The Midwife's Marriage Proposal (7 page)

And looking at her this evening, looking at that poise and confidence, he could almost convince himself that he'd done the right thing.

But then he'd felt the pulsing, throbbing tension between them, and the question came back to taunt him as it had a million times over the last seven years.

What if he hadn't ended it?

Wondering why life was so damn complicated, Tom tugged open the fridge to retrieve another beer when he
remembered that he'd already had one and it was still possible that he'd be called back to the hospital.

So instead he made himself a coffee and took it into his huge living room.

He sprawled on one of the leather sofas, staring blindly, thinking about the one woman who was never far from his mind.

When she'd chosen to leave Cumbria he'd been relieved. He had been fully aware that living in the same community as Sally Jenner and not wanting to ravish her twenty-four hours a day had been more than his willpower would have been able to cope with.

Even believing that his decision had been right for both of them, it hadn't made it any easier to live with.

He'd hurt her. Badly. Which had reduced him from friend and lover to just another person who'd rejected her.

What he hadn't anticipated was that seven years of separation wouldn't dull his desire for her in even the smallest degree.

All that the time had done had been to increase his doubt.

He stirred slightly, his gaze sliding around the stylish room that he'd designed himself, noticing how empty it was. Usually he found comfort in returning to the peace and order of his home.

But tonight something had changed.

Tonight his house didn't feel peaceful, it felt silent.

It didn't feel private, it felt lonely.

Suddenly he'd found himself wishing that he shared it with a woman, but not just any woman.

Sally.

The connection between them was as powerful as ever, even though she was choosing to deny it.

And who could blame her for that?

Suddenly he wished it were Sally who was pregnant,
with his child.

Shocked by his thoughts, he rose to his feet and paced the generous expanse of his living room, wondering just what on earth was happening to him.

* * *

Sally dragged herself through the next few days at work, feeling totally exhausted. The strain of working in such close proximity to Tom was affecting her sleep pattern and she was permanently tired.

And she was thinking too much.

Thinking about the past.

Gritting her teeth and promising herself that she'd spend the weekend outdoors, she walked onto the unit for her last shift before her days off, frowning slightly as her mountain rescue team pager bleeped.

Moments later Tom strode onto the unit, his expression urgent.

‘Grab your things, we need to get going.'

‘Going?' Sally looked at him, her hand still on her pager. ‘Surely we can't both leave the unit?'

Emma gave her a little push. ‘We're quiet, and anyway Chris is around and I can get some help from the ward if I need it. What's happening, Tom?'

‘Would you believe me if I told you that Lucy Thomas has called from somewhere in the Langdales? She's fallen and hurt her ankle.'

‘Lucy?' Emma gaped at him. ‘But she must be eight months pregnant by now!'

‘Apparently she felt like some fresh air.' Tom let out a breath. ‘I have to admit that of all the incidents I've ever attended, this one looks as though it might take the prize. It seems she fell and twisted her ankle and her
husband can't move her. But we can talk about it on the way. I need to grab some extra equipment, Emma. Just in case.'

Sally frowned. ‘But I thought it was her ankle that was injured.'

‘It is, so far …' Tom was already striding down the corridor towards the storeroom, ‘but I have a bad feeling about this one and clearly so does Sean. It's the reason he's asked for both of us to be there.'

He was back minutes later, stuffing various packages into a bag. In the meantime Sally had grabbed her coat and bag.

‘You'll be pleased to hear I brought the four-wheel-drive today,' he said dryly, his eyes faintly mocking as he looked at her. ‘So at least you'll be travelling in comfort.'

The hospital was only minutes from the base, and as soon as Tom pulled up in the car park Sally was out of the door and sprinting inside, grabbing her gear and changing quickly.

‘I'm still waiting for the others,' Sean told them, ushering them across to the large map that was permanently displayed on the wall. ‘She used a mobile phone but the battery went dead before she could be precise about their location. They stayed on the flat and she said they'd walked for about an hour. Given that she's eight months pregnant, that can't put them any further than here …' He stabbed the map with the end of his pen and frowned thoughtfully. ‘We should be able to land a helicopter there if we have to.'

