The Elusive Consultant

by Carol Marinelli

  She loves me; she loves me not.

  ‘What are you looking so serious about?’ With her usual bright smile Tessa looked up at him, her own hand flicking away her fringe, that single gesture ramming home the void that stood between them.

  ‘I was just wondering if you’d miss me.’

  ‘Of course we’ll miss you.’ Tessa gave a nervous giggle, the small storeroom as stifling as a sauna as she fought to keep her cool.

  ‘I meant, will you miss me?’

  Max’s arm was still there. Suddenly the cupboard was suffocatingly small, she almost heard the hiss as a ladle of water was poured over the hot coals and the temperature went up a notch. His eyes were boring into her, and she truly couldn’t read the expression in them, sure on the one hand that the joking was over but terrified she might be misinterpreting things and utterly confused at the change in Max’s demeanour.

  Oh, Max.

  His hair was drying now, the brown curls springing into their usual chaotic shape, and she physically ached to put up her hand to run it through the damp newly washed tendrils, to run her fingers along his clean-shaven jaw and to press her lips to his.

  How she’d miss him. Words didn’t even come close.

  ‘You know I will...’ Her eyes worked the small cupboard, desperate for a distraction, but the scent of him filled her nostrils, that masculine undertone so familiar. Hell, this man even managed to make gamma benzene hexachloride smell vaguely sexy. Tessa was assailed with a vision of volunteering to delouse all the waifs and strays for the next year in a strange quest to somehow relive this moment. Relive the feel of standing in this small space, inches apart, his hand on her arm, the question in his eyes and the impossible dream of promise. One movement of her cheek, one tiny step forward and Tessa knew with a flash of absolute clarity that their lips would meet, that this was so much more than two friends getting maudlin, that the shift in tempo she’d detected hadn’t been without foundation. A nervous tongue flicked across her lips and she almost felt the internal groan emanate from Max as he acknowledged the tiny gesture with his eyes.

  How very easy it would have been to discard Emily from her mind, to toss away her mental image on a vague promise that their relationship was struggling, to cross the tiny space that held them apart, to say yes to dinner and excuses, but though every fibre in her being, every cell in her body screamed for his touch, she simply couldn’t do it. Couldn’t dip her toe in the uncharted murky waters of infidelity, couldn’t tangle herself in the dark depths that had pulled her parents’ marriage down.

  ‘Better check on Josie...’ His hand was still there and Tessa gave a bright smile as she reclaimed her arm and breezed past him, pushing aside the thoughts that were rampaging through her brain, her voice amazingly light given her accelerated heart rate. ‘And then it’s my turn for a shower.’

  * * *

  ‘We’ve got a problem.’ Kim met Tessa at the bathroom door.

  ‘She didn’t try to get out?’ Tessa asked urgently.

  ‘No.’ Kim pushed open the bathroom door. ‘But there goes our morning.’

  A rather remorseful-looking Josie was sitting on the hoist over the drained bath, wrapped in a mountain of white towels and covered in the white snow of talcum powder. Tessa smiled for a moment at her patient, but then, as she looked down, Tessa’s mouth literally fell open, taking in the piles and wads of notes that littered the bathroom floor.

  ‘Oh, my goodness,’ Tessa said slowly, her eyes slowly scanning the bathroom floor as Josie sat there, pointedly saying nothing. ‘There must be thousands of dollars here.’

  ‘Tens of thousands, I think,’ Kim said grimly. ‘And it all nearly ended up in the bin. Tell her, Josie,’ Kim urged in an indignant voice that surprised even Tessa. ‘Tell Tessa how you were going to let me throw your coat away without telling me that you had your life savings stuffed in the lining.’

  ‘I forgot about it,’ Josie said airily, flicking her hand and turning her face away.

  ‘She forgot about it,’ Kim repeated in utter disbelief, her long initiation into emergency nursing only just starting. ‘I was just about to throw her coat away when I felt something in the lining. I thought it was newspaper, you know, how you said that sometimes they stuff there clothes to keep warm? Thank goodness I checked.’

  ‘What are you doing with all this money on you, Josie?’ Tessa asked.

  ‘I didn’t steal it.’

  ‘I’m not suggesting that you did.’

  ‘It’s my disability pension,’ Josie boomed. ‘I’m mentally ill, you know.’

