CHAPTER TWO

      A COUPLE of days later, Ellen came down to breakfast to find Sean sitting with his feet propped up on the range, munching on a bacon sandwich.

      He stood up and grinned at her.

      ‘Good morning. I’m afraid I’ve been taking advantage of Maggie again.’

      ‘Wheesh now, Sean. You do more than enough for me, a wee sandwich is nothing.’ Maggie turned to Ellen. ‘Sean’s just got back from a night on the mountains. I happen to know he doesn’t keep much in that larder of his so I told him that he wasn’t going home until I had fed him.’

      Ellen helped herself to tea from the pot and took a slice of toast from a heaped plate. She wasn’t hungry but if she didn’t have something Maggie’s suspicions would be aroused and she would give her no peace until she had wheedled information out of her. As it was, her grandmother had spent the past couple of days trying to tempt Ellen with home baking, complaining that women weren’t meant to be so thin.

      ‘What happened?’ Ellen asked Sean.

      ‘We had a climber with a broken leg about halfway up the mountain. We found him easily enough but the rescue ‘copter couldn’t land because of poor visibility. These boys take chances and they nearly came to grief trying to get a winch down, but in the end they had to back off. It took the six of us almost eight hours to get the stretcher down the mountain.’

      It was all said matter-of-factly but Ellen knew that conditions must have been horrendous. It hadn’t stopped snowing since she’d arrived and last night there had been strong winds too. However, looking at Sean, no one would have guessed he’d been out all night. Apart from a five o’clock shadow, which Ellen decided suited him, he looked more refreshed than she felt.

      ‘Is the casualty going to be okay?’

      ‘I expect the hospital will discharge him later today once they’ve put him in plaster,’ Sean said. ‘My biggest worry was hypothermia, but we managed to keep him warm enough.’

      Sean stood up and stretched lazily. As he did so, his sweater rode up, revealing the dark hairs on his lower abdomen. To her dismay, Ellen felt a strange buzzing sensation go through her. Wasn’t her crush on him well and truly a thing of the past and didn’t she have enough on her plate without reacting to Sean Jamieson? On the other hand, after the past two weeks, when she hadn’t been able to think of anything except her illness, it was a welcome relief to realise she was still functioning as part of the human race and that she could still feel something.

      ‘I should go into town and get some supplies,’ Sean said. ‘I can see from the way your car is hidden by the snow, Ellen, that you haven’t been anywhere. You could come with me if you like.’

      ‘Thank you, but no.’

      ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, child, you haven’t been out of the house these last two days,’ Maggie scolded. ‘As long as you wrap up, a bit of fresh air will put some colour in those cheeks. And, besides, we do need some things from the shop. If the snow carries on like this we may well be snowed in and I’m not sure we have enough in the larder to keep us going.’

      ‘But Sean must be tired,’ Ellen protested. ‘And what about work?’

      ‘I’m used to doing without sleep. I’m on call tonight so I have the morning off.’

      ‘Okay, then,’ she said reluctantly. She didn’t want to be alone with Sean but she could hardly refuse to get some shopping for her grandmother.

      Sean and her grandmother shared a look. Ellen realised she had sounded rude and ungrateful. Sean was only being polite. He wasn’t to know that she didn’t trust herself to spend any more time with him than was strictly necessary.

      She made herself smile. ‘Thanks for the offer, Sean. I really don’t fancy having to dig my car out.’

      ‘Good. I want to check up on one of my patients, though. If you don’t mind, perhaps we can call in at the hospital on the way back? It’s sort of on our way.’

      Alarm spiralled down Ellen’s spine. She didn’t want to go into the hospital. She most certainly didn’t want to go to the maternity ward. She simply wasn’t ready yet. She forced the panic away. She could stay in the car. He couldn’t make her go inside. She was getting het up over nothing.

      ‘If you give me a couple of minutes,’ she said, knowing she didn’t have the energy to argue with both Sean and her grandmother, ‘I’ll go and change into something warmer.’

      ‘So how long do you think you’ll be staying?’ Sean asked as they drove along the narrow roads made even narrower by the drifting snow piled up on either side. Her grandmother’s croft house was around ten miles from the city centre and all the major supermarkets. Although there was a village within walking distance, it only stocked the basics.

      Ellen looked out of the window. She had no idea how long she was going to stay. She hadn’t thought that far. The need to come to her grandmother’s house had been overpowering and instinctive. She had asked for and been granted three months’ leave by the hospital where she worked. One day she’d have to decide what she was going to do, she certainly couldn’t live with her grandmother indefinitely, at least not without working, but every time she thought about going back to her empty flat in London and the midwifery unit, a sick feeling washed over her. Perhaps she could get a job in the village? In one of the shops maybe?

      ‘I’m not sure. A few weeks, maybe longer. I haven’t made up my mind.’

      The look Sean shot her was full of curiosity. She didn’t want him to ask her any more questions, so she changed the subject. ‘How is your family?’

      ‘Mary and Louise moved to Ireland so my parents sold up and bought a house there. Patricia’s in Australia with her husband. My mother hates not being near my siblings, especially now that they have children of their own,’ Sean said. ‘She and my father go out to Australia for three months every winter—they’re there at the moment, in fact. My mother has six grandchildren now, so she’s blissfully happy.’

      ‘Gran told me that they’d moved to Ireland.’ Mary, Louise and Patricia were Sean’s sisters. Ellen wasn’t surprised his parents had followed their children to Ireland. The Jamiesons had always been a close family unit. The opposite from her family in every way possible. ‘It seems strange not to be going straight over to your mum’s house to say hello, like I always did.’

      ‘What about your mother?’ Sean asked. ‘I read articles by her in the British Medical Journal almost all the time. She has quite an international reputation. You must be proud of her.’

      ‘I am,’ Ellen said simply.

      ‘And she must be proud of you.’

      Ellen smiled wryly. ‘I wouldn’t go as far as that. Mum wasn’t exactly happy when I told her I wanted to be a midwife. She thought my choice of career was second best and that with my grades I should be studying medicine. Now that would have made her proud.’

      Sean sent her another sharp look. He wasn’t to know that it was her hero-worship of him that had given her the idea to pursue a career in maternity. She’d loved hearing his stories of drama in the maternity unit when he was a trainee. But it wasn’t hero worship that had kept her in the job. She knew she had found her vocation from the first moment she’d stepped onto the midwifery unit and, when she’d delivered her first baby, it had only strengthened that conviction. Now she didn’t know if she would ever be able to bring herself to return to the job she had once loved and she despised the weakness in herself.

      ‘If your mother knew you at all, she wouldn’t have wasted her breath trying to persuade you to change your mind. It was obvious to everyone, apart from her, that you were a determined kid.’ The smile on his face made Ellen wonder if he was remembering the time down by the river.

      Before Ellen