by Fiona Lowe
Jen nodded, her demeanour friendly yet professional. ‘Fair enough. I can get nursing staff in to staff Theatre and Recovery, but that isn’t going to be enough. It’s the anaesthetic registrar’s weekend off and he’s not due back from Bali until this evening’s flight.’
Gobsmacked, Poppy stared at her, not knowing whether to be more stunned that a person could fly direct to Bali from the middle of nowhere or the fact that it left the town without an anaesthetist. ‘Surely there’s someone else?’
‘Well, yes, technically there is, but …’
A tight band of tension burned behind Poppy’s eyes. Hell, she really had come to Mars. She didn’t have time for staff politics, especially if they got in the way of her doing her job and proving to William that she deserved the chief of surgery position back in Perth. ‘Just ring the doctor and get him or her here, and leave the rest to me.’
Jen gave a wry smile. ‘If you’re sure, I can do that.’
‘Of course, I’m sure.’ Poppy headed back to her patient, shaking her head. It seemed a very odd thing to say but, then again, she was a long way from Perth. She busied herself inserting an IV into Sam’s arm, administered Maxolon for his nausea and pethidine for the pain.
‘This will have you feeling better soon.’ ‘Thanks, Doc.’ ‘No problem.’
She clicked her pen and started scrawling a drug order onto the chart when she heard voices coming from the direction of the nurses’ station. She couldn’t make out Jen’s words but could hear her soft and conciliatory tone, followed quickly by a very terse, deep voice asking, ‘Why didn’t you call me first?’
‘Because Ms Stanfield was here and I thought I could save you—’
As Poppy hung the chart on the end of the trolley, Jen’s voice was cut off by the male voice. The anger was unmistakable and his words hit painfully hard. ‘Save me? I don’t need you or anyone else in this town making decisions for me, do you understand? I’m the on-call doctor today and that means I get called.’
Sam’s head swung towards the raised voices, his expression full of interest.
Staff politics. She’d asked Jen to call in this guy so she needed to be the one to deal with him. ‘Back in a minute, Sam.’ Poppy grabbed the cubicle curtains and deliberately pulled them open with a jerk, making the hangers swish against the metal with a rushing ping to remind Jen and the unknown doctor that there was a patient in the department. She marched briskly to the desk.
‘Oh, Ms Stanfield.’ Jen glanced around the man standing with his back to Poppy. Her organised demeanour had slipped slightly but instead of looking angry or crushed at being spoken to as if she was a child, her expression was one of resignation tinged with sadness and regret. ‘Poppy Stanfield, meet Dr. Matt Albright, Head of ED.’
The tall, broad-shouldered man turned slowly, his sun-streaked chestnut hair moving with him. It was longer than the average male doctor’s and the style was either deliberately messy-chic or overdue for a cut. A few strands fell forward, masking his left cheek, but his right side was fully exposed, and olive skin hollowed slightly under a fine but high cheekbone before stretching over a perfectly chiselled nose. A dark five-o’clock shadow circled tightly compressed lips, leaving Poppy in no doubt of his masculinity.
With a jolting shock she realised he wasn’t handsome—he was disconcertingly beautiful in a way that put everyone else into shadow. In ancient times he would have been sculpted in marble and raised onto a pedestal as the epitome of beauty. Poppy found herself staring as if she was in a gallery admiring a painting where the artist had created impossibly stunning good looks that didn’t belong on battle-scarred earth.
He was heart-stoppingly gorgeous and she’d bet anything women fell at his feet. Once she would have too but thankfully, due to years of practice, she was now immune and not even a quiver of attraction moved inside her.
Nothing ever does any more.
Shut up. Work excites me. She extended her hand towards him. ‘Matt.’
His hand gripped hers with a firm, brisk shake, and a faint tingling rush started, intensifying as it shot along her arm. Immune, are you?
Compressed nerve from a too-firm grip, that’s all.
