‘I THOUGHT the words Olivia and workaholic had been permanently welded together. It’s good to see that they haven’t,’ said a voice from the doorway, and Olivia nearly tipped her cup over herself.
Unfortunately, the man coming across the staffroom wasn’t the man she wanted to see.
‘Ri — Mr d’Agostino,’ she stammered as she tried to fight her way out of a chair that seemed loath to release her from its saggy refuge.
‘Rick, please,’ he corrected firmly and held a staying hand up. ‘Don’t get up when you’ve managed to get the most comfortable seat in the room. The upholstery in most of them is too hard for any sort of relaxation.’
‘Perhaps the hospital wants to make sure we don’t fall asleep during our tea breaks,’ Olivia suggested, marvelling that she was able to put any sort of coherent sentence together while all she could think about was that there must be a major problem with his findings if Gregor’s consultant was seeking her out like this.
That fear only intensified when, without even pausing to get himself a drink, the handsome man folded his lean body into the chair beside her.
‘So, what’s the decision? Is it on for Monday?’ he asked, seeming almost boyishly eager as he smiled at her.
‘Monday?’ Olivia blinked. ‘What’s happening on Monday? What decision?’ Suddenly she realised just how foolish she was being. What else would the orthopaedic surgeon be talking about but…? ‘You can operate? You’re going to operate on Gregor? You can help him?’
Her overwhelming delight that something could be done for the man she loved almost outweighed the fact that he hadn’t come to tell her himself. Then she saw the chagrined expression on the consultant’s face and was angry that Gregor’s thoughtlessness had caused this embarrassment, especially for a man who seemed so keen to help.
‘I’m sorry. I appear to have jumped the gun,’ he apologised. ‘I take it Gregor hasn’t had a chance to speak to you yet.’
‘Or hasn’t tried to,’ she muttered under her breath, confusion filling her head. If Rick d’Agostino had told Gregor that there was an operation that could help him, why on earth hadn’t he come straight to her to let her know the good news…unless…?
‘Will the operation give him the chance to get out of the wheelchair — to be able to use his legs again — or was it only going to be able to give him a better quality of life? Or…or did you find other, unexpected problems that — ?’
‘I’m sorry, Olivia,’ he interrupted with a pained expression. ‘If Gregor hasn’t told you what’s going on, then patient confidentiality prevents me from discussing anything with you without his permission.’
‘But — ’
‘I’m really sorry,’ he apologised as he unfolded to his full height. ‘Just…just ask him to contact me before the weekend if he decides he wants the slot on Monday. Tell him I’ll keep it open for him until then.’
Olivia watched, wide-eyed, as the man hurried out of the room and her blood began to boil.
Not that she was angry with Rick. The poor man had been put in that uncomfortable position through no fault of his own. After all, what patient wouldn’t have hurried back to his nearest and dearest with the news that such an eminent surgeon was willing to operate on him? What normal person wouldn’t have been eager to pass on the good news that…?
But that was the problem, wasn’t it?
She didn’t even know if it was good news.
She had no idea whether the orthopaedic surgeon had reached the verdict that he would be able to completely restore Gregor’s ability to walk and carry on a normal life, or if he would only be able to relieve some of the pain that still left him intermittently dependent on heavy-duty analgesia nearly two years after he had been injured.
In all probability, the reality would be somewhere between those two extremes, but the very fact that Gregor hadn’t come to tell her about it was ominous.
She flicked a glance at the big clock up above the unit housing the tea and coffee and a vast collection of mismatched cups and mugs, and calculated that she had at least another ten minutes before she had to rejoin the fray…longer if the current lull continued until the usual rash of admissions around the time the children came out of school.
Well, that was long enough to track the wretched man down, she decided as she hurriedly rinsed out her cup and tipped it up on the draining board. And the first place she was going to look for that particular wounded animal was in his temporary lair.
She stuck her head round the door of the treatment room he’d made his own over the last couple of days, but it was empty, everything pristinely ready for the next patient who needed it. So, the next stop was the room they’d been allocated, and all the time she was waiting for the lift to arrive, then travelling up in a compartment that seemed to need stop at every single floor on the way, she forced herself to replay in her mind every one of the articles she’d pulled up on the medical website that had anything to do with injuries to the hips, pelvis and lower spine.
By the time she flung open the door to their temporary home, she’d drawn up a comprehensive mental list of all the possible orthopaedic complications that could have been thrown up by the tests Rick would have ordered. She was ready to grill Gregor to find out exactly what problems they would be facing and had even drawn breath to fire the first question at him, but the room was empty.
