Kitabı oku: «Best Friend To Perfect Bride»

CHAPTER ONE

SHE HADN’T CHANGED. Tall and slender, her red-gold hair coiled into an elegant knot at the nape of her neck, Bella English looked as beautiful today as she had done the last time he had seen her. On her wedding day.

‘Mac! I heard you were back. Good to see you, mate. How are you?’

‘Great, thanks, Lou.’

James MacIntyre—Mac to all who knew him—turned and grinned at the elderly porter. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Bella move away from the desk but he kept his attention firmly focused on the other man. After what his old friend Tim had told him, he wasn’t all that eager to speak to her.

‘You’re looking well, I must say, Lou. Obviously, moving to the new paediatric A&E unit has done you the power of good. You look a good ten years younger than the last time I saw you!’

‘I wish!’ Lou’s grizzled face broke into a wry smile. ‘It’d take major surgery to turn me into Dalverston’s very own version of George Clooney.’ He glanced over Mac’s shoulder and grimaced. ‘Anyway, I’d better get going. Catch you later.’

‘Yep.’

Mac didn’t need to check to see what had caused Lou to beat a hasty retreat. He could smell her perfume, that subtle fragrance of freesias that Bella always wore. She had told him once that it was made especially for her and that had fitted perfectly with everything he knew about her. Bella was the sort of woman who would have her very own perfume. Nothing about her was ordinary or commonplace.

Mac turned slowly around, taking stock of all the details he had missed before. Although Bella had always been slender, she was verging on thin now, he realised. And even though her complexion was as creamy as ever, there were dark circles under her green eyes that hinted at far too many sleepless nights. Was it guilt that had kept her awake? he wondered a shade bitterly. A noisy conscience clamouring to be heard, even if it was too late in the day? After all, even Bella must feel some degree of remorse about ending her marriage to Tim.

‘Hello, Mac. I heard you were back. How are you?’

The greeting was almost identical to Lou’s, but Mac had to admit that it made him want to respond very differently. He experienced an uncharacteristic urge to take her by the shoulders and shake her, demand to know why she had done such a cruel thing. She had ruined Tim’s life—didn’t she care? Didn’t she care either that she had broken all those promises she had made three years ago to love, honour and cherish the man she had married? He had sat through the ceremony, listened to her cool clear voice swearing a lifetime’s devotion, and had believed every word. If he was honest, he felt almost as let down as poor Tim must do.

The thought shocked him so that it was a moment before he answered. He and Bella had never been anything more than friends—he had made sure of that. So why should he feel so disillusioned? He blanked out the thought, knowing it was foolish to dwell on it. If he and Bella were to work together for the next few months, he couldn’t allow recent events to stand in the way.

‘Fine, thanks. Looking forward to working in the new unit.’ He glanced around and nodded. ‘It looks great, I must say. Obviously, no expense has been spared.’

‘No. Everything is state of the art. We’ve been open for almost a month now and I still have to pinch myself when I come into work. I can’t believe that we have such marvellous facilities to hand.’

She gave a husky laugh and Mac tensed when he felt the tiny hairs all over his body spring to attention. He had forgotten about her laugh, forgotten how soft it was, how sexy. It had been her laugh that he had noticed first, in fact. He had been standing in the lunch queue in the university’s refectory when he had heard a woman laugh and he had turned to see who it was …

He ditched that thought as well, not needing any more distractions. He knew where his loyalties lay, knew that if he had to take sides then he would be firmly allied to Tim. Tim had poured out the whole sorry tale, told him what had happened from start to finish, and whilst Mac was realistic enough to know that it was rarely all one person’s fault when a marriage ended, it was obvious that Bella was more at fault than Tim. No, Tim’s biggest mistake had been to love Bella too much and be too soft with her. The thought firmed his resolve and he smiled thinly at her.

‘Is that what brought you to Dalverston, the chance to work in a wonderful new facility like this? I must confess that I was surprised to learn you had moved out of London.’

‘It was one of the reasons, yes.’

Bella’s expression sobered and Mac’s heart twisted when he saw the pain in her eyes. Maybe Tim was hurting but Bella was hurting too, it seemed. The idea affected him far more than it should have done, far more than he wanted it to do. It was an effort not to let her see how he felt when she continued.

