Her Doctor's Christmas Proposal Page 14

  The girl began to cry. ‘Owwww. I don’t want to push.’

  ‘You have to push when I say so. Okay? Okay? Okay, Phoenix…you need to push now.’ Cradling the head with one hand, he caught the body as it slithered out. He laid it on Phoenix’s chest, but she turned away as he cut the cord. Closed her eyes tight shut as tears trickled anyway down her cheeks.

  ‘A girl, you have a daughter, Phoenix.’ But the little one wasn’t happy to be out in the big wide world. He rubbed her chest with a towel. And again. Come on. Come on. Breathe for me. Breathe, damn it.

  His gut twisted as he carried her to the Resuscitaire, worked on her until she took a short breath and squawked. A river of relief ran through him. He would not have been able to look at Isabel if this little one hadn’t made it. God knew what she was feeling. Dealing with a young desperate teenager and a preemie baby. Although not as preemie as Joshua…

  Isabel seemed to have overridden any emotion and was handling the situation with warmth and professionalism; she’d delivered the placenta and was clearing up with a sunny smile. But he could see the stretch in her shoulders, the clench of her jaw. It was costing her a lot to be here, he knew. She’d done that ever since he’d been back in her life again: borne every emotional insult with fastidious grace. She might have called it coping. He called it denial. She refused to be broken. No, she refused to allow anything to reach her emotionally.

  ‘She’s beautiful, Phoenix. Do you want to hold her just for a few moments?’ He carried the little one over. ‘Just hold her against your chest, skin to skin. They love that.’

  ‘No. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do.’ The girl was shaking. ‘She’s so small. Her skin’s too big. She looks…she looks so tiny.’

  ‘Look, she’ll love being against your skin.’

  She turned away. ‘No. I don’t… I can’t. I’m too scared.’

  ‘It’s okay to be scared, sweetheart. But you have the strength to do this. She needs you. She needs her mum.’ Isabel cast a worried flicker of her eyes to Sean. This teenager was experiencing the most traumatic experience possibly of her young life—having a premature baby with no emotional support. She needed someone she knew and loved to be with her. ‘Hey, are you sure you don’t have a friend, your mum, someone who you can at least talk to on the phone? You need someone here for you, Phoenix. You and…your daughter. Have you chosen a name yet?’

  ‘No. I don’t know… I thought it was going to be a boy… I thought she was going to die. I thought—’

  ‘Look, she’s doing okay. Your daughter is perfect.’

  Clearly Phoenix was struggling and needed time to get to grips with all this. And baby needed to be looked after properly—she needed a full assessment, warmth and care. Sean bent to speak to her. ‘Okay, so she’s managing to breathe fine on her own, she’s a trooper, but she’s quite little and may not be able to feed properly as yet. I’d like to get her along to the Special Care Baby Unit as soon as we can—get her checked out and warm and looked after. How about I run her along there now and you come with Isabel or Hope when you’re a bit more settled?’

  Phoenix looked up at Isabel, saw the quick nod of her head. ‘Okay. Yes. Okay. Thank you.’

  ‘I’ll stay here with Phoenix.’ Isabel caught his gaze. She looked as shaken as he felt. He didn’t miss the irony—that Isabel had been almost in the same situation, with no one experienced to help her. She’d been through months of worry and anxiety. She hadn’t told a soul about her pregnancy. And yet here she was dealing with this.

  Her face was fixed in a mask, her emotions hidden so deep that it made his chest ache. Was this how she’d been? Had she shaken like this? Cried? Or had she internalised it all? Damn, he didn’t want to think about any of that. Like her, he didn’t want to meet those emotions head-on.

  But they were there, glittering brightly within him. He wanted to comfort her. He wanted to stroke her worries away. Goddamn, he wanted her, body and soul, more than anything he’d wanted in his whole life.

  So, yeah, he loved her. Which was hardly a surprise given that he’d probably been in love with her for most of his life.

  Which was a dumb move on his part, because he knew that loving Isabel Delamere was the single most destructive thing he could do. Because she wouldn’t allow herself to love him back.

