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With a gargantuan effort he forced the images of their bodies locked in passion from his mind and asked, ‘What did you want to see me about?’
‘I want you to remove Ruth Tilley from Kate Lowe’s room,’ she said implacably. ‘In fact, not just Kate’s room but ICTU altogether.’
His brow wrinkled as he brought the senior nurse’s features to mind, mentally reminding himself of her impressive capabilities. He’d seen her manage a trauma patient with multiple injuries almost single-handedly the previous week when several multi-trauma patients had arrived simultaneously and the medical staff had been stretched beyond the limits. She had saved a young man’s life and surely didn’t deserve the indignity of being dismissed from the unit without a very good reason. ‘Why? Have you some sort of issue with her?’ ‘Yes, I do, actually. She’s got the wrong attitude.’ His features hardened. ‘According to who?’ Allegra could feel his intransigence like an impenetrable wall being built brick by brick between them. She drew herself up to her full height and bit out, ‘According to me.’
‘Let me guess.’ His mouth quirked a fraction. ‘Her aura is off centre, is it?’
Allegra had had enough. ‘Don’t you dare make fun of me, Addison. If anyone’s aura is askew, it’s yours.’
He looked down at her flashing green eyes and his smile tilted even further. ‘Are you threatening me, Dr Tallis?’
She held his taunting brown gaze for several heart-chugging seconds, the atmosphere tightening around them to snapping point. The air was thick with it. She couldn’t even breathe properly. Her chest felt restricted, her head light as if not enough oxygen was getting through to her brain. Deep and low in her belly a throbbing pulse had begun a tattoo that triggered a silky liquid response between her thighs, which she suddenly realised with a jolt of awareness were way too close to his. Their hard muscled presence alerted her too late to the hot sexual current charging between their bodies, a current that she had tried desperately to ignore because of what she knew it signified.
She tried to step back but both of his hands countered it by coming down on her hips and with one short hard tug bringing her up against him.
‘Who’s going to throw the first punch, Allegra?’ he asked, staring at her mouth as if mesmerised. ‘Or should we kiss and make up instead?’
She moistened her lips nervously, her heart leaping in her chest as he brought his head down, her breath consumed by the greedy hunger of his mouth as it captured hers.
CHAPTER TWELVE
HIS kiss was a searing reminder of her escalating feelings for him, feelings she had never expected to feel for anyone, or at least not at this level of intensity. She wasn’t cynical enough to discount the prospect of ever falling in love, but never had she expected to do so in such a short space of time. She had not been in love with anyone before, although she had slept with previous boyfriends, more because of their expectations than anything she’d felt herself. But somehow Joel Addison, the one man who stood in the way of what she wanted to achieve, had stolen her heart without her being able to do anything to prevent it. She hadn’t even seen it coming. It had crept up on her with every look he’d sent her way, every word he’d spoken and with every nuance of his face as she’d watched him deal sensitively with patients and relatives and staff.
She wasn’t fool enough to imagine he had similar feelings for her. She knew enough about male hormones to recognise full-on lust when she saw it. Every determined stroke of his tongue against hers reminded her of how his body would feel inside the silky cocoon of hers. No rational argument was going to be enough to fight this overwhelming attraction that had crackled constantly between them almost from the first moment they’d met.
She returned his kiss with the same fire as his, her tongue dancing with his, her small teeth nipping at his bottom lip in response to the similar tantalising treatment by his. It was a primitive sort of exchange, at times bordering on the edge of pain, as if they were both trying to find each other’s boundaries.
Allegra imagined he would be a demanding but totally enthralling lover. She could feel it in his hands as they ruthlessly tugged her shirt out of her skirt, his warm palms possessing the aching weight of her breasts until her stomach caved in with out-of-control desire.
Her fingers curled into the thickness of his hair as she struggled to control her reaction to him. She was within a second of begging him to take her then and there when he dragged himself away to look down at her with glittering eyes, a dull flush of colour beneath the tan of his face.
‘Maybe I should have let you punch me instead,’ he said with a rueful smile that melted her almost as much as his kisses had done. ‘It might have been less complicated.’
