‘Agreed,’ she said softly. She reached across the table and squeezed his hand briefly. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Me, too. And I’m sorry I wasn’t very nice to you when you turned up.’
‘You’d had the shift from hell, and you weren’t expecting me. And I wasn’t very nice to you, either.’
‘Dr Snootypants.’
She felt her eyes widen. ‘Is that what you called me? Well, you were Grumpy McGrumpface.’
‘Grumpy McGrumpface?’ He stared at her in seeming disbelief, and for a moment she thought they were about to get into another slanging match.
But then he nodded. ‘You have a point. I was miserable after my shift, guilty because I’d got it all wrong about when you were supposed to arrive, and the whole thing just snowballed. The snootier you were with me, the angrier I got.’
‘And the more you acted as if I was a nuisance, the more sarcastic I got with you. We both got it wrong,’ she said. ‘Maybe we should cut each other a bit of slack and start again.’
‘I’m still not a great cook,’ he warned. ‘When it was my turn to sort dinner, I served up ready meals. I bought them from Janie, mind, so it was as good as home-cooked, but I do microwave dinners only.’
‘We’ll work something out between us,’ she said, and finally handed him the plate with the brownie. ‘Eat this. From what Parm said, nobody could have done any more than you did on Saturday.’
‘That doesn’t make it feel any better. I still couldn’t save the baby.’
‘We all get cases that haunt us,’ she said softly. ‘Things we can’t fix, no matter how hard we try, because they’re just not fixable.’
‘Is that why you’re here?’ he asked. ‘Because you needed to get away from memories in London?’
Yes, but not quite how he thought it was.
It seemed that Clara had respected her confidence, and Georgie was grateful for that. But what did she do now? On the one hand, she didn’t want him to think that the move here was just an idle whim. On the other hand, if she told him even part of the truth, there was a risk she’d end up having to field all the pity here as much as she had in London. What was the point of coming four hundred miles to repeat your mistakes?
He was looking at her curiously, his amazing eyes full of questions.
‘It’s personal,’ she hedged.
‘Uh-huh.’ But he didn’t try to fill the gap with small talk. He waited.
In the end, she caved. ‘All right. But, if I tell you the truth,’ she said, ‘I want you to promise me on your honour as a doctor that it stays confidential. And,’ she added, ‘most importantly, I want you to promise you’re not going to start pitying me.’
He looked surprised, then nodded. ‘All right. You have my word.’
Was that enough?
She thought about it. She barely knew him, and the fact she hadn’t picked up on the fact that her husband was a liar and a cheat showed that her own instincts weren’t so great. But she’d heard the way Ryan’s colleagues and his neighbour spoke about him. They seemed to think he was a man who could be trusted; and that decided her in his favour. She’d take the chance.
‘I love my job and I love my family and I love my friends. But, last year, my husband was one of the emergency doctors on a rescue mission after an earthquake, and he was killed in an unexpected landslide.’ She couldn’t bring herself to tell Ryan the rest of it. About the baby her husband had made with his mistress, though he’d come up with excuse after excuse not to make a baby with her. Better to stick to a simplified version of the truth. ‘Everyone at work was sympathetic and kind, but I hate being seen as “Poor Georgie”—it’s been weighing me down. I know everyone means well, but the pity just stifles me. And I needed to get a break from it all. That’s why I wanted to leave London.’
Ryan could understand that. It was exactly how he’d felt after his marriage had crashed and burned. Everyone had been so nice, and he’d been so miserable. Clara had been his rock, offering him and Truffle somewhere to stay until he could buy another house—Zoe had bought him out of their home—but, oh, the conversations that had stopped when he’d walked into the room and the pitying glances. He’d hated being talked about, even though he’d known people were trying to be kind rather than judging him.
‘I get that,’ he said softly. ‘And I won’t pry. It’s none of my business.’
‘Thank you.’
Telling him about her husband’s death had clearly been painful. But in some ways she’d done them both a favour: she’d given him another reason to keep a bit of emotional distance between them and not give in to the growing attraction he felt towards her. Physically, she was gorgeous, but it was more than just looks. Something about Georgina Jones made him feel hot all over, made him feel like a teenage boy having his first crush.
And that wasn’t a good thing.
He wasn’t good at relationships. He already had one divorce under his belt—and he knew that the break-up of his marriage was largely his own fault. He hadn’t let Zoe close enough, and he hadn’t been able to put his own feelings aside to give her the family of her dreams. As a widow, Georgie was clearly grieving for her late husband and she didn’t need the complication of getting involved with a man whose own heart was a complete and utter mess.
‘Given that I’m not Clara, will sharing a house with me be a problem?’ she asked.
‘Problem?’ Did she mean because she wasn’t Clara, or that he had
