you finally stood up to him about something.’ He gave a short laugh. ‘Good for you. But that still doesn’t make you suitable material for an A and E doctor.’
She stiffened, refusing to be intimidated by his disparaging tone. ‘I was top of my year, Jago.’
‘I never said you weren’t bright and I’m sure you’d make an excellent GP,’ he said dismissively, his expression hard and uncompromising. ‘What was your last job?’
‘Paediatrics.’
‘Go back there,’ he advised silkily. ‘Accident and emergency is medicine in the raw. It’s a real job. It won’t suit you.’
Her heart was thumping so hard she felt dizzy.
‘I’ve done real jobs before.’
‘Really?’ He lifted an eyebrow, his tone heavy with sarcasm. ‘Just how much blood and serious, gut-wrenching trauma have you dealt with in your time, Katy?’
None.
She’d done the required medical and surgical house jobs after she’d qualified, of course, and then she’d done a year of paediatrics before deciding that it wasn’t the route she wanted to take in her career.
It had been her consultant on the paediatric ward who’d observed her calm, unflappable nature and suggested that she might like to consider A and E work.
And despite Jago’s acid comments, she knew she could do it.
‘I’ll be fine.’ She swallowed. If she was honest, she was slightly anxious about how she’d cope with major trauma, but she’d rather stop breathing than admit that to Jago. ‘Being a good doctor isn’t just about blood and guts. I’m good at communicating with patients and I have good instincts when it comes to judging clinical situations.’
His eyes raked over her from head to foot, taking in every inch of her appearance. ‘And do you really think that scraping back that blonde hair, wearing glasses that you don’t need and dressing like my grandmother is going to make you seem tougher?’
Katy touched the glasses self-consciously. Having long blonde hair and being considered exceptionally pretty had turned out to be a distinct disadvantage, so over the years she’d adopted a disguise. She’d discovered that if she dressed discreetly then people paid more attention to what she was saying. But not Jago, of course. He saw through the disguise right to her soul. He’d always been razor sharp.
She decided to be honest. ‘I wear the glasses because they make people take me more seriously.’
His laugh was unsympathetic. ‘And I bet you need all the help you can get, querida.’
She bristled at his tone and lifted her chin with an icy dignity that she’d learned from her mother.
‘I’m a good doctor, Jago.’ She’d had to prove it on umpteen occasions in the past so it was nothing new. ‘I’ll be fine.’
‘Too right you’ll be fine.’ His voice was lethally soft and contained more than a hint of menace. ‘You’ll be fine because I’m going to be breathing down your neck every minute of the day. Everything you do, Katy, every patient you see, I’m going to be there, next to you, watching. I do not need another lightweight doctor in this department. If someone is sick on those designer shoes of yours, you’re going to have to carry on to the end of the shift. You’re going to have to prove yourself to me. And you don’t have to be as good as everyone else, you have to be twice as good. Or you’re out.’
Her heart was thumping double time.
‘I’m not lightweight. You’re making judgements about me—’
‘Based on experience.’ He moved towards her. ‘I know you, Katy. I know how you think. You hate confrontation. There’s no way you’ll cope with A and E. I guarantee that after one week you’ll wish you were back in paediatrics.’
She licked her lips, her whole body pulsating in response to his looming proximity.
‘That won’t happen and you’re totally wrong about me.’
‘Yes?’ His black eyes were as hard as flint. ‘When I knew you, you didn’t even have the courage to stand up to your own father. You were terrified that he might find out you were seeing me.’
She tried to back away but there was nowhere to go. The cold metal of the lockers pressed through the thin fabric of her blouse.
It was true that at eighteen she’d been terrified of her father. And as it had turned out, her fear had been fully justified.
But Jago didn’t know that, of course. He’d vanished into the sunset before any of it could get ugly, ignorant of the devastation he’d left behind him.
He’d never known what her father was like.
Very few people did.
‘Your father was a tough man—probably still is—but he’s a walk in the park compared to some of the patients we see in this department on a Saturday night.’
A walk in the park?
Remembering just what had transpired after Jago had left, Katy was shocked into speechlessness.
He stepped closer. ‘You don’t like disagreements or controversy and you hate all forms of violence. We do violence quite well in A and E, you know.’ His tone was smooth. ‘Saturday afternoons after football and rugby, nights after the pubs close. What are you going to do when the department is full of drunks? What are you going to do when someone turns round and hits you?’
He was trying to scare her off but it wasn’t going to work.
The only thing that frightened her about working in A and E was being close to him.
Especially the way he was acting at the moment.
Like a madman.
As if he wasn’t the man who’d taken her virginity and then walked away without a backward glance.
She cast him a confused look. ‘Why are you being like this?’
His gaze was hard and unsympathetic. ‘Because this is a horrifically busy department and frankly I don’t have time to nursemaid someone who’s main concern in life is whether she needs to file her nails.’
He made her sound frivolous and shallow, but maybe she’d seemed that way to him when he’d known her at eighteen. One thing was sure, if they were ever going to be able to work together effectively, they had to get the past out of the way.
‘You don’t know me any more.’ She kept her tone conciliatory, the way she did when her father was in one of his scary moods. ‘It’s been eleven years since you last saw me. Maybe we should talk about what happened, Jago.’
Maybe he could explain why he’d walked away.
Jago’s eyes were cold and his broad shoulders were rigid with tension. ‘The past is history. There’s nothing that I want to talk about and if you’re trying to convince me that you’ve changed, you’re wasting your breath. You’re forgetting that I met the man you’re engaged to.’ He gave a short laugh. ‘That in itself was enough to prove to me that you haven’t changed one little bit.’
Maybe he had changed, she reflected. Despite his Spanish ancestry, Jago had always been so emotionally controlled that in the past she’d longed to do something which would shake him out of his almost permanent state of indifference. Yet she sensed that at this moment he was hanging onto control by little more than a thread. For the first time she was seeing a hint of that volatility that was supposed to characterise Mediterranean men.
But what she didn’t understand was why. Something had obviously really challenged his legendary cool and she had absolutely no idea what. And his lack of remorse about the way he’d treated her still puzzled her. He seemed so hard.