She tidied her clothes as best as she could, trying her best to sound casual even while her stomach was still crawling with desire. ‘I don’t believe in violence,’ she said. ‘I would never have hit you.’
‘That’s very reassuring. For a moment there I thought I was going to have to make an emergency appointment with my orthodontist.’
She gave him a shame-faced look from beneath her lashes as she tucked in her blouse with unsteady hands. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t have a good night’s sleep and Ruth Tilley’s attitude towards Kate Lowe this morning upset me. I took it out on you.’
‘You can take it out on me any time you like if you choose the same modus operandi,’ he said. ‘In fact, how about we have dinner tonight and we can pick another fight? Is it your turn to choose or mine?’
‘I think it might be your turn,’ she said, unable to affect a reproving look in time and smiling at him instead.
He gave her an answering smile and brushed her cheek with the back of his hand. ‘Let’s keep this out of the corridors, OK? I don’t want to have to deal with the speculation right now. There are other pressing matters I have to concentrate on, but that’s not to say that during out of working hours we can come to some arrangement that is mutually satisfying.’
She lowered her gaze. ‘I understand …’
He tipped up her chin and looked deeply into her eyes. ‘I’m not sure you do, Allegra Tallis. I don’t think you have a clue about what I’m thinking right now.’
‘You don’t think I can read your mind?’
His eyes became like dark, unfathomable pools as he held her gaze. ‘It’s been a long time since I’ve been in a relationship, for a variety of reasons which I won’t go into now. Suffice it to say you don’t know me very well. I don’t want you to think I’m someone I’m not.’
‘We all have baggage,’ she said, trying to read his expression, but it was as if a mask had come down over his face, effectively shutting her out.
‘Maybe, but being involved with me involves sacrifices most women don’t have the fortitude to take. Believe me, I know it from experience.’
‘Has someone hurt you in the past?’ she asked softly.
‘I’m not the broken-hearted sort,’ he said. ‘I’m just aware of my own limitations in what I can offer another person in an intimate relationship.’
‘You’re a nice man, a decent gorgeous man …’ She gave him a spontaneous hug, leaning her cheek against his chest where she could feel his heart beating. ‘I’m willing to take the chance.’
He put her from him with a gentleness that was girded with firmness, his eyes meeting hers once more. ‘We’ll see.’
Allegra looked up at him, the shadows in his eyes worrying her. She eased herself away, feeling embarrassed and far too exposed. ‘I’m sorry … If you’re not interested, just say so. I can handle it.’
‘I don’t suppose there’s any hope of me denying my attraction to you with any efficacy,’ he said. ‘After all, you have the physical evidence which has been to date both repeatable and provable.’
She smiled crookedly in spite of her inner pain. ‘Ever the scientist, aren’t you?’
He pulled her close for one last kiss. ‘You’d better believe it, baby.’
‘I believe it but I still think there’s room for the grey areas that science overlooks.’
‘I’ve never said science has all the answers, Allegra. I just don’t want you to inadvertently bring disrepute on the unit, especially not now when every calculating eye is on it.’
‘You make it sound as if I’m a complete amateur who has no clue what she is doing.’
‘Do you know what you’re doing?’
She frowned at him. ‘Of course I do. I want what is best for both the patient and their loved ones.’
‘But what if the patient and loved ones have totally different needs, what then?’
‘Surely they would want the same things?’ she said. ‘Life is not a dress rehearsal. This is it. We get one chance at it. Life is precious in all its forms.’
She felt his sigh as if it had happened in her own chest, even though he was now at least half a metre away from her.
‘There’s a part of me that admires your commitment to what you believe in,’ he said heavily. ‘But another part—the realistic part—wants to shake you into the real world and show you that what you’re searching for doesn’t exist.’
‘Miracles, you mean?’
‘Miracles, fairy dust, aromatherapy—the tools of your moonlighting trade,’ he said. ‘They just don’t bring about the results people are desperate for, and I hate the thought of anyone being fooled into believing they can. It’s unspeakably cruel to offer hope when there is none. Lives get destroyed, hanging on the thin thread of a hope that just doesn’t exist.’
