Secrets of a Career Girl Read Online Free PDF Page B

ring the IVF nurse, Penny decided, see if she could fiddle around her appointment, but for now, till she had, she’d have to stand firm.
    ‘Is there anybody else you can ask?’
    ‘A few.’
    ‘Well, see if they can help and if not, let me know.’
    If she occasionally smiled, Ethan thought, she would actually be exceptionally attractive, but even then, with her terse attitude and unfeeling ways, Penny could never be considered beautiful. A black smile spread across his lips. She really was the limit and instead of leaving it there, Ethan found that he couldn’t. ‘What is your problem, Penny?’
    ‘Problem?’ Penny frowned. ‘I don’t have a problem. I simply can’t come in early tomorrow, that’s all.’
    ‘It was the same when I asked you to come in for a few hours the other day.’
    ‘So that you could go to a football match.’ Penny stared back coolly, looking into his angry eyes and surprisingly tempted to tell him that she had a vaginal ultrasound and a blood test booked for ten past eight tomorrow, just so that she could watch him squirm. ‘I’m sorry, Ethan, I have things on. I’m not able to simply change my schedule at a moment’s notice. If you can check with the others...’
    ‘Like it or not,’ Ethan said, ‘there has to be a senior staff member on at all times, and that sometimes means making last-minute changes to the roster.’
    ‘I’m aware of that,’ Penny responded.
    ‘Yet you don’t...’ He watched two spots of colour rising on her cheeks, and then she turned abruptly to go, but Ethan refused to leave it there. ‘You’re going to have to be more flexible.’
    Her back was to him and he watched as Penny stilled, her shoulders stiffened and she slowly turned around. ‘Excuse me?’
    ‘In the coming days you’re going to have to be more flexible—Gordon will need some time after all.’
    ‘If Gordon’s wife having a baby leaves us short-staffed then it might be prudent to look at getting a locum because—and I am warning you now—I am not going to be dropping everything and coming into work and leaving here late and changing shifts at the last moment to accommodate Gordon, his wife and their baby.’
    Penny was angry now and with good reason—part of her mandatory counselling before she’d commenced IVF had addressed problems such as this. Timing was important. These weeks were incredibly intense and to keep it from becoming a staffroom topic of conversation Penny had worked out her appointments very carefully around her work schedule. And now Hilary had gone into labour and she was supposed to juggle everything.
    Well, Penny was doing this for her baby.
    ‘You’re such a team player,’ Ethan said.
    ‘Oh, but I’m not,’ Penny responded. ‘Ask anyone.’
    ‘I don’t need to ask, I’d say it’s already common knowledge.’ It was—Penny was the ice queen. He’d heard it from many and had seen it for himself, but she hadn’t finished yet, pulling Ethan up on a very pertinent point.
    ‘You’re talking as if Hilary is about to deliver a micro-prem when, in fact, she’s actually thirty-five weeks’ gestation.’ Ethan at that point actually had to suppress a smile, because she had well and truly caught him out. When he’d said premature labour he had been appealing or rather searching for the softer side to Penny, but he was fast realising that she simply didn’t have one. ‘I don’t respond to bells and whistles, Ethan. Give me a real drama and I’ll deal with it accordingly.’ She walked off and Ethan watched.
    She was absolutely immaculate. Her straight blonde hair was tied low at the back of her neck. Her sheer cream blouse looked as if it had come straight off a mannequin at an expensive boutique and her charcoal-grey skirt was perfectly cut to show a very trim figure. If she had been just a few inches taller she could be walking down a runway instead of the corridor of the emergency department.
    ‘What do you respond to, Penny?’ The words