‘I’ve resigned,’ she murmured, trying to put some distance between them, even if it wasn’t physical.
‘Have you?’ He sounded insultingly unconcerned at the news. ‘Don’t worry. We can unresign you tomorrow.’
‘Sorry?’
‘When you change your mind,’ he elaborated.
‘Why would I want to change my mind?’
‘Because you’re happy here.’ Pausing a moment, the fingers at her hair moved to caress her neck, making her flesh prickle. His voice dropped, soft yet husky. ‘Because it’s time to stop running.’
Kate stiffened in his hold. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Yes, you do.’ His fingers maintained their soothing caress, lulling her into a false sense of security. ‘Do you want to know where I’ve been?’
‘Not particularly,’ she lied, feeling the chuckle rumble inside him, her fingers defying her, unable to resist their own explorations over the warm, supple, hair-brushed skin of his chest.
‘I went to London.’
Kate tensed, her fingers stilling. ‘Really?’ Anxiety curled inside her.
‘Mmm.’
‘W-why?’ Her eyes closed as she tried to shut out what she feared was to come.
‘I had a very interesting talk with your father.’
Every particle of her being went rigid with shock and dismay. ‘Conor—’
‘Shh.’ He stilled her protests, his hold tightening as she struggled to draw away from him.
‘Why?’ she whispered again, a shiver of foreboding rippling through her.
‘I needed to understand,’ he explained, his fingers resuming their rhythmic caress. ‘And you need to talk.’
She shook her head, denying him, denying the emotions that threatened to overwhelm her. ‘I can’t.’
‘Yes, you can. You are the bravest, most courageous person I’ve ever met, Kate.’ His voice rang with sincerity and she was frightened at the sting of tears pricking her eyes, scared she couldn’t hold on. ‘I can’t imagine what it must have been like for you out there but I could never have coped as you did.’
‘But I didn’t cope,’ she interjected, emotion threatening to overwhelm her.
‘From what I heard, you held everything together in terrible circumstances until help came.’
The guilt and the helplessness and the fear threatened to well up all over again, her voice rising with self-recrimination. ‘There was so much death, so much killing. Such senseless waste. I should have helped more but I hadn’t a clue what I was doing. I panicked, Conor. Cool Kate, always so calm in a crisis, wanted to abandon ship, hide, die—anything to get out of there. Then I came home and I lost it, running away from everything like a coward because I can’t hack it any more.’
‘Oh, Katy, that’s not true,’ he murmured roughly, his arms tightening, his hands comforting. ‘Listen to me. You were alone in a terrifying and dangerous situation, trying to do things beyond your training level. You were physically exhausted, wounded, had little help and you were grieving for your brother and your colleagues. You were understandably scared and tired and ill. Yet you still carried on, saving as many lives as you could until help arrived. You did more—unspeakably more—than any one person could ever be expected to do. You are remarkable, Kate, and I’m so proud of you. Anyone would have been overtaken by the enormity of even a fraction of what you went through. It’s hardly surprising that reaction set in once it was over and your body just shut down. It was too much. And you still haven’t cried, you’re still holding it all inside. You have nothing to feel guilty for, you are not to blame. It’s time to let go. Time to acknowledge that you did what you could—and that that was truly amazing.’
‘No!’
‘Yes,’ he pressed, refusing her any respite. ‘You have to release this burden.’
She shook her head, trying to fight the emotion, to block out his rawly determined words. ‘I can’t,’ she cried, angry at him for pressuring her, panic clawing ever closer.
‘Why not?’
‘Because I’m scared it won’t stop, that I’ll never pick myself up again,’ she argued, her words catching, her body shaking with the effort of keeping herself together.
Gentle fingers stroked her face as he held her close, his voice husky in her ear. ‘I’ll always pick you up, Katy.’
‘Conor—’
‘Let it go. Trust me.’
She felt as if her last handhold had been ripped from her. The ground slipped away beneath her and she was in free fall. Tears started to flow, huge, hot tears coursing down her cheeks. It was like a dam had been breached, all her defences crumbling under the weight of the torrent, and everything came gushing out, all the pent-up pain, guilt, fear and grief. She turned in Conor’s arms, burrowing into him as she sobbed out the hurt.
‘It’s OK,’ he soothed, sounding as if he himself was on the point of cracking. ‘I’m here. I’ve got you. I’m not going to let anything happen to you.’
She had no idea how long the storm lasted but Conor held her, keeping her safe, his warmth and strength seeping into her. Almost without conscious thought or free will, she found herself telling him everything, all the things she had never been able to tell anyone else, that she had never come to terms with: the terror of the gunfire and shelling; the noise; the smells; the blood; the suffering; people dying all around her; the mindless cruelty; the loneliness; anger; fear; and always the guilt that she hadn’t been good enough.
