‘Thanks,’ he managed weakly, and Ryan gave him a cheery wave and headed off to the compost bin with his wheelbarrow of fern clippings. Leaving his advice behind.
You’ll get over it.
It was a sensible statement, the only problem being that Marc didn’t exactly know what it was. This thing he was feeling.
It was temporary, he told himself. It was the result of shock and relief and gratitude.
Be practical.
‘What you need to do is help her see her way forward,’ he said, only this time he said it under his breath because the walls had ears around here.
But that brought another thought. If she did leave the island, if she and Robert moved to Sydney... ‘Then maybe we’d have time to...’
And that was where he stopped, because when it came to time to do what, he couldn’t begin to imagine what that might be.
He should go find a cold shower, he told himself. He should at least talk sense into himself. Instead his thoughts kept drifting to a place that didn’t seem at all sensible.
The way he felt about Elsa... The feeling in his gut as she’d walked into Theatre... It seemed a chasm he hadn’t even noticed approaching.
So step back. Find solid ground. Accept the way you’re feeling and work around it.
‘Whatever happens, it’d have to be on my terms,’ he said, and this time he said it out loud. He needed to reassure himself there was still room for him to be sensible.
He thought of his gorgeous harbourside house, inherited from his father, who’d died a few years ago. He thought of the space, the garden, the room for people to live pretty much separately.
‘Even if we...’ he started to say, but then he paused. He hadn’t the least idea where his thoughts were headed.
Even as a child he’d known emotional ties were transitory and he’d never really considered the idea of a permanent relationship. When his friends fell in love he always felt as if he was looking at something totally foreign to him. But with Elsa suddenly his mind was going there whether he willed it or not.
‘But my life wouldn’t have to change all that much.’
Something at the back of his mind was suddenly flabbergasted. He almost felt dizzy.
‘What the hell are you thinking?’ he demanded, out loud again, and quickly looked around to make sure Ryan hadn’t returned.
He hadn’t. He was free to argue with himself.
‘I have no idea,’ he confessed to the sensible part of his brain, but sensible wasn’t winning right now.
Nothing was winning. He kept sitting there. He needed to get his head clear. He needed a plan.
It didn’t happen. The dizziness stayed.
Finally he shook his head and limped back into the hospital. He needed something to do. Something medical. Something that had nothing to do with the weird infighting that was going on in his head.
* * *
Elsa stayed busy for the rest of the day. Marc had insisted on continuing with the afternoon clinic so she wasn’t needed there. She bossed her grandfather into settling down to rest, starting what she hoped would be the new norm. Then she did a round of the hospital patients. Maggie filled her in as she went.
‘Marc’s been pretty much over everything,’ she told her. ‘The islanders think he’s great. Dotty Morrison has run out of scripts four times—I think she’s fallen in love with him.’
‘Who wouldn’t?’ Elsa said absently. She was reading a patient file as she spoke, and was aware of a sudden silence. She glanced up to see that Maggie was skewering her with a look.
‘Yeah?’ Maggie said softly. ‘Really?’
‘I just meant...’ Elsa flushed. ‘Oh, Maggie, cut it out. He’s tall, dark and dishy, he saved Grandpa’s life, he’s taken over my workload and I’m incredibly grateful. What’s not to like?’
‘The word though,’ Maggie said thoughtfully, ‘was love.’
‘As if that’s going to happen.’ She let the clip on the file she was reading close with a snap. ‘I imagine he’ll be leaving tomorrow now I’m back.’
‘But you...’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Maggie, please don’t.’ To her horror she found she was suddenly close to tears. She closed her eyes and her friend was right there, giving her a hug.
‘Hey, Elsa, sweetheart...’
‘It’s okay.’ She let herself savour her friend’s hug for a moment and then pulled away, gathering herself together. ‘This is just a reaction. From homecoming. From worry about Grandpa.’
‘Nothing at all to do with Marc?’
‘Maybe,’ she admitted. ‘But surely I’m allowed to have the same sort of crush that Dottie has? It’s been a long couple of weeks and I’m overwrought. Marc’s been great and I’ve let myself fantasise a little. There’s nothing else to it.’
‘No,’ Maggie said thoughtfully. ‘Of course there’s nothing else. That’d require you putting yourself before the island, maybe even before your grandpa. As if that’d ever happen.’
‘And it’d require interest on his part.’ It was a snap, and she caught herself. She’d spent twelve stressful days in Sydney trying to figure out her future. What she didn’t need now was her friend imagining a non-existent romantic interest to complicate things even further.
‘You know, Tony’s started to go out with Kylie from the bakery,’ Maggie told her, still thoughtful. ‘He’s obviously given up on you.’
‘Bully for Tony.’
‘So who else is in the offing?’
‘There’s no one,’ she replied before she could help herself.
‘Then why not do a little more than fantasising? Marc’s here and he’s lovely and he’s not attached. He’s just split up with his girlfriend and...’
‘Have you been grilling him?’
‘Of course,’ Maggie said, grinning. ‘Why not? So the field is clear. Why not go for it?’
