Doctor and Protector Page 18

‘She might be in the house!’

  He leaned forward and kissed her on the nose.

  ‘Sorry, Dave, but even wet, this woman is the most beautiful person in the world.’

  Not that Dave cared. He was chatting on his mobile.

  McCall touched Cassie’s chin, tilting up her head so he could look into her eyes. ‘I’ll get some breathing apparatus from Dave when he finishes his call and go in and have a look for her,’ he promised, and Cassie felt all the fear and tension in her body dissolve in a rush of what could only be love.

  ‘You would?’ she said, flinging herself into his arms. ‘You’d do that for me? For Blondie?’

  Then a frightening thought stopped her gratitude.

  ‘But you could be in danger yourself, going in there.’

  ‘Enough of this mush and heroics,’ Dave said, pocketing the phone. ‘Blondie’s fine. The constable out at the vet’s place found her locked in a back room in the house. She was annoyed at the confinement but otherwise fit and healthy. Apparently Derek could kill humans with impunity, but drew the line at deliberately harming animals.’

  Dave dropped them back at the motel so they could change their clothes, and Cassie wondered at the gentleness of the man who’d rescued her as he helped her out of her wet things, ran the shower, then stayed with her, worrying that she might have a return of the nerves that had set her shivering.

  ‘And that was the hardest thing I’ve ever done,’ he announced, when she was dressed and combing out her hair in front of the mirror. ‘You are one beautiful woman, Cassie Carew, and naked you’d tempt a saint.’

  He departed into the bathroom himself before Cassie could respond, but his compliment made her feel warm, and she smiled at herself in the mirror, realising there was a lot about McCall that made her feel warm.

  Back at the hospital, they found a young policeman talking to Lennie. He turned to them as they came into the single room where Lennie was still hooked up to drips and oxygen.

  The policeman motioned to them to stay outside and left the room himself, drawing Cassie and McCall into an alcove where he could explain what was happening.

  ‘Lennie remembers seeing Derek at the surgery this morning but can’t remember anything else. But we’ve found a cotton pad still smelling of ether or chloroform in Derek’s car, so Dave’s presuming he used that to knock Lennie out, then slit his wrists. Apparently June never goes into the theatre, so Derek left Lennie to bleed to death in there while he went after Cassie. It seems he intended then going back and finding Lennie dead. He was hoping the police would assume Lennie was the killer and had finally been overcome by remorse.’

  They left the policeman with Lennie and continued on to Cassie’s office.

  ‘Now we know Lisa worked for Derek for a while, the only one who doesn’t fit is Mrs Ambrose,’ Cassie said. ‘What contact would Derek have had with her to know she was worrying about his letters?’

  McCall thought about it.

  ‘Mrs Ambrose’s accident—you said she had a steep drive. Are there other hills outside town, or would her house have been in the hills above Derek’s property?’

  He saw light dawn on Cassie’s face.

  ‘Of course. Her house would look straight down on Derek’s place. I guess he could have kept watch. I know the letters worried me most in the middle of the night. I’d wake up thinking about them and have to get up and have a glass of milk. He could have found out a lot about her from Lennie, to make the letters seem like the work of a local. And he probably knew her routine—what time her lights went out. Maybe just seeing a light on at her place in the middle of the night was enough of a thrill for him.’

  ‘I think you’re right,’ McCall agreed. ‘He was just starting—or we assume he was. Dave will be checking other places he’s lived, and whether there were accidents there. He’s also trying to track down Derek’s ex-wife. There’s a chance she might have been his first victim. But if Mrs Ambrose was the first, then maybe just seeing a difference in her routine would have been enough of a thrill for him.’

  Cassie started shivering again, and McCall was forced to put his arms around her, and in the kiss that followed, fear faded.

  It was some weeks before things returned to normal. If walking on air about a foot above the ground could, in Cassie’s case, be construed as normal. Her family was back in the house, the SES crew having cleansed all remnants of the chemicals from it. McCall was still in town—the reason for her levitation—but though he had a lot of meals with the Carew family, he had stayed on in their drab room at the Maddox.

  His excuse was that it was easier for him to work with Dave from there, but in truth it gave them somewhere private—away from the family and the interest of the town—where they could explore, and enjoy, the growing intimacy between them.

  ‘It won’t work, you know, McCall,’ Cassie said to him one evening, when she knew his excuse of helping Dave put a case together couldn’t last much longer. She was lying on the bed, snuggled against his side, enjoying the afterglow of the physical side of that intimacy. ‘You belong in the city and I can’t go off and leave Mum here to cope with the family on her own, especially now the twins are here.’

  She felt him move and held her hand across his lips to stop his protest before it began.

  ‘I know you’re going to say she has Anne and Gwen to help with them, but Anne needs a lot of Mum’s attention at this stage of her life. She wants to go to university next year, but she’s the baby of the family and she’s fearful about leaving home. She needs a lot of support.’

  McCall didn’t seem to be at all impressed—or bothered—by this conversation. In fact, he was sliding his tongue back and forth across her palm, sending tingles of delight through her body and silently suggesting they hadn’t had quite enough intimacy just yet.

  ‘Concentrate on what I’m saying,’ she told him sternly, but his answer was to flip her over on her back, where, propped on one elbow, he could look down into her face.