‘I was so scared, so useless,’ she sobbed. ‘There was so much I couldn’t do.’
‘But so much you did do to help many, many people who would have had nothing had you not been there,’ he insisted quietly.
‘But what good did I do them, Conor? What kind of life did I give them?’ she demanded, wiping furiously at her tears. ‘I didn’t become a doctor to cut shattered limbs off innocent children.’
‘Oh, Kate.’ His voice was thick with answering emotion and he wrapped his arms more securely around her, as if trying to absorb her pain.
‘Wesley, he—’ She snapped off the words, unable to say it. ‘He what?’
She shook her head, ashamed of her feelings. ‘Nothing.’
‘You’re angry with him.’
‘Sometimes,’ she admitted, surprised anew at his perception. ‘I miss him so much. He was brave, foolishly so sometimes. I told him not to go after that final story but he wouldn’t listen. Everything was an adventure to him.’ Fresh emotion welled inside her. ‘I’m mad at him for leaving me there, for abandoning me, for not coming back. What does that make me?’
‘Human, Kate, like the rest of us.’
She sniffed, taking the umpteenth tissue he had offered her. ‘When I got home London seemed too oppressive and mad. Everything that had once been familiar and comfortable was suddenly alien and distressing. I’d lost a bit of weight, felt run down and stressed out.’
‘And you had your injury.’
‘Yes.’ A flush tinged her tear-stained cheeks, a very different kind of shiver rippling through her as his fingers slid under her T-shirt and caressed the scar on her side.
‘You didn’t take care of yourself,’ he chided.
‘There was only me, Conor, and medications were so short. Others had far more need of them than I did. It was a flesh wound—the bullet missed anything vital.’
She felt a tremor run through him as she talked about her injury. ‘It became infected?’ he asked with obvious concern.
‘Yes. But I’m fine now,’ she murmured, distracted by the feel of his touch on her skin.
‘I can understand why you wanted to shield your dad from all this, especially as he was grieving for Wesley, too, but wasn’t there a friend, anyone, you could talk to?’
‘Most people can’t understand or don’t want to. They prefer not to acknowledge how bad things are in other parts of the world, they don’t want it to upset their cosy lives. Either they see what aid workers do as crazy or they think we are some kind of heroes, and neither
is true. People volunteer for many different reasons.’ She frowned, feeling exhausted as she rested against him. ‘There just seemed a distance between me and the people I’d known before. I’d been away nearly a year by then, our lives were so different, we didn’t connect any more.’
Held safe in his arms in the darkness of the night, she expunged the pain, exorcised the ghosts. And something she had never expected began to happen. A new calmness and sense of peace slowly began to ease the maelstrom of torment inside her, as if everything that had been eating away at her had been washed away. She felt almost ill from the crying that had ravaged her but there was a sense of release, of things shifting back into balance.
‘Do you want to go back?’ Conor asked after a while.
‘Not to aid work.’ She welcomed the way he linked the fingers of one hand with hers, giving her strength. ‘I’ve done my bit. I couldn’t live that life any more. But I think I’d like to go back to Africa one day. Make some new memories. Some better ones.’
His free hand returned to stroke her hair, his fingertips caressing her neck. ‘What about your career?’
‘I wondered for a time if I could still be a doctor.’
‘And now?’
She sighed, trying to organise her jumbled thoughts—not easy the way her body responded to his touch. ‘I can’t face surgery any more but being a GP…I’ve enjoyed it.’
‘You’re an amazing doctor, Kate.’ A warm glow burned inside her at his words. ‘Russ is holding his own. He’s going to have a long recovery, but he’s alive thanks to you. His parents want to meet you and thank you. And all your patients love you—you’ve given the people here so much.’
‘They’re easy to care about.’
‘So why don’t you stay?’
It was tempting but she couldn’t see him every day and not be more to him than a practice partner. Neither could she watch him with other women. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘I want you here, Kate.’ He sounded so serious, so sincere that she lifted her head from his chest, her teary gaze drawn to his. The emotion in the green depths amazed her. ‘With me. Please.’
‘W-with you?’ she said in a shocked whisper.
A wry smile curved his mouth. ‘Is the idea so terrible?’ he teased, failing to mask the edge of anxiety.
‘It’s not that, but…’ Her words trailed off as she struggled to voice her concerns. ‘You want a quick fling—’
‘Do I?’
‘Don’t you?’
‘No.’ He released her hand, his fingers lifting to brush the lingering wetness from her cheeks. ‘What do you want?’
Everything, the whole happy ending, but it wasn’t going to happen. She tried to move away because being so close to him made it impossible to think straight, but his hold tightened, keeping her close. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘It does to me.’
