A Special Kind of Woman

Caroline Anderson
has the mind of a butterfl y. She’s been a nurse, a secretary, a teacher, run her own soft-furnishing business and now she’s settled on writing. She says, ‘I was looking for that elusive something. I fi nally realised it was variety and now I have it in abundance. Every book brings new horizons and new friends, and in between books I have learned to be a juggler. My teacher husband John and I have two beautiful and talented daughters, Sarah and Hannah, umpteen pets and several acres of Suffolk that nature tries to reclaim every time we turn our backs!’ Caroline writes for the Mills & Boon Romance and the Mills & Boon Medical™ series. Make sure you look out for her latest books!

‘T
HAT’S
it, there.’

Cait looked up at the grim and forbidding exterior of the halls of residence and her heart sank. Oh, lord. Her baby was going to be living here in this dismal grey pile, hemmed in by endless buildings and concrete and dirt and vice—

‘Look, Mum, there’s a parking place, by that Mercedes.’

So there was. What an unfortunate contrast. She zipped her modest old banger across the road into the space just ahead of another car, triggering a blast on the horn and wild gestures the meaning of which she could only guess at.

She resisted the urge to gesture back, and reversed neatly into place behind the Mercedes. ‘OK. I wonder if we’ve got enough money to feed the meter and keep it quiet for an hour or so?’

‘It won’t take that long,’ Milly said naïvely. ‘I’ve only got a few things.’

Cait glanced in the rear-view mirror at the teetering pile of essentials Milly had simply
had
to bring with her, and sighed. A few things? In her dreams.

She fed the meter—copiously—and then they had to
run the gauntlet of the security system to gain access to the entrance hall. Milly went up to the porter behind his desk in the porter’s lodge and smiled a little uncertainly. ‘Hi. I’m Emily Cooper. I’ve got a room here this year?’

‘Sure. Cooper—here it is. Here’s your swipe card, your room key, information about the phone system, rules of the hall…’

He handed over a sheaf of papers, rattled off some instructions and dropped the key in Milly’s outstretched hand. ‘Give me a shout if you need any help.’

‘Right, let’s go and have a look,’ Cait said. ‘We’ll bring in your things in a minute.’ She summoned up an encouraging smile, and Milly smiled back, her face a little tight and pale.

To be fair, it was probably pale because of all the wild partying and farewells that had been going on for the past few days, but Cait knew she was also apprehensive.

It was a huge step in her life, and one Cait had no personal experience of to fall back on in her encouragement. She couldn’t give her the ‘don’t do this and you’ll enjoy that and try the other’ sort of talk she might have been able to under other circumstances, because she’d never made it to university, despite her ambition to read Law. Instead she’d been struggling to raise Emily and keep a roof over their heads.

Not that she’d ever been as clever as her brilliant and multi-talented daughter. Still, she’d done her best for her, kept her nose to the grindstone and been there for her for the last eighteen years.

And now it was time to let go.

Oh, help.

‘It looks quite decent,’ Milly said slowly, as if she was trying to convince herself. ‘At least the paint’s new.’

On old and crumbling walls, Cait thought with a
return of her maternal panic. Oh, yipes. She dredged up a smile. ‘Here’s your room! Look, it’s handy for the kitchen. That’ll be nice.’

‘Not when everyone’s making tea in the middle of the night,’ Milly said pragmatically and shoved her key in the lock.

The door swung open to reveal a fairly small and barren room. Although like the corridor outside it had been recently decorated, still it seemed bare and forbidding, and Cait’s heart sank. There was a bed, a chair, a battered old desk with some wonky shelves over it, a wardrobe in the corner and that was it. Home from home it was not, even though their home was far from luxurious. Poor baby.

‘Well, at least it’s clean, and the carpet’s new, by the look of it,’ she said with false cheer. ‘What’s the bed like?’

Milly bounced experimentally. ‘OK. Bit soft.’ She stood up and looked out of the window into an inner courtyard, and her face fell. What a dismal view, Cait thought. The bins. Oh, lord.

‘At least you won’t have the traffic noise from the street,’ she said bracingly, and Milly made a small noise that might have been agreement. ‘Come on, let’s get your things and you can unpack and put everything out on the shelves. It’ll look a lot better then.’

