Maybe This Christmas…?

‘Oh… hon come here.’ Gemma balanced Sophie with one arm and held the other one out to gather Hazel and the twins close. ‘It’s all right…’

‘No, it’s not.’ Simon had a hand on Jamie’s shoulder, pushing the small boy towards her. ‘Your babysitter decided not to show.’

‘What? Oh, no…’

‘She rang. Had a car accident or some such excuse.’

‘Oh, my God! Is she all right?’

‘She sounded fine.’ Simon shook his head. ‘Look, I’m sorry, Gemma but, you know… I had no idea what I was signing up for here.’

‘No.’ Of course he hadn’t. This had been a blind date that an old friend had insisted on setting her up with. Just a glass of wine, she’d said. At your local. Just see if you like him. He’s gorgeous. And rich. And single.

There was no denying that Simon was good looking. Blond, blue-eyed and extremely well dressed, too. And… smooth was the first thought that had come to mind when she’d let him into the house. But definitely not her type. He’d been horrified when she’d said she had to get Sophie to the hospital and could he please wait until the babysitter arrived.

And…

‘How did you get them here?’

‘I drove, of course. You practically live in the next county.’

Hardly. The house was rural, certainly, but on the very edge of the city, which made Queen Mary’s the closest hospital, otherwise Gemma would have gone somewhere else.

‘What about the car seats?’

‘Ooh, look…’ Jamie was pointing to the area of the waiting room set up to cater for children. ‘There’s toys.’ He trotted off.

‘He didn’t use them,’ Hazel said. ‘I told him and he…’ Her breath hitched. ‘He told me to shut up.’

Gemma’s jaw dropped. She stared at Simon, who simply shrugged.

‘Look, I could’ve left them in the house. If Jane had told me anything more than that you were a cute, single chick who was desperate for a date, I wouldn’t have come near you with a bargepole. I don’t do kids.’

Chloe chose that moment to hold her arms up, asking to be cuddled. When it didn’t happen instantly, she burst into tears. Sophie’s grizzles turned into a full-blown wail. Ben sat down on the floor and buried his face against the well-worn fluff of his toy. Simon looked at them all for a second, shook his head in disbelief, turned on his heel and walked out.

Gemma had no idea what to do first. Hazel was pressed against her, her skinny little body shaking with repressed sobs. Gemma didn’t need to look down. She knew that there would be tears streaming down Hazel’s cheeks. Both Chloe and Sophie were howling and… Where on earth had Jamie got to?

Wildly, Gemma scanned the waiting room as she tried to tamp down the escalating tension from the sounds of miserable children all around her. The action came to a juddering halt, however, when her gaze collided with a person who’d been standing there watching the whole, horrible scene with Simon.

A man who had shaggy brown hair instead of groomed blond waves. Brown eyes, not blue. Who couldn’t be considered well dressed with his crooked tie and shirtsleeves that were trying to come down from where they’d been rolled up. But her type?

Oh… yes. The archetype, in fact. Because this was Andy. The man she’d fallen in love with. The man she’d known would be the only one for her for the rest of her life. For just an instant, Gemma could forget that this was the man whose life she’d done her best to ruin because the first wave of emotion to hit her was one of…

Relief.

Thank God. No matter what happened in this next micro-chapter of her life, she could deal with it if she had Andy nearby.

Her touchstone.

The rock that had been missing from her life for so long. Yes, she’d learned to stand on her own two feet but the ground had never felt solid enough to trust. To put roots into.

The blessed relief that felt like a homecoming twisted almost instantly into something else, however. Fear?

He hadn’t said her name but he looked as angry as Simon had been when he’d stormed into the waiting room of Queen Mary’s.

Or… maybe it wasn’t anger. She’d seen that kind of look before, during a fight. Partly anger but also pain. And bewilderment. The result of being attacked when you didn’t know quite what it was about and why you deserved it in the first place.

Gemma didn’t know what to say. Maybe Andy didn’t either. He was looking at the baby in her arms.

‘I’ll take her,’ he said. ‘You bring the others and follow me.’

CHAPTER TWO

THANK heavens there was a sick baby to assess.

It was another blessing that Andy had had plenty of practice in using a professional mode to override personal pain. This might be the best test yet, mind you.

Gemma’s baby?

She had found someone to take his place in her life and she’d had his baby? A baby he now had cradled in his own arms as he led the way from the waiting room into the business area of the emergency department. Gemma was a good few steps behind him. He hadn’t waited quite long enough for her to scoop up the youngest girl and send the oldest one to fetch the boy called Jamie from the playpen.

Jamie?

Something was struggling to escape from the part of his brain he was overriding but Andy didn’t dare release the circuit breaker he’d had to slam on within seconds of walking into that waiting room.

That first glimpse of Gemma had hit him like an emotional sledgehammer. The power of that initial, soul-deep response had had the potential to destroy him utterly if he hadn’t been able to shut it down fast. Fortunately, some automatic survival instinct had kicked in and extinguished that blinding glow. Shutting off his emotional response had left him with a lens focused on physical attributes and… astonishingly, it could have been yesterday that he’d last seen her.

OK, her hair was longer. Those luxuriant brown waves had barely touched her shoulders back then and they were in a loose plait that hung down to the middle of her back now. Same colour, though, and even in the artificial glare of the neon strip lighting in here it was alive with sparks of russet and deep gold. She’d filled out a little, too, but that only made her look more like the woman he’d fallen in love with instead of the pale shadow that had slipped out of his life four years ago.

How much worse was it going to be when he was close enough to see her eyes? Nobody else in the world had Gemma’s eyes. They might share that glowing hazel shade but he’d never seen anyone with the unusual gold rims around the irises and the matching chips in their depths.

So far, by concentrating on the small people around her, Andy had managed to avoid more than a grazing glance. He was still avoiding direct eye contact as he walked briskly ahead of her.

He was getting close to the triage desk now and Julia was watching his approach. Or rather she was staring at the small train of followers he knew he had. Gemma must look like the old woman from the shoe, he thought grimly. So many children she didn’t know what to do.

The irony would be unbearable if he let himself go there.

‘Space?’ he queried crisply. ‘Query meningitis here.’

‘Um…’ Julia gave her head a tiny shake and turned it to glance over her shoulder at the board. ‘Resus One’s just been cleared… but—’

‘Thanks.’ Andy didn’t give her time to say that it probably needed to be kept clear for a more urgent case. The privacy and space of one of the larger areas would be ideal to contain this unacceptably large group. It wasn’t until he led them all into the space he realised that isolating himself from the hubbub of the cubicles would only intensify the undercurrents happening here but, by then, it was too late.

A nurse had just finished smoothing a clean sheet onto the bed. Andy laid the baby down gently. Her wails had diminished as he’d carried her here but the volume got turned up as he put her down and she was rubbing her eyes with small, tight fists. Was the light hurting her? Andy angled the lamp away.

‘What’s going on?’ he asked. It was quite easy to ask the question without looking directly at Gemma. Right now she was just another parent of a sick child.

‘Fever, irritability, refusing food.’ Gemma’s voice was strained. ‘She vomited once and her cry sounded…’ her voice wavered ‘… kind of high-pitched.’