The Marriage Gamble

by Meredith Webber

  “You haven’t been crying, have you?”

  Warm brown eyes peered at him across the top of the towel.

  “Crying? Why on earth would I be crying? I’ve been running around with paint on my face all day—you told me so, remember—so I thought I’d wash it off.”

  Jacinta was pleased the excuse sounded so reasonable. She could hardly have told him splashing her face with cold water had been an attempt to cure the tingles he caused.

  But first his voice, then the sight of him, had brought them back a thousandfold.

  She was battling the renewed attack when she saw the blood on the snowy white handkerchief he held in his hand. She crossed the room and took his hand in hers, saw the tiny pinprick and shook her head.

  “Is that why you came in? Do you need a plaster to make it better?”

  She looked up at him, not really expecting a reply, and saw something in the gray-green—or was it gray-blue now?—of his eyes that stopped both the tingles and her breath. She couldn’t bring herself to release his hand—and her brain had stopped working.

  Also her lungs.

  And possibly her heart.

  Dear Reader,

  On a trip to western Australia some years ago, my husband, who always seems to need an emergency visit to a strange doctor when we’re away from home, had cause to visit an inner-city medical clinic. The image of that subterranean waiting room remained as a vivid picture in my head, to reappear when I began to think about this book. And once I had my setting, I knew I needed a heroine who was totally committed to the well-being of her patients, seeing them as people, not isolated ailments. And so Jacinta was born.

  Entrepreneurial doctors made big news here in Australia back in the 1980s, and though the twenty-four-hour clinics furnished with leather sofas and lit by chandeliers have now largely disappeared, medicine continues to provide business opportunities for people who like that kind of challenge. So matching the two—the businessman and the dedicated doctor—seemed to offer plenty of problems for the pair to overcome if they wanted to explore the attraction between them.

  Believe me, there were times I didn’t think they’d make it, but they came through in the end. I hope you enjoy their journey.

  Meredith

  The Marriage Gamble

  Meredith Webber

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  EPILOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  MICHAEL TRENT stood in front of the painting, which three eminent artists and critics had adjudged the best in the exhibition, and frowned. He hadn’t yet seen the bill for the air fares and accommodation for these same judges, but he guessed it would be hefty, though not as hefty as the acquisition prize of twenty thousand dollars Trent Medical Clinics, as sponsors of the art award, had offered.

  ‘A cross-section of a wart, with a phloxine-tartrazine stain, seen through a pathologist’s electron microscope.’

  He was startled by the voice at his elbow, but amused enough by the description to smile.

  ‘I’ll admit to not spending a lot of time studying cross-sections of warts,’ he said to the diminutive brunette who’d materialised beside him to offer her opinion of the striated lines of colour, broken by spotty blobs of darker paint, ‘but I had been thinking about slides and smears and images from my early student days.’

  He paused, unconsciously assimilating twin arcs of dark eyebrows, eyes so brown they were almost black, a neat nose and sweetly curving lips—glossed but not coloured—before he added, ‘Is it as bad as I think it is?’

  His fellow viewer tipped her head to one side as if to better consider the painting. She had dark hair, pulled loosely back and held with a clasp, and the movement brought an attractive sheen to it.

  ‘I suppose the actual composition isn’t too bad—I mean, it’s got a kind of balanced look with those amoeba-like things on one side and the striated muscle fibres on the other. And the main colour combinations of pink and purple, while not what I’d choose for home decorating, aren’t as gloomy as the all black and grey masterpiece that won the highly commended award. It looks like diseased lung tissue.’

  Her opinion of the highly commended so matched his own that he was about to introduce himself and ask her which of the exhibits she did like when Jaclyn tapped his shoulder.

  ‘Darling, you simply must meet Beau Delpratt. He’s so delighted with the win he’s offered to do a complementary painting to hang opposite this one.’

  ‘Complimentary as in free?’ Michael asked, and Jaclyn gave a trill of laughter.

