Angel Kate by Anna Ramsay Read Free Book Online

clear up. Great start!
    Her VIP patient lay propped up against a triangle of pillows, apparently naked apart from his bandages. The unmade bed was littered with official-looking forms which Mr Galvan was studying with total concentration, scrawling notes on a clipboard with his uninjured right hand.
    He didn't look in the least bit sorry. For himself, his behaviour—or anyone else, for that matter.
    So I'm invisible, am I? frowned Kate. This is all going SO wrong. She knew she ought to read him the riot act, but why stress herself. Far from being dismayed by the new Nurse Dragon, Mr Galvan wasn't giving her a second glance. He was completely absorbed in his papers.
    Well, she'd have to say something! Kate put her shoe back on and closed the bathroom door with a bit of a slam to demonstrate her annoyance. He didn't even glance her way.
    'Good morning, Mr Galvan,' she said sternly. 'Good morning,' came the automatic reply.
    This was polite enough, but he didn't look her way.
    Under cover of clearing up the mess he'd made, she watched him with darting glances which resolved into blatant stares. The facial cuts and grazes were still livid but looked to be healing cleanly. A sterile dressing protected the abdominal incision which was healing well, according to Sister Carter. But that rigid snowy plaster clearly hampered Tom Galvan's actions and irritated him. The left hand, noted Kate on automatic professional pilot, remained swollen.
    In spite of the plaster and bandages Tom Galvan's body looked as fit and tautly-muscled as when she had prepared him for surgery. And surely no one with a serious head injury could work with such concentration?
    But he'd no business lying in bed all day. Did he want to end up with a thrombosis? And what if Frank Davy should arrive for his morning's round and discover his patient in a chaotic unmade bed? It was high time this patient was up and in a chair. He should be encouraged to walk up and down the corridors for exercise. No one should be bothering him with paperwork at this stage of recovery.
    Kate piled the debris onto the breakfast tray and hurried back to the kitchen, in her haste almost colliding with the door. Whoops! Drat the eyewear. It would have to go before she broke  her nose walking into something. She stuffed her glasses in her pocket.
    She turned back into the corridor just in time—too late!—to see Professor Davy going into Mr Galvan's room, Sister Carter close behind, indicating with a flap of the hand that Nurse Wisdom should lend a hand with some of the other patients.
    It was over an hour before she got back to Room 27. Mr Galvan was still in bed working, but his papers had been stacked into several piles over locker and bed table and Sister had plumped his pillows and tidied the sheets.
    Kate regarded him with appreciation. The ruffled untidy dark hair looked as if a woman had just run her fingers through it. Rumpled white cotton sheets deepened the warm smooth olive tones of his skin, the glossy tangle of hair curling over and around the sterile dressing emphasising his tantalising masculinity.
    No getting away from it, Tom Galvan was a disturbingly attractive hunk of man.
    She gave a sudden start of alarm as she realised she'd been caught momentarily off her guard. Those lowered eyelids had deceived her, concealing the direction of Tom Galvan's gaze. He was watching her watching him. Watching her with an amused look in his eye as he scrutinised Judy Carter's latest offering: the bright spark who'd entertained him earlier with her impromptu breakfast cabaret.
    Kate blushed like a teenager. Helplessly she felt the beat of colour transform her smooth pale cheeks.
    Tom's practised eyes worked upward from the elegant ankles. Shame they didn't wear black stockings on Maynard. Her hospital badge told him this was a home-grown St Crispin's staff nurse. Bit of a streak of lightning, she was, and so shapeless it was hard to tell if she was coming or going.
    Hah! She'd taken off