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This time he wanted the right to be a father to his child.
Pain thumped through his gut and suddenly he wanted to tower over her and demand an explanation right here, right now. He wanted to know why the hell she hadn’t contacted him herself.
The depth of his disillusionment surprised him because he’d always considered himself to be realistic about women.
Rose glanced between them. ‘I’ve scheduled the two of you to work together on every shift right through the summer. I don’t need to tell you that the hospital management are scrutinising this department very closely. I know it’s going to be a fantastic success.’
Nikos dragged his gaze from Ella’s but somehow his eyes simply shifted to a different part of her, this time her abdomen. To the untrained eye her pregnancy wasn’t visible under the loose fabric of her scrub suit and yet he knew her so intimately that he could see the changes in her. Her glorious breasts were even fuller than usual, her hips more generously curved.
Cradling his child.
What would she have to say for herself?
What excuse would she give?
Was she one of these modern feminist women whowanted a baby but not a man?
His mouth tightened into a grim line as he pondered that possibility. If that was the case then she’d picked the wrong guy for a stunt like that. He was Greek. And she was about to discover exactly what that meant.
‘Just breathe normally, sweetheart,’ Ella soothed, her hand gently stroking the little girl’s head as she tried to relax the terrified child. ‘This mask is going to help you breathe.’
The little girl squirmed and clawed at the oxygen mask and Ella felt her heart contract as she tried to calm her. The poor child was terrified and her fear was making her condition worse.
Faced with a potentially life-threatening situation, Ella pushed her own problems to the back of her mind and concentrated on the job she was trained to do.
Moments after Rose had given her the keys to the drug cupboard, the department had suddenly been swamped with patients. A dog bite, two asthma attacks and a child who had slipped while scrambling over the cliffs and sustained a nasty laceration to his lower leg.
Denied any opportunity to dwell on the implications of Nikos’s presence, Ella had taken the most serious of the cases, a three-year-old girl with an acute asthma attack.
Thank goodness for training, she thought numbly as she adjusted the flow of oxygen and carefully observed the child’s breathing. It was only training that was allowing her to function as if nothing was wrong. Her hands were doing the right things and her mouth was saying the right things, but inside she was shocked and shaking.
After Helen’s confession, she’d cycled the brief distance along the canal to the hospital, her mind sifting through the various scenarios and how she’d handle them.
He’d come. Deep down, she’d known he’d come. And she’d decided that the most important thing was to stay calm and not allow emotion to play a part in their discussion. She’d be dignified and distant and keep the conversation focused on facts and nothing more. She’d find out what he wanted in terms of access and then go away and think about it. Nothing personal. She’d dismiss him as easily as he’d dismissed her.
At least, that had been the theory.
But how could any woman dismiss a man like Nikos Mariakos? How did you dismiss six feet two inches of strikingly good-looking, unwaveringly confident, muscle-packed male? Muscle-packed angry male.
Fortunately he’d gone with Rose to complete some paperwork, leaving Ella to work with Alan, a doctor with six months’ accident and emergency experience who was spending the next month in the paediatric department as part of his training. Alan was unfailingly polite and courteous and perfectly competent with the routine stuff that came through the doors of the main emergency department. Privately, Ella wasn’t sure he had the skill set to work with sick children, but she was hoping she’d be proved wrong.
So far three-year-old Tamsin had refused to allow him to listen to her chest, and nothing he tried could persuade her to co-operate. Flustered and out of his depth, the young doctor grew red in the face as he tried to reason with the child using a falsely bright voice.
Sensing his lack of confidence in a way that children always seemed able to do, Tamsin’s panic increased and she flailed her little arms, becoming more and more upset and making it harder for Ella to calm her.
‘Sweetheart, he’s not going to hurt you.’ Deciding that his presence was counter-productive, she discreetly waved a flustered Alan away from the trolley and picked up a doll from the toy box. ‘This is Angie, isn’t she beautiful? We’re going to put a dress on her and then give her some special air to breathe, just like you. Which dress do you think? You choose.’ She grabbed two dresses from the box and held them up. ‘Pink or purple?’
Tamsin was panting for breath but she stopped clawing at the mask and pointed to a dress.
‘Pink? Good choice. I love pink, too.’ Ella pulled the pink dress over the doll’s head and Tamsin reached out a hand for the doll.
‘Say please, Tams,’ the child’s mother muttered, but Ella didn’t care about manners. She just wanted the child to keep the oxygen mask on.
‘Are you going to help me put a mask on Angie? Oops—it’s a bit big.’
Forgetting her own mask, Tamsin tried to help the doll.
‘Good girl. Aren’t you clever? She’ll soon be feeling all better.’ As Ella praised the child she glanced at the monitor again and felt a flash of unease. Worried about what she was seeing, she glanced at the child’s mother. ‘Amanda, has she had an attack like this before?’