  ‘Oh, darling, as if you could expect Delpratt to give his talent away.’

  Jaclyn’s hand slipped to his forearm and she applied a slight pressure which, while unspoken, definitely meant, Come with me now.

  Prepared to follow—after all, he’d known talking to the artist would be part of his duties for the evening—he was momentarily distracted by the word ‘Talent?’ murmured in a huskily mocking voice behind him.

  He turned back but the brunette was still studying the painting, so motionless he thought he must have imagined hearing the word. As he threaded his way through the crowd of expensively dressed men and women, responding to greetings and praise with a nod or murmured ‘thank you’, he wondered who she was and whether, in a crush like this, he might happen to meet up with her again.

  ‘Great start!’ Jacinta muttered to herself. Coming to the art show opening had seemed such a good way to meet the big boss, Michael Trent. Then she’d seen the painting to which he was giving the major prize and had blurted out the first thing that had come into her head.

  Or maybe it had been the shock of seeing the man himself. In the flesh. For the first time.

  Hunky men had been so thin on the ground in her vicinity in recent years she’d begun to think they only existed between the covers of expensive magazines.

  To be honest, healthy men of any type had been thin on the ground, which probably explained the tingly feeling his voice had generated in her stomach. She’d always been a sucker for deep gravelly voices.

  So she’d shot off her mouth about the prize-winning painting!

  Though he hadn’t seemed put out by her remark, rather the opposite, in fact, which had encouraged her to make an even more derogatory remark about the second place-getter.

  Then the willowy blonde had appeared and effortlessly removed him from in front of the painting, and Jacinta was left staring blankly at the pink and purple swirls, which failed to provide any inspiration for her next move.

  Following him through the crowd and appearing at his side a second time wouldn’t offer the element of surprise she’d hoped might lead to a conversation that ranged beyond the artwork on the walls. But trying to get an appointment with him at his office hadn’t worked and neither had phoning him at home. The man was surrounded by more minders than Michael Jackson!

  No! It had to be tonight. Somehow she had to get close to him again.

  ‘Drink, madam?’

  A waiter pressed a tray towards her, using his free hand to indicate the different drinks on offer.

  ‘Champagne, dry white wine, Chardonnay.’

  ‘Not right now,’ Jacinta told him, as the germ of an idea sprouted in her mind.

  The drink waiters wore black trousers and charcoal grey shirts—no doubt to differentiate them from the dinner-suited male guests. But the women serving finger food were in black—long skirts, and roll-neck, long-sleeved, skivvy tops. Not so
different to Jacinta’s dress with its high neck and long sleeves.

  She made her purposefully towards the kitchen area, where the caterers were refilling platters to pass around again. Given his opinion of Beau Delpratt’s winning entry, Michael Trent might welcome a diversion. And as he chose between dainty little omelette rolls filled with sour cream and smoked salmon or herbed pikelets topped with horseradish cream and tiny prawns, she could introduce herself and tell him she had to speak to him about Abbott Road. Quickly explain she’d been unable to get an appointment any other way.

  Should be a cinch!

  So, why, as she made her way towards him, was her stomach churning like a washing machine?

  No, washing machines sloshed while her stomach’s behaviour was more a grumble of uneasiness. What else might churn?

  Seeking a suitable metaphor took her closer to where Michael Trent’s height made him easily identifiable, but the knot of people around him added to the anxiety that had replaced the tingle in Jacinta’s midsection.

  ‘Ah, more food,’ someone on the outskirts of the knot cried, and half a dozen hands reached out to scoop the small delicacies off the plate.

  ‘There’s plenty coming,’ Jacinta assured them, while inwardly fuming at the gluttony which was rapidly diminishing her excuse to get close to Dr Trent. ‘These were for the officials,’ she tried, wanting to slap their hands away, but one man was passing pikelets to all his friends, and before the words were out, all she had left on the platter were a few sprigs of parsley and a tired lettuce leaf.

