A Very Precious Gift Read online

  ‘I suppose you know all about this?’ Mrs Stubbings said, swinging around to see who the new arrival was and apparently finding him a satisfactory target.

  ‘All about what?’ Nick asked, sneaking a glance at Phoebe who was flushing guiltily.

  ‘About these two going off together, that’s what. Jackie’s sick. She needs looking after. Even in remission I have to see she eats the right food, I have to tempt her appetite, see she doesn’t get tired and make sure she gets enough sleep.’

  She shot a look of deep antipathy at Peter.

  ‘I’d expect you to know that, Peter Carter, and be thinking of her welfare, not encouraging her in this wild scheme.’

  Nick shook his head, hoping the movement might sort the words into a semblance of sense.

  ‘What wild scheme?’ he asked, when the head shaking didn’t help.

  ‘Them going off together,’ Mrs Stubbings roared at him. ‘What other wild scheme do you think I’m talking about?’

  She glared suspiciously at Jackie, as if further ‘wild schemes’ might be written on her forehead.

  ‘Can we start again here?’ Nick asked. He turned to Malcolm. ‘Maybe you can explain. What’s the problem?’

  Malcolm shrugged.

  ‘It’s really nothing to do with me what patients do with their time when they’re discharged. I can advise them about diet and not over-exerting themselves and give them detailed instructions regarding their medication but, as I explained to Mrs Stubbings, I can’t tell them what to do or what not to do.’

  He hesitated, then added in a mild tone, ‘In fact, even when they’re in here, I can’t tell them that either.’

  Which didn’t help Nick one iota.

  He turned hopefully to Phoebe, who was obviously in the thick of things, although she’d now exchanged the guilty expression he’d thought he’d caught earlier to one of total innocence.

  Hugely suspicious!

  ‘Dr Moreton?’

  She shrugged the softly rounded shoulders which had haunted his dreams for the past week and looked towards Peter, who nodded and reached out to take Jackie’s hand.

  Nick was still getting over his surprise at this action when Phoebe spoke.

  ‘Peter and Jackie want to spend some time together when they both get out of here. Not immediately, of course, but when they both get the all-clear. Mrs Stubbings is understandably upset as she’s worried Jackie won’t look after herself.’

  ‘I’ll look after her,’ Peter said. ‘I’m not a total idiot. I know exactly what she’s been through and how important rest and regular meals and taking her medication is.’

  Nick was about to voice his opinion when Phoebe spoke again.

  ‘But, not being a total idiot,’ she said to Peter, ‘you must understand how Mrs Stubbings feels about this, how concerned she is.’

  Another pause, but Phoebe obviously hadn’t finished what she wanted to say.

  ‘You must realise Mrs Stubbings’s priorities have shifted since Jackie was diagnosed. Jackie’s welfare has become her life.’

  ‘Like mine became Nick’s,’ Peter said, and Nick fancied he heard sadness in the words. Then Peter turned to him and said, ‘Well, old mate, are you going to add your voice to the dissenter? Are you going to say our going away together for a short time is nothing more than a foolish whim? That people doomed not to live out a normal life-span shouldn’t pretend to normality? Shouldn’t do normal things like fall in love?’

  Nick felt the air stiffen in the room when the impact of those final words fell on the assembled company.

  ‘Of course you’re entitled to fall in love,’ Phoebe said stoutly, and Nick was pleased she’d answered. He was too flabbergasted to think, let alone speak.

  ‘And I for one am totally delighted for you,’ she continued in her own redoubtable way. ‘Where you made your mistake was in not talking this over with Mrs Stubbings earlier, explaining to her how you both felt. Telling her why you wanted to spend time together.’

  Nick heard Phoebe’s voice grow husky and saw her blink rapidly as if to rid her eyes of tears.

  ‘I think if you had, Mrs Stubbings would be happy for you both. I think she’d agree with me that it’s like a miracle to find love flourishing amidst such adversity. Love’s not something you choose but something that’s given to you. It’s like an affirmation of life, and all that’s good about it. A precious gift, rare and beautiful, to bless you both.’

