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  And they were not dancing!

  She balanced on one stiletto but his grip of her was firm and the wall behind her solid. Then her hips angled and both were just as urgent as the other as Dominic thrust and took her.

  Victoria had never felt anything so powerful. He was rough and delicious and she felt matched for the first time in her life, because he held nothing back.

  Everything he delivered.

  Dominic’s hand was behind her back and he could feel the scratch of stone on his knuckles but that was so far from his mind that it barely registered.

  ‘There...’ she said in a voice that was both demanding and urgent.

  He met that demand and heightened it too.

  She felt amazing. Dominic was rather more used to holding back, but Victoria invited intensity. It had been ages for Dominic, and he had wanted her for a very long time.

  There was almost anger in him for how much she made him want her, so he thrust hard and fast and then harder still to the sound of her pleasurable moans, and then he lifted her.

  Victoria had never had both feet off the ground like this; she had never been so consumed. His fingers were digging into her bottom as he took her hard against the wall.

  Their faces were side by side and she wanted to find his mouth, but there was no time for that as she was starting to come. Never had she climaxed so deeply, and if she were not wrapped around him she would have folded in two at the pleasure.

  He released to her deep shudder and together they hit high, and finally she found his mouth, tasted the cool of his tongue as she drank in his kiss. They rested their foreheads together, sharing those last beats of pleasure and breathing the same air until gently he lowered her down.

  With long slow kisses he moved them away from the wall now. She pulled down her dress and then they broke contact and she moved out of the shadows.

  Victoria picked up her discarded knickers but had to lean on the ledge, not just so she could put them on, but because her legs were shaky and she was still breathless.

  She had never let herself go like that, she had never come so hard and she had certainly never been made love to so thoroughly.

  When Dominic emerged from the shadows he, too, was dressed, though his hair was rumpled. It should have been really awkward between them, yet it was not.

  ‘I look like I’ve been in a fight,’ he said as he examined his hands in the moonlight. Victoria took his fingers and looked at them, and made him smile with what she said.

  ‘You’re going to have some trouble explaining those injuries, Doctor,’ she teased, because it really did look, to her trained eyes, as if he had punched the walls.

  Yes, it should have been really awkward but instead he came and sat beside her on the ledge.

  ‘Victoria...’ he started, but really he did not know what to say. Dominic was in no position to start anything. And what had just taken place was very far removed from his usual nature.

  He felt amazing though, as if on the top of a high mountain.

  And she saw him struggle with what to say, so she said it for him.

  ‘You don’t have to explain anything,’ Victoria said. She was not referring to his knuckles, but still she smiled.

  ‘You’re sure?’ he checked.

  ‘Yes.’

  What had happened was something she could never have imagined, something so far removed from her usual wary approach to intimacy, but he did not need to know all of that.

  She felt liberated.

  And feminine.

  With him she felt she had found herself.

  So, instead of an awkward parting they shared a kiss that was deep, long and slow, and ended by her.

  ‘I’m going to go,’ Victoria said, and stood.

  And still she waited for awkwardness, even as she walked to the door.

  So did he, yet awkward did not exist in this room.

  ‘So, if you don’t like diamonds,’ Dominic called. ‘What do you like?’

  And she opened the door and laughed as he went back to the original question.

  ‘Pearls.’

  He sat in the room and looked around. The moon shone through the window and the air was still stirred and seductive from them; his knuckles were grazed and he was somewhat reeling.

  Dominic had never really given pearls any thought before.

  They were just something his mother or grandmother wore for weddings and such occasions.

  Certainly he had never considered them sexy.

  He did now.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ‘PREGNANT?’

  Victoria watched as her father took off his glasses and cleaned them. And, as he did so, she remembered the time she had got her first period and it had been almost an identical reaction—slight bemusement, mild irritation, though more at the intrusion of conversation rather than what was actually being said.

  Victoria sat in her father’s office at Riverside Hospital and waited. For what, she didn’t know.

  She had read somewhere that some terrible parents made the most wonderful grandparents. That without the responsibility of parenthood, they enjoyed the experience. And she had hoped, truly hoped, that it might be the case here. That this might breathe some life into her relationship with her father.

  Apparently not, if his cool reaction was anything to go by.

  And Victoria knew deep down that there had been no real relationship with her father. At least, not the sort she wanted. She hadn’t seen or spoken to him since the function they had attended, despite Victoria having tried to call.

  Her father was brilliant but completely self-absorbed.

  Completely.

  ‘How far along are you?’ he asked.

  It had been six weeks since her time with Dominic, and with the requisite two weeks added, Victoria knew her dates.

  ‘Eight weeks,’ she said.

  ‘Do you want it?’ Professor Christie asked.