  ‘It’s a wonder they didn’t eat those as well,’ she muttered to herself as she pushed her way back to the kitchen to refill the tray and start again. ‘And the platter, the pigs!’

  ‘What’s this, Jazzy? You moonlighting as a waitress? Surely those days are over for you.’

  Adam Lockyer accosted her before she was halfway back to her destination.

  ‘Ah, but you’re working for Mike now, I hear. Is this his way of making staff feel part of the empire? Expecting them to help out at functions?’

  Adam was smiling jovially down at her, while his blue eyes flicked an admiring glance up and down her person. He really was the world’s worst flirt!

  Her mind was trying to devise a new strategy so she wasn’t paying a hundred per cent attention to Adam’s light-hearted prattle, but the name Mike was recurring with regularity and finally registered in her frustrated brain.

  ‘Mike? You call Michael Trent Mike? You know him?’

  Adam looked a little put out, no doubt by Jacinta’s incredulity.

  ‘Why shouldn’t I know him? We’re both doctors after all. In fact, we trained together, down in Sydney. Knew him from playing rugby before that. He was a state player and could have gone on to play for Australia. Don’t know why he dropped out.’

  Jacinta could have told him. She’d studied every bit of information she could find on Michael Trent, but she guessed Adam wasn’t particularly interested in knowing anyway, and right now he could be put to better use.

  ‘I’ll just return this tray, then you can introduce me to him,’ she told Adam, taking hold of his arm so he couldn’t escape her. ‘Make it casual. Let him think we’re together, and you’re greeting him as an old friend and introducing the woman you’re with.’

  Adam gazed down at her with such perplexity she suspected the task would be beyond him. How the man had ever made it through medical school…

  ‘It’s not hard,’ she assured him, then a sudden doubt assailed her. ‘You haven’t already said hello to him, have you? Or introduced him to your date?’

  ‘I don’t have a date,’ Adam said, beaming now she’d asked him something simple enough for him to answer. ‘I always come to these things alone. Never fail to meet someone who wants to go on afterwards.’

  He smiled hopefully at her.

  ‘I don’t suppose you’d—’

  Jacinta shook her head.

  ‘We tried it years ago, Adam,’ she reminded him. ‘After Becky and Paul’s wedding. One date, and we both realised we were only ever going to be friends.’

  ‘Most women would have been thrilled to spend the day in the champagne tent at a big race meeting,’ he grumbled, while Jacinta deposited the tray on the serving bench, then took her friend by the arm and steered him back towards their destination.

  ‘I’m not most women,’ she reminded him. ‘Now, have you got it right? We breeze up to him, you do the “old mate” thing and introduce me. Then, if you wouldn’t mind distracting anyone who’s hanging around him—you could tell that story about the Irish basketballer—I can have a quick word with Michael.’

  ‘But you work for him—you could have a quick word anytime.’

  Jacinta sighed. Of all the allies she could have chosen, she’d been stuck with Adam, to whom the world was black and white and whose interests—outside paediatrics, at which he was very good—were limited to women, racehorses and sporting stars.

  ‘I work in the Abbott Road clinic which is light years away from the rarefied air of his Forest Glen home. And he’s so hemmed in by staff it’s impossible to get a memo through to him.’

  Or if he does get it, he ignores it, she added darkly, but only in her head.

  ‘So you want to talk to him about something?’ Adam said, far too loudly given they’d now reached the outskirts of the crowd around one of the city’s wealthiest men.

  Uttering a silent prayer for patience, Jacinta smiled and nodded, then, as Adam’s broad shoulders forced a wedge through the cluster, she clutched at the bottom of his jacket and followed in his wake.

  ‘Mike, old man! Long time no see!’

  I could have taken a bet he’d say that, Jacinta thought, but Adam had got her to where she wanted to be so she could hardly criticise his conversational gambits.

  ‘How’s everything going? I heard you’d opened another clinic. That’s five or six, is it?’

