More Than A Gift

The first time she’d read the letter, she’d been shocked, then overwhelmed with anger at the deception that had shaped her life. It had taken her several months before she’d been able to find sympathy in her heart for the mother who had abandoned her then deliberately distanced herself from any contact.

Laurel closed her eyes against the hot prick of tears, cradling her hands over the swell of her own child. It hadn’t been until she’d realised that she was pregnant and had felt that instant flood of maternal love that she’d been able to understand how a mother would do anything to make sure her child was taken care of, even give her up for adoption.

She was just grateful that society had changed enough in the last twenty-eight years that she could make her own choices, not have them forced upon her by appalled family and friends.

And they would be appalled if they knew what she’d been doing for the last year.

She gave a brief wry chuckle when she realised just how close to twelve months it had been since she’d left the only home she’d known and had tried to disappear.

It would be Christmas in just a few days, and exactly one year ago she’d been a meekly dutiful part of the lavish planning and preparations for her wedding.

She still didn’t know whether Grant had been privy to her father…no, not her father…to Robert Wainwright’s machinations. When she’d realised what had been going on, she hadn’t paused even long enough to leave him a note and hadn’t dared to contact him in the meantime.

Not that she believed for a moment that she’d left Grant with a broken heart. As far as she could tell, theirs had been a marriage brokered solely in pursuit of financial gain.

One thing that had persuaded her into agreeing to it had been the fact that she would finally be escaping from Robert’s incessant criticism. It would be such a relief not to have to pretend any more that she was still taking those wretched tablets and to be able to live her own life. The fact that she would finally be able to wholeheartedly follow the nursing profession she’d fought so hard for had been enough to convince her to accept Grant’s proposal.

It wasn’t as if she’d had any other suitors lining up, not with Robert keeping an eagle eye on every spare moment when she hadn’t been on duty. Anyway, she’d never really wanted a man in her life. A lifetime under the overbearing control of one had made her wary about any sort of social interaction. It had been enough for her that she’d finally completed her training as a nurse.

Laurel sighed when she remembered just how long she’d had to campaign to be allowed to apply for a place and her surprise when her mother…no, not her mother, Robert’s wife, had added her weight to the argument in her favour.

She would always see the day of her interview as a milestone in her life. For a few moments she’d wondered if she’d made an enormous mistake when she’d explained in detail how she’d become addicted to tranquillisers and the steps she’d taken to rid herself of the problem.

Looking back, she believed that it had been her willingness to consider herself on probation and the offer to permit blood tests at any time to confirm that she was ‘clean’ that had prompted them to give her the chance she’d wanted.

Those years had been hard work but she didn’t regret a single bedpan. Not only had they given her a way to escape the poisonous atmosphere that seemed to surround her whenever she was in the same room as Robert Wainwright, they’d also made her realise that she’d found the purpose to her life.

And that wasn’t all. There was another, even more important reason.

If she hadn’t fought to get out from under Robert Wainwright’s thumb—if she hadn’t insisted that she wanted to train as a nurse—she’d never have been in the right place at the right time to meet Dmitri.

This time the smile was bitter-sweet, muted by the pang of loss that surrounded her heart.

It hurt to know that never again would she see the man she loved. After the way she’d had to leave him, he probably wouldn’t want to have anything to do with her, but that didn’t mean that she regretted meeting him. Far from it.

Laurel didn’t need to have him in front of her to be able to picture him perfectly, starting with those mesmerising eyes.

CHAPTER TWO

‘EXCUSE me?’

Fear had been Laurel’s first reaction at being accosted, and she’d frozen. It had always been her first emotion in those days. Fear that someone had finally seen behind her deception and tracked her down. She hadn’t seen how they could have, since she’d changed the name she was known by on the ward, but still, with the necessity of at least one person in the admin department knowing her legal name so that she’d been able to be paid, there had always been a risk that something could get back to Robert Wainwright.

The softly spoken voice behind her had a definite accent but it wasn’t one that Laurel recognised. Neither did she recognise the shiver of awareness that the velvety sound had on her nerves.

