The Magic of Christmas (16 page)

‘I thought you were searching for flaws.'

She gave a weak smile. ‘Yes. Thanks for reminding me. Did your wife stay at home when the children were little?'

‘Fiona was working on her laptop in the delivery room, thirty minutes after Aggie was born.'
While he'd been busy falling in love with his daughter.

‘But if she didn't want to be a mother…'

‘Why did she have the children?' He gave a twisted smile. ‘For me. She knew I wanted to create a stable family. If she'd confessed that she didn't want children, I never would have married her.'

‘They must have been in a state when she left.'

‘For six months Aggie slept in my bed because she was afraid that, if she didn't, I'd leave, too, when she was asleep.' His voice was gruff. ‘And Chloe—well, she said less but she was hollow-eyed and listless. We stumbled on together and eventually we somehow managed to form ourselves into a family again. It's starting to work. I can't risk destabilising that.'

Lara looked at him. ‘You're assuming that they'd be hurt if you had another relationship. But maybe they wouldn't be.'

There was a long, difficult silence while Christian struggled against the masculine instincts that threatened to drive common sense out of his brain. ‘Maybe not.' His tone was rough. ‘But that's a risk I'm not prepared to take.'

‘H
OW
high was the wall, Eddie?' Lara checked the young man's observations and recorded them on the chart.

‘Higher than I thought it was, thanks to the contents of a bottle of champagne.' The young man shifted on the trolley, the pain making him wince. ‘Must have been about four metres, I suppose. I feel as though my entire body has snapped in half.'

‘Hopefully it won't be that bad—' Lara's smile was sympathetic ‘—but we will need to take some X-rays. I'll ask a doctor to come and see you now.'

She stepped towards the door just as Christian entered. ‘Did I hear you mention the fact that you need a doctor?'

Lara felt her heart rate double and quickly
turned away from him.
It was becoming harder and harder to work with him and act normally.

Flaws
, she reminded herself. She needed to fall out of love with him and the only way to do that was to find his flaws.

‘Lara?' His soft prompt brought her back from fantasyland to reality.

‘This is Eddie,' she said, tucking her pen back into her pocket and trying to concentrate on her job. ‘He jumped off a wall.'

‘We were coming out of a restaurant after our Christmas lunch,' Eddie groaned, lifting his hand to his head. ‘I'm in a lot of pain. I thought alcohol was supposed to numb the senses.'

‘We'll give you something for that right now,' Lara said, reaching for an X-ray form and swiftly filling in the blank spaces while Christian examined his patient.

‘Don't move me around too much, my head is spinning. Why are you looking at my spine?' Eddie grumbled as he followed Christian's smooth instructions and moved on the trolley to facilitate a fuller examination. ‘It's my feet that are killing me.'

Lara wandered back to the trolley. ‘If you land on both heels you can damage more than your feet,' she explained. She turned to Christian. ‘Do you want him on his front so that you can examine his Achilles tendon?'

‘In a minute. I'll just look at his ankles and feet first.' He examined the man's heels and Lara noticed the swelling and obvious bruising.

‘Ow, that hurts!' Eddie flinched backwards and Christian murmured an apology.

‘You've very tender over the calcaneum.'

‘I don't know my calcaneum from my cranium but I do know that I'm in bloody agony and I'm never drinking again. If I hadn't had so much champagne I would have known that the wall was too high. It's just that I thought I could fly.'

Lara caught Christian's eye and tried not to laugh.

‘I need you to lie on your front, Eddie,' he said, ‘so that I can examine your Achilles tendon.'

Lara helped Eddie manoeuvre onto his front. ‘Wriggle down a bit so that your feet dangle over the end. That's it. Perfect.'

Christian gently squeezed the mid-calf, looking for normal plantar flexion of the ankle. ‘That's
fine. If you can turn over again, Eddie. I'm just going to send you for some X-rays. Can I have a form, Lara?'

Lara handed him the form that she'd already completed. ‘Sign on the dotted line.' She grinned at him. ‘Calcaneal X-rays—both feet. Is there anything I've missed?'