  He thought she was here to ask for a referral for an abortion, Victoria suddenly realised.

  And he’d write her one, Victoria knew.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I very much want my baby.’

  She stared at him but he was reading through some notes that lay on his desk.

  ‘What about the father?’ he asked, and looked up.

  ‘I haven’t told him yet. We’re not together or anything. He’s in Scotland.’ Victoria had heard that in passing. ‘On annual leave,’ she added to her father.

  She was forewarned as to the response she might get from Dominic, when her father spoke next.

  ‘Well, he’s in for a pleasant surprise when he gets back.’

  The sarcasm was evident in his voice and it told Victoria all she needed to know about her father’s thoughts on parenthood.

  ‘Victoria, you really need to give this some consideration. Being a single parent is hard work—I should know. It interferes in every aspect of your life. You’re the one who always bangs on about your career—think what it will do to that...’

  She hadn’t seen him since the function and then it had been for an award for his career. Victoria didn’t bang on, as her father described it. Given he was a professor and specialised in Accident and Emergency and she was a paramedic, she had, on occasion, tried to find some common ground.

  But there was none and there never had been.

  There was no room in this narcissist’s world for anyone other than himself.

  ‘I can’t help you financially,’ he said, for Professor Christie had amassed a small collection of ex-wives.

  ‘I’ve never once asked you to.’

  Victoria hadn’t.

  She had left home as soon as she had finished school and had never asked her father for anything.

&
nbsp; But she was about to.

  She looked at her father and knew that really there was no point even being here. He did not want to be a part of her life, and the occasional public showing of his daughter was only when he was between wives.

  ‘Victoria, I need to get on.’

  ‘There is something I want...’ Victoria said, and he let out the little hiss of irritation that he always did when she asked for a moment more of his time. ‘I was hoping to have the baby at Paddington’s.’

  Victoria had decided as she’d walked through the corridors of Riverside that she didn’t want her baby to be born here. There was nothing wrong with the hospital—she often brought patients here—but it felt bland to Victoria, and her father worked here too.

  She felt closer to a building than her own parents. It was sad but true, and that was why she asked the favour.

  ‘They only take complicated cases,’ Professor Christie said.

  ‘Not always,’ Victoria refuted. And she didn’t point out that she’d been born there and that members of staff tended to choose, where possible, to have their child there, but she would not be fobbed off.

  ‘It’s closing.’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ Victoria said. ‘And if it does close before the baby comes along, then I’ll be referred elsewhere, but I’d really like to have my antenatal care there.’

  As an adult she had never asked her father for anything, not one single thing. ‘Can you get me in there?’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

  ‘Now,’ Victoria said, because she knew this conversation would be forgotten the second she walked out of the door. ‘I want to be seen before I tell work.’

  And so, more to get rid of the inconvenience, her father made some calls and finally she was booked in to Paddington’s maternity unit.

  ‘You need an ultrasound before he sees you,’ Professor Christie said, and he went through the details, telling her she had an appointment for tomorrow and that the referral form would be at Reception. Finally, he asked her to reconsider. ‘I really suggest you have a long hard think about going ahead with this, Victoria.’

  That hurt.

  On so many levels it hurt.

  Victoria knew he had never wanted her. She was certain that had her mother not left first, then he would have gone.

  As she got to the door Victoria turned and could see that she was forgotten already—her father was straight back to work, though she still stood there.

  Dominic was right—her father was cold to the bone.

  ‘I can see why she left you,’ Victoria said. ‘My mother, I mean.’

  Professor Christie looked up from his notes and he stared at his daughter for a long moment and then, just before resuming writing his notes, he, as always, had the last word.

  ‘She left you too.’

  * * *

  His words shadowed and clung to her right through into the next day.

  ‘You’re quiet,’ Glen observed as she was driven towards the children’s hospital with Glen, for once not in an ambulance.

  Glen had offered to come with her for her ultrasound appointment. Victoria had declined, though she was touched that her colleague had given her a lift. She had felt very sick on the underground but that was fading.

  Glen knew that she was pregnant.

  Of course he did.

  He had no idea, though, who the father was.

  They worked together, and when Victoria had started to turn as green as her overalls at the smallest thing, he had asked if everything was okay.

  Victoria had said she was fine.

  Then, a couple of days ago, he had asked outright.

  ‘Hayley had terrible morning sickness, with Ryan,’ Glen had told her.

  It had been hard to deny a pregnancy when you were sitting holding a kidney dish in the back of an ambulance.

  ‘You have to tell work,’ Glen said.

  ‘I know.’ Victoria closed her eyes.

  It was starting to be real.

  For the last couple of weeks she had been in denial, but now she was facing up to things and telling work was something she knew she had to do.