  But still, all he wanted to do was take her in his arms and hold her, soothe her pain away. To make her believe how much she meant to him. But he couldn’t. He had a professional responsibility to Phoenix and the little scrap of new life in his hands. He also had a responsibility to himself. ‘Excellent, I’ll see you up there in a little while.’ And that would give him a few precious minutes to get his act together too.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  HOLD IT IN, Isabel reprimanded herself as she walked to the SCBU. Hopefully he’d have gone by the time she got there. Hopefully she wouldn’t see the love in his eyes and feel the need to walk straight into his arms and cry like a baby over things that had happened too long ago. To be held in arms that she still longed to be wrapped inside. To let herself go and love him right back.

  No such luck. He was lifting the tiny baby from the incubator; she looked so frail in his strong hands. ‘Hi, Isabel. Where’s Phoenix?’

  ‘She’s having some food and going to have a shower. She’s exhausted, poor thing, and overwhelmed.’

  ‘She doesn’t want to come?’

  Avoiding eye contact, she walked to the baby and gave her a wee stroke on her head. Someone, one of the nurses, she assumed, had popped a little knitted red Santa hat on her head. It just about broke her heart. ‘I think she will. She needs some TLC herself. She’s just getting her head around everything. I managed to get a bit of history from her. Basically she has no one. Her mum died a couple of years ago and her dad’s been pretty absent for most of her life. There are no siblings. She needs a lot of support. I’ve warned her about the bells and whistles up here, and the feeding tube and the oxygen. But she’s terrified, poor thing.’ Then she remembered about the good news she had to tell him. ‘But, after all that, she won the first baby of Christmas prize, so at least she’s got a few things to tide her over.’

  ‘You don’t think she’ll decide to put this little one out for adoption?’

  ‘I don’t know. She needs a little time to work it all out.’

  Cradling the baby in the crook of his arm, he rocked side to side as he spoke. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Bearing up, thanks.’ She would not break down. She would not let the pain in. And he had no right to look so damned beautiful standing there with a baby in his arms. Her heart thumped with desire, with emotion she did not want to recognise.

  ‘You don’t have to hide it from me, you know.’ He leaned close enough that, if she’d wanted to, she could have touched him. She could smell his scent, the one that had clung to her body after he’d left her in Paris, and her heart thumped a little more.

  She shivered. ‘I’m not hiding anything. I’m at work, is all.’

  ‘Isabel, it’s been a very emotional morning. You’re about at boiling point.’

  Thankfully, Dean sauntered over. There was safety in numbers. ‘Hey, Happy Christmas!’

  ‘Thanks, you too.’

  Dean tickled the baby girl under her chin. ‘Is mum coming soon? This little one needs some cuddles.’

  ‘No. She’s having a rest.’ Grateful for the chance to speak and not to feel Sean’s insistent, concerned gaze on her, she filled Dean in on Phoenix’s history. ‘She’s scared stiff and feeling guilty all round, so we need to be gentle with her. I think she’ll come round. I’ll pop down in an hour or so and see if she wants to come up then.’

  ‘And in the meantime this one needs a cuddle. You want to hold her, Isabel?’ He took the baby from Sean and gave her a quick check over. ‘Kangaroo care. She really needs some love—especially on Christmas Day. Who doesn’t?’

  Whoa. Skin-to-skin contact? No. No way was she cradling this baby against h
er bare skin. That would be the worst thing she could ever do. That would bring back so many memories—she shook her head vehemently. ‘No—oh, no, I couldn’t.’ The little thing was wiggling and her bottom lip had started to shake and Isabel’s instinct was to reach out and comfort her, but she couldn’t, wouldn’t…but, oh, suddenly Dean was helping her to sit and lowering the baby into her arms, onto her chest, which—as bad luck would have it—was covered with a blouse that easily stretched open. She felt the tiny little shudder and curl into her breast, felt the warmth and smelt the just-born fresh scent. For a moment she held her there skin to skin, feeling the life force in this tiny thing, the beating heart where she’d felt none with her own child. And suddenly everything was swimming and blurred from tears she’d steadfastly refused to shed. Ever. It was all too much for her to deal with. The baby. Her memories. Sean. All on Christmas Day. ‘I—I just can’t.’