‘I needed to get away and moving up here seemed like the right thing to do. It’s a fresh start for me and, hopefully, it will be a fresh start for Tim as well.’

Bella could feel the animosity coming off Mac in huge waves and it hurt to know that he had judged her and obviously found her wanting. She knew that Tim would have told Mac his version of the story but she had hoped that Mac would wait until he had spoken to her before he started apportioning blame. However, it appeared that he had accepted what Tim had said without question. She was the one at fault, the bad guy who had called time on her marriage, while Tim was the innocent victim.

She swung round, refusing to stand there and try to justify herself. She had made up her mind that she wouldn’t retaliate after she had found out that Tim had been spreading all those lies about her. She had seen that happen with other couples, had watched as the situation had deteriorated into an unseemly sparring match, and she had sworn that she wouldn’t go down that route. People would believe what they wanted to believe anyway. If she tried to contest Tim’s claims that she had been unreasonable, that she had ruined his career, that she had ended their relationship rather than have a baby with him, few would believe her.

She had always been the reticent one in the relationship, the one who took longer to make friends, whereas Tim had always been very outgoing. Tim drew people to him and made instant friends of them, and if he tended to drop them just as quickly later, then nobody seemed to mind. No, if there were sides to be taken then most folk would take Tim’s. Including Mac, it seemed.

Pain stabbed her heart as she led the way to Reception. Even though she knew it was silly, she hated to think that she had sunk so low in Mac’s estimation. Dredging up a smile, she turned to Janet Davies, their receptionist, determined that she wasn’t going to let him know how she felt.

‘This is Dr MacIntyre, Janet. He’ll be covering the senior registrar’s post until Dr Timpson is fit to return to work following her accident.’

‘Oh, I know Mac. Who doesn’t?’ Janet got up and hurried around the desk to give Mac a hug. She grinned up at him. ‘So where was it this time? Africa? India? Outer Mongolia?’

‘The Philippines.’

Mac hugged Janet back, his face breaking into a smile that immediately warmed Bella’s heart. He had always had the most wonderful smile, she thought, then pulled herself up short. Maybe Mac had smiled at Janet with genuine warmth but he certainly hadn’t smiled at her that way.

‘Oh, grim.’ Janet grimaced. ‘Was it as bad as it looked on TV?’

‘Worse.’

Mac shook his head, his dark brown hair flopping untidily across his forehead. It needed trimming, Bella decided, even though it suited him, emphasising his craggy good looks and that air of toughness he projected. Mac looked exactly like the kind of man he was: tough, unflappable, someone you could depend on, someone who would never let you down. Her heart ached even harder at the thought. She could have done with Mac’s support this past difficult year.

‘The typhoon destroyed whole cities and left people with nothing except the clothes they stood up in. We had a devil of a job getting hold of even the most basic supplies in the beginning,’ he continued.

‘How awful!’ Janet shuddered as she went back to her seat. ‘Makes you grateful that you live here, doesn’t it.’

‘It does indeed.’ Mac grinned. ‘Even if it does rain a lot in this part of the world!’

Janet laughed as she reached for the telephone when it started ringing. Bella moved to the whiteboard and checked the list of names written on it, determined to start as she meant to go on. Maybe there were certain issues that she and Mac needed to address, but they were colleagues, first and foremost, and she intended to keep that at the forefront of her mind. There were just three children in cubicles and each of them had been seen and were currently awaiting the results of various tests. She pointed to the last name on the list when Mac joined her.

‘I’d like you to take a look at this one, if you wouldn’t mind. Chloe Adams, aged eight, admitted at four a.m. this morning complaining of a severe headache. She’d also been vomiting.’ She sighed. ‘Apparently, she’s been suffering from violent headaches for several weeks. Mum took her to their GP, who thought it was probably a sinus infection, but I’m not convinced.’

‘So what are you thinking?’ Mac queried. ‘That it’s something more sinister?’