  She had this week to get through and then a weekend of nights before she went on two weeks’ annual leave and she had decided that she would tell them at the end of her nights.

  And now they sat in his car as Glen offered some further advice that she certainly didn’t need.

  ‘You have to tell the guy he’s going to be a father.’

  ‘Thanks, Glen,’ she snapped.

  ‘Listen to me, Victoria—’

  ‘No.’ She turned and looked at him. ‘I accepted a lift, not a lecture.’ And though she told Glen to stay back she knew he was right and that Dominic needed to be told.

  When he came back from his leave she would tell him.

  If he came back.

  He might have decided that he missed home.

  Victoria really didn’t know him at all.

  They had gone straight back to being strangers.

  There was no flirting and certainly there had been no reference to what had taken place.

  He was still moody and she was her usual confident self.

  Really, if it hadn’t been for the fact that she was pregnant, by now Victoria would be wondering if it had even taken place.

  That night still felt like a dream.

  Albeit her favourite one.

  ‘Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you?’ Glen checked, but Victoria snorted at the suggestion of needing someone to hold her hand.

  ‘For an ultrasound?’

  ‘Hayley gets nervous whenever she has one...’ Glen started, referring to his wife, as he always did.

  ‘I’m not Hayley,’ Victoria pointed out as she often did. ‘I’ll be fine on my own.’

  She would be better on her own, in fact.

  It was what she was used to after all.

  Victoria walked through the familiar corridors of Paddington’s and turned for the Imaging Department. There she handed over her referral slip to the receptionist.

  ‘We’re running a bit behind,’ the receptionist explained.

  ‘That’s no problem,’ Victoria said, even though she was desperate to go to the loo.

  She had been told to have a lot to drink prior to the ultrasound so that they might get the best view of the baby.

  Still, she had expected to have to wait and had plenty to do.

  Apart from a baby, something else had been created that night.

  Victoria was on the social committee and had decided to use her position there to start a campaign to save the hospital from the merger.

  They met each week over at the Frog and Peach and there was a meeting being held tonight.

  It was proving difficult to get things rolling though.

  Most people seemed to think it was a foregone conclusion that Paddington’s would close. Apart from the odd small write-up in the press, the campaign was not getting any real attention and Victoria was at a bit of a loss as to what to suggest next.

  Rosie, a paediatric nurse, along with Robyn, who was Head of Surgery, were both a huge support and Victoria was hoping to catch up with them before the meeting kicked off.

  Victoria sent a group text, reminding everyone of the meeting, and then she answered a few emails, but though she was passionate about doing all she could to save the hospital from closure, she could not give it her full attention right now.

  She was nervous.

  Oh, Victoria would never let on to Glen that she was, but she had butterflies fluttering in her chest. She was seated next to a heavily pregnant woman who, from the conversation taking place, was accompanied by her mother.

  When Victoria was less tha
n a year old, her mother had decided that motherhood and marriage were not for her and had walked out; Victoria hadn’t seen her since.

  Not once.

  Growing up, she had asked about her, of course. She had craved information, but there had never been much. Her father refused to speak of his first wife and, apart from a couple of photos that Victoria kept to this day in a drawer in her bedside table, she knew very little about her, other than that she had worked at Paddington’s.

  As Victoria had got older, and she could more readily see her father’s very difficult behaviour, Victoria had decided her mother had walked away because she was depressed. A few years ago, Victoria had decided that no mother could walk away like that and have nothing to do with her child.

  And so she had to be dead!

  It had been a shock and black disappointment to find out that no, her mother was alive and well.

  Thriving, in fact, Victoria discovered when she found her on social media.

  She lived in Italy with her second husband.

  And was a proud mother of two grown-up sons.

  Victoria didn’t merit a mention.

  She had contacted her but there had been no response.

  That had been the final hurt and Victoria had decided she would never allow herself to hurt over her mother again.

  Yet she was, and today, especially so.

  Sitting in the ultrasound department, she was jealous of the stranger that sat beside her.

  With her mother by her side.

  She tried to focus on an email she was writing on her phone, rather than them. Hearing the doors swish open Victoria moved her legs to let a trolley carrying a patient past.

  The child was crying and Victoria looked at him. She was just trying to guess what was wrong with him when she looked up into the eyes of Dominic walking alongside the trolley.

  Usually they ignored each other, or spoke only about their patients. Eye contact was pretty much avoided, but today his met hers and she saw that he frowned.

  And well he might.

  She was sitting in a children’s hospital ultrasound waiting room after all!

  It hadn’t once entered Victoria’s head that it might be a problem to see him here today. It wasn’t just that she’d thought he was on holiday, more the fact that Victoria was so used to Paddington’s, so completely used to being here, that it simply hadn’t entered her head that it might be an issue for her to see him.