  Michael Trent greeted Adam with a smile and hearty handshake, asked how the ankle-biter business was going and generally seemed pleased to see his old rugby friend.

  ‘Oh, almost forgot!’ Adam said, when he and Michael had relived several ancient games and played ‘do you remember’ about their university lecturers. ‘Got someone I want you to meet. Very special little woman, this one.’

  He hauled Jacinta forward before she had time to kick him, hard, in the shins. Little woman indeed!

  ‘Jacinta Ford. Michael Trent.’

  ‘Ah, the wart!’ Michael Trent said, holding out his hand towards Jacinta. ‘Jacinta—that’s a pretty name.’

  ‘But too much of a mouthful,’ Adam put in. ‘Just call her Jazzy!’

  Jacinta, who’d spent three months of her hospital training working under Adam and trying to convince him she hated her childhood nickname, sent Michael Trent a look that dared him to try it.

  ‘I prefer Jacinta,’ she said in her coolest voice, then remembered her ulterior motive in meeting the man and smiled to make up for the coolness.

  Mike accepted the small hand she offered and murmured a polite greeting, while random thoughts flashed through his head. How delicate, almost fragile, her hand felt in his much larger one, how her smile lit up her face, how strange he’d met up with her again without having to go seek her.

  Ah, but she was with Adam Lockyer, the man voted most likely to succeed—with women—way back when they’d gone through medical school together.

  The killjoy in him squelched the pleasure.

  He was consoling himself with the thought that personally he preferred blondes to brunettes, and that small women always made him feel overly large and clumsy, when he realised she was talking to him.

  Urgently.

  ‘So, you see, if I could just set up a time to talk to you,’ she was saying, when Jaclyn, with perfect timing, once again grasped his arm. ‘I know we could work something out.’

  Brown eyes, luminously large in her small face, gazed beguilingly up into his, while a quite becoming flush lit th
e clear skin.

  ‘Darling, they’re ready for the presentation,’ Jaclyn was saying in his ear, while her hand was exerting a similar pressure on his arm. ‘We really must go.’

  She smiled apologetically at Adam—women always smiled at Adam—but ignored his companion, and it was partly out of embarrassment at Jaclyn’s behaviour that Mike gave in.

  ‘No problem,’ he assured Jacinta-not-Jazzy. ‘Phone my secretary and set it up.’

  He turned to follow his arm, which Jaclyn was tugging through the crowd, but his way was blocked by the small woman who’d stepped abruptly into his path. The beguiling brown eyes were now shooting sparks of anger and the becoming flush in her cheeks had turned to red flags of rage.

  ‘I have phoned your secretary seventeen times, I have spoken to every underling and yes-man in your employ. I have sent you written memos, emails and faxes, all requesting an appointment and all answered by faceless minions who assure me you understand my concerns and are taking them into consideration.’

  She stamped her foot at that stage, but missed the floor and got his toe—the one with the ingrown toenail he kept meaning to have fixed.

  ‘Shit!’

  The word reverberated through the room, causing beautifully clad women and elegantly suited men to turn towards him. Not that he cared. He was hopping up and down, clutching at his foot, wanting only to take off his shoe and sit for a while until the agony subsided.

  The cause of his problems, meanwhile, gave him a stricken look then, perhaps realising his pain went beyond a simple toe-stamp, dropped down, wresting his injured foot from his hands and balancing it on her knee while she carefully undid the laces of his shoes.

  ‘Leave it alone!’ He managed to put enough menace into the whispered order for her to stop, which was just as well because if she’d removed the shoe and hurt the toe in doing it, he’d probably have strangled her.

  She looked up enquiringly at him, her fingers still hovering over the laces.

  Pretending a calmness he was far from feeling, he added, with less menace but sufficient warning to make his message clear, ‘It’s only throbbing. It’ll get better soon. If you take the shoe off, it will hurt more putting it back on.’