Claimed: One Wife Page 17

  'You're saying the only reason your brother felt anything for me was because he caught your love for Sam?' Sally threw up her arms in despair.

  'Give me strength!' she muttered, and turned away from him. Then, as he began to argue it wasn't what he'd meant, she remembered what he'd said earlier.

  'Never mind that,' she said, waving away his explanation. 'How come I've ruined your honeymoon? Or is this another twin thing? Blaming someone else for every ill that befalls you?'

  Tom sighed.

  'I don't suppose I could have a cup of coffee?'

  'No!' Sally snapped. 'At least, not until you've explained. Come in, shift the books off that chair and sit down.'

  The second Dr Hudson did as he was told, then he sighed again, but finally, fixing blue eyes that were like, yet not like, others she fancied, began to talk.

  'For a start, I should explain that Grant's got an overdeveloped responsibility gene. In our relationship I put it down to him being the first-born, but he carries it through to his work. When he had just been admitted as a fellow, and was appointed senior registrar, he had a fourth-year resident who fell madly in love with a second-year who came onto the team from another hospital.'

  He glanced at Sally as if to check she was listening, but she guessed, from what she knew of Grant, he was marshalling his thoughts.

  'It was a fairly torrid relationship from the start, and Grant was always worried about the effect it might have on both their work and study schedules. But when he spoke to his department head about it he was told it was their private business and not his concern.'

  Sally felt a knot tightening in her stomach. She wasn't sure she needed to hear this story.

  Yet she prompted him.

  'So?'

  Tom looked towards the window, then studied her bookshelves, before finally facing her again.

  'It went on for eight months, the fourth-year failed his finals. As you know, the names, on that final day, are put up on a list, and those who don't get through learn by omission. While those who passed went back into the college to be welcomed and inducted, he went back to the flat they shared, shot his girlfriend and hanged himself.'

  There was a pause while the knot grew tighter and ice formed in Sally's blood.

  'She didn't turn up for work and Grant went to look for her. He found the bodies, identified them for the police. He then took it on himself to clean up the flat. He won't talk about it—about any of it—but it has to have affected him.'

  Sally closed her eyes and waited until the words had stopped hammering in her skull. She glanced at her watch.

  'Where is he?'

  Tom moved his head to indicate the apartment block.

  'I'm on my way over to Toowong,' he said. 'But I thought you should know.'

  She nodded, unable to find anything more to say. Certainly not 'thank you', although it did explain a lot.

  Tom stood up, then came across and kissed her on the cheek.

  'Good luck,' he said, as if he knew what she was going to do.

  She listened to his footfalls down the hall and across the front verandah. Even imagined she could hear a car starting up in the street beyond the gate.

  Then she stood up, carefully, like someone old and tired, and walked through to the bathroom where she washed her face and smoothed her hair down with damp fingers.

  Still without a clue as to what she would say, she set out towards Grant's place. Under the railway bridge and up the hill, striding determinedly on, until she reached the foyer door.

  Which was where she nearly turned tail and raced back home again. But her heart told her she had this one last chance, and her head told her if she didn't do it she'd be as cowardly as she'd labelled him.

  She pressed the bell.

  'It's Sally,' she said when he answered, although she knew he could see her on the screen.

  He didn't reply but the front door lock snicked to tell her it was open and she walked in. Up in the lift, turn right. He was standing in the doorway, looking as tired and confused as she felt.

  She went towards him, wanting only to put her arms around him and hold him close.

  For ever.

  But not yet, her head warned. Don't confuse things with sex!

  So she walked past him, into the living room, and stood, looking out at the view.

  'For as long as I can remember, being a doctor has been a dream. My dad used to tease me by telling people, "Sally's going to be a brain surgeon." And that idea took root as well.'

  She turned and found he'd followed her so he was standing only a metre from her now. His expression was carefully neutral but his eyes were wary.

  'I think now that I clung to it after he had died, because it was all I had. Something definite.' She shrugged with a kind of helplessness, finding the words hard to find, and even harder to say.

  'You know how people tell you get a life. Well, perhaps if someone had come along, somewhere along the way— someone who'd meant a great deal to me—I'd have lost focus then, been diverted, gone into something easier, something that could accommodate a "life".'

  He didn't move, said nothing, and she realised he wasn't going to help. That she was going to have to stammer her way through all of this without feedback or prompting.

  'Anyway, that didn't happen, and I love the work, and I do want a career in neurosurgery, but...' She stalled, unable to go on because what came beyond that 'but' was new and scary.

  'But?'

  Finally he broke his silence—if only with one word.

  'But I realise it's not enough. Not for me. I thought it would be, but I know now that it isn't.' She shrugged again and, feeling suddenly vulnerable, covered herself. 'I could make it that way again. If that's how life works out. But right now, I can't help feeling that there are more important things than stereotaxic operations and fibre-optic light sources.'

  She looked into his eyes, and added, 'Things I'd be a fool not to at least investigate.'

  He shook his head and came towards her, taking her in his arms and holding her tightly.

  'You'd be a bigger fool to not finish your study, and you'd be disappointed in yourself if you didn't pass the exam and become a fellow.'

  She nodded against his chest.

  'We'll have to snatch our time together.'

  She nodded again.

  'I could work with you. Help you. Take you through old exam papers.'

  He sounded so unlike himself, so uncertain somehow, that she freed herself a little and reached up on tiptoe to kiss him on the lips.

  'And how much study would I get done?' she teased, a little breathlessly, when his response had convinced her he wasn't so uncertain after all.

  'You'd study!' he growled, then he kissed her again. 'We could schedule the other stuff.'

  'Tuesday night one hour of kisses, Thursday sex?'

  Grant chuckled and led her across to the couch where they'd sat that fateful night.

  'Are you sure about this, Sally? Certain you can handle an involvement at this crucial stage of your career?'

  She snuggled against him, amazed by how good it felt to have someone worrying about her welfare.

  'If I don't get in this year, I can do the exam again next year,' she assured him. 'Or in five years' time if we decide to have a family first and I want to stay home with the babies.'

  She then realised just how far ahead her mind had leapt and sat back, her hand across her mouth to prevent further indiscretions.

  Not that it worked.

  'I'm sorry! I'm rushing ahead. All you've talked about is a relationship. We barely know each other and I'm assuming—Not that it matters, I'd be happy to just have a relationship—'

  He stopped the babble with a kiss and, when they stopped for breath, reassured her with words as well.

  'The relationship I want with you is marriage, Sally Cochrane. Nothing less. But we'll do it properly, and take our time, and get to know each other first.'

  Another kiss, more like a pledge this
time.

  'And I, too, can take time off to mind babies, but first we'll get you qualified so your dad's dream comes true.'

  He kissed her again.

  'Did I tell you I loved you?'

  She smiled at him.

  'Not yet.'

  'Well, you haven't told me either,' he reminded her, and they kissed again and whispered all the words the kisses said but which they both needed to hear.

  And on the verandah of the old house at Toowong Tom took his new bride in his arms and kissed the breath out of her.

  'It's a twin thing,' he said, then he looked up to find her brothers watching. 'Just wait until it happens to you.'