Emily Forbes – A Mother To Make A Family (страница 5)

‘Then I like to draw.’

‘What do you draw?’ Rose asked as she looked around, expecting to see some drawings taped to the walls, but the walls were bare. ‘Have you got any drawings?’

Lila nodded.

‘Would you show me?’ Rose asked.

Lila pulled a piece of paper from the bedside drawer and held it up. ‘It’s not very good ’cos I don’t have any pencils.’

The paper was lined, Rose recognised it from the hospital case notes, but on it Lila had drawn a fabulous picture of a horse.

‘Is this your horse?’ Rose asked.

Lila nodded.

‘What’s her name?’

‘Fudge.’

‘That’s an interesting name.’

‘She’s the same colour as caramel fudge,’ Lila explained, ‘but it’s hard to tell ’cos the nurses could only find a lead pencil.’

‘Well, I think she’s beautiful.’

Rose noticed that Lila’s voice became a little more animated when she was talking about her horse. Maybe that was the secret to getting her to engage. But wasn’t that the same with all children? You just needed to find something that they were interested in. Rose knew that if you did that it was often hard to stop them from sharing.

‘Does she smell like caramel?’

‘That’s silly.’ Lila couldn’t hide her smile. ‘Horses don’t smell like caramel.’

‘Well, what does she smell like?’

‘She smells like a horse.’ Lila giggled and her dark eyes sparkled, losing their serious intensity. She looked like an eight-year-old girl now and Rose had a moment of self-satisfaction that she’d been able to make this little girl laugh. That she had been able to make a connection, however small, gave her a sense of achievement. This was what she loved about teaching, establishing a connection with the children.

Lila’s giggles continued and Rose knew she was intrigued, but before she could say anything further she became aware of someone on the periphery of her vision. Someone else waiting and watching as she listened to Lila’s laughter. She looked up to find a man standing in the doorway of the ward.

Possibly the most gorgeous man she had ever seen.

Tall, dark and handsome.

Her heart skipped a beat as she wondered who he was. A doctor she hadn’t met yet? An orthopaedic surgeon? She was certain she’d never seen him before—his was not a face she would forget.

Rose ran her eyes over him. He would be a shade over six feet tall with a slim build but his shoulders and chest were broad, his arms were strong and muscular and his legs were long. He was casually dressed in jeans and a navy T-shirt, not the normal doctor-on-staff outfit—no white surgical coat, no tell-tale stethoscope—but Rose noted these things almost subconsciously as her gaze remained locked on his face. His very handsome face. It was tanned and he had a full head of thick, brown hair, cut short, with dark brown eyes to match. His jaw was triangular, darkened by a shadow of stubble, and he had a slight smile on his lips.

She bent her knees and her thighs tensed, ready to push her out of her chair, ready to cross the room and introduce herself to a handsome stranger. It was a reflex response, a reaction completely outside her conscious control, but before she could actually complete the movement the rest of her brain woke up and she realised what she was doing. She relaxed back into her seat, barely managing to rescue herself from complete embarrassment, and took some comfort in the thought that he hadn’t noticed that she’d been about to stand as his attention was focussed on Lila.

The drive to go to him had been strong and the attraction she felt was primal, carnal and, while the result might have been pure embarrassment, it pleased her that she could still experience these feelings. That she still had the desire. The want and the need.

She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt such an immediate attraction to a man. She hadn’t been remotely interested in men or relationships for the past two years yet somehow, with just one look, she knew she would change her mind for this man.

Who was he?

She checked for a hospital ID lanyard hanging around his neck but there was nothing. If he wasn’t a doctor, who was he? Should he even be in the hospital?

He stepped into the room and crossed the floor, and Rose held her breath.

She was vaguely aware that Lila’s giggles had stopped and out of the corner of her eye she saw Lila turn her head as she noticed the man’s movements.

‘Daddy!’

This was Lila’s father?

He reached his daughter’s bed and bent over, kissing her on the forehead. ‘Hello, princess.’

