Relative Ethics

At the door to her room she fumbled with the key so badly that he took it from her with hands only a little steadier than her own. Once in, he leaned back against the door and crushed her body against his, motionless for several minutes, then he eased her away from him and looked down into her eyes.

‘Sorry, I just had to be alone with you. I couldn’t hide my feelings any more.’ His voice was gruff with passion, and yet tinged with uncertainty. He searched his eyes, and then his lids drifted shut and he swallowed unsteadily. ‘Bron?’

‘Oh, yes, Oliver … please?’

For a long, breathless moment, he was motionless, then he exhaled and reached round to slide the zip down with trembling fingers. Slowly, with infinite care, he lowered the dress from her shoulders until it slithered in a shimmering pool to her feet, and then he knelt and eased the tiny triangle of lace down over her trembling legs. With a feather-light kiss on the tangle of curls he had revealed, he straightened and stripped off his own clothes, casting them aside until he stood naked before her, the moonlight silvering the smooth planes of his body, casting shadows in the scatter of curls on his chest, darkening the skin to bronze. Her breath caught in her throat.

‘You’re beautiful…’

He gave a shaky little laugh that cracked in the middle. ‘That’s my line. Oh, Bron…’

He scooped her up in his arms and laid her tenderly on the bed, coming down carefully beside her. She felt the slight rasp of his hair-roughened thigh, and smelled the warm, male, musky scent of his body as it joined with hers, and a soft cry rose in her throat, mingling with his as his mouth closed over her lips and captured her words of love.

She hadn’t known the highs could be so high. It was as if a giant hand had lifted them and thrown them out among the stars, to tumble gently back to earth in a tangle of limbs and murmured promises.

Later, she lifted her hand and touched his face, and found it wet with tears. He turned his lips into her palm, and pressed a soft kiss on the skin. When he lifted his head, she was stunned by the naked emotion in his eyes. His voice was ragged.

‘Dear God, Bron … I had no idea. Oh, darling, hold me, I love you, Bron. I love you, I love you…’

When she woke in the morning, he was gone. He had written ‘I love you’ on the mirror with her lipstick, and there was a note on the dressing-table.

Gone back to clear up the chaos. Think it’s best if I sleep in my room—I don’t want any speculation about you. See you for breakfast. We have to talk—there’s so much to tell you. I love you. Oliver.

She showered and dressed and ran downstairs eagerly, but as she reached the bottom step the manager crossed over to her.

‘Oh, Dr Jones, I’m so glad I’ve caught you. Mr Henderson asked me to give you a message. He was called away in the night—awful business, his brother-in-law was killed in a car accident. He had to dash back; he said his wife—Clare, isn’t it?—is pregnant, and he had to be with her. Dr Jones, are you all right?’

CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_31365805-9e62-5de7-9d54-f6333f51d4eb)

‘DR JONES? Bronwen? Are you all right?’

Bron lifted her shocked face to Jim Harris’s startled eyes and nodded faintly.

‘Yes—yes, I’m all right, Jim. Just a bit giddy. I think I stood up too fast.’

Oliver swore softly under his breath, and Bron felt her knees give way. She sat down abruptly before she fell.

‘I’ll get you a cup of coffee,’ Jim mumbled, and turned on his heel. Out of the corner of her eye, Bron could see Oliver, his face composed, only a muscle twitching in his jaw giving him away.

He sat beside her and covered her hand with his. ‘Bron? Are you OK? What happened?’

Was it her imagination, or was there a note of genuine concern in his voice? She snatched her hand away, but that only made matters worse because his hand then lay on her knee, and he made no attempt to remove it. Oh, lord, was she to be punished for that fatal attraction over and over again?

‘Here, drink this——’ Jim thrust a cup of coffee into her unsteady hands, and she tightened her fingers on the handle until her knuckles were white. ‘Did you have any breakfast?’

She nodded. ‘Yes, I was sat down and force-fed.’

‘So it’s not the hallucinogenic effect of hypoglycaemia?’ Oliver murmured drily, and removed his hand from her knee. ‘Just to be on the safe side, I’ll get you a bar of chocolate.’

‘Please don’t bother,’ she said curtly, and Jim looked from one to the other of them with puzzled eyes. ‘Do you two know each other?’

‘Yes.’

‘No!’

‘Yes, we do,’ Oliver argued gently. ‘We met on a conference on trauma, remember?’

How could she forget? It had been the most traumatic week of her life. ‘Yes, we have met, but I wouldn’t say I knew you—though I thought I did…’

‘Bron?’

Jim’s bleep went off then, so he excused himself with a worried look at his new registrar, and left the room.

‘Just what did you mean by that?’ Oliver asked.

Bron laughed, a thready, shaky little laugh that betrayed her tension. ‘I would have thought it was obvious.’

‘Not to me. Why didn’t you reply to my letters?’

‘Letters? What letters?’ Bron couldn’t quite meet his eye. There had been letters, three of them, addressed to her hospital, but not for two months, and by then she’d been so hurt that she’d thrown them away without reading them. And then nothing, just when she had been prepared to sink her principles and tell him that she was pregnant. She had wound up her courage to ring Guy’s and tell him about Livvy when she was born, and she was told he had left. Mail would be forwarded, she was told, but they had no address as yet. Her courage had failed before she could post the letter, and afterwards she was glad it had.

He sighed heavily. ‘I tried to contact you—several times. When you didn’t reply, I phoned the hospital and was told you had left with no forwarding address. I had to assume that what we had between us had meant nothing to you—but I was wrong, wasn’t I? You’re as shocked to see me as I am to see you——’

‘Rubbish,’ she got out, and he snorted.

‘Look at you. If you aren’t affected by seeing me again, why are you trying to throttle that cup?’

Surprised, Bron glanced down and made an immediate conscious effort to relax. The coffee slopped on to her skirt and she smacked the cup down on to the saucer with a defiant clatter. ‘Damn—now look what you’ve made me do!’

Unruffled, Oliver produced a clean handkerchief from his pocket and blotted her skirt unnecessarily thoroughly.

‘Thank you,’ she muttered through tight lips, and he chuckled.

‘Oh, Bron. Look, I have to go and start the afternoon list. What are you doing tonight?’

She closed her eyes. Surely he didn’t think she was going to let him pick up where they left off? Thinking of that gave her heart an unruly and unwelcome flutter, and she crushed the memory of his lovemaking with ruthless vigour. Lovemaking, indeed! Sex. A juvenile exercise in relieving hormones. So he was particularly good at it. So what? There were other things—like loyalty.

‘Going home, putting my feet up and telling someone very important to me how much I love them.’

His mouth thinned. Good. He had misunderstood, as she had intended.

‘OK. But we need to talk, Bron, because there’s a lot we didn’t say.’

‘You’re too late, Oliver.’ Years too late.

He stood up and sighed again, running his hand through his hair in that gesture she knew so well.

‘Nevertheless—I left abruptly, without time to say half of the things I wanted to say to you, and I want to apologise.’