Consultant Care. Sharon Kendrick

you’ll love it,’ prophesied Nicolette cheerfully. ‘I did.’

      ‘Just not as much as paediatrics?’ guessed Nurse Jones.

      ‘That’s right. But then for me nothing was ever as much fun as paediatrics. Now, shoo! Take that baby before I change my mind,’ and Nicolette laughed as she picked up the cloth and started to sing tunelessly as she began to wipe the bath out.

      Life was good.

      Very good, she sighed contentedly.

      After doing her nurse training in one of London’s biggest teaching hospitals she had done the additional studying required to become a registered paediatric nurse. And after all that hard work had decided that she needed a break!

      So she had taken a year off to travel around Australia and had had an absolute ball of a time, exploring the country’s beautiful wide, open reaches and enthusiastically entering into the sporty lifestyle which the Australians seemed to take for granted. When the year was up she had found that she had changed her mind about returning to London and her training hospital. The thought of crowded metropolitan life in comparison to the great outdoors had made her feel positively claustrophobic. So she had applied for the post of staff nurse here at pioneering Southbury Hospital, set in the glorious south of England. And although Southbury itself was a big naval port, with a thriving city centre, Nicolette couldn’t dispel her image of it as a sun-baked, sleepy haven—a little like a lazy cat sleeping in front of a banked fire!

      She didn’t hear footsteps; she was too busy belting out a number from the year’s hit musical and attacking the side of the bath with her usual enthusiastic vigour. She didn’t even hear a voice, and surely someone wouldn’t have just come and stood at the bathroom door without saying anything?

      Consequently she didn’t know how long it took for her to register that there was someone else in the bathroom with her.

      She saw a leg. Correction: two legs swung into her line of vision. Or, rather, it was the feet connected to the legs that she noticed first, because the feet were wearing the kind of shoes which Nicolette had never seen before, and she knew instinctively that the soft black leather was handmade, that it was very definitely not English, and, furthermore, that the shoes had cost a fortune. They were also polished and bright and extraordinarily clean. Now who on earth had the time to keep their shoes that clean? she thought fleetingly as her bright blue gaze travelled upwards.

      Nice trousers, too, she thought absently. Grey and immaculate. Worn casually loose. Nicolette blinked.

      And not doing much . . . Correction: not doing anything to disguise thighs so strapping and so muscular and so. . . This man could be an Olympic sprinting champion, she decided, keen to see whether the top half of the mystery intruder would match the bottom half, when a cold, clear and crisply incisive voice cut into her thoughts like a tape-measure into the hips of an unnsuccessful dieter.

      ‘When you’ve quite finished,’ the voice said repressively.

      Nicolette sat back on her heels and found herself looking into the most spectacular pair of eyes she had ever seen. She swallowed.

      Beautiful brown eyes.

      She swallowed again. Brown was far too ordinary a word to use in conjunction with eyes which reminded her of velvety chocolate, and of treacle . . . of all things dark and sweet and mysteriously delicious. And when she looked more closely they weren’t a uniform colour at all, because there were flecks of other colours hidden in their depths. An arresting green—as fresh and as verdant as a spring day—and gold, too, precious and gleaming and . . . and . . .

      ‘Er. . .hello,’ she managed.

      His mouth, which also happened to be the embodiment of perfection, twisted into a grim, hard line as his eyes flicked disparagingly over her dripping hands. ‘Staff Nurse,’ he growled dangerously, ‘would you mind telling me what you think you’re doing?’

      Nicolette should have interpreted the dangerous glint in those magnificent eyes, but she foolishly attempted to chivvy him out of a blatantly foul temper. ‘Well, I’m not writing out my tickets for the National Lottery, am I?’ she joked.

      He didn’t move a muscle of his face in an answering smile. Instead he surveyed her with a cold, unblinking scrutiny as though she were something which had just been dragged in by the cat. ‘Are you or are you not supposed to be in charge of the ward?’ he demanded curtly.

      The implication being, she supposed, that she’d left work on the ward undone, which she knew darned well she hadn’t! Nicolette’s soft features rearranged themselves into a mutinous expression. ‘I am!’ she fired back with equal curtness, her good humour evaporating completely. Just let him dare criticise her—just let him!

      Not seeming at all perturbed by her expression, he proceeded to do just that. ‘And is this how it is deemed proper—’

      Oh, what a pompous word!

      ‘—for a staff nurse to run the ward?’

      ‘What am I doing that’s so wrong—Doctor?’ enquired Nicolette sweetly. ‘At least, I’m assuming that you’re a doctor and not a pharmacist or a dietician or one of the many other members of the hospital staff who wear white coats. And the reason I don’t know your status is because you haven’t. . .’ she toyed with saying ‘haven’t had the courtesy’, but resisted the temptation ‘. . .haven’t introduced yourself,’ she finished primly.

      The implied criticism went over him like water off a duck’s back. ‘Of course I’m a doctor,’ he snapped back. ‘Since when have you known pharmacists and dieticians to carry stethoscopes around in their pockets?’ His finger jabbed at the stethoscope which was dangling clearly from the pocket of his white coat. ‘And as to what you’re doing wrong—why, you’re cleaning the bath out, for heavens sake!’

      ‘Haven’t you ever heard of cross-infection?’ she retorted hotly, not flinching from the look of incredulity which had hardened the eyes she had once foolishly thought magnificent.

      ‘What?’ he demanded, as though she’d just started speaking to him in a foreign language.

      ‘Baths have to be cleaned every time they’re used,’ She shot back. ‘Or didn’t you know that?’

      ‘Of course I know that,’ he bit out impatiently. ‘But isn’t there a junior who could be doing it for you, while you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing, namely, looking after the ward?’

      Nicolette had many theories of her own about how nursing could be improved, and the mystery doctor had inadvertently hit on one of her number-one bête noires. She took a deep breath as she forced herself to control her temper. Heavens, she couldn’t remember being so mad in years! ‘I do not ascribe to the theory,’ she began haughtily, ‘that the students should be lumbered with all the menial tasks around the ward. If we make them play skivvy the whole time then they aren’t exactly going to learn a whole lot, are they, Doctor?’

      His eyes narrowed. ‘Why bother asking me, Staff? You seem about to give me a little lecture. Pray continue.’

      Patronising so-and-so! ‘With pleasure!’ she responded tartly. ‘Giving juniors nothing but menial chores plays havoc with their self-esteem.’

      ‘Self-esteem?’ he echoed incredulously, as though he hadn’t heard her correctly.

      ‘Yes, Doctor—self-esteem! Nurses need it too, you know. And constantly assigning them to clean baths and empty bedpans, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, isn’t going to make them feel like an indispensable member of the nursing team, is it?’ she finished, her defiant tone disguised by her need to draw in a deep breath. ‘Especially if they see the staff nurse swanning around the place like a queen bee, afraid to dirty her apron or have any kind of hands-on contact with the patients. Now that kind of attitude doesn’t earn the kind of respect I like to receive from my junior nurses!’

      ‘Whereas you think