Her Knight Under The Mistletoe. Annie O'Neil
niece had had a son out of wedlock and sought refuge with her, rather than crawl back to her parents and beg forgiveness.
A lifetime of living under her parents’ judgmental gazes? Unh-unh. She’d had it from both ends of the spectrum, and refused to let anyone who supposedly “loved” her judge her again. Love should be love. And it should not come with a rulebook.
“Seeing as the lie of the land is pretty frenetic...it probably would be a good idea for the both of you to get a feel for the hospital. See how the place ticks.”
Dr. Menzies glanced unnecessarily to the steady flow of doctors, nurses and patients one floor below them, then abruptly focused in on Amanda.
“Will this short notice be all right for you to sort out arrangements for your son?”
Ice ran through Amanda’s veins. She could feel Matthew rise up to his full height behind her. He knew nothing about her child. Of course he didn’t. And Dr. Menzies certainly didn’t know Tristan was Matthew’s son.
“I didn’t realize you were a mother.” Matthew’s blue eyes blazed with curiosity.
“There’s no reason for you to know anything about me.”
She distinctly remembered avoiding all of his questions that night, finally stemming the flow of Who are you? and Where did you come from? with heated kiss after kiss.
“I thought you two had met?” Confusion washed across Dr. Menzies’s eyes.
“Not formally,” they answered in tandem, tension tightening both their voices.
Plowing through the taut atmosphere, Dr. Menzies continued, “So you’ll be able to arrange care for him at short notice?”
“That’s right.” Amanda nodded, refusing to show any chink in her armor.
Any more details and Matthew was going to put two and two together. The last thing she wanted was to expose her son to a man she knew wouldn’t be interested in being a father. She knew that pain in the very center of her heart.
She pasted on her “everything’s fine” face, offered them both bright smiles and said, “If you’ll excuse me? I just need to make a quick call.”
* * *
A kid, huh? Well, so much for a few extracurricular forbidden nights under the mistletoe with the Ice Queen.
Matthew didn’t bother undoing all his shirt buttons once he’d hung his suit jacket up in the nearest locker. Just pulled the thing off in a oner. More efficient.
Just like his usual One Night Only policy. He didn’t do relationships. Didn’t really even do dating. If you got attached to people sooner or later you let them down. And he was carrying around enough guilt to bury the whole of London without adding more weight to his shoulders.
He scrubbed a hand through his hair as harrowing memories from his teens began to crowd out the racier ones he’d been having about Amanda.
He’d not had a chance to check her ring finger for signs of a permanent attachment. And she had dismissed his attempts to enquire about her marital status.
Work. He needed to get some scrubs on and get out on the floor.
December was a rough month for him. Any spare time meant thinking about his brother. Going through That Day with a fine-toothed comb trying to think if there was anything he could have done to stop Charlie from taking that awful final step. Every single time he found fault after fault...with himself.
Which was precisely why getting to work and proving this job was already running through his veins was vital. He hadn’t been man enough then...he sure as hell was going to prove he was now.
Compared to the cases he had dealt with out in Afghanistan and Syria, most inner city A&E patients were a doddle. But this time of year meant a lot of people were weighing up the pros and cons of their lives. Taking stock. What was it the Beatles had said about all the lonely people?
He wondered if the countless suicides over the course of the holiday season ever thought of all the broken hearts they’d leave behind.
He slammed his locker door shut, willing the dark thoughts to stay in there. Hidden.
While he was at it, he might as well rip any notion of extracurriculars with Amanda off his Christmas wish list. If he had one.
He slipped his trousers off, yanked open the locker door again and rammed the dark chinos into the locker before snapping a pair of dark blue scrubs out to full length and stuffing his legs into them one by one.
Just feeling the soft cotton move along his legs reminded him of the slip and shift of the hotel sheets as Amanda had made full use of her flexibility.
He swung the locker door back and forth. Maybe she’d consider...
Slam.
Why waste time speculating? They’d had a don’t ask, don’t tell thing going on that night and it had been near enough three years ago. No point in wondering what might have been.
Besides, it might be fun working with her. Interesting to see just how much of an “anything you can do I can do better” vibe he could create out in the A&E. It would keep his mind off picturing her naked, anyway.
He grinned and crossed to the mirror, tugging his fingers through his hair, trying to put it back into some semblance of publicly acceptable. He caught a glint in his eye as he did.
Who was he kidding? Nothing would stop him from picturing Amanda Wakefield naked.
A few moments later and he was ready for action.
He pressed open the door leading to the busy A&E department and breathed it in as if it were pure oxygen. He loved this. The chaos. The constant action. The demands upon a doctor to react and react and react, because every patient was important and every patient deserved his best.
He caught the eye of a doctor putting notes on the assignments board. What was it Deena had said his name was? McBride?
He strode past a couple of elderly women sitting in wheelchairs and narrowly dodged a paramedic team running in with a man on a gurney complaining of severe chest pain.
“All the resus bays are full—you’re going to have to put him in the corridor.”
Dr. McBride’s brow was creased as he pointed the paramedics to a spot further along the corridor. He obviously wasn’t happy with the situation.
“Dr. Matthew Chase.” He put out his hand for a quick handshake, then flicked his head toward the gurney the paramedics were steering to a spot against a wall as they called for a crash cart. “Want me to see to that?”
“Be my guest. We’ve got seventy-two patients on the list. Half of them have been here for hours without so much as an initial examination.”
Matthew blew out a low whistle. Well above capacity. He’d thought it looked busy from up in Dr. Menzies’s office, but maybe this job share thing wasn’t such a ridiculous idea after all. Then again, the crush of patients wasn’t anything he hadn’t seen before out on the battlefield. Too many people needing attention, never enough doctors to help. Just like life, really. Same ol’, same ol’—and he was ready to get to it.
“Already on it.”
As Matthew turned toward his patient he caught a glimpse of Amanda wearing a set of pale blue scrubs and approaching Dr. McBride. She looked across, caught his eye, and just as quickly looked away. He guessed she was ready to hit the ground running, too.
He knew he shouldn’t be smiling as he turned around to help the paramedics preparing to hand over their patient, but there had been something about the look Amanda had shot him...
It was game on all the way—and he was ready to play.
“Aspirin? Nitroglycerin?” Matthew asked one of the paramedics.
“Yes,