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Miranda didn’t look at him and Jake’s mouth tightened.
She was pregnant.
How could she be pregnant? And how the hell had he not noticed?
He was an obstetrician, for goodness’ sake. He dealt with pregnant women on a daily basis. And he’d had a woman who was six months pregnant in his house and he hadn’t even noticed.
Well done, Jake. Good going. He closed his eyes briefly. The signs had all been there. The fact that she ate so much, her extreme tiredness, the fact that she burst into tears for apparently no reason…
But what had she been doing on her own in the mountains on Christmas Day? And what had she been doing kissing him when she was six months pregnant with another man’s baby?
Angry with himself and even more angry with her, his jaw clenched and his eyes hardened.
He’d thought she was interesting and beautiful and appealing. It turned out she was duplicitous and lacking in morals. No wonder she’d made cynical comments about families. Clearly she had no sense of responsibility.
‘Never known you speechless before, Jake,’ Ruth teased, walking Miranda to the door. ‘We’ll just go and get the ultrasound machine while you pull yourself together.’
‘Do you think the baby will be all right, Mr Blackwell?’
Aware that Lucy was looking at him expectantly, Jake pulled himself together and stood up.
‘We’re going to check everything, Lucy,’ he assured her, managing a smile despite the turmoil inside him, ‘and we’re going to keep a very close eye on you. Leave the worrying to me if you can. It’s what they pay me for. But I’m afraid you’re spending the rest of Boxing Day in here with us.’
‘I’d be too scared to go home anyway,’ she confessed ruefully.
Miranda came back with the ultrasound machine and Jake resisted the temptation to drag her back into the corridor and demand an immediate explanation for her behaviour. That was going to have to wait until they were alone. But they would be alone, he promised himself, and they were going to talk, whether she liked it or not.
Where had the father of her baby been when she’d been spending Christmas Day at his house? Had they had a row? The guy must have been worrying himself sick. He knew he would have done if his wife or girlfriend had vanished without any warning.
His eyes slid to her neat little bump and he asked himself again how he could possibly not have noticed that she was six months pregnant. She was so slight.
But when he’d first seen her she’d been wearing a bulky waterproof jacket and then she’d changed straight into his jumper, which had been at least six sizes too large. Large enough to conceal a pregnancy.
Why? Why would she want to hide something like that?
Forcing himself to concentrate on his patient, Jake slid the transducer across Lucy’s rounded abdomen and studied the picture on the screen. Later, he vowed, he’d get her on her own and find out what was going on.
‘OK, everything looks fine with the baby, Lucy, but I want you to stay in for now, if that’s all right with you.’
‘Whatever you think.’
‘I think that if your waters have broken, I want you where I can see you for the rest of the day,’ Jake said calmly, reaching for some paper towels and wiping the jelly from her abdomen.
‘That’s fine by me. I don’t want you to go off duty.’ Lucy gave a worried smile. ‘I want you to sleep here in the room with me tonight!’
Ruth smiled. ‘Oh, don’t worry about that—the work I’ve got for him, he’ll still be here at New Year, but he certainly won’t be sleeping.’
Jake gently covered Lucy with a blanket and stood up. ‘Stop worrying,’ he said softly, and then turned to Miranda. ‘I want her kept on the monitor for the time being and let me know if there’s any changes. I’ll be back to check on her when I’ve seen the other lady.’
Miranda nodded and he turned to Ruth. ‘Where is she?’
‘Room 2.’
Jake could see from the look on Ruth’s face that she was expecting the consultation to be difficult, and the moment he walked into the room he knew that she was right. The couple didn’t appear to be speaking but the atmosphere crackled with tension.
The husband was hovering helplessly in the background and the woman, Gail, was leaning over a beanbag and her face was pale and sweaty. The moment she saw Jake, her features tensed.
‘I need to tell you straight away that I don’t want to be here and I certainly don’t want any intervention.’
