CAROL MARINELLI - Special Deliveries - Wanted - A Daddy - Dr. Dark and Far Too Delicious / Royal Rescue / Father by Choice

And now, when she’d rather be anywhere else, she sat at her mother’s, eating Sunday lunch with Penny and wondering how on earth she could ever tell her and if it would simply be better if Penny never found out.

Which sounded to Jasmine an awful lot like lying.

‘You wanted to talk to me.’

‘I just wanted a chat,’ Jasmine said. ‘We haven’t caught up lately.’

‘Well, there’s not really much to catch up on,’ Penny said. ‘It’s just work, work, work.’

‘It’s your interview soon,’ Louise reminded her.

‘You haven’t mentioned it to anyone?’ Penny frowned at Jasmine. ‘I told you about that in confidence. I shouldn’t have said anything.’

‘I haven’t,’ Jasmine said, but her face burnt as she lied.

‘Well, I’ve heard that there are rumours going around, and if I find out that it’s you …’ Penny gave a tight shrug. ‘Sorry, that was uncalled for. I just hate how gossip spreads in that place.’

‘Are you going to the A and E ball?’ Jasmine tried to change the subject, attempting to find out what she simply had to know.

Not that it would change anything between her and Jed.

Not just because of the possibility that he and Penny had once been an item, more the way he had been when they’d had a row. He hadn’t given her a chance to explain, had just thrown everything she had confided to him back in her face and then walked out.

She didn’t need someone like that in her life and certainly not in Simon’s—still, she did want to know if the rumours were true, which was why she pushed on with Penny, dancing around the subject of the A and E ball in the hope it might lead to something more revealing.

‘I’ve been asked to put in an appearance,’ Penny said, helping herself to another piece of lamb. ‘Why?’ she asked. ‘Are you thinking of going?’

‘Not at that price,’ Jasmine said. ‘I just wondered if you were, that’s all.’

‘I have to, really. Jed and I will probably take it in turns—someone has to hold the fort and all the consultants will want to be there.’

‘Jed?’ Louise asked.

‘The other senior reg,’ Penny explained.

‘The one who’s going for the same position?’ Louise checked, and Penny gave a curt nod.

‘You and Jed …’ The lovely moist lamb was like burnt toast in Jasmine’s mouth and she swallowed it down with a long drink of water. ‘Are you two …?’ Her voice trailed off as Penny frowned.

‘What?’

She should just ask her really, Jasmine reasoned. It was her sister after all—any normal sisters would have this conversation.

Except they weren’t like normal sisters.

Still, Jasmine pushed on.

She simply had to know.

‘Is there anything between you and Jed?’

‘If you’re hoping for some gossip, you won’t get it from me. I don’t feed the grapevine,’ Penny said, mopping the last of her gravy from her plate. ‘So, what did you want to talk about?’

And really the answer didn’t matter.

She and Jed were over. If he had slept with Penny she just wanted to be as far away from them both as possible when the truth came out. ‘I’m thinking of taking the job in the fracture clinic.’

Penny looked up.

‘Why?’

‘Because …’ Jasmine shrugged ‘… it’s not working, is it?’

‘Actually, I thought it was,’ Penny said. ‘I was worried at first, thought you’d be rushing to my defence every five minutes or calling me out, but apart from that morning with the baby …’ She thought for a moment before she spoke. ‘Well, seeing you work, you’d have said the same to any doctor.’ She gave her sister a brief smile. ‘You don’t have to leave on my account. So long as you can keep your mouth shut.’

Her mum had made trifle—a vast mango one with piles of cream—and normally Jasmine would have dived into it, but she’d lost her appetite of late and Penny ate like a bird at the best of times. Louise took one spoonful and then changed her mind.

‘I must have eaten too fast,’ Louise said. ‘I’ve got terrible indigestion.’

‘I’ll put it back in the fridge,’ Jasmine said, clearing the table.

‘Take some home,’ her mum suggested. ‘I don’t fancy it.’ She smiled to Simon, who was the only one tucking in. ‘He can have some for breakfast.’

‘Jasmine.’ Penny caught her as she was heading out of the front door. ‘Look, I know I kicked up when I found out you were going to be working in Emergency.’ Penny actually went a bit pink. ‘I think that I went a bit far. I just didn’t think we could keep things separate, but things seem to be working out fine.’

‘What if you get the consultant’s position?’ Jasmine checked. ‘Wouldn’t that just make things more difficult?’

‘Maybe,’ Penny said. ‘But I don’t think it’s fair that you have to change your career just because of me. You’re good at what you do.’

It was the closest she had ever come to a compliment from her sister.

‘Look,’ Penny said, ‘I do want to talk to you if that’s okay—not here … not yet.’ She closed her eyes. ‘It’s …’ She blew out a breath. ‘Look, you know how I bang on about work and keeping things separate? Well, maybe I’ve being a bit of a hypocrite.’

‘Are you seeing someone?’

‘It’s a bit more complicated than that.’ Penny shook her head. ‘Let me just get the interview over with. I mustn’t lose focus now.’ She let out a wry laugh. ‘Who knows, I might not even get the job and then there won’t be a problem.’

‘Sorry?’ Jasmine didn’t get it. ‘I thought you were desperate to be a consultant.’

‘Yes, well, maybe someone else might want the role more than I do,’ Penny said. ‘Forget I said anything. We’ll catch up soon.’

And as Jasmine lay in bed that night, she was quite sure she knew what the problem was.

Penny was worried that if she got the position it might hurt Jed.

For the first time in a long time Penny was actually putting another person before herself. She actually cared about another person.

The same person her younger sister had been sleeping with.

Monday morning was busy—it always was, with patients left over from a busy weekend still waiting for beds to clear on the ward, and all the patients who had left things till the weekend had passed seemed to arrive on Emergency’s doorstep all the worse for the wait. Jed didn’t arrive in the department till eleven and was wearing a suit that was, for once, not crumpled. He was very clean-shaven and she knew he wasn’t making any effort on her behalf, especially when Penny came back from a meeting in Admin and her always immaculately turned-out sister was looking just that touch more so.

Clearly it was interview day.

She had to leave.

It really was a no-brainer—she could hardly even bear to look at Penny. She made the mistake of telling Vanessa on their coffee break that she was going to apply for the fracture clinic job.

‘You’d be bored senseless in the fracture clinic.’ Vanessa laughed as they shifted trolleys to try to make space for a new patient that was being brought over. Unfortunately, though, Vanessa said it at a time when Lisa and Jed were moving a two-year-old who had had a febrile convulsion from a cubicle into Resus.

‘I’d be glad of the peace,’ Jasmine said, and she would be, she told herself, because she couldn’t go on like this. It wasn’t about the workload, more about having to face Jed and Penny every day and waiting for the bomb to drop when he found out that she and Penny were sisters.

She could not face her sister if she ever found out that she and Jed had been together, even if it had been over for ages.

But then she looked over and saw that Lisa and Jed were there and, more, that they must have heard her talking about the fracture clinic job.