Special Deliveries: Wanted: A Daddy: Dr. Dark and Far Too Delicious / Royal Rescue / Father by Choice

She did know what he meant.

Maybe it hadn’t been quite an instant attraction, but that evening on the beach, when he’d lifted his T-shirt … Jasmine pulled back the sheet, looked at his lovely abdomen and bent over and ran her fingers lightly over the line there. He caught her hand as it moved down.

‘I thought you wanted to sleep.’

‘I do.’

‘Then later.’

She set the alarm for that afternoon, before she remembered another potential problem. Penny.

‘And no one at work is to know.’

‘Suits me.’

‘I mean it,’ Jasmine said. ‘What happened yesterday at work was wrong.’

‘I’ll carry on being horrible.’

‘Good.’

‘So much for clearing the air,’ Jed said. ‘Now it’s all the more complicated.’

‘Not really,’ Jasmine yawned. ‘Just sleep with me often and buy me lots of chocolate. My needs are simple.’

For that morning at least it really did seem as straightforward as that.

CHAPTER NINE

JED WAS NICE and grumpy at work and he deliberately didn’t look up when she walked past, and Jasmine made sure there were no private jokes or smiles.

Gossip was rife in this place and the last thing she wanted was to be at the centre of it again.

No one could have guessed that their days were spent in bed. She just hoped he understood that it couldn’t always be like this—that night shifts and her mother’s help had made things far easier than they would be from now on. In fact, Jed got his first proper taste of dating a single mum that weekend.

Ruby was lovely.

‘I’m hoping to work overseas as a nanny,’ she explained to Jasmine, ‘so I’m trying to get as much experience as I can and hopefully by the time I’ve got my qualification I’ll have a couple of good references.’

She was very good with Simon, happy to sit with him as he tried to bang square pegs into round holes, and Jasmine could tell Ruby was very used to dealing with young children.

‘My main problem is late shifts,’ Jasmine explained.

‘The crèche knows me,’ Ruby said. ‘I pick Liam up and I take him back to Vanessa’s. I give him his dinner and bath and I try to get him asleep for Vanessa but Liam likes to wait up for her.’

Jasmine laughed. She and Vanessa had got the boys together a couple of times and Liam certainly had plenty of energy.

‘Well, Vanessa and I aren’t working the same shifts so much now,’ Jasmine explained, ‘so if we can try and work opposite late shifts …’

‘It will all work out,’ Ruby said. ‘I can always look after them both some evenings.’

Jasmine was starting to think this could work.

So much so that for a try-out Ruby suggested she look after Simon that night, and for the first time in a very long time Jasmine found herself with a Saturday night free. To her delight, when Jed rang a little bit later she found that she had someone to share it with.

‘It went well with Ruby, then?’

He asked about the babysitter as they were seated for dinner.

‘She seems lovely,’ Jasmine said. ‘Simon didn’t even get upset when I left.’

They were eating a couple of suburbs away from the Peninsula Hospital in a smart restaurant that overlooked the bay. Jasmine had taken a taxi because she hadn’t been out in yonks and she wanted a glass or three of wine.

‘I would have picked you up.’

‘I know.’ Jasmine smiled. ‘But I’ve a feeling Ruby might gossip to Vanessa. I feel like I’m having an affair. It’s too confusing to work out …’ She looked up from the menu and went cross-eyed and Jed started to laugh. ‘I can’t do that.’

‘It’s easy,’ Jasmine said. ‘You just look at the tip of your nose and then hold it as you look up.’

‘You’ve practised.’

‘Of course.’ She grinned.

And, cross-eyed or not, she looked stunning, Jed noted.

Her hair was loose as it had been on the day he had met her on her walk on the beach, but it fell in thick glossy curls. Unlike at work, she was wearing make-up, not a lot but just enough to accentuate her very blue eyes and full mouth. ‘What do you want to eat?’

‘Anything,’ Jasmine said. ‘Well, anything apart from chicken nuggets.’

So instead of leftover nuggets there was wine and seafood, and conversation was easy, as long as it was just about food, about movies and the beach, but the second it strayed deeper there was a mutual pulling back.

‘Will you go back to your maiden name?’ Jed asked after a while.

‘I don’t know,’ she admitted. ‘I don’t know if I should change Simon’s …’

‘So what is it?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Your maiden name?’