‘Yes. I noticed a definite lack of coordination when I was examining her. It made me wonder if it’s a tumour. I asked Mum if she’d noticed anything—clumsy gait, frequent falls, that kind of thing—but she said she hadn’t.’ Bella shrugged. ‘Chloe is one of five children and I get the impression that her mother is finding it hard to cope since their father upped and left them at the beginning of the year.’

‘I see. It must be difficult for her when she’s been abandoned like that,’ Mac said blandly, so blandly in fact that Bella knew he was thinking about her situation.

Colour touched her cheeks as she led the way to the cubicles. She hadn’t abandoned Tim! She had left because Tim had made it impossible for her to stay. She had tried to help him, tried everything she could think of, but nothing had worked. He had been too dependent on the painkillers by then to give them up. Oh, he had promised that he would, swore that he had umpteen times, but he had lied. The drugs had changed him from the man she had married, turned him into someone who lied and deceived at the drop of a hat. It had reached the point where she simply couldn’t take any more and she had left and, amazingly, it had been the best thing she could have done for him.

Tim had sought help after that. He had admitted himself to rehab and finally kicked his habit. Maybe she should have gone back to him then—she had thought about it. But then she had found out about his affair and there hadn’t seemed any point. She would only have gone back out of a sense of duty and that hadn’t seemed right or fair to either of them.

It made her wonder all of a sudden if she had ever really loved him—loved him with the depth and intensity that people were supposed to feel when they married—if she hadn’t been prepared to fight for him. The problem was that she had never been truly in touch with her feelings. As the only child of career-minded parents, she had learned at an early age to keep her emotions in check. Even after she had grown up, she had always held back, had always been wary about letting herself feel. Tim had seemed like a safe bet—the type of man she was used to, someone from her own social circle, someone she felt comfortable with. Unlike Mac. Mac had been very different. Even though they’d only been friends, his self-assurance and experience of life had unsettled her. Everything about him had seemed alien. Dangerous. A threat to her peace of mind. He still was.

Bella’s breath caught. If Mac had seemed dangerous all those years ago, he was even more of a threat now that she was so vulnerable.

‘Mrs Adams? I’m Dr MacIntyre. Dr English has asked me to take a look at your daughter.’

Mac smiled at the harassed-looking woman sitting beside the bed. He knew that Bella was standing right behind him and forced himself to focus on the other woman. He had sworn that he would behave with the utmost propriety and wouldn’t take Bella to task about what she had done. Maybe he did believe that she had behaved deplorably by ending her marriage, but it wasn’t his place to say so.

‘She’s feeling a lot better now, aren’t you, Chloe?’ Donna Adams turned to the little girl, urging her to agree, and Mac sighed. No matter how long this took or how inconvenient it was for the mother, they needed to get to the bottom of Chloe’s problem.

‘That’s good to hear but I still think it would be best if we carried out a couple more tests.’ He smiled at the little girl. ‘We don’t want you having any more of those horrible headaches if we can avoid it, do we, Chloe?’

‘No.’ She smiled shyly back at him, clutching tight hold of a battered old teddy bear.

Mac grinned at her as he sat down on the edge of the bed. ‘What’s your teddy’s name? I have a bear just like him and he’s called Bruno.’

‘William.’ Chloe gave the bear a hug. ‘He’s my best friend and I take him everywhere.’

‘I expect he enjoys it.’ Mac took hold of the bear’s paw and solemnly shook it. ‘It’s nice to meet you, William. My name’s Dr Mac.’

Chloe giggled at this piece of nonsense, but Mac knew that it was important to gain her trust. He smiled at her again. ‘So, now the introductions are over, I need to ask you some questions, Chloe. There are no right or wrong answers, mind you. And if you want William to help you then that’s also fine. OK?’

‘OK,’ Chloe agreed happily.

‘So, Chloe, have you noticed that sometimes you don’t seem quite as steady on your feet as normal and fall over?’

‘Sometimes,’ Chloe murmured. She glanced at her mother then hurried on. ‘It happened in school the other day. I got up to fetch a piece of paper to do some painting and fell over. Teacher thought I was messing about and told me off.’

‘I see.’ Mac glanced at Bella and saw her nod. Poor balance could point towards a disturbance to the function of the cerebellum and was often an indication of a tumour. Although he hoped with all his heart it wasn’t that, it was looking increasingly likely.