‘Because he’s going back to Sydney and my life is here.’
‘Your life might not be able to be here much longer. You need to face facts, love.’
‘But not now,’ Elsa said with a weary sigh. ‘Leave it, Maggie. There are so many complications in my life anyway. Where would I find time for romance?’
‘What’s wrong with tonight? He’s here. He’s available. If I was twenty years younger I’d go for it.’
‘Maggie!’
‘Chicken.’
‘I’d rather be a chicken than a dead hen.’
‘And I’d rather have a wild fling with a gorgeous doctor than be a chicken,’ Maggie said, and chuckled and headed back to the wards.
Elsa was left floundering. A wild fling? She’d never had such a thing. He’d be gone in the next couple of days. How could she possibly expose her heart like that?
She headed through to her house, adjoining the hospital. The locals had been in as soon as they’d learned she and Robert were home, and casseroles and cakes were lined up on the bench.
The islanders had helped her for ever, she thought as she sorted them. They’d supported her grandpa in raising her. They’d helped cover the cost of her medical training.
A wild fling? She thought of Maggie’s words and rejected them. A fling and then what? It’d leave her unhappy, unsettled, ungrateful for the life she needed to live.
‘At least I’ll never go hungry if I stay here,’ she told Sherlock—who was already looking tubbier after two weeks of islander care—and heard the if that she’d just said.
Ouch.
Robert was asleep. She roused him. They ate one of the casseroles together but he was silent throughout, and then he headed straight back to bed. The last few days seemed to have aged him ten years or more.
She washed and wiped, then let Sherlock out. There was a brief bark and she thought there must be a possum on the veranda. She should chase it off to protect her grapevin
es and then she thought, Who cares about grapevines?
She felt totally, absolutely discombobulated. Then she walked outside, and if it was possible to feel even more discombobulated, she did.
Marc was sitting on the back step, under the outside light. Just sitting.
‘Marc!’
‘Hey,’ he said, rising and backing away a little. ‘It’s only me. I know this looks like stalking, but I didn’t want to interrupt you and your grandpa. We need to talk, so I thought—what would I do if I’d been off this island for twelve days? I’d want to soak it up, that’s what. So I decided to come here and wait.’
She eyed him with suspicion that was definitely justified. ‘So you just guessed where I might be?’ she ventured. ‘It wasn’t Maggie who told you I mostly drink a glass of wine out on my back step after dinner?’
‘Okay, it might have been,’ he confessed, and he sent her a lopsided smile that did something to her heart that she somehow had to ignore. He motioned to a bottle and two glasses set out on the top step. ‘I brought these. Just in case.’
She harrumphed her indignation at her scheming friend. ‘I don’t believe Maggie.’
‘She’s great.’
‘She’s incorrigible.’
‘But she’s still great.’
‘Yeah,’ she said, casting him another suspicious glare, but then she succumbed. This was her porch after all, and there was wine. She plonked herself down on the top step and filled a glass and then filled one for him. ‘Everyone’s great. I have seventeen casseroles jammed into the freezer, that’s how great everyone is. I won’t have to cook for a month.’
‘Lucky you.’ He sat down beside her. Not too close. Still giving her space. Sherlock, glorying in having his mistress back, but also extremely pleased to see his new friend, wriggled in between them.
Silence. The warmth of the night closed over them. The surf below the house provided the faint hush of waves. The moon had flung a ribbon of silver out over the water. A bush turkey was scratching somewhere in the bushes—she could hear its faint rustle.
This man had her so off-balance. The concerns that had been building over the last twelve days were still with her.
Marc’s presence here tonight wasn’t helping a bit.
It was Marc who finally broke the silence. ‘Elsa, I’ve been thinking,’ he told her. ‘I came to tell you I can take another two weeks off before I need to return to Sydney. You don’t need to jump back into work straight away. Give yourself some space. Your grandpa needs you.’
‘Everyone needs me.’ It was said flatly, an inescapable fact.
There was another moment’s silence. And then, ‘You know,’ Marc said softly into the stillness, ‘I could get to need you, too.’
And with that, all the complications of the islanders’ needs, her grandfather’s needs, fell away. There was so much in Marc’s statement it took her breath away.
She sat with her wine glass in her hand, but she could well have dropped it. She was looking out to sea but seeing nothing. There was some sort of fog in her mind. Some dense mist that meant she couldn’t make sense of what he’d just said.
She didn’t want to make sense of it?
‘I... That’s not very helpful,’ she said at last because, for some stupid reason, the first thing that came into her head wasn’t rejection. It was simply impossibility.
In answer he lifted the glass from her suddenly limp hand and set it aside. Then he took her hand in his. He didn’t tug her to face him, though. He simply intertwined their fingers and let the silence envelop them again.
His hand was strong. Warm. Compelling.
Impossible.
The word was slamming round and round her head, like a metal ball bashing against the sides as it bounced. It hurt.
‘Elsa, you can’t continue to do this alone,’ he said softly at last. ‘You know you can’t. I’ve been talking to Maggie. She says you were barely managing before Robert had this attack. She said the walk you went on when you found me was the first time you’d taken time off for weeks.’
