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‘You’ll be OK?’ she asked, then immediately regretted it. He couldn’t possibly be all right after all he’d been through. But he let her off the hook, nodding acquiescence.

‘I will see you again,’ he said, before shifting the weight of his backpack against his shoulders and crossing the road to the hotel, a tall dark shadow in the streetlights—a man who walked alone.

She turned towards her apartment building, free to mutter now, castigating herself for feeling sorry for him, but also warning him, in his absence, that the ‘seeing you again’ scenario was most unlikely.

Emmaline had a family now—there’d be no need for her to provide that special contact all babies needed. Emmaline’s father was best placed to do this for her and it was up to him to decide where the little one’s future lay.

Her heart might ache as she accepted these truths, but it was time to be sensible and make a clean break from the baby who had sneaked beneath her guard and professionalism, and had wormed her way into her heart.

She rode the lift up to her floor, then opened the apartment door, walking through the darkened rooms to stand on the balcony and look out at the river, reminding herself of all the positives in her life—a job she loved, a great apartment, interests and friends—but neither the river nor her thoughts filled the aching emptiness within her, and she hugged herself tightly as she went back inside to find something for her dinner.

CHAPTER TWO

‘I MAY join you?’

Had he been watching for her that she’d barely left her apartment when Carlos appeared by her side? A shiver ran down Marty’s spine, not because he might have been watching but because of the way his voice curled into her ears.

She turned to look at him in daylight—to see if a night’s sleep had softened the hard angles of his face. If anything they were sharper, while the skin beneath his eyes was darkly shadowed. The man looked more strained than he had the previous day.

Not that dark shadows under his eyes made any difference to her internal reaction to the man. Looking at him caused more tremors along her nerves than listening to him.

Determined to hide these wayward reactions, she went for professional.

‘Didn’t sleep much?’ she diagnosed, and saw a flicker of a smile.

‘The hotel is comfortable, but there was much to think about, and air-conditioned air—how do people sleep in it?’

Marty took it as a rhetorical question and didn’t try to explain that for a lot of people it was the only way they could sleep in the hot, humid summer.

The major question was, why was he here?

Had his sleepless night convinced him of his responsibilities?

Could he be interested enough in his daughter to be visiting her at seven in the morning?

‘You’re going to the hospital?’

‘I am.’

Maybe everything would work out for Emmaline! But Marty had barely registered her delight for the baby when he squelched it with his next statement.

‘I arranged things when I spoke to the administrator. For the next month I will be working there. Not for money, but for useful things to take back with me—equipment the hospital no longer uses because it has been superseded. No equipment is too old-fashioned for us as long as it works.’

The information about the equipment was interesting and she’d have liked to ask what kind of things he found most useful, knowing there were store-cupboards full of obstetrics gear that no one ever used tucked away at the hospital.

But something he’d said at the beginning of the conversation needed following up before she started donating old bedpans.

‘Working at the hospital? I’m sure if you asked they’d give you whatever they didn’t need anyway, so why would you want to work? Haven’t you heard of holidays?’

And shouldn’t you be spending your time getting to know your daughter—making arrangements for her care?

‘I try to work at other hospitals whenever I’m on leave, but not only in the hope of getting some useful equipment. My specialty is surgery and I have plenty of accident experience but there is always a time when I realise how little I know and when I wish I’d learnt more of other specialties. Your own field, obstetrics, is one of my weaknesses. Oh, I can do the basics but in Sudan I’m not needed for basics. There, the women look after each other and have good midwives, so mainly I’m needed for emergencies and this is where I fail my patients.’

‘You can hardly be held responsible for failing patients with complicated obstetrics problems,’ Marty told him. ‘Even obstetricians do that at times.’

‘I should know more,’ he said, refusing her excuses. ‘So, at the hospital I will work in the A and E Department and take the obstetrics patients, assisting, of course, a specialist such as yourself.’

Great! Flickering along her nerves she could put up with if it only happened occasionally, and was time-limited—like for a day or two! But a month? When he’d be around all the time?

Maybe she’d get over it.

She sneaked a look towards him, catching his profile as he turned to watch a pelican skid to a landing on the river’s surface, and knew she probably wouldn’t get over it. Whatever was happening inside her body was getting worse, not better, which was weird to say the least, because she wasn’t sure she even liked the man.

‘And Emmaline?’ she asked, knowing if anything was going to put her off him, his attitude to his child surely would.

‘I will have a month to think about the situation. As you said, the doctors want to keep her in for another fortnight, so the need to do something isn’t urgent. At the moment—well, at the moment I don’t know.’

His voice told her the subject was closed, but this was Emmaline, so as far as Marty was concerned it had to be reopened.

‘Don’t know if you want her, or don’t know what to do with her?’ she persisted.

‘How could I want her? I knew nothing of her existence! And a baby—it is impossible to fit a baby in my life. But she is my responsibility and I will make such arrangements as I see fit!’

‘She’s a child, not a responsibility!’ Marty muttered, forgetting that muttering was out.

And he did hear her, for he turned towards her, his face harsh with anger.

‘You are wrong, Marty Cox, and you are allowing emotion to cloud your thinking. A child must be the greatest responsibility a person can have.’

‘You’re right as far as that goes,’ Marty conceded, ‘but surely a child is a responsibility that should be considered with love, not just as a duty. Emotion has to come into it.’

‘Never!’ he argued, his deep voice rolling out the word with such certainty Marty frowned at him. ‘Emotion clouds too many issues—it makes us stupid, that’s what emotion does. A parent would be neglectful if he allowed emotion to sway the decisions or arrangements he makes for his child. He would be irresponsible.’