The Registrar's Convenient Wife

‘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 against the baby’s and the mum’s blood. The blood we put in will replace the red blood cells which are coated with antibodies—the new blood will be compatible with the mum’s serum so the antibodies won’t coat the new red blood cells,’ Eliot recited. ‘Tilly, Claire’s going to do the cannula in the umbilical artery and vein, and we’re going to remove the blood in five-mil aliquots from the artery and replace it through continuous infusion into the vein, so there’s less risk of the baby’s blood pressure fluctuating. The baby may need some pain relief and we need to watch for rebound of the bilirubin serum level.’

Claire nodded. ‘OK, you’ve passed your viva.’ She gave him what she hoped was a big-sister grin. ‘Tills, we want to monitor Miles’s ECG, his Us and Es, bilirubin, glucose—you know there’s a risk of rebound hypoglycaemia after the transfusion—and calcium.’

‘OK. And are we doing phototherapy after that?’

‘Yes. The usual—keep him uncovered as much as possible, keep an eye on his temperature and fluid loss and keep checking the eye shields to make sure they’re not irritating his eyes,’ Claire confirmed.

‘And pinch a surgeon’s mask to use as a mini-nappy to protect his gonads from chromatic radiation damage,’ Tilly added.

‘Why don’t we use a phototherapy blanket?’ Eliot asked, referring to the fibre-optic filaments which carried a high-intensity halogen light source, woven into a pad which the baby could lie on. ‘Then he wouldn’t need an eye shield, and it’ll be easier for Estée to care for him.’

‘We don’t have any,’ Claire told him. ‘We’re fundraising at the moment. So if you want to buy some raffle tickets...’

He rolled his eyes. ‘OK, OK. Message received and understood.’

‘And you’re a doctor, so there’s a minimum purchase level of ten tickets,’ Tilly added.

‘I think I’ll go and get that consent form signed, before you two get too carried away,’ Eliot said with a grin.

‘Like I said. He’s lovely,’ Tilly muttered to Claire when Eliot had gone. ‘He’d be good for you.’

‘Like I said, it’s not going to happen,’ Claire muttered back.

If only...

CHAPTER THREE

CLAIRE managed to keep up the ‘big sister’ act for nearly a week. And then she was heading to her office to write up a patient’s notes when she saw a small boy wandering around the ward.

‘Hello. Are you lost?’ she asked.