She didn’t answer him, just peeled a prawn. She didn’t even get a reprieve when he asked what had happened in her marriage, because for a marriage to break up when someone was pregnant it sounded as if something pretty serious had.

‘I’ve got three hours, Jed.’ She smiled, dipping a prawn in lime mayonnaise. ‘In fact, two hours and fifteen minutes now. I want to enjoy them, not spend time talking about my ex.’

And later, when they were finishing up their heavenly dessert and he mentioned something about a restaurant in Sydney, she asked why he’d moved. His answer was equally vague and Jasmine frowned when he used her line.

‘We’ve got thirty minutes till you need to be back for Ruby. Do we really want to waste them hearing my woes?’

‘No.’ She laughed.

But, yes, her heart said, except that wasn’t what they were about—they had both decided.

They were going to keep things simple and take things slowly.

But it was difficult to find someone so easy to talk to and not open up, especially when the conversation strayed at one point a little too close to Penny. She’d mentioned something about how good it was to have Ruby, given her mum and sister were so busy with their jobs. As soon as she said it she could have cut out her tongue.

‘Your mum’s in real estate?’ Jed checked, and she nodded. ‘What does your sister do?’

It was a natural question but one she’d dreaded.

‘She does extremely well at whatever she puts her mind to,’ Jasmine evaded, reaching for her glass of wine.

‘Ouch.’ Jed grinned. ‘Sore point?’

‘Very.’

So he avoided it.

It was nice and going nowhere, they both knew that. It was an out-of-hours fling, except with each turn it became more complicated because outside work there were Simon and Penny and unbeknown fully to the other the two hearts that were meeting had both been incredibly hurt.

Two hearts that had firmly decided to go it alone for now.

They just hadn’t factored in desire.

‘It’s like being a teenager again.’ Jasmine grinned as he pulled the car over before they turned into her street and kissed her. ‘My mum lives in this street.’

‘We’re not outside …?’

‘No.’

‘Good,’ he said, and got back to kissing her.

They were under a huge gum tree that dropped gum nuts everywhere, but Jed risked the paintwork, grateful for the leafy shield, and they were ten minutes into a kiss that was way better than teenage ones she’d partaken in, right on this very spot, especially when Jed moved a lever and her seat went back a delicious fraction.

She could hardly breathe. He was over her and looking down at her, his hand was creeping up between her legs, and she could feel how hard he was. However, they could not take it even a fraction further here and she was desperate to pay Ruby and have her out of there, wanted so badly to have him in her bed.

And it would seem that Jed was thinking the same thing. ‘I could wait till Ruby’s gone.’

‘No.’ She hauled the word out, for if she regretted using it now, she knew she would regret it more in the morning if she didn’t. ‘I don’t want that for Simon.’ She looked up at those gorgeous eyes and that mouth still wet from her kisses and it killed her to be twenty-six and for it to feel wrong to ask him in. ‘We’re keeping things light,’ Jasmine said. ‘Agreed?’ she prompted, and he nodded. ‘Which is fine for me, but I won’t treat his little heart lightly.’

‘I know.’

‘Next time we’ll go to yours,’ Jasmine suggested.

He looked down at her and the rules he’d embedded into his brain were starting to fade, because he had enjoyed being out, but now he wanted in.

‘We’ll see,’ he said, because this was starting to be about a whole lot more than sex. He’d more than enjoyed tonight, had loved being in her company. The only bit that was proving difficult was leaving things here. ‘Maybe we’ll go out but eat more quickly?’

‘Confusing, isn’t it?’ she said, and again she crossed her eyes and he laughed and then one more kiss and it ached to a halt.

Killed to turn on the engine and drive down the street and then turn into her own street and to park two doors down from her home.

To smile and walk out and to rearrange her dress as she let herself in.

To chat and pay Ruby and carry on a normal conversation, saying that, yes, she’d had a great night catching up with an old friend, and maybe she’d ask Ruby to babysit so that they could catch up again, perhaps as soon as next week.

But a week didn’t seem so soon once Ruby was gone.

A night felt too long.

It killed her not to text him to come back.

CHAPTER TEN

‘HI, JASMINE!’

She looked up at the familiar face of a paramedic who was wheeling a stretcher in.

‘I haven’t seen you in ages.’

