A Very Precious Gift Read online

  Jess was already on her feet, urging Charles to finish his coffee and accompany her back to the rooms. Charles pushed the coffee to one side, looked wildly towards Nick, then stood up, ran a hand distractedly through his usually immaculate hair, and followed Jess towards the door.

  ‘He looks rattled,’ Phoebe observed, wondering why she didn’t feel the slightest sense of triumph.

  ‘So he should,’ Nick told her, favouring her with a smile that jolted her heart.

  How could this be? What was happening to her immunity? Why was she reacting to every facial change of Nick’s and not feeling at all upset about Charles’s obvious discomfort?

  She concentrated on her meal though she was no longer hungry. Which was another worry, now she considered it. No matter what drama might be playing out in her life, she never lost her appetite.

  ‘I’ll eat the second potato if you can’t manage,’ Nick said, and when she nodded he leaned across and dug his fork into it, then lifted it off her plate.

  A sense of intimacy in the action sent an involuntary shiver down her spine, and though she hid it by pushing her plate away and reaching for her dessert, chocolate cheesecake was the last thing she wanted to tackle.

  Perhaps if she thought about work…

  ‘Mr Abrams must be terrified of a recurrence to be playing silly games with us,’ she said. ‘How can you—we—reassure him? Ease his fears?’

  ‘It’s a huge problem and I’m not certain how to tackle it,’ Nick admitted. ‘He needs support from us, but the play-acting has to stop.’

  ‘He hasn’t many skin lesions—well, not hundreds,’ Phoebe said, thinking back to the images she’d taken. ‘Could we excise all of them? Would that help?’

  ‘It’s what he’d like us to do,’ Nick told her. ‘He’s already suggested that. Why not take them all off and eliminate any chance of their turning cancerous?’

  He paused and Phoebe prompted him.

  ‘Well, why not? Aren’t some women with a family history of breast cancer having radical mastectomies as a preventative measure?’

  ‘I’ve heard of it happening,’ Nick agreed, ‘but it’s not something I’d recommend with melanoma. In my opinion it could give the patient a false sense of security. Then he might not continue to come for regular checks, and could miss a new lesion—perhaps in an inaccessible place. As you know, a superficial spreading melanoma can start off quite pale. Like a layer of plaque on the skin.’

  ‘Easy to miss,’ Phoebe murmured, cutting the cheesecake into tiny pieces and pushing them around the plate. ‘But if removing all his moles isn’t an option, what else can we do?’

  ‘Reassure him our screening works?’ Nick shrugged as if he knew that wasn’t going to be enough. ‘Have him come in more regularly? Suggest counselling to help him deal with his fears?’

  ‘Can anyone who’s been through the diagnosis and treatment of a malignant melanoma ever learn to deal with their fears?’

  Phoebe looked at Nick and saw her own concern mirrored on his face. Then he smiled, a tiny half smile that did little more than tilt one corner of those tantalising lips.

  She ate some cheesecake, hoping a chocolate fix might restore normality to the situation.

  ‘Perhaps counselling could give him strategies to handle them.’ His left eyebrow lifted as he spoke. ‘Is that phrasing it better?’

  She should have looked away, but the mobility of his face, an intensity in his eyes as he leaned towards her, held her, and she nodded, mesmerised by the thought of what might happen next.

  ‘Charles isn’t here,’ he murmured, ‘so we’d have to consider it a rehearsal.’

  The conversational switch should have startled her, but her own anticipatory feeling had been so strong she wasn’t surprised to find it was mutual.

  His lips brushed hers, then claimed them again, and, sitting at a table in the hospital cafeteria, with a half-eaten piece of chocolate cheesecake in front of her, she kissed him back.

  In the cafeteria?

  Disbelief battled desire for an instant, then lost the struggle. The myriad feelings of the previous afternoon returned, though the fire within was hotter, the tug of what could only be desire far stronger. She wanted to capture the wonder of it all, define the different sensations so she could replay them later and work out what was happening.