  And then Sean was there taking the baby and in his eyes he was telling her it was okay, that everything would be okay. He was telling her all the things she’d said to Phoenix. That she was strong enough to deal with it, that she’d be okay.

  But she wasn’t. She wasn’t okay at all. None of this was okay.

  ‘I’m sorry, I think I might… I just… I need to go.’ And she hurried out of SCBU, down the stairs and out into the falling snow, trying to force cold air into her lungs.

  ‘Isabel! Izzy, wait. Stop.’ It was Sean behind her, his footsteps muffled by the deadening snow. Where it had been beautiful and magical in Paris, now it just felt grey. Ice. The thick air suffocating. ‘Isabel.’

  She turned. ‘I’m going for a walk.’

  Warm hands skimmed her arms. ‘You have no coat. You’re shivering. You shouldn’t be out here.’

  ‘Please, Sean, just leave me alone.’

  ‘I can’t. I won’t.’ He caught her up again and pulled her round to face him. ‘I know you enough that I feel the pain inside you, Isabel. Talk to me. Let it out.’

  If she did she might crumble. She started to walk again, with no idea where she was headed. But the words just tumbled out; she couldn’t stop them. ‘I used to think it was something I’d done, you know. I thought it was my fault he didn’t make it. That I could have saved him if I’d only done…this…or that. But I know he wasn’t ever going to make it, Sean. Not like that little one in there. So tiny, so precious and perfect.’

  ‘I understand.’

  She came to a halt, whipped round to rail at him. ‘Do you? Did you fight against your own body, trying to keep him inside you? To protect him? When you failed at that, did you hold him against your bare chest and sing to him? Did you whisper his name over and over? Did you pray for someone to hold you too? And did you have no one who was capable to take care of you? Oh, yes, Isla was brilliant and so was Evie…but in the end it was me. Just me, and this little lifeless thing that I loved with all my heart. And that broke it into tiny pieces that will never ever mend. And just when I had survived and was getting on with my life, just when I was okay, this is reminding me all over again.’

  ‘You will mend and grow again, Isabel. Look at everything you’ve achieved with your life so far—what an amazing and compassionate doctor you’ve become. What a beautiful, sensational woman. Just think of what a tour de force we’ll be together.’ That was a promise from him for the future. He believed in them, that this could work. His arms were round her now and he’d found a bench in the white-coated garden and she was sitting on it and hadn’t even noticed. He was warm and safe and for a moment she let him hold her, let him soothe her memories away with a kiss against her throat. He was here, he was making his claim, his stand, his promise and she felt so close to letting go, to believing him. To feeling that everything would turn out fine.

  That realisation was enough to jolt her away from him.

  She stood. Closed down every emotion, just as she always had, because it was safer that way. Because she had never felt as if her heart had been wrenched from her chest until today—and that surely must mean that she’d allowed herself to get lulled into feeling too much again.

  She’d seen him hold a baby, seen the look of contentment on his face, the joy. And she knew she would be unable to commit herself to give him that or anything like it. Ever. Because it couldn’t be fine, because she would always be thinking about the worst things that could happen, never giving herself totally to protect herself from breaking into pieces again, and he deserved more than that. So much more.

  She’d been too close to the edge just now and she did not want to fall from it. She was too scared, too darned terrified because it would be too hard, so very, very hard to pull herself up from it again. Life had been fine before she’d met Sean again. Empty, but fine. Monochrome, but liveable. She could survive without colour and a full heart and making love, without Paris and without Sean. Without memories and pain and the risk that she could feel so lost again without him. Some time. Once had been enough for any lifetime.

  She did not want to bleed for him again. ‘I’m so sorry, Sean. I can’t do this. Us. I’m sorry. There isn’t a future and I don’t want to let you think there could be.’

  ‘What?’ He stood to face her. ‘After everything we’ve been through? You’re saying you don’t want to try?’

  She took a deep breath of the cold, cold air, filled her insides with ice, let it infuse her veins, her blood, because that way she would be able to say these things. ‘Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. It’s over, whatever it was, in Paris—whatever I let you believe, I’m sorry.’

