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Why did women always demand a reason for why things had come to an end?
Why did they always want to know where they had gone wrong or how they could change, or what had happened to suddenly change his mind?
Nothing had changed Jack’s mind.
He simply didn’t get involved and there was no such thing to Jack as long term.
And so, as he entered the meeting room, Jack readied himself for his second round of feminine emotion that morning. Nina had already arrived and was taking off her scarf and unbuttoning her coat. There were still a couple of flakes of snow in her hair and as she glanced over and saw him enter the room Jack watched her lips close tightly as she realised perhaps that Eleanor had brought in the big gun.
‘Morning, Nina,’ he greeted her, and flashed a smile just to annoy her.
‘Jack.’ Nina threw a saccharine smile in his direction and then turned her back and took off her coat.
Damn.
Nina didn’t say it, of course, she just undid the belt and buttons and shrugged off her coat, but despite her together appearance she was incredibly unsettled and not just because Jack was Head of Paediatrics.
They clashed often.
Jack, always cool and detached, often brought her to the verge of tears, not that she ever let him see that. Just a couple of months ago she had been part of the team that had worked hard with a family struggling with a small baby who had been brought in to the emergency department. Jack had been reserved in his judgement that Baby Tanner should be discharged home to the care of the mother, but her team had fought hard to ensure that it happened. But just two weeks ago she had been called to the emergency department to find out that Baby Tanner had been brought in again, unconscious, a victim of shaken-baby syndrome.
Jack had said not one word to her as she had stepped into the cubicle.
His look had said everything, though—I told you so. Nina could still see his cool grey eyes harden as they had met hers, and she still carried the guilt.
But it wasn’t just that that had Nina unsettled this morning.
Jack Carter was more than good looking and, of course, that didn’t go unnoticed. He was known for his playboy ways and his charmed, privileged life, and the acquired arrogance that came with it irked Nina.
But, no, it wasn’t just that either.
What really got to Nina was that he got to her.
He was arrogant, chauvinistic, dismissive—in fact, Jack Carter was everything Nina didn’t like in a man, and, no, logically she didn’t fancy him in the least—it was just that her body said otherwise.
It noticed him.
It reacted to him.
And Nina didn’t like it one bit.
She could feel his eyes lazily watching her as she took off her coat, was incredibly aware of him as she hung up the garment and headed to the table to commence the meeting. She almost anticipated the slight inappropriateness that would undoubtedly come from his smirking lips.
He didn’t disappoint her. ‘Nice to see someone at the meeting with their clothes on,’ Jack said as she made her way over, because everyone apart from Nina and Jack was wearing scrubs. Everyone present laughed a little at his off-the-cuff remark.
Everyone, Jack noted, but Nina.
Then again, he’d never really seen her smile, at least not at him. She was always so serious, so intense and the only time her face relaxed and lit up with a smile was when she was engaging with her clients.
This morning she had on a grey pinafore dress with a red jumper beneath, but this was no school uniform! The red stockings and black boots that she wore took care of that. Nina’s dark blonde hair was pinned up and her cheeks were red from coming into the warmth of the hospital from a very cold January morning.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ Nina said, taking a seat at the table opposite him. Just as Jack found himself wondering if the workaholic Nina had actually overslept, she corrected his thought process. ‘I got called to go out on an urgent response.’
And, rather inconveniently for Jack, he wondered if there was a Mr Wilson who got annoyed at having Nina peeled from his bed at the crack of dawn by the emergency response team, or even a Ms Wilson, who bemoaned her partner leaving her side. Jack realised then that not once had Nina so much as flirted with him. Not once had she turned those cobalt-blue eyes to his in an attempt to bewitch him, which might sound arrogant, but flirting was par for the course when your name was Jack Carter.
Just never with Nina.
‘Right.’ Nina glanced around the table. Every person present felt like the enemy in this meeting and so she didn’t bother to smile. ‘Shall we get started, then?’
Nina really wasn’t looking forward to this morning.
Normally she would have spent a lot of the weekend poring over the medical notes and histories, but she had been working at the pro bono centre as well as moving into her new three-bedroomed apartment. She’d hoped to get into work very early this morning and go over the notes again, but instead, at four a.m., just as her alarm clock had gone off, so too had her phone, and now Nina felt less than prepared.
Which was very unlike her.
Certainly, it didn’t sit well with her. In a few short weeks her own family would be under the spotlight of a case conference and she wanted her sister and brother’s case worker to be as passionate and as informed as she usually was. Still, even if Nina hadn’t prepared as meticulously as usual, she was still well informed and, given Sienna was only two weeks old, most of the details of the case were fresh in her mind.
She knew that most of the medical staff were opposed to Sienna being discharged home to the parents. Their concerns had been well voiced and they were repeated again now.
First she heard from Brad Davis, head of the prenatal unit. Brad had seen Hannah for her very brief prenatal care and had also delivered Sienna, but thankfully he was very matter-of-fact in his summing up.
‘Hannah presented to us at thirty-four weeks gestation,’ Brad explained. ‘She had recently resumed her relationship with Sienna’s father, Andy. He was seemingly the one who insisted that Hannah attend Angel’s. Andy was concerned about Hannah’s drug habit and the effect it would have on their unborn child—Hannah’s only concern was feeding her habit.’
‘At that time,’ Nina responded, and Brad nodded. ‘She complied with the methadone programme?’ Nina asked, and again Brad nodded, and so on they went.
Nina heard from the midwives and nursing staff and also the addiction counsellors who had been in regular contact with Hannah.
Eleanor Aston, though, was particularly difficult. Always a huge advocate for her patients, Eleanor was perhaps the most insistent that Sienna be removed from her mother’s care.
‘I looked after her son last year.’ Eleanor’s voice shook with emotion. ‘And I can remember—’
‘We’re not discussing Sienna’s half-brother this morning,’ Nina interrupted. She knew that it was terribly difficult to separate the two cases, especially as Eleanor had dealt with Hannah at her very worst and had looked after what had indeed been a very sick little baby boy with a very cold and unfeeling mother, but this was a crucial part of Nina’s job and one that made her less than popular at times with the medical staff.
‘The difference this time around is that Hannah is doing her best to get straight and she is also in a very different relationship with this baby’s father. As soon as Andy found out that Hannah was pregnant he brought her straight to Angel’s and has been rigorously making sure that she keeps up with the programme, and Hannah herself has made a huge effort—’
‘When?’ They were half an hour into the meeting and it was the