Christmas-Eve Baby Read Online Free PDF Page A

counter, nodding at the patients in the waiting room, vaguely registering the children playing in the corner with the brightly coloured toys. He saw the stairs straight ahead, easy-rising, and the consulting rooms to the right, on each side of the short corridor that led to the lift.
    ‘It’s a big lift,’ Kate was saying as the doors opened and they stepped in. ‘Designed for buggies and wheelchairs and so on, but not big enough for stretchers, although we don’t have any call for them really. If people collapse and have to go to hospital in an ambulance, they’ve probably been in to see one of the doctors, and as most of the consulting rooms are downstairs anyway, that’s more than likely where they’ll be. If not, the paramedics usually manage to get them down in the lift without difficulty. The trouble is the building wasn’t designed to be a surgery, so it’s been adapted to make the best use of what we have.’
    ‘How long has the practice been here?’
    ‘Two years. After Phil died there wasn’t a practice here in Penhally Bay until two years ago. A neighbouring practice closed and they lost the last of the local doctors, and Marco Avanti and Nick set up the practice here where it is now to fill the gap.’
    The lift doors opened again and he found himself at the end of a corridor the same as the one downstairs, with rooms to left and right. ‘We’ve got the nurses’ room and a treatment room up here, and our MIU, such as it is. I’ll let Lucy show you that, she’ll know more about it than me.’
    ‘What about a waiting area?’ he asked, forcing himself to concentrate on something other than Lucy. She was going through a door marked ‘Private’, closing it firmly behind her. Damn.
    ‘We have a couple of chairs out here but we don’t tend to use them except in the summer when it’s busier,’ Kate was saying. ‘Usually they call the patients up one at a time from downstairs. Our staffroom and shower and loo are up here, too, as well as another public toilet and the stores, and this is my office.’
    She opened the door and ushered him in. ‘Have a seat,’ she said. ‘Lucy won’t be a moment. I’ll put the kettle on.’
    He didn’t sit. He crossed the room, standing by the window, looking out. It was a pleasant room, and from the window he could see across the boatyard to the lifeboat station and beyond it the sea.
    He didn’t notice, though, not really. Didn’t take it in, couldn’t have described the colour of the walls or the furniture, because there was only one thing he’d really seen, only one thing he’d been aware of since Lucy had got out of her car.
    The door opened and she came in, and with a smile to them both Kate excused herself and went out, closing the door softly behind her, leaving them to it.
    Lucy met his eyes, but only with a huge effort, and he could see the emotions racing through their wary, soft brown depths. God only knows what his own expression was, but he held her gaze for a long moment before she coloured and looked away.
    ‘Um—can I make you some tea?’ she offered, and he gave a short, disbelieving cough of laughter.
    ‘Don’t you think there’s something we should talk about first?’ he suggested, and she hesitated, her hand on the kettle, catching her lip between those neat, even teeth and nibbling it unconsciously.
    ‘I intend to,’ she began, and he laughed and propped his hips on the edge of the desk, his hands each side gripping the thick, solid wood as if his life depended on it.
    ‘When, exactly? Assuming, as I am, perhaps a little rashly, that unless that’s a beachball you’ve got up your jumper it has something to do with me?’
    She put the kettle down with a little thump and turned towards him, her eyes flashing fire. ‘Rashly? Rashly? Is that what you think of me? That I’d sleep with you and then go and fall into bed with another man?’
    He shrugged, ignoring the crazy, irrational flicker of hope that it was, indeed, his