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‘All the time, when I was a kid.’
‘Well, then, you can show me how. Now, let go of me and let’s get started.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
THEY WERE OFF the motorway and heading back into London. They’d searched for hours in every place they could think of and hadn’t found the notebook. So Greg had loaded two plastic crates of papers into the boot of his car, taken Jess for lunch at the local pub and, in what was fast becoming a private joke between them, given her the car keys.
Jess’s phone rang and Greg picked it up from the dashboard. ‘It’s Gerry.’
‘Answer it.’ She flashed a grin at him. ‘If Gerry’s calling me on a Sunday afternoon, it’s probably not just for a chat.’
‘And I’m answering your phone why?’
‘It’s my phone. I can ask anyone I like to answer it.’ Jess wondered whether Greg would take up the challenge. He could quite easily pretend to press ‘reject’ instead of ‘answer’ by mistake, and let Jess pull over and call Gerry back.
He grinned, and turned his attention to the phone. ‘Gerry? Yes, it’s me. No, you can’t speak to her, she’s driving at the moment. We’re not in her car, we’re in mine.’ He winked at her and held the phone away from his ear. Jess kept her eyes on the road but she could hear a stream of indistinct words from the other end of the line.
‘What, you called to tell me this?’
‘What’s he saying?’
‘Nothing of interest. I don’t know where He gets the idea that I’m over-particular about my car. What did you call for, Gerry?’ He listened intently and then grinned. ‘He says there’s an emergency heart bypass coming in shortly. If you want to sit in… ’
‘Yes!’ Jess had been waiting for this chance for weeks. ‘Tell him yes. If we swing past my place so I can pick up my car… ’
‘We’ll be half an hour. Yes, see you then. Cheers, mate.’ He cut the call. ‘No point in making a detour all the way over to yours. We’ll go straight there.’
‘Sure?’ Greg answering Gerry’s call was one thing, but arriving together at the hospital on a Sunday afternoon looked an awful lot like a public admission that something was going on between them. And Greg had always been so careful to keep his love life well away from his work.
‘You’re ashamed to be seen with me?’ He was grinning.
Hardly. ‘I might want to keep you under wraps.’ The thought occurred to Jess that she might be happier if he wanted to keep her under wraps. As if his job at the hospital was still a long-term proposition.
‘Do you?’
‘No.’ She didn’t care what anyone said, she was proud to be seen with Greg. And if he didn’t mind being seen with her…
He nodded, seemingly pleased with what he heard. ‘Next left, then. We don’t want to get caught in traffic.’
Greg had found himself a cup of coffee and ensconced himself in the back row of the operating theatre viewing gallery. A couple of students sat ready to take notes and Greg ignored their covert glances. Right now they probably reckoned that another few years and they could stop climbing that steep learning curve and relax. He wasn’t going to disenchant them.
Jess looked delicious. Scrubbed clean, covered from head to toe in shapeless, sterile theatre garb and concentrating hard on what Gerry was saying to her. He could only see her brow and her eyes, and somehow that was just as enchanting as being able to see everything. Like concentrating on one small part of a magnificent painting, admiring the virtues of a detail to enhance one’s appreciation of the whole.
He leaned back in his chair, stretching his legs as much as was possible in the confined space. It would be a while before they were finished, but that was okay. It would be a chance to brush up on his knowledge of a speciality other than his own, and he could watch her. At the moment, a couple of hours where he had a cast-iron excuse to do nothing else except sit and watch Jess seemed like heaven.
He was sprawled on one of the chairs outside the cardiac department when she finally emerged. She looked tired, but her face was one broad sweep of a smile.
‘Greg! What are you doing here still?’ A trace of guilt intruded on the exhilaration in her eyes. ‘I thought you’d gone home.’
‘Nothing much to do there.’ If you didn’t count the boxes of paperwork in his boot. ‘I thought I’d stay and watch. You did a good job.’ Gerry had given her plenty of opportunity to assist and Jess had come through with flying colours. More than once Greg had seen Gerry’s brief nod of approval at her deft, careful work.
‘It was really good of Gerry to give me the opportunity.’ She looked up at him, her eyes clouded. One of those looks that let Greg know that there was an awful lot of activity going on in her thoughts but gave him no clue about what it was. ‘I think I owe you an apology.’
‘Do you? What have you done?’
‘This morning. I heard you downstairs on the phone.’
‘I know.’ He stuffed his hands into his jeans pockets. ‘I heard you upstairs on the landing.’