  She stood up, glared defiantly at Nick and added, ‘Well, that’s what I think, anyway.’ And marched from the room.

  Nick opened his mouth but found he had nothing to say so closed it again. His body wanted to follow Phoebe, but his mind suggested there was too much to consider for him to go barging after her right now.

  Besides which, Peter needed him.

  He turned towards his friend and realised Peter didn’t need him after all, except perhaps to remove the other bemused spectators from the room.

  For Peter was smiling mistily at Jackie, who was smiling with equal mistiness back at him.

  ‘Well, really,’ Mrs Stubbings said, but Nick detected something suspiciously like a sniffle accompanying the words.

  ‘Why don’t Malcolm, you and I sit down and talk about some safeguards we can put in place for this pair’s grand adventure,’ he suggested to the stunned woman. ‘I think over coffee in the staffroom. Malcolm?’

  Nick took Mrs Stubbings by the arm, cocked his head at his colleague and somehow got the three of them out of the room. But if he’d expected gratitude from Peter, he was doomed to disappointment. Glancing back over his shoulder, it was clear his friend had eyes only for Jackie.

  Maybe Phoebe was right and a miracle had happened. Not the miracle he might have wished for, but a first-rate alternative. Something to be going on with while he worked on the other.

  But as he made coffee for the three of them, then talked Peter’s and Jackie’s idea over with Malcolm and Mrs Stubbings, his mind played with other words Phoebe had said. ‘Love’s not something you choose but something that’s given to you. A precious gift, rare and beautiful.’

  Had he, somehow, turned down that gift?

  How did one know? How could one tell?

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  WHEN Mrs Stubbings had been pacified to the extent that she was planning how to get an assortment of clothes delivered to the hospital so Jackie could choose some new outfits, Nick excused himself and returned to Peter’s room.

  As he’d guessed, Jackie was gone, but the smile on Peter’s face still lingered.

  ‘Mrs Stubbings OK about it?’ Peter asked, and Nick nodded.

  ‘We should have done it better, should have given the poor woman some warning about how we felt, but it hit us both so suddenly. Your Phoebe’s right, we don’t choose love. It’s given to us.’

  ‘She’s not my Phoebe,’ Nick protested. ‘In fact, as she keeps reminding me, she’s immune to men like me.’

  ‘Nonsense!’ his old friend said firmly. ‘Don’t forget I’ve seen her with you. What about the night of the ball? She was positively glowing.’

  ‘She wanted my body!’ Nick muttered. ‘Talk about tables being turned! There I was fancying myself maybe slightly in love, and all she wanted was sex.’

  ‘Are we talking about the same Phoebe here?’ Peter queried. ‘Dark-haired, twenty-something, doctor on your team?’

  Nick nodded.

  ‘Then you’ve got it wrong,’ Peter said. ‘Maybe she said she just wanted sex, but really meant something else. Women’s minds work differently, you know. Though in my opinion you’ve mistaken what she said—or meant. If she was immune to you, the last thing she’d want is sex. And what’s this immunity anyway?’

  Nick looked out the window, his mind recalling the debacle the night of the ball. He answered absent-mindedly.

  ‘I’ve never received a rational explanation for that statement but I guess if your father’s on his fifth marriage, it’d make you wary.’

  ‘If
that’s the case, then being attracted to a man who’s seen with a different woman every week would make you even warier,’ Peter reminded him. ‘But there’s got to be something between you.’

  ‘Only when we kiss,’ Nick told him, and Peter laughed.

  ‘It’s not funny,’ Nick said sharply.

  ‘Of course it is. Look at you. You’re a mess over a girl with dynamite kisses and you’re sitting here talking to me instead of being wherever she is, talking to her. Or kissing her. Get out of here. Now you’ve sorted out my love life, go find one of your own.’

  Phoebe answered the door wearing the old bathrobe Jess had told her needed updating, and immediately regretted it.

  Though she could hardly have answered it wearing her red ball gown.

  ‘Aren’t you going to ask me in? Or at least say hello?’

  She blinked at Nick, and told her heart to be still because it was only natural he’d call. After all, she’d stormed out of the meeting in Peter’s room before any conclusions had been reached.

