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‘Ready,’ she agreed with a determined nod and a tightening of her grip, and they set off towards the small group clustered around the newly-weds.
‘Congratulations, Nick,’ Joe said, shaking the man’s hand. He was determined to ignore the little voice that wondered whether he’d looked that happy on his wedding day.
‘I hope you’ll both be very happy,’ Vicky added with every semblance of meaning the words.
Joe found himself watching her closely as she spoke to Frankie for a moment, wondering if she was just very good at putting on a front. To his surprise, he couldn’t tell. Surely she should have been showing some animosity towards the woman who had stolen her fiancé’s affections? As far as he could tell, she seemed to genuinely like the other woman and really wished her well.
Surely she wasn’t that shallow? This was the girl who had pined after her older brother’s best friend for at least a dozen years, culminating in their fairy-tale engagement just a few months ago. Could she really switch off her feelings so quickly? Was she the sort of person who no longer wanted something once she had it in her grasp?
He didn’t like to think so, not when she’d been the only one to awaken the protective instincts that had lain dormant since he’d lost Celia.
Vicky turned to speak to Nick, and Joe thought he might have part of his answer. She was smiling and chatting with the ease of an old friend, but only he knew that her hand had tightened like a tourniquet around his arm.
He covered the slender fingers with his own, hiding the tension-whitened knuckles from view. Unfortunately Nick noticed and there was wary speculation in the glance that went from one face to the other and back to their joined hands.
Joe could hardly snatch his hand away, neither was this the time or the place to make explanations. All he could do was look the man in the eye and dare him to make anything of it. Only time would show that this was just a performance he and Vicky were putting on for the occasion.
Except…
There was something in Nick’s expression that gave him a jolt. Something that looked almost like approval when he looked from one to the other of them. Something that made Joe suddenly desperate to retreat as far and as fast as he could into the confines of his own safe world.
He wasn’t interested in a relationship, and that was the end of the matter.
It didn’t matter how attractive Vicky was—or any other woman for that matter. It didn’t matter how good it felt to have her hand wrapped around his arm, knowing that the contact was giving her the support she needed. It didn’t matter that he could smell the hint of flowers and musk drifting from her skin or that her long blonde hair was like spun gold against the dark fabric of his suit. It didn’t matter that the last hour had made him feel more alive than he had in several years and that he was actually looking forward to sharing a meal with her.
As the common idiom went, he’d been there and done that already, and had the scars on his heart to prove it.
He was just about to make their excuses when Frankie grabbed Nick’s arm, her face suddenly pale and clammy as she hurried towards the nearest bathroom.
‘Oops! Sorry, folks,’ Nick said with a slightly strained chuckle before he followed her. ‘Graphic illustration of the fact that morning sickness isn’t confined to mornings.’
The realisation that Frankie was already pregnant brought the swift stab of painful memories and Vicky’s hastily smothered gasp told Joe that she hadn’t known about the pregnancy either.
At least the spreading ripple of understanding laughter meant that people had overheard Nick’s devious way of announcing his impending fatherhood. That should take people’s minds off the fact that he and Vicky were leaving so soon.
‘I think that’s our signal to fade into the woodwork,’ he suggested quietly, but she didn’t say a word.
He escorted her towards the door, wondering why she suddenly felt so fragile beside him, and had to glare at the overzealous photographer when he wanted to take yet another picture of Vicky. She certainly wasn’t in the mood to have a camera pointed in her direction and Joe actually had the strange impression that if he moved too fast she might shatter into a thousand fragments.
Her movements were quite wooden as he helped her into her coat and she was moving almost like a sleepwalker as he ushered her out of the hotel and into his car.
He waited for her to fasten her seat belt but she just sat in the dark silence of the car, staring blindly out of the windscreen.
‘Vicky?’ he prompted. ‘Seat belt?’
‘Hmm?’ The expression she turned on him was somehow dazed and he had to repeat the reminder before she began to fumble her compliance.
