The Nurse's Christmas Wish Read online

  He frowned. ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘You’re not fine, Mac. I can see that you’re—’

  ‘Louisa, I’m fine.’ He moved his arm, dislodging her hand, as cold and remote as she’d ever seen him. ‘I need to do this. I was the one with the patient in Resus. It’s my job.’

  She opened her mouth to point out that Josh had been in Resus, too, but he was already striding down the corridor.

  She gave a frustrated sigh and hurried after him.

  The woman’s husband was slumped in an armchair, his head in his hands. As the door opened he lifted his head and looked at them.

  Louisa could almost taste his fear.

  He breathed out slowly, his eyes reddened and his face tormented. ‘Will she live?’

  Mac ran a hand over the back of his neck, the tension visible in every angle of his handsome face. ‘At the moment she’s stable but it’s too early to be sure that she’s out of the woods. Her injuries were severe,’ he said quietly. ‘We’ve taken her to Theatre so that the surgeons can take a proper look at her chest. We’re doing everything we can and the surgeon is excellent. The best in the country.’

  The husband let out a long breath. ‘You think she might die?’

  Mac took a moment to answer. ‘I hope not,’ he said finally, his tone gruff. ‘I truly hope not. We’ll keep you informed every step of the way.’

  * * *

  He was as good as his word.

  He stayed at the hospital until the woman was out of Theatre and stable in ITU. Then he spent more time talking to her husband and the surgeon.

  ‘Go home, Mac,’ Hannah urged. ‘You should have been off duty hours ago. You must be dropping.’

  ‘I didn’t want to leave until I knew what had happened in Theatre,’ he said heavily, and Hannah glanced at Louisa.

  She hadn’t wanted to leave until she knew that Mac was all right. Which was ridiculous, she told herself firmly, because he didn’t need comfort from her. He didn’t need comfort from anyone.

  His handsome face was shuttered. Blocking everyone out. No trace of emotion visible.

  Louisa sighed.

  Undoubtedly he was thinking of his wife.

  Was this really the same man who had lost himself in her arms the night before?

  ‘It’s Christmas Eve,’ Hannah reminded them, her tone exasperated as she waved a hand towards the massive tree that stood in the waiting room. ‘You’re supposed to be off duty and at home. Go and enjoy yourselves.’

  ‘Yes.’ Unsmiling, his hard features strained, Mac gave them a brief nod and walked towards his office.

  ‘There goes a troubled man,’ Hannah said softly, and Louisa nodded.

  Thanks to Rick, her car was working again and she had her own transport home.

  But would he want her company?

  Something told her that the magic of last night was well and truly over.

  * * *

  She found him sitting in the darkness of the living room, his eyes closed, his legs stretched out in front of him.

  The remains of a fire still flickered in the hearth but the room had a distinct chill about it.

  Louisa hesitated in the doorway, her eyes adjusting to the gloom. There was something about the stillness of his body that suggested that he didn’t want to be disturbed. But she couldn’t walk away. His pain was like a living force, so powerful that she could feel it.

  ‘Mac?’

  For a moment he didn’t answer and then his eyes opened and she saw the desolation and emptiness.

  ‘Go to bed, Louisa.’ His voice was gruff and she bit her lip.

  ‘Not until I know you’re all right.’

  His eyes glittered hard in the darkness. ‘You can’t fix everything.’

  ‘Neither can you.’ She stepped forward into the room, fearing rejection and yet unable to leave him alone. ‘You did everything you could, Mac. More than most would have done and she’s holding her own. I just rang ITU to check.’

  There was a long silence.

  ‘Did you see his face?’ He spoke slowly, almost talking to himself. ‘It was like looking at myself in the mirror. A couple of years ago, I was in his shoes. Standing in the relatives’ room, waiting for someone to come and tell me what the hell was happening to my wife.’

  Hardly daring to breathe, Louisa tiptoed into the room. There was a long silence and she sat down timidly on the sofa next to him, braced for rejection.

  ‘Do you want to talk about it?’

