Gift of a Family. Sarah Morgan
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don’t drink? You don’t drink with colleagues? Or you don’t drink with me? Which is it, Dr O’Brien?’
Her mind went completely blank. She wasn’t used to playing games with men and she had a feeling he was playing games. ‘I have to get home.’
‘And is there someone at home waiting for you, Kat?’ His eyes scanned her face and she felt something shift in her stomach. An awareness that she instantly dismissed.
‘Archie.’ She said the name firmly as if to remind herself as much as him. ‘Archie is waiting for me. Thanks for today, Dr Sullivan.’
Even though they hadn’t had time for a conversation, she’d learned a great deal just from watching him work. She’d seen enough to know that, whatever else he might be, Josh Sullivan was an excellent doctor. He used instinct as well as experience and training, and those instincts were obviously good.
‘Call me Josh.’ He smiled, and there was more than a hint of the pirate in that smile. ‘We’re very informal here, but I’m sure you already know that.’
She did know that, but somehow calling him Josh implied an intimacy that she didn’t want.
There was no way she was becoming intimate with Josh Sullivan.
* * *
Prickly, Josh thought as he walked towards his office to make a start on the mountain of paperwork that awaited him. If he had to find one word to describe Kat O’Brien, it would be ‘prickly’. Like a thorn bush, it was impossible to get too close without risking physical injury.
He sprawled in the chair and narrowed his eyes as he mentally examined the facts.
She was fine from a professional point of view. More than fine. She’d handled those teenagers extremely well and, from what he’d seen so far, her clinical skills were excellent—but the minute they moved from the subject of work the barriers had come up and she’d frozen him out.
Was that because of Archie?
Josh leaned forward and flicked on the computer. The fact that she was obviously involved with someone disappointed him more than he would have anticipated.
She wasn’t available, he told himself firmly, pushing away memories of her body in the black wetsuit. All right, so she had legs to die for and curves designed to drive a man out of his mind, but she was already taken, so as far as Josh was concerned that was the end of it. He didn’t poach.
Katriona O’Brien was a colleague, nothing more, and that was the way she was going to stay.
KAT paid the babysitter and then tiptoed upstairs and peeped round the door of the bedroom.
‘You can come in,’ a sleepy voice said from the bed. ‘I’m not asleep.’
She slid inside and sat on the bed, wincing as she sat on a plastic boat. ‘Well you should be asleep, young man!’ She moved the boat and added it to the pile of toys in the box by the bed. ‘It’s really late.’
‘I wanted to stay awake until you came home.’
She winced, wrestling with the guilt that went hand in hand with single motherhood and the need to earn a living. ‘I got held up at the hospital.’
‘Lots of people having accidents.’ He nodded wisely. ‘Did you fix them?’
She smiled at the question. ‘I did my best. How was your day at summer camp? Did you meet anyone nice?’
Because it was the summer holidays she’d been forced to find Archie somewhere to go during the week, and fortunately she’d found a wonderful children’s ‘camp’ run by a team of teachers from the local primary school. Given that Archie would be attending the same school from September, it had seemed like an ideal solution.
‘I did magic.’
‘What sort of magic?’ Unable to resist touching him, she smoothed his hair gently, thinking that in the dark like this, snuggled in pyjamas covered in boats, he still seemed like her baby. But she knew he was growing up very fast and she was making the most of every single moment. ‘How did you get to be six? Tell me that. Last time I looked you were still a baby.’
‘Magic.’ Archie looked at her, his eyes huge. ‘Did you know that I can make myself invisible whenever I want to?’
‘Really?’ Kat looked impressed. ‘Wow, I bet that’s really useful.’
He nodded. ‘I did it today in camp. Twice.’
She lifted a hand to free her hair and it tumbled in waves over her shoulders. There was a frown in her eyes as she listened to him. ‘Are you having problems making friends, sweetheart?’ She’d worried like mad about uprooting him but Archie was such a friendly child she’d assured herself that he’d soon settle in. ‘Who did you eat lunch with?’
‘A boy called Thomas.’ Archie sighed. ‘He turned me into a chatterbox.’
Knowing that her son never stopped talking, Kat hid the smile. ‘How did he do that?’
‘Well, he kept talking to me so I had to talk back instead of listening to the captain.’
Kat smiled. The summer camp was run along the lines of a ship with a ‘captain’ and ‘mates’. They were obviously very creative.
‘And did the “captain” tell you off?’
Archie shook her head. ‘Not once I explained I’m not normally a chatterbox. Anyway…’ he stifled a yawn ‘…camp is different to school. No one tells you off. It’s cool.’
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