.
and she sobbed. ‘Roger mustn’t know.’ She closed her eyes. ‘I found out he’d had an affair with his secretary. I wanted to pay him back, so I had a fling with his best mate one night. Mickey and I were drunk...The worst thing is, it didn’t even make me feel better. Then I found out I was pregnant. I was so sure it was Roger’s. I mean, me and Mickey...it was only once.’
‘Once is all it takes,’ Claire said drily. ‘If you and Roger are both A negative, Miles should be A negative, too. So Mickey’s blood group must be rhesus positive, and Miles must be his baby.’
‘What am I going to do? If Roger dumps me because of this...I don’t want to be a single mum. I’d never cope. He doesn’t even really want kids—so I didn’t tell him for weeks and weeks, until it was almost too late to do anything and...Oh, God. What am I going to do?’ Estée wailed.
‘It’ll sort itself out. The first thing to concentrate on is making Miles better,’ Claire said. ‘Try not to worry. We have people you can talk to here—counsellors who can help you through the problems you might face with your husband. But right now your son needs you on his side. He needs cuddles and for you to talk to him, sing to him, let him know you’re here. And as soon as we get the test results back, we’ll be able to start treatment.’
‘Thank you. I’m sorry for being so wet. It’s...’
‘You’ve just had a baby. Your hormones are all over the place, you’re worried about your son, and it’s perfectly natural.’ Claire squeezed her hand again. ‘I’ll come back and see you as soon as I’ve got the results. In the meantime, if you need anything, the nurses are here to help.’
‘Thank you,’ Estée said again.
Ten minutes later, Eliot rapped on her open office door. At her nod, he walked in and closed the door behind him. ‘Well?’
‘You were right. The baby isn’t her husband’s. She had a fling to pay him back for cheating on her.’ Claire shook her head. ‘Marriage is the pits. If people thought about the possible consequences before they had an affair—and I mean really thought—they’d never do it. It causes way too much mess and pain.’
It sounded as if she was talking from the heart. She must have been married before, Eliot thought, and he guessed that her marriage had disintegrated after an affair. From what Eliot knew of her, Claire wasn’t the type to have a fling—she was way too honest. So she must have been the one to get hurt. No wonder she’d stayed focused on her career.
He couldn’t help himself. He took her hand and squeezed it. And then somehow—he really wasn’t sure how it had happened—he was holding her. Stroking her hair, hair that was as soft and silky as he’d thought it would be, and he wanted to unpin it, let it fall round her face and soften her professional doctor look.
He was close enough to inhale the fragrance of her skin, a soft, sweet scent that made him want to touch her even more. His cheek was pressed against hers and he could feel her heartbeat—slightly irregular, like his own. She must be as knocked off balance as he was. And he couldn’t stop. From nuzzling her cheek, it was only one tiny step to—
‘I don’t think this is a good idea.’
Her voice was quiet yet firm. Eliot dropped his hands immediately and backed off. Though he couldn’t help looking in her eyes, and her eyes definitely weren’t giving the same message as her mouth. She’d clearly felt the same spark of awareness that he had.
Except she was a lot more professional in the way she dealt with it.
‘I’m sorry. I don’t know...’ He raked his hand through his hair. ‘No. I do know.’ He wasn’t going to insult her by pretending. He shrugged awkwardly. ‘It sounded like you were speaking from experience. And I just wanted to give you a hug.’
‘Thanks, but I’m a big girl. I can look after myself,’ she said drily, sitting back down at her desk.
It was his turn to flush. She’d made her position very, very clear. ‘And I was out of order. Sorry.’
‘Don’t worry about it. We all act on impulse from time to time.’
‘Yeah.’ She was giving him a let-out, and he seized it gratefully. ‘Call it kid-brother syndrome.’
To his relief, that made her smile. ‘I’m the youngest. So I’ll have to take your word for that.’ She coughed. ‘I’ll, um, see you when the results are back, then.’
‘OK.’ He left her office and closed the door behind him. Dismissed, in the nicest possible way. And he’d really, really blown it. Why hadn’t he kept his hands to himself?
You know why, a little voice said inside his head. Because she’s gorgeous. The kind of woman you’ve always dreamed of.
Yes. But he couldn’t have her.
Ignoring the sour taste in his mouth, he scooped up a set of notes and went to see his tiny patient.
* * *
As her office door shut, Claire leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. Hell, hell, hell. Why had she let her mouth run away with her like that? She’d virtually told Eliot she’d been unhappily married. And when he’d given her a hug—what he’d said had been a kid-brother sort of hug—she’d been so near to embarrassing them both. For a mad moment she’d actually thought about moving her head, letting her lips trail over his. Kissing him. For an even madder moment, she’d thought he’d been about to do the same.
Thank God they hadn’t. Because now she knew he thought of her as his big sister; he’d only given her a hug because he’d thought she could do with one.
The problem was, she couldn’t reciprocate. She simply couldn’t see Eliot Slater as her kid brother. Not now she knew what it felt like, being held by him. And he smelled good, clean and male. And...
Stop right there, Claire Thurman, she told herself. It isn’t going to happen. Your relationship’s strictly professional. And it’s going to stay that way. He’s your junior, and you’re going to do the big-sister, kid-brother thing, even if it kills you.
* * *
When the test results came back, both Claire and Eliot managed to pretend that the near-clinch in her office had never happened. ‘Coombs is positive, baby’s blood group is A positive, mum’s is A negative.’ Eliot frowned at the haemoglobin results. ‘I think we should do the exchange transfusion now.’
Claire looked at the results and nodded. ‘The haemoglobin’s too low to wait for the bilirubin levels. Have you done this before?’
‘Once.’
‘So you want Claire the dragon to put the big bad needle in?’ she teased.
‘And I’ll get the consent form signed,’ he offered. ‘Deal?’
‘Right. I’ll get Tilly to do the monitoring.’
He checked his watch. ‘An exchange transfusion usually takes about two hours, doesn’t it?’
‘And you can’t stay that long.’
He hated the disappointment in her eyes. But how could he explain that it wasn’t her, it wasn’t anything to do with what had nearly happened between them in her office, without going into detail about his family circumstances? Detail he didn’t want to go into, because he definitely didn’t want her pity. ‘Sorry,’ he muttered.
‘No problem.’
‘Tills—case conference,’ Claire said when they reached the nurses’ station. ‘We have a little one with rhesus haemolytic disease, and we’re going to do an exchange transfusion. Which means, Eliot?’
‘It corrects the anaemia and stops the circulatory system being overloaded—at the moment the baby has a normal blood volume but the central venous pressure’s too high. We need to use warmed blood—at thirty-seven degrees—cross-matched