Chapter Seven #3
On the day he had started at Rachel’s school, instead of heading to the dining room, he had sat with her under a vast oak and she had shared her homemade lunch with him.
Now she made two mugs of builder’s tea—dark and strong and exactly how he had come to like it.
And as he watched her squeeze the teabags and flick them into the bin, he knew not a single person watching would even guess they were flirting.
Even if cameras were trained on them and their moves were being analysed, no one would be able to tell.
But they were.
She carried the plates and he carried the mugs, and they went into the large, deserted staff room and sat down opposite each other.
‘Still like the relish, I see,’ he said in his fake northern accent, after he’d taken a bite and tasted the spicy fruity tang that was a staple in the Walker household—well, everywhere in Sheffield, really.
‘Aye!’ Rachel said.
‘Reminds me of the lunch breaks I’d take when I worked with your dad.’
‘I am sorry about that.’
‘About what?’
‘About my family. They gave you a hard time.’
‘Not really,’ he dismissed, but then he laughed mirthlessly, because the Walkers weren’t exactly sensitive New Age guys and it had been one hell of a time when he’d worked with them.
‘Yeah, it was pretty rough—but that said, they were just being protective. I did get you pregnant; they were never going to go easy on me.’
And this time he didn’t shrug, but told her a truth instead.
‘That year of working with them did me a lot of favours. For all his blundering ways, your dad’s actually very good at small talk.
’ He gave a soft laugh of recall. ‘He could chat to anyone,’ Dominic said.
‘I mean, moving house is one of the most stressful times of people’s lives, yet your dad would nail it each and every time, and some of it rubbed off on me. ’
‘Really?’
Dominic nodded, then watched as she lay back in her seat and closed her eyes—not to sleep, but to sigh. ‘What a night...’
‘I know,’ Dominic agreed.
In the scheme of things, a tension pneumothorax on a Saturday night was something they were well used to, but it felt very different when it was a colleague and friend.
‘How was Heather?’
‘Terrified,’ Dominic admitted. ‘I tried to play it down a bit, but she’s a doctor herself. She knows it was touch and go for a moment.’
‘Not with you there,’ she said, opening her eyes and looking right at him. ‘Your hand didn’t even shake.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t be much good if it did. I just had to shut it all out and focus on the task, and then panic afterwards...’ Then he admitted the truth. ‘He’d just told me that Heather’s pregnant again.’
‘God!’
‘I’d literally just told him what a lucky bastard he was...’
‘Really?’ Rachel said. ‘And there I was thinking you’d be giving him the name of your vasectomy surgeon.’
It was a little dig, but it made both of them smile.
He’d never expected her to smile about it...
* * *
In fact, Rachel was surprised to discover that what she felt was the oddest sensation of sweet relief. Perhaps, she told herself, it was because it took any future for them—even if it was only in her imaginings—right off the table. Because more than anything Rachel wanted to be a mother some day.
Only that wasn’t quite it.
She was looking right at him.
Still.
And the news that he’d had a vasectomy somehow made sex—well, just about sex.
It was actually quite liberating.
It all boiled down to desire.
And that desire was there.
Zaima came in then and broke the spell. She had come for a coffee, rather than her meal break, she said, though Rachel was sure it was actually to find out all the gossip from the Emergency team’s night out.
‘Who else was up on the tables?’ she asked Dominic. ‘Was May?’
‘No!’ Dominic grinned.
‘What about Louise from Maternity?’
‘I don’t think so,’ Dominic said.
Usually that would have been something he’d notice, thought Rachel—because Louise, a midwife on Maternity, was stunning.
Zaima pushed for more gossip by bribing him with salt-and-vinegar crisps. ‘What about Tara?’
‘She was there.’ He nodded.
And Rachel was horrified to feel a slight twitch of her nose. Her superpower was fading... But then, it had never been put to the test against the thought of Dominic dancing with another woman before.
Zaima didn’t pick up on the tension between Rachel and Dominic because there was nothing to see.
The chemistry belonged entirely to them.
Rachel’s internal radar was tuned with precision to him, and she knew, even though he chatted and ate crisps, that his little pauses before answering Zaima’s questions were down to her presence.
* * *
Indeed, Dominic was having trouble focusing on the conversation—because it was killing him not to have Rachel again. And it was killing him to work alongside her.
No, things could not continue as they were. The fault line was shifting. But he was more than happy to suffer any collision that might be ahead if it meant he got to be with Rachel again.
He glanced over to where she sat, watching the television and sipping her tea, as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, but he was certain of the fire that was growing between them.
* * *
‘I’d better get back,’ Zaima said.
Rachel glanced up at the clock to see how much of her meal break she had left. ‘I’ll be back in ten.’
She turned back to the television, but the image on it seemed blurry and she had no idea what else was being said, such was her awareness of Dominic in the room.
‘Do you ever think of us?’ Dominic asked suddenly.
Rachel swallowed. She wanted to give a dismissive laugh, as if that might shut him down, except it would be a blatant lie. ‘Sometimes.’