‘What’s that got to do...’
‘With you and me? Nothing,’ he told her. ‘Except everything.’
‘You’re not offering to come here and help, are you?’
‘I’d love to say I would, but no. I’m a cardiologist, not a family doctor. I need to go where my skills are most needed. In two weeks we have new interns starting rotation at the hospital, so I need to be back in Sydney.’
‘Two weeks’ medical help would be great,’ she told him, struggling desperately to sound practical. ‘But where does that fit with what you’re saying about need?’
‘I’m talking of possibilities in the future.’ He spread his hands. ‘Elsa, I come from a background that’s emotionally barren, to say the least. My parents were rich and dysfunctional, and they used money as a substitute for affection. The way I feel about you has me confused. Blindsided, if you like. You and me...’
‘There is no you and me.’
‘There might be. I have no idea, but the way I’m feeling...isn’t it worth exploring?’
She was well out of her comfort zone now, feeling as if she were swimming in uncharted waters, towards what seemed like a whirlpool.
‘The way you’re feeling?’ She intended her voice to sound mocking, but she was mocking herself as well as him. There was no choice but to mock the impossibility of what he was saying. ‘You’ve known me for what, four days?’
‘We’ve talked every day while you were in Sydney.’
They had. Every night after Robert slept she’d rung him, ostensibly to check if there were any medical problems on the island. Which she knew there weren’t. Or he’d rung to consult on something she knew he didn’t really need to consult with her about. In the end they’d abandoned reasons and simply talked. She’d sat on her balcony in her anonymous hospital relatives’ apartment and she’d talked to him as a friend.
Only now he felt like more than a friend.
When had that line been crossed?
It hadn’t, she told herself frantically. It couldn’t.
She needed to get a grip.
‘Marc, what we’re both feeling... It’s just that we’ve both been thrown into fraught situations,’ she managed. ‘I’ve been frightened and stressed, and you’ve been a godsend. You came here for hours, with plans to head off for a glamorous holiday, with glamorous friends...a glamorous girlfriend.’
‘And found a friend who’s maybe not so glamorous,’ he said seriously. ‘But a friend who’s beautiful. Who’s caring, brave, funny, devoted...’
‘To my island. To my people.’
‘There’s a complication.’
‘You think?’ She almost snapped it at him. ‘If this really was...a thing...’
‘It’s interesting, this thing,’ he said, and his eyes were smiling. Oh, that smile... ‘We can’t define it. To be honest, I’m all at sea with what I’m feeling, yet maybe I know what it might be.’
‘Well, it can’t be,’ she said. ‘And if it is...’ She struggled to find a way to say what she had no words for. ‘If this...thing...turns out to be, I don’t know, more than just a passing thing, then where would we go from there?’
‘Anywhere you like.’
‘Like that’s possible.’ Anger came to her aid then, and it helped. ‘You work in one of the most prestigious coronary care units in the world. I work on this island.’
‘But you need to leave.’ His words were gentle enough, but behind them she heard a note of implacability. ‘Elsa, you know this island needs more than one doctor, and your grandpa can’t keep working. I know the island will hardly support another doctor who needs a full wage, but there are medical couples who might well jump at the lifestyle. Couples who’d like the opportunity for one to work part-time. For the island’s sake, Elsa, you need to open up th
at opportunity.’
‘By leaving?’
‘By leaving.’ It was said flatly. A truth that hurt.
‘But how do I know any other doctor would give my islanders the care they deserve?’ She’d thought this through—of course she had. She’d spent a long time in Sydney contemplating her future. ‘What if some nine-to-fiver takes over? Where would my island be then? So what’s the choice? If I leave here and make Grandpa safer, the islanders would be at risk and Grandpa would be deeply unhappy. If I stay here I need to accept that Grandpa will probably die earlier. But Grandpa and I have discussed it and it’s no choice at all. He wants to stay.’
‘So where does that leave you personally? Or...us?’ His eyes were still on hers, serious, questioning. ‘Maybe that’s what we need to find out.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘I think you do. This thing we’re feeling...’
‘I don’t want...’ But her voice trailed off. She didn’t want what? A nebulous something. A problem that had no solution?
This man?
All of him was compelling, she thought. He was drawing her into some sweet web she had no hope of escaping. But it was a web she had to escape, because her grandfather’s happiness, the security of the islanders, depended on it.
‘Marc...’
‘You know, I don’t understand it either,’ he said, and there was a note of uncertainty in his voice that told her he was speaking the truth. ‘Honestly, Elsa, I didn’t expect to feel like this about someone so...’
‘Unsuitable,’ she finished for him, but he shook his head.
‘You know that’s not true. But different, yes. I’ve been brought up without family ties. My father was indifferent to his family, committed to his work. My mother was loyal in her own way—sort of—but her work and the mountains always came first. I was essentially raised by servants. But the way you feel about your grandpa...’
‘It’s normal.’
‘It’s great.’
‘It’s no big deal. It’s just called love.’
Mistletoe Kiss with the Heart Doctor Page 14