Guilty Secret Page 12

  ‘I’ve never tasted crumble like this before,’ he continued, almost drooling as he loaded the spoon again. ‘You’ve put some spice in it, haven’t you?’

  ‘Cinnamon, and a little brown sugar,’ she told him, mesmerised by his whole-hearted enjoyment of the simple dish. It was just more evidence, if she’d needed it, that he was a man who seemed to enjoy his senses to the full.

  ‘Sorry to sidetrack you. You were saying about Martin?’ he prompted, dragging her back to far less pleasant thoughts.

  ‘Yes. Martin.’ She sighed. ‘Unfortunately, the disco takes place on a weekend the girls are due to spend with their father.’

  ‘And he wouldn’t agree to swap weekends?’

  ‘I don’t even want to ask,’ she said bluntly. ‘I haven’t heard anything further about his decision to have the custody agreement changed, so just in case he’s having second thoughts, I don’t want to do anything to rock the boat.’

  ‘Didn’t Laura understand your reasoning?’ He was already scraping the last of the dessert from the bowl as though he would clean the pattern off it, too.

  ‘I haven’t told her.’

  ‘Why not? She’s an intelligent girl. I’m sure she’d see it was—’

  ‘I don’t want her to have to understand,’ Frankie broke in heatedly. ‘I don’t want to be one of those ex-wives who spends all her time bad-mouthing her husband. I might not love him or respect him any more, but he is still their father.’

  It wasn’t until he put his hand over hers that she realised she’d been twisting a teaspoon round and round between her fingers.

  ‘Hey, I understand,’ he assured her softly. ‘And I admire you for it. Most women would leap on the chance to make their ex look bad.’

  The look in Nick’s eyes was only compounding the warmth flowing from his hand into hers and if she didn’t do something now, the fact that there were two young girls upstairs wasn’t going to make a scrap of difference to what happened down here.

  ‘I just hope that in the end it’s worth all the heartache,’ she said quietly, reluctant to break the contact between them but knowing it had to be done.

  Time I went,’ he said, his voice sounding as raw as her nerves as he pushed his chair back from the table and stood.

  ‘Thanks for collecting the girls from school—again. And for running interference with Laura.’

  ‘You’re welcome, Frankie,’ he said as he thrust his arms into his sleeves. ‘Even when they’re not behaving perfectly, I still think your two are great. I’m quite envious.’

  ‘Well, it won’t be too long before you can get started on some of your own,’ she said brightly, looking up just in time to surprise a strange expression in his eyes.

  ‘Maybe,’ he said cryptically as he reached for the door.

  He had one hand on the handle when, with a muttered imprecation, he whirled back towards her, his head already angled to meet hers as his arms encircled her startled body.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  NICK had tasted of coffee and cinnamon and too many dreams that could never come true, Frankie thought as she hurried in the direction of the accident and emergency department the next morning.

  Just one touch of his mouth on hers and she’d been ready to abandon all trace of restraint, wanting nothing more than to wrap her arms around him and welcome him into her body.

  The trouble was, this time she knew absolutely that what she felt for him wasn’t just an overwhelming physical attraction. She was in love with him, heart and soul, and it had probably happened the first time she’d seen him, standing there dripping wet. She would never be able to forget the expression in those beautiful blue eyes as he’d looked her over, as if she was more tempting than any chocolate cake and he was greedy to devour her one sweet morsel at a time.

  In the end it had been love that had enabled her to draw back from the brink.

  Frankie would have loved nothing more than to have taken him to her bed and loved the night away, even with her impressionable daughters in the same house, but she wasn’t going to allow it to happen. She loved him too much to let him compromise his honour.

  ‘No more, Nick,’ she whispered, one finger pressed to his lips when he would have kissed her again. ‘This mustn’t happen any more.’

  ‘You don’t want it to happen?’ he challenged huskily with a telling glance towards the way her body was still tightly pressed against his.

  ‘That’s the trouble. I do want it to happen, but it can’t. It’s not fair to Vicky. It’s not fair to any of us.’