The bathroom door was open, too, so she didn’t even have to set foot over the threshold to know he wasn’t there.
She knew he had been there, and fairly recently, too. The room was still redolent of the mixture of soap, shampoo and man that lingered in the air from his shower that morning, and she could almost see him, with droplets of water scattered over those impressive shoulders and his dark hair sexily rumpled from his usual haphazard rub with a towel.
Now, she could see that his infamous leather jacket was missing from the back of the chair, but where he would have gone with the threat of rain in the air had her totally stumped.
If he wasn’t here and he hadn’t offered his services down in A and E after his appointment, where on earth was he? Where could he have gone to lick his wounds…presuming that Rick’s conclusions had left him with wounds to lick. Where would she choose to go if…?
A mental image of the soothing oasis that they had made of their flat and how much she’d valued it in the dreadful days after she’d been told he was dead told her exactly where Gregor would have gone if he needed time to think.
The fact that he’d needed to do that thinking without her — without even talking to her before he’d left — hurt more than she could have anticipated. Only a few hours ago they’d been as close as any two people could be, physically and mentally…at least, that’s what she’d believed.
She’d actually found herself smiling in those few minutes when she’d been able to forget about his appointment with the orthopaedic surgeon, and was certain that at times the smile must have widened into a soppy grin as she’d painted new versions of happily-ever-after inside her head and her heart.
So, what was she going to do about this?
Was she going to nurse her hurt at being shut out, and let it fester?
Was she going to allow his need for some private time to come to terms with…with whatever Rick had told him…come between them?
Or was she going to grasp the nettle and fight for what she wanted — Gregor in her life, for all of her life?
It didn’t take long to let A and E know that she needed some personal time, and bearing in mind that she’d been conscripted to fill in for injured colleagues at a moment’s notice, Tricia promised to sort matters out for her, with the proviso that she got to hear the whole story at some stage.
‘You still owe me the skinny on the wedding-that-never-was,’ she reminded Olivia darkly. ‘And for the fact that I warned the rest of them not to bug you until you were ready to talk.’
Even in a taxi, the journey took longer than she expected. Well, she didn’t usually do this journey at a time when all the children were coming out of school and the roads were clogged with mothers driving oversized off-roaders as if they were Centurion tanks.
In an effort to take her mind off the possibility that there would be some sort of showdown when she got home, Olivia forced herself to switch her phone on and worked her way through the more important messages that had been accumulating ever since the spectacular cancellation of the wedding.
At least the more earthy goings-on between several members of a reality TV show meant that there were no longer any messages from the press, so the only ones she had to ignore were the dozen or so from her mother, in the hope that she might eventually come to believe the fiction that her daughter had gone away.
‘Fat chance!’ she muttered under her breath, knowing that her parent’s interrogation techniques would eventually give her the information she needed as to Gregor’s and her whereabouts. All she could hope was that it would take a little longer — long enough for the two of them to work out what they wanted to do with their lives and their marriage — before her mother tried to stick her oar in.
Nerves forced her to take the stairs when she reached their building. She was far too worked-up to want to stand waiting for the elderly lift to arrive. Unfortunately, it meant that she opened the door and burst into the flat panting as if she’d just completed a marathon.
‘Livvy!’ Gregor exclaimed as he twisted to face the unexpected intruder. ‘What on earth is the matter? What is wrong? Why are you here?’
‘That’s funny. Those were exactly the questions I wanted to ask you,’ she said as she deposited her purse and mobile phone on the little table and conscientiously hung her keys on the hook above.
She turned to face him, this time making sure that he was more than a silhouette against the late afternoon sunlight so that she could see his expression.
‘Gregor,’ she began, but when she caught her first proper look at him and saw just how drained and miserable he looked, somehow she didn’t feel like haranguing him any more.
‘Oh, Gregor,’ she said as she sank onto the nearest chair, her heart heavy inside her. ‘I was waiting for you to come and tell me Rick d’Agostino’s verdict, and when you didn’t come I just told myself that his clinic might be running late. Then I saw him while I was having a tea break and I knew your appointment was over, and then he asked if you’d made your decision about Monday — ’
‘What else did he say?’ he interrupted fiercely. ‘What did he tell you?’