  But instead of giving the understanding, thoughtful gentle response she expected, he frowned. His voice was laced with anger. ‘No, you’re not sorry at all. You just want to protect yourself. You want to live a half-life. You want to hide. That’s not living, Isabel.’

  ‘Please don’t make this harder than it is. It’s what I want.’

  ‘And what about what I want? Ever think about that?’ When she looked away he huffed out an irritated breath. ‘No. I didn’t think so.’

  ‘It’s not you—’ Then she shut up, because all that it’s not you, it’s me gumpf was just a sweetener, and nothing about this was sweet. He had so much to offer, so much promise, so much capability to love—he deserved far more than what she could give him. It made her stomach hurt. It made everything inside her twist and contort and knot. He was right: she hadn’t given much thought to how he would be after all this. It had all been about her.

  How selfish. How typically Delamere girl. But there it was… She had to do what was right for her; there was no point letting him believe in something that she just couldn’t do.

  He glared at her. ‘Really? You were going to trot out some well-worn phrase? Don’t we deserve more than that?’ And even though she’d made him cross he was still devastating to look at. His dark eyes still entranced her. There was still that magnetic pull to him that was so hard to resist. She’d been resisting it for too long already. Snow whirled around him like a vortex sticking to his scrubs. He didn’t seem to notice. ‘You really mean it, don’t you? You don’t want any of it.’

  ‘No. I don’t.’

  ‘You’re a coward, Isabel Delamere. You have closed off your life, shut down, checked out. You don’t have to bury yourself along with Joshua, you know. You deserve to live.’

  ‘I do live.’

  ‘Hardly. I mean, sure, you get involved with your patients, because that’s safe, you know where the line is and you never cross it. You allow yourself to feel their pain, like some sort of proxy for actually feeling things inside you, and then you try to fix them—because you couldn’t do that for yourself. But with someone who really cares for you, with me, you totally shut down. You’re afraid. I get that, but you have to let people in some time or you’ll end up sad and lonely and, well…dead inside.’ He pulled her towards him, anger and desire mingling in his eyes. ‘I love you. I just think you should know that before I go.’

  ‘Don’t—’ She put her hand out to hi
s lips, trying to erase his words. ‘Don’t say that.’

  He shrugged her hand away. ‘I love you. And I know you love me. I saw it in Paris. I saw it in the way you looked at me. I saw it when we made love. For God’s sake, Isabel, don’t run away from it this time.’

  ‘No—’ She couldn’t love him; she’d tried so hard not to. She’d fought and fought to stop him affecting her, to stop him reaching inside her soul and meeting her there, raw and pure. But here she was, out in the snow, having almost lost the plot with him and a preemie and a young girl on Christmas Day. In Paris she’d almost felt that things could be perfect; she’d let them be. She’d almost believed him.

  She remembered that feeling at the top of the Ferris wheel—the freedom, the joy of being with him. The way her whole body craved him, and still did now, even more than ever.

  And she was struggling to let him go, because she wanted him so much to stay. She did…she did love him.

  She closed her eyes against the bitter reality. She loved him totally, utterly…needed him in her life. It was the single worst thing she could do. She hated that she needed him, that she wanted him so much. She hated that they’d become us and she couldn’t allow herself to be part of that. She’d fallen further under his spell, with his total faith in things working out okay. She needed to go home, to be with Isla—the only person in the world who understood. She needed to put herself back together again.

  When she opened her eyes he was closer, his gaze smoky with intent despite the layer of snowflakes in his hair, on his cheeks, on his shoulders. Despite the freezing gale both outside and in her gut. ‘Tell me you don’t love me and I’ll walk away. Tell me, Isabel, that Paris meant nothing to you and I won’t stay here another moment.’

  ‘I… What does it matter? I don’t want to love you. I can’t love you. There it is. Now go, please.’

  He stood for a moment, not moving, just looking at her as if willing her to change her mind.

  She didn’t.

  Then he shrugged his shoulders and took one last step towards her. She’d never seen him like this—so coiled and taut, so angry and explosive. And, damn her hormones, she wanted him even more for it. This Sean loved her. This formidable man had been there for her years ago and she hadn’t taken him then, this man who had come to find her, who had loved her once, loved her again. It was a second chance.