  ‘What happened after I left?’ she asked, backing into the hall and waving her hand towards her living room.

  Which was as much of an invitation as he was going to get!

  She tied the cord of the robe more securely around her waist, mentally shook herself to get rid of the physical effects of his presence in her home and followed him, then felt a moment of satisfaction as he looked around her cosy room and smiled approvingly.

  ‘I didn’t really take in much about this room last time I was here,’ he said. ‘If I hadn’t heard the romantic in you in action today, I might have been surprised.’

  A huskiness in his voice made her shiver, and to counteract this effect she looked around the room, wondering what was romantic in a room with polished timber floors, a red rug, an open fireplace and two leather recliners by way of furniture.

  Perhaps it was the flowers.

  ‘I love flowers,’ she said lamely, as any conversational skills she might once have had took flight.

  Nick completed his survey of the room and turned towards her.

  ‘I can see that,’ he said gravely, nodding towards the bathrobe which was a faded pink with equally faded red roses trailing up from the hemline.

  ‘I—I’ve just had a shower,’ she stuttered, realising how ragged she must look. ‘I’ll get changed. Or aren’t you staying?’

  Nick smiled and all her mental warnings followed her conversational abilities out the window. Then he shrugged, and she wondered if he was feeling as unsettled, as uncertain and uncomfortable as she was.

  Surely not. Not Nick.

  But he said, ‘I’m don’t know if I’m staying.’ Then added, as if to confirm his uncertainty, ‘Or if you want me to stay?’

  Phoebe looked at him for a long moment. Did she want him to stay?

  Whatever his staying might entail?

  Her heart, which had settled into a rapid but more regular rhythm, accelerated again.

  Forget sex, she told herself. Just think practical. First, you’ve got the Peter and Jackie thing to sort out and, second, your relationship with Nick, as a colleague, needs some work. This is an opportunity—

  ‘I didn’t mean it as a double jeopardy question,’ Nick said, hovering near a chair as if he’d like to sit but didn’t dare until she gave the word.

  ‘You can stay,’ Phoebe said, and Nick chuckled.

  ‘Don’t overwhelm me with a welcome,’ he said, but he sat, and settled back into the chair as if it had been designed for him.

  Phoebe contemplated racing upstairs to get dressed, but getting dressed involved taking off the bathrobe—being naked with Nick in the house.

  She shivered again, tightened the belt and remembered her manners.

  ‘Would you like a drink? Coffee? Whisky?’

  Nick rejected the whisky, though he’d have killed for one right then. Said yes to coffee then sighed with relief as Phoebe bustled off to the kitchen to make it.

  He’d come here to talk—to try to get things back on an even keel between them, perhaps suggest they start again and explore the attraction between them.

  But from the moment she’d opened the door in the faded bathrobe, all he could think about was taking it off her, peeling it back to reveal the woman beneath it and making love to her—with her—until both of them were exhausted.

  Great approach! he chastised himself, then he tried to remember all the clever things he’d rehearsed as he’d driven from the hospital to Phoebe’s house.

  ‘Did World War Three break out in Peter’s room after I left?’ Phoebe asked, returning to the room and putting not only a mug of coffee down on the side table beside him but a plate of biscuits as well.

  Nick sensed a false bravado in the words and wondered if she was feeling as awkward and uneasy as he was.

  He tried a smile, but although she reciprocated with a hint of one it wasn’t by any means a top Phoebe-effort.

  ‘I think you successfully put a stop to further confrontation,’ he told her. ‘Especially as Peter and Jackie both seemed to take your words as some kind of blessing and immediately began smiling at each other as if no one else existed.’

  He sipped his coffee and eyed Phoebe over the rim, hoping to gauge her reaction.

  Couldn’t!

  ‘Anyway, as they obviously weren’t going to listen to anything from anyone for the foreseeable future, I hustled Malcolm and Mrs Stubbings out and we all had a natter about how best to organise things for the lovebirds.’

  This time he did see the reaction. A real smile that sparkled on her lips and shone so brightly in her eyes there was no mistaking her delight.