  Her twinkling eyes turned to Tessa and simultaneously a smile wobbled on both their faces and they started to giggle, a giggle that got out of hand and turned into slightly hysterical laughter.

  ‘It’s not funny, you two,’ Kim scolded, stuffing the filthy money into a garbage bag with a pair of tongs. ‘What the hell are we supposed to do with this lot?’

  Waste an entire morning, as it turned out.

  Counted, rubber-banded and sorted into neat piles under the very watchful eyes of Josie, still no decision could be reached on how best to deal with it. Josie refused to let it be put into the safe and despite Rita’s, the social worker, pleas, Josie wouldn’t even hear of it being banked. Technically, once the referral was made, Josie’s finances ceased to be Tessa’s problem, but unfortunately life was never that simple, particularly if you had a conscience. And when that conscience was coupled with a genuine affection for a seventy-something, endearingly difficult patient, it meant that the problem, for now at least, remained Tessa’s.

  The fact that Josie had refused all the social worker’s recommendations and was completely prepared to walk out into the world with a six-figure sum in a garbage bag wasn’t something Tessa felt she could just let happen in the name of patient’s rights and hospital protocol.

  ‘They’ll give me one of those little plastic cards that gets eaten up.’

  ‘You can apply for another one if that happens,’ Tessa said, exasperated. ‘Rita’s explained all that.’

  ‘And I won’t even see my pension.’

  ‘It will be paid in to your account directly.’

  ‘What if I get hit over the head at the machine?’

  A smart reply was on the tip of Tessa’s tongue, she was starving and it was well past lunchtime, but she bit it back. Emergency nursing to the uninitiated was considered somewhat exciting, but it wasn’t all hightech drama and blood and gore. A vast amount of time was spent trying to come up with answers to the strangest of problems, and somehow, Tessa thought as she chewed her lip thoughtfully and eyed Josie, it wouldn’t make the recruiting advertisements looks quite so exciting.

  ‘You’re more likely to be mugged, carrying all that money about on you. Anyway, as Rita said, you should go to supermarkets and well-lit places to use it, places where there are a lot of people around. You can even use it in shops to buy your batteries without pulling money out. Please, Josie, I can’t just let you walk out of here with all this cash—there’s enough to buy a small house here! It’s just not safe.’

  ‘Problem.’ Max’s calmness defused the rather tense stand-off. Tessa was exhausted, trying to reason, and Josie was sitting with her arms folded, refusing to budge an inch. ‘I thought this would be sorted by now. Didn’t the social worker explain everything, Josie?’

  ‘She tried,’ Tessa sighed, standing up and wincing as her knees creaked.

  ‘Blinded me with a pile of forms more like. How am I supposed to remember a “four-digit number”? I’m—’

  ‘Mentally ill,’ Tessa finished for her. ‘You don’t have any trouble remembering the phone number of the radio station, Josie, and that must surely be more than four numbers.’

  ‘It’s not the same,’ Josie puffed, refusing to give an inch.

  ‘Come on, you two.’ Max cocked his head and gestured towards the door. ‘I’ll buy you both lunch, my treat.’

  Josie jumped up, followed by a reluctant Tessa. Used to Max�
�s oddball ways by now, normally she’d have jumped like Josie at the chance for lunch with him, but right now all Tessa wanted to do was put her feet up with a mug of coffee and a magazine and read about a few Hollywood stars falling from the sky.

  ‘We’re going to lunch.’ Tessa rolled her eyes as she came over to the nurses’ station and handed Kim the keys as Josie wandered to the exit then stood impatiently at the swing doors, determined not to miss out on her free lunch. ‘Can you give these to Jane and let her know to page me if she needs me?’

  ‘Sure. Are you going, too, Max?’

  ‘Yep.’ Max nodded. ‘And then I’m going to crash in the on call-room so, unless it’s desperate, call Chris Burgess. If I don’t get a couple of hours in, I’m going to be useless.’

  ‘We’re taking Josie, by the way.’ Tessa scribbled on the whiteboard, a small gesture but necessary in case there was a fire or the department had to be evacuated.

  ‘You two are terrible!’ Kim laughed. ‘And you both have the gall to lecture me on not getting too involved with the patients. It’s just as well you’re not together, your house would end up as the local drop-in centre.’