‘Because I’ve been thinking about us a lot of late,’ Dominic pushed, ‘and I think you’ve been thinking about us too.’
‘What part of us?’ Rachel asked dryly, and continued staring ahead. ‘The arguments, the bills, the—?’
‘Not those parts.’
She swallowed again. She was tempted to pick up her mug and walk out, but then she turned and looked at Dominic, thirteen years older and somehow all the sexier for it.
Which was incredible, because there had not been a single thing she would have changed about him back then.
Yet here he was, pale from lack of sleep, with dark shadows under his eyes and unshaven, and he still made her weak with wanting.
‘It would be a mistake,’ Rachel said, talking about the sex that now seemed inevitable.
‘Perhaps,’ Dominic conceded. ‘However, of all my regrets—and with you there are many—one of the biggest is that I can’t remember the last time we did it.’
She was startled.
For once she was actually startled—and not because of what he’d said, more because she had been thinking the same thing.
‘Neither can I,’ she admitted.
Their sex life had died with their baby. It hadn’t felt right to reach out for comfort. For solace. For the moment of peace their lovemaking gave. She hadn’t known how. And on top of all that for Rachel there had been a sense of impending doom that their marriage was about to end.
But she also hated it that she couldn’t remember their last time.
She’d tried to think back, but they’d been at it all the time. If she’d known that it was the last time she’d have treated the moment, the memory, with infinite care.
‘It might complicate things,’ she said now.
‘Or it might clear the air,’ Dominic said. ‘I want to remember our last time.’
There was a warning there—that it would be a one-off—even as he invited her to play this dangerous game.
She could have chosen to take offence, but she didn’t, for if she decided to give in to her perpetual desire for him, then it most certainly would be for the last time.
She gave him a smile, but no answer, collecting her mug and returning to work.
Rachel had made her decision.
Richard knew about them, his wife probably knew, and Jordan knew. Very soon everyone would know...
She simply could not work in a goldfish bowl where their failed marriage was gossiped about.
And she could not move on with her life alongside him.
She was leaving The Primary.
* * *
Heather arrived at just after seven in the morning, and Rachel walked her up to the ward to which Jordan had been transferred.
‘Of all the irresponsible things to do!’ Heather said as they took the lift. ‘What on earth was he doing, dancing on a table?’
‘Letting off steam?’ Rachel ventured.
‘Killing himself, more like,’ Heather said, letting off a little steam of her own.
She was clearly frantic and scared as the ward nurse pointed them in the direction of his bed, in a four-bed pod near the nurses’ station.
Dominic was sitting in a chair beside him, but jumped up when he saw Heather and gave her a hug.
‘He’s going to be fine,’ Dominic said.
And Heather stopped being cross as soon as she saw her husband, groggy from medication and with tubes and drips everywhere.
‘Oh, Jordan,’ she sobbed. ‘Look at you!’
‘Heather...’ Jordan said. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Stop that now,’ Heather said as she hugged him. ‘It’s just rotten luck.’
It made Rachel feel teary, and she wasn’t quite sure why. Their intimacy and obvious affection and love had brought a rare lump to her throat, but she swallowed it down as she heard someone call out to her.
‘Staff Nurse Walker?’
She turned at the sound of her name and there, sitting up in bed, smiling at her in the semi-darkness, was a wonderfully familiar face.
‘Miss Tate!’
She went over to the bed, delighted to see her elderly patient from the other day. Her arm was in a sling attached to an IV pole, and she wore a white theatre gown.
‘How’s your hand doing?’ Rachel asked, assuming she had had it repaired.
‘The same as when you last saw it.’ Miss Tate rolled her eyes. ‘My surgery has been cancelled three times. There have been a lot of emergencies. Still, hopefully I’ll be sorted this morning. I’ve been put on “Nil by Mouth” again. It’s a good way to go on a diet, let me tell you.’
‘You poor thing.’
‘Oh, I don’t know about that. I’m quite enjoying watching the world go by. What did he do?’ She nodded in the direction of Jordan’s bed.
‘I can’t tell you that!’ Rachel smiled.
‘Well, I heard he was dancing on a table.’ Miss Tate laughed. ‘Good for him, I say. I danced on a few tables in my day.’
‘Really?’
‘Oh, yes.’ Miss Tate nodded. ‘And I’d dance on them again, given half a chance.’
So would Rachel.
Well, not so much dance on a table, but she felt a growing need to be with Dominic again.
And later, as she came out of Emergency at the end of a very long night shift, Dominic was standing at the entrance.
‘Do you want a lift home?’ he asked.
‘No,’ Rachel said.
She went to walk off, but desire was coursing through her, and she could almost taste the lonely regret she would feel if she climbed into her bed alone and missed out on just one more time with him.
Dominic Hadley was her eternal Achilles’ heel.
Maybe sleeping with him once more might just clear her head after all—because she was going crazy.
Perhaps in going to bed with him she could finally put them to bed and then move on with her life...?
She knew the arguments were flimsy, but she was too weak to care. She simply wanted to be with him.
And so, instead of walking away, she met his eyes. ‘We can go to yours.’