Outback Doctors/Outback Engagement/Outback Marriage/Outback Encounter Page 10

  Romance!

  She chuckled to herself as she left his room. Must have been talking to Dani made her think that way.

  ‘I’m glad you’ve found something to laugh about!’

  The voice startled her and she spun around to find Tom about six inches behind her.

  ‘Do you realise what that car accident means? It means those women won’t leave town. They’ll have to hang around at least until Grace gets her permanent cast on. Unless…’

  He looked hopefully at Anna. ‘Unless you could find something seriously wrong with her and send her over to Rocky.’

  ‘Causing further disruption in her life? This is a woman you once loved enough to ask her to marry you,’ Anna reminded him, and though he protested about it not quite happening that way, she ignored him and continued, ‘And now you want to send her off to a place where she probably knows no one.’

  ‘It’s closer to Brisbane where her family live,’ Tom pointed out, his blue eyes fixed on Anna’s face as if by their force alone he could persuade her to agree with him.

  ‘I thought of that earlier and looked at it on a map,’ Anna told him. ‘It would be a seven-hour drive from Brisbane to Rockhampton. Hardly what you’d call handy visiting range.’

  She stepped aside, meaning to walk past him, but he raised his hand and rested it lightly on her shoulder. The touch, casual though it was, froze her, and she looked questioningly into his eyes.

  But there was no answer there, and in the end he shrugged and lifted his hand away, but to Anna it seemed as if a thousand unspoken messages had been transmitted between them in that brief instant.

  And she didn’t understand any of them!

  Tom walked away, and she continued on her final round of the day, winding up in the two-bed room shared by Grace and Carrie.

  ‘You could have gone home—well, back to the motel where you’ve been staying,’ she said to Carrie.

  ‘And leave Grace here on her own? No way! According to the nurses, if she doesn’t show any signs of concussion or brain damage during the night, you’ll let her out tomorrow, so we’ll both go then. In the meantime, I’m working up a nice little article on medical services in the country. Down in the city, we keep hearing about how bad things are out here—tales that doctors won’t work here, and how people have to travel hundreds of kilometres to see specialists. But, believe me, Anna, we wouldn’t have got this kind of treatment if we’d had our accident in the city.’

  ‘But Grace could have had a scan,’ Anna said.

  ‘Maybe—after lying around in A and E for up to four hours. Here we were checked and X-rayed and patched up in no time at all. The hospital is lovely, the staff are wonderful and the food, what we’ve had of it so far, is terrific.’

  Anna was warmed by the praise, though she noticed Grace wasn’t equally enthusiastic about country medical services. Or was it simply the doctor providing them that made her scowl?

  But ignoring Grace’s scowl was easy as Anna accepted Carrie’s praise. She might only have been in charge a few days, but already Anna felt a proprietorial interest in the place. She chatted to the two women for a while—it was mostly Carrie who did the talking—all the time aware of the minefield of deception through which she walked, but they didn’t prod or probe into her relationship with Tom, and by the time she wished them both goodnight, she was feeling well disposed towards both of them.

  It was a strange alliance, she thought as she made her way back to the house. The two of them had been brought together by a shared interest in Tom’s love life, yet Anna sensed they’d moved beyond alliance to friendship.

  The thought of friendship brought a fleeting pang of envy, but she assured herself she’d soon make friends herself. After all, she hadn’t been in town a week yet. There was plenty of time.

  But no assurance could banish the thought that there was only one friend she really wanted in this town. And he was the only one she couldn’t have.

  By the beginning of the following week, Anna had forgotten she’d ever longed to make a friend. Though invitation after invitation had been pressed on her by people she’d met as she’d moved between the hospital and surgery, she was reasonably sure she’d never find time to exchange more than two words, unrelated to work, with the general population of townsfolk, let alone have a social life.

  Grace, now sporting a beautiful blue fibreglass cast, and Carrie were once again staying at the motel, though Grace had spent two nights in hospital and had constantly demanded the attendance of her ex-fiancé so Anna had seen more of Tom than she’d wanted.