‘I doubt it.' He scanned the form and signed, a trace of humour in his eyes as he glanced at her. ‘You don't usually miss anything, do you? I'm starting to think you're a mind-reader, Staff Nurse King.'

‘It's called anticipation and it just means that I've worked here for too long. If I hang around any longer I'll be able to treat the patients before they've even had the accident.' Lara took the signed form from him and put the side up on the trolley. ‘I'm locking you in, Eddie, just in case you get any more bright ideas about jumping and flying. Hold on tight. You and I are going to take a trip down to X-Ray.'

She left Eddie with the radiographer and went in search of Jane, who was checking the controlled drugs. ‘Emergency meeting needed.'

‘Not when I'm counting ampoules of morphine.' Jane finished the task, dismissed the staff nurse who had been helping her and turned to Lara. ‘Well?'

‘I need a new flaw.'

‘What's wrong with the old one?' Jane locked the drug cupboard. ‘The man has two demanding children. I thought we agreed that they are
enormous
flaws.'

‘We did. But they're not.' Lara slumped against the wall. ‘I love them.'

‘You love his kids?' Jane pinned the keys into her pocket. ‘Lara, you're in trouble.'

‘I know, I know. But they're so sweet. To be honest, it would be impossible not to love them.'

‘That's because they're still on their best behaviour and they don't know you have dishonourable designs on their father. Once they work it out, they'll turn into horribly, snivelling flaws,' Jane predicted in a dark tone, but Lara shook her head.

‘I'm not sure that they will. You have to think of something else.'

‘No,
you
have to think of something else. Some
one
else, to be precise. Christian Blake isn't
for you.' Jane's voice was serious. ‘You're going to get hurt.'

‘I can't believe you're saying that! You were the one who thought I should have a fling!'

‘A fling, yes. A lifetime of agony because you've fallen in love with a guy who isn't interested in a relationship, no. That isn't what I wanted for you.'

‘How do you know I'm in love with him?'

‘Because I know you.'

Lara breathed out heavily. ‘Why is it that I can never meet anyone I even remotely like and then finally when I meet someone that turns my whole life upside down, he's got two children and he isn't interested?'

‘And you have a ticket to Australia,' Jane reminded her. ‘A month ago you were excited about going. You need to get away and stop deluding yourself. Go and sit on Bondi Beach and look at some half-naked Australian men. They should take your mind off Christian.'

Lara looked at her, unconvinced. ‘Yes. I'll do that.'

What choice did she have?

* * *

‘There's a reduction in Bohler's angle.' Christian stared at Eddie's X-ray on the light box, trying not to be aware of Lara by his side.
She smelt fantastic.
‘It's a sign of compression.'

It took her a moment to respond and, when he glanced at her, he saw that her expression was vacant.
What was she thinking?
‘Lara?'

She gave a little start and peered at the X-ray. ‘Oops. Well, I suppose that's what you get when you drink a bottle of champagne and misjudge your landing.'

Eddie sighed. ‘Is it bad?

Christian turned away from the light box. ‘We need to refer you to the orthopaedic team. They'll decide how best to handle you but they're going to want to admit you.'

The man closed his eyes. ‘Merry Christmas, Eddie.'

‘It's not as bad as all that.' Lara walked across to him and gave him a sympathetic smile. ‘Hospitals are fun places to be at Christmas.'

‘Really?'

‘Actually, no. It's a myth that hospitals are fun. Everyone who is well enough goes home so the
only people left are very sick.' Her eyes twinkled. ‘And then there are the patients…'

Eddie laughed but Christian found himself unable to drag his gaze from Lara,
unable to look away from the dimple at the corner of her mouth.
It appeared every time she smiled and that was most of the time. He loved her irrepressible sense of humour.

And she was wonderful with patients.

She had a natural feel for how to handle each case and modified her behaviour accordingly. When the patient was seriously injured she was calm and reassuring, but when the injuries were less serious she had a light-hearted touch that never failed to make patients laugh.

She was the most talented nurse he'd ever worked with.

And she kissed like a man's hottest fantasy.