  She forced herself to take the step that would put space between the two of them, knowing she wouldn’t be able to find the words she needed if they were touching.

  ‘This is going to have to stop before people get hurt,’ she said, trying to sound firm when her heart was already breaking. ‘I’m very grateful that you’ve been willing to fetch the girls from school and that you’ve humoured them by accepting their invitations to meals and birthday treats, but they’re getting too attached to you. They won’t understand when you don’t have time for them any more.’

  ‘You don’t want me to see them any more?’ he demanded roughly, and she could have sworn that there was pain in his eyes. ‘You want to cut off any association between us just like that?’

  ‘It would probably be for the best,’ she agreed softly, throwing a worried glance towards the door leading to the hallway and hoping that their voices wouldn’t carry as far as the bedrooms. ‘Once you’re married to Vicky you’ll be going home rather than sitting in the reception area, supervising their homework. You’ll be having your meals with her and spending your weekends with her.’

  ‘Anyone would think you were jealous,’ he accused, his tone heated even though his expression was stony.

  ‘Yes. In a way, I am jealous,’ she admitted, opting for a partial truth even though she couldn’t tell him of her love. ‘I…We’ve enjoyed spending time with you. Sometimes it’s been almost as if we were a real family.

  Martin left them so long ago that Laura and Katie can’t remember what that was like, but they’ve now got an idea of what they’ve been missing.’

  ‘And you’ve had a taste or two of what you’ve been missing,’ he pointed out cuttingly. ‘Did you enjoy that, too?’

  It distressed her that he would try to denigrate what they’d found in each other’s arms, but if he was hurting even a fraction as much as she was, she could forgive him.

  ‘Yes, I enjoyed it,’ she admitted, refusing to look away from the accusation in his eyes even though her own were burning with the threat of tears. ‘But I lo—I respect you too much to try to hang onto something that isn’t right for any of us.’

  ‘What gives you the right to make all the decisions?’ he demanded harshly, his frustration showing as he speared his fingers through his hair. ‘How do you know it isn’t right?’

  ‘Because it can’t be,’ she snapped back, suddenly reaching the end of her tether. ‘I’m a divorced older woman who’s already had one run-in with a man who didn’t mind cheating on me. I’m already heading towards middle age with two almost-teenage daughters and a possible custody fight on my hands. And while you might want to carry on a temporary red-hot affair, you’re not free to do anything about any of it.’

  Nick left after that, closing the door so quietly behind him that it was somehow more telling than if he’d slammed it, hard.

  She spent a wretched night, uselessly trying to find some alternative to banishing him from her life when she knew there wasn’t one.

  The air at the breakfast table was almost poisonous with Laura’s realisation that even her sulking hadn’t persuaded her mother to change her mind about the disco. Even Katie was subdued, not even producing her usual groan when Frankie reminded her to leave her things ready to go to her father’s that night.

  At least she had a weekend to herself to look forward to, Frankie consoled herself. With any luck she’d catch up on some of her sleep and be over this wretche
d bug by the time the girls returned on Sunday night.

  In the meantime, she had a patient waiting for her in the accident and emergency department. According to the message passed on to the GP unit, Joe needed someone to come and help him deal with a dislocated shoulder, and Frankie was the first one available.

  To her surprise, it was Vicky waiting with the patient in the treatment room, and the patient was Joe Faraday himself, stripped to the waist and looking thoroughly miserable.

  ‘Joe! What on earth happened to you?’ Automatically she registered that his face was grey and pinched with pain and she couldn’t miss the way he was cradling his arm against his naked chest.

  Tight with a bullock,’ he muttered through clenched teeth.

  ‘Some bullocks got out onto the road and he was putting them back into the field. One of them didn’t want to go,’ Vicky elaborated swiftly.

  Her manner was almost nervous, but that was something Frankie didn’t have time to ponder. The obvious deformity of the joint and the way he was protecting it were telling their own story. The ball joint had come out of the shoulder socket and could even now be pinching nerves or blood vessels. If they weren’t released quickly, permanent damage could be done.