‘Poppy.’ He raised his espresso-brown eyes to meet her gaze. She expected to see at least a flicker of interest in a new colleague, almost certainly a calculating professional sizing-up, and, at worst, a derisive flare at the fact she was a surgeon and a woman. None of it worried her because she knew exactly how to handle the men she worked with—she’d had years of experience.
But what she saw was so unexpected that it sucked the air from her lungs, almost pulling her with it. A short, sharp flame flickered in his eyes for a split second, illuminating hunger, but as it faded almost as fast as it had flared, she caught deep and dark swirling shadows before clouds rolled in briskly, masking all emotion.
She swayed on her heels as his hunger called up a blast of her own heat but as she glimpsed the misery in his eyes, she shivered and a jet of arctic cold scudded through her. Fire and ice collided; lust and pain coiling together before spiralling down to touch a place that had been firmly closed off and abandoned since—
She abruptly pulled her hand out of his, breaking his touch and moving her gaze to his left shoulder. There you go, simple solution: no eye contact. She didn’t want to care about what hid behind that flawless face and now that his heat wasn’t flowing through her, she marshalled her wayward thoughts and valiantly recomposed herself. This was no time to be discomfited. She needed to be in control and in charge, her future depended on it.
‘As Jen will have explained, I need you to anaesthetise Sam Dennison.’
Long, lean fingers on his right hand crossed his wide and casually clad chest, flicking at the sleeve band of his white T-shirt. ‘This is my department and I need to examine my patient before any decisions are made.’ He turned and walked towards the cubicle.
Poppy matched his stride. ‘And as Bundallagong’s resident surgeon for the next ninety days or less, it’s my considered opinion that—’
‘You’ve had time to examine Sam and now you need to extend that courtesy to me.’
He didn’t alter his pace and before she could reply, Matt Albright stepped through the curtains and closed them in her face.
CHAPTER TWO
MATT could hear the new surgeon pacing, her black heels clicking an impatient rhythm against the linoleum floor. Well, she could just wait. He wasn’t a stickler for protocol but Jen had overstepped the mark by not calling him in to examine Sam first. God, he was sick of the town walking on eggshells around him and trying to protect him when all he wanted was normality. Yeah, and what exactly is that these days?
‘You OK, Doc?’ The young miner lay propped up against a bank of pillows, his eyes slightly glazed from the opiate pain relief.
Hell, if a spaced-out patient noticed he was shaking with frustration then things were really spinning out.
Matt, how can you always be so calm? Lisa’s slightly accusing voice sounded faintly in his head. But that conversation had taken place in another lifetime, before everything he’d held dear had been brutally stolen from him. He hadn’t known calm in over a year.
‘I’m fine.’ Pull the other one. ‘But you’re not. That appendix rumbling again?’
‘Yeah, although whatever that other doctor gave me is good stuff.’ Sam grinned happily.
Matt smiled as he examined him. ‘Have you got any family up here?’
Sam shook his head. ‘Nah, came for the job and the money.’
‘I’ll arrange for a phone so you can talk to your mum because there’s a very high chance you’ll be parting with your appendix. We’ll fast you from midnight and observe you overnight.’
‘OK.’
‘Any questions?’
‘Nah, you explained it all last time and then it got better.’ Sam’s eyes fluttered closed as the drugs really kicked in, tempering any concern over the surgery that he might have.
Matt decided
he’d explain it all again to him later. He pulled the curtains open and the new surgeon immediately ceased pacing, but she held her wide shoulders square and tight. It struck him that there was nothing soft about this woman except for her name.
And her mouth.
Guilt kicked him hard. His initial top-to-toe glance of her had stalled unexpectedly on her mouth and a flash of lust-filled heat had sparked momentarily, shocking him deeply. There’d only ever been one woman for him, and until ten minutes ago no one else had ever registered on his radar, let alone elicited such a response. But there’d been something about Poppy Stanfield’s plump mouth that had held him mesmerised. Lips that peaked in an inviting bow were the colour of crushed strawberries and hinted at tasting like an explosion of seductive sweetness. He’d almost licked his own in response.