‘And have you found it difficult to walk sometimes, as though your feet don’t want to do what you tell them to?’ he continued gently.

‘Yes. Sometimes they keep going the wrong way,’ Chloe told him guilelessly.

‘I’m sorry, Doctor, but what has this got to do with Chloe’s headaches?’ Donna Adams demanded.

‘It all helps to build up a picture of what might be wrong with Chloe,’ Mac explained, not wanting to go into detail just yet. If their suspicions were correct then there would be time enough for the poor woman to face the fact that her child was seriously ill. He stood up and smiled at Chloe. ‘I’m going to send you for a special scan, Chloe, so we can see what’s happening inside your head. I just need to make a phone call first and then the porter will take you and your mum downstairs to have it done.’

‘Will it take long?’ Donna Adams asked anxiously. ‘Only I’ve got to get the others ready for school. They’re with my neighbour at the moment but I can’t expect her to see to them. She’s in her eighties and it’s far too much for her.’

‘The scan itself won’t take very long,’ Bella said gently. ‘However, Chloe will need to stay here until we get the results back. Is there anyone else you can contact who could see to the children?’

‘No.’ Donna’s tone was bitter. ‘There’s nobody since their dad upped and left.’ She glanced at her daughter and sighed. ‘They’ll just have to miss school today, I suppose.’

Mac didn’t say anything as he followed Bella from the cubicle, but it didn’t mean that he wasn’t thinking it. Breaking promises was a definite no-no in his view. He only had to recall his own father’s despair after his mother had walked out on them to know that it was something he would never do. If he ever made a commitment then he would stick to it, no matter what.

He glanced at Bella and could tell from her expression that she knew what he was thinking, but it was hard luck. Letting Tim down the way she had was beyond the pale, in his opinion. She had promised to love and cherish Tim for the rest of her days but she hadn’t meant it. She couldn’t have done if at the first sign of trouble she had turned her back on him. He felt guilty enough about not being there when Tim had needed his support, even though he’d had no idea what his friend had been going through. However, Bella had been there and, as Tim’s wife, she should have been the one person he could rely on. It was little wonder that his friend was so devastated.

Mac’s mouth thinned as he followed her into the office. Maybe it was unfair of him to be so judgemental but he had always considered Bella to be the ideal woman. Not only was she beautiful, but she was highly intelligent too. Although he had been deeply attracted to her when they had met at Cambridge, he had been ever so slightly in awe of her as well. The fact that she had kept herself aloof from the rest of their class had only added to her allure, in fact.

He had never been the reticent type. His upbringing, on a council estate on the outskirts of Manchester, hadn’t allowed for such luxury. He had learned early on that he needed to be tough to survive, focused and determined if he hoped to achieve his goal of becoming a doctor. Bella had been very different from the girls he had known at home, different too from the rest of the women in their year at university. Although many of them had come from privileged backgrounds too, Bella had stood out: her perfection had made her special. To discover that she wasn’t perfect after all had hit him hard. For all these years he had put her on a pedestal but the truth was that Bella was just a woman like any other, a woman who could make and break promises. She wasn’t special. And she wasn’t out of his league, as he had always believed.

Mac frowned. It was the first time that thought had crossed his mind and he didn’t like it. Not one little bit. Or the one that followed it. There was nothing to stop him making a play for Bella now.

Sadly, the results of Chloe’s scan only confirmed their suspicions. Bella sighed as she studied the monitor. ‘There’s no doubt about it, is there? That’s definitely a tumour.’

‘It is.’

Mac leant forward to get a better look and she tensed when his shoulder brushed against hers. She moved aside, not enjoying the fact that her heart seemed to be beating far faster than it normally did. She cleared her throat. The last thing she needed was Mac thinking that he had any kind of effect on her.

‘It’s probably a medulloblastoma, wouldn’t you say? That’s one of the most common types of brain tumour that occur in children.’

‘Oh, yes. The fact that it’s arisen in the cerebellum makes it almost a certainty,’ he concurred.

