LITMIR.BIZ

      CHAPTER ONE

      THE man was standing in the hospital corridor when Fler came out of the room where they’d put her daughter. They’d told her he was there, that he’d brought Tansy in. She couldn’t recall whether he’d been there when she arrived. She’d been too intent then on getting to Tansy’s side, finding out her chances, being there for her, to notice anyone—anything—that wasn’t directly related to her daughter’s survival.

      Now she smelled the antiseptic and polish, saw the cheap prints on the walls and the shine of the green vinyl on the wide floor of the corridor, heard the murmur of voices from the ward office. And saw the tall, grey-suited man straighten from where he’d been leaning against the wall with his arms folded, and come towards her.

      With a curious detachment she noted the thick brown hair, brushed neatly back, the slight furrow between his dark brows, the hazel eyes and pronounced cheekbones, the cheeks appearing rather hollowed by contrast. His nose was classically straight but a shade long, and his mouth wasn’t thin but looked firm and decisive. There was something surprising about that mouth.

      He looked older than she’d expected, and briefly she wondered if she was mistaken, but he said, ‘Mrs Hewson? My name’s Kyle Ranburn...’ And she knew there was no mistake.

      He seemed surprised too, she noticed. From being oblivious to her surroundings, she’d suddenly become hypersensitive to every irrelevant detail. A nurse walked by them, and she heard the hushed squeak of rubber on the well-shined floor. She noticed that Kyle Ranburn wore no tie, that his rumpled shirt had three buttons undone, and a pulse was beating under the lightly tanned skin of his throat, revealed by the open collar. His eyes were flecked with brown around the irises, more green towards the edge. And he hadn’t shaved. A musky male scent underlaid the faint sharpness of sweat. He probably hadn’t had a chance to wash, either. She supposed she ought to be grateful that he had obviously lost no time answering Tansy’s call in the night.

      He held out a hand to her and she looked down at it, saw his fingers were long but blunt-ended, the nails cut short.

      When she didn’t take his hand, he withdrew it, saying evenly, ‘How is she now?’

      ‘They think they’ve got rid of the pills. She’ll probably be all right, if there’s no liver damage. They’re going to keep her in for a couple of days to be sure. But they seem fairly sure they got the drugs out of her system in time. She isn’t going to die.’

      ‘That’s good.’

      ‘You must be relieved?’ Fler asked in brittle tones.

      ‘Yes, of course. Very.’ Unforgivably, he glanced at the leather-strapped stainless steel watch on his wrist. ‘Look, I really have to go, I’m afraid—’

      The gesture broke her determined calm. All the varied emotions she’d been tightly reining in for hours, while she hastily dressed in anything that came to hand, made hurried phone calls of her own, ran to her car in the cold dawn and then drove for almost three long, terrified hours, shattered in a flare of shaking, white-hot rage. ‘You callous bastard!’ She wanted to hit him, preferably with a blunt instrument.

      He blinked. ‘I’m sorry—’

      ‘I’m sure you are!’

      He looked away for a moment, as if thinking, and then said, ‘I don’t know what Tansy told you, Mrs Hewson, but—’

      ‘She’s told me about you!’

      ‘—I didn’t do anything to her. She did it to herself.’

      ‘You know damned well you were responsible!’ Tansy’s broken, tearful, half-conscious mutterings had made that unmistakably clear. ‘How old are you?’

      He looked taken aback. ‘What?’

      ‘I said, how old are you? You must have known that Tansy is only eighteen.’

      ‘If that has anything to do with—’

      ‘You must be at least ten years older.’

      ‘I’m thirty,’ he said. ‘Look, Mrs Hewson, Tansy has a problem—’

      ‘Yes, she does. You!’

      He ran a hand over his hair, and looked about them. An orderly was wheeling a frail, grey-haired man down the corridor towards them, and two nurses came through the swing doors and walked past, chattering. ‘This isn’t really the place to discuss it. And I do have to go.’

      ‘I don’t think I have anything to discuss with you,’ Fler said. ‘Thank you for bringing Tansy in,’ she added stiffly. He’d probably saved her life. But it wouldn’t have needed saving if this man had any sense of decency, if Tansy had never had the misfortune to meet him.

      He looked as though he wanted to say something more, but then he made an exasperated gesture with his hands, nodded to her curtly, and left.

      ‘Would you like a cup of coffee?’ the nurse coming out of Tansy’s room offered.

      She shook her head. ‘May I go back and sit with my daughter?’

      ‘Yes, of course. She’s sleeping it off now. Not likely to wake again for some time. Maybe you should get yourself something to eat at the cafeteria.’

      ‘I will later,’ she promised. Just now she had to be with Tansy, hold her hand and feel its inert warmth in hers, assure herself that her daughter was really breathing, really alive after that brush with deliberately induced death.

      She could scarcely believe that lovely, bright, talented Tansy, with all her future before her, had really tried to kill herself.

      They said she’d emptied the medicine cupboard in the bathroom of the flat

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