‘Nothing, of course,’ she snapped, instantly imagining the worst if this was the irrational way he was behaving. ‘He apologised, politely, but said he couldn’t break patient confidentiality.’
Gregor subsided, but he was looking greyer than ever, and her heart ached for everything he was going through. Had the news been that bad that he couldn’t face talking about it?
Perhaps it was time to do something completely ordinary, to relieve a little of the pressure.
‘Shall I make us a drink, or something to eat?’ she suggested, even as she ached to know what he was thinking…share whatever was making him look so depressed.
‘That would be good, but I need the bathroom, first,’ he said as he grimly wheeled himself across the polished wood floor.
Olivia was listening out for Gregor to exit the bathroom while she loaded the scratch meal on a tray so when her phone rang, she automatically picked it up without thinking what she was doing.
‘About time, too, Olivia,’ her mother declared stridently. ‘I don’t know what you were thinking of, cutting yourself off like that when there are so many things to organise.’
‘Hello to you, too, Mother,’ she said wryly, but she may as well have saved her breath because the human steam-roller on the other end of the line wasn’t taking any notice.
‘I’ve spoken to that friend of your father’s who’s a QC and he says it’s important that the two of you aren’t cohabiting. The fact that he isn’t dead means that you need to start all over again to apply for a divorce before you can marry the Grayson-Smythe boy, but you can easily get it on the grounds of desertion. It’s a good job you’d taken leave from work to go on your honeymoon because that gives you plenty of time to get this mess properly sorted out, once and for all. I’ve made an appointment for you to speak to him — the QC, that is — tomorrow morning at ten-thirty. He’s going to have all the paperwork drawn up and ready for your signature.’
‘Mother, I’ve already spoken to a solicitor — ’ she tried to tell her, remembering that was one of the calls she’d returned in the taxi just a few minutes ago.
‘Oh, good!’ she butted-in enthusiastically. ‘I presume he contacted you as soon as I instructed him. Did he tell you he’d got everything organised?’
‘Mother, I’ve spoken to my own solicitor, to ask him to find out about Gregor’s — ’
‘Stupid girl!’ she interrupted. ‘Why on earth did you want to waste time doing that? Phone him back and cancel the appointment. You don’t need to bother with some tuppenny-ha’penny jumped-up clerk when you can have the services of a top-notch QC. That way it will get done properly so we can get started on rescheduling the wedding. I’ve already spoken to the vicar…the church seems to get so booked up that I thought I ought to see when was the soonest he had available.’
She barely drew breath before she was off again. ‘In fact, tell me the name of the person you spoke to, Olivia, and I’ll let him know we’ve got someone else dealing with it. We want to make sure it’s done properly, this time, so that — ’
‘No, Mother,’ Olivia interrupted firmly, almost feeling as if she would have to shout to make sure her mother listened.
‘Really, Olivia!’ she exclaimed in her most disapproving voice. ‘There’s no need to bellow like that. So uncouth. Now, Ashley is a completely different matter and the sooner we can reschedule the wedding — ’
‘This is a totally pointless conversation because I never loved him anyway. It’s a recipe for divorce.’
‘Rubbish! It’s just as easy to love a rich man as a poor one…easier, in fact, especially if he’s in line to inherit a title and an estate. And all you have to do is sign the papers to let the QC sort out the divorce and you can have it all. Your father and I can keep an eye on things to make sure he doesn’t drag his heels.’
‘That’s exactly why I won’t be using your QC. The last thing I want is someone you can browbeat into breaking client confidentiality so you can push things along. Anyway, it’s a moot point because I’ve already instructed my own solicitor.’
‘I expect he’s using the fact he’s in a wheelchair to play with your emotions. Is he expecting you to use our money to pay for his treatment…or does he even need the thing?’
‘Yes, Mother, he definitely does need the wheelchair and, in spite of it, he’s already working at the hospital. And the fact that he’s on staff means that he has access to any specialist he needs.’
‘Well, thank goodness for small mercies!’ her mother exclaimed. ‘That means you don’t need to be tied to him for him to get decent treatment, so you can go ahead with getting the divorce and I can get on with re-booking the wedding.’
‘Forget it, Mother,’ Olivia snapped, totally out of patience with the woman’s one-track mind. ‘It isn’t going to happen, so don’t waste your time. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve got more important things to do so I’m ending this conversation. Goodbye.’
Her ear was ringing from the verbal onslaught and her head was so full of turbulent thoughts that she almost missed the sound of the wheelchair tyres on the polished floorboards as Gregor came into the room.