‘I’m not fooling anyone.’
He gave her one of his arched-brow expressions as he opened the door to leave. ‘Only yourself, and maybe in the end that is the worst sort of deception of all.’
Allegra sank to the nearest chair as the door closed. She had to prove him wrong, but how?
Tommy Lowe was still in the same comatose state when Allegra finished in Theatre to check on him later that day. His BIS monitor scores showed no brain activity and to make matters worse, his temperature had crept up to 38.5.
Keith Lowe came in while she was massaging Tommy’s feet, using acupressure to release tension in his little body.
‘What are you doing?’ Keith gave her a suspicious look, his whole demeanour seeming on edge as he hovered at the side of his son’s bed.
‘I’m using touch therapy to connect with Tommy,’ she explained. ‘Children usually have very ticklish feet. It’s a way of ramping up the level of sensory input.’
‘None of this is working, is it?’ Keith said after a long, tense moment.
Allegra stilled her massaging movements to look at him. ‘We don’t know that yet. We need more time.’
He gave her a defeated look, before shifting his gaze to the monitors and machines that were keeping his son alive. ‘If I can’t have Tommy back as he was, I don’t want him back at all.’
Allegra stared at him in shock. ‘You surely can’t mean that?’
He met her eyes briefly. ‘You don’t understand,’ he said. ‘There’s life and there’s life.’ He rubbed a hand over his face and continued in a tone that sounded empty and defeated. ‘I told you yesterday about my family background. My parents were not the emotional, nurturing sort.’
‘A lot of parents of your generation weren’t,’ she offered.
He gave her a brief glance and, shifting his gaze, continued in the same flat, emotionless tone. ‘They would have been except for the fact that I had an older sister who was the biggest disappointment of my parents’ life. They took their disappointment out on me. If I let them, they would still be doing it.’
Allegra sat very still, a sudden chill travelling down the length of her spine. ‘What happened?’
‘My older sister had a severe form of autism,’ he said, looking down at his hands. ‘She was diagnosed far too late to do anything to help her. It ruined my parents’ lives, so in a way I can’t really blame them for how they reacted to me. I guess it was a combination of guilt and frustration, which they could hardly take out on her so they chose me instead.’
‘I’m so sorry. It must have been very difficult for you.’
‘Yes … yes, it was …’
‘What about your other sister, Serena?’ she asked gently. ‘Were your parents hard on her as well?’
He met her eyes for a moment before turning away. ‘Yes … yes, it was difficult … for both of us.’ He released a heavy breath and went on, ‘I simply can’t bear the thought of my son having a major disability of any sort. Not after what I’ve been through. I’d would rather he died now.’
‘What eventually happened to your older sister?’
‘She died of pneumonia at the age of sixteen,’ he said. ‘I can still see the relief on my parents’ faces. I can’t help thinking they paid the doctor not to treat her appropriately.’
Allegra felt an upswell of emotion fill her chest until she could hardly breathe with comfort. ‘Tommy might not have any form of brain damage at all,’ she said, dredging up the last of her hope to convince herself, even as she wanted to convince Tommy’s father.
Keith turned to look at her. ‘It’s a risk I can’t afford to take. Not after what I’ve been through with my sister and my parents. I personally witnessed the damage of what a needy child can do.’ He looked down at his hands once more. ‘I’m in a new relationship. My … partner would never cope with Tommy if he was … damaged in any way.’
‘Don’t rush into this,’ Allegra pleaded. ‘Tommy is a child with his whole life ahead of him.’
‘But what sort of life are we talking about?’
Allegra tried not to be put off by the similarity to Joel’s words the night before. ‘Tommy could make a full recovery. I really believe that,’ she said, mentally crossing her fingers.
‘That’s not what the neurosurgeon intimated,’ he said.
‘Mr Pardle is a brilliant neurosurgeon, but over the course of his long career he has seen too much to be able to offer hope in cases like this. He’s lost children of Tommy’s age and condition before and, believe me, it takes its toll, but that’s not to say Tommy can’t prove everyone wrong.’
