Risk of a Lifetime. Caroline Anderson
talking to Cody’s parents.
‘I’ll chase up PICU,’ Kate was saying, and she nodded.
‘Thanks. Right, I’m just going to update the notes, and as soon as they’ve got a bed free, we’ll be moving him. You’ll be able to stay with him overnight.’
His mother nodded, and Annie stepped away from them, grabbed the notes and moved to the side to write them up.
Behind her she could hear Ed’s voice murmuring to the parents, answering their endless questions with sensibly noncommittal answers.
He’d been amazing. Calm, steady, gentle, soothing the distressed child with a competence that usually came with years of practice.
He was probably a father. Almost inevitably. Someone was bound to have snapped him up, he was far too good to be on the shelf.
Unless he was a player, but he didn’t seem the type. Far too wholesome and straightforward. Until the lights went out?
It was none of her business, she reminded herself crossly. And in any case she wasn’t interested.
At all!
* * *
So this was Annie Brooks.
He glanced across at her, writing up the notes while Kate kept an eye on Cody’s monitor and pottered quietly in the background.
Her back was to him, which meant he could study her without detection. She wasn’t short, but she certainly wasn’t tall. Her head would tuck easily under his chin. And her body was—well, just a body. Nothing out of the ordinary. She wasn’t fat, she wasn’t thin, she was just...womanly, he thought with interest. Feminine. Her curves were in all the right places, and she moved with grace.
Except when she was rattled. Then she moved awkwardly, self-consciously. He found that interesting, too.
Her mid-brown hair was twisted up in a clip at the back, out of the way. A strand had escaped, and she was fiddling with it, one finger twirling the little curl round and round.
It was a curiously innocent gesture, utterly unconscious, the sort of thing people did when they were concentrating hard, and he found it strangely touching.
James had told him about her. He’d said she was competent, kind and easy to work with, but he was sure that underneath the surface there was much, much more to her than that.
Unlike Kate.
There were hundreds of girls like Kate, nice girls, pretty girls, girls who made it clear with every glance that they were available, but Annie...
Annie intrigued him. For a moment there, right at the beginning, he’d had his doubts about her. She’d seemed ruffled by his arrival, somehow, distracted and unfocused, but then the ambulance had arrived and she’d changed.
It was as if she’d engaged a different gear, and it had all settled down. She’d become everything that James had told him she was, and he began to think he’d imagined that sizzle of awareness.
Until their glances had met again. For a fleeting moment the forget-me-not blue of her eyes had locked with his, and then it had been back, whatever ‘it’ was. Some crazy pull between them, like kissing dolls, the magnetic attraction drawing them inexorably together.
And she seemed to resent it, to pull back from it as if it was unwelcome, turning her head and carrying on as if nothing had happened, but it had, and she’d dismissed it.
He felt a twinge of regret. A little light relief to take his mind off the coming months of family trauma and upheaval might have been welcome, but it probably wasn’t sensible. He had nothing to offer, he wasn’t here for long and anyway it was never a good idea to muddy the waters with someone you worked with.
Kate, for instance. She’d made it blindingly obvious she was up for anything he might suggest, but anyway, even if he found her attractive, which he didn’t except in the most superficial and basic way, the same principle applied—
‘PICU are ready for him.’
He nodded at Kate and switched his eyes to Annie.
‘Annie?’
‘All done. Kate, will you go with him, please?’
She slapped the notes shut, put them on the trolley, shook hands with the parents and the two of them watched as Cody was whisked away.
‘Poor little boy. He’s going to have a cracking headache for a few days,’ he said softly.
Annie nodded. ‘Let’s hope that’s all. Good teamwork, by the way. Thank you.’
‘My pleasure. Thank you for letting me join you.’
Annie flashed him a quick acknowledging glance, the first time she’d met his eyes for a while now. Well, since that time, when he’d felt that sizzle of awareness again.
But there was no awareness now that he could see, and her voice was brisk and businesslike.
‘You’re welcome. It’s nice to know we’ve got someone on the team with Paeds training. You can never have too many. Right, I need to go and chase up some tests,’ she said, and he could have sworn she was running away.
From him? Surely not. He hadn’t given her any reason to feel threatened or harassed in any way.
So why was he so much of a threat to her?
* * *
‘Hello, my darlings! How are you?’
‘Mummy!’
The girls ran to her, hugging her in stereo, dragging her to the table to see what they were doing.
‘We’ve made you a picture!’
‘I did this bit, and Chloe did that bit—’
‘And Grace put the ears on the bunny, and MamaJo let us eat the last chocolate bunny!’
‘Did she?’ Annie laughed at her mother and shook her head. ‘I thought we didn’t eat chocolate between meals?’
‘But we had it for pudding!’ Grace told her solemnly. ‘MamaJo didn’t cheat.’
Annie bit the inside of her cheek to stop herself laughing. ‘I’m glad to hear it. And it’s a lovely picture. Thank you. As soon as it’s dry, we’ll put it up on the wall. Now, how about your bath, and then I’ll read you a story.’
‘I want to choose—’
‘No, it’s my turn—’
‘I’m choosing,’ she said firmly. ‘I think it’s my turn. How about Peter Rabbit?’
‘Yes!’
They ran for the bathroom, and she rolled her eyes at her mother. ‘Don’t worry about the mess, I’ll clear it up,’ she promised, and followed them.
Chloe, always the one in trouble, was diving headfirst over the side of the bath, trying to put the plug in, and she fished her back out, put the plug in and turned on the taps.
‘So what else have you done today?’ she asked, quickly stripping their clothes off and throwing them at the laundry basket.
She bathed them while they chattered, washing their hair—Grace’s angelic pale blonde curls, Chloe’s wildly tangled chocolate-brown mop—and then combed it through with conditioner, rinsed and blotted and fished them out of the bath to finish drying while the water drained out.
And all the time they were talking, telling her about their day, their friends, the helpers at the nursery, and amidst the lively chatter Annie felt herself starting to relax.
‘Gosh, we’ve all had a busy day. Come on, let’s go and snuggle up and have a story, and then it’s time for bed.’
She settled them down, tidied up the bathroom and went back to the kitchen.
‘Oh,