  But although those two had now departed, other people soon took the beds, and the constant flow of admissions and releases kept staff busier than having the same number of long-stay patients. Fortunately, Anna was getting into the rhythm of the coming and going, and adapting to the constant change in her patient population in the hospital, when chickenpox broke out.

  Starting at the primary school, it soon swept through the town, keeping both her and Peter busy in the surgery, while two badly affected children had to be admitted to hospital.

  ‘It’s impossible, telling the poor things not to scratch,’ she said to Jillian who was on night duty on Friday evening when Anna did her late round. ‘Bicarbonate of soda baths and soothing lotions will only do so much.’

  Jillian was using mouthwash on a cotton bud to soothe the sores in tiny Ginny Parr’s mouth, while Maria, the little one’s mother, sat helplessly by the bedside.

  ‘At least the sores are crusting now, so it won’t be long before she’s over the worst,’ Anna told her, though looking at the child, so badly affected there was barely a spot the size of a pinhead between her lesions, it didn’t seem likely she’d be better any time soon.

  Maria, however, found comfort in this. She nodded her head, then said, ‘And to think Ryan, who brought it home to all the kids in the first place, only had two spots!’

  They talked for a while about the unpredictability of infection, then Anna made her way out of the hospital and across the yard to her home.

  Home! Funny how it already feels that way, she thought, though in reality it was so far removed—in physical difference even more than distance—from the home she’d known it may as well have been on the moon.

  A message on her answering-machine told her Philip had rung, but as it had been to tell her he was flying to South America for a polo game, she didn’t bother trying to contact him on any of the numbers she had for him.

  Philip. She conjured up an image of him in her head. He was about the same height as she was, and slight, though with a wiry strength, particularly in his arms and legs, from all the riding and polo playing he had done. She could see him in his polo clothes, and also dressed for work in a beautifully cut three-piece suit. Business clothes suited his elegant figure and the polished sheen of his blond hair.

  She tried to see him looking casual—to fit him into a faded blue or checked cotton shirt like most of the locals wore—but it didn’t work, and neither did comparisons of classically dressed and professionally coiffed Philip and the thrown-together appearance of Tom.

  The two men were so different they might have been from separate species.

  The phone rang again and, certain it would be a summons to return to the hospital, she lifted the receiver before the answering-machine came on.

  ‘Hi, it’s Tom.’

  Ah!

  ‘Over here we usually say hello.’

  Ah again.

  ‘You are there, I presume. Are you trying to remember who I am? Big chap. Vet. Little sister called Penny. Actually, it’s Penny I’m calling about. She’s all over spots and now she tells me there’s chickenpox raging through the school. Do we treat chickenpox or let it run its course?’

  Damn!

  ‘I’d better take a look at her.’ Anna found her voice, and professionalism overcame her reluctance to see the man who was troubling her thoughts. ‘Don’t bring her out in the cool night air, I’ll come to you. I’m on
call, but I can put any calls through to my mobile.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  The click told her he’d hung up. Perhaps he wasn’t any more eager to talk to her than she was to talk to him.

  She drove the roundabout route to Tom’s place, thinking she really should find time to explore her surroundings—she could probably have walked across more quickly—and pulled up behind a vaguely familiar car.

  Tom came out of the shadows on the veranda, sprang down to the ground and walked swiftly towards her. He stopped an arm’s length away, then reached out and drew her close.

  ‘What I didn’t tell you is that I have more house guests. Only one more in total as Jim moved out as soon as the invasion happened, but Grace and Carrie are staying here. Just until Monday when they’re both flying back to Brisbane. It seems the motel had a long-held booking for their rooms and there was no other accommodation available in town.’

  Anna realised he was holding her like this while he explained to give the impression of a lovers’ greeting, but the proximity was disturbing—no, more than disturbing, it was positively volcanic.

  And while she knew she should make some lighthearted remark about his inability to say no, her reaction to his touch had stopped her mouth working.

