LITMIR.BIZ

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you choose an omelette or a salad I’m going to override you and get the most expensive thing on the menu just to annoy you.’

      ‘Well, can you get the most expensive vegetarian thing on the menu please?’ She looked through the menu and … To hell with it, she was out with Jack Carter so she chose what she wanted—a tomato salad for a starter and then mushroom and goat cheese ravioli with saffron cream for the main course.

      And, yes, maybe she could use a brain like his if it would help with her sister—she simply couldn’t take the emotion out of the equation.

      Jack could do it without blinking.

      ‘My sister, Janey, is fifteen and my brother, Blake, is nine. They’re both in foster-care—separate foster-homes …’

      ‘So when you say that foster-care is no fairy-tale solution, you’re not speaking just professionally?’

      ‘No. Blake has been very lucky for the most part, but in the last year his placement hasn’t been going so well. The couple he’s with are getting old and their daughter has just returned from overseas with her children and I think they’d rather be spending time with them than Blake. He doesn’t say much to me about it, I have him every alternate weekend, but I think he’s spending an awful lot of time alone in his room.’

      ‘And Janey?’

      ‘Janey hasn’t fared so well in the system. She was moved around a lot, but she’s been with a woman, Barbara, for the last four years. In the last few months … I think Barbara’s had about enough. Janey’s skipping school, arguing, just delinquent behaviour …’

      ‘What happened to your parents?’

      ‘They died when I was seventeen,’ Nina explained. ‘I tried to get custody but …’ She shook her head.

      ‘Too young.’

      ‘Yes,’ Nina said, ‘but it was a bit more than that. I was very angry at my parents for dying. I was a lot like Janey is now. I lost my temper with the social workers on more than one occasion.’ It helped that he smiled a little as she told him, because the guilt of her handling of things back then still ate away at her to this day. ‘So I managed to stuff everything up …’

      ‘You were seventeen,’ Jack pointed out. ‘Do you really think you could have taken care of them?’

      ‘No,’ Nina admitted. ‘But it just hurt so much that we were separated. My parents weren’t well off, there was no insurance, no savings, nothing. I know the department was right to place them, but that was then and this is now. I’ve just moved into a three-bedroomed apartment and I’m about to go again and try for custody.’

      ‘Without losing your temper this time?’

      ‘Yes,’ Nina said.

      ‘Without getting all fired up.’

      ‘Yes.’ And this time she smiled.

      ‘You’re going to go in there being cool and the amazing professional that you are.’

      ‘Thanks.’ She looked over at him. ‘It’s hard enough to be dispassionate when you’re fighting for a client, but when it’s family, well, you can imagine what that’s like …’

      Actually, Jack couldn’t, but he chose not to say anything, just let Nina continue to talk. ‘I thought there would be no problem, but Janey ran a way a few weeks ago, and when she turned up on my doorstep I didn’t let Barbara or the case worker know where she was. I know I should have rung straight away, I know I was wrong, but I just wanted some time to get to the bottom of what was going on before they took her back. Then the duty social worker turned up at my door and, of course, there she was.’

      ‘Another black mark against Nina.’

      ‘I just want my family together.’

      ‘You’ll get them.’

      ‘I’m not sure.’ She blew out a breath. ‘I work very long hours …’

      ‘Can you reduce them?’

      Nina gave a tight shrug. She didn’t want to drone on about her finances to someone who simply wouldn’t understand. ‘I also volunteer at the pro bono centre in Harlem eight hours a week …’

      ‘Well, that can go,’ Jack said, and Nina felt her hand tighten around her wine glass. She looked at him, at a man who had had everything handed to him on a plate as he coolly dismissed something that was very important to her.

      ‘I happen to like working there,’ Nina said. ‘It’s extremely important to me. Without them …’ She stopped, she just wasn’t going to get into this with Jack, but rather than letting her drop it Jack pushed for Nina to go on.

      ‘Without them …?’

      ‘They do amazing work,’ Nina said. ‘It’s run by very passionate, caring people.’

      ‘Unlike me.’ Jack grinned. He could hear the barbs behind her words.

      ‘I didn’t say that.’

      ‘You think it, though.’

      Nina shrugged again.

      ‘I can’t afford to get involved, Nina.’

      She didn’t buy it.

      ‘How can you not?’ She blinked at him. ‘You’re a brilliant doctor. I’ve actually seen you in action the rare times you’re hands on. You and I both know …’ She halted. There were some things that should perhaps not be said.

      ‘Go on,’ Jack invited.

      ‘I don’t think I should.’

      ‘Off the record?’ Jack smiled. ‘And, no, you can’t screw me here.’

      He made her blush, he made her smile, he gave her permission to be honest.

      ‘I’m not criticising the other doctor, but I do think that had it been you who examined Tommy …’ She took a slug of her wine before continuing. ‘Well, things might have been picked up a little sooner.’

      Jack would never criticise a colleague and certainly not to a woman he didn’t really know—idle gossip was a dangerous thing—but he absolutely agreed with Nina. He’d thought exactly the same thing.

      Not only that, he’d had a rather long and difficult conversation with the locum registrar just that morning, not that he could share that with Nina.

      ‘I just think …’ She really should say no more, except his silence invited her to go on. Sometimes she was a little too honest and even as the words tumbled out, she wished she could take them back. ‘Instead of sucking up to benefactors, you’d be better off with the patients.’ She knew she had gone too far, knew from the flicker of darkness across his eyes that she’d overstepped the mark, and she recanted a little. ‘Certainly the patients would be better off …’

      She was nothing like Jack was used to.

      Nothing like anyone he had ever been out with before.

      He could not think of one person who had ever spoken to him like this, yet over and over she had.

      ‘Do you ever got involved?’ Nina asked a little later, when she was scraping her dessert bowl. ‘I mean, do you ever get close?’

      ‘Are we still talking about work?’ Jack grinned.

      ‘Of course.’ Nina gave a tight smile. She already knew the answer in regard to his personal life. Jack saw the smile, matched it and then upped it, just looked at her and smiled till her face was pink and her toes were curling in her boots.

      ‘No,’ he said. ‘And no at work as well.’ Then he stopped smiling. ‘I’m not a machine, Nina. I get a bit upset sometimes, I guess, and some things get to me more than others but, no, I work better by staying back …’

      He

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