Emergency: Mother Wanted Read online

  EMERGENCY: MOTHER WANTED

  (aka ON THE MEND)

  Sarah Morgan

  A family in need ...

  Casualty officer Keely Thompson is determined to prove to her boss Zach Jordan that she is no longer the scatty teenager who once embarrassingly declared her love to him. Dynamic A&E consultant Zach has also changed since then - he's now a single father! When he needs temporary help with his little daughter Keely steps in, though living with him throws her emotions into further turmoil. Zach and his daughter Phoebe clearly need help, but even if Zach can see Keely as a desirable woman, he apparently doesn't see her in the role of wife and mother ...

  PROLOGUE

  'Say that name again?'

  Zach Jordan paused with a coffee-mug halfway to his lips, his blue eyes suddenly watchful.

  'Which name?' His colleague Sean Nicholson, the senior consultant in the accident and emergency department, glanced down at the list he'd been reading aloud. 'Um...Keely Thompson?'

  Keely...

  Zach put his coffee-mug back on the table, untouched.

  'What's the matter? Do you know her?' Sean frowned and Zach's eyes narrowed as he did the calculation in his head. Could it be her? Had that much time passed? Could she really be one of the new senior house officers?

  'I think I might do,' he said finally. 'You interviewed her—can you remember what she looked like?'

  Sean nodded and tossed the file of papers he was holding onto the table. 'I certainly can. Small and delicate, short blonde hair...a bit urchin like—massive blue eyes, the biggest smile I've ever seen...' He broke off and gave an appreciative grin. 'In fact, I have to admit that she was absolutely gorgeous, but don't tell Ally I said that.'

  Zach gave an absent smile, knowing that Sean adored his pretty wife and their three children. 'Bouncy? Bubbly personality?'

  'That's her.' Sean picked up his coffee and took a sip. 'She's the daughter of the Professor Thompson from St Mark's. I suppose we should count ourselves lucky she's here. With that sort of pedigree I don't expect she'll be hanging around the Lake District for long. She'll be aiming for a job in one of the hot seats of academic learning.'

  Would she? Zach gave a slight frown. That didn't seem like the Keely he'd known as a child. She'd been gentle and caring and totally lacking in ambition. In fact, there had been times when he'd wondered how on earth the Prof had managed to produce a child like Keely—she was so very different from the rest of them. But if she was following in the family footsteps and carving a high-profile career for herself then she'd obviously changed.

  He sat back in his chair, wondering what she'd be like now. Last time he'd seen her she'd been a typical teenager, worrying about school and arguing with her mother. It was pretty hard to accept that she'd become a fully qualified doctor.

  Sean was looking at him curiously. 'So how do you know her?'

  'I trained with her older brother and sister.' Zach leaned forward and retrieved his coffee. 'They're twins. And one of my first surgical jobs was with the Prof. I used to go and stay with them sometimes. They had this fabulous house in the Cotswolds. That was where I met Keely.'

  'She was the youngest?'

  'Yes.' Zach gave a slow nod. 'The baby of the family. I wonder what she's doing up here in the Lake District?' If she was so ambitious, why hadn't she stayed in London? 'Can I look at her CV?'

  He held out a hand and Sean passed it over. 'It's pretty impressive. Top grades all the way through.'

  Zach studied it carefully. 'So did she say why she wanted to come here?' The hospital had a good reputation but it was hardly the most high profile in the country. Why hadn't she stayed in London?

  Sean gave a shrug. 'I didn't really ask her that. Why shouldn't she come here? It's a great place. We love it. Why shouldn't other people?'

  'It is a great place,' Zach agreed, frowning thoughtfully. 'But it's hardly the best springboard for a fast-track medical career.'

  'You seem to know rather a lot about her.' Sean gave him a keen look. 'Did you have an affair with her?'

  Zach choked on his coffee. 'For goodness' sake, Sean! She was sixteen years old and I was twenty-four! What sort of man do you think I am?'