She forced herself to turn, and looked up into the most amazing eyes she’d ever seen.

They were grey, but not like any grey she’d ever seen before. They didn’t look the cold colour of steel but almost as if they carried the searing heat of molten silver, and set against the intriguing slant of lean cheeks and surrounded by long dark lashes they seemed more mysterious than ever.

For several long seconds Laurel stared into them, almost mesmerised by their intensity. It wasn’t until he blinked that those sinfully long lashes broke the spell and she realised that she hadn’t said a word.

‘I’m sorry. Can I help you?’ At least she hadn’t dropped the armful of clean sheets she was carrying.

‘I hope so. Can you tell me, which way to ryebyonak?’

‘Ryeby—what?’ Laurel asked, wondering if her brain was so scrambled that she couldn’t understand simple English any more.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said with a rueful grin. ‘I was thinking of home—of Russia—and sometimes the wrong words come out. I should have said I was looking for the…the babies. Neonatal department.’

‘I’m going that way myself. I can show you,’ she offered, hoping her cheeks weren’t as red as they felt. His eyes had hardly left her face since she’d turned round and she was now wondering if she’d got a coffee moustache, or something. She would have to check as soon as she had a moment. It was imperative that she didn’t draw even the most innocent attention to herself, not until she’d accomplished what she’d set out to do.

‘Here. Let me take those for you,’ he offered, and before she even realised what he was going to do, let alone argue about the need, he’d scooped the heavy pile of linen out of her arms and tucked them easily under one arm.

And all she could think about was the fact that she could smell the scent of soap on his skin.

‘You work in the department?’ he asked as they set off, and she wondered if he was having to shorten his stride to allow her to keep up with him. She wasn’t particularly short at five feet eight, but guessed that he must be at least six feet and probably an inch or two more.

And every inch of it seemed as lean and powerful as one of those swimmers she’d seen on television, practising for the next Olympics. He might be dressed in a smart charcoal-grey suit and white shirt at the moment, but she could just imagine what he’d look like in a pair of those skin-tight shorts, or…

Whoa! Enough!

What on earth was happening to her? She’d never been the sort to fantasise about men, let alone naked men. And all he’d done had been to carry a pile of sheets and ask her…

‘Oh, yes!’ she said hurriedly, suddenly realising that he was still waiting for an answer. ‘I work on the neonatal ward—well, I’ve only recently started in the department. It’s my first post since I qualified.’

‘And was this an assignment, or was it something that you have chosen?’

His expression was so intent that she could almost imagine that her answer mattered more than if it was just for the sake of conversation.

‘Oh, I chose it,’ she said, feeling quite flustered. She just wasn’t accustomed to being the focus of anyone’s attention, unless they were looking to find fault. ‘It’s what I’ve always wanted to do.’

‘I hope it meets your expectations,’ he said with a thoughtful nod, then continued softly, so softly that, coloured by his exotic accent, she couldn’t be sure she’d heard him correctly, ‘You will be good for the babies.’

That had sounded like a compliment, something else that she wasn’t accustomed to hearing and had no idea how to respond to. Thank goodness they had reached the ward.

‘Sister should be in her office. Shall I show you where…?’

‘No, thank you. That won’t be necessary,’ he said with a smile that almost had her swallowing her tongue. This man was more deadly than anything the old Soviet Union might have once had in its nuclear arsenal. ‘I can find my way around the ward. I just have trouble finding my way around the hospital at the moment.’

He relinquished his hold on the pile of sheets.

‘Perhaps you need to drop a trail of breadcrumbs so you can find your way back,’ she suggested with a grin of her own, only realising how flippant she must have sounded when she reached the linen cupboard. That was hardly the right way to go about keeping a low profile.

‘Get a grip on yourself,’ she muttered under her breath as she stacked the shelves neatly. They couldn’t afford to run low on clean linen when their patients were among the most fragile and susceptible to infection in the whole hospital.

At least disposable nappies had eliminated one set of supply problems. She could just imagine how many traditional cloth ones would have been used in a day.