  Frankie began a gentle palpation to establish the precise direction of the dislocation, hoping that there would be no signs of fracture, and was interrupted by Vicky.

  ‘When I checked, his distal pulse was strong and there didn’t seem to be any nerve deficit,’ she said helpfully, removing two of Frankie’s main concerns.

  ‘Happened before,’ Joe muttered, stifling a groan as Frankie inadvertently increased his discomfort during her examination.

  ‘Frequently?’ she demanded, knowing that a shoulder that recurrently dislocated was a different matter altogether. That might need surgery to make it stay where it belonged.

  ‘Once. Playing rugby at med school. No trouble since.’ The staccato delivery was enough to tell her the degree of pain and Frankie reached for a mask.

  ‘Time to get this show on the road, then,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Start taking some good steady breaths while we get you comfortable and into position and then we’ll reassemble you.’

  Vicky took the mask out of her hand to settle it over Joe’s face and even while she was contacting Trish to notify her they were going to need an X-ray, Frankie couldn’t help noticing the gentle way she helped their patient to lie back on the couch.

  ‘Do you need any help in here, or shall I go?’ Nick announced, drawing their attention to his presence as he came into the room. ‘It looks as if you’ve already got half the hospital staff in here.’

  ‘It doesn’t count if one of them is the patient,’ Frankie announced, and turned back to Joe, but the fact that she wasn’t looking at Nick didn’t stop her awareness of him as he drew close behind her. ‘Would you rather pull or manipulate?’

  ‘If you’re feeling strong, you can pull,’ Nick directed as he stepped up beside the couch. ‘How’s the anaesthesia going, Vicky? Has he had enough to give birth yet?’

  There was a muffled growl from behind the mask that translated to something roughly the equivalent of ‘Stop making jokes and get on with it’.

  Frankie couldn’t help responding to the rueful grin Nick sent her way, then it was time to concentrate on the job in hand.

  She moved Joe’s arm gently until she was certain that the Entonox had deadened the pain sufficiently, then she moved it until it was pointing sideways from his shoulder and locked her hands around his wrist.

  ‘Ready?’ she asked as Nick positioned himself in the angle between Joe’s arm and his body, his thumbs positioned on the protruding ball of the misplaced joint.

  ‘Ready,’ he confirmed, and Frankie began to pull.

  She hadn’t realised that Joe was quite so fit and well muscled. In fact, she’d hardly noticed very much about him at all as he seemed to make a habit of fading pretty much into the background. She certainly knew that he must be doing some form of regular exercise to keep himself in such good shape, and it was those strong muscles that were making her job so difficult at the moment.

  It was all very well having well-toned muscles around the shoulder joint, but when they were actively locking the component parts out of joint it was a different matter.

  ‘We’re going to need to swap jobs,’ Frankie admitted when she couldn’t get quite enough traction to pull the arm back into position. ‘I think Joe must have been working out on the sly to get muscles like these.’

  It was one thing to change places so they could get the job done. It was another thing entirely to have to squeeze past Nick between the couch and his body without rubbing up against every inch of him like an over-friendly cat. And under Vicky’s gaze, too.

  Frankie was glad to have to bend forward to concentrate on her new task but almost wished that she had long hair to hide the heat that had bloomed in her cheeks.

  ‘Ready?’ Nick prompted, and began to apply traction, pulling the head of the humerus away from the body just far enough for Frankie to thumb it back into position with an audible snick.

  ‘Got it!’ she said with satisfaction as she straightened up. ‘Now all we need to do is take a picture to confirm reduction and rule out any fractures.’

  ‘Can you move your fingers, Joe?’ Nick prompted, and they all smiled when he complied. ‘Good. Now, you know as well as I do that you’ll be in a sling for a few days but if you want to regain the mobility in the joint, don’t forget to exercise it.’

