‘I don’t care about my car.’ He took her hand in his. ‘Jenny, do you remember what happened?’

She didn’t appear to be suffering from memory loss but she’d been knocked out and he wanted to check.

‘I remember.’ She closed her eyes and then they fluttered open again. ‘How did you know where to find me?’

He gave a wan smile. ‘Lucky guess. What happened? Why did you crash?’

Her eyes slid away from his. ‘I don’t know. I suppose I wasn’t concentrating.’

His grip tightened on her hand. ‘All right. Don’t worry about that now. The only thing that matters is that you’re both OK.’

And, thank God, they seemed to be.

He just wanted to get her to the unit so that he could check that she hadn’t done any damage to her cervical spine.

‘Alex—’ her voice was a croak ‘—did you get my letter?’

His jaw clenched. ‘Yes.’

‘She isn’t yours.’ Her eyes filled. ‘I really believed she was. I’m so sorry for everything I said.’

His body tensed and he fought the impulse to drag her roughly into his arms and kiss her senseless. He didn’t want to risk making her injuries worse and anyway they had a paramedic sitting in the back with them.

‘We can’t talk about this now,’ he said gruffly, squeezing her hand to reassure her. ‘Wait till we’ve sorted you out then we’ve got all the time in the world to talk.’

‘But—’

‘Later,’ he said, glancing impatiently out of the window. ‘Where the hell are we?’

‘Nearly there,’ the paramedic said quietly, and sure enough Alex recognised the entrance to the hospital.

He just wanted to arrive so that he could give Jenny and Daisy a thorough check-up.

And then they had some serious talking to do.

* * *

Jenny lay in the bed with Daisy in a cot next to her.

‘Do I really have to stay in overnight?’ she asked the nurse, who was checking her blood pressure yet again.

‘You had a nasty bump on the head,’ the nurse reminded her, recording the results with a satisfied nod. ‘Fortunately everything seems to be all right but Alex will hang us out to dry if we let you move a muscle before he says so.’

Jenny gave a weak smile. ‘He’s a bully.’

‘That’s me.’ His dark drawl came from the doorway and he took the chart from the nurse and glanced at the monitors. ‘How are you feeling?’

Jenny pulled a face. ‘Headache, but apart from that—fine.’

‘Have you been sick?’

She shook her head. ‘I’m all right. Really.’

‘Well, we’re keeping you in to be on the safe side.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘What with you and Libby, we can virtually fill a ward with our family.’

Our family.

The words caused a pain so intense that she closed her eyes. They reminded her of just how desperately she’d wanted to be just that.

A family.

With Alex.

Somehow she’d got used to living with him. Even though she’d always known that there could never be anything permanent between them, she’d played the role so convincingly for Daisy’s sake that now she was finding it hard to let go of the dream.