One Magical Christmas Read online

  Christmas really was magic

  Imogen had witnessed it in her training when she’d worked a shift on the children’s ward—seen how, no matter how dire the circumstances, everyone pulled together and made the impossible work on that one day. She had seen its magic in her own family a few short years ago, and she was seeing it now with his.

  Angus, with only an hour’s sleep to his name, was trying to work out what parcel Santa had left for whom. When he’d wrapped them, Angus had been sure that he’d remember! He was smiling and keeping it together—doing his very best for the two little people who mattered most.

  Imogen was blinking at her rather big pile of presents. A big pile she truly hadn’t been expecting.

  “From me,” Angus said gruffly, as she pulled back the wrapper on a huge silk bedspread. “I figured if I can’t be with you…”

  And it was so nice…too nice.

  Imogen crumpled. She truly didn’t know if she was crying because she’d miss Angus or because right now she missed her little boy. Maybe she was crying because the one time in her life that she had the crème de la crème of everything lined up and at her service, raring to go, she was in absolutely no position to take what was on offer.

  Dear Reader,

  I will confess, this book had me in a spin. I never knew what my heroine was going to do from one moment to the next (neither did my hero, Angus!). I don’t plan, I don’t plot—I just write the story that appears in my head. And boy, did Imogen appear!

  Imogen is a big girl with a big heart. She has this incredible capacity for love and forgiveness, which, at the time, I didn’t quite get.

  People sometimes think that when you write a book, you write about yourself. If only that were true. So many times I paused while writing—marveling at this gentle, strong, sexy woman who, in the end, taught me many life lessons. She really did.

  Happy reading!

  Carol Marinelli

  ONE MAGICAL CHRISTMAS

  Carol Marinelli

  ONE MAGICAL CHRISTMAS

  For Bob and Glynn

  Love you lots

  xxx

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  EPILOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  ‘HI THERE! I’m Imogen.’

  Accident and Emergency Consultant Angus Maitlin looked up from orders he was hastily writing as, wearing a smile and not a trace of unease, the woman walked towards him.

  ‘Sorry?’ Handing his orders to his intern, Angus frowned at the unfamiliar face.

  ‘Heather said I should come introduce myself to you,’ she patiently explained, and Angus picked out an Australian accent. ‘I’ve been sent down from Maternity to help with the emergency you’re expecting in…’

  She watched him glance at her ID badge.

  ‘You’re a midwife?’

  ‘And an RN.’ Imogen added, without elaborating. Something told her that this good-looking package of testosterone really wasn’t in the mood to listen!

  ‘Have you worked here before?’ His hands gestured to the frantic Resuscitation area. The five beds were full and one was being cleared for a burn victim trapped in a car on a busy London motorway. ‘Do you know the layout?’

  ‘Not yet,’ she said, looking around her. ‘I’ve only been in the country two days. Still, I’m sure—’

  She didn’t have a chance to finish so she just stood there as he stalked off, no doubt to complain to the nursing unit manager. Well, let him complain, Imogen thought—she didn’t want to be here and he clearly didn’t want her here either! With a bit of luck she’d be sent back to Maternity.

  ‘Heather!’ Angus barked, not yet out of Imogen’s earshot. ‘When I said that I urgently needed more help in Resus I didn’t mean you to send in a midwife!’

  Angus rarely lost his temper but he was close to it now. The department was full, Resus was full, and his request for more staff had been met by this rather large, grinning woman in a white agency nurse’s uniform who had only just set foot in the country!

  ‘I’ll come and help if need be,’ Heather responded calmly. ‘But the nursing co-ordinator did tell me that not only is Imogen a midwife, she’s also advanced emergency and ICU trained. Though,’ she added sweetly, ‘I do have a grad nurse in the observation ward. I can swap her over if you think that would be more—’

  ‘I’ll manage,’ Angus cut it in curtly, and then changed his mind, closing his eyes for a second and running a hand through his dark blond hair. ‘I’m sorry, Heather—I didn’t think to ask about her qualifications. It’s just when she said that she’d only just arrived here…’

  He glanced over to where Imogen stood where he’d rudely left her, and gave a small wince of apology. He expected to receive a rather pained, martyred look back—it would have been what he deserved—only, clearly amused, she merely shrugged and smiled. The strangest thing of all was, given the morning he was having, Angus actually found himself smiling back.

  ‘I’m sure people suffer from burns in Australia!’ Heather’s sarcasm soon wiped it from his face, though.

  ‘I get it, OK?’ He reached for his water bottle at the nurses’ station and took a long drink. The patient they were expecting was still being extricated from the car and there was plenty he could be doing in that time, but from the brief description of the horrific injuries that would soon present, Angus guessed a minute to centre himself was probably going to be time well spent.

  ‘Is everything OK, Angus?’ Heather Barker also had plenty she could be getting on with but, used to priorities shifting quickly in this busy London accident and emergency department, she took a moment to deal with the latest category one to present. Angus Maitlin, the usually completely together consultant, the utter lynchpin of the department, seemed for once to not be faring so well.

