up, but with a firm, decisive hand he stopped her.
‘Just there. Look.’ He pointed out through the window. ‘In the sunshine. Babies need fresh air. He’s fine.’ He knitted his black brows together furiously and a look of sweet concern came over his face. ‘But it isn’t Simon I’m worried about—it’s you! Darling, how’s your head?’
Darling? Triss wondered if hearing things was a well-known side-effect of banging your head. ‘What happened?’
‘You slipped on the kitchen floor. You must have spilt something—’
‘Egg,’ she put in, as if in a trance, and saw him frown at her rather dreamy response.
‘You were only out a couple of minutes,’ he continued, his gaze scanning her face closely. ‘But I called Michael and Martha immediately. Michael is on call at the hospital, but Martha is on her way over. She’ll be here shortly. She’s going to look after Simon while I take you to the hospital.’
‘Hospital?’ Triss protested. ‘But I don’t need to go to hospital!’ She tried to sit up again, but waves of nausea washed over her and she slumped back against the pile of cushions which Cormack must have built up into a small mountain behind her head.
‘Oh, yes, you do!’ he retorted swiftly. ‘Martha says that as you lost consciousness—’
‘Only for a few seconds!’ she pointed out.
‘A few seconds or a few hours—either way, you still need an X-ray.’
‘Rubbish!’
‘Beatrice—’ he began, and Triss could not remember seeing him look quite so stern. ‘I am not playing games here. Now, either you allow me to take you to the hospital when your sister-in-law arrives or I call an ambulance and we go there right now, with sirens blaring and lights flashing and a very confused little baby into the bargain!’
Triss slumped back again, feeling weak and helpless but also oddly satisfied. She had been on her own with Simon for so long that she had forgotten what it was like to be able to lean on someone else for a change. And it was rather comforting, she realised, to have someone else to make the decisions—even if Cormack did tend towards the very bossy!
‘OK?’ he quizzed.
‘OK,’ she agreed, at the same time as the doorbell pealed out. Cormack hurried out of the room to answer it.
He returned minutes later with Martha, her sister-in-law, who rushed over to Triss’s side, her worried expression clearing slightly when Triss managed a wide smile.
‘Are you OK?’ she demanded, her fingers swiftly moving to Triss’s pulse.
‘I’m fine.’
‘Where’s Simon?’
‘In his pram outside,’ answered Cormack. ‘He needs some breakfast.’
‘Right.’ Martha nodded decisively.
‘But I can give him his breakfast!’ objected Triss on a pathetic little wail. ‘And I don’t want to go to the wretched hospital either!’
Martha merely looked up and said serenely, ‘Cormack?’
He bent down, scooped Triss up into his arms and carried her out to the car, and Triss could not help but notice the rather complacent smile on her sister-in-law’s face as he buckled up her seat belt for her.
She felt dozy in the car, and she caught Cormack giving her a sharp, sideways glance before turning an even paler colour—something which Triss had not thought was physically possible.
‘It should be you going to hospital!’ she joked shakily.
‘Keep talking,’ he said grimly.
‘Why?’
‘Because Martha told me you weren’t to sleep. Talk to me, Triss,’ he implored.
‘About?’
‘About anything. About what is closest to your heart. Tell me about the day our son was born.’
It was the hardest thing she had ever had to do, but it served its purpose because it kept her talking. The words spilled out in an emotional torrent as she described the first sharp pain of labour which had speared at her womb in the middle of the night.
‘He came a couple of weeks earlier than he was meant to,’ she explained. ‘I hadn’t planned to be on my. own.’
She saw the muscle which had begun to work convulsively in his left cheek.
‘What did you do?’
‘I rang Martha. She came straight away—which was loyalty beyond the call of duty, considering it was three in the morning! She kept me calm, kept me talking. Helped with my breathing. She...’ Triss, bit her lip.
‘She what?’
‘She wanted to ring you.’
His mouth thinned. ‘But you wouldn’t let her, I suppose?’
‘No. And you must hate me for that. For denying you the opportunity of seeing your son born.’ Was it the wooziness from knocking her head which gave her the courage to voice her greatest fear? she wondered. Or was it simply that she had never known Cormack quite so approachable, quite so open with her?
‘How could I hate you, Triss,’ he answered simply, ‘when only a fool would fail to see why you acted as you did?’ He changed down a gear. ‘We’re here,’ he announced, with an unmistakable note of relief in his voice.
Triss was disappointed that their arrival at the hospital meant that their conversation was cut short, but one fact remained in her mind, bright as a new lightbulb—Cormack didn’t hate her. He didn’t love her, no, but at least he didn’t hate her. So would that be foundation enough to start to reconstruct their relationship?
He insisted on carrying her all the way into the accident and emergency department. Triss initially felt mortified at such a brazen display of masculine strength, and she was only slightly cheered by the ill-disguised looks of admiration on the faces of every woman they passed, with Cormack striding along like a hero from a costume drama!
In A&E the nurse in charge said to him rather reprimandingly, ‘You really should have got a wheelchair, sir!’
To which Cormack replied, ‘But why bother? I rather like this method of transport!’
And so did Triss—that was the trouble. In fact, she really missed his warmth and strength when they told her to lie down on some horrible cold, unyielding hospital trolley.
When the X-ray result came back, Triss was given the all-clear. The doctor handed Cormack a sheet of instructions on what abnormal signs to look for which might indicate that she needed to come back to hospital. ‘And no emotional stress, please!’ he warned perceptively as he picked up on some of the incredible tension which seemed to be flowing between the two of them.
Unfortunately, the doctor’s instruction seemed to give Cormack the idea that he now had carte blanche to run Triss’s life as he saw fit!
He banished her to bed on their return home and saw Martha off, and then proceeded to take full charge of Simon for the next two days—as if he had recently graduated with honours in childcare!
‘How d’you know so much about babies?’ Triss enquired as she spooned up the tomato soup he had brought her on a tray and watched while he constructed yet another pile of wooden bricks for Simon to swipe at with a chubby fist.
‘How did you?’ he countered, with a lazy smile.
‘Instinct coupled with trial and error, I guess.’
‘Same here,’ he grinned. ‘Though I discovered to my cost that Simon doesn’t like having his hair washed!’
‘Er—no,’ agreed Triss, thinking that that was the understatement