It was a totally ridiculous and over-the-top reaction given the contrast between the softness of the lips and the precise and no-nonsense words they formed. Everything else about Poppy Stanfield was sharp angles and harsh lines. Her long black hair was pulled straight back exposing a high and intelligent forehead. Black hair, black brows, black suit, black shoes; the monotone was only broken by her lush mouth and the most unexpectedly vivid blue eyes.
Eyes that were fixed on him, full of questions and backlit with steely determination.
He deliberately sat on the desk and put a foot up on a chair, the position screaming casual in stark contrast to her starchy demeanour. For some crazy reason he had to concentrate really hard to get her name correct because, apart from being the colour of her lips, Poppy didn’t suit her at all.
Her fingers tugged sharply at the bottom of her suit jacket, which was ludicrously formal attire for Bundallagong, and she seemed to rise slightly on her toes so she wasn’t much shorter than him. ‘Dr Albright.’
‘You’re in the bush now, Poppy.’
Her gaze drifted to the red dust on his boots before moving up to his face. ‘Oh, I’m very well aware of that.’
Her tone oozed urban superiority and for the first time in months something other than anger and despair penetrated his permanent sadness—the buzz of impending verbal sparring. No one had faced up to him or even questioned him since Lisa. Hell, half the time his friends and colleagues had trouble meeting his gaze and, like Jen, their well-meaning attempts to help only stifled him. But he had a citified stranger in front of him who knew nothing about him and he realised with unexpected relish that he was looking forward to this upcoming tussle.
He met Poppy’s baby-blue eyes with a deadpan ex-pression. ‘Excellent. Oh, and by the way, we use first names here even when we’re ticked off.’
Her eyes flashed but her mouth pursed as if she was working hard not to smile. It was the first sign that a sense of humour might lurk under all the superficial blackness.
‘Thank you for that tip, Matt. So you agree with my diagnosis that Sam has appendicitis?’
‘I do.’ He tilted his head ever so slightly in acquiescence. He didn’t have any problem with her diagnosis, just her modus operandi. ‘The pain he was presented with last month has intensified.’
Poppy schooled her face not to show the sweet victory that spun inside her. ‘So we’re in agreement. He’s been fasting due to his nausea so Jen can prep him for Theatre and—’
‘I said I agreed with your diagnosis.’ He raised one brow. ‘That doesn’t translate into agreeing with your treatment plan.’
The coolness of his tone didn’t come close to soothing the hot and prickly frustration that bristled inside her, and she silently cursed William for sending her to the middle of nowhere where men ruled and women had no choice but to follow. ‘So you’re going to sit on it until his appendix bursts and we’re faced with dealing with peritonitis?’
Emotionless molasses-coloured eyes bored into her. ‘Not at all. He requires surgery and he’ll have it—tomorrow.’
So this is a power play: my turf versus your turf. ‘But he could deteriorate overnight and we’d have to come in anyway. Tomorrow is an unknown quantity, whereas right now it’s quiet, we’re both here, so why wait?’
‘Technically you don’t even start work until 8:00 a.m. tomorrow.’ ‘That’s semantics.’
He lowered his gaze and stared at her bright red suitcase stowed by the desk and then he moved the stare to her. ‘Is it? It’s Sunday and I would have thought seeing as you’ve only just arrived, you’d want to get settled in the house, hit the supermarket and fill your fridge.’
Something about his unflinching gaze made her feel like he saw not just the persona she showed the world but way beyond it and down deep into the depths she hadn’t allowed anyone to enter since Steven.
But he really didn’t want to—
I am so not doing this now!
She shut the voice up, hating that her hand had crept to the pendant that sat just below her throat. She forced her arm back by her side and her voice came out stiff and authoritative. ‘You don’t have to concern yourself with my domestic arrangements.’
‘Very true.’ He radiated a controlled aura that was an odd mix of dark and light, although the dark dominated. ‘But I do concern myself with my staff’s. They have lives outside work, Poppy.’ His expression intimated that he thought perhaps she didn’t. ‘This is not an emergency and therefore we are not interrupting their family time, their fishing and sailing time, and, for some, their afternoon naps.’