  Not that he said it.

  Not that he ever said it.

  Impossibly busy, he was usually infinitely calm and dependable. Not only did Angus help run the accident and emergency department, he was also married to a successful model, a proud father to two young children and had, in the past few years, become something of a TV celebrity. Angus had been asked, by the local television station, to give his medical opinion on posttraumatic stress syndrome. His deep, serious voice, his undeniable good looks, combined with just the right dash of humour, had proved an instant hit, and the cameras, along with the audience, had adored him. Which meant he had been asked back again, and now Angus Maitlin was regularly called on to deliver his particular brand of medicine on a current affairs show. Yet somehow his celebrity status hadn’t changed him a jot—Angus still had his priorities well in place—his family first, the emergency department a very close second, or, when the situation demanded, Emergency first, family second, and then, somehow, everything else got slotted in.

  Just not today.

  Not for the past couple of months, actually.

  ‘Angus?’ When he ignored her question Heather rephrased it. ‘Is there a problem?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Anything that you might want to talk about?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  Sitting on a stool, muscular, yet long limbed and elegant, his thick fringe flopping over jade eyes, his immaculately cut suit straining just a touch to contain wide shoulders as he d
rank some water, Angus Maitlin looked better than fine—the absolute picture of relaxed health, in fact—only everyone in the department knew better.

  ‘It’s not like you to snap at the nurses.’

  ‘I’ll apologise to Imogen. I really am fine, things are just busy.’

  ‘It’s not just Imogen…’ He could tell Heather was uncomfortable with this discussion and he was too. ‘I’ve had a couple of grumbles from staff recently. And we always are busy—especially at this time of year.’

  They were. It was a week before Christmas and London was alive. The streets were filled with panicked shoppers, parties, cold weather, ice, families travelling, people meeting. Combine all that with alcohol in abundance and December was always going to be a busy time—only it had never usually fazed him.

  ‘What’s going on, Angus?’ Heather pushed. ‘You just haven’t been yourself lately. Look, I know it’s not a great time to talk now, but once we get the place settled…or we can catch up for coffee after the shift…’

  ‘Really, I’m fine.’ Angus said firmly. Heather was the last person he wanted privy to his problems. Oh, she meant well and everything, but some things were just…private. ‘I hate burns, and this one sounds bad.’ He gave her a tight smile, picked up the phone when it trilled and spoke to Ambulance Control. Then took another quick drink of water and stood up from his stool. ‘They’ve just got the victim out of the car—ETA twelve minutes…’

  For someone who hadn’t been shown around, Imogen had done a great job of setting up. Burn packs were opened on a trolley, sterile drapes were waiting, and despite his rather abrupt walk out earlier she gave him a roll-of-the-eye smile as Angus returned.

  ‘Couldn’t get rid of me, then?’

  ‘Believe me, I tried!’ Angus joked, surprisingly refreshed by her humour.

  ‘Given that we’re going to be spending the next few hours together, I’d better introduce myself properly—I’m Imogen Lake.’

  ‘Angus…’he offered back, ‘Angus Maitlin—I’m one of the consultants here. Look, I’m sorry if I was curt with you earlier.’

  ‘That’s OK.’

  ‘No, it’s not…’ He was washing his hands, but he looked over at her as he spoke. ‘I completely jumped the gun—when you said that you’d been pulled from the maternity ward, that you were a midwife, I thought the nursing co-ordinator had messed up.’

  ‘They often do!’ She was smiling even more readily now—his rather snooty English accent along with his genuine apology making it very easy to do so.

  ‘You weren’t in the middle of a delivery or anything?’ Angus asked, wincing just a touch as she nodded.

  ‘And I was enjoying it too.’ Imogen added, just to make him feel worse. ‘So what do we know about the patient?’

  ‘The victim coming in was the driver of a motor vehicle heading onto the M25.’ Angus told her the little he could. ‘According to Ambulance Control, the car lost control at the junction, hit the sign and exploded on impact, a fire truck witnessed the whole thing and the crew were straight onto it, putting out the fire as quickly as they could…’

  ‘Is the patient male or female?’ Imogen asked.

  ‘We don’t know yet.’

  ‘OK.’ It was her only response to the grim answer—that the victim’s gender hadn’t been immediately identified was just another indication of the direness of the situation.

  Imogen truly didn’t want to be here.

  She had spent the last hour in a darkened delivery room, coaching Jamila Kapur through the final first stages of labour and into the second stage. Jamila had just been ready to start pushing when Imogen had been called to the phone.

  When the nurse co-ordinator had rung and asked if she’d help out in Emergency, Imogen had immediately said no and not just because she didn’t want to go down there. Continuity of care with labouring mums was important to Imogen, and just as she wouldn’t have walked out on Mrs Kapur if she had been at that stage of labour when her shift ended, in the same way she hadn’t wanted to walk out on her then.