Milly made the same noncommittal noise, and with an inward sigh Cait followed her back out to the car. They brought in the cases first, bumping and banging on their legs and the walls of the corridor, and as they struggled up the stairs to the second floor, they had to pause to let two people pass.

The man went first, tall and rugged, flashing her a brief, impersonal smile of thanks that for some reason made her heart beat faster, then a young man Cait thought was probably his son paused beside Emily.

‘Hey—Milly, isn’t it?’ he said, and Milly flipped her hair out of her eyes.

‘Hi, Josh!’ she exclaimed, and smiled up at him with every appearance of delight. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Same as you, I guess.’ He lounged against the stairwell wall and grinned. ‘So, did you make it to medicine?’

‘Yes—did you?’

‘Yeah—hey, that’s really cool!’ His grin widened, and Milly’s smile lit up her face.

She’s really beautiful, Cait thought with a lump in her throat. Oh, heck. Will she be all right?

‘Josh?’

The voice echoed back up the corridor, and he pulled a face. ‘Coming!’ he called, and flashed her another grin. ‘I’ll see you around, Milly.’ He bounded down the stairs two at a time and disappeared round the corner.

Cait watched him go, tall and gangly but with a cheerful friendliness about him that lightened her spirits. ‘So who was that?’ she asked Milly casually.

‘Oh, his name’s Josh something—can’t remember. He was at one of the other schools in town—I’ve seen him around. He went out with Jo for a bit. I met him on a conference in Cambridge as well, but I haven’t seen him for ages.’

‘Well, it’s someone you know, anyway,’ Cait said, relieved as much for herself as for her daughter. ‘It’s always nice to see a familiar face, and he seemed pleased to see you. Come on, let’s get these bags in.’

The bags were the easy bit. The boxes were much more of a challenge, and Cait was wondering how on earth she was going to get up the stairs with the last one, a hugely awkward lump that seemed determined to defeat her, when she felt the weight taken out of her hands.

‘Here, let me,’ a soft, deep voice murmured.

‘Thanks.’ She stepped back and smiled, then their eyes met and her heart hiccuped behind her ribs. ‘Oh—you’re Josh’s father,’ she said inanely.

‘That’s right. Owen Douglas.’

‘I’m Milly’s mother—Cait Cooper.’

‘Her
mother?
Good heavens. I thought you were her sister or aunt or something.’

Flattery? If it weren’t for the wedding ring on his hand and the fact that
he
was helping
her
, not the other way round, she would have thought he wanted something. Under the circumstances she gave him the benefit of the doubt and blamed it on the poor lighting.

‘Hardly,’ she said, studying him and thinking what a terrible shame it was that he was married. Not that he’d be interested in her. No man worth having ever was. Oh, well.

He flashed her a rueful smile over the top of the box that nearly melted the soles of her shoes. ‘I’d shake your hand but I seem to be holding something just a tad heavy at the moment.’

‘Oh, my goodness, I’m sorry!’ She leapt to attention. ‘Can you manage it?’

‘I think I’ll just about cope,’ he said drily. ‘You’ll have to show me the way, though.’

‘Of course—she’s on the second floor,’ she told him over her shoulder, heading up the stairs at a fast clip. ‘Josh must be on the floor above.’

‘He is. I think he’s giving Milly a tour at the moment. We’ve finished, at last. I can’t believe he thinks he needs this much.’

Cait laughed. ‘We’re not the only ones, then? I’m sure most of what you’re struggling with is non-essential.’

‘Nothing’s essential,’ he said drily. ‘Not by the time you’ve lugged it up three flights of stairs.’

He lowered the box to the last square inch of space on Milly’s floor, and straightened with a smile, holding out his hand. He must be fit, she thought. He isn’t even breathing hard.

‘It’s good to meet you, Cait,’ he said, and belatedly she reached out her hand and felt it totally engulfed in a warm, hard grip that robbed her of her senses. She mumbled something about small worlds, and he laughed.

‘Not really. There aren’t that many medical schools—you’re almost bound to meet someone you know.’