  Sean grinned. 'A woman's dream—if the gossip is to be believed. According to the nurses, you're now top of the list of the most eligible bachelors in Cumbria.'

  'Oh, for Pete's sake, Sean!' Zach shot him an impatient look and put his mug down on the table with a thump. 'Since when did you start listening to women's gossip?'

  'Since I lived with three of them,' Sean said ruefully. 'I'm decidedly outnumbered in my home and work life so I've decided to give in gracefully and adopt some of their habits.'

  'Well, whatever gossip says, rest assured that I have more self-control and decency than to seduce sixteen-year-olds.' Zach was careful not to reveal the slight uneasiness Sean's words had prompted.

  If it had been left to little Keely, they most certainly would have had an affair. She'd had a massive teenage crush on him.

  A ghost of a smile hovered around his firm mouth as he remembered the night she'd proposed to him. Turning her down without hurting her fragile ego had been one of the hardest experiences of his adult life.

  What would she be like now? And would she have recovered from her teenage crush on him? If she hadn't then they were going to be in trouble.

  Zach gave a short laugh, picked up the mug and finished his coffee. Of course she would have recovered. That was years ago, for goodness' sake, and he hadn't seen her since that night. He'd kept away—more for her sake than his. He'd decided that the sooner he removed himself from her life, the sooner she'd get over him and start fancying boys her own age. Which was probably what she'd been doing ever since.

  'So come on, Mr Eligible Bachelor, bring me up to date.' Sean leaned back in his chair, a slow smile spreading across his face. 'Who's the lucky woman at the moment?'

  'I thought you were one of the few people I could trust not to interfere with my love life,' Zach growled, irritation sizzling through his veins. This was one topic of conversation guaranteed to ruin his day. 'I have enough of it from your wife and the nurses in this department, without getting it from you, too.'

  Sean looked at him calmly. 'Ally thinks it's time you got married.'

  Zach closed his eyes and counted to ten. He loved Sean's wife dearly but he wished she'd stop trying to arrange his life. 'For the record, I am perfectly satisfied with my love life.'

  'From what I've heard, you don't have a love life,' Sean said bluntly, 'just a sex life.'

  'And since when was that any of your business?' Zach's blue eyes flashed a warning and Sean must have heard the threatening note in his voice because he gave a lopsided smile and lifted a hand.

  'All right, all right. Calm down. I'm just saying that sooner or later you're going to have to take a risk and get back into a proper relationship.'

  Sean was as direct as ever and Zach felt his hackles rise. Why did everyone feel they knew what was best for him?

  'I have no intention of doing anything of the sort. I like my life as it is.'

  There was a slight pause. 'It wasn't your life I was thinking of,' Sean said gruffly, not quite meeting his eyes. 'It was Phoebe's.'

  Zach swore under his breath and stood up suddenly, the chair scraping on the floor as he pushed it away. 'Phoebe is fine.'

  'Zach, she's not even three years old,' Sean said quietly. 'She needs a mother.'

  Zach closed his eyes and the breath hissed through his teeth. Damn. Why did it still hurt so much? Why? It had been more than a year now. Were his battered emotions ever going to recover?

  Sean gave a sigh and rubbed his forehead with long fingers. 'Look, tell me if I'm out of line
, but—'

  'You're out of line,' Zach said coldly, dropping his empty mug into the washing-up bowl. 'And, please, tell Ally I don't need her advice on my love life. And I certainly don't intend to get married again. There are some things you only do once in a lifetime.'

  Sean studied his coffee. 'You say that now because you don't think you'll ever meet anyone again, but you will. Perhaps sooner than you think.'

  Zach rolled his eyes. 'And I suppose this is the part where you tell me that you and Ally are having some people to dinner and I'm the available single man?'

  Sean shook his head and grinned. 'I know when I'm beaten. I'm just going to let nature take its course. Once you meet Keely I'm sure you'll revise your opinion on romance.'

  'Keely?' Zach blinked, thrown by the change of subject. 'What on earth has she got to do with this? Keely's a child, Sean.'

