The Best Of The Year - Medical Romance

‘Oh, that’s good to know.’ Macey smiled.

He had, on admission and again last week, interviewed Macey extensively and she had revealed nothing more but Steele pushed on. He knew where they were heading.

‘I saw your picture in the corridor,’ he said. ‘They’re putting up pictures of the history of the hospital as a part of the renovations. Emergency is getting a makeover at the moment and so too is the entrance corridor.’

Macey said nothing at first. She didn’t want to hear about the changes to the hospital she had loved. It had been such a huge part of her life. ‘I don’t like hearing about renovations,’ she said finally. ‘I like remembering it as it was.’

‘Things change,’ Steele said. ‘Not all things, though. Anyway, I saw you in one of the photographs. It looked as if you were getting a medal or a badge in the gardens …’

Macey’s eyes filled with tears as she remembered those days.

‘Can you talk to me?’

She shook her head.

‘I want to see if I can help.’

‘Well, you can’t.’

‘Okay.’ He knew not to push her. Macey was starting to come out of her emotional collapse a little. The medicines were starting to help and she was engaging with the nursing staff and the occupational therapist.

He knew there was more, though, and that night he told Candy as he cooked them a stir-fry.

‘Macey’s holding out on me.’

‘Maybe not,’ Candy said.

‘Oh, I’m pretty certain that she is.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I just know.’ He smiled. ‘Can you pass me the oyster sauce?’

She jumped down and went to the cupboard and got it for him.

‘I hate this kitchen,’ Steele said. ‘It’s really badly thought out.’

‘I hate kitchens, full stop,’ she said. ‘You like cooking?’

‘Not really,’ he said, ‘but I like eating.’

‘Did you …?’ Candy stopped. She’d been about to ask if he’d done the cooking when he’d been married. It was, she guessed, a no-go area, so she swiftly changed what she had been about to say. ‘So why did you buy it if you hate it so much?

‘It’s just a serviced apartment.’ Steele answered her question while knowing what she’d been about to say. He was used to avoiding such subjects with women he dated but Candy, or rather his feelings for her, was unlike any he had known and he was starting to come to grips with answering the tricky questions for her. For now, though, he was glad she had changed what she’d been about to say. ‘All my stuff is in storage. Which is why I have to work out things like the coffee machine.’

‘Oh! I thought you just need glasses. Well, I guess that accounts for the terrible pictures on the walls.’

‘I was about to say all my stuff is in storage apart from the pictures,’ he said, and then grinned at her pained expression. ‘Joke.’

‘Thank goodness.’

She opened the bottle as he stirred in the beef. The smell was incredibly strong, and she headed to the sink for a drink and took a few breaths, not wanting to show how the smell had affected her.

Tiny spots were dancing in her eyes and she was sure that if she said anything then Steele would simply tell her, as her parents had, to cut down on the extra shifts that she was working.

‘Are you okay?’ he asked.

‘Fine,’ she said as she ran a glass under the tap. ‘I’m just thirsty.’

‘You’re wrecked,’ Steele said. He turned off the wok and came over and turned her to face him. ‘You need an early night.’

She smiled up at him. ‘Our early nights are possibly the reason that I’m so tired.’

‘I’m serious,’ he said. He looked at her pale features and felt a touch guilty that she had been burning the candle at both ends. ‘Why don’t you go to bed?’ he suggested. ‘To sleep—a decent sleep.’

‘It’s seven o’clock.’

‘Go to bed,’ Steele said, ‘and I mean to sleep. You need it.’

‘I think I might.’

Because they could, because they were both tired, for no other reason than they wanted to, when Steele had served up their meals they headed to the bedroom, stripped off, Steele closed the curtains and they ate dinner in bed while watching the news. Candy felt very spoiled and very lazy as he took their empty plates through to the kitchen.

‘I don’t think I’ve been to bed at this time since I was seven years old,’ she said as Steele climbed back into bed. ‘I used to beg to stay up then!’

‘Do you want to watch a movie or just go to sleep?’ he asked, and they shared a very nice kiss.

‘I just want to sleep.’ She sighed, wriggling down in the covers and getting comfortable with him.

‘Then do.’