Now she needed to let Sister know that she’d returned from her errand and find out about her next task. That was one thing about working in a busy unit like this, there was so much going on and so many things to do that she was learning something new every day. Still, it would be nice when she was proficient enough to do more than assist her more senior colleagues.

‘Roll on the day when I’m not one of the lowest of the low,’ she murmured. Having had to fight to be allowed to do her nursing training, she was several years older than most newly qualified staff, and she was human enough to feel a twinge of resentment when she was being ordered to do relatively menial tasks by much younger women. ‘And as there’s no way I’ll be moving up the ladder until they’re sure that I’m competent enough, that situation can only be remedied by time and hard work.’

She consciously straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin. The fact that her flight from home had also cost her the plum post she’d been offered at the hospital where she’d done her training was just another thing to lay at her family’s feet. At least her ‘record’ as a former tranquilliser addict was in the past, buried by the hospital at which she’d done her training. They’d actually told her that after watching her closely over the last three years, they had no fear that it would ever interfere with her work.

‘Ah, there she is, Sister Richards! My rescuer!’ exclaimed a newly familiar voice, and Laurel’s breath caught in her throat.

‘Thank you for rescuing him for me, Laurel. I wouldn’t want to lose him,’ her superior said, but although she was speaking to Laurel, her eyes never left the lean man at her side.

Laurel could all too easily understand why, especially if he was in the habit of smiling like that. What she didn’t know was whether there was something of a personal nature between the two of them, neither did she know why just the thought of it made her feel strangely hollow inside.

‘We didn’t introduce ourselves properly,’ he said, completely ignoring Melanie Richards’s possessive-sounding words as he held a hand out towards Laurel.

‘Oh, she’s Laurel Wright, one of our most junior staff,’ her superior said dismissively, her eyes still fixed on the man like a starving woman gazing at a giant box of Belgian chocolates. ‘This is Dr Ros—Rostro—’

‘Rostropovich,’ he supplied, tightening his hand fractionally around Laurel’s when she would have withdrawn it immediately. ‘Dmitri Rostropovich. It would probably be easier if you called me—’

‘Pleased to meet you, Dr Rostropovich,’ Laurel said without any difficulty, and had to fight a smile at her superior’s visible chagrin. Stumbling over pronouncing his name was all the evidence Laurel had needed that they were not as close as the younger woman wanted them to be. ‘Do you spell that the same way as the famous cellist?’

Having retrieved her hand, she wrapped the other one around it, surprised that she couldn’t feel the flash of heat that had been generated when his hand had touched hers. She was going to have to revise her scepticism over those scenes in romance novels where there was an electric connection between the hero and heroine the first time they touched.

Not that she was anybody’s heroine, least of all his.

‘It’s spelt exactly the same, although I don’t think there’s any family connection. Do you like his music?’

‘Some of it, especially his recording of—’

‘Laurel doesn’t really have time to stand chatting about music,’ Melanie Richards pointed out with a disgruntled scowl. ‘It’s time for Staff Nurse Norris to go for her break, isn’t it, Nurse? You’re supposed to be taking over monitoring baby Sweeny, aren’t you?’

It was news to Laurel but she wasn’t about to turn down the chance to do some hands-on nursing for a change. Up till this moment Sister Richards had seemed to be deliberately keeping her to menial tasks.

‘Perhaps we will be able to talk of music another time,’ Dmitri said politely as Laurel turned to cross the ward towards her charge. ‘In the meantime, if you will permit, I will come with you to have a look at this baby Sweeny who needs monitoring.’

Laurel caught a glimpse of the hastily hidden flash of anger in her superior’s eyes and blinked in surprise.

Surely the woman realised that it had been a purely professional decision for the good-looking doctor to accompany her? Melanie was a beautiful young woman with the sort of curves that Laurel could only sigh for. After all those years of ‘blunt speaking’ by Robert Wainwright, she knew only too well that she had few charms to attract a man’s eye. Least of all now, when she was being so careful not to draw attention to herself. If Robert Wainwright tracked her down before she found her sister, her rebellion would all have been in vain. She had no doubt that the man would be desperate enough by now to resort to all sorts of underhand tactics to achieve his aim.