Keith got to his feet, his movements slow and tired as if he’d reached the very end of his tether. ‘I don’t really care what happens with my wife but I want my son to die with dignity. I don’t want him to suffer for months on end. I would like his life to count for something.’ He scraped a hand through his hair, which did nothing to bring any sort of order to its already haphazard arrangement on his head before he continued, ‘Tommy and I discussed this once not that long ago. When the time comes, I want his organs to be donated to give life to others. It’s what he would have wanted.’
‘You don’t have to decide anything like that at this stage,’ she said. ‘There’s still a chance he will wake up.’
‘It’s a slim chance, though, isn’t it?’ he asked, for once meeting her gaze directly.
She rolled her lips together, searching for a moment for the right words to say to offer him hope. ‘It’s slim but not impossible.’
‘You’re the only one who thinks it’s possible. Everyone else I’ve spoken to has given me a thin slice of hope tempered with the reality of a life blighted by impairment.’
‘It might not be anything like that …’
‘I can’t take the risk,’ he said, ‘For Tommy’s sake.’ He looked down at the small frail figure lying connected to the numerous machines hissing and groaning and pumping in the background, each one keeping the child’s life suspended in an indefinable place that had no real future and a past that was all too short.
Seven years.
It had taken Allegra longer to get her qualifications.
‘I may not be a great father, according to the rules of the current times, but one thing I know for certain is that Tommy wouldn’t want to live half a life,’ Keith said. ‘I would be an even worse father to stand by and let his life be reduced to that.’
‘Please, give me some time with him,’ she begged. ‘No matter what the other specialists say, please, don’t give up until I’ve exhausted every possible avenue. Please, Mr Lowe … Keith … He’s your son, your only child. Surely you owe him this one last chance at life?’
Tears sprang into Keith’s eyes and he brushed at them impatiently, clearly embarrassed by this momentary lapse. ‘I’m not sure I can do this … It’s too risky …’
‘What about your sister?’ she asked. ‘Would she be willing to help me? I can’t always do this on my own, I often have to rely on relatives to pitch in.’
His eyes shifted away again. ‘I’m not sure my sister is the right person …’
‘But your wife asked for her several times during the night,’ Allegra informed him.
He looked across at her, surprise evident in his expression. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, I heard it from one of the nurses and then I heard it myself when I was in her room. She definitely said your sister’s name as well as Tommy’s. Are they particularly close?’
His eyes fell away from hers. ‘I’m afraid Kate hasn’t let anyone close to her for years …’
‘Depression is a distressing condition for the sufferer and all those in close contact,’ Allegra said, recalling her conversation with Judy earlier. ‘But perhaps Kate has remembered your sister’s past kindness. It happens in cases like this. The most insignificant act of charity can be imprinted on the brain in such a way that when the chips are down, the one person who has stood by is remembered.’
‘My wife is not close to anyone,’ he said. ‘She had a falling-out with her family well before we were married. Her parents haven’t even met Tommy. They live in Western Australia. The last we heard it was Fremantle, but they could very well have moved by now. Kate has a sister somewhere … last time I heard she was living in a remote part of a developing country. She’s a missionary, but as far as Christian charity goes, it apparently doesn’t stretch as far as this.’
‘Is there any way of contacting Kate’s parents and sister?’
His eyes were cold and distant as they met hers. ‘Why would I bother? In many ways they are the reason Kate and I came unstuck. When I married her I thought I could help her overcome her past, but in time I realised it was beyond me. Kate suffered some sort of abuse as a child, she has never said exactly what, but her frequent episodes of depression seem to indicate it was serious.’
So you bailed out when things got tough? Allegra was too professional to say the words out loud, although she dearly longed to, but Keith must have sensed something for he said without apology, ‘I have met someone else. She is everything my wife is not. She is confident, assured, going somewhere and determined. She is an extrovert and meets my needs in a way Kate has never done.’ He paused, almost guiltily. ‘Look, Dr Tallis, I’ve spent close to ten years propping my wife up with every means available. She’s been in and out of clinics and I can no longer carry on supporting her. I want a life of my own without the burden of a partner who is bordering on the psychotic most of the time.’