‘Let me,’ he offered, speaking softly and moving slowly to take the catch from her, feeling as if he were dealing with an injured animal.
He wanted to take her hands in his and try to persuade her to talk about what had brought this on, but now was neither the time nor the place.
Knowing that any one of the people they’d just left could emerge from the hotel to see them sitting together in his car, he started the engine and set off out of the car park.
Obviously they were going to have to abandon the idea of going out for a meal. Vicky wasn’t in any fit state to cope with the niceties of public dining. The only option was to take her home, but whose?
It wasn’t far to the place where he’d had his painful run-in with the escaped bullocks and, just past it, the fork in the road that demanded a decision.
One way led to the renovated farm labourer’s cottage she’d told him about when she’d been trying to distract him from the pain of his dislocated shoulder; the other led to the small stone-built farmhouse which was more a refuge than a home to him.
The thought of inviting anyone into his safe haven made him uncomfortable, but the thought of delivering Vicky to a solitary evening felt equally wrong.
Anyway, he temporised as he accelerated away from her turning, she needed to eat and he had no idea what she’d have in her kitchen. At least he knew his fridge could supply the essentials, thanks to Vicky’s persistence. And there was a wry, pleasing irony that he would be feeding her with the food she’d chosen and bought for him.
‘We’re here, Vicky,’ he said as he pulled into the small enclosed yard to one side of the house.
He wasn’t surprised when she didn’t comment but his understanding turned to concern when she didn’t react when he opened the door beside her.
The harsh brilliance of the safety light, activated by their arrival, flooded the interior of the car and painted its silent inmate with unforgiving accuracy.
She looked as perfect as a marble statue, but when had marble statues ever had silvery tears trickling down their cheeks?
‘Come on, Vicky. Out you get,’ he encouraged as he reached across her to release her seat belt. He had to stretch his shoulder some way beyond what was comfortable to reach it, but that hardly mattered when Vicky was in such misery.
She didn’t even seem to realise that she was crying as he let them into the house through the back door which took them straight into the kitchen.
It wasn’t the first time that he’d been grateful for the enveloping warmth of the Aga cooker. He didn’t even bother taking her coat off as he grabbed a chair and settled her in it as close as possible to the warmth.
For just a moment he stood there looking at her, feeling completely at a loss.
He hardly knew the woman, for heaven’s sake. What on earth was he supposed to do or say to help her, to bring her out of this?
‘Tea,’ he muttered, reaching for the kettle and putting it on the hob to boil. ‘If in doubt make a pot of tea.’
He was out of his depth here, and didn’t mind admitting it. The psychiatry he’d learned during his training was enough to tell him that Vicky’s mental state was no steadier than her physical one. All he could think to do was bury himself in the familiar ritual of pouring milk into the waiting mugs while he waited for the tea to steep.
Did she take sugar? He didn’t even know her well enough for that small detail, had never bothered to notice such a thing when they’d been in the same room. Whether she did or not, she was having some. She was borderline shocky and the sugar boost would give her body something to fight with.
‘Here.’ He crouched beside her chair and wrapped her icy hand around the chunky handle. ‘It’s hot, but see if you can sip it.’
She barely acknowledged him and the way those silent tears continued to slide down her cheeks, one after another, caused something unfamiliar to tighten inside his chest.
‘Please, Vicky.’ Joe reached up to cup one damp cheek in his hand and turned her to face him. ‘Please, drink some of the tea. You need it.’
As though waking from a nightmare, she focused on his face and blinked, almost as if surprised to see him there.
‘Joe?’
He’d never heard her voice sounding so lost and alone. He might not join in with the banter that usually characterised any gathering of staff at Denison Memorial, but he couldn’t help having noticed that this strikingly beautiful young woman had a bright bubbly personality to match. It almost hurt to see her looking so…so defeated.
