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THREE

      MAX FROWNED and strode quickly down the corridor as he saw the man enter Georgia’s room.

      He knew most of the consultants across the hospital but not this one. Some latent protective instinct raised the hairs on the back of his neck and all he could think about was that Georgia might need him.

      His suspicions firmed at the sight of the man bent over Elsa’s cot.

      Max loomed in the doorway. His voice came out low and hard. ‘Can I help you?’

      Sol straightened slowly and he lifted his chin. ‘No. I don’t think so. Thank you.’

      The man smiled but something about his phoney amusement increased Max’s own wariness and disquiet.

      Max moved to one side of the doorway to allow a free exit from the room—though only if the man left Elsa in her cot.

      ‘Are you a friend of Georgia’s?’ Max enquired politely, yet the hint of steel suggested it wasn’t a frivolous question and he required an answer.

      ‘I’m more than that.’ Sol smiled gently. ‘Are you her doctor?’

      ‘You could say that.’ Max looked up as Georgia opened the bathroom door and his instincts firmed as her eyes widened and then closed for a second as if her worst nightmare had come true.

      Her hand hovered over her mouth. ‘Sol?’ She shook her head but no further words came.

      ‘My dear wife.’ Sol smiled.

      Georgia shook her head again and the words burst out in a vehement whisper. ‘I’m not your wife.’

      Sol smiled again, and from the outside he looked quite pleasant yet something made Max take a step closer to Georgia in support.

      Sol ignored him. ‘You’ll always be my wife. But I do see this is not a good time so I’ll leave you. Our daughter is beautiful.’ He placed the chocolates squarely on the bedside table.

      ‘Good day.’ He turned nonchalantly and sauntered away.

      Georgia belted the robe as she rushed to Elsa to check she was fine. ‘Thank God you were here.’

      Fighting back tears, she looked at Max. ‘Did he try to take her?’ She lifted and hugged Elsa to her as she sank onto the bed as if unable to support the weight on her legs. Her hands shook violently.

      Max didn’t know what to do to comfort her.

      ‘No. He didn’t pick Elsa up. He just looked at her.’ What the hell was all that about? Max thought, and he glanced at the door through which Sol had disappeared. He’d love to ask the sleaze but he’d gone and Georgia needed him.

      Max sat down beside Georgia on the bed and slid his arm around her shoulders. She quivered under his arm like a new lamb.

      ‘I’ll put safeguards in place. Your ex-husband won’t be able to get to you if that’s what you want.’

      She shook her head and shuddered as she wrapped her arms around her baby. ‘I don’t want to stay here.’

      Max squeezed her shoulders. ‘Where do you want to go?’ Her distress affected him in a way he hadn’t expected and he’d like to have shaken the truth out of the other man.

      Georgia’s free hand was at her throat. She could barely speak because of the panic she was trying to control. ‘I was afraid this would happen. There is something I need to explain. Something I haven’t told anybody.’

      She hesitated with reluctance to dwell on the whole distressing nightmare but it had to be spoken of. Her reluctance had almost cost the ultimate price. Elsa.

      Sol would take her baby if he possibly could. He’d threatened her in those silky tones of his and the thought terrified her, made her sick to her stomach, and now it grew to epic proportions, like a phobia about spiders—except her phobia was all about Sol.

      Even what he had done to her before was nothing to this fear that he might take her baby, and even though a tiny spark deep in her brain whispered she was being irrational, she had no control over the dread that was rising in her throat.

      Georgia drew a deep breath and her voice sounded weak and strained even to her own ears.

      No wonder Sol could smile.

      And no doubt Max would hear the paranoia too but there was nothing she could do about that except try and master it at a later time when she had time to regroup. At this moment she just needed Max to understand.

      She hadn’t progressed to why that seemed so important at this moment.

      ‘Before I met Sol I was happy in my work, a senior midwife in my unit and studying for my master’s in midwifery.’

      Max nodded. ‘Harry said you were well respected and then you became sick—is that right?’

      ‘In the end I began to think I was sick. I need to start the story before then.’

      She closed her eyes for a second to gather her thoughts. ‘I met my husband, the new senior consultant at our hospital, Sol Winton, and he swept me off my feet. He promised nothing would change, and marriage would only enhance my full life, and that he couldn’t live without me.’

      She laughed without amusement. ‘I was flattered. I’d passed thirty waiting for Mr Right. I’m no raving beauty and he was distinguished, handsome, and I’d begun to think I’d missed out on love and marriage and children. He caught me at a vulnerable time and I thought I loved him.

      ‘In truth I was married for two years to a man who wanted to own me, body and soul, and rule my life down to the smallest degree.

      ‘In the beginning I believed his excessive protectiveness was because he treasured me but I soon realised it was because he felt I was his prized possession and he was training me to jump.’

      Georgia drew a shuddering breath and her shoulders shook until Max edged back closer and leant against her. ‘You OK?’

      The tremor stopped and she nodded. ‘I don’t like to go over it but I have to so that you’ll understand.’

      Max shook his head. ‘Not if you don’t want to.’

      ‘I have to,’ she said with resolve.

      ‘OK.’ Max pressed harder against her as if he knew she needed that support.

      She felt strangely safer with Max’s hip and shoulders touching hers, which was ridiculous but it helped her to go on. ‘I tried to make Sol see that marriage wasn’t a power game and I needed to be my own person, but my charming ex-husband, the highly esteemed obstetrician, informed everyone I was a paranoid depressive. That’s not an easy thing to dispute if you have reason to be unhappy.’

      ‘That would explain what Harry said about your marriage getting you down.’

      ‘Harry mentioned it, did he?’

      She saw the look on Max’s face and sighed. ‘This is what I meant about disputing people’s opinions. Sol made it seem I protested too much.’

      Max frowned. ‘It’s OK. I believe you. Go on.’

      ‘I was a professional woman with a career and friends before Sol. But he became more and more demanding. He isolated me from my friends and began to dictate my daily routine. He would change it at a whim.’ She clutched Elsa to her as she remembered.

      ‘He cancelled my appointments with my uni, pulled my shifts so that when I turned up, cases had been replaced by another midwife, and that was when I realised people had begun to talk. He’d arranged a visit to a psychiatrist and circulated that I suffered from an anxiety-driven mental illness. The saddest thing was that I almost began to believe him, but I kept telling myself it was his problem, not mine, and refused to take medication. Finally I left him.’

      ‘Leaving was a good thing.’ Max nodded.

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