The Consultant's New-Found Family

Gorgeous. That was the only word to describe Lisa Richardson. In her car, her face white with fear, she’d looked beautiful but remote. There had been something almost other-worldly about her—an elfin face, huge blue-grey eyes and dark hair cut in a gamine, slightly spiky style that reminded Joel of Audrey Hepburn. Here, on the ward, she’d seemed warmer. Nearer. And when she’d shaken his hand, his skin had tingled at her touch. A tingle that had worked all the way down to the base of his spine. A tingle that had made him want to take her hand and trace a path with his mouth, starting at the pulse beating at her wrist up to her inner elbow and moving up to her shoulder, gliding along the sensitive cord at the side of her neck and then finally—

No. She might be the most attractive woman he’d met in a long, long time, but nothing was going to happen between them. There wasn’t an official hospital rule banning relationships between staff on the same ward, but everyone knew it was a bad idea—they’d all had to work on a team where a personal relationship had shattered and soured the working relationship, too. Besides, Joel had learned his lesson the hard way. Relationships weren’t his strong point.

She’d called him ‘Sir Galahad’; he winced inwardly at the memory. You couldn’t get much further from the truth than that. The gallant knight in shining armour who rescued maidens from peril. Ha. He hadn’t been able to rescue the one person he should’ve been able to rescue. As knights in shining armour went, he was an utter failure. If that was how she saw him, he’d only end up disappointing her.

And then there was Beth.

No, it would be much too complicated.

He shook himself and strode to the reception area to find his next patient.

CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_acc6230f-bcc7-5904-964b-558a0e39c16a)

THE next week flew by, and Lisa was too busy to say more than hello to Joel. They weren’t on the same shift pattern either: she’d seen him when she’d been on early shift and one of the lates, but not on the two nights she did in her first week.

Not that she asked why the registrar wasn’t doing night shifts. It wasn’t any of her business.

Particularly as she’d overheard a certain telephone call on the Thursday.

‘OK, honey. I’ll pick you up from Hannah’s as soon as I finish here. See you soon. Love you, too, Beth.’

She shouldn’t have listened. Or sneaked that look at Joel’s face. Seen the softness of his eyes and the sheer love in his smile—the same expression she’d seen on her mother’s face whenever she’d looked at Lisa’s father.

True love.

The One.

And then, when it was all over, what then?

Her mother had had years and years and years of loneliness. Sure, of course she’d needed time to mourn the love of her life. Of course she wouldn’t have wanted to find someone else straight away. But it had been so long—twelve years of being on her own, of nobody ever measuring up to The One. Lisa had promised herself she’d never, ever let herself fall in love with someone so deeply that he’d be her whole world and she’d never get over it if she lost him. And she’d kept that promise. She’d dated at med school, but she’d always kept things light. When her friends had started pairing off, she’d managed to avoid being set up with a suitable man by a shrug, a smile and the sweetly worded comment that you didn’t need to date someone to have fun and she was doing just fine, thanks.

In the week she’d been here, Mark, one of the paramedics, had asked her out; so had the registrar on the maternity ward, Jack Harrowven. Lisa had turned them both down—though she’d gone out of her way to be charming in her refusal, and they’d agreed to stay purely friends and colleagues.

Which was just how it should be with Joel Mortimer. Especially as she knew he wasn’t available.

Her body seemed to have other ideas and wasn’t listening to the messages her brain was sending to it. Every time she caught his eye, there was a weird tingle at the base of her spine. Every time he spoke to her, her pulse sped up. Every time his hand brushed against hers when she handed over a set of notes or a piece of equipment, it felt as if an electric shock had gone through her. And it was wrong, wrong, wrong.

You, she told herself silently, need to get a life.

Starting tonight, when she was going out with the team for a Chinese meal.

The little boy’s breathing was ragged, as if he was trying to hold back tears. Lisa glanced swiftly at his notes. She could still remember being nine and how uncool it was to cry, especially for boys. ‘That looks painful,’ she said gently. ‘You’re being very brave, Sam.’

‘Yeah.’ The word was clipped, as if he didn’t trust himself to say any more. Didn’t trust himself not to start howling.

