Miracle Christmas: Dr Romano's Christmas Baby. Cara Colter

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СКАЧАТЬ date, proud of her professional detachment. Luca nodded at each salient point but didn’t look at her and she was pleased to be spared the intensity of his black-velvet gaze.

      ‘What have you been doing to yourself?’ Luca asked. His tone was deliberately light, hiding the alarm at what he felt was almost certainly a potentially catastrophic injury. He glanced at Rilla, seeing her teeth sink betrayingly into her bottom lip, the way they always had when she was deeply concerned. She knew it too.

      ‘Just woke up with a bit of a sore neck this morning and it’s been getting worse all day.’ Damien shrugged. Or as much as he could with a collar that was applied so tightly it restricted shoulder movement as well.

      ‘What about last night?’ Luca probed. ‘Yesterday?’

      ‘Just some footy with my mates at a back-yard barbie last night. It was a bit of a late one. Didn’t get home till after four.’

      ‘Footy? Did you fall? Get tackled?’ Luca cut straight to the salient point.

      Damien frowned. ‘Of course I did. No more than usual, though. You don’t feel anything after a few beers.’

      Rilla felt sick. Had Damien been walking around with a fractured neck since last night? She glanced at Luca and could tell by the way his jaw clenched and unclenched that he was also very worried.

      ‘So you have pain in your neck?’ Luca asked.

      ‘Oh yeah.’

      ‘Any numbness, or tingling in your arms or legs?’ Luca persisted.

      ‘Nope,’ Damien replied.

      ‘Any difficulties swallowing, coughing or breathing?’

      ‘None,’ Damien said.

      ‘OK. Right.’ Luca nodded, relieved to see that there were no gross cord compression symptoms. ‘I’m sending you for an MRI.’ He took his stethoscope from around his neck. ‘Rilla, can you page the neurology team?’

      Luca knew the moment she’d left and he felt the tension across his shoulders ease. He’d been acutely aware of her presence—even her lingering perfume interfered with his concentration.

      ‘Right, let’s get a full neuro assessment.’

      ‘Now you’re scaring me, Doc.’

      Luca pulled up a stool, fairly certain that Damien’s life was about to change significantly. ‘I think you may have damaged your neck. I’m not sure of the severity yet. It may be nothing.’

      Rilla watched Luca talking to their patient from the central work station through the partially open curtain as she waited for the neuro team to get back to her. She couldn’t hear what he was saying but she could hear the low rumble of his voice and noticed how he had placed a hand on Damien’s shoulder.

      She watched as the frown between Damien’s eyes smoothed out and he actually smiled for the first time since walking through the doors. Luca’s bedside manner had always been second to none. She’d seen his quiet confidence, innate Latin charm and easy smile calm everyone from the most fractious child to the most frightened heart-attack patient. It had been one of the things that had attracted her most.

      He’d always been a pleasure to watch in action and not even their complicated history could erase the fact. The phone rang and she answered it, relaying the details of Damien’s case to the neuro registrar.

      Rilla re-entered the cubicle, efficiently flicking the curtain shut. ‘They’ll be here shortly,’ she said briskly.

      ‘Excellent,’ Luca said. He patted Damien’s shoulder. ‘Rilla will get your details and I’ll be back when the neurologist arrives.’

      He turned to leave. ‘Well caught,’ he said in a low voice as he passed her on his way out.

      Rilla turned back to Damien, smiling to herself. She couldn’t help it. Even after seven years, his praise still made her glow.

      Just before her evening meal break Rilla was relieving an exhausted mother of her wheezy eighteen-month-old daughter so she could administer a ventolin nebuliser. The restless infant smelled like soap and sunshine and Rilla’s heart contracted as the little girl snuffled tiredly into her neck, the toddler’s hair brushing against her face.

      She hugged the little one close. An overwhelming urge to have a baby of her own washed over her and she absently kissed the toddler’s head. How many babies would she and Luca have had by now?

      As if by some extrasensory connection, Luca chose that moment to enter the cubicle and their gazes locked over the child’s head. Was he thinking the same thing? He looked tall and lean and sexy as hell, and her pulse leapt.

      ‘I thought you left at five.’ She blurted the first thing that came into her head in an effort to banish oestrogen-enriched fantasies.

      Luca’s breath caught in his throat at the sight of Rilla rocking the fretful child, trying to balance it and hold the misting mask in place as she clucked soothingly.

      ‘I was just on my way out. The regs looked snowed under.’

      Rilla nodded. It had been crazy for the last two hours.

      Luca turned to the mother. ‘How’s she doing?’ He smiled, consulting the chart at the end of the trolley.

      ‘Better, I think. But still wheezy.’

      Luca nodded as he placed his stethoscope in his ears and turned his attention to the child. The toddler had a chubby hand on Rilla’s breast, squishing into the buxom roundness beneath Rilla’s shirt, and its cheek against the hollow of her shoulder. She looked so maternal that Luca gripped the stethoscope hard, sucked into a past that never was.

      ‘Hey, there, sweetie,’ Luca crooned, and rubbed the little one’s back.

      The child turned her head towards his voice and Luca smiled at her. ‘It’s OK, it won’t take long,’ he said softly as he lifted her top so he could place the stethoscope against her chest.

      The little girl settled a little, seemingly fascinated by Luca, and Rilla wasn’t surprised. She was finding him pretty fascinating herself. It was hard to believe that after seven years’ absence she could look her fill whenever she wanted. Even though it was a rather dangerous indulgence, considering their most recent episode.

      She watched him as he fixed his gaze on the child’s back and concentrated on the lung sounds. She waited for him to finish and swapped the child to her other hip so he could listen to the front.

      ‘The wheezing is settling,’ Luca said, addressing the anxious mother. ‘We’ll see how it is after a few more nebs.’

      The mother smiled her gratitude as her daughter drifted off to sleep in Rilla’s arms and then excused herself, using the moment to escape for a much-needed loo break.

      Luca and Rilla were left alone in the cubicle, a drowsy child and all the missed opportunities it represented between them. Rilla rubbed her chin absently along the child’s head, excruciatingly aware of the intimate undercurrent.

      Luca’s gaze followed the sweep of her hair СКАЧАТЬ