  ‘No.’ Mac closed his eyes and rested his head against the back of the sofa. ‘Or maybe I do. I don’t know. I’ve never tried it before. It was all too complicated.’

  Louisa relaxed slightly, relieved that he hadn’t sent her away. ‘Is it so complicated just to say how you feel?’

  He looked at her. ‘It is when how you feel isn’t the way people expect you to feel.’

  She sat still. ‘How did you feel, Mac?’

  He closed his eyes. ‘Angry. Frustrated. Let down.’

  ‘It’s normal to feel angry when people die.’

  ‘That’s what everyone told me. It’s fine, they said, all part of the normal grieving process.’ He gave a harsh laugh. ‘They didn’t have a bloody clue.’ He looked at her. ‘She was nothing like you. She wouldn’t have been sitting there now, waiting patiently for me to talk. She would have been tapping her high-heeled shoes on the floor and glancing at her watch. For Melissa everything was measured in time. Billable hours.’

  Louisa watched him. ‘Tell me what she was like.’

  ‘Melissa?’ He dropped his head back against the sofa. ‘She was driven. Wildly ambitious, political and totally focused on where she was going and how she was going to get there.’

  ‘She was a doctor?’

  Mac shook his head. ‘A lawyer. She worked for a big, fancy firm in London and I met her when I was doing a stint for one of the London teaching hospitals. We got married. End of story.’

  Except it wasn’t the end of the story, Louisa mused. Any fool could see that.

  He had so many emotions that he’d locked away.

  ‘So you moved down here once you were married?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking. There were firms down here that would have given her a partnership but she wasn’t interested. She carried on working in London during the week and travelled here at weekends.’

  Louisa hid her surprise. ‘That’s quite a journey.’ Even with good roads that was a journey of at least five hours. ‘You must have been very much in love.’

  Mac made a noise that was somewhere between a groan and a laugh. ‘Louisa, you are so innocent!’ He turned his head towards her, his eyes tired and more than a little cynical. ‘Such a romantic. I hate to disillusion you but my marriage was anything but a fairy-tale.’

  She sat still, everything suddenly falling into place. ‘You weren’t in love with her?’

  ‘At the beginning. Maybe.’ He shrugged. ‘Or maybe we weren’t. We had a passionate relationship and I think we both confused that with love. But we didn’t want the same things.’

  ‘What did you want, Mac?’ She hardly dared ask the question.

  ‘I suppose I was pretty naïve, too,’ he said gruffly. ‘I thought we could both enjoy our careers until the time came when we were ready to start a family together. But Melissa didn’t want that. Perhaps she never did. She was only interested in her career. In the next case. The adulation. She was seduced by her own success.’

  ‘There are plenty of couples who both manage to have careers,’ Louisa said softly, and Mac gave a bitter laugh.

  ‘But generally they at least live in the same county. Melissa never had any intention of leaving London. She had to be at the heart of the action. A law firm outside the city was her idea of hell.’

  ‘And you would never have left Cornwall because it’s so much a part of who you are,’ Louisa said softly, remembering how he content he seemed whenever he was at the beach or in the sea.

  He gave her a curious look. �
�I don’t think Melissa ever understood that. Or maybe at the end she did.’

  ‘What happened?’

  He paused briefly. ‘The night she died we’d been out for dinner.’ His voice was flat and totally devoid of emotion. ‘We both knew we needed to rethink our life together. I asked her to take a break from her job so that we could spend some time together...’ He paused, his gaze fixed on the dying flame of the fire. ‘She told me she’d met someone else and asked me for a divorce.’

  Louisa felt something twist inside her. ‘Oh, Mac...’

  ‘Don’t feel sorry for me.’ He gave a harsh laugh. ‘I felt nothing but relief. Relief that our farce of a marriage was finally to be over, and with the minimum fuss and bother. I sat there thinking that it was a good job that we’d never found the time to have children. It made everything so much simpler. Or it should have done. We would have told people straight away that weekend and that would have been the end of it, but she hit ice on her way back to London.’