‘Nothing this severe.’ The woman was cradling a young baby and trying to calm Tamsin at the same time. ‘Just breathe through the mask like the nurse is telling you, Tams.’
‘Has she had a cold? Any sort of infection you’re aware of?’
‘Nothing.’ The baby started to cry and Amanda shifted the tiny bundle onto her shoulder with an apologetic look. ‘Sorry. I wouldn’t have brought the baby but I didn’t have anyone to leave her with. Shh, Poppy—not now. Good girl, hush.’
Alan pushed his glasses higher up his nose. ‘Someone could give your husband a ring, if that would help?’
Amanda gave a quick shake of her head and looked anxiously at Tamsin, clearly afraid of upsetting her still more. ‘He’s not on the scene any more,’ she murmured quietly. ‘Not since he discovered I was having this one.’
Ella felt a rush of sadness as she focused on Tamsin’s sweet face. Long eyelashes. Blonde curls. And no father.
Another fractured family.
He should be here, she thought grimly, holding his littlegirl when she needed him.
Mortified at having been tactless, Alan mumbled an apology, but Ella was too concerned about the condition of the little girl to dwell on the unreliability of the male gender.
‘Alan, that salbutamol inhaler isn’t having much of an effect. Do you want to give her some prednisolone?’
‘She doesn’t seem to be wheezing that badly.’ Wary of approaching the child and unsettling her again, Alan hovered a safe distance from the trolley. ‘Perhaps we ought to just try checking her peak flow?’
‘She won’t be able to manage it. She’s too young.’ Ella contemplated telling him that wheeze didn’t give an accurate indication of airway obstruction, but decided it would be better to mention it later when they were alone. She didn’t want to worry the child or the mother.
Suddenly she wished that Nikos hadn’t chosen that moment to disappear with Ruth. It was impossible not to compare Alan’s hesitant, hyper-conservative style with Nikos’s bold, fearless approach to every emergency that crossed his path. He might be the last man in the world she wanted to see personally, but professionally he was a dream.
She was swiftly weighing up her options when Tamsin’s small hand slid into hers. She looked exhausted and frightened, but the trust in her eyes tugged at Ella’s heart.
‘You’re going to be fine, sweetheart. We’ll make you better.’ Her hand tightening over the child’s, Ella looked at Alan. ‘She needs prednisolone.’ She spoke firmly, hoping that Alan would realise that she had experience in this area and just agree with her. ‘I think a dose of 20 milligrams would be a good idea.’
Alan rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. ‘I’m wondering whether perhaps I might just pick the prof’s brains on this one.’
Ella gritted her teeth. ‘Go ahead.’ She didn’t really care, just as long as someone with more experience than Alan checked the little girl. ‘See if he’s free.’ Do it now.
As if the cosmos had ordered it, Nikos strode into the room at that moment. He’d shed his jacket, rolled his shirtsleeves up to the elbows and everything about him was relaxed and confident. ‘Everything all right in here?’
‘Professor…’ Alan straightened, a flicker of awe in his eyes. ‘We weren’t sure whether or not to go straight ahead and give her a dose of prednisolone or wait a bit and see if the inhalation improves her breathing. It’s been a bit tricky, persuading her to co-operate.’
Nikos took one look at the gasping child and murmured, ‘Give the prednisolone—now,’ in a tone that suggested the question should never have been asked.
Alan gave Ella an apologetic look and she gently pulled her hand from Tamsin’s. ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ she soothed as the child gave a whimper of protest and clutched at the air. ‘I’m right here. Just getting you something to help you breathe.’
She felt Nikos’s gaze on her as she reached for the dose she’d already prepared in anticipation of that exact outcome.
‘Her sats are 95 percent.’ Ella turned back to the child, making encouraging noises as she coaxed the medicine down the little girl, painfully conscious of Nikos’s powerful frame on the other side of the trolley. ‘The charts are behind you if you want to take a look.’
But Nikos didn’t look at the charts. He was looking at his little patient.
‘Tamsin?’ A smile danced in his eyes and his expression changed from detached to playful. ‘You have no idea how happy I am to see you.’
Tamsin shrank closer to Ella, like a tortoise retreating into the safety of its shell to hide from danger. ‘Go away.’
Nikos leaned on the trolley to reduce his height and make himself less intimidating. ‘I will if you want me to, but first I was hoping if you could help me out with this. I have no idea what to do with it.’ From his pocket he produced a small stuffed mermaid with long golden hair. Despite her growing stress levels Ella couldn’t help smiling because it was so typical of him to know exactly how to relate to each patient.
People said he was cold, but she knew that wasn’t always the case.
The little girl’s expression changed from panic to interest. Still clutching Ella’s hand, she reached out for the toy, but Nikos held it just out of reach. ‘First you have to give her a name. What are we going to call her?’