Tom shook his head in disbelief. ‘What is a heavily pregnant woman doing, walking in the Langdales in this weather? Has the world gone mad?'

Sean grinned. ‘It's a sunny day. Perhaps she wanted to deliver alfresco.'

‘Don't even joke about it,' Tom growled, and Sally glanced at her watch.

‘Let's get going.'

Part of her was quaking at the thought of going on alone with Tom, but part of her was relieved to be paired with him.

He was a highly skilled climber and a brilliant doctor. He was the perfect partner on any mountain rescue.

She just wished he wasn't so dangerously attractive.

Or, at the very least, she wished she no longer noticed or cared.

They both jumped back into the four-wheel-drive and Tom drove quickly to the point that he and Sean had identified from the map as being the closest to the path the couple seemed to have taken.

As she slipped her arms into her rucksack, Sally gave a shiver and looked up at the sky.

‘The weather's closing in.'

‘Of course it is.' Tom's tone was loaded with irony. ‘You didn't really think you were going to carry out this rescue in sunshine, did you?'

Sally laughed. ‘I would have hated it if we had. I love wild weather.'

He stilled, a strange expression flickering in his eyes as he looked at her. ‘That's right.' His tone was suddenly soft. ‘So you do.'

For a moment their eyes held and then she turned on her heel and started up the path, her emotions churning.

Being out in the mountains with him was the most bitter-sweet reminder of what they'd once shared. When they hadn't been working, they'd spent their whole lives outdoors. And she'd often chosen to climb when the
weather had been at its worst, and Tom had always come with her.

Reminding herself that dwelling on the past just made the present harder to cope with, Sally increased her pace and strode confidently along the path that led along the valley floor, looking and listening and keeping a sharp eye on the weather. But all the time she was aware of Tom close behind her.

When she reached a fork in the path she paused, and Tom walked up to her, squinting up at the sky.

‘It's not looking good. So which way? Left or right?'

Sally thought for a moment. ‘Left,' she said decisively. ‘And if they only walked for an hour, they shouldn't be far from here.'

She set off again and this time Tom walked by her side, adjusting his stride to hers. ‘Why did you decide on left?'

‘Instinct.' Sally glanced at him. ‘If I was pregnant I would have taken this path. The views are better and it stays in the valley. The other one creeps up the mountain. It's steeper.'

‘I can't imagine that would bother you,' Tom said dryly. ‘I have no doubt that you'll still be climbing rock-faces when you're nine months pregnant.'

Sally dragged her eyes away from his.

She didn't want him to know how much she still longed for a child. It was one of the factors that had triggered their break-up. She'd wanted a baby and he'd thought she'd been too young.

She focused on the path. ‘I see them. There—by that boulder.'

She increased her pace and they reached the couple quickly.

‘Thank goodness you're here.' The man looked pale
and tired, his arm around his pregnant wife, who was lying on the ground, her bump smothered by an enormous weatherproof jacket. ‘I didn't know what to do.'

‘Well, first we need to sit her up,' Sally said quickly, shrugging the pack off her back and dropping to her knees next to the woman. ‘I'm Sally. I presume you must be Lucy, unless there's another pregnant woman wandering the fells today.'

Tom dropped to his haunches. ‘Lucy, what on earth do you think you're doing?'

The young woman gave a gasp and pressed a hand to her swollen abdomen. ‘Oh, Mr Hunter! I didn't know that you'd come. I just fancied stretching my legs and we lost track of time and then I fell … I'm so sorry to be a nuisance. I can't believe I was stupid enough to slip!'

‘You're not a nuisance,' Sally said immediately, ‘but we do need to sit you up. Lying flat can cause problems at your stage of pregnancy because the weight of the baby presses on your major blood vessels.'

Tom was by her side and together they lifted the woman into a sitting position, propped against a large boulder.

‘She's been having pains for the past half an hour,' Lucy's husband told them, his face drawn and anxious. ‘We never should have come on this walk but it was such a beautiful day when we started out.'

