Page 18 of Twin Surprise for the Italian Doc
CHAPTER FOUR
ITWASOFTENthe case that normal life could seem dull in the aftermath of an overseas holiday or a challenging adventure.
And Georgia Bennett had combined both of those into the few days of the Rally Rakovi international medical rescue competition. It had been the most extraordinary few days of her life and it was no surprise that she felt flat for a while after getting home.
But surely this heavy cloud of fatigue laced with waves of something that bordered on misery at frequent intervals should have worn off by now?
It had beenweeks...
Enough time for the glory of arriving home as a winner and impressing all her colleagues at the Edinburgh Emergency Response Centre to have worn off.
Enough time to have had evidence that she been right to assume she had been ina safe part of her cycle when she’d slept with Matteo. That, even if she’d gone further down that unwise path of hoping to get pregnant by someone she would never have to see again, a one-off encounter would have been a disappointing failure.
And it was a huge relief. Of course it was.
She wasn’t disappointed because she hadn’t expected anything different. She had, in fact, been waiting forher period to start with an acute anticipation of the relief that it would bring.
It would be a line being drawn under that very brief chapter in her life. It would make it so much easier to put it all behind her, neatly packaged in a memory box that could be labelled ‘The Rally’. Or, probably more accurately, ‘Matteo’.
Georgia would, at last, be able to embrace life and the job she was so passionateabout with all the enthusiasm and determination that was so much a part of who she was.
But there had been a note of, not disappointment, but sadness to be found amidst that wash of relief. She had taken a risk after all, and so there’d been that small chance that she could have conceived. Her brain might be telling her in no uncertain terms that it was a good thing she wasn’t but her body—andher heart—were whispering a reminder of how much she wanted to become a mother. That, if it had happened, it would have been a genuine accident so she could have avoided the guilt of knowing she had done something she knew would have been so wrong.
As a final kicker, it almost felt as if someone or something in the cosmos was mocking the fact that she had stepped back, however briefly, into thatfantasy planet of true love and happy-ever-afters. Of holding her own baby in her arms for the first time and feeling like her heart would burst from the joy of it.
She was putting a brave face on it, of course, and she was confident that nobody had guessed the internal struggle she was grappling with.
Certainly not her crew partner, Sean, whose face brightened with the priority call that wascoming through on their pagers.
‘Yes...a cardiac arrest. Finally—we get to save a life today. Come on, champ.’
It had been her new nickname on station ever since she had come back with the trophy that was now proudly on display in the staffroom. Every paramedic who worked here and even the doctors and other medical professionals she encountered during her working hours had wanted details aboutthe competition. A description of how it all worked, of what the scenarios had involved and about the level of skill other competitors had displayed.
She’d told them everything they’d wanted to know. Encouraged them to think about entering themselves for a ‘once in a lifetime’ experience. The one thing she never mentioned, however, was what had left the most lasting personal impression.
MatteoMartini.
Georgia followed Sean at a run, slamming the passenger door of the ambulance and reaching for her safety belt as the garage doors came up and Sean put his foot down on the accelerator, flicking on the lights and siren the moment they exited the station gates.
Thank goodness the interest in the competition had finally worn off. She’d spent far more time than was healthy reliving everymoment she had had with Matteo anyway. Every conversation, every glance, every touch. Being reminded of him every time she had talked about the rally to people who had no idea how much of an impact it had had on her had been a form of emotional torture.
It was still all bottled up inside her and she had no idea how to deal with it.
She couldn’t even tell Kate about it, which had always beenher go-to therapy for any emotional woes because Kate was more than a little starry-eyed about reconnecting with her friend from medical school and Luke was Matteo’s best friend and it was all...complicated. Just a bit of mess, really.
Thrown into her seatbelt as Sean braked behind a slow car that seemed unaware of the noise of the siren and flashing lights was a helpful distraction. The blasthe gave on the air horn to order the car to pull over and let them through the traffic was enough to tickle her adrenaline levels and she actually laughed as the ambulance swerved and even mounted the kerb briefly to get past the obstruction.
Sean sent a grin sideways.
Her favourite crew partner was enjoying this as much as she was. Relatively new to their station, Sean had become instantlypopular. Tall, good looking and with a very cute Irish accent, he was particularly popular with his female colleagues and a month or two ago Georgia might have been interested herself, despite having sworn off the search for a long-term relationship in the wake of that crushing break-up with Rick.
But not now.
She liked him. And she loved working with him but as far as anything more was concerned,she couldn’t summon even a flicker of interest.
Because he wasn’t Matteo Martini?
Yeah... The bar had been reset at an impossibly high level, hadn’t it? Which was a good thing, Georgia told herself, because she didn’t want to go there. She didn’t want to get lured back into a situation where the odds of it ending well, as in not ending at all, were sadly virtually non-existent in her experience.And she was at risk because she fell in love too easily.
