flashed a smile at him, a streak of dirt on her cheek giving her the impish, mischievous look of a little girl having way too much fun—and he didn’t really want to start thinking about Daisy having fun, because it was a long, long time since he’d had fun with a woman, and for all she might look fleetingly like the little girl she’d once been, there was nothing but woman under those clothes. And he was taking her out to dinner?
He cleared his throat, nodded curtly and went.
‘Phew.’
Daisy straightened up, blew the hair back out of her eyes and looked around. Utter chaos, but at least it was organised chaos now. The rubble was swept into a heap, the boxes had been blotted dry and the water sucked up—and she was going to be late for work, today of all days!
She fled, grabbing the quickest shower on record and dragging on her clothes. Her hair would have to do, she decided, pulling it back and doubling it into a loose bun in an elastic band. No time for makeup. No time for anything, and the new consultant was starting today.
Great start, she thought. Please God he wasn’t an arrogant snob—or a tedious box-ticker. One of them on the team was more than enough. She ran to the car, paused in the street to shut her garden gates and headed for the hospital.
On the way she took a call from the plumber, then dropped Ben’s suit into the cleaners in the hospital reception area, instructing them to be careful. She’d seen the label, and it had made her wince.
Then she legged it for the ward.
By the time she got there, people were clustered around the nursing station. She could see a man’s head slightly above the rest, hear a quiet voice giving some kind of team-leading chat, and her heart sank. Damn. He was here already, doing the meet and greet. So much for making a good impression.
Evan Jones, the specialist registrar, gave the ward clock a pointed look as she squeezed into the group.
‘Sorry I’m—’ she began a little breathlessly, and then stopped in her tracks as the man turned and met her eyes, and if she hadn’t been so busy staring at him in shock she would have missed the quickly masked flicker of surprise.
‘Mr Walker, this is Dr Fuller,’ Evan said, sounding and looking unimpressed, but Ben’s professional smile did something utterly different in his eyes, and he brushed Evan smoothly aside.
‘Yes, we’ve met. Dr Fuller’s very kindly been doing something for me,’ he explained, cutting him off at the knees, and then turned back to her. ‘Any joy?’
Still shocked, running on autopilot and ready to fall in love with him for saving her from another tedious lecture, she nodded. ‘Yes, it’s sorted,’ she told him without missing a beat. He’d found a plaster, she thought, staring at the cut above his eyebrow, but apart from that you’d never know how his day had started. He looked cool, calm and in control—more than she was.
‘Thank you. I don’t think you’ve missed much,’ he said with a wry smile, then he looked back at the group. ‘As I was saying, I’m looking forward to working with you all, and I hope you’ll forgive me when I ask silly, irritating questions and don’t know where things are or how they’re done here. I’ll do my best to make this transition as painless as possible, if you’ll just bear with me, and if you’ve got anything you want to talk about, my door’s always open, so to speak.’
He smiled at them all. ‘Right, that’s it, everybody. I know you’ve all got plenty to do, so I won’t hold you up. Dr Jones, rather than keep you from our patients any longer, why don’t I get Dr Fuller to show me round? I need to speak to her anyway, so she might as well give me a quick tour and I’ll introduce myself to her properly, then I suggest we meet for coffee at nine thirty, if that’s all right, and you can fill me in on anything she might have missed and show me the department in detail. Any problems with that, either of you?’
Evan looked a bit startled, but conceded with a stiff little nod. ‘No, you go ahead, Mr Walker. I’m sure Dr Fuller can tell you everything you need to know. I don’t really have time, anyway. There are some patients I need to see urgently.’
‘Clare Griffiths,’ she said, worrying about her as she had been all weekend. ‘How’s she doing?’
‘I’ve seen her already. Don’t worry, I can manage without you,’ he said dismissively, and Ben frowned. He didn’t like the sound of that at all. In fact, he was beginning not to like Evan Jones …
‘Fine. We’ll catch up with you later,’ he said, and without pausing for breath, he ushered Daisy towards the doors.
‘Doing something for you?’ she muttered under her breath, and his laugh, low and soft and inaudible except to her whispered over her nerve endings and made her shiver.
She gulped as he swiped his ID over the sensor and pushed the door open for her.
‘Well, you were, it wasn’t a lie. OK, first things first. I want you to fill me in on everything there is to know about the department and its politics—starting with the location of the nearest decent coffee.’ His mouth tipped into a wry grin. ‘Breakfast was unexpectedly cancelled.’
She had a vision of him covered in his ceiling, and grinned back. ‘Indeed. Full English, Mr Walker, or would you rather have something sweet and sinful?’
His eyes flared slightly, and for a second her breath hitched in her throat. ‘Oh, I think sweet and sinful sounds rather promising, Dr Daisy, don’t you?’ he murmured, and followed her out of the ward while she tried to remember how to breathe.
‘So—the plumber’s coming at seven?’ Ben said as they sat down with huge mugs of coffee and wickedly sticky buns—sweet and sinful, she’d said, and he had to try very, very hard to keep his thoughts on track as he watched her bite into hers. ‘Is that seven today or in three years’ time?’
‘No, today,’ she said with a laugh, taking down her hair and twisting it back up again into a knot. Pity. He preferred it down. It looked soft, silky, and he could almost imagine sifting the long, dark strands through his fingers—
He stirred his coffee for something safe to do with his hands and dragged his mind back in line again. ‘So how come he’s available this quickly? Usually if a tradesman’s any good, you have to wait weeks. Do you know him?’
She nodded. ‘Yes. He’s doing it as a favour to me, and he is good. He refitted my bathroom for me.’
‘Ah. Yes. Your lovely bathroom. I’m afraid I left it in a horrendous mess.’
‘Don’t worry, it’s fine, I’ll deal with it later.’
‘So did he charge a fortune, or did your landlord pay?’
‘Landlord? I don’t have a landlord,’ she said ruefully. ‘It’s my house, and he was very reasonable, as plumbers go.’
‘You’re buying it alone?’ he added, fishing, although it was none of his business and utterly irrelevant, he told himself firmly. He was not interested.
She nodded and pulled a face. ‘Although sometimes I wonder how I got myself in this situation. I must be mad. I wanted my own house because I was fed up with unscrupulous landlords but I’m not quite convinced I’m really grown up enough!’
Oh, he was sure she was. She was certainly grown up enough to satisfy his frankly adolescent fantasies, he thought. She was biting into the sticky bun again and it was giving him heart failure watching her lick her lips.
And they were colleagues and neighbours? Sheesh, he thought, and was hauling his mind back to work when she spoke again.
‘So how about you?’ she asked, her clear green eyes studying him curiously. ‘I mean, you’re a consultant, so clearly you’re old enough to have a house, but—well, without being rude, what’s a consultant doing buying a run-down little semi in a place like Yoxburgh?’
Good question—and one he had