‘Drink,’ he urged, cupping one hand around hers where she held the steaming mug in a white-knuckled grip and lifting it towards her mouth.
‘Don’t.’ With a shake of her head she resisted, her brows drawing into a frown as she tried to pass the mug to him. ‘I don’t need that. I need to know…’
She had to pause when her lips began to quiver uncontrollably. He saw her press them firmly together and heard the deep breath she drew and held as she fought for control.
‘What do you need?’ he asked gently. ‘Is it something I can get for you? Something to eat?’ He wasn’t a brilliant cook but anything short of cordon bleu and he’d give it a go if it would take that expression out of her eyes.
She shook her head. ‘Oh, Joe, it’s nothing like that,’ she said with a hitch in her voice. ‘I just need to know why.’
‘Why?’ And he’d thought he’d been all at sea before. She’d completely lost him now. ‘You mean, why did Nick marry Frankie? But you know—’
‘Not that,’ she broke in almost impatiently. ‘I know he married her because they fell in love. Because he loved her more than he ever loved me…’
‘Ah, Vicky, don’t do this to yourself,’ he begged, feeling panic-induced sweat prickling between his shoulder-blades.
He really didn’t want to be having this conversation. What did he know about what she was going through? He and Celia had met in their teens and there had never been anyone else for either of them, right up to the day she’d died.
‘No, Joe, I need to know,’ she insisted with a spark of her former energy. ‘I know we both did the right thing to call off our wedding and I really hope they’re happy but…but I need to know what’s wrong with me.’
‘Wrong with you?’ he said, more lost than ever. Would he ever unravel the Gordian knot of a woman’s thought processes? ‘But there’s nothing wrong with you.’
‘There must be,’ she said adamantly, with a sad droop to a mouth now bare of any lipstick. ‘Otherwise I’d be the one expecting his baby rather than Frankie.’
‘You…’ He gave up. Did she want to be pregnant? Surely not, without a marriage in her near future. With her engagement so recently broken she wouldn’t even have a close relationship to rely on.
‘He’s only known Frankie for a matter of weeks, Joe,’ she barrelled on suddenly, as though the words and the emotions behind them wouldn’t be contained any longer. ‘They’re married now, but they obviously didn’t bother to wait before they went to bed because she’s already expecting his baby. So what was wrong with me? He was engaged to me for nearly six months and he never gave me anything more than a kiss and a hug.’
CHAPTER TWO (#u38335f78-98b1-5957-847b-0b77b91c96c0)
TWO days later Vicky still couldn’t believe what she’d said, and to have said it to Joe!
Just thinking about the embarrassment of it made her go hot and cold, but at the time her thought processes had been so scrambled that she’d had no idea that she was going to make such a momentous revelation.
She groaned silently, her thoughts still scurrying around in her head in spite of the fact that she’d been trying to keep busy to switch the thoughts off. As if it wasn’t bad enough that she must be the only twenty-six-year-old virgin in Edenthwaite, she had to go and tell Joe, the one man whose opinion of her really mattered.
How was she going to face him again? It had been difficult enough putting up with all the sympathetic murmurs of her colleagues when they’d found out about Nick and Frankie. If they discovered that her adolescent crush on Nick had prevented her from indulging in the flings her colleagues seemed to flit in and out of, she’d probably never live it down.
Could she trust Joe not to say anything?
She could hardly bring herself to think about it, let alone hold a conversation begging for his discretion.
‘Vicky. Phone call for you,’ called one of the juniors, beckoning her from the other side of the ward, and she hurried across to the desk. There were several sets of lab results she’d been chasing up ever since she’d come on duty and they’d promised to phone them through as soon as they were ready.
‘Hello. Vicky Lawrence speaking,’ she said crisply, but when she waited for a reply all she could hear was the faint crackle of an open line. ‘Hello? Is there anyone there?’
When there was still no answer she shrugged and put the phone down. ‘Who was it, Sue? Did they say what they wanted?’