  But once again her brain had stopped processing her thoughts—intent on reacting only to sensation.

  Next thing she knew Nick had eased away from her, steadied her momentarily with a hand on her shoulder, then straightened in his chair.

  ‘Mmm, sweet chocolate,’ he whispered, while Phoebe struggled to pull herself together. For the first time in her life, she understood how apt that over-used phrase could be. The kiss had reduced her to a scattering of parts, all of which had reacted differently. Her heart, already jolted earlier, was thudding, her nerves were tingling, while deep inside her a liquid heat was scorching her flesh.

  It was the kissing ruining her immunity. It had to stop. The very last thing she wanted was to fall in love with Nick. He was too like her father. He’d even admitted the idea of commitment terrified him.

  She battled a confusion of thought and sensation.

  ‘I doubt one rehearsal will be enough, but sadly I have to love and leave you,’ Nick said, resting his hand lightly on the nape of her neck as he pushed back his chair and rose to his feet. ‘Duty calls.’

  Then he bent and brushed his lips across her hair, said something that sounded like ‘losing his fingers’ and departed, leaving only the echo of his footsteps and a sense of total disarray in Phoebe’s body.

  ‘I don’t know about him losing his fingers, but you’re definitely losing your mind,’ she told herself, saying the words out loud in the hope they might have more impact on her disordered senses.

  She pushed away her unfinished dessert, propped her elbows on the table, rested her chin on her hands and tried to think.

  Her brain, usually sharp and incisive, seemed unwilling to tackle the problem of Nick’s kisses, or the unreliability of her immunity.

  She’d think about Charles—honestly! The more Nick reminded her of her father, the more she realised she’d chosen Charles because he was everything her paternal relative wasn’t. Meeting Charles had been like meeting the embodiment of a dream—the kind of man she’d told herself since childhood she’d eventually marry. From there it had been easy to imagine herself falling in love with him.

  Easy to make more of an occasional date and shared evenings at work than there really was?

  Of course she had—though, in fairness to herself, Charles had showed enough interest to encourage her to think their friendship was moving towards a closer relationship.

  In any case, now she’d faced up to her motivations, and to the fact that she’d never been in love with Charles but in love with the idea of being in love, the whole scenario of making Charles jealous was pointless and had to stop.

  The thought filled her with an inexplicable dismay.

  Nothing made sense any more, so she stared out across the room and tried to decide why the second kiss had been more electrifying than the first. Or had its recentness simply made it seem that way?

  ‘May I join you?’

  She turned to find the slim, blonde Jessica already pulling out the chair so recently vacated by Nick.

  Probably still warm from his body, Phoebe thought with a regret she knew she shouldn’t feel.

  ‘This chap you’re worried about,’ Jess began. ‘He’s not down in the appointment book and Charles wondered what time he was coming in.’

  Yesterday Phoebe might have been irritated by the woman running messages for Charles, but tonight it didn’t seem to matter.

  ‘I told him early, eight o’clock, before regular appointments start.’

  ‘Great!’ Jess replied. ‘I can be there at that time. I’ve been fiddling around with an idea for something that patients might be able to use at home. A kind of self-examination progr
am using shots from a digital camera. It won’t work for everyone, but Mr Abrams should be computer literate and it might go some way towards allaying his fears.’

  ‘Wow!’ Phoebe muttered as the idea seized her imagination. ‘But might it not also make them worse? Aren’t there concerns among medical people about the home blood pressure machines which are sold commercially these days?’

  ‘Some concern,’ Jess admitted. ‘But not enough to stop their use. If Mr Abrams can see it as an adjunct to his normal screening visits rather than an alternative…’

  ‘And if we can convince him to come in and see us anytime he’s worried,’ Phoebe added.

  ‘Exactly,’ Jess agreed.

  Phoebe smiled at her, while thinking how she’d like to get to know the other woman better. Had she gone away hoping to change Nick’s views on commitment?

  The thought caused such physical discomfort in Phoebe’s stomach she turned her attention firmly back to the topic of conversation.