‘That was a mistake,’ she said, rubbing her ear theatrically. ‘I completely forgot who might be phoning when I answered it.’
Gregor didn’t return her smile, his expressive mouth flattened into an unexpectedly grim line. For the first time in a long time she saw a look of flint in his grey eyes, hard enough to strike sparks, and she wondered just how devastating the surgeon’s verdict had been.
Part of her knew that the man she’d married…the man she’d come to know almost as well as she knew herself…needed time to process things inside his head before he was ready to talk about them. She’d also had to learn to accept that some things would never be discussed.
But this was different.
This didn’t just affect Gregor’s life. If they were going to remain a married couple — as she fervently hoped they were — then it would affect her, too.
‘Gregor, can we talk about it?’ she asked when they were settled in the familiar comfort of the sitting room, hating how tentative she sounded. But that was the way her voice came out when everything inside her was tied up in knots.
‘Talk about what?’ He swung to face her and the expression in his eyes felt like being slashed by jagged-edged blades. ‘Is there something you want to tell me, Livvy?’
Gregor saw the way those beautiful eyes of hers widened at his challenge and the spark of satisfaction that he’d surprised her almost banished the sick despair that had filled him as he’d overheard her conversation with her mother.
He hadn’t intended listening…had even tried to block his ears to what was being said…but it had been impossible, especially once he’d heard his own name.
He’d known from the first moment that he’d met Livvy’s mother that the woman couldn’t stand him because he hadn’t been her choice of husband for her daughter, but by that stage he and Livvy had been crazily in love and nothing the woman had tried to throw at them had stopped them getting married.
Of course, he’d recognised that he would never be good enough for the only child of the Mannington-Forbes dynasty — for someone as special as Livvy — and he’d thanked his lucky stars that she’d apparently fallen every bit as hard for him as he had for her.
When he’d realised who was on the phone just now, he’d selfishly hoped that he would hear Livvy make some sort of declaration to let her mother know, once-and-for-all, that she was going to stand by him, no matter what the outcome of his surgery.
Instead, in almost the same breath as she’d told her mother that she’d already instructed a solicitor, he’d heard her say that she didn’t love him and had spoken about divorce.
And that was before he’d found the guts to tell her that he was having to weigh up the choice between being able to regain the use of his legs against the possibility of losing the use of his manhood.
The longer he held her gaze the more uncomfortable she appeared to become, a look that seemed very like guilt filling her eyes until, finally, she looked away.
An icy shiver snaked its way up his spine, setting every hair on end, and he froze.
The last time he’d felt that sensation had been…had been…
Frantically, he searched his memory, desperate to uncover what felt like vital information.
Suddenly, it burst into lurid detail and he almost groaned aloud as it buried him under an avalanche of impressions…the unforgettable smell of cordite mixed with the rich scent of the earth thrown up by the explosion…the intermittent sharp crack of gunfire making him flinch, each report growing closer and closer as he tried to squeeze just one more of the wounded into the inadequate transport available…trying to ignore the vulnerable feeling of having no bulletproof clothing to protect himself, the multicoloured trousers and jacket he’d thrown on over his blood-spattered operating scrubs nothing more than camouflage-patterned heavy-duty cotton fabric.
He’d felt the presence of danger all around him in those moments when he’d left the dubious safety of a building erected in less vicious times. Perhaps this vividly remembered sensation had been a presentiment of what was going to happen when he’d answered the old man’s plea for help for his trapped pupils?
But surely he couldn’t be sensing that sort of danger here, in the home he’d shared with the woman who would be a part of every fibre of his being until the end of his days and beyond? There were no hidden snipers or out-of-date boilers ready to explode, just a sensation…an impression that…that there was something coming…something that was going to hurt…something that was going to be even more agonising than waking up to find that not only had he lost the use of his legs but he’d also lost his memory…
Well, he had his memory back, but very little else, and somehow, before tomorrow morning when he had to give his decision to Rick d’Agostino, he had to find the words to tell Livvy just how precarious his situation could be.
It was agonising trying to choose between the real chance that the operation would give him back the use of his legs and the equally real chance that he would never again be able to make love to her.
There wasn’t really a choice to be made when he contemplated the possibility of spending the rest of his life in a wheelchair, dependent on others. In comparison with getting his health and strength back — getting his life back — becoming impotent might seem a small sacrifice. But would that leave him with the agony of trying to decide what sort of a future he would have when Livvy finally told him that she didn’t want him in her life any more?
