More Than Caring

Lauren nodded, silently acknowledging the sense in his caution even though he couldn’t see her. Part of her railed at the need for it, but she had to live with the reality of modern life. Before she had time to say anything, he was continuing inexorably.

‘You’ll want to give some guidelines about what clothes they’ll need to wear, how many sessions and how long each session will last,’ he listed without pausing for breath. ‘If you drop off the outline with my secretary, she can photocopy it so you’ve got the right number to go around. Tomorrow morning, perhaps?’

He’d made it sound like a question but there was the unmistakable air of command in his tone that made her grin, glad that he couldn’t see her response.

The hospital grapevine had suggested that Marc Fletcher had a military background and she could well believe it. He certainly liked to have everything organised and by the book.

‘I’ll do that,’ she said, only just resisting the temptation to say Yes, sir!

Her mind was full of all the things she was going to have to do before she came to work the next morning—not least the fact that there was laundry waiting to be done and carpets needing a clean before she could settle down to design an eye-catching poster.

She wasn’t so busy with her thoughts that she didn’t notice that there was a full complement of safety lights this evening, but still she kept her eyes open. This time there were no unidentified people lurking in the shadows at the edge of the shrubbery, at least none that she could see.

She could chalk up her unfortunate experience yesterday to a random mugging that she’d foiled in spite of her inattention.

Still, there was a strange niggling doubt at the back of her mind. Something that she’d ignored, or a detail that had slipped her memory. There was something about the whole event…or non-event, as it had turned out…that was irritating her like a burr caught in clothing, if only she could remember what it was.

Unfortunately, the thing she remembered most clearly was the strangely electric sensation that had shot through her when she’d realised that the second man that she’d just deposited unceremoniously on the ground had been the punctilious Marc Fletcher.

Mixed in with the dismay at her faux pas was a wicked thrill that she’d actually caught the man by surprise and, big and strong as he was, flipped him base over apex.

She wished she had a photo of that. It was something that would have been able to make her smile on even the greyest of days. As it was, she was just going to have to rely on the memory.

CHAPTER TWO (#u69137f72-860d-5962-943f-a33df590d5b1)

MARC waited until he saw the taillights of Lauren’s car disappear into the September dusk before he switched the light back on in his room and sat down behind his desk.

Wretched woman would probably cause a scene if she knew that he’d been looking out for her this evening, but he couldn’t do anything else. At thirty-nine, the sense of responsibility had been part of him for far too many years for him to switch it off now.

If only he could switch it off, his life might be less stressful, but there would still be the guilt to keep him awake at night.

He sighed heavily, forcing himself to focus on the file spread open on his desk, then groaned again when he saw what it was.

In a larger hospital he wouldn’t have been so intimately involved with so many of the different departments. Here, at Denison Memorial, he had a role to play in almost every aspect of the day-to-day running of things. That included being a member of the interview panel for the appointment of new members of staff, but he was guiltily aware that wasn’t the reason why Lauren Scott’s file was on his desk.

As she’d reminded him, there was documented evidence of the self-defence courses she’d run at her previous post. What she didn’t know was that, in the course of checking her references, he’d also managed to find out about her involvement, almost to Olympic level, with several of the more strenuous forms of martial art.

He shook his head, bemused all over again. To look at her, so slender and elegant even in the loose-fitting tunic and trousers of her hospital uniform, you’d never know that her hands and feet could almost be classed as lethal weapons. Perhaps he should be counting himself fortunate that he had little more than a bruised elbow as a souvenir of their car park encounter.

He felt the wry smile edge over his face and knew that there was more than a hint of admiration in it. Her reaction to the perceived threat of his arrival on the scene had been so swift that he’d hardly had a chance to prepare himself for the impact.

He couldn’t help admitting that this was a hidden side to her character that he found uncomfortably fascinating. He’d watched her at work on her ward and all he’d seen had been a gentle woman with a caring word or touch for anyone who needed it.

She was slightly taller than average but because she was slender he hadn’t realised the fact until she’d faced him down in the car park. Then he’d had to notice that, in a pair of heels, her eyes would almost be on a level with his and her mouth…

‘Her mouth would probably take a bite out of me, rather than kiss me,’ he muttered, then was startled to feel a slow wash of heat spreading up over his face at the thought of those teeth sinking into his shoulder. And where had the thought of kissing her come from in the first place?

‘Crazy!’ he growled, slapping the file closed. ‘Doubly crazy,’ he added with a touch of bitterness that echoed around the unadorned walls of his office. ‘She won’t be staying long enough to start any kissing. She never stays anywhere long enough. And anyway, you’re not interested in starting any sort of relationship.’

He deliberately buried Lauren’s file under the heap of paperwork still to be done before he went home.

Not that he was in any rush to leave the hospital. There certainly wasn’t anything worth going home for. Just an empty cottage along a fairly isolated lane, one of a pair. He hadn’t even had any neighbours until a week or ten days ago when someone had taken up residence while he’d been at work.

