Alison Roberts - Midwives On-Call

But the offending wagon had a bull bar attached and it hadn’t just scratched his paintwork. While the wagon looked to be almost unscathed, the passenger-side panels of the Morgan had been sheared off completely.

He loved this baby. He’d bought her five years ago, a post-marriage toy to make him feel better about the world. He’d cherished her, spent a small fortune on her and then put her into very expensive storage while he’d been overseas.

His qualms about returning to Australia had been tempered by his joy on being reunited with Betsy. But now … some idiot with a huge lump of a wagon—and a bull bar …

‘What the hell did you think you were doing?’ He couldn’t see the driver of the wagon yet, but he was venting his spleen on the wagon itself. Of all the ugly, lumbering excuses for a car …

And it was intact. Yeah, it’d have a few extra scratches but there were scratches all over it already. It was a battered, dilapidated brute and the driver’d be able to keep driving like the crash had never happened.

He wanted to kick it. Of all the stupid, careless …

Um … why hadn’t the driver moved?

And suddenly medical mode kicked in, overriding rage. Maybe the driver had had a heart attack. A faint. Maybe this was a medical incident rather than sheer stupidity. He took a deep breath, switching roles in an instant. Infuriated driver became doctor. The wagon’s driver’s door was jammed hard against where his passenger door used to be, so he headed for its passenger side.

The wagon’s engine died. Someone was alive in there, then. Good. Or sort of good.

He hauled the door open and he hadn’t quite managed the transition. Rage was still paramount.

‘You’d better be having a heart attack.’ It was impossible to keep the fury from his voice. ‘You’d better have a really good excuse as to why you ploughed this heap of scrap metal into my car! You want to get out and explain?’

No!

Things were already appalling—but things just got a whole lot worse.

This was a voice she knew. A voice from her past.

Surely not.

She had to be imagining it, she decided, but she wasn’t opening her eyes. If it really was …

It couldn’t be. She was tired, she was frantically worried about Gretta, she was late and she’d just crashed her car. No wonder she was hearing things.

‘You’re going to have to open your eyes and face things.’ She said it to herself, under her breath. Then she repeated it in her head twice more but her three-times mantra still didn’t seem to be working.

The silence outside the car was ominous. Toe-tappingly threatening.

Maybe it’d go away if she just stayed …

‘Hey, are you okay?’ The gravelly voice, angry at first, was now concerned.

But it was the same voice and this wasn’t her imagination. This was horrendously, appallingly real.

Voices could be the same, she told herself, feeling herself veering towards hysteria. There had to be more than one voice in the world that sounded like his.

She’d stay just one moment longer with her eyes closed.

Her passenger door opened and someone slid inside. Large. Male.

Him.

His hand landed on hers on the steering wheel. ‘Miss? Are you hurt? Can I help?’ And as the anger in his voice gave way to caring she knew, unmistakably, who this was.

Oliver. The man she’d loved with all her heart. The man who’d walked away five years ago to give her the chance of a new life.

So many emotions were slamming through her head … anger, bewilderment, grief … She’d had five years to move on but, crazy or not, this man still felt a part of her.

She’d crashed his car. He was right here.

There was no help for it. She took a deep, deep breath. She braced herself.

She raised her head, and she turned to face her husband.

Emily.

He was seeing her but his mind wasn’t taking her in. Emily!

For one wild moment he thought he must be mistaken. This was a different woman, older, a bit … worn round the edges. Weary? Faded jeans and stained windcheater. Unkempt curls.

But still Emily.

His wife? She still was, he thought stupidly. His Em.

But she wasn’t his Em. He’d walked away five years ago. He’d left her to her new life, and she had nothing to do with him.

Except she was here. She was staring up at him, her eyes reflecting his disbelief. Horror?

Shock held him rigid.

She’d wrecked his car. He loved this car. He should be feeling …

No. There was no should , or if there was he hadn’t read that particular handbook.

Should he feel grief? Should he feel guilt?

He felt neither. All he felt was numb.

She’d had a minute’s warning. He’d had none.

‘Em?’ He looked … incredulous. He looked more shocked than she was—bewildered beyond words.

What were you supposed to say to a husband you hadn’t seen or spoken to for five years? There was no handbook for this.

‘H-hi?’ she managed.

‘You’ve just crashed my car,’ he said, stupidly.

‘You were supposed to be a bike.’ Okay, maybe that was just as stupid. This conversation was going exactly nowhere. They’d established, what, that he wasn’t a bike?

He was her husband—and he was right beside her. Looking completely dumbfounded.

‘You have a milk stain on your shoulder.’

That would be the first thing he’d notice, she thought. Her uniform was in her bag. She never put it on at home—her chances of getting out of the house clean were about zero—so she was still wearing jeans and the baggy windcheater she’d worn at breakfast.

Gretta had had a milky drink before being ill. Em had picked her up and cuddled her before she’d left.

Strangely, the stain left her feeling exposed. She didn’t want this man to see … her.

‘There are child seats in your wagon.’

He still sounded incredulous. Milk stains? Family wagon? He’d be seeing a very different woman from the one he’d seen five years ago.

But he looked … just the same. Same tall, lean, gorgeous. Same deep brown eyes that crinkled at the edges when he smiled, and Oliver smiled a lot. Same wide mouth and strong bone structure. Same dark, wavy hair, close cropped to try and get rid of the curl, only that never worked. It was so thick. She remembered running her fingers through that hair …

Um, no. Not appropriate. Regardless of formalities, this was her husband. Or ex-husband? They hadn’t bothered with divorce yet but she’d moved on.

She’d just crashed his car.

‘You’re using Harry’s car park,’ she said, pointing accusingly at … um … one slightly bent sports car. It was beautiful—at least some of it still was. An open sports car. Vintage. It wasn’t the sort of car that you might be able to pop down to the car parts place in your lunch hour and buy a new panel.

He’d always loved cars. She remembered the day they’d sold his last sports car.

His last? No. Who knew how many cars he’d been through since? Anyway, she remembered the day they’d sold the sleek little roadster both of them had loved, trading it in for a family wagon. Smaller than this but just as sensible. They’d gone straight from the car showroom to the nursery suppliers, and had had the baby seat fitted there and then.

She’d been six months pregnant. They’d driven home with identical smug looks on their faces.

He’d wanted a family as much as she had. Or she’d thought he did. What had happened then had proved she hadn’t known him at all.

‘I’ve been allocated this car park,’ he was saying, and she had to force herself back to here, to now. ‘Level Five, Bay Eleven. That’s mine.’

‘You’re visiting?’

‘I’m employed here, as of today.’