Gift of a Family

‘You’re a genius!’ Kat took the paper and smiled at the woman. ‘How did you do it?’

Paula gave a modest shrug. ‘Appealed to the conscience of the little dark-haired one. She’s not such a tough nut as the other one.’

Kat read the number on the paper and gave a sigh. ‘I suppose I’d better phone and tell them where their daughter is.’

‘Is that the parents?’ Josh checked the ECG reading and then glanced across at her. ‘If so, you definitely need to call them. They need to get down here. After the CT scan we’re transferring her to Intensive Care. She’s going to need ventilating. Do you want me to ring the parents or are you OK with that?’

Kat shook her head. ‘I can do it.’

Just about the worst job in the A and E department, she reflected, but she could do it.

She called the parents, gave them the barest information but tried not to worry them, and then returned to Resus to find that they were preparing Holly for a CT scan of her brain.

The girl was unconscious now and something about her pale face tugged at Kat’s heart.

She turned to Josh. ‘Will she be OK, do you think?’

He gave a shrug. ‘Who knows?’ His voice was hard. ‘Drugs aren’t to be messed with.’

‘Weird really…’ Kat frowned. ‘This place is so far away from the streets of London and yet you have the same problems as a big city.’

‘In some ways we have more problems.’ Josh scanned a blood result that someone handed him. ‘That looks a bit better. Where were we?’ He glanced at her, momentarily distracted from their conversation. ‘Oh, yes, the problems of living in a seaside town. Unfortunately, because we have such good surfing beaches, inevitably we attract a pretty lively crowd. A young crowd. Generally it’s all pretty harmless but not always, and there are always unscrupulous individuals out to make money from the unwary. The main problem is usually alcohol. Teenagers come down here to surf and party and they over-indulge. Saturday nights are the worst.’

Kat gave a rueful smile. ‘I can imagine.’

He looked at her. ‘It won’t be anything you haven’t seen before. Teenagers behave like teenagers. It’s just the setting that’s different. Are the parents coming?’

‘They’re on their way,’ Kat told him. ‘They live about two hours away. They didn’t even know Holly was here. The girls said they were having an extended sleepover with a friend at home and then caught the train down here.’

Josh winced. ‘Ouch. Well, they always say that your sins will find you out.’

Finally the patient was transferred, but that seemed to be a signal for the whole of Cornwall to have accidents and the rest of the day was frantically busy.

By the end of her shift Kat’s feet were aching, her head was throbbing and her stomach was rumbling from lack of food.

And she’d thought London was busy…

Josh let out a long breath and glanced at the clock. ‘Long day. I’m conscious that we didn’t have a chance to talk at all. Or eat. Why don’t we go for a drink? There’s a lovely pub a very short drive from here. Sells great food. I can answer all those questions you haven’t even had time to ask.’

Kat stiffened, immediately on the defensive. Was he asking her out? ‘I don’t think so. I don’t—’ She broke off and he lifted an eyebrow in that slightly mocking, sexy way designed to test the resolve of the strongest female.

‘You don’t what?’ His voice was soft. ‘You don’t drink? You don’t drink with colleagues? Or you don’t drink with me? Which is it, Dr O’Brien?’

Her mind went completely blank. She wasn’t used to playing games with men and she had a feeling he was playing games. ‘I have to get home.’

‘And is there someone at home waiting for you, Kat?’ His eyes scanned her face and she felt something shift in her stomach. An awareness that she instantly dismissed.

‘Archie.’ She said the name firmly as if to remind herself as much as him. ‘Archie is waiting for me. Thanks for today, Dr Sullivan.’

Even though they hadn’t had time for a conversation, she’d learned a great deal just from watching him work. She’d seen enough to know that, whatever else he might be, Josh Sullivan was an excellent doctor. He used instinct as well as experience and training, and those instincts were obviously good.

‘Call me Josh.’ He smiled, and there was more than a hint of the pirate in that smile. ‘We’re very informal here, but I’m sure you already know that.’

She did know that, but somehow calling him Josh implied an intimacy that she didn’t want.

There was no way she was becoming intimate with Josh Sullivan.

* * *

Prickly, Josh thought as he walked towards his office to make a start on the mountain of paperwork that awaited him. If he had to find one word to describe Kat O’Brien, it would be ‘prickly’. Like a thorn bush, it was impossible to get too close without risking physical injury.

He sprawled in the chair and narrowed his eyes as he mentally examined the facts.

She was fine from a professional point of view. More than fine. She’d handled those teenagers extremely well and, from what he’d seen so far, her clinical skills were excellent—but the minute they moved from the subject of work the barriers had come up and she’d frozen him out.

Was that because of Archie?

Josh leaned forward and flicked on the computer. The fact that she was obviously involved with someone disappointed him more than he would have anticipated.

She wasn’t available, he told himself firmly, pushing away memories of her body in the black wetsuit. All right, so she had legs to die for and curves designed to drive a man out of his mind, but she was already taken, so as far as Josh was concerned that was the end of it. He didn’t poach.

Katriona O’Brien was a colleague, nothing more, and that was the way she was going to stay.

CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_63820e0b-0ccd-56e7-9974-088914575079)

KAT paid the babysitter and then tiptoed upstairs and peeped round the door of the bedroom.

‘You can come in,’ a sleepy voice said from the bed. ‘I’m not asleep.’

She slid inside and sat on the bed, wincing as she sat on a plastic boat. ‘Well you should be asleep, young man!’ She moved the boat and added it to the pile of toys in the box by the bed. ‘It’s really late.’

‘I wanted to stay awake until you came home.’

She winced, wrestling with the guilt that went hand in hand with single motherhood and the need to earn a living. ‘I got held up at the hospital.’

‘Lots of people having accidents.’ He nodded wisely. ‘Did you fix them?’

She smiled at the question. ‘I did my best. How was your day at summer camp? Did you meet anyone nice?’

Because it was the summer holidays she’d been forced to find Archie somewhere to go during the week, and fortunately she’d found a wonderful children’s ‘camp’ run by a team of teachers from the local primary school. Given that Archie would be attending the same school from September, it had seemed like an ideal solution.

‘I did magic.’

‘What sort of magic?’ Unable to resist touching him, she smoothed his hair gently, thinking that in the dark like this, snuggled in pyjamas covered in boats, he still seemed like her baby. But she knew he was growing up very fast and she was making the most of every single moment. ‘How did you get to be six? Tell me that. Last time I looked you were still a baby.’

‘Magic.’ Archie looked at her, his eyes huge. ‘Did you know that I can make myself invisible whenever I want to?’

‘Really?’ Kat looked impressed. ‘Wow, I bet that’s really useful.’