If he were the sociable sort he could have gone round with a welcoming bottle of wine or something. As it was, he was grateful that whoever was renting the property seemed to lead just as busy a life as he did and was quietly content to keep himself to himself. The last thing he needed was some happy couple living right under his nose, reminding him of everything that was missing in his own life. Thank goodness the cottage was too small to accommodate a family with children.

Not that he begrudged others their happiness. He’d had it all once, until his own selfishness had put it in danger. He’d had to come to terms with the fact that duty and responsibility were going to fill his life from now on.

‘And paperwork,’ he said with a baleful glare, suddenly loathing the fact that his job involved so little activity. Once upon a time… ‘No. It’s over. Finished!’ he said fiercely. ‘I can take care of people just as effectively this way—by making sure that their medical services are running properly—as I ever could by running around, playing the hero.’

He forced himself to concentrate on the latest forecast figures for the hospital wages but still couldn’t stop the sudden shiver of awareness that snaked up his spine at the thought of Lauren’s self-defence class. She was intending that the first sessions were just going to be run for interested female staff and was probably hoping that, in spite of his offer to help with her demonstrations, he would be happy to sit at the back as an observer.

What she didn’t know was that he had every intention of being an active member of those classes. What he didn’t know was whether that decision was based on the desire to make sure that the lessons were thorough and accurate, or whether it had anything to do with the growing need to see if Lauren’s slender body was every bit as lithe and strong as he remembered.

‘Damn. I’m going to be late!’ Lauren muttered with a quick glance at her watch. She hastened her steps past the X-ray department, wondering why some days turned out like that.

She should have had plenty of time to get to the physiotherapy department and give her notes a final read through before the first brave souls arrived. Now she’d be lucky to get there before it was time for the class to start.

‘Ah! Here she is!’ called a male voice as she pushed the doors open, and she had to deliberately tamp down the swift surge of pleasure that Marc’s husky voice set off.

Then she saw him and almost forgot how to breathe.

He looked good in the business suits he wore to work each day, but in the softly draping fabric of a tracksuit she could see just how well the formal clothing camouflaged the muscles beneath. And to see him lounging easily against the wall with his arms folded across an impressively broad chest…

It was a real physical effort to drag her eyes away and acknowledge the half-dozen assorted members of staff waiting for her.

‘Sorry to be late but I got delayed on the ward,’ she said in a strangely breathless voice.

‘You don’t need to apologise to us. We know it goes with the territory,’ groaned a staff nurse she vaguely recognised from the accident and emergency department. It was amazing the difference a slim-fitting pair of jeans made when she was accustomed to seeing the young woman in baggy cotton theatre greens.

‘It doesn’t help when staff numbers are down either,’ said another with a dark look in Marc’s direction.

‘You don’t need to tell me,’ he said, his hands held up in surrender as he shouldered himself away from the wall to join the group. ‘Most nurses are working the equivalent of one and a half jobs but aren’t being paid a fair rate for one. That’s why recruitment is so difficult.’

‘Well, love of the job won’t pay the grocery bills,’ said another voice, and Lauren realised her class was in danger of being hijacked by the perennial nursing complaint.

‘So, does anyone here want to learn how to defend themselves against people desperate to mug them for their lavish salary?’ she joked, and heard the mixture of groans and chuckles she was looking for. ‘If you’d like to come over and perch yourselves on these benches, we’ll start with a few basics.’

‘This reminds me of being in gym classes at school,’ said Sam, the youngest member of the group, with a giggle as they settled in a row on the low wooden bench.

‘OK, now, I’ll start with a general introduction. For those who don’t know me, I’m Lauren Scott, a recent recruit to Denison Memorial. Before I came here I worked in a big inner city hospital in a rather rough part of an industrial town. It was bad enough having to cope with so many victims of physical violence but when some of them were our own staff, I wanted to see if I could do something about it.’

She paused a moment to draw breath, needing to subdue the ache of memories of a friend she would never see again, knifed right outside the hospital by an assailant trying to snatch her bag to support a drug habit. If she had her way, none of these women would end up victims. That was what she should concentrate on.

‘At school I was into sport and, like a lot of women, I enjoyed pitching myself against the boys in my class.’ There was another chuckle and some shared glances that told her she hadn’t been the only one. ‘Unfortunately, as we moved up the school, the boys got bigger and stronger, especially in their upper bodies, and when I realised that I was going to have to learn to use guile to beat them, I turned to martial arts.’ It wasn’t the whole story by a long chalk, but it was enough to get their attention.

‘You mean judo? That sort of thing?’ Sam asked eagerly. ‘There have been several films recently with women doing that.’

‘Judo and Tae Kwon Do,’ Lauren said with a nod. ‘It came in very useful when the body-builders tried to get a little more friendly than I wanted, but it wasn’t until a couple of years ago that I realised how few women know how to defend themselves against the threat of random violence.’