The Surgeon's Convenient Fiancée (Medical Romance) Read Online Free PDF Page B

children. Although she was close to tears, there was no way that she would give this man the satisfaction of seeing it.
    ‘That’s right. You leave her alone,’ Fleur said. She linked her hand through Deirdre’s.‘Come upstairs with us, Dee. I need some help with something.’
    The three of them went out of the kitchen and began to go up the staircase.
    ‘As far as I’m concerned, you’re fired,’ Jerry shouted after them.
    ‘No, she’s not,’ Mungo said. ‘We want her with us.’
    In Fleur’s bedroom, with the door locked, they all sat on the bed. ‘What are we going to do?’ Fleur whispered, sounding close to tears. ‘I couldn’t bear it if you weren’t with us, Dee.’
    ‘I shall be with you,’ Deirdre said as firmly as she could manage. ‘I’m going to call your granny and talk to her about it, see if I can meet her tomorrow. You can discuss things better with people face to face. I’ll do it tonight, not wait until tomorrow. I’ll see her in the morning. It’s time to get very serious. If Jerry gets too much, you can live with her, or with me in my house. Granny has plenty of space. Also, I’m going to talk to a lawyer about the fact that Jerry pushed me—I know someone—so that it’s on record, in case I need that.’ At that moment she wasnot sure exactly how she would need it, but an instinct told her that it was a good thing to have a record of what had happened between them. Her situation was odd. She really had no claim on the children, she was simply an employee, yet she knew that Jerry Parks was not good for them.
    ‘We’re going to talk to the social worker at school tomorrow,’ Fleur said, ‘so that’s on record there, too.’
    ‘Yes. Why did you suddenly think about going back to work as a nurse, Dee?’ Mungo asked. ‘I mean, why today? Has something happened?’
    ‘Not specifically,’ Deirdre said slowly, searching for words. ‘It’s something I’ve been thinking about for some time, because what has happened here is that I’ve taken on more and more of the job of housekeeper and hostess, when I don’t want to be that, instead of just taking care of you. I’ve stuck it out because I thought he might ask me to go…and I think you need me.’
    There, it was out. The breakdown that she feared still threatened her, yet somehow it seemed less acute because she hadarticulated her thoughts and needs, had had a showdown of sorts. Inside, she felt as though she were trembling. What she could not say to them at this time was that one day she hoped to have a husband and children of her own, and who would take her on if she were the mother of two children who were not her own? If she were to wait until Mungo and Fleur were old enough to go to university, and off her hands, she would be in her early thirties, which seemed impossibly in the future. At the moment she could only project herself forward for the next six months or so.
    Fleur began to weep. ‘We do need you,’ she managed to get out, between sobs. ‘I couldn’t bear it if you went.’
    ‘Don’t go, Dee,’ Mungo said.
    Deirdre’s own eyes pricked with tears and she swallowed, her throat tight with emotion. ‘I’m not going,’ she said. ‘We’re going to work it all out. Sometimes you come to a point in your life when you have to make changes, and there’s no sense in putting it off because it will just go on nagging and nagging you. I would prefer not to have anythingwhatsoever to do with Jerry Parks, don’t want to see him even.’
    They sat together, their arms around each other. They could hear Jerry down below, crashing about as though he were throwing cooking pots. Maybe he was, Deirdre speculated, and found that she didn’t care.
    ‘Look,’ she said at length, ‘you two get on with your homework. I’m going to phone Granny. I’ll come in a little while to help you, Fleur. Try not to worry. We are going to work something out, and I’m not going to accept a job in nursing until everything