‘Hi, Mark.’ Jasmine smiled, but there was a dull blush on her cheeks, and as Jed looked over to see how the new patient was, he couldn’t help but notice it, couldn’t help but see that Jasmine was more than a little flustered as she took the handover. ‘What are you doing out here?’

‘We’re all over the place today,’ Mark said. ‘I had a transfer from Rosebud that got cancelled and then we were called out to Annie here.’ Jasmine smiled at her new patient. ‘Annie Clayfield, eighty-two years old, fell at home last night. We were alerted by her security when she didn’t respond to their daily phone call. We found her on the floor,’ Mark explained. ‘Conscious, in pain with shortening and rotation to the left leg.’

He pulled back the blanket and Jasmine looked at the patient’s feet and saw the familiar deformity that was an obvious sign of a hip fracture.

Annie was a lovely lady and tough too—she tried to hold back her yelp of pain as they moved her over as gently as they could onto the trolley.

Jed came over when he heard her cry and ordered some analgesic.

‘We’ll get on top of your pain,’ Jed said, ‘before we move you too much.’ He had a listen to her chest and checked her pulse and was writing up an X-ray order when he saw one of the paramedics leave the stretcher he was sorting out and head over to Jasmine.

‘So you’re here now?’

‘That’s right.’ Jed noted that her voice was falsely cheerful and he had no reason to listen, no reason not to carry on and see the next patient, except he found himself writing a lot more slowly, found himself wanting to know perhaps more than he should if they were planning to keep things light.

‘I heard you and Lloyd split up?’

‘We did.’

‘What’s he doing with himself these days?’

‘I’ve no idea,’ Jasmine said. ‘We’re divorced now. I think he’s working in his family’s business.’

As Jed went to clip the X-ray slip to Annie’s door he saw the paramedic give Jasmine a brief cuddle.

‘You had nothing to do with it, Jasmine, we all know that. You don’t have to hide.’

‘I’m not hiding.’

And there was no such thing as uncomplicated, Jed decided, looking at Annie’s X-rays a good hour later and ringing down for the orthopaedic surgeons. They’d both agreed to keep it light, to take things slowly. Neither of them talked much, about families or friends or the past, and it should suit him, and yet the more he knew, or rather the less he got to know …

The more he wanted.

Despite all efforts to take things slowly, things were gathering pace between them. They’d been seeing each other for a few weeks now—at least, whenever they got a chance.

They rang each other a lot, and went out whenever shifts and babysitters permitted, or more often than not they ended up back at his for a few stolen hours.

It just wasn’t enough, though.

Concentrate on work, he told himself as he ran along the beach that night.

Except she was home, he knew it.

And Simon would be in bed.

And she wanted to keep that part of her life very separate.

So too did he, Jed reminded himself.

He caught sight of the city shimmering gold in the distance. Melbourne offered a gorgeous skyline but a different skyline from the one he knew so well.

He’d come here to get away, Jed reminded himself.

To finally focus on his career and get ahead.

Yet he looked at the tall gleaming buildings of Melbourne and as much as he loved Peninsula, there was something about the city, or rather a busy city emergency department.

And still Melbourne Central beckoned.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

JASMINE STARED AT the roster and gritted her teeth.

Jed was filling out blood forms and suitably ignoring her, and Penny was at her annoying best, suggesting that the nurses join her in Resus so that she could run through a new piece of equipment with them.

A new piece of equipment that had been there as long as Jasmine had and had been used often.

Honestly, the second the place was finally quiet Penny found a job or an activity for everyone.

No wonder she was so unpopular.

The roster had finally been revealed for the next eight-week period and as she tapped the shifts into her phone Jasmine could feel her blood pressure rising.

Yes, she was the new girl.

Yes, that meant that she got the rubbish shifts—but she had more late duties coming up than she could count, and lots of weekends too, which she would usually be glad of for the money, but of course the crèche wasn’t open on weekends and, even though she’d been told it was only about once every three months, there was another stint of nights coming up in two weeks.

Her mum would be on her cruise by then.

‘Problem?’ Lisa checked.

‘Just the nights,’ Jasmine said. ‘I thought it was every three months.’

‘Well, we try and share it, but especially when someone’s new I like to get them to do some early, so that was an extra for you.’

Was she supposed to say thanks?

She liked Lisa, Jasmine really did, and she was running a department after all, not Jasmine’s childcare arrangements, but the pressure of shift work and single parenting, let alone trying to date, was starting to prove impossible.