Princess. Rose’s father used to call her that. But she forgot all about her father as this man straightened up and looked at her.

Her breath caught in her throat, stuck behind a lump that had lodged there.

Now that father and daughter were side by side Rose noticed that they had the same eyes. Dark and serious. His chocolate eyes were intense, probing and forceful and she felt as if he could see right into her soul.

* * *

Mitch straightened up and looked again at the woman who sat by his daughter’s bed. He’d noticed her as soon as he’d stepped into the room. He’d heard his daughter giggling, a sound he didn’t hear enough of, but he’d been distracted by the woman sitting beside Lila’s bed. She was not the type to go unnoticed.

He thought he’d imagined her at first. She didn’t look real. Her face was round and serene, perfectly symmetrical. Her green eyes were enormous and iridescent. Her mouth was wide and her nose small. She looked like a woman from a Renaissance painting. Maybe that Botticelli one, the one of the young Madonna with the baby Jesus and the two angels. The light from the window bounced off her golden hair, making it shine like spun silk and making him forget that he hated hospitals, making him forget that he wished he and Lila were a thousand miles away. She was absolutely beautiful, but he had no idea who she was or why she was by his daughter’s bedside.

She was watching him now, staring, silent, frozen like a deer in a spotlight. There was something fawn-like about her. Innocent. Young. Maybe it was her huge, luminous eyes.

Who was she?

She wasn’t a nurse. She had a hospital ID badge hanging around her neck but she wasn’t wearing a uniform and unless things had changed considerably since his last foray into a hospital he was pretty certain nurses didn’t have time to sit idly at patients’ bedsides. Unless the patient was critically ill, which he knew Lila wasn’t.

A feeling akin to dread flooded through him as it occurred to him who she might be. ‘Are you from social work?’ he asked. The social worker had left several messages for him on the station answering machine but by the time he got in at the end of the day it was well past office hours and too late to call back. He knew he could have returned to the house during the day to make a call but he’d been nervous. Worried about what the social worker might want. Worried she might want to talk about what had happened two years ago. That she might want to talk about Cara. He had refused counselling before and had no qualms about doing it again. They didn’t need it. They were all fine.

‘I meant to call you back,’ he fibbed.

She was frowning. A little crease had appeared between her green eyes, marring the perfect smoothness of her brow.

‘I’m not a social worker,’ she replied.

Mitch relaxed; expelling the breath of air he hadn’t even been aware of holding.

‘I’m Rose,’ she continued. ‘I’m just here to keep Lila company.’ She stood up. Her hair fell past her shoulders and she lifted her hands and gathered it all, twisting it into a long rope and bringing it forward to fall over one shoulder.

Now it was his turn to stare. Her movements were fluid and effortless. She’d obviously done this a thousand times before but to Mitch it was one of the sexiest things he’d ever seen and he was transfixed.

‘But now that you’re here, I’ll get going,’ she said, and before he could find another word to say she had stepped past Lila’s bed and was on her way out of the ward.

He couldn’t stop himself from watching her go and his eyes followed her out of the room.

She was slim but under her dark trousers he could see the two, full, round globes of her buttocks. They bewitched him as she stepped out of the room. She wore a soft white top that floated around her torso and reinforced his first impression of her as a golden angel.

Or maybe a golden rose.

Rose who? he wondered. She had left without a decent explanation of who she was and why she was there.

She was young and pretty and her name was Rose. That didn’t seem like enough information. He wanted more. But just thinking about her made him feel old. He couldn’t remember ever feeling young. He felt like he’d always been old. He knew he’d only felt that way since he’d lost his wife but he struggled to remember how he’d felt before. So now it felt as if he’d been born old.

His life was defined by before Cara died and after Cara died. But the more time that passed the harder it was to remember the before. He was so busy running the station and trying to figure out how to be a single father that he never seemed to have time to stop and sit and remember her. He was asleep before his head hit the pillow at night and up at dawn and he didn’t stop all day.