  Why were they talking about Keely all of a sudden?

  'A child?' Sean lifted an eyebrow and a ghost of a smile played around his mouth. 'She might have been a child when you last saw her but, believe me, that was no child that I interviewed. Your "child" has grown into a woman. And a very beautiful woman.'

  Zach scowled. 'You shouldn't be making sexist comments about the doctors who are coming to work for you.'

  'I wouldn't dream of making a sexist comment when I'm working,' Sean defended himself smoothly, 'but you and I are off duty at the moment and as your friend I'm just telling you that your little Keely is a knockout. Sweet, sexy and honest as the day is long.'

  'Then I'm sure she'll make some lucky man very happy,' Zach said shortly, 'but it isn't going to be me.'

  Firstly, whatever Sean said to the contrary, he couldn't think of Keely as anything other than a child and, secondly, he knew he would never, ever find another woman he wanted to marry. How could he after Catherine?

  CHAPTER ONE

  What had she done to deserve it?

  Keely Thompson stared in disbelief at the man standing at the front of the lecture theatre.

  She always helped old ladies across the road, she fed the birds in winter, she donated time and money to a charity for the homeless, she never told lies and she rang her mother regularly.

  All in all she was a pretty responsible citizen and she definitely—most definitely—didn't deserve to bump into Zach Jordan again. Which proved that people didn't always get what they deserved, she thought gloomily, shrinking down in her seat and staring at her notepad. They got what they were given, and she'd been given Zach Jordan. Out of the blue, with no warning, and as her boss. Well, not exactly as her boss, but as a senior colleague, which was almost as bad.

  When he'd walked through that door to deliver the lecture she'd felt as though she'd been hit by an express train. She'd been expecting one of the junior consultants from the accident and emergency department. She certainly hadn't expected Zach.

  But it was Zach. And as it looked as though she was going to be a senior house officer in the same department as him, she had to come to terms with the fact that he was going to be under her nose. On a daily basis.

  She stifled a groan and leaned her forehead on her hand so that he wouldn't be able to see her face.

  So much for her escape plan. She'd chosen the Lake District because it was far away from home. And, most importantly, far away from people who knew her family. She'd needed space. Space and time. Time to think about what she really wanted to do with her life. She hadn't known that Zach would be here.

  Zach, who knew her family almost as well as she did, and on top of that had been present, if not responsible, for the single most humiliating moment of her life. She'd been sixteen and he'd been twenty-four...

  What was she going to say to him? How on earth did you greet someone you used to have a massive teenage crush on and hadn't seen for eight years?

  She moved her head slightly and peeped cautiously at the tall, broad-shouldered map standing at the front of the lecture theatre, totally at ease in front of his audience, his presentation style confident and relaxed.

  Satisfied that he wasn't looking in her direction, Keely rested her chin in her palm and allowed herself the luxury of one long look at him. Over the years she'd decided that what she'd felt for Zachary Jordan had just been part of a teenage fantasy, but looking at him now all she could think was that she'd had impeccable taste when she was younger.

  The man was lethally attractive. Smooth dark hair swept back from his forehead, sexy blue eyes, a permanently darkened jaw and a body that made women drool. Zach Jordan was a real man in every sense of the word and at sixteen his looks had left her breathless. No other member of the opposite sex had affected her in the same way. She'd spent every minute of every day dreaming about how it would feel to be kissed by him.

  He was the stuff of fantasies...

  Obviously she wasn't the only one who thought so if the soft sigh from the female doctor sitting next to her was anything to go by.

  'Wow! I thought doctors only looked like that in American movies. Tell me I'm not going to be working with him every day. I'll never be able to concentrate. I'm Fiona, by the way.'

  Keely quickly introduced herself and picked up her pen. She wouldn't be able to concentrate either.

  She shrank further into her seat as she remembered the way she'd behaved towards him as a teenager. The things she'd said to him. Like the night she'd proposed—

  She suppressed a whimper of horror as she recalled that night. How totally humiliating. How on earth was she going to convince him that she wasn't a dippy teenager any more?

