LITMIR.BIZ

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So this was how it was going to be. They were not going to acknowledge having worked together, let alone knowing what they did know about each other.

      A warning shot had been fired. If she said anything about the rumours she’d been hearing before she left London, he would warn her superiors that allowing her access to restricted drugs might be inadvisable.

      The unfairness of it added a new element to the emotional turmoil Alice was dealing with. Despite the traitorous reaction of her body earlier, she knew she wasn’t in love with the man any more. She’d got over that a very long time ago. About when she’d been standing in front of his desk and he’d said he couldn’t trust her enough to let her keep the job she loved.

      She’d tried to hate him for that but hadn’t succeeded. Her heart had been incapable of flipping the coin to embrace the dark side of love. Especially when her head, coupled with an innate sense of fairness, had forced her to acknowledge that he’d only been doing what he had to do as head of department. Quite generously, really, when he’d offered her the opportunity to resign instead of launching an official investigation and a paper trail that would have haunted the rest of her working life.

      What was really unfair was that she’d never believed the rumours about him. Even now, with the dark emotions sparked by seeing the poor battered woman they were treating at the moment and the cool distance he had placed between himself and an old colleague, she knew he was as incapable of hurting someone deliberately as she was of stealing and taking drugs. If Andrew had been interested enough to actually get to know her properly, he would have had—would still have—the same kind of faith in her.

      Clearly, he didn’t. The implication beneath his request for morphine had been a deliberate reminder of the humiliating rumours she’d been unable to disprove. That he hadn’t trusted her. That he’d never really seen who she was. That hurt.

      Quite apart from being an intimately personal slight, mud had a habit of sticking. Enough to ruin lives. Alice actually felt sick to her stomach as she pulled an ampoule of morphine from the cabinet and signed the register. She could feel Andrew watching her.

      Jo did the drug check with her. The name of the drug. The dose. The expiry date. She watched as Alice snapped the top of the ampoule and slid a needle in to draw it up. Try as she might, Alice couldn’t disguise the subtle trembling of her hands.

      ‘You still need toast,’ Jo whispered.

      Alice needed something a lot more than food. She needed to be a long way away from their new consultant. How could she possibly work with him when he was watching every move she made? Knowing that, despite the best of intentions and for very different reasons, she would have to fight the desire to watch every move he made? Looking for a reminder of the man she remembered. Hoping not to find one, possibly, so she could decide it had been a lucky escape and move on, once and for all.

      She could switch departments, she thought wildly. Go into Cardiology. Or Paediatrics. Or Theatre. No. This was where she loved to work. Where she got a taste of everything and the adrenaline rush of helping to deal with major, life-threatening situations. This department was a big part of why her life was on track again.

      She drew up the saline to dilute the morphine. She taped the ampoule to the barrel of the syringe to identify its contents and then she walked back to the bed to hand it to Andrew.

      Watching Janine relax as the effect of the narcotic took the edge off her pain had a curiously similar effect on Alice. She eyed the bruised and swollen face of the woman again. The marks of brutality on the woman’s ribs and the misshapen arm now resting in a splint. The thought of someone enduring a beating like this was horrific. Sickening. Alice raised her gaze, knowing that her reaction would be evident in her eyes.

      Deliberately capturing the gaze of Andrew Barrett before that reaction dimmed.

      Maybe she hadn’t believed any of it but allowing Andrew to think she might have was possibly the only defence she had.

      They both had something they didn’t want their colleagues to know. Things they didn’t want to lose. Alice was more vulnerable. She had something she didn’t want Andrew to know, as well. It was good that he’d chosen not to acknowledge her. Distance was safe and, if it stopped being safe, then she was prepared to fight, if that was what it would take to protect herself.

      Andrew’s gaze was steady. So was he, it told her.

      For the moment at least, this appeared to be a standoff.

      This was a disaster.

      Alice clearly knew a lot more than he would have expected. Was she still in touch with old friends in London? People who would be only too happy to gossip about a police investigation involving a consultant emergency physician? That she knew too much was as unfortunate as knowing he was perpetuating a lie by letting her think he still believed the worst of her. But what else could he do?

      He’d come this far and had found what appeared to be the perfect place for himself and Emmy. They’d only been here for a little over a week but he’d never seen his daughter so happy. He knew he’d made the right decision despite how hard leaving had been. Running away from it all had gone against the grain so hard it had been painful. An admission of defeat that some would probably interpret as guilt, but he’d done it for his daughter. He wasn’t going to let his little girl grow up anywhere within reach of a tainted past.

      He couldn’t keep running. The world of medicine was surprisingly small and, no matter where you went, someone always knew someone else. Look at the way Dave had contacted him about the possibility of this position when they hadn’t seen each other since a short stint in an American hospital together ten years ago.

      Andrew was between a rock and a hard place, here. Damned by his conscience whichever way he turned. The unwanted distraction filled his mind as he waited for Janine’s X-ray views to appear on the screen in front of him. Should he follow his first instinct and simply talk privately to Alice? Tell the truth and then apologize? Lay his cards on the table and ask for her help?

      Why would she want to do that? She’d not only lost her job. When he’d heard that she’d left the country, he’d also heard that the sale of her house had been forced by the bank. That she’d lost everything. He could have talked to her then. Tried to make amends, even, but nobody had seemed to know where she’d gone. And then the real trouble had started and he’d forgotten everything other than trying to survive. To keep Emmy safe.

      What could he say now? An excuse that he couldn’t have simply taken her word for her innocence and an apology for any inconvenience caused was hardly going to clear the air. It might actually make her jump at the chance for revenge.

      The notion was jarring. It didn’t fit with the Alice Palmer he remembered from five years ago. The attractive, competent nurse working in his emergency department. A young woman doing her O. E. who’d made friends with his fiancée. Who’d come to their wedding, in fact. She’d been good at her job. Caring. The evidence that she’d been stealing morphine and other restricted drugs had been shocking. Unbelievable, really, but you never knew with women. Look at how things with Melissa had turned out.

      Oh, God…No! Andrew rubbed his temple and then raked his fingers through his hair. He didn’t want to think about Mel. Or London. Or any of what had been left behind and that was why working with Alice Palmer was a complication he didn’t know how to resolve.

      Images began appearing on the wall-mounted computer screen. It was a relief to focus as he scrolled through them. The cheekbone probably needed wiring. The nasty fragmented fracture of the radius and ulna would require surgery. Orthopaedics were on the way and someone from plastic surgery should be contacted to deal with the facial suturing that could be done in Theatre as well. Andrew turned back to Resus 1. He had a job to do here. His patient needed care. And protection. A delicate situation when he couldn’t know whether it might make things worse for Janine by encouraging her to lay a complaint about her boyfriend.

      Alice would be in Resus 1 as well. Another delicate situation and Andrew needed more time to try and figure out what he was going to do about it. Maybe he could buy time by putting some

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