  Damn, she thought again, then Tom bent his head and kissed her.

  She knew it was for show—an act for unseen watchers either on the veranda or inside the house—but her heart didn’t understand and skittered into idiocy, while the palpitations from it froze her lungs, making the simple act of drawing breath impossible.

  ‘I—I’d better take a look at Penny,’ she eventually managed to stutter, and Tom, apparently more able than her to cope with pretend kisses, simple nodded his agreement, and with his arm slung casually across her shoulders guided her inside.

  ‘Oh, you poor thing!’

  The sight of Penny’s spotted face brought her back down to earth with a thud, though as yet the attack looked like a mild one.

  ‘I don’t feel sick,’ Penny told her cheerfully. ‘And I know what it is because half the school’s got it. It’s just Tom fussing, making you come around.’

  She grinned at Anna. ‘And he might have wanted an excuse to get away from his other visitors as well,’ she whispered, as Anna came closer and bent to lift Penny’s wrist and feel her skin for heat.

  Anna checked her out and confirmed Penny’s guess that she wasn’t too bad, then agreed she’d better stay off school until the spots were gone.

  ‘It’s a pity, actually, as I was enjoying it.’ Penny’s youthful candour made Anna smile. ‘I mean, I don’t really belong in the class so no one expects me to do any work, and I’ve made some fabulous friends.’

  Again the issue of friendship raised its head, and again Anna was aware of the emptiness inside her where friends should be. Or a friend, at least.

  ‘Want to see the colt?’

  Tom’s head poked around the doorway in a manner that was almost familiar.

  ‘I thought you said Jim had moved on,’ Anna reminded him, mainly because, though she really did want to see the colt, she wasn’t sure seeing it with Tom was such a good idea.

  ‘He has.’ Tom smiled at her then winked at Penny. ‘Couldn’t stand all the women round the place. But he’s still in town—found a friend at the pub and shifted in with him until Felicity and Frank are ready to travel.’

  ‘Frank? He called that beautiful animal Frank?’ Disbelief made Anna forget about friends—though they were becoming a recurring theme—and good or bad ideas.

  ‘I called him Frank,’ Penny said with immense dignity. ‘And if you think about it, it’s a great name. It’s Jim’s father’s name for a start, and it also means open and honest and Jim says that’s what draught horses are—honest toilers.’

  Anna offered a suitably chastened apology then, with a little more urging from Penny, agreed to go and see the colt.

  ‘I’ll come back to check on you some time tomorrow,’ she told her patient, then she joined Tom in the doorway.

  For a moment she hesitated, held back by a reluctance that was almost fearful in its intensity, but then the familiar gesture, a touch of his hand on her shoulder, and she went as docilely as a child.

  Or a lamb to the slaughter! the reluctant bit suggested.

  But the colt was truly beautiful, standing straight and tall beside his mother.

  ‘He looks as if he’s doubled his size,’ Anna said, amazed to see the difference in so short a time.

  ‘He probably has—Jim could tell you. I swear he measures him three times a day.’

  Anna reached out over the half-door of the stall and ran her hand over the still rough coat of the foal.

  ‘He’s beautiful!’ she murmured, and turned, right into Tom’s arms.

  ‘So are you,’ he said, shaking his head as if he couldn’t quite take in what was happening.

  Which made two of them, but Anna didn’t turn away. In fact, as he lowered his head, aiming his lips unmistakably towards hers, she shifted so she could meet him halfway.

  And this time there was no margin of pretence. This time it was a kiss between two adults who were finally giving in to an attraction that had sizzled between them from their first meeting.

  Anna felt heat rising in her body, felt more heat as Tom’s hands seem to weld themselves to her shoulders. Her knees shook as tremors of desire swept over her, but nothing could make her shift her lips from Tom’s or from the sweet fulfilment and even sweeter promise of that kiss.