Idly flicking through the patient bulletin, her eye fell on the perfect job for a single mum who actually wanted to have a little bit of a life too.

It was in the fracture clinic and was almost nine to five.

It was a level above what she was on now, but with her emergency experience she would stand a pretty good chance at getting it.

‘Fracture Clinic!’ Vanessa peered over her shoulder. ‘You’d go out of your mind.’

‘I’m going out of my mind looking at the roster,’ Jasmine admitted.

‘Don’t think about it,’ Vanessa said breezily. ‘Something always turns up.’

Jasmine rolled her eyes as Vanessa walked out. ‘I wish I had her optimism.’

‘Jasmine.’ She turned and smiled at the sound of Mark’s voice. ‘How are things?’

‘Good.’ Jed saw she was uncomfortable, saw she glanced over her shoulder to check whether or not he was there, and it was none of his business, he wanted it that way, yet he wanted to know what the problem was, why Mark thought she was hiding.

‘Just giving you the heads up, no doubt you’ll be alerted soon, but there’s a nasty car versus bike on the beach road. Sounds grim.’

‘Do we know how many?’ Jed asked.

‘That’s all I’ve got but they’re calling for backup.’

‘Thanks.’

Jasmine let Lisa know and the orthopods were down anyway, looking at a fractured femur, and Lisa said to just wait till they heard more before they started paging anyone but that she’d let Penny and Mr Dean know.

Then Mark’s radio started crackling and he listened, translating the coded talk of the operator. ‘They’re just about to let you know,’ Mark said. ‘One fatality, one trapped, one on the way—adult male.’

The alert phone went then and Lisa took it just as Penny appeared, looking brusquely efficient as usual.

‘Car versus motorbike,’ Lisa said. ‘We’ve got the biker coming in, he’s conscious, abdominal injuries, hypotensive.’ She looked up at the clock. ‘He’s five minutes away and they’ve just freed the trapped driver, so he’s on his way too.’

‘I’ll take the first,’ Penny said. ‘If that’s okay with you, Jed?’

‘Be my guest,’ Jed answered, but Jasmine saw the clenching of his jaw and knew that Penny was seriously rattling him—she was always jumping in, always trying to take over anything that was remotely interesting.

‘Have we paged the surgeons?’ Penny asked.

‘Done,’ Jasmine said.

‘Blood bank?’

‘I’ve let them know.’

Penny gave no response, but with reason as the blast of a siren told them the ambulance was here. As the paramedics raced the patient in, Jasmine didn’t blame Penny a bit for the curse she let out when she asked where the hell the surgeons were.

The patient, though conscious, was beyond pale. His pulse was thin and thready and Jasmine set to work, with Greg cutting his leathers off.

‘Can you tell me your name?’ Penny asked as she examined him.

‘Reece.’

‘And do you know where you are?’

He answered the questions when prompted but kept closing his eyes and drifting off. Jasmine could only just palpate his blood pressure manually and Penny wasted no time in drawing blood for an urgent cross-match and telling the porters to run it up.

‘And I mean run!’ he warned. ‘Let’s put the O-neg up.’

Penny was possibly up there with the most horrible doctors Jasmine had worked with. She was abrupt to the point of rudeness, gave no thanks, only barked demands, except …

She was brilliant.

‘If they can’t be bothered to get down here,’ Penny shouted as Jasmine tried to locate the surgeons again, ‘tell them that I’ll meet them up in Theatre.’

The patient had had a spinal and chest X-ray, and despite the O-negative blood being squeezed in, his blood pressure was still barely discernible. It was clear he needed Theatre and Penny wanted him taken straight up.

Jed was dealing with the latest admission, and Jasmine quickly prepared Reece for theatre, loading his clothes into a bag and itemising his valuables—rings, wallet … But as she opened up the wallet Jasmine hesitated. There were loads of hundred-dollar notes—at best guess the wallet contained a few thousand dollars.

‘Can someone check this with me?’ Jasmine asked.

‘I’ll check it with you later,’ Greg called. ‘Just put it in the safe.’

‘Can we just check it now?’ Jasmine pushed, except Greg wasn’t listening, so she popped her head around the curtain to where Vanessa and Lisa were assisting Jed. ‘Can someone check this, please? He’s got a large amount of cash.’