Her heart gave a thud of fear before she deliberately set her thoughts on a different track…such as the handsome doctor’s completely unexpected response towards her.

Had her attempts at merging into the background completely failed today? Dmitri Rostropovich’s eyes seemed to be spending an inordinate amount of time looking in her direction. And the only reason she knew that was because, even though her hands were busy noting down the readings of Jason Sweeny’s temperature, blood pressure and pulse from the electronic monitors onto his charts, her own gaze seemed magnetically attracted to him.

Unfortunately, Jason’s mother, who had rarely left his bedside once she’d been released from her own, had noticed her preoccupation.

‘He’s a good looker, isn’t he, Nurse?’ she prompted slyly, and Laurel felt the flush of heat travelling inexorably upward from her throat to her tightly restrained hair. How could she have forgotten just how sharp-eyed some people could be when there wasn’t much else to watch?

She bit her tongue as she hung the clipboard on the end of the high-tech trolley, hoping desperately to find some way of avoiding an answer.

‘Well, Nurse?’ he prompted, startling her into looking up into the wicked gleam in his eyes. He’d leaned himself against the column supporting the monitor displays while he’d chatted easily with Mrs Sweeny. Now he’d folded his arms across his chest as though he had the whole day to wait for her answer. ‘Do you agree with Mrs Sweeny?’

The pair of them exchanged a telling glance, grey eyes meeting blue, each knowing that they had put her on the spot.

Laurel felt the familiar anxiety start to swamp her, the feeling that she just wanted the ground to open up and swallow her. And what was worse, she couldn’t drag her eyes away from him.

If he could read her thoughts and feelings in her eyes, what would he think of her cowardly nature?

He wouldn’t know about the years she’d spent as the butt of Robert Wainwright’s caustic wit. Then, defiance had only earned her the label of ‘disturbed child’ and another handful of tranquillisers.

In the end, her only defence had been silence and stoicism while her resentment had grown, and in her undrugged moments her determination to find some way out of the destructive situation.

Then, for the first time in her life, she felt a sudden surge of something new. She didn’t know what it was or what was causing it. Could it be something to do with the expression in a certain pair of liquid silver eyes?

‘I suppose he’s quite good-looking, Mrs Sweeny,’ she admitted grudgingly. She flicked her gaze over him from head to foot and back again, his elegant grey suit doing more to enhance his lean physique than disguise it, then made sure there was more than a hint of doubt in her intonation. ‘That’s if you like them long and skinny.’

Mrs Sweeny burst out laughing.

‘That told you, didn’t it?’ She laughed gleefully up at Dmitri Rostropovich, her perpetually worried eyes brightening briefly with a flash of humour. ‘I’m so glad that we women are getting a chance to put a man in his place these days.’

Laurel found herself holding her breath, waiting for his response. What on earth had possessed her to talk to him like that? Apart from the foolishness of drawing attention to herself, she knew better than to provoke a man into anger by answering back.

Then he chuckled.

‘Oh, yes, Mrs Sweeny. I certainly like a woman who knows how to put a man in his place,’ he agreed. ‘The only trouble is, most men don’t know their place until a woman shows them.’

There was something in his gaze that made Laurel feel warm inside, almost as if she were basking in the warmth of a summer’s day, and it was a feeling she wanted to explore. Perhaps…

‘Haven’t you finished that yet, Nurse?’ Melanie Richards’s voice snapped, dispelling the warmth with a blast of frigid disapproval. ‘I thought you were supposed to be fully qualified for this job, but you’re as slow as the greenest student.’

‘I’m sorry—’ Laurel began, automatically apologising even though she knew she hadn’t done anything wrong.

‘That would be my fault,’ Dmitri interrupted smoothly, straightening up from his relaxed slouch against the column supporting the monitoring equipment to his full six feet plus. Laurel couldn’t help noticing that there was no smile in evidence any more either. ‘My interruptions might have delayed her but they didn’t interfere with the standard of Laurel’s work.’