  Eventually the need to breathe broke them apart, but Tom wouldn’t let her escape, cradling her in his strong arms, pressing her body against his so she could feel her flesh learning the shape and texture of his as if it needed the pattern of it to be imprinted on its cells.

  ‘This can’t happen,’ she said at last. ‘It won’t work. I’m engaged to Philip and…’

  She hesitated as all the threads linking her to Philip and to her future with him took a stranglehold on her, coiling around her neck and shoulders, weighing as heavily as the harness and yoke of an ox.

  ‘I was engaged to Grace once. Engagements can be broken,’ Tom said, but even before he heard his own words he felt an overwhelming sadness. He remembered how he’d felt when Grace had broken off their engagement, how betrayed and devastated that a woman he’d thought he loved could let him down in such a way.

  Did he really want to become involved with a woman who would break such a commitment—not to him but to some other poor bloke?

  He was still considering this when Anna spoke.

  ‘Not this engagement,’ she said quietly, looking up into his eyes. ‘It’s too complicated, Tom. I owe him so much, and on top of that there are other people to consider. My father, my cousin, even my best friend work for Philip, my parents live in a house on his estate. We’re not married yet, but our lives are inextricably linked. They have been for years.’

  She backed out of the circle of Tom’s arms and walked away, head bowed so the three-quarter moon shone on her blonde hair, turning it to a shimmering silver.

  He watched her go, his mind processing the information she’d just given him, adding more snippets of knowledge he’d gleaned from Penny’s chatter. But while he understood the concepts that tied her to her fiancé—duty, obligation, family—and applauded them, there was one glaring omission from the explanation.

  She hadn’t mentioned love…

  Anna was almost at the car when the tinkling melody of her mobile stopped her.

  Hopefully it was just the hospital wanting her back there, because she wasn’t sure she was emotionally capable of dealing with too huge a crisis. Not while her reactions to Tom Fleming were turning her inside out…

  ‘My husband’s caught his hand in the grain auger and it’s almost off. I can’t get the ambulance, can you come?’

  While part of Anna’s mind wondered what a grain auger was, the other part concentrated on more practical matters. Emotional confusion was forgotten as training
and professionalism concentrated her mind on the man who needed her help.

  ‘Who is it calling, and where do you live?’ she asked, heading for her car and a pen to write down the information.

  ‘It’s Mavis Cullen and we’re out at the Sixteen Mile. Have you been out here? You take the Three Gorges Road, the property’s called Havemore. The turn-off’s about twenty kilometres along on the left, then you follow the dirt road to the State Forest sign and turn right across the grid just past it.’

  ‘Havemore, Three Gorges Road, twenty k’s,’ Anna repeated, hoping she’d remember the directions without writing them down, because right now the patient’s condition was of prime importance.

  ‘Where’s your husband now?’

  ‘He’s in the shed. I didn’t know how to get his hand out. I put a blanket round him and packed ice around his hand. You might have to cut it off.’

  Her voice faltered as she added this desperate possibility, and Anna felt her stomach somersault as she considered such an amputation. Tom had crossed to stand beside her and must have heard the conversation for he rested his hand on her shoulder as if to offer his physical support.

  ‘Do you have a Royal Flying Doctor Service emergency kit?’ Anna asked, thinking of the morphine that was part of the supplies.

  ‘No, we’ve not been here very long, and Kevin thought we were too close to town to qualify.’

  She sounded as if not having one was a problem, and Anna hastened to reassure her.

  ‘That’s OK. You could give him a drink—not alcohol, but something warm and sweet,’ Anna said. ‘I’m on my way but I’ll have my mobile with me so phone me if you need me.’

  ‘Your mobile won’t work out there, but it’s the assurance that counts.’ Tom’s voice startled her out of terrifying thoughts of what might lie ahead. ‘Now, hop in and I’ll drive you out there. I know the way and know the road. That’ll save at least fifteen minutes. You can phone Penny…’ he rattled off his phone number ‘…and tell her what’s happening and that I’ll be home in a couple of hours.’