  ‘But you said you’ve been working on it. It doesn’t exist?’

  ‘Not yet,’ Jess told her. ‘But if Mr Abrams is interested, I might treat him as a guinea pig and rig up something he can use in the meantime.’

  Phoebe forgot Charles and deception, and pushed Nick David to the very furthest corner of her mind. Talking to Jess about this exciting possibility was the antidote she needed—or the booster shot, perhaps that was a better analogy.

  ‘Have you been dating Nick long?’

  The question, coming after a long and technical discussion of the use of computerised technology, jolted Phoebe.

  ‘Nick? I’m not dating Nick,’ she protested. She was about to add she’d been going out occasionally with Charles, to reassure Jess she wasn’t poaching, but realised this was no longer true so kept quiet.

  ‘But you looked so…I don’t know the word I need—as if something special was sparking between you.’

  ‘An argument most probably,’ Phoebe said, anxious to dispel any doubts from Jess’s mind. ‘We argue all the time.’

  ‘More than we ever did,’ Jess said, and Phoebe, hearing the weight of sadness in the other woman’s voice, decided the charade with Nick had to end. For Jess’s sake as much as anything…

  ‘Jessica doesn’t give a damn what I do,’ Nick said, when Phoebe put this idea to him the following morning.

  Once again they’d met in the car park, and once again he’d—casually—slung his arm around her waist.

  Aware she should shrug it off, or move away, Phoebe hesitated, but let it stay.

  ‘You might think she’s over you, but she’s not,’ she said stoutly, and Nick chuckled.

  The deep ripple of sound flowed across her skin and whispered in her blood. She forgot what she’d been trying to say, and leaned into his body as the arm tucked her closer.

  ‘Charles approaching from the left. What is it the pilots say—angels at ten o’clock?’

  It was a light-hearted remark but it reminded Phoebe that the warm arm around her waist was a sham, and Nick’s kisses merely play-acting. She stepped away from it—from him—and hurried into the building, something that felt very like disappointment dogging every step she took.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  MR ABRAMS arrived early, dead-heating with Jess, who had introduced herself to him in the corridor.

  Charles was there to greet him with a cool and very formal handshake. He ushered him through to the smaller consulting room, where Sheree had set out extra chairs. Phoebe, following them, sensed a discomfort in Charles, but he was glancing more towards Jess than herself, so she assumed it had nothing to do with the silly act she and Nick had been putting on.

  ‘Dr David, who is head of the clinic, will be seeing you today,’ Charles explained to the patient. ‘Dr Moreton you know, and Miss Hunter is a specialist in medical technology.’

  ‘I’ve already introduced myself and told him to call me Jess, Charles,’ Jessica said. ‘If you’re not staying, why don’t you buzz off so I can start explaining things to Ryan?’

  Phoebe saw the colour rise in Charles’s cheeks and wondered whether it indicated anger or embarrassment. Whatever it was, it was more reaction than she’d ever been able to generate in the man. Then Nick came in and she found it difficult to think about Charles.

  About anything but the man with whom she definitely, absolutely, unequivocally, did not want to become involved.

  Fortunately he took over, shaking hands with Ryan Abrams, inviting him to sit, waving herself and Jess into vacant chairs, and coming bluntly to the point.

  ‘We think you may have coloured that mole, in much the same way as you used dye around another harmless lesion some months ago.’ It was Ryan Abrams’s turn to flush, but before he could speak Nick continued.

  ‘We understand you feel a need to test us—to make sure in your own mind that we know what we’re doing—but we have patients waiting three months for an appointment, patients who could have a dangerous melanoma just about to spread deadly cells into underlying tissue and the bloodstream.’

  ‘But you’d see anyone whose doctor was concerned straight away,’ Mr Abrams protested.

  ‘When possible,’ Nick told him. ‘When we can squeeze them in.’

  ‘And I’m wasting your time? That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it? But what about me? What about my time? How much would I have left if it happened again?’

  Jessica moved to the chair beside him and leaned over.

  ‘We’re concerned about that as well,’ she told him. ‘That’s why we’re here.’