  ‘Always remembering that for the first three weeks you mustn’t combine lateral rotation with abduction,’ Frankie added.

  ‘Dear Lord, preserve me,’ Joe groaned, his Scots accent somehow more pronounced than usual. ‘Am I going to have every one of you clucking around me?’

  ‘Probably,’ Frankie confirmed cheerfully. ‘You’re one of us, and we take care of our own.’

  He muttered something unintelligible under his breath as Vicky helped him to sit up. He tried to don his shirt unaided but had to admit defeat in the end.

  Frankie heard a phone ring in the reception area outside the room and suddenly looked around for a clock.

  ‘Goodness! I’ve got patients waiting,’ she announced. ‘Vicky, I’ll leave Joe in your capable hands. I’ve got to run.’

  She was partway down the corridor before she realised that Nick was following her. She felt strangely vulnerable, knowing that he might be watching her, and instinct had her wanting to turn and confront him. Common sense told her that it was just a coincidence that they were both travelling in the same direction and she lengthened her stride.

  ‘It won’t work,’ he said softly, easily keeping pace with her. ‘My legs are longer than yours.’

  She knew they were longer, and more muscled and patterned with intriguing dark hair that abraded her own legs when they…

  ‘Avoidance isn’t going to work,’ he said bluntly, echoing her own despairing thoughts as they crossed the central atrium on their way to the GP unit.

  ‘You might want to pretend that the connection between us doesn’t exist,’ he continued, his voice still forceful for all that he was keeping it low enough to reach only her ears. ‘And you might want to cut me out of your life, but you can’t do either of them. There is a connection, and unless either one of us leaves Edenthwaite, we’re going to remain a part of each other’s lives.’

  There wasn’t time for Frankie to reply, even if she could think of anything to say, as there was a waiting room full of patients waiting to be seen. In addition, she realised, the rest of the GPs on duty were going to have to share Joe’s patients between them.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ Nick began, obviously having come to the same conclusion, ‘Dr Faraday will be unable to see any patients today. Those of you who are waiting to see him are welcome to make another appointment if you’d rather not see another doctor. Those of you who need to be seen today, if you don’t mind waiting, we’ll share you out among us.’

&nb
sp; ‘Shall I give the same message to people as they arrive?’ Mara murmured to Frankie under cover of the ensuing hubbub of conversation.

  ‘It might be worthwhile to phone the ones who haven’t set off from home yet. It would save them a journey if they’d rather wait till Joe’s back.’

  ‘Can you tell me why he hasn’t come in?’ Mara probed delicately, aware of the many surrounding pairs of ears.

  ‘Had a minor accident on his way to work,’ Frankie said briefly, knowing that Mara was discreet enough to choose the right moment to pass the information on to the rest of the unit’s staff. ‘Could you give me a moment to get myself organised then send the first one in?’

  It was such a pig of a day that Frankie was afraid she wasn’t going to finish in time to collect Laura and Katie from school. That would have been the final irony, to have had to ask Nick to fetch them the very day after she’d told him it mustn’t happen any more.

  Laura was in such a bad mood, knowing that the disco was due to start in a matter of hours, that for the first time since the divorce Frankie actually breathed a sigh of relief when Martin’s car receded down the lane taking the children away.

  Then guilt swept over her. What sort of mother was she, to be relieved that her children were going away for a weekend?’

  ‘A normal one,’ she declared aloud, needing the affirmation of actually hearing the words. ‘I’m not just a mother. That’s only one facet of who I am.’

  She gave a single nod for emphasis and set off for the kitchen, already planning what she was going to cook for her evening meal. Something…something that she didn’t normally have because the children didn’t like it. Something with ginger and spices and lots of crunchy vegetables. Definitely a stir-fried something.

  Frankie stood in front of the cupboards, all the doors open while she took an assortment of herbs and spices out and added them to the growing selection.

  When she finally served it out, her meal was the most glorious mixture of textures and flavours. The dish might never have made its way into the pages of any cookery book, but it was exactly what she needed tonight.