A Cotswold Christmas Bride. Joanna Neil

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СКАЧАТЬ to the gate. Suddenly, she felt a nudge from behind and was pushed forward against the fence, so that she had to put out a hand to steady herself.

      ‘Don’t do that, George,’ she said crossly, turning to reprimand the goat. ‘I’ve told you before, you mustn’t butt people. It isn’t polite. Wait your turn, and I’ll feed you, too.’ But George was taking no notice at all and nudged her again. She sighed. ‘Why can’t you be nice and placid like your mate, Jessie?’ she queried. ‘Look at her, she’s munching grass. She’s quite contented and she never gives me any trouble. Unlike you.’ It occurred to her, though, that Jessie was maybe a little too content with life on the farm. She was always eating and she seemed to be putting on quite a bit of weight.

      Still, she didn’t have time to dwell too much on the animals’ welfare just now. She was running late. Her shift at the hospital started in around three quarters of an hour and she still had to top up the ponies’ hay and fill up the water troughs.

      It was some twenty minutes later that she was finally ready to set off for the hospital. Glancing back at the lovely, stone-built farmhouse, where a late flush of roses clambered over the walls and mingled with lush, green ivy, she felt the familiar pang of loss as she drove away. It was a beautiful house, lovingly cherished by her parents, and she missed them dreadfully. This had been her home from as far back as she could remember, a place where she had always felt safe and secure, but now everything had changed. Her life had been turned upside down overnight after that fatal traffic accident.

      Once she arrived at work, there was no time to settle into the day. ‘You’re wanted down in A and E,’ the duty nurse told her. ‘It’s a five-year-old with breathing difficulties. He was brought in by ambulance a few minutes ago, and the registrar’s asking for a paediatric consultation.’

      ‘Thanks, Hannah,’ Sophie said. ‘I’ll go down there right away. Is everything else going smoothly here?’

      Hannah nodded. ‘I’m doing observations on the children who were admitted overnight. There aren’t any problems that I can see, so far, except that the boy with the congenital heart condition is still very weak. He’s probably going to need surgery before too long, according to Mr Burnley.’

      ‘I’ll look in on him as soon as I get back.’ Sophie shrugged into her white linen coat and took a stethoscope from her pocket before hurrying towards the lift.

      ‘The registrar called for me to look at the young boy with breathing problems?’ she said to the house officer when she arrived in Accident and Emergency a couple of minutes later.

      ‘That’s right.’ Debbie Logan, a pretty, newly qualified doctor with long, chestnut-coloured hair and grey eyes, led her to the treatment room where the little boy was lying in bed propped up by pillows. He was pale, and in obvious distress, with his breathing shallow and rapid. He was already attached to monitors that registered his pulse and respiratory rate and showed the activity of his heart.

      ‘His blood oxygen level is very low,’ Sophie commented. The child was being given oxygen through a face mask, but clearly it was Sophie’s job to find out what was causing his difficulties.

      She greeted the child’s parents, who were sitting beside his bed looking extremely anxious. ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘I’m Sophie Welland, the paediatrician. I understand that James was taken ill suddenly?’

      ‘He’s had a cough these last few days, and a bit of a wheeze,’ his mother said. ‘But it got worse in the early hours of this morning, and we were worried, so we called for an ambulance and he was brought straight to A and E.’

      Sophie nodded. ‘I’ll listen to his chest, and we’ll do some blood tests and get an X-ray, so that we can see what’s going on.’

      ‘That’s what the other doctor said,’ Mrs Coleman told her. ‘He’s already ordered tests, but he was called away to another emergency. He said you’d be down to look at James.’

      Sophie looked over the boy’s chart. The registrar had been thorough. The child had already been given antibiotics, and the doctor had ordered a nebuliser that would help widen the boy’s airways.

      ‘Ah, there you are. That was quick. I didn’t expect you to get here quite so fast.’ A strangely familiar male voice reached Sophie from across the room as she bent her head to carefully examine James a minute or so later. ‘I thought we should admit him, but I wanted your opinion as to whether we should put in an airway. I’d say he was a borderline case, but I’ll leave it to your judgement.’

      Sophie withdrew the stethoscope from her ears and let the instrument dangle from around her neck. She turned to see who was speaking, and immediately the breath caught in her lungs and all at once her throat was unexpectedly tight.

      ‘Lucas,’ she said, her blue eyes widening. A prickle of awareness ran down the length of her spine. He was the devil incarnate, as fiendishly good-looking as ever, with glittering grey eyes that held her fast and that right now were registering every bit as much surprise as her own. ‘I didn’t realise—I mean, I hadn’t expected to see you here,’ she added under her breath.

      Her voice must have had a salutary effect on him, because he seemed to snap out of his stunned reverie and his mouth curved faintly in acknowledgement. ‘That goes for me, too, Sophie,’ he responded huskily, keeping his voice low, as though he was all too aware of the boy’s parents close by. Not that they were paying any attention. They were watching the monitors and talking anxiously to one another.

      ‘I’d hoped I might see you again,’ Lucas said, ‘but I must admit I hadn’t expected it to happen quite so soon. Your friends were reluctant to give out your details, but all the same I felt sure I was pretty close to finding out where you lived.’ His gaze moved over her. ‘Somehow, I haven’t been able to get you out of my mind since the wedding.’

      Her cheeks flushed with hot colour. No wonder he had given her that odd look when he’d left her hotel room the other day. He’d never intended to give up on trying to find her, had he? She wasn’t sure how she felt about that.

      His shrewd smile told her he knew full well how he managed to get under her skin. Images of their last meeting filled her vision, causing a tide of heat to rush from her head to her toes and back up again. It was bad enough that he’d seen her half-naked, without adding to it that she’d given him her life history, and confided in him her worries about Nathan and the farm. She had always kept her private life to herself, but he had learned more about her in half an hour than anyone here had discovered in two years.

      ‘I’d no idea that you were a doctor,’ he said. ‘It’s great news to discover that we’ll be working together.’

      Sophie winced. From her standpoint it didn’t bode well. ‘But I’ve worked at this hospital for some time,’ she said with a frown. ‘How is it that I haven’t seen you here before this?’

      He gave a light shrug. ‘I only started working here last week. I was brought in to take over from Dr Friedman when he left for the States.’

      ‘Oh, I see.’ She was struggling to come to terms with the fact that he was going to be her colleague from now on. How would her credibility as a doctor hold up with him knowing that she was harassed and finding it difficult to cope? And it was especially galling that he knew that lately she had been prone to dizzy spells.

      She pulled in a deep breath and turned her mind back to their patient. ‘I think we’ll postpone the intubation for a while,’ she said, doing her best to keep her manner professional. ‘James is still conscious СКАЧАТЬ