He’d clearly hit the ground hard, at speed, because his sweatshirt was in ribbons. The skin beneath it was lacerated and studded with gravel—it would need proper irrigation or he’d end up with an infection. And Lisa didn’t like the way he was nursing his arm. A dislocation at best—and a fracture at worst. Especially if the fracture involved the epiphyses, the growing ends of the long bones in the body, which could result in the growth plates fusing too early so the arm would be too short when Sam was fully grown. ‘What happened?’ she asked.

‘Fell off my bike,’ Sam muttered.

‘Tell the doctor the truth,’ his mother said, rolling her eyes.

‘I fell off,’ the boy insisted.

His mother sighed. ‘And you’re not getting any sympathy from me. I’ve told you before you’re not to go near Mr Cooper’s drive. And to wear elbow pads when you’re on your bike. At least you had the sense to keep your cycling helmet on.’ She looked at Lisa. ‘We live in a culde-sac. The boys all race like mad down it and stop just before they hit the old man’s drive at the end. It’s some stupid game where they see who can stop the fastest and the nearest to the gravel. Half the time they come straight over the handlebars. The other half, they skid on the gravel and come off. Just like that.’ She gestured to her son’s arm. ‘We’ve all told the kids not to do it—because it’s not fair to the old man, having them scatter his gravel everywhere, as well as it being dangerous for them—but since when do little boys ever listen to their mothers?’

‘I’m not a little boy. I’m almost a teenager,’ Sam grumbled.

‘You’ve got four years until you’re a teenager. That isn’t “almost”,’ his mother retorted. ‘Now, let the doctor look at your arm.’

‘It hurts,’ Sam said between clenched teeth.

‘I know, sweetheart, and I’ll try to make it stop hurting very soon. Can you wiggle your fingers for me?’ Lisa asked.

He did, but she noticed him flinching.

‘Where did it hurt most?’ she asked.

‘My arm.’

Wrist? Elbow?’

‘All of it.’

‘I really need to examine your arm properly,’ she said gently, ‘because you might have broken something or dislocated a joint. But first I think we need to stop it hurting, and I’ll also need to get all that grit out of your arm so it doesn’t get really sore.’

‘It hurts now.’ His eyes widened as she stepped nearer. ‘Don’t touch it. Please, don’t.’

She smiled at the boy. ‘I could leave it so you can gross out all your mates with the pus that’ll appear over the next day or so, but that’ll hurt an awful lot more in the long run. Trust me, it’ll hurt a lot less and heal much faster if you let me clean it properly now. What I’ll do is numb the area first so you won’t feel any pain.’

His eyes widened. ‘You mean, you’re going to stick a needle into me?’ He dragged in a shaky breath. ‘But they—they hurt!’

‘He had a bit of a bad time when the nurse at the surgery gave him his tetanus jab,’ Sam’s mother explained.

‘Poor you,’ Lisa said sympathetically. ‘But I’m really good at this. I bet you won’t even notice.’

‘I will,’ Sam said, and this time the tears came.

Oh, Lord. The poor kid really must be in pain: boys that age, in her experience, tried to tough it out as much as they could and hated to be treated as a baby. She had to do something—and fast.

‘Hey.’ She took his hand and squeezed it. ‘I know injections can be scary. But I promise you, it won’t hurt. And then all this pain in your arm will stop hurting, too. And did you know I have a special bravery certificate for boys who are being very, very brave like you are right now?’

‘I want to go home,’ he said, hiccuping through his sobs.

‘Give him a cuddle,’ she said softly to Sam’s mother, ‘and I’ll be back in a tick.’ She needed someone who was good at distracting—and that included the mum as well as the little boy. Lisa could understand the woman’s exasperation, because she’d obviously told her son time and time again to be careful on his bike and he hadn’t listened, but right now in her view Sam needed a cuddle more than a lecture. There would be time enough for telling him off later, when he’d stopped hurting.

Lisa twitched back the curtain, and nearly walked straight into Joel. She put both hands up in a gesture of apology. ‘Whoops! Sorry. I wasn’t looking where I was going.’ Though she was very, very aware of his physical presence. Tall and strong and reliable.

‘No worries. Everything all right?’