‘Well, I’m very glad we met you! Quite apart from you lugging that huge box upstairs for me, it’s comforting to know she’s not totally alone in this big, bad city.’

He shot her an understanding smile. His eyes crinkled and seemed to glow with warmth from their amber depths, and she felt herself melting again. She could still feel the imprint of his hand on hers, and something deep in her heart that had been in hibernation for ever seemed to flicker into life.

How long they stood there staring at each other she didn’t know, but Milly and Josh erupted into the room and broke the spell, and a girl opposite came out and introduced herself, and suddenly Cait felt redundant.

‘Time to make a move,’ Owen murmured, and she nodded distractedly.

‘Come on, Josh, come and see me off,’ he said, and his son’s face seemed to falter.

‘Oh. Right. See you, Milly.’

Milly nodded, and the girl from the next room looked from her to Cait and said she’d see Milly later, and went out, leaving them alone.

‘Want me to help you unpack?’ Cait asked, not knowing whether to prolong the agony or get the heck out of it before she made a fool of herself.

‘I can manage,’ Milly said. ‘It’ll give me something to do until teatime.’

‘Now, the phone in here should be working for me to ring in, they said, so I’ll call you when I’m home, and you’ve got your mobile if you need me—’

‘It’s OK, Mum. I’ll be fine.’ She hugged Cait, and Cait wrapped her arms around her and thought how slight Milly felt, how small and slender and fragile and much too little to be here, doing this all on her own.

‘Right, I’ll be off before I get a parking ticket,’ she said brightly, and kissed Milly on the cheek. ‘Remember, I’m there if you need me. Love you.’

She hugged her daughter again, a brief, hard hug, and then turned and made her way sightlessly through the corridors and out into the street. The Mercedes was gone, so she backed into the space, pulled out into the street and made her way out into the hum of the London traffic.

I won’t cry, she told herself firmly, and then again out loud, ‘I won’t cry! She’s doing what she wants to do. She’s happy! She’s made it. There’s nothing to cry about.’

But there was, of course, because her baby had grown up and flown the nest, and now Cait would be all alone.

‘You’ll be able to do what you’ve always wanted to do. You’ve enrolled for that course in Law, and you can read books and go to films and museums and art galleries, and do all the things you’ve never had time for.’

Intellectual things. Not family things. She’d be clever and better educated, but she’d be
lonely
.

She sniffed hard and scrubbed her cheeks on the back of her hand, then had to dig about in her pocket for a tissue. She wandered into the next lane and got a blast on a horn for her pains, and after that she turned on the radio and sang to it, very loudly and utterly off key, all the way out of London onto the A12.

Then finally her bravado fizzled out, and she turned off at a roadside restaurant, folded her arms on the steering wheel and laid her head down and howled.

‘Idiot,’ she told herself disparagingly a few minutes later. ‘You must look a total fright.’

She lifted her head, blew her nose vigorously and glared at herself in the rear-view mirror. Red-rimmed, bloodshot eyes glared back at her, and she sighed unsteadily. ‘Coffee,’ she said, and opened the car door, to find Owen Douglas standing there, immaculately clad legs crossed at the ankle, propping up a familiar Mercedes estate.

‘You OK?’ he said softly, and she closed her eyes in despair. Of all the times to bump into someone you didn’t know well enough to howl on.

‘I’ll live,’ she muttered, and forced herself to meet his eyes. They were gentle with understanding, and suddenly she was glad he was there because, know him or not, he was at least in the same boat.

‘You look like I feel,’ he said with a rueful smile. ‘How about a coffee?’

She nodded. ‘I was just going in. Have you only just arrived?’

He shook his head. ‘No, I was leaving. I’m in no hurry, though, and I’m sure I could force down another cup. You know what they say about misery loving company.’

Her laugh was a little strangled, and it ended on something suspiciously like a sob, but at least it was a laugh, and maybe she’d cried enough.

‘Coffee sounds good,’ she said, and for the first time in hours, she managed a genuine smile. ‘Thanks.’

‘My pleasure,’ he murmured, and his voice sent little fingers of anticipation shivering up and down her spine.

Don’t be a fool, he’s married, she told herself fiercely, but his eyes were smiling and her heart was clearly not listening at all…