  Another seemingly innocuous remark, another dose of salt in Tessa’s wound. Kim looked back over to Max, who was stifling a yawn, thankfully not noticing the blush spreading across Tessa’s face. ‘You’d better get lunch over with, Max. You look as if you’re about to fall asleep standing up.’

  ‘I am, I’ve been here since three a.m. If I don’t get a decent coffee soon, I think I’ll keel over. Still, thank God it’s Friday.’ He made to go then with a jolt he turned back, a broad grin on his face.

  ‘Ah! Thank God it’s Friday,’ he said again as Kim stood there smiling brightly, a big blush spreading over her face as a couple of colleagues turned around curiously. ‘Can I give you a hug now your twelve weeks are up?’

  ‘You can.’ Kim half laughed, half cried. ‘I’m just about to tell the world at large.’

  Funny, Tessa thought to herself as the rather odd looking trio made their way along the corridor. For all Max’s casual ways, for all his easygoing nature and wicked humour, there beat inside him a heart of pure gold.

  A groan escaped her lips as they turned into the hospital foyer and she realised the real reason behind the little outing. Just inside the hospital canteen’s foyer stood a shiny ATM.

  ‘No way.’ Tessa nudged him. ‘Don’t even think about it.’

  But Max completely ignored her, turning instead to Josie. ‘I’m going to do something I shouldn’t do here,’ Max warned Josie. ‘I’m going to do something you must never, ever do—do you understand me?’

  Josie eyed him suspiciously as Max pulled out his wallet and proceeded to tell Josie his PIN number.

  ‘Max,’ Tessa warned, but again he chose to ignore her.

  ‘Right, Josie, put it in this slot here, that’s right. Now, read the prompts.’

  Tessa stood there at the ATM, quietly fuming as the hospital personnel brushed by, unable to believe Max could be so completely irresponsible, only managing a rather forced smile when a jubilant Josie turned, waving a fifty-dollar note.

  ‘Right, you can go and get our lunch now.’ Max smiled as Josie ambled off.

  ‘That was stupid,’ Tessa said angrily. ‘Of all the irresponsible...’

  ‘What’s she going to do?’ Max shrugged. ‘Mug me? All four feet five of her?’

  ‘You can’t go around telling the patients your PIN number. What would the bank say? What would Personnel say?’

  ‘So shoot me,’ Max said easily. ‘Anyway, I leave the country next week. I’ll be closing the account anyway.’

  ‘All the same,’ Tessa mumbled, his imminent departure again rearing its ugly head. ‘You shouldn’t have done that.’

  ‘Oh, and are you seriously trying to tell me you wouldn’t have done the same if you hadn’t thought of it? You’re as soft as butter, Tess.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have,’ Tessa insisted.

  ‘Only because your card is probably up to its limit.’ Max grinned. ‘Look, the old girl was scared, all she needed was to be shown. Rita spent an entire morning confusing her when all that was needed was a trip to the ATM. It’s stupid if you ask me.’

  It was stupid, Tessa thought reluctantly, Maybe Social Services should think about setting up a small account for times like this, There was a genuine fear amongst the elderly and confused for anything remotely technical, and Max in his own way had cut through the red tape and dealt with the problem. But she certainly wasn’t going to back down, and she certainly wasn’t going to let Max know she privately agreed with him.

  ‘Tessa.’ The rather strained atmosphere was broken by the smiling face of Fred. ‘I’ve been trying to catch up with you. Looking forward to court on Monday?’

  ‘Don’t remind me,’ Tessa sighed. ‘I’m trying not to think about it.’ It was true. The two things Tessa was dreading were the court case and Max’s departure, and both were drawing appallingly close.

  ‘Don’t get worked up, you’ll be fine. I was on with you that night, remember. Nobody did anything wrong.’

  ‘I hope not.’ Tessa gestured to a chair. ‘Sit down.’

  But Fred shook his head. ‘I’m due in Theatre, there’s a full list this afternoon. Look, I just wondered if you needed a lift on Monday.’

  ‘I’m taking her.’

  It was the first time Max had spoken since Fred had joined them, and Tessa looked up at the slight edge in Max’s voice.

  ‘No worries.’ Fred shrugged. ‘How about lunch, then?’