‘Chloe’s going to need immediate treatment,’ Bella said, focusing on their patient in the hope that it would stop her thoughts wandering again. Maybe she did seem to be unusually aware of Mac, but that was only to be expected. Ever since she’d heard he was back in England, she had been on edge. After all, Mac was Tim’s best friend and it must be hard for him to accept what had happened. It was bound to lead to a certain degree of … well, tension between them. The thought was reassuring and she hurried on.

‘From what I’ve read, medulloblastomas can grow very rapidly and spread to other parts of the brain as well as to the spinal cord.’

‘That’s right. Chloe needs to be seen by an oncologist ASAP so we shall have to set that up. She’ll probably need radiotherapy as well as chemotherapy if she’s to have any chance of surviving this.’ He shook his head and Bella saw the sorrow in his eyes. ‘I feel sorry for her mother. It’s going to be a huge shock for her.’

‘It will be a lot for her to deal with, especially with having the other children to look after,’ Bella agreed quietly. ‘Just travelling back and forth to hospital while Chloe receives treatment will be a major task with her not having any backup.’

‘It will.’

Mac’s tone was flat. Although there was no hint of censure in his voice, Bella knew that he was thinking about the way she had seemingly deserted Tim in his hour of need. The urge to tell him the truth—the real truth, not the version that Tim was determined to tell everyone—was very strong but she refused to go down that path. It wouldn’t improve Mac’s opinion of her if she tried to apportion blame; it could have the opposite effect, in fact.

It was hard to accept that there was very little she could do, but Bella knew there was no point agonising about it. Switching off the monitor, she turned to leave the office. ‘I’ll go and have a word with Mrs Adams,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘The sooner she knows what’s going on, the better.’

‘Fine. Do you want me to phone Oncology and start the ball rolling?’ Mac offered, following her out to the corridor.

‘If you wouldn’t mind … Oh, they’ve got a new phone number. They’re starting the refurbishments today so they’ve moved temporarily into the old building. I’ll get it for you.’ Bella went to go back into the office and staggered when she cannoned into Mac.

‘Sorry.’ He grinned as he set her safely back on her feet. ‘I didn’t expect you to turn round so suddenly, or that’s my excuse, anyway. It’s got nothing whatsoever to do with me being born clumsy!’

‘No harm done,’ she assured him, although she could feel heat flowing from the point where his hands were gripping her shoulders. She stepped back, setting some much-needed space between them, or much-needed by her, at least. Mac appeared unmoved by the contact. ‘Janet should have Oncology’s new number, now that I think about it,’ she said, hastily squashing that thought. ‘Let me know what they say, won’t you?’

‘Will do.’

He sketched her a wave as he headed to Reception. Bella watched until he disappeared from sight then made her way to the cubicles. She wasn’t looking forward to the next few minutes. Breaking bad news to a parent was always difficult and one of the few things she disliked about her job …

Her breath caught as she felt the heat finally consume her entire body. It felt as though she was on fire, burning up, inside and out, and all because Mac had touched her. She couldn’t recall ever feeling this way before, couldn’t remember when the touch of a man’s hands had set her alight, not even when Tim had made love to her. What did it mean? Or didn’t it mean anything really? Was it simply the lack of intimacy that had made her so susceptible all of a sudden?

Once Tim had become hooked on the painkillers, they had stopped making love. He hadn’t been interested in anything apart from where his next fix was coming from and she hadn’t been able to stand the thought of them being intimate when it wouldn’t have meant anything. It was almost two years since they had slept together and there had been nobody else since, or at least not for her. Was that why she felt so aware of her body all of a sudden, so emotionally charged? It wasn’t Mac’s touch per se that had aroused her but the fact that she had been denied an outlet for her feelings for such a long time?

Bella told herself that it was the real explanation; however, as she entered the cubicle, she knew in her heart that it was only partly true. Maybe the lack of intimacy was a contributing factor but she doubted if she would have reacted this way if another man had touched her the way Mac had done. The truth was that she had always been aware of him even though they had never been anything more than friends. There was something about him that she responded to, even though she had refused to acknowledge it. It made her see just how careful she needed to be. The last thing she wanted was to start craving Mac’s touch when it was obvious how he felt about her.