Paddington Children's Hospital Complete Collection. Kate Hardy

routine and usually Victoria would go and get a table while he went and got the food.

      Except Dominic was there.

      She had known the moment she stepped in, and though she deliberately didn’t look over, she was aware that he was seated in the far corner chatting with a woman.

      She really didn’t want Dominic seeing her alone and coming over for another ‘discussion,’ or request to come to the scan.

      ‘Victoria?’ Glen checked, because she hadn’t answered his question.

      ‘I’m not sure what I want,’ Victoria said. ‘I’ll come with you.’

      She chose a salad sandwich and bought a mug of hot chocolate and a bottle of water, as Glen chose tomato soup and a couple of rolls. Together they found a table, thankfully one far away from Dominic.

      She drank half her water and then opened up her salad sandwich and took an unenthusiastic bite as Glen slurped his tomato soup.

      ‘Can I ask you something, Victoria?’

      ‘What?’ she snapped, awaiting the inevitable questions as to when she was going to tell work, or whether she had told the father.

      Glen had asked both regularly since he’d found out.

      ‘Do you put butter on your peanut butter sandwiches?’

      Victoria smiled. She liked their often mundane conversations and it helped take her mind off Dominic. ‘Of course I do.’

      ‘Well, Hayley doesn’t. And apparently Adam has asked that when it’s my turn to make the sandwiches, for me not to put any butter on.’

      ‘Adam’s nine?’ Victoria checked, and Glen nodded and took another slurp of his soup. ‘Well, then, I’d suggest he makes it himself if he’s going to be so choosy.’

      ‘You haven’t tried getting four children to school on time, have you?’ Glen sighed. ‘If they all made their own sandwiches, aside from the mess that they’d leave behind, they’d never get there.’

      And she conceded, because no, she’d never had to get four little people to school before.

      But hopefully in a few years she’d have one little person to get there.

      The pregnancy was starting to take shape in Victoria’s mind and she was beginning to get excited at the prospect of being a mother.

      She liked the glimpses of family life that Glen gave her.

      It helped her to picture things a bit.

      Glen made sandwiches for everyone if he was on an early shift. It gave Hayley a break and it worked well.

      Except he’d left his behind today.

      Victoria could no more imagine her father making lunch for her than a flight to the moon.

      It just hadn’t happened.

      And they hadn’t taken meals together, unless they were out at some function.

      ‘Have you told the guy he’s going to be a father yet?’ Glen asked, and Victoria sighed. She was just about to tell him to mind his own business when someone answered the question for her.

      ‘Yes, Glen, she has.’

      And she stared at her half-eaten sandwich rather than at Dominic, who very calmly took a seat at their table.

      ‘Well, this is awkward,’ Victoria said.

      ‘Why is it awkward?’ Dominic asked. ‘All three of us already know you’re pregnant.’ He looked to Glen. ‘Did you know that the father was me?’

      ‘I had an idea that it might be,’ Glen admitted, and Victoria threw him an angry look as she realised that he had deliberately steered her into the canteen. Glen picked up his rolls and then stood. ‘I’ll see you back at the vehicle, Victoria.’

      As he walked off Victoria looked over to Dominic. ‘I’ll be having words with Glen.’

      ‘I wouldn’t bother. I was coming by the station tonight to leave a message for you to contact me,’ Dominic said.

      ‘Why?’

      ‘Because we need to speak.’

      ‘About what?’

      ‘Well, Glen knows...’ Dominic started.

      ‘Glen guessed that I was pregnant,’ Victoria interrupted, assuming he was annoyed that others knew.

      ‘Victoria, I’m glad that he knows. It’s good that you’ve got him looking out for you. Mind you, he should have stopped you when there was that fire.’

      ‘Don’t interfere with my work,’ Victoria said. ‘He’s my partner, not my line manager. I make my own choices.’

      ‘Fair enough,’ Dominic said. He was trying and failing to treat her as he would a colleague. And trying to rationalise that he had every right to be concerned if she was carrying his child.

      Only, it wasn’t the baby he had been thinking about on that day of the fire, because he hadn’t known she was pregnant then.

      He had been loading a child into the ambulance and had turned at the sound of the explosion.

      He had seen her rush forward towards the firefighter.

      Glen had rushed forward too.

      And he had seen the firefighters going into the burning building over and over, but it had been Victoria who he had wanted to go and haul back.

      Dominic knew already that she wasn’t anything like the women he was usually attracted to.

      And his response to her was like nothing he had known.

      He had just watched her arrive in the canteen a little pink and flustered, though he had soon worked out why when he had watched her gulp down half a bottle of water—they had just come from the burns unit and boots and overalls would not have been the most comfortable things to be wearing.

      And he had seen her and Glen, casually chatting as they selected their meals.

      He was actually very glad that Glen knew.

      ‘I wasn’t going to broadcast the fact you were the father,’ Victoria added, ‘until the paperwork came in.’

      ‘Who else knows? What about family?’ he asked, worried that she had been dealing with this on her own.

      ‘I told my father.’

      ‘And what did he say?’

      ‘Not very much.’

      ‘Is he cross?’

      ‘Cross?’ Victoria checked.

      ‘Well, because you’re single?’

      ‘I don’t think he gives me enough thought to be cross. He was irritated. I asked if he could pull a few strings so that I could have the baby here at Paddington’s and he did.’ She closed her eyes for a moment. ‘Actually, I just ran into him at Riverside.’ And she told him what she could not tell even to Glen.

      ‘We hardly even said hello to each other. We had words the other day.’

      ‘About the baby?’

      ‘Sort of.’ She gave an uncomfortable shrug.

      ‘I’ve spoken with your father on occasion,’ Dominic told her, and he watched as her eyelids briefly fluttered as he said without words that he got what an awful man he was. When she said nothing he moved the conversation on.

      ‘And your mother?’

      ‘She’s not on the scene. I’ve already told you that.’ Victoria took a long drink of her water but then chose to continue. ‘That was what my father and I had words about.’

      His patience was pleasant;