very sure she pulled her weight on the team and did her best to reassure her patients. They’d gone for a coffee after that first shift, and had dated every night after that. The more time he’d spent with her, the more deeply he’d fallen in love with her.
Small wonder that they’d gone to bed together within a week and had moved in together within a month. They hadn’t wanted to spend a single moment apart.
Yet they’d spent the past four years as far apart as they could be: Marina in London, and he moving from disaster zone to disaster zone, pushing himself to the limit so he wouldn’t have to think about how much he’d lost.
He closed his eyes briefly. Now wasn’t the time or the place. He and Marina were going to have to talk about it, but not now, and definitely not here. Right now, he had a job to do. And so did she.
Marina was rostered on the children’s section of the emergency department that morning; that was good, because it meant she didn’t have to see Max. Not unless there was a really difficult case where she needed a second opinion. But she was in luck: her first case was a toddler who’d stuffed a plastic bead up her nose, her second was a child with a cough that she suspected was asthmatic, and her third was one who’d fallen in the playground and gashed his arm deeply enough to need stitches and a lot of reassurance. All things that needed a bit of time, reassurance and TLC as well as medical treatment, and she knew she was perfectly capable of dealing with all of them on her own.
Everything was fine until she took her break. The second that she made herself a mug of coffee in the kitchen, Max walked in, as if he had some weird kind of radar that told him exactly when she’d be there.
‘How’s Phoebe?’ he asked.
‘Doing OK, thanks. Mum’s looking after her today again.’
He made himself a coffee, then took a bar of chocolate from the pocket of his white coat, snapped it in half and handed half to her.
She accepted it without thinking, the way she always had when they’d worked together. ‘Thanks.’ Then she stared at the chocolate, suddenly realising what they’d both done.
Just like old times.
Except they’d both come a long way in the last four years.
‘I didn’t have time for breakfast this morning,’ he said with the quirky smile that had once made her knees melt.
She remembered those days. Even though their flat had been a ten-minute walk from the hospital, they’d never had time for breakfast. Because they’d been too busy making love.
She took a gulp of coffee and willed the memories to stay back.
‘So what’s wrong with Rosie?’ he asked. ‘I overheard Kelly asking you how she was.’
‘Pre-eclampsia,’ Marina explained. ‘They’ve kept her in so she’ll get some rest and they can monitor how the baby’s doing.’
‘Is it OK if I go and see her?’ he asked.
She frowned. ‘Why would you want to do that?’
He sighed. ‘Look, I know things didn’t work out between us, but I liked your family.’
And they’d liked him. A lot.
Pity that the same couldn’t be said of the way Max’s family had felt about her. Kay Fenton had seen Marina as a rival for her son’s affections, and Andrew Fenton had usually been away on business trips. Marina had found them distant and cold, the complete opposite of her own family. And when everything had gone wrong, and Marina had been at her most vulnerable, the Fentons had made it very clear that they weren’t going to offer her a shoulder to cry on. Andrew, as usual, had been absent, and Kay had actually said that it was for the best—that it was the wrong time for Max to have a baby when he had his career to think about.
How could anyone possibly say that a miscarriage was ‘for the best’? All this time later, it still took her breath away.
‘Marina?’
It wasn’t Max’s fault that his mother was supremely tactless. ‘It’s not up to me to give you permission. If you want to visit Rosie—’ she spread her hands ‘—then visit her. But bear in mind she has pre-eclampsia. The last thing she needs right now is any kind of worry that’ll make her blood pressure rise.’
‘As a medic, I’d just about worked that one out for myself,’ Max said drily.
‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude.’ She blew out a breath. ‘It’s just…’
‘She’s your big sister, you love her and you worry about her,’ Max supplied.
‘Yes.’
‘It’s good that she has family who care.’
Marina was careful not to comment, and she took refuge in eating the chocolate he’d given her.
He sighed. ‘Look, if you’re worrying—nobody here knows about Bristol. And I’m happy for it to stay that way. I don’t like being gossiped about, either. If anyone twigs that we know each other, we’ll just tell them we worked together years ago and lost touch.’
It was the truth. Just not the whole truth. And it left out a hell of a lot of pain in between. ‘Thank you,’ she said quietly.
He looked away. ‘We have to work together, and there’s enough tension in an emergency department as it is without adding to it.’
‘Agreed.’
‘So can we just drop the formality and treat each other like any other member of staff?’
‘Sure.’ But he wasn’t just ‘any other member of staff’. He never could be. But Marina had already been there, done that and had her heart well and truly broken. She wasn’t going to take that risk a second time. No matter that she still found Max incredibly attractive physically; she knew that they weren’t compatible. And, although part of her would’ve been more than happy to walk back into his arms, part of her knew that it’d be a huge mistake. She’d simply be setting herself up for more misery. So she was going to have to learn to think of him as just a colleague.
Somehow.
She drained her coffee. ‘I’d better get back. Thanks for the chocolate.’
‘Pleasure.’
During his lunch break, Max called in at the hospital shop to buy chocolates and a puzzle magazine—he’d already learned that the hospital had a clear-locker-top policy, and flowers were discouraged, to help in the battle with hygiene—and went up to the maternity ward.
‘We have protected lunchtimes, I’m afraid,’ the senior midwife told him firmly. ‘Sorry. You’ll have to come back later.’
‘Is there any chance you can bend the rules for me, as staff?’ Max asked. ‘I promise to be quiet. And I have a feeling that this particular patient hates being on bed rest. So that’s fifteen minutes or so when you won’t have to keep an eye on her and nag her, because I can do it for you.’
She glanced at his name-tag. ‘Ah. You work with Rosie’s sister?’
‘I do indeed.’ Max had no intention of giving the more complicated explanation—that Rosie was his ex-sister-in-law. He held out his free hand. ‘Max Fenton, emergency senior registrar.’
She shook his hand and introduced herself. ‘Iris Rutherford, senior midwife. No doubt we’ll be working together at some point.’
‘Good to meet you outside of a crisis.’ Max gave her his most charming smile.
‘All right. You can have fifteen minutes,’ Iris said. ‘But you’d better make sure she rests and doesn’t move, or I’ll be forced to scalp you.’
He laughed, enjoying her direct approach. ‘I will. Thank you, Iris.’
Max followed her directions;