Ella caught the startled expression on Alan’s face and knew that he was wondering why a professor of international repute would choose this moment to play mermaids with a little girl.
He looked at Nikos and saw him playing a frivolous game.
But Ella saw something very different.
She saw a skilled doctor using a distraction technique as a tool to give him answers. She saw Nikos’s gaze rest on the child’s chest as he assessed her breathing. She saw him encouraging the child to speak to him, so that he could evaluate how breathless she was.
And she saw a more relaxed child.
Look and learn, Alan, she thought wryly.
Nikos removed his stethoscope from his pocket. Tamsin immediately tensed and opened her mouth to protest loudly, but Nikos simply smiled and listened to the mermaid’s chest, a look of total concentration on his handsome face.
‘Well?’ Playing along, Ella asked the question with a solemn expression on her face. ‘How’s the mermaid?’
Nikos nodded slowly. ‘I think she might have swallowed some sea water but, other than that, she is good.’
Tamsin grabbed at the stethoscope. ‘Me.’
‘You want a turn?’ Ella stroked Tamsin’s silken curls. ‘Would you like to listen?’ She took Nikos’s stethoscope and pretended to put it to the child’s ears.
Seeing Ella smiling at Nikos, Tamsin started to relax. And Nikos was so skilful at dealing with her that by the time he finally placed the stethoscope on the child’s chest, the little girl was so fascinated by him that she simply reached up a chubby hand and tugged at his dark hair. Then she pushed the mermaid in front of him again and Nikos smiled.
‘She’s all yours, koritsi mou. Make sure you look after her.’
Ella felt her heart flip because this side of him always left her in a puddle. She’d seen him verbally dissect experienced doctors who had fallen short of his expectations, she knew he was capable of being ruthless when the need arose, and yet with a small child he was a pussy cat—extraordinarily gentle, all that latent strength and power firmly leashed.
It was so hard to hate this man. So hard.
Choked by the thought of what could have been, she concentrated her attention on the monitor.
‘Her sats are improving.’
Nikos nodded. ‘She’s doing fine.’
Despite the simmering tension between them, they worked together seamlessly, their movements smooth and slick as they did what needed to be done—a veneer of normality covering dangerous undercurrents…
Twice his fingers brushed against hers and in the end Ella stepped back from the trolley because although he was clearly indifferent to her, she didn’t think she had the control to be this close to him and not react. He registered her retreat with a faint narrowing of his eyes and she wished she knew what he was thinking.
Why was he so angry?
He should have been thanking her for making things easy for him.
For quietly accepting his cold email brush-off.
She studied his handsome face for signs of strain—some evidence that the separation of the last four months might have affected him in the same way that it had affected her. Had he lost weight? Did he look as though he’d suffered?
But his face showed no sign of the ravages of worry. He looked strong and healthy, as if the weaknesses that permeated other mortals were afraid to lay a hand on him. The collar of his white shirt was undone and for a moment Ella’s gaze lingered on the strong column of his throat, remembering how many times she’d pressed her mouth to that exact place. And his skin was a deeper bronze than usual, suggesting exposure to a more generous climate than that enjoyed by the South of England. Which reminded her of just one thing.
He’d been back in Greece.
With his beautiful Greek wife?
The pain almost split her in two and with the pain came anger.
He’d betrayed her and she needed to remember that. What she didn’t need was to be seduced all over again by his skills as a doctor.
‘So—her breathing is much improved.’ Having won the child’s confidence, Nikos addressed his remark to the little girl’s mother. ‘We need to try and establish what might have caused this attack. Her asthma is usually well managed?’
Still jiggling the baby in her arms, the woman nodded. ‘Yes. In the winter she sometimes has problems if she has a chest infection, but nothing like this. We’ve rented a house on the coast with my sister and her family. One minute she was playing happily, the next she couldn’t breathe.’
‘And she is well at the moment? No cold? No temperature?’ As he questioned the mother Nikos carried on examining Tamsin, this time checking her throat and her ears, feeling her glands and doing the same with the mermaid whenever required to do so by the little girl. ‘Nothing different?’
Ella’s heart jerked as her eyes settled on his skilled, bronzed fingers. Fingers that could save a life or drive awoman crazy.
She had so many questions.
Why was a billionaire playing at being a doctor?
Why hadn’t he told her the truth about himself?
The mother was trying to give him the answers he wanted. ‘I can’t think of anything. She hasn’t even been on the beach much because the children have mostly been playing in the house with the puppy.’
Nikos raised an eyebrow. ‘Puppy?’
‘I’m on holiday with my sister. They bought a puppy last week. A little spaniel. Tamsin loves the dog. They’ve been sleeping together.’
Ella exchanged a brief glance with Nikos just as the little girl snatched the mask off her face.
‘Want to see Bruno.’