She lay on his chest, delighted with their early night, feeling the lovely crinkly hair on his stomach and wondering if she’d ever been happier. ‘I love your stomach,’ Candy said.

‘If you want to sleep you’d better stop playing with it, then.’

She didn’t.

She thought back to what she’d been about to ask in the kitchen. Whether Steele had done the cooking or if his wife had was irrelevant, she knew. There was other stuff she’d like to know, though. ‘Can I ask you something?’

‘You can,’ he said, staring into the semi-dark and sort of knowing what was coming and wondering how he’d answer it.

‘Why did your marriage break up?

‘We just didn’t work out,’ Steele said. Then he went to add his spiel about they’d been too young, or they’d just grown apart, yet he and Candy had always been honest with each other. They were so honest with each other that it sometimes took his breath away. Which meant he didn’t want to be evasive now, yet he had never told anyone the reason for the break-up. He’d never told anyone apart from his ex-wife that he was infertile.

And when he had told Annie, she hadn’t taken the news well.

‘I haven’t really talked about it before,’ Steele admitted.

‘Were you a wife basher?’ Candy whispered.

‘No.’ He laughed.

‘Then it doesn’t matter,’ Candy said, and gave him a light kiss on the chest. ‘You don’t have to answer.’

He wanted to, though.

‘Annie and I got married when I was twenty-three and she was twenty-six. We’d been going out for years,’ Steele said. ‘We bought the house, the dog, all good …’

Candy didn’t like that.

It was funny but she felt the little stiffening of her body as he gave his past a name and an age but then she breathed out through her nostrils and lay there, waiting for him to continue. ‘Then Annie decided, or rather we both decided, to start a family.’

‘She decided or both?’ Candy checked.

‘I thought we should wait but Annie really wanted children so we went for it but nothing happened,’ Steele said. ‘And then nothing kept on happening. I went and had a test—they usually check for issues with the guy first as it’s far less invasive—and so we found out, pretty much straight away, that the problem was me. I’m infertile.’ He waited for her to stiffen again, or some sign of tension, or what, he didn’t know, but instead she looked up at him through the darkness. ‘That’s why you broke up?’

‘Pretty much. Annie was devastated. I mean, the news completely sent her into a spin.’

‘You broke up just because of that?’ Candy asked. She really didn’t understand.

‘It causes a big strain in a marriage. Then there was all her family and how they dealt with the news.’ Steele let out a sigh. ‘Can you imagine your family’s reaction if you told them that your husband was infertile?’

Candy thought for a moment and she could and so she answered him honestly. ‘One, I’m not very keen on getting married …’

‘Come on.’

‘Seriously, I’m not,’ she said. ‘Two, I wouldn’t tell them—it’s none of their business. I might tell them that we were having problems if they nagged enough.’ She thought about it some more. ‘Steele, I do everything I can not to discuss sex and such with them—I still hide my Pills in my handbag.’

‘I guess.’ He smiled. ‘After all, you hid me in the bedroom.’

Candy nodded to his chest. ‘So I certainly wouldn’t be discussing my partner’s sperm count with them.’

Steele gave a low laugh.

‘You said that she’d been back in touch?’ she ventured.

‘Yep, her second marriage has broken up and she asked if I would consider giving us another go, though with one proviso—there have been a lot of advances in technology apparently …’

‘What a cow!’

He smiled. ‘My thoughts at the time—well, a little less politely put in my head. I just hung up on her.’

‘You didn’t consider it.’

‘I don’t love her any more,’ he said. ‘I haven’t for a long time.’

He looked a little more closely into the timeline of his marriage and divorce, something he rarely did. ‘When I found out that I probably couldn’t be a father and Annie had wrapped her head around the news, she lined us up for this battery of tests and investigations. She started to talk about donor sperm and, to be completely honest …’ Steele hesitated; it hurt to be honest at times. ‘I think I knew then that we had more problems than my infertility.’

‘Like?’

He had never really examined it. He’d just shoved that into the too-hard basket, but lying there, her fingers on his stomach and her breath on his chest, he felt able to go further. ‘Well, I’d always planned on being the complete opposite to my parents with my children. I didn’t want boarding school or that sort of thing. I wanted to be a real hands-on father. When we first started trying to have a baby, though I thought we were maybe jumping in rather too soon, I was also looking forward to it. I think we all assume, or at least I did, that I’d be a parent one day. When I got the results I suddenly lost all that. I told Annie and she sobbed and she cried and then she had to go to her family and wail with them. It went on for weeks, and do you know what, Candy?’