The phone shrilled a summons and they both jumped then stared at the instrument waiting for the machine to answer it.
He was almost certain that it would be Livvy’s mother again. The woman was noted for her persistence and it didn’t sound as if she’d been satisfied with her daughter’s response to whatever demands she’d been making.
Instead, it was a male voice, and all his possessive instincts raised their heads and snarled.
‘This is Gareth Lloyd from Solomon and Associates with a message for Mrs Olivia Davidson,’ the voice said crisply. ‘I have completed my enquiries and now have the definitive information she requested concerning — ’
Livvy snatched the receiver up, silencing the recording as she broke in. ‘Hello, Mr Lloyd, this is Olivia Davidson. Thank you for getting back to me so quickly.’ She turned her back on him and Gregor was left fuming as the rest of the call deteriorated into little more than a series of noncommittal murmurs.
This time, even though he was openly eavesdropping, he was unable to glean a single thing from the call, other than the fact that the man’s precise way of speaking had left him with the impression that he was a lawyer of some sort.
Suddenly, he was convinced that Livvy would take advantage of the fact that they were within the privacy of their own home to break the bad news — that she had taken steps to end their marriage properly this time by filing for divorce — and in spite of the numerous dangers he’d had to face in his life, cowardice clenched a tight hand around his heart and he burst into hasty speech as soon as the call ended.
‘Are you ready to go back to the hospital or are you thinking of staying here for the night?’ Even as he asked the question his emotions were in such turmoil that he wasn’t sure which answer he wanted.
‘After speaking to my mother and letting her know I’m at the flat, the chances are that she’ll turn up here,’ she pointed out with a grimace.
‘You don’t think she’ll have some more important “do” lined up for this evening?’ he suggested, ashamed to sound so petty.
‘I suppose it’s possible,’ she conceded calmly. ‘She was expecting to be basking in the glorious aftermath of the wedding, this week, and would have accepted all sorts of invitations so that people could tell her how wonderful it had all been and how brilliantly she’d organised the whole thing, so she’ll either be keeping her head down until someone in their circle does something more gossip-worthy, or she could have decided to brazen it out…doubtless, blaming the whole fiasco on her dreadful wayward daughter — ’
‘Or on me for having the bad manners not to die when I was supposed to,’ he interrupted wryly. That startled a chuckle out of her that lifted his spirits enough that he decided to risk making a suggestion. ‘How about ordering a meal from that little Italian restaurant just off the high street before we go back to the hospital? You know the one I mean…where they make that fabulous marinara…and the home-made pannacotta to the grandmother’s own recipe? I think I was fantasising about their food when I was eating yet another bowl of potato soup. Are they still there? Do they still deliver?’
‘They’re still there,’ she confirmed, then hesitated briefly before continuing, ‘but I don’t know if they still deliver because I haven’t had anything from them since…for two years,’ she finished quietly.
His eyes burned with the realisation that she must have been avoiding the place ever since he’d disappeared. Had she missed him so much that she hadn’t been able to face eating food from their favourite restaurant? The mere possibility was enough to rekindle a spark of hope.
‘So, are you going to phone or shall I?’ he asked, hoping the huskiness to his voice wasn’t as obvious to her as it was to him.
The meal was probably as wonderful as ever, but Olivia found it hard to remember a single mouthful with guilt weighing her down so badly.
It had been bad enough when she had only been hiding one secret — a devastating secret that had been gnawing away at her soul for nearly two years already — but since that phone call from Gareth Lloyd she could almost hear Gregor’s mind working as he tried to unravel whatever he’d managed to glean from her deliberately cryptic conversation.
She knew she should tell him. He deserved to know…everything. But there was a small stubborn part of her that kept arguing that he was keeping secrets from her, too…such as the results of all those tests and the verdict on what sort of recovery Gregor could anticipate.
So, here they were, Olivia thought in frustration, the two of them sitting at either side of the table in silence, each apparently wrapped up in their own thoughts.
She had no idea what was going through Gregor’s head…nothing pleasant if the grim expression on his face was anything to go by. And all the while she was struggling to find a way to break the silence with an innocuous topic in the hope that it would lead to the conversation that needed to be broached.
Olivia had just about nerved herself to jump in with both feet when he beat her to the punch.
‘When were you intending telling me that you’re already going ahead with the divorce?’ he demanded, and completely robbed her of the power to speak.