  ‘I knew I’d done the right thing, getting the nurse to page you for back-up!’ she said. ‘I knew you’d put Peter’s happiness before any medical consideration. I think Malcolm felt the same but didn’t want to argue with Mrs Stubbings.’

  Nick felt a glow of warmth at Phoebe’s praise—then realised just how undeserved it was. He held up his hand.

  ‘All I did was paper over the cracks. Whatever was resolved came from you.’ He took a deep breath, told himself honesty was the best policy, then added, ‘In fact, when I realised what was going on—what everyone was so upset about—my first reaction was as bad as Mrs Stubbings’s. I thought it was the most ridiculous idea I’d ever heard.’

  The words hung between them and a heaviness in his gut suggested he’d just blown any chance he might ever have had of starting over again with Phoebe.

  He searched for the words he needed to make things right again, but his thoughts were so muddled he didn’t know where to begin.

  And if he didn’t begin, he’d lose this opportunity. Maybe lose Phoebe, whom he’d never rightfully had but now suspected meant more to him than life itself.

  He’d lose the rare and precious gift!

  ‘I met your mother,’ Phoebe said, and although he guessed she was only making conversation—filling in the awful void—he seized the cue.

  ‘It’s all her fault,’ he grumbled. ‘This entire mess! Talk about making a botch of things.’

  The puzzled expression in Phoebe’s eyes made him grin.

  ‘I’m making it worse, aren’t I? Just bear with me, I’ll get there in the end.’

  Uncertainty fluttered like a cloud of butterflies in Phoebe’s chest. She sat in the chair opposite Nick, pressed her hands together between her knees and waited.

  ‘If you’ve met my mother you’ll know she designs wedding dresses,’ Nick began. ‘My father died when I was young, my three sisters even younger. Mum had always loved sewing and it was something she could do at home, so her career choice wasn’t all that surprising.’

  He hesitated, ran his fingers through his hair and looked pleadingly at Phoebe.

  ‘She was so darned sentimental about them—about her brides and their wedding dresses, and stitching love together. It was as if love was something she was capable of conjuring up and sewing into a dress, for heaven’s sake.’

&n
bsp; He did the raking thing with his hair again, breathed deeply and plunged on.

  ‘As an adolescent boy it was downright embarrassing to hear her going on about it, but as I grew older I figured it might have been Mum’s way of clinging to Dad. You see, he’d died young, apparently before anything disastrous had ruined Mum’s rosy vision of marriage as the ultimate commitment to love. That’s when the wedding-dress thing began to loom like a huge responsibility. I assume my sisters feel the same way, as they’re all still single. But, whatever they feel I knew, whoever I married, Mum would want to make the wedding dress, then it would be up to me to make sure she wasn’t disappointed. Up to me to make sure my marriage lasted for ever and ever.’

  ‘That does happen,’ Phoebe told him, refusing to consider her own father’s disastrous forays into matrimony.

  ‘Yes, but how often?’ Nick countered. Then he shook his head. ‘Damn! I’m reverting right back to where this all began instead of getting on with the explanation. That’s the cynical attitude that started me on my campaign to stop Mum designing wedding dresses for every woman I met. It’s what made me use Peter’s illness as an excuse to not get too involved with any particular woman. I was assuming I’d fail to live up to Mum’s expectations if ever I did.’

  He held out his hands, as if passing all his problems to Phoebe.

  ‘Is this going somewhere?’ she asked, her heart now tripping with excitement.

  Nick looked at her and groaned.

  ‘I have no idea,’ he muttered. ‘None!’

  Once again lean fingers scored tracks through night-dark hair.

  ‘Less than a month ago, I was a normal, well-adjusted male. Or as well adjusted as anyone with a phobia about marriage failure can be. Then I foolishly kissed a colleague and my world turned upside down.’

  The husky words skimmed across Phoebe’s skin like a cool feather, and hope held her heart to ransom.

  ‘It wasn’t until your words today—when you said people didn’t choose love, but rather it was granted to them like a precious gift, rare and beautiful—that I figured maybe someone had given me a present, back there in the corridor at work.’