  Then the co-ordinator had rung again, reading off her qualifications as if Imogen mightn’t be aware that she had them! Telling her that her skills would be better deployed in Emergency and that was where they were sending her.

  Her first shift, in a different hospital, in a different country and an agency nurse to boot, she really wasn’t in any position to argue.

  Imogen felt as if she’d been pulled from the womb herself—hauled from where she had been comfortable and happy then plunged into the bright lights of the busy department, to be greeted by unfamiliar faces, chaos and noise. But—as Imogen always did—she just took a deep breath and decided to get on with it.

  It wasn’t the patient’s fault that she didn’t want to be here!

  ‘Where are the gowns?’ She answered her own question, pulling two packs down from the rack on the wall. She handed one to Angus before putting on her own, her ample figure disappearing under a mass of shapeless paper, and Angus felt more than a pang of guilt at complaining about her earlier. She seemed completely undaunted by what was coming in, and by all accounts it would be horrific, yet from the organised way she’d set up for the patient, from the qualifications he now knew she had, her unruffled manner wasn’t because of ignorance—she was clearly a very experienced nurse.

  ‘The anaesthetist should be here.’ Angus glanced at his watch. ‘You paged him?’

  ‘Twice.’

  On cue he arrived and Imogen handed him a gown too as Angus gave the information they had.

  Her fine red hair was already scraped neatly back in a ponytail, but she popped on a paper hat, as Angus did the same, to maintain a sterile field as far as possible and minimise the risk of infection.

  The wait was interminable and Angus glanced at his watch, the delay in arrival possibly meaning that the patient had died en route. ‘What the hell’s keeping—?’ His voice stopped abruptly, the short blast of the siren warning of the imminent arrival.

  Even though it was still only nine a.m. the sky was so heavy with rain it was practically dark outside. The blue light of the ambulance flashed through the high windows, and Angus gave Imogen a grim smile as they waited those few seconds more. This time, however, her freckled face didn’t return it, blonde eyelashes blinking on pale blue eyes as instead she took in a deep breath then let it out as the paramedics’ footsteps got louder as they sped their patient towards Resus.

  ‘I hate burns!’ Imogen said, catching Angus still looking at her.

  It was the only indication, Angus realised, that she was actually nervous.

  CHAPTER TWO

  IT WAS organised chaos.

  The type where everyone worked to save a life—and not just in the emergency department but in so many unseen areas of the hospital. Porters running with vital samples up to Pathology, who in turn raced to give baseline bloods and do an urgent cross-match—as the radiographer came quickly around to take an urgent portable chest film.

  The patient’s name was Maria. That was all the information they had so far. Her bag carrying all the details that would have identified her had been lost in the furnace of the car. But in a brief moment of consciousness as they had extricated her from the car she had given her name.

  The paramedics were dripping wet—a combination of rain, sweat and the dousing of the car, and smelt of petrol and smoke. Their faces were black with soot and dust from the fire. Two of the firefighters were being triaged outside, one with minor burns and one with smoke inhalation.

  By every eye-witness account that had been given, Maria should have been dead.

  ‘Core temperature?’ Angus snapped as he viewed the young woman in front of him.

  ‘Thirty-four point eight,’ Imogen responded.

  And it seemed bizarre that someone who had been severely burnt might be suffering from hypothermia, but the dousing, the exposure, the injuries just compounded everything. The thermostat in Resus was turned up, the staff dripping with sweat in the sti
fling warmth as the patient’s burnt body shivered.

  ‘She put up her hands…’ Angus was swiftly examining her, and the little bit of hope that had flared in Imogen as they’d wheeled her in was quashed. The beautiful face that she’d first glimpsed was, apart from the palms of her hands and some area on her forearms and buttocks, the only area of her body that wasn’t severely burnt.

  ‘TBSA, greater than 85 per cent.’ Angus called, and Imogen wrote it down. The total body surface area that had suffered burns was horrific and for now intense Resuscitation would continue. Maria would be treated as any trauma victim, airway, breathing and circulation the first priority, and they would be assessed and controlled before a more comprehensive examination would occur, but things didn’t look good. Even though the depth of the burns still needed to be assessed, with every observation, with every revelation the outcome for Maria was becoming more and more dire.

  ‘There was one more victim at the scene—deceased,’ the paramedic added quietly. ‘No ID.’

  ‘They were in the car together?’ Angus checked. ‘Is the deceased male or female?’ The paramedic gave a tight shake of his head. ‘We don’t know at this stage. Adult,’ he added, which couldn’t really be described as consolation, but when the paramedic spoke next, Angus conceded, it was perhaps a small one. ‘The child car seat in the rear of the vehicle was empty.’

  There were many reasons that no one liked burns—the rapidity, the severity and the potential for appalling injuries, the sheer devastation to the victim’s life, the long road ahead, both physically and mentally if they made it through. It took a very special breed of staff indeed to work on a burns unit, and most emergency staff were grateful that they only dealt with this type of injury relatively occasionally and for a short time only.