She heard the bitterness in his voice and now she could understand it. ‘What?’

‘I was feeling pretty awful at the time. Seriously awful. I wanted some time to get my head around it. I wanted to process the knowledge that I couldn’t have children. In hindsight we’d had it really good till that point. We’d never had to deal with anything major. And when we did, I found out that I didn’t like the way Annie dealt with the difficult things that life flings at us at times. She made it all about her, not even about us. It was all about Annie. I tried to understand where she was coming from, yet she never did that for me. I think I fell out of love. If I was ever properly in love in the first place …’ he mused. ‘So, yes, while I’ve always thought that it was infertility that broke us up, I don’t think it’s that neat.’

He loved it that she was still there. She hadn’t even jolted when he’d told her. Maybe because they were temporary, Steele pondered. Maybe because she wasn’t worried about his ability to make babies, but it was nice to have said it and to have got such a calm reaction.

‘Was she blonde?’ Candy asked, and it made him smile.

‘No.’

‘Tall and leggy?’

‘Go to sleep.’ He was really smiling now as he kissed the top of her head.

‘Can I ask another thing?’ she said sleepily.

‘You can.’

‘Why are we using condoms?’

‘Because I always have.’

‘So have I.’ She gave him a little nudge and Steele lay there smiling at the potential reward for his little confession. ‘Well, they do say that every cloud has a silver lining.’

Candy didn’t answer.

She was fast asleep.

CHAPTER SEVEN

CANDY HAD NEVER slept better than she did when Steele was beside her. His breathing, his heartbeat, the way he held her through the night were like a delicious white noise that blocked out everything else other than them. They wrapped themselves around each other, then unwrapped themselves when they got too hot and then when they got too cold found the other again. It was a seamless dance that lasted a full ten hours and had them on a slow sultry simmer that, by morning, started to rise to boiling point.

Candy awoke slowly, face down on the pillow and with her arms over her head. Steele’s arm lay over her waist. The scent in her nostrils was Steele and as she started to wake up she remembered what they had been talking about before she’d fallen asleep. She knew it wasn’t something that he’d discussed with others and the privilege of him confiding in her gave her a warm feeling. She loved it that he’d told her. She loved lying in bed next to him and feeling him start to wake up. She loved every minute of her time with him.

She felt his hand roam her spine. Steele’s slow, lazy explorations made her melt into the mattress. It was as if each vertebra, right down to the lowest, was an individual treasure worth examining. His hand moved up her back and then to the exposed flesh on her side. Her rib cage received a significantly slower perusal, and his fingers found the softness of her flattened breast. She wanted to lift herself up to let his hand in but he rolled heavily onto her. His mouth buried beneath her hair, reaching for her neck, and then kissed his way to her ear.

‘You do talk in your sleep.’ His lovely voice greeted her ear and was just as effective in turning her on as his hands.

‘Don’t believe a word I say.’ Candy smiled as he whispered to her the rude things that she hadn’t said.

‘How are you feeling now?’ he asked, because it had been a very long sleep after all.

‘Better than I ever have,’ she admitted. ‘I never want to move.’

‘Then don’t.’

There was a thrill low in her belly and Candy, who had never, till Steele, had morning sex, was fast becoming a fan as, still face down on the pillow, she felt Steele’s delicious weight come fully on top of her.

Temptation beckoned as she parted her legs just a little, closing her eyes as his fingers checked that she was ready, which of course she was. Clearly last night’s conversation was still on his mind because there was no pause in proceedings to reach for a condom and put it on. Instead, she felt his naked warmth nudging her.

He entered her slowly and Candy let out a moan and so too did Steele, because to feel her wet warmth along his length was intimate, way more intimate than he had been in a very long time.

His mouth was at her ear. ‘Cross your ankles,’ he said.

