Theatre was your life.’
‘You can talk. I thought surgery was your life.’
He shrugged. ‘People change. I was facing a lifetime of increasing specialisation, and I didn’t want to spend every day doing the same thing over and over again until I’d perfected it. I wanted a change, and MFA provided me with that, and over the course of my time with them I realised I like trauma work. I like the variety, the pace, but you…’
‘I wanted a change, too.’ Needed a change, because everywhere she’d looked there’d been reminders of what she’d lost, and she’d found working in Theatre with anyone but him just plain wrong. ‘So, when did you get back?’
‘Two weeks ago. I’ve been back a few times on leave, picked up a bit of locum work here and there to refill the coffers and keep my registration up to date, but this time it’s for good.’
For good?
She felt her eyes widen, and her heart thumped. ‘Really?’
His smile was sad. ‘Yes, really. I’ve seen enough horror, lost some good friends, seen way too many dead chil—’
She flinched, and he gave a quiet groan.
‘Sorry. I didn’t…’
‘It’s OK,’ she lied. ‘And I can only begin to imagine what it must have been like. So, was it after you lost your friends you decided to come back?’
He gave a wry laugh. ‘No. Oddly, that was when I decided to stay on longer, to carry on the work they were doing because it was so necessary, but there’ll always be others waiting to take my place and it was time to come home because I’m just as needed here in many ways. My grandparents are frail and my mother’s shouldering the whole burden on her own, and it just seemed like it was time. Time to move on with my life, to get back to the day job, as it were. Back to the future.’
With her?
He’d said it was time to move on with his life, but he was the one who didn’t do relationships. Not after Katie had tried to get pregnant to stop him going away.
But what if he’d changed now, got MFA out of his system and was ready to settle down? It sounded like it, and maybe he wanted to try again with her? Maybe a bit more seriously this time—although it could hardly have been more serious than the way it had turned out. But if he did?
She wasn’t sure she was ready for that, not yet. She was still working through life day by day, hour by hour, step by step. She stared down into her coffee, stirring the froth mindlessly.
‘So that’s me,’ he murmured. ‘How about you? Are you happy here, in Yoxburgh?’
Happy? She could hardly remember what that felt like.
‘As happy as I can be anywhere,’ she said honestly. ‘It’s a lovely place, and that weekend we spent here—it was really special, the walks, the feel of the sea air—we said then what an amazing place it would be to live, and then a job came up here and I thought, why not? I was sick of working in an inner city, the noise and the dirt and the chaos, and I wanted to get away from all the reminders. I just needed peace.’
Peace to heal, to reconcile herself, to learn to live again, and where better than here, where it all began—
She sucked in a breath and looked up again. ‘So how come you applied for the locum job?’
He shrugged. ‘Same reason, I guess. I loved it here, the peace, the tranquillity of the coast and the countryside, and I needed that, after all I’ve seen. And there were the memories. I know we were only here for a weekend, but it was hugely significant.’
He looked away, his brow creased in a thoughtful frown,