  He thrust away the hand she’d rested on his arm and glared angrily at all of them.

  ‘If you’d just taken them all off, all my moles or whatever else you like to call them, then none of this would have happened.’

  Phoebe guessed it was as close as they were going to get to an admission.

  ‘Taking off all your moles won’t guarantee protection,’ Nick told him. ‘I’m sure Dr Marlowe has explained to you that seventy per cent of melanomas arise from normally pigmented skin. Only thirty per cent arise from moles.’

  ‘Seventy per cent come from normal skin?’ Their patient echoed the statistic in horrified tones, at the same time searching the bare skin on his hands—all that was immediately visible to him.

  ‘They begin as a proliferation of melanocytes, the pigment cells which give colour to your hair as well as your skin. A bad sunburn you may not even remember suffering as a child could have affected some of those cells, and though they might lie dormant for a long time they could suddenly start multiplying. That’s why we have you in for regular checks,’ Nick continued. ‘You’re probably clued up enough to keep check on the spots you can see, but we check all of you and do computerised comparisons.’

  ‘Which is why I’m here,’ Jess said cheerfully. ‘I’m really the brains behind the program the doctors currently use and I’d like to work with you to see if it’s practical to give some patients a home program.’

  Ryan Abrams turned to her, clutching at her arm like a drowning man reaching for a life-raft.

  ‘Could you do that? Set one up for me?’

  ‘You’d still have to come in for regular checks,’ Nick warned him. ‘And I still want to take a look at that blue nevi today, so why don’t you strip off? I’ll do a check, then you and Jessica can use my office for a chat while Phoebe and I tackle today’s patients.’

  She and Nick to tackle today’s patients? Today was a skin clinic day when most of the patients were regulars, coming in to have old lesions checked and new ones removed. It was a clinic Charles usually ran, with Phoebe assisting and learning as she helped.

  ‘I’ve swapped,’ Nick said to Phoebe, as Jess ushered Ryan out the door. He seemed to be answering her, though she hadn’t voiced her surprise.

  She lifted a chair, intending to return it to the tearoom, but Nick took it out of her hands.

  ‘I’ll restore order. Could you check with Sheree whether we’re getting a nurse replacemen
t or not?’

  His shoulder brushed against her as he turned towards the inner door, and Phoebe closed her eyes and tried to stem the responses even such an accidental touch had caused.

  Perhaps if she went to visit her father.

  Tonight.

  Nodding her head decisively, she walked back through the waiting room, murmuring a ‘good morning’ to the patients collecting there, before entering Sheree’s office.

  No Sheree. Only Charles, bent over the filing cabinet.

  ‘Have we lost our secretary now as well?’ Phoebe asked, hoping normal conversation might dispel the discomfort she was feeling in Charles’s presence.

  ‘She’s getting me a cup of coffee,’ he said, without interrupting his search. ‘At least someone in this unit shows me a little consideration.’

  The remark was so petty—and uncalled for—it stung Phoebe into retaliation.

  ‘I showed you consideration,’ she fumed. ‘I gave you support, and understanding, and time, Charles, which you said you needed. And for what? To be told you couldn’t make a commitment! Not that I wanted a for-ever-and-ever-type commitment—not immediately. I just wanted to know if we had some kind of relationship going or not!’

  He swung around at that, glaring at her and nodding towards the glass wall between the office and the waiting room.

  ‘You’re making an exhibition of yourself in front of the patients,’ he said coldly. ‘But, then, I guess that’s no more than what’s to be expected of someone who’s joined the ranks of Nick’s women!’

  Fury boiled up like molten lava, but Phoebe clamped it down. A movement beyond the glass caught her eye. Nick must have finished removing spare chairs and had now taken on the nurse’s duties, entering the waiting room to call a patient, bending to help an elderly woman out of her chair. Smiling. Lips moving as he greeted her, reassured her.

  The sight of him cooled Phoebe’s rage, and when Sheree came in she was able to voice the question she’d been sent to ask.