  Louisa swallowed. What had Melissa been thinking that night? Had she been upset that she’d finally ended the marriage? Not concentrating on the road? Or had she been driving too fast, eager to return to the arms of her lover?

  ‘Afterwards her parents were distraught. They blamed me,’ he said heavily, ‘for expecting her to travel to me every weekend, for not putting enough effort into the marriage.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous,’ Louisa said hotly. ‘You had responsibilities at the hospital. You couldn’t get away that easily.’

  ‘Couldn’t I?’ His eyes glittered hard in the darkness. ‘Or maybe I just didn’t want to. Melissa always told me that I was terrible at relationships. She was right. I wasn’t prepared to do what it took to make it work.’

  ‘But maybe that was because you married the wrong person.’

  He looked at her with a half-smile. ‘You don’t see bad in people, do you? I’m a selfish workaholic, Louisa. And you should stay away from me.’

  She didn’t want to stay away from him.

  ‘You’re a brilliant doctor,’ she corrected him softly, ‘and it’s lucky for your patients you’re a workaholic. And I don’t think you’re selfish. I think you just know what you want. Unfortunately it wasn’t the same thing that Melissa wanted. Did you tell her parents she was having an affair? That she wanted a divorce?’

  ‘No.’ His voice was hollow. ‘It would have made things even worse. I didn’t want their memory of her to be tainted.’

  ‘I can understand that, I suppose.’ Louisa frowned. ‘But surely you must have told someone.’

  ‘Just Josh. For everyone else it seemed kinder just to leave things as they were.’

  ‘But not kinder for you.’

  ‘What difference did it make to me? She was gone.’

  ‘But you must have had so many feelings that you couldn’t express,’ Louisa said, her expression troubled. ‘That night she died she also told you that she was having an affair and that she wanted a divorce. You must have felt totally betrayed.’

  ‘What I really felt was that I didn’t deserve the sympathy I was getting from everyone. I was a lousy husband.’

  ‘So is that why you pushed everyone away? Because you felt you didn’t deserve what they were offering?’ She bit her lip. ‘You’re not to blame for her death, Mac.’

  He closed his eyes. ‘It certainly feels like it.’

  ‘No wonder you shut people out,’ Louisa said quietly. ‘It must have been awful because no one truly understood what you were going through.’

  ‘I’m not looking for sympathy, Louisa,’ he said heavily. ‘What happened, happened. We should have ended our relationship a long time before we did. Melissa was right, I wasn’t any good at marriage.’

  ‘She said that? And you believed her?’ Louisa was horrified. ‘She’s the one who had the affair, Mac.’

  ‘Because I was too busy to pay her any attention.’ He stared into the dying embers of the fire. ‘I hardly ever came home.’

  ‘She wasn’t here, Mac. She was up in London, building her career. What was there for you to come home to?’

  ‘I could have moved to London.’

  ‘You’ve got the sea in your soul, Mac Sullivan. You could never live in any city and Melissa must have known that. I expect she thought she could change you,’ Louisa said sagely. ‘People often think that about other people. Weird really.’

  He looked at her with a faint smile. ‘And what about you? Do you think that?’

  She shook her head. ‘If you’re asking me if I’d want to change you, the answer is no,’ she said softly. ‘I love the fact that your job means so much to you, that you care so much. It’s part of the man you are. I love the fact that you love the sea. I just wish you’d talk to me a bit more. Not because I want to change the way you are but because I think you’ve shut yourself away long enough. It’s time to let people back into your life, Mac. Time to move on.’

  There was a long, pulsing silence while they watched each other, trapped by the rising tension that swirled and twisted around them.

  Louisa could see the battle in his eyes, read the indecision. So she made the decision for both of them. With a courage she hadn’t known she possessed, she slid along the sofa and wound her arms round his neck.

  ‘Kiss me, Mac.’ Her voice was husky and her eyes were on his mouth. ‘Make love to me like you did last night.’

  She could sense the struggle inside him and then he cursed under his breath and unlocked her arms from around his neck. ‘No, Louisa.’ He stood up suddenly, his breathing unsteady, his eyes tormented. ‘It wouldn’t work. I’m totally wrong for you and I’ll hurt you.’