‘Afternoon naps?’ Her voice rose in disbelief as her brain tried unsuccessfully to wrap itself around such a foreign concept. ‘You’re joking.’
Matt gave a snort that sounded like a rusty laugh as his face creased stiffly into lines that bracketed his mouth and for a moment his lips broke their tight line. A streak of something close to warmth followed, giving life and character to his face, which up until this point had been almost a caricature of unmarred features.
Her gut lurched as a flicker of delicious shimmers moved through her and she wished he’d stop. Perfection she could resist. Deep life lines around those dark and empty eyes, not so much.
His expression neutralised as the shadows returned. ‘Life is slower here and, as you’ll discover, the humidity at this time of year really saps your energy.’
She thought of the chief of surgery job back in Perth and went back into battle. She knew this game and she didn’t plan to give an inch. ‘Nothing saps my energy. I’m here to work, not to relax.’ She reached for her briefcase and pulled out a folder. ‘In regard to staff, I have a surgical budget and my own staffing ratios, and it’s my call when to operate, not yours.’
‘It is, and come tomorrow, your first official day, when David, the anaesthetic registrar, is back on duty, you can order him about to your heart’s content. Today, as the ED doctor and the back-up anaesthetist, it’s my call. We’re not operating on Sam just so you can rush in, set a precedent and get some runs on the board.’
‘This has nothing to do with me and everything to do with patient care.’ She protested too quickly as his words hit far too close to home. Sam’s case technically wasn’t an emergency but it wasn’t strictly elective surgery either. She hated that he’d guessed at her need to operate so she could stake her claim as the incumbent surgeon, competent and in charge.
He slid to his feet, the movement as graceful as a gazelle’s but with the calculation of a panther. Everything about him screamed, I don’t believe you.
‘Should Sam’s condition change, I’ll call you straight away. Meanwhile, go stock your fridge and turn on the air-conditioning so you can sleep tonight.’
Her body vibrated with rage. ‘Don’t patronise me.’
Genuine surprise raced across his face and he gave a sigh filled with fatigue. ‘I’m not. I’m actually trying to help. Your life here will be a lot easier if you don’t get the staff off-side before you’ve officially started.’
She wanted to stay furious with him, she wanted to cast him in the role of obstructive male, but his gaze wasn’t combative and amid the darkness that hov
ered around him, she detected a sliver of goodwill. It totally confused her.
‘I see. Well, we may not agree about Sam but I take on board what you’re saying.’ She made herself say, ‘Thank you.’
‘No problem.’ His fingers pushed through his straight hair, the strands sliding over them like water on rocks.
With a shock she caught the glint of gold on his ring finger. How had she missed that? But it didn’t matter how or why—what was important was now she knew. Married men didn’t interest her.
It’s been a long time since an unmarried one interested you.
Get off my case!
She had a gut feeling that she and Matt Albright would probably spend the next ninety days disagreeing but now it would be without fear of those strange and unwanted shimmers. Working with Matt would be uncomplicated and all about the job, and that was what she did best.
She pulled out a business card and held it towards him.
‘This is my mobile number should Sam deteriorate, and meanwhile I’ll let you get back to your Sunday afternoon and your family.’
The goodwill vanished from his eyes as his lean body ceased all movement, and an eerie stillness hovered around him.
So much for her attempt at being polite. She couldn’t work him out.
The card hung between them for a moment and then he slowly raised his arm and plucked it from her fingers. ‘Right. See you around.’
‘I guess you will.’ What else was there to say?
‘Wait!’ Jen hurried over as two bloodied men supported and half dragged another man into the de partment.
‘What happened?’ Matt hauled his way back from the black despair Poppy’s innocent comment had plunged him into, hating that it had, and was glad to be able to focus on the patient.
‘Patient involved in a brawl, suspected head injury and possible fractures.’
He grabbed a gown and stifled a groan. In years gone by, drunken brawls had been exclusively Saturday night’s domain but the mining boom had brought more people into the town and some of them had more money than sense. This patient could have anything from a broken toe to a subdural haematoma, with a million possibilities in between.