Was he doing the right thing, resisting the chemistry?

A thud of lust threatened to destroy his self-control and he gritted his teeth. He pulled the X-rays out of the light box and slid them back into
the brown envelope. ‘The orthopaedic team are on their way down to see you now.'

‘Is there anyone you want me to phone?' Lara took a pad out of her pocket. ‘Girlfriend? Mother? Boss? Santa?'

Eddie pulled a face. ‘Unfortunately for my promotion prospects, my boss was there when I jumped so you don't need to call him. For goodness' sake, don't call my mother because I'll never hear the last of it. I suppose you could call my girlfriend, although she won't be too pleased, either. She had plans for Christmas.'

Lara grinned. ‘I'll call your girlfriend now and with any luck she'll arrive in time to hear what the orthopods have to say about you.'

Christian watched as she walked out of the room.

‘That nurse is gorgeous,' Eddie said dreamily. ‘Is she married? Because I'm going to be looking for a new girlfriend once my current model gets wind of what I've done.'

Christian felt a sudden rush of heated anger envelop him. ‘I don't think she's married.'
Why did he care if another man was interested in Lara?
It wasn't as if he was in a position to have
a relationship with her. He didn't want to risk shattering his children's fragile sense of security.

He walked back into the main area of the ED and immediately bumped into Lara. He reached out a hand to steady her, wondering why fate was so intent on tormenting him. Why couldn't he have bumped into Jane or Fran?

‘Sorry. I wasn't looking where I was going.' He released her immediately and noticed her take a step backwards.

So it wasn't just him, then.

‘I just called Eddie's girlfriend. She's on her way in. She sounded immensely irritated to think he was here.' Her mouth curved into a smile but her eyes were shadowed and tired. ‘Do you think we should call Security? He might need protection.'

Christian studied her delicate bone structure and the tiny freckles that dusted her nose. Eddie was right. She
was
beautiful. He wondered why she was tired. Was looking after the house and the girls too much for her?

Or was she lying awake at night, suffering as he was?

‘Eddie expressed an interest in your marital status.'

Lara lifted a hand. ‘Oh, no.' She shook her head. ‘I can see his flaws without even going on a date. He obviously drinks too much and his spatial awareness must be pretty poor if he couldn't judge the distance to the ground. Disaster. If we went out for dinner, I'd strangle him before we reached the end of the first course.'

‘Has any man ever come close to meeting your impossibly high standards?'

Why had he asked that question?

She was obviously wondering the same thing because the laughter in her eyes faded and she looked away, clearly self-conscious. ‘No. Absolutely not. Never.'

A tense silence followed her statement and Christian felt the slow throb of his heartbeat. ‘Lara—'

‘I forgot to mention,' she interrupted him quickly, her tone unnaturally bright, ‘both the girls want to go to sleepovers tomorrow night. It's with friends that they've played with before so I'm assuming that's all right with you. I'll send in a bag
for them and they can go straight from school. It's quite convenient, actually, because we have a bit of a staffing crisis on the nursing front and I've promised Jane that I'll do a night shift.'

Christian felt an immediate rush of tension. ‘I'm doing a night shift, too.'

Something flickered in her eyes. ‘Oh. Right. Well, that's—that's…'

‘That's what?'

She gave a funny twisted smile. ‘Another test of self-control?'

Christian felt a hot flame of lust burn through his body. ‘It will be fine. We'll both be working.'

‘Of course we will. Just make sure there's no mistletoe.' She backed away from him. ‘Well, I'll just go and break the news to Eddie that his girlfriend is on her way. Judging from her tone of voice, he might want to try and run away on two broken feet.'

* * *

Another heavy fall of snow brought chaos to the roads and the night was frantically busy.

‘Why don't people just go to bed when it gets dark?' Lara said desperately as she called the
medical ward to try and hasten the transfer of two patients so that they could make room in the department.

‘This is why we don't usually work nights,' Jane said, juggling a pile of X-rays. ‘There's never any chance to rest. Ambulance Control just rang. They're bringing in a young guy who's been stabbed. Can you go into Resus?'