  Again Max jumped in before Tessa could even open her mouth. ‘Better not,’ Max said tersely, a distinctly proprietarial note to his voice. ‘No doubt there’ll be a few things we’ll need to go over. It’s Tessa’s first time in court.’

  ‘Fine.’ Fred looked quizzically from Max to Tessa, who was sitting, mouthing like a goldfish. ‘Some other time perhaps?’

  The question in his voice didn’t go unnoticed and for the first time in the conversation Tessa realised he was actually asking her out.

  ‘Sure,’ Tessa mumbled, her face reddening as Fred smiled and with a cheery wave walked off.

  ‘Will you go?’ Max asked when once again they were alone.

  ‘I don’t have a choice,’ Tessa answered, deliberately missing the point. ‘I’ve been summoned, remember?’

  ‘I wasn’t talking about the court case,’ Max retorted sharply. ‘I meant for dinner with Fred.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ Tessa shrugged, her eyes narrowing as she looked across the table. ‘I really haven’t given it much thought.’ Still Max was looking at her. ‘But why not? He seems nice enough.’

  ‘He’d bore the hell out of you,’ Max said. ‘If you think all Luke talks about is work then wait till you spend an hour or two with Fred, and bear in mind his patients spend most of their time unconscious.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘Mind-numbing.’

  Tessa’s eyes were still narrowed and she stared at him thoughtfully for a moment, half cross at him for answering for her and utterly, completely confused at he way he was acting. For all the world Max Slater, Max, ‘engaged with a fiancée to die for’ Slater, sounded just like a jealous schoolboy.

  ‘Bank fees!’

  Slopping the coffee into the saucers, Josie slammed the tray between them and Tessa tore her eyes away as Max sat there with a defiant look on his face.

  ‘I heard it on the radio, they charge people a fortune in bank fees.’

  ‘Not people like you, Josie.’ The jealous tinge was gone from his voice and the carefree smile was back.

  ‘Because I’m mentally ill?’ Josie asked, breaking a muffin in two.

  ‘It’s “mentally challenged” now, Josie,’ Max smiled gently. ‘And, no, it has nothing to do with that. The reason they won’t charge you is because, believe it or not...’ he broke into laughter as Josie looked up expectantly ‘...you’re richer than the lot of us.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ‘THE diet wor
ked, then,’ Letting out a low whistle, Max followed her along the hallway of Tessa’s small single-storey house, admiring her dark-stockinged legs as she clipped along the floorboards in unfamiliar high heels.

  ‘No,’ Tessa confessed. ‘I took my credit card for a workout instead of myself. If I look at another egg I think I’ll scream.’ She gave a small laugh as she busied herself with the coffee perculator and spooned sugar and milk into mugs, not quite sure her made-up face would cover the blush that simply wouldn’t fade.

  ‘Well, you look fantastic.’

  So did Max.

  Of course, he wasn’t going to rock up to the court in his usual fare of crumpled jeans and wild hair. But Max Slater, clean-shaven, his very newly cut hair slicked back, with just the tiniest bit of wax was a sight for sore eyes. His charcoal grey suit made the wiry body suddenly look a couple of inches taller, if that was possible, his shoulder that bit wider. Between the two of them they looked like they were heading off to a wedding or a funeral.

  ‘I thought you said you wouldn’t wear a suit for anyone,’ Tessa tried to joke.

  ‘Well, you’re not just anyone.’

  She should have anticipated this, Tessa mentally scolded herself. Should have realised the emotional overload having Max here in her home, looking so divine, was going to cause. So busy had she been, fretting over the court case, she hadn’t prepared herself for the impact of having him here in such intimate surroundings. And it was intimate, Tessa thought, him here in her kitchen. It was a world away from the safety of work, the anonymity her uniform offered. At work, telephones rang, people rushed in and out, she was in charge and completely in control, but at home... Max had never been in her home before and having him here was having the strangest effect on Tessa. Even the scent of him was reaching her as she made heavy work of making two simple drinks.

  OK, so he’d dropped her off from work a couple of times when her car had died in the car park, and once he’d had to deposit her rather unceremoniously in the hallway when the fruit punch at the Christmas party had been more than spiced up a bit. But having him in her kitchen, perched on a barstool, was causing Tessa more angst than the nine a.m. court case.