  ‘Mac—’

  ‘We’re different, Louisa. You like crowds and company, I like solitude.’

  ‘Sometimes I like solitude, too,’ she said softly, ‘and sometimes you like crowds and company. It’s just that you’ve forgotten how to just relax and enjoy yourself.’

  ‘I can’t offer you a relationship. I’m hopeless at relationships. I’m too selfish.’ He gave a humourless smile. ‘I’m obsessed with my work.’

  ‘It wasn’t that you were bad at relationships, Mac.’ Louisa stared at the lights flickering on the tree. ‘It’s just that you were in the wrong one. But you and I have a chance of happiness. We should take it, even if it’s only for tonight.’

  ‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘That isn’t what you need. You’ve said it yourself, Louisa—you’re waiting for the fairy-tale. Well, I’m not anyone’s idea of a fairy-tale.’

  CHAPTER TEN

  LOUISA awoke to find Hopeful lying on the bed next to her, a sorrowful expression on his face.

  Her first thought was that it shouldn’t have been Hopeful.

  It should have been Mac.

  But when did life ever turn out the way you wanted it to?

  She reached out a hand and stroked his soft coat. ‘You shouldn’t be on the bed,’ she murmured as she forced herself awake. ‘If Mac found out he’d be furious and there’d be another black mark against you.’

  She glanced at the clock and gave a gasp. ‘Oh, my goodness!’ She scrambled out of bed in a sudden panic, her dark hair falling over her face and the strap of her nightdress trailing down her arm. ‘I need to check the turkey.’

  Picking up on her panic, Hopeful leaped off the bed with an excited bark, his tail wagging so hard that his whole body was moving.

  ‘Louisa.’ A deep voice from the doorway made her freeze and she looked at Mac in horror.

  There was no way of hiding Hopeful.

  ‘I can explain—’

  His gaze rested on Hopeful. ‘That dog obviously isn’t as stupid as he looks.’

  She gave a weak smile. ‘I would have preferred to share the bed with you.’

  Dark eyes clashed with hers. ‘We’re too different, Louisa. I can’t make you happy.’

  ‘I think you’d make me very happy,’ she said softly, dragging the strap of her nightdress back up her arm. ‘I just think you’
re too afraid to risk another relationship. But you need to realise that Melissa was just the wrong woman for you. It was a mistake. It happens to people all the time. If you’d spent more time together you probably would have realised sooner.’

  He stared at her. ‘I preferred to work.’

  She gave a soft smile, wondering how such an intelligent man could be so obtuse. ‘And why was that, Mac? One day when you’re having a few hours off from blaming yourself and taking responsibility for everything, you should try asking yourself that question.’

  He inhaled sharply and took a step backwards, his gaze shuttered. ‘I have to go into work now.’

  Avoiding the issue again.

  She blinked and brushed her hair away from her face. ‘It’s Christmas morning, Mac, and you’re supposed to be off until tomorrow. People are coming here to spend the day with us. I’m cooking turkey and there are presents round the tree.’

  And mistletoe above the doorways.

  She was doing a proper Christmas.

  He looked as though she’d suggested he run naked down the coast road. ‘They’re really busy. Short of staff. I need to go in.’

  He wanted to go in.

  She felt the hope drain out of her.

  Clearly he was willing to do anything to avoid Christmas. To avoid being with her. ‘You’re going to the hospital?’

  She couldn’t quite believe it. Didn’t want to believe it.

  ‘It’s my job, Louisa.’ He turned and strode away, leaving her staring after him with tears in her eyes and the smell of turkey wafting up the stairs.

  ‘It’s your job, Mac,’ she said softly, ‘but not your life.’

  * * *

  Mac watched while Josh intubated the patient and secured the airway, his movements smooth and proficient. He felt a burn of pride that went right to the bone. His kid brother was a hell of a doctor.

  When exactly had he moved from eager junior doctor to cool-headed, experienced consultant? He was a team member to be proud of. A brother to be proud of.