Candy did so and she thought she might collapse with the pleasure as together they started to rock—she could feel every long generous inch of him, hear his ragged breathing. Her face was red and sweaty in the pillow, and Steele took her hand and placed it between her legs and got to work on her breasts.

Oh!

She’d feel guilty later, Candy decided, but he didn’t seem to mind a bit that she touched herself. They were barely moving, just rocking, his mouth was at her ear, his fingers stretching her nipples, and then his fingers slid down and took over from hers.

‘You’re bad for my conscience,’ she said.

‘No conscience needed,’ he said.

He could go for ever like this.

Usually.

Her buttocks were so soft and ripe and they started to lift and press into his groin, and the soft muffled moans of pleasure had Steele tip just as she did and it was bliss to feel him come unsheathed inside her.

‘Oh …’ Candy lay feeling his weight on her and never wanting him gone. Even the alarm clock that was going off seemed a mile away.

‘Can you wake me up like that tomorrow?’ she said.

‘I can.’

He rolled off and they lay, Candy still on her stomach, facing each other, and sharing a smile.

‘I’m going to try and swap so I can get this weekend off,’ Steele said, because she flew out the following Friday. ‘It’s not long now till you go.’

She didn’t want to go.

Well, she did, because she was probably going to spend the entire first week of her holiday in bed. With all these extra shifts and sex marathons she was looking forward to sleeping round the clock.

She just wished that her holiday was scheduled for after he’d gone.

Then she stared into his eyes and wondered who she was kidding because she knew that she was going to spend her entire holiday sobbing. Despite starting off with the best of intentions to keep things light, to simply enjoy, Candy knew she was in way over her head. Her feelings for this man were so intense, so instinctively right that she simply could not imagine how she was possibly going to begin to get over him.

‘Steele …’ She took a breath. She wasn’t sure if what she was about to say would sound too pushy, but she’d never held back from the truth with him and she chose not to now. ‘Why don’t you come for a few days?’

‘To Hawaii?’

‘Yes.’ Candy nodded.

‘I don’t want to intrude on your holiday …’

‘It wouldn’t be intruding. It would be nice if you came in the middle. You’ve got a long weekend coming up.’

‘It would be nice,’ Steele said. ‘I’d be pretty wrecked, though.’

‘Well, I’ll have slept for a week by the time you get there,’ Candy said. ‘I’ll have enough energy for both of us. Think about it,’ she offered, and then she climbed out of bed and grimaced when she saw the time. ‘I’m going to be late. I’ll have a quick shower and then I need to stop by my flat.’

‘I’ll drive you in,’ Steele said. To keep things well away from work Candy was still taking the Underground and he watched the little flash of worry flare in her eyes.

‘We might be seen,’ she said. ‘Steele, you’ve no idea how gossip spreads at that place.’

‘I’m sure I do.’ He smiled. ‘It doesn’t bother me if we’re seen, unless of course it’s a problem for you.’

She thought about it for a moment. ‘Actually, no.’

‘I can have broken your heart and put you off seeing anyone for ages after I’ve gone.’ Steele grinned, giving her an excuse to give to Gerry if he pushed her to go out with him when he returned from Greece. But then Steele met her eyes and his tone changed slightly and she, though late for work, stood there in the bedroom and felt her heartbeat quicken. ‘You could even say you were still seeing me,’ he said, and they just looked at each other.

‘I guess he wouldn’t know either way,’ Candy said, though something told her this conversation had little to do with excuses to give to Gerry.

There were two, possibly three, conversations going on.

That Steele would be gone and that Candy could say what she liked about them if it made things easier for her with Gerry.

That he would be gone, Steele thought, and he was saying that possibly this might last longer.

That he would be gone, Candy thought, and she didn’t want him to be.

‘Get ready,’ he said.

They stopped at her flat and Candy quickly changed into jeans, which was what she usually wore for arriving at work, and rubbed some serum into her hair as she chatted to Steele.

‘We came back here for this?’

‘I can’t leave home without it,’ Candy said, trying to tame her long wild curls. ‘I should buy another bottle and leave it at yours.’

‘Why don’t you just pack some things now and put them in my car?’ Steele said, and she hesitated because she’d been thinking exactly the same thing. ‘It would save us dashing back and forth all the time.’

