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‘Right.’ He snapped the phone shut and grinned at Jess. ‘Gerry wants you up in Cardiology.’
‘I know. I’ve got things to do.’
‘He wants to make sure you’re all right.’
‘I’m fine. I said so.’
‘Hypothermia?’ He pulled her closer to him.
‘Somehow I don’t think so. It wasn’t that cold in there.’
‘Shock?’ Greg amended that to cover any possibility of imminent deterioration. ‘Delayed shock. Delayed hypothermia perhaps. You’ve laddered your tights, so I imagine you’ve probably grazed your knee as well if I look a little closer.’
‘Are you by any chance fishing for a diagnosis, Doctor? Because I have to tell you that making things up isn’t going to work.’ The glint in her eyes told Greg that she had his number. Fooling her was infinitely more difficult than fooling himself.
There was only one honest answer. He kissed her. He was going to have to do better, keep a closer eye on her. Unobtrusively, of course, or she’d call him out on it. He’d think of a way, though.
Jess wasn’t used to being looked after. She wasn’t used to the feeling of wanting to be looked after either. Greg had delivered her up to Cardiology, where Gerry had taken over as guardian-in-chief and had insisted that she sit for a while and relax, while he saw the patients who were waiting for her. Then, at six o’clock, Greg had appeared again, and despite all her protests he’d guided her into a waiting taxi and taken her home.
‘Don’t you have something to do tonight?’ He’d hung around until she’d given in and asked him up for a cup of tea.
‘No.’
‘Liar.’ The quick dip of his gaze had betrayed the truth.
He shrugged. ‘Okay, you got me. But if you want some company… It won’t do anyone any harm to wait on a decision from me for twenty-four
hours.’
‘Let them stew, you mean.’ She grinned at him. Maybe keeping Greg occupied tonight wasn’t such a bad thing. Every time she’d seen him this week he’d been disentangling himself from one set of responsibilities so that he could shoulder another.
‘Yeah. I have a life too.’
‘Glad to hear it.’ And she needed him here. No, scrap that, she wanted him here. Needing him felt as if she was betraying her unborn child. She’d made a promise that she would look after it and no one, not even Greg, was going to put that into jeopardy by eating away at her independence now.
He looked around at her sitting room. ‘This is nice. Cosy.’
‘Small, you mean?’
‘No. If I’d meant small, I would have said small.’ He flopped down on the sofa. ‘It could be bigger, though. Ever thought of expanding?’
Jess rolled her eyes. ‘In which direction? There are flats above and below me and to either side. Guess I could build out over the pavement, But the planning authority might have something to say about that… ’
He held his hands up. ‘Okay. But if the people around you ever want to sell up… ’
‘They don’t.’
‘They might. Depends how much you offer them.’ He had a look of exaggerated innocence on his face.
‘Don’t even think about it, Greg. There’s plenty of room here for me.’ She knew exactly what he was driving at. ‘And the baby. For the time being, anyway.’
He nodded. ‘Yeah. But you don’t need to… What I mean is that you do have a choice, Jess. You can live wherever you want to. You could come and live with me.’
As invitations to move in went, this one was distinctly underwhelming. ‘You want an answer to that?’
‘Of course I do.’
A meal, a little candlelight and some kind of declaration of love would have been nice. He might just as well have emailed her. Or got the irreplaceable Pat to do it for him. ‘I’ll get us some tea, shall I?’ It looked as if that talk that she’d rehearsed in front of the mirror and then with variations while she’d been trapped in the dark today was just about to be enacted for real.