‘Oh, well, I…’ Melanie began backtracking, fast.

‘And she’s got very gentle hands, too,’ Mrs Sweeny butted in. ‘Not like some of the nurses. Sometimes you get the feeling that they’re trying to do too many jobs at once and doing none of them well.’

‘Yes, well, Staff Nurse Norris is back now, so you can take these papers to Administration,’ Melanie ordered repressively, before turning her attention on the handsome doctor with a renewed smile. ‘Have you got time for a cup of tea, or perhaps you’d prefer coffee?’

‘Actually, I know I’m not due on duty until tomorrow, but I think I’d prefer to take a trip around the department, if that’s all right with you.’

‘Of course it is. And I can answer any questions as we go round,’ Laurel heard her gush, and gritted her teeth as she shouldered her way through the door and paused to hear the security latch click firmly closed behind her. Did the woman have no idea about subtlety?

‘That would take up far too much of your valuable time,’ she heard him say firmly. ‘I would rather familiarise myself with the department in my own way, if you don’t mind. If I have any questions, I can ask you later, perhaps?’

‘Well, of course. If that’s the way you would prefer it.’

Melanie’s annoyance at having her invitation turned down was so clear that Laurel couldn’t help laughing to herself as she set off on her time-wasting errand. It was good to know that their new doctor wasn’t going to be taken in by a woman with a pretty face. He definitely knew his own mind.

Perhaps he would even be able to do something about making better use of her presence in the unit. Each of their little charges needed the equivalent of five and a half nurses and they were desperately short of fully qualified staff. Even though she lacked experience, it just didn’t make sense to send her off on errands that could just as easily have been done by a porter.

The smile put on Laurel’s face by Dmitri’s rebuff of Melanie Richards’s cloying attention didn’t last for long. How could it when inside her head there was a maelstrom of thoughts whirling and colliding in chaotic confusion?

And all because of Dr Dmitri Rostropovich.

What was it about the man?

She’d only met him this morning and already it looked as if he’d caused mayhem in the calm, ordered life she’d created for herself.

For a start, he seemed to have completely scrambled her emotions. Not so very long ago she’d been in the middle of preparations for a wedding to a man who’d never even made her heart skip a beat in all the time she’d known him. Now she’d met a man who created wild Latin-American dance rhythms in her blood with nothing more than the sound of his voice or a wicked smile.

One part of her—a very large part—was only too willing to explore these enticing new sensations. The other part was far more sane and rational, reminding her of the reasons why she was here in the hospital at all.

If she’d stayed where she had been she’d be a married woman by now, browbeaten into obedience by Robert Wainwright purely because she’d realised it had been her only escape from a life lived permanently under his thumb.

The sole reason why she’d been at the right place and time to meet Dmitri was because she was searching for her sister, and the only way she’d been able to do that was by changing her name and moving away from everything and everyone she knew.

Still, the feminine side of her couldn’t resist the suggestion that Dmitri found her attractive. Well, he seemed to prefer her company to Melanie’s, at least.

Who knew what might develop over the next days and weeks? For the first time in a very long time she was actually looking forward to finding out.

‘If I’d known then what I know now,’ she muttered through chattering teeth, her breath emerging in a ghostly cloud, visible even in the dark of the car.

She had no idea how long she’d been here. At this time of the year any time between four o’clock and seven o’clock would be dark whichever end of the day they appeared.

With a feeling of dread she realised that it must still be evening, and the only reason it seemed lighter was because the snow was beginning to accumulate around the car.

She almost regretted her return to the stark reality of her present situation. It was far more pleasant reliving those first heady days after she’d met Dmitri.

She glanced at the luminous dial on her watch and was surprised to see that it was only just past four in the afternoon.

Unfortunately, she didn’t know whether any cars had come along while she’d been unconscious and it didn’t look as if there were going to be any more along this particular road today, in spite of the fact that it was still relatively early.

With snow falling this close to Christmas, perhaps the locals were wise enough to stay at home with their families where it was warm and safe.