Lucy screwed up her face and sucked in a breath. ‘Oh—the pain is terrible.'

Tom frowned. ‘In your ankle?'

‘No.' Lucy shook her head, her eyes tightly shut as she struggled with the pain. ‘I think the baby is coming.'

‘Don't be ridiculous, Luce.' Her husband spoke in a falsely cheerful tone that was supposed to hide his
anxiety and didn't. ‘It isn't due for another three weeks and babies don't come that quickly.'

Lucy's features relaxed and she opened her eyes. ‘Sorry to scare you, Mick, but it feels as though it's coming to me.'

Her husband glanced at Tom, horrified. ‘She's wrong, isn't she? It can't possibly be coming here. That quickly.'

‘Babies don't usually care too much about the venue and they don't always care about the timing either,' Tom said, squatting down beside Lucy and sliding a hand over her abdomen. ‘They come when they're ready. And you're definitely having contractions. Sally, you monitor them. I'm going to take a look at your ankle, Lucy, so that we know what we're dealing with here. If you are in labour, we need to get you to hospital.'

Mick looked horrified. ‘But it usually takes a long time, yes? Labour takes ages.'

‘Usually, but not always,' Sally muttered, placing her hand on the top of Lucy's uterus to feel the strength of the contraction while Tom gently removed Lucy's boot. ‘Has everything been normal in your pregnancy?' A gust of wind blew her blonde hair across her face and she anchored it back with her hand, contemplating the fact that she'd never had to ask these questions on a mountain rescue before. ‘Any problems at all with you or the baby?'

Lucy shook her head. ‘The baby was breech for a while but it turned about a month ago and the head has been engaged for a week. I saw Mr Hunter in clinic last week and he said everything was looking fine. Oh—' She broke off with a gasp of pain and Sally felt the power of the contraction as the uterus tightened under her hand.

‘All right, Lucy, remember your breathing.' She glanced at her watch. ‘Your contractions are very frequent. How long have you been in labour? When did the pains start?'

Lucy screwed up her face and shook her head. ‘I didn't know I was in labour, but I was very uncomfortable in the car. We'd been to see my mum and we thought we'd stop and stretch our legs.'

‘Stretch your legs?' Tom glanced up from examining her ankle. ‘You walked for an hour.'

‘It was just so beautiful we sort of lost track of the time, and walking helped the pain,' Lucy muttered. ‘And it isn't as if pregnancy is an illness. I felt fine until I lost my balance.'

Tom looked at Sally, a question in his eyes. ‘Well?'

‘She's definitely in strong labour,' Sally said quietly, and Tom let out a breath.

‘All right—let's take this one stage at a time,' he suggested, his tone calm as he finished his examination. ‘In my opinion your ankle is sprained, not broken, but you're certainly not going to be walking anywhere on it for a while. If you're in labour, we need to get you to a hospital as fast as possible.'

‘You can get a helicopter, yes?' Mick raked a shaking hand through his windblown hair, visibly shaken by the news that his wife was certainly in labour. ‘Something fast.'

Lucy screwed up her face and grabbed Sally's hand. ‘I've got another pain coming … Oh! I want to push—I can feel it.'

Even Tom looked startled by her terrified announcement and Sally found herself struggling not to smile, despite the potential seriousness of the situation. She'd
never seen Tom out of his depth before, but at the moment he looked seriously disconcerted.

‘I think you'd better unpack some of that equipment you brought, Tom,' she suggested calmly. ‘It looks as though we're going to need it.'

Sally waited until the contraction had passed and then gently released Lucy's hand so that she could assess the progress of her labour more accurately. ‘All right, I'm going to unzip your coat and see what's going on.'

Tom had moved to one side and was using the radio, presumably to talk to Sean at the mountain rescue base.

Sally concentrated on the labouring woman. Because there was no doubt in her mind that the woman was about to deliver. She didn't even need to pull on a pair of gloves and examine her. As Lucy was gripped by another powerful contraction, Sally clearly saw the top of the baby's head.