  ‘Have I asked you to go off and leave your delightful but exhausting family?’ he demanded, and Cassie felt ice water fill the place where blood should be.

  He was telling her it was over.

  That this was all there was.

  A holiday romance kind of thing—a murder romance!

  Panic seized her, clutching at her heart, stifling her lungs, making her feel physically ill.

  ‘Breathe,’ he ordered, then, before she had a chance, he dropped a kiss onto her lips. ‘And stop jumping to conclusions.’

  McCall paused then added, ‘I love you, Cassie, and, loving you, accept all your family in a wider kind of love. Do you think I don’t know you couldn’t go off and leave them? I doubt you’d be the woman I fell in love with if you could.’

  He kissed her again, just in case the words weren’t enough.

  ‘But I was talking to your mother. Apparently, ever since Emily realised the situation with the boys had broken down, with their father taking off for wherever, she’s been working on being replaced down there. She has to see out six months of her contract, but it looks as if she could be home in another couple of months.’

  ‘Home here? She’d come home here?’ Cassie asked, then she added, ‘And why didn’t I know any of this? Why have she and Mum been emailing this stuff to each other and no one’s mentioned it to me?’

  McCall smiled, knowing Cassie’s annoyance rose out of her natural instinct to protect the family group—and her willingness to be the one to do it.

  ‘Abigail thought you had enough on your plate and, no, she didn’t tell Emily about the danger you were in—she thought Emily had enough on her plate, worrying about the boys.’

  Cassie shifted, not far away but far enough so she could sit up.

  ‘I can’t seem to be able to think when I’m too close to you, McCall,’ she told him. ‘But even sitting up, I can’t see what Em coming home has to do with you and me.’

  McCall smiled at her.

  ‘Only because you hav
en’t had enough time to sort it out,’ he said soothingly. ‘But think about it. You wanted to do paediatrics but had to leave the city before you could do the training. Em’s coming back and, with the boys settled here and your mother to help out, she’ll be looking for a job.’

  He reached out and pushed a lock of hair off Cassie’s face. His heart was thudding because he knew the next bit was the crux of the whole matter. If he’d guessed wrong…

  If Cassie didn’t want to move…

  ‘I thought she might take your job at the hospital, and if she can’t get the job by fair means, I’m willing to go for foul.’ He smiled to himself, remembering Cassie’s face when he’d dropped the name to Don Trask. ‘It just so happens your esteemed Director General of Health is my cousin and, providing Em’s got the qualifications, I’m sure he wouldn’t mind twiddling a string or two.’

  Cassie turned on him.

  ‘Em doesn’t need anyone pulling strings for her,’ she snapped. ‘Do you think they entrust the health care of people down in the Antarctic to just anyone? She’s wonderfully qualified—she’d be perfect for the job.’

  She stopped abruptly when she saw McCall’s smile.

  ‘I’m defending my family again, aren’t I?’ she said, and McCall reached out and drew her into his arms.

  ‘You are, and it’s one of the two thousand, four hundred and thirty-two things I love about you.’

  Cassie relaxed.

  ‘Only two thousand, four hundred and thirty-two?’ she teased, running her fingernails along his thigh in a way she knew drove him mad.

  ‘Two thousand, four hundred and thirty-three,’ he amended, ‘and stop that right now as we haven’t finished this conversation.’

  ‘We haven’t?’ Cassie was puzzled, but she lost track of so many conversations these days she wasn’t surprised. Whenever McCall was near, her brain was seduced by her body and sensations took over where once thought had reigned supreme.

  ‘No, we haven’t,’ he said, and she realised he was serious. ‘Em’s return is some months away. I have to go back to Brisbane for a while to sort out things there, but then I’ll be back. I do have a research project to complete.’

  He paused, and she could sense his tension.

  ‘If Em’s back by the time I finish, if she’s happy here, would you come with me when I go back to Brisbane? You could start enquiring now about getting into paeds training and—’

  Cassie stopped him with a kiss.

  ‘You keep mentioning that, as if I need an incentive to be with you.’

  She framed his face with her hands and looked into his eyes.

  ‘Don’t you know how I feel about you? Don’t you know I’d go to the ends of the earth with you? Don’t you feel, as I do, that suddenly you’re whole, and that being together, whatever we’re both doing, is the only important thing in the world?’

  He clasped her in his arms again and held her close.

  ‘Oh, Cassie, that’s exactly how I feel, but I was so frightened you might not feel it, too. Then I thought you might have wanted to stay in the country and I was working out how I could work from here so I was with you. But you’re right. It doesn’t matter where we are, or what we do, as long as we’re together.’

  She shifted out of his arms so she could look into his eyes again.

  ‘This isn’t something you’ve made up, is it, McCall?’ she asked sternly, and his heart was so full of love he couldn’t answer.

  So, instead, he kissed her, and Cassie knew every word he’d spoken was the truth. She snuggled against him, secure in his arms, as the horrors of the last few weeks were burnt away by the special glow of happiness Henry McCall had brought into her life.

  ISBN: 978-1-4603-5802-3

  DOCTOR AND PROTECTOR

  First North American Publication 2004

  Copyright © 2004 by Meredith Webber

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