‘Sorry, Vicky.’ Sue shook her head. ‘It was a man and he wanted to speak to you. I don’t know any more than that.’
‘A man?’ The person she was waiting to speak to was definitely not a man, so perhaps it hadn’t been the lab results. ‘Oh, well. They’ll just have to try again.’
‘They will, if it’s important,’ Sue agreed. ‘Let’s hope it isn’t anything complicated and that they don’t phone back in the middle of the patients’ lunch.’
Vicky groaned. It wasn’t often that they had so many who needed individual help with their meals, but the last few days had been dreadful. For some reason there had been an overflow from the geriatric ward into her general one. Now she was trying to cope with one gentleman who was flat on his back with both legs in traction and a woman in her sixties whose years of a strict vegan diet had left her with multiple fractures in a collapsed spine, rendering her all but immobile.
Apart from them, there was a man in his late fifties who had been born with Down’s syndrome. Although Owen was physically capable of feeding himself, he still required constant supervision if the food was actually going to be consumed while it was hot. At least his broken leg was keeping him in one place at the moment. His elderly carers had warned that once he was mobile again he was quite likely to go wandering off at any time.
‘And won’t that be just what I need to brighten my day,’ Vicky muttered as she tried to juggle the number of patients requiring individual attention against the staff available for the task. ‘And some time during all that, the staff have to go for their lunch-breaks, too!’
Her calculations were interrupted by the phone and she reached out to lift the receiver without taking her eyes off her little chart.
‘Hello. Sister Lawrence, General Ward,’ she said automatically, more than half of her mind on possible permutations that would get the job done. Would she need to ring around for some temporary help, just until the older patients were able to move into their proper domain?
It was several seconds before she realised that no one had spoken since she’d answered the phone.
‘Hello?’ she prompted, but once again there was just that faint crackle of an open line. ‘Is there someone there?’
Although there wasn’t a sound from the other end, for some reason she just knew that there was someone there, someone listening to her.
The hairs on the back of her neck felt as if they were standing on end, almost as if a cold draught had blown across her, but she knew that was nonsense in a modern building like this.
‘I’m sorry, but I haven’t got time to waste,’ she said, firmly squashing the sneaking feeling of unease. ‘If you’re not going to speak I’ll have to put the phone down.’
She started counting silently, determined to carry out her threat on the count of five. She’d only got as far as four when she heard a single whispered word before the connection was abruptly broken.
She was sitting there, staring at the receiver still clasped in her shaking hand, when a familiar baritone voice nearly had her jumping out of her skin.
‘Vicky? What on earth’s wrong with you?’ Joe demanded when she’d shrieked and dropped the phone. He picked it up from the floor and put it to his ear before he deposited it where it belonged.
Whether he was checking to see if there was someone still on the line or whether the thing was still working, she didn’t know.
She was trembling all over now, and it wasn’t because Joe had startled her.
‘Are you all right?’ he demanded, so she knew she must be looking as shaky as she felt. ‘Is there something I can do or would you rather I came back later?’
‘No!’ she said hurriedly, suddenly far more worried that he might leave than that his presence might be an embarrassment. She’d been dreading this first meeting, after her blurted revelation, but that phone call had really given her the creeps. ‘No, Joe, please, don’t go.’
‘What’s the matter? Aren’t you feeling well?’ He perched one hip on the corner of the desk, bringing those changeable hazel eyes almost down to her level. The clear concern in them was like a balm to her jangling nerves.
‘I’m all right, except…except for that weird phone call. And I don’t think it was the first one.’ Now that she thought about it, there had been something similar yesterday, too.
‘Weird? How was it weird? Who was calling?’
‘I don’t know who it was.’
‘So, what did they want?’ He was patience itself but that didn’t do anything for her agitation.
‘I don’t know what he wanted,’ she retorted snappishly. ‘The first couple of times he didn’t say anything at all but this time—’