She packed a case and they loaded it into his car and drove to work. It was all so new, so exciting that neither could help smiling.

As they pulled into the staff car park, Louise, a midwife who had done a stint in Emergency last year, was walking past. She and Candy had got on well. Louise was blonde and gorgeous and rather pregnant and she waved to Candy and gave a little wink.

‘We’re public knowledge now.’ Candy smiled as she waved back, because Louise was a terrible gossip, which was surprising, considering that she was married to Anton, an obstetrician whose middle name was discretion.

‘I’m fine with that,’ Steele said.

He had long ago stopped playing games and this felt nothing like a game with Candy.

‘We’ll keep it discreet on the ward, though,’ Candy said, because she was working on the geriatric unit today till lunchtime.

‘Yes,’ Steele said. ‘I just don’t want to be dropping you at another entrance and things. Come back to mine after work. I’ve got a meeting at six, though,’ he continued, ‘so I won’t be back till about eight.’

‘I’ll have bread waiting in the toaster for you,’ Candy said as he peeled off a key, which he had never done before. She snapped it onto her key ring as if it was no big deal.

It was a big deal. Both knew it. It was way too soon, but in other ways it was not soon enough.

Neither knew where this had come from or fully what it was.

They were planning holidays, her suitcase was in his boot, his key was now in her bag and they were kissing in the front seat as if one of them had just stepped off a plane after a year’s absence. When she pulled back from his kiss, she returned to her question from before she’d fallen asleep. Candy was curious about his ex-wife and that spoke volumes in itself.

‘Was she tall and leggy?’ Candy smiled, watching him cringe just a little as he shook his head.

‘Gamine?’ Candy ventured. ‘Please say no.’

‘Not gamine exactly …’ Steele said, and she groaned.

‘Careful, Steele,’ she warned. ‘You may live to regret your next choice of words.’

He just smiled as they got out of the car.

There was nothing about their time together to regret.

Just that it was running out.

CHAPTER EIGHT

‘I’M GOING TO take off your dressing, Macey,’ Candy said. ‘Steele wants to have a look at it.’

‘Are you working tomorrow?’ Macey asked, because Candy only had a four-hour shift and finished at lunchtime.

‘I am, but I’m working down in Emergency.’

Macey was improving. Her medications were starting to kick in and she was engaging with the staff and other patients. She was also taking her meals unaided but she was still far from the feisty woman who had arrived in Emergency.

Steele came in just as Candy had got the dressing off. It was clearing up but it was very sloughy and still a bit smelly and as she saw it, Candy blew out.

‘I’m just going to get the phone,’ she said, even though it wasn’t ringing, but she felt a bit sick. ‘I won’t be long.’

‘I was like that,’ Macey said to Steele, ‘when I was …’ Macey quickly changed what she had been about to say mid-sentence. ‘When I was nursing.’

‘No, you weren’t,’ Steele said. ‘You weren’t some young pup who couldn’t stomach a bit of pus.’

Macey looked at him.

He knew. She was sure of it.

Steele did know because he had seen the cape carefully held to hide Macey’s stomach in the photo in the entrance hall. He’d also done a little delving and it would seem that Matron Macey Anderson had gone to Bournemouth to recover from polio, though she’d made no reference to it when Steele had asked her for her medical history.

Tell me, his eyes said as Macey’s own eyes filled with tears. Steele sat on the bed and took her hand. ‘Talk to me, Macey.’

‘When I was carrying, I was like that.’ She started to cry as a fifty-five-year-old secret was finally released and Steele let her cry. He passed her tissues from her locker, not saying a word as Macey wept.

As Candy came in to do the dressing he briefly looked up to her. ‘I’ve got this, thanks,’ he said.

Candy saw that Macey was upset and left them.

When Macey stopped crying, he didn’t press her for more information; instead, he did the dressing on her leg and afterwards he sorted out the covers. ‘Do you want a cup of tea?’ he asked.

‘I’d like a sherry.’

‘I bet you would,’ he said. ‘I’ll be back in a moment.’

He took away the trolley, leaving Macey alone for a little while to gather herself. He left the curtains closed around her.

Candy was having a glass of water at the desk and he asked her for the keys to the cupboard where the sherry and things were kept and poured Macey a glass.