‘Just pop it in the safe,’ Lisa called. ‘I’ll count it when things have calmed down.’

‘We’re supposed to check it before we put it in the safe.’ Jasmine’s voice was shrill. ‘We’re not supposed to sign—’

‘Here.’ It was Penny who stepped in. ‘Give it to me, Nurse. I’ll put it in the safe.’ She walked over and took the wallet, signed the piece of paper and threw the contents into the safe. Jasmine realised that she was sweating and she could feel Jed’s eyes on her.

‘Right,’ Penny said. ‘We need to get him up or he’s going to bleed out.’ She picked up the phone and told Theatre the same as Jasmine prepared the trolley for an emergency transfer, but her hands were shaking and her heart was thumping as she knew she’d made a bit of a scene.

‘All okay, Jasmine?’ Lisa checked as Jasmine walked past to get a space blanket to put over Reece on the way up to Theatre.

‘We’re just about to move him,’ Jasmine said, and as Jed briefly looked up she felt the question in his brief gaze, knew she wasn’t fooling anyone that everything was okay, least of all Jed.

‘Reece.’ Jasmine tried to explain things as best she could as she covered him with the space blanket. He was irritable now and struggling to remain conscious, and he wanted to wait till his wife got there before he went up. ‘We’re going to have to move you to Theatre now. Miss Masters will explain things.’

Which Penny did.

She was efficient, brusque but also terribly kind. ‘I know you want to wait for your wife—I completely understand, but you’re too sick,’ she explained gently but firmly. ‘I will talk to your wife myself as soon as she gets here. Is there anything you want me to say to her?’ She glanced at Jasmine and Greg and at the anaesthetist who had just arrived. ‘Could you all excuse us a moment?’

As Jasmine stepped outside to give Penny and Reece some privacy, there was a strange sting of tears in her eyes. It wasn’t that she had seen a different side to her sister, rather she had seen a side to Penny that she had long forgotten.

Sitting on the stairs, hearing her parents argue, had terrified four-year-old Jasmine. It had been Penny who would take her back to bed, Penny who would sit beside her and tell her not to worry, that she would take care of things, that even if things did get bad, that even if Dad did what he was threatening and left, they would be fine.

‘But what if we’re not?’ Jasmine would argue. ‘What if we never see him?’

‘Then we’ll deal with it.’

And in their own ways and albeit not perfectly they had.

And as she ran up to Theatre with her sister, and Penny told her to head back down, that she wanted to speak with surgeons, Jasmine knew that she hadn’t just come back for the support of her family, neither had she taken the job here for the reasons she had so determinedly given.

She wanted to be close to Penny again.

CHAPTER TWELVE

‘I’LL COME OVER after work.’

Jed was coming out of X-Ray as Jasmine walked back from Theatre and they found themselves walking together towards Emergency.

‘It’s fine.’ Jasmine shook her head. ‘I’ll see you at the weekend. Ruby said that she could—’

‘But you’re upset tonight.’

‘Don’t worry, I’ll be fine by Saturday.’ She couldn’t keep the brittle edge from her voice. Yes, she was happy keeping things light, but sometimes, on days like today, it was hard.

‘I’m not expecting to be entertained,’ Jed said. ‘What happened back there?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Jasmine? Why did you get all upset over the safe? You know we can’t just drop everything—the guy was bleeding out.’

‘Just leave it.’

But Jed wouldn’t.

It was a very long shift. Vanessa was on a half-day and Jasmine really wished that she herself was—she could feel Jed watching her, especially much later when Lisa came over and asked her to check the cash.

‘Four thousand six hundred dollars. Agreed?’ Lisa checked.

‘Agreed,’ Jasmine said, and because Penny had first signed for it, she had to be there too.

‘I just rang ICU,’ Penny said. ‘He’s doing much better. His wife told me that he was on his way to put down a deposit on a car—that’s why he had so much cash on him.’ She added her signature to the valuables book.

‘Oh, the irony of it,’ Lisa sighed, because in a car his injuries would have been so much less. ‘Now, I know this is a lot of money and that it has to be checked,’ Lisa continued, ‘but it’s not always possible to just drop everything. It’s better to put it in the safe.’

‘That’s not what the protocol says,’ Jasmine pointed out, and Lisa pursed her lips. ‘It’s been six hours now.’