  At least she looked different. Her blonde hair was shorter and somewhere along the road she'd grown a chest. And she was twenty-four now, for goodness' sake. Hardly the child who'd thrown herself at him all those years before. Maybe he would have forgotten all about it.

  Staring at Zach was making her insides feel strange so she stared down at her lined pad instead and decided that the thing to do was to concentrate on making notes. It was certainly a better alternative than looking at Zach's broad shoulders—not that it was guaranteed to keep her mind on her work. There had been at least four occasions at school when she'd been given detention for scribbling 'Keely loves Zach' all over her notebook instead of paying attention.

  Keely loves Zach...

  Only she hadn't loved Zach, she told herself firmly, tapping her pen on the page as if to emphasise the point to herself. Not really. She'd just been a vulnerable, impressionable teenager and he'd been drop-dead gorgeous and very kind to her. A recipe for emotional disaster when you were sixteen.

  She gave herself a mental shake and a sharp talking-to. She didn't have anything to worry about. She was a completely different person now. A grown woman and a fully qualified doctor about to take up her position as casualty officer in the accident and emergency department. She was long past the age of suffering from childish crushes. All she had to do was keep their relationship professional and prove to him that she was an excellent doctor.

  With a determined expression on her delicate features she concentrated hard on that deep, sexy voice, making notes as he spoke about the medico-legal aspects of working in the A and E department, the importance of good note-taking and liaison with GPs.

  He was a good speaker, using just enough humour to keep their attention and just enough drama to make his talk interesting. Everyone was paying attention. Especially the women.

  'He's unbelievable. I don't think I can work next to that man every day without throwing myself at him,' Fiona said dreamily, and Keely gave a wry smile. If her brother and sister were to be believed, women had been making fools of themselves over Zach since the minute he'd arrived at medical school, and probably long before that.

  And hadn't she done exactly the same thing herself?

  With a sigh her mouth softened into a smile and she remembered the first time her brother had brought Zach home to stay.

  It had been love at first sight. On her part at least. Not on Zach's, of course. By all accounts he'd been u
sed to cool, sophisticated women, and she'd been a smiley, chatty schoolgirl. He wouldn't have even thought of her in those terms. But still they'd been friends. And maybe they could be friends again—

  She pulled herself together to find everyone in the lecture theatre staring at her expectantly.

  'Dr Thompson?'

  Oh, help! He'd asked her a question and she'd missed it. She'd been so intent on planning how to make him see her as a mature, qualified doctor that she hadn't been listening.

  Her face heated and her palms were suddenly sweaty. So much for wanting him to take her seriously.

  'I asked you to tell us where you worked last, Dr Thompson.' He repeated the question calmly and she swallowed.

  'Medical,' she said breathlessly, glancing round with a self-conscious smile, relieved when he turned his attention to another of the new SHOs.

  'I bet he's fantastic in bed,' Fiona said in an undertone. 'Look at those shoulders, those muscles, those legs—I feel faint just thinking about it.'

  Keely felt faint, too, but for different reasons. This was never going to work. Zach was going to treat her the same way everyone else back in London had. As just another member of the Thompson clan, instead of as an individual. All the usual pressures would be there, the expectations— only with Zach it would be even worse because he was bound to remember her as a scatty teenager.

  Was he going to think she wasn't up to the job?

  With a long sigh she stared hard at her pad. Unlike her companion, she didn't want to look at Zach's body. She already knew how good it looked and the only way she was going to be able to work with Zach was if she didn't look at his body.

  Suddenly she realised that everyone was standing up and shuffling papers. The lecture was over. It was time to start work. And Zach Jordan was walking towards her...

  She stood up and clutched her notepad to her chest, aware that her new colleagues were melting discreetly into the background.

  'Hello, Keely.' The tone of his deep voice told her immediately that he knew exactly who she was and she felt hideously self-conscious. What on earth should she say? Sorry I wasn't listening when you asked me a question. Sorry I proposed to you last time I saw you.