‘It wouldn’t work, Conor, we’re too different. You flit from woman to woman. You’re phobic about commitment and—’
‘You think I don’t want commitment?’ he interrupted.
Kate frowned in confusion at the surprise and challenge in his voice. ‘Do you?’
‘I want you to be a partner in the practice, if that’s what you’d like, but most of all I need you in my life,’ he insisted, his lips whispering against her skin. ‘I love you, Kate. More than anything I want to settle down with you and have a family.’
Tears stung her eyes and she shook her head, trying to take it in. This wasn’t what she’d expected, but he sounded genuine. ‘Why haven’t you, then? Settled down, I mean.’
‘All I remember from my childhood is my parents’ terrible marriage, the vindictive divorce and the stream of failed relationships and marriages that followed for both of them. I’ve lost count of the number of times my mother has married, the trail of devastation left in her wake.’ His thumb brushed her cheek as he continued. ‘I vowed that would never happen to me, that I wouldn’t make those mistakes. I want it to be right, Kate. I don’t want to put any child through the kind of thing I faced.’
Kate struggled to concentrate. ‘But I thought—’
‘You thought I was another Darren,’ he chided.
‘But all the women.’
‘Just because I went on dates and have women friends doesn’t mean I sleep with them, or even kiss them, for that matter. I’ve been much more choosy than you give me credit for. Why do you think I was in such a panic on Saturday night that the condoms might have been past their use-by date?’
The very thought of that night made her blush. She frowned, thinking back, realising she had been so desperate for him that his scramble for the box in the drawer hadn’t really registered. Could it really be true that he loved her? She hardly dared to believe it.
‘But you said you just wanted some fun while I was here,’ she reminded him, seeing him wince.
‘A stupid misjudgement on my part.’ He smiled, brushing some wayward strands of hair back from her face. ‘You were so wary, so skittish, I thought you’d freak if I told you how serious I was and I’d frighten you away, so I planned to take it slowly, keep it casual. I didn’t know that was exactly the wrong thing to do after what you had been through.’
‘I don’t understand.’
He smiled patiently at her frown. ‘I knew from the first second I saw you that I was going to marry you.’
‘W-what?’ She stared at him, open-mouthed in shock, her heart thudding uncontrollably. ‘But you don’t even know me.’
‘Don’t be silly, Kate,’ he chastised with a gentle smile. ‘You’re the other part of me that makes me feel whole and complete for the first time in my life.’
Kate swallowed, sure she was going to cry again. ‘I am?’
‘Convincing you has been another matter entirely.’ The fingers of one hand slid back under her T-shirt, tracing distracting circles on her skin. ‘I thought you’d say I was crazy if I dropped to my knees that first morning and begged you to marry me. You were so beautiful, so sad, so scared. I love you, Kate. All of you. Everything about you. Your compassion and ability as a doctor, your goodness as a person, your courage, your humour, your intelligence. As for what you do to me…’ He drew her hand to his chest and she felt the rapid thud of his heart under her palm. ‘I’ve never felt anything like this before. You turn my insides to mush. Kissing you, touching you, making love with you—nothing has ever been like this, Kate. I want to spend the rest of my life with you, loving you.’
‘Oh, Conor.’ The words escaped as a half laugh, half sob, her mind clearing, her fears fading. She couldn’t doubt Conor’s sincerity, could no longer deny her feelings for him, the amazing chemistry and bond between them. ‘I love you, too.’
Overwhelmed with relief and happiness, Conor sank a hand into Kate’s silken hair and drew her head down for a kiss, sighing with contentment as her mouth opened on his, hot and demanding, and the hungry desire flared out of control in an instant, just as it always did. She whimpered, pressing her body against his, her fingers gliding over his skin. There was only one place this was going but while he had a fragment of sense left he needed to know something. Rolling them over, he pinned her under him, catching her hands and linking his fingers with hers, smiling as she looked up at him through sultry brown eyes.
‘What?’ she demanded impatiently, wriggling under him, arousing him beyond bearing.
‘Wait a minute.’ He gave her more of his weight, keeping her still. ‘Will you marry me?’
Disbelief vied with happiness as she looked up at him. ‘Yes!’
‘And we’ll have dozens of babies?’
‘I don’t know about dozens.’ She laughed through her tears. ‘But definitely some.’
He had been scared about what would happen when Kate’s fall hit her, had never imagined the secrets and the pain she had held inside her had been so traumatic. His heart had nearly broken at her anguish but they were through the worst now. It would take time but they would face it together and co
uld look towards a brighter future. Peeling off her T-shirt, he lost himself in the magic of making love with Kate and, when they were finally joined together as one again, Kate wrapping around him, he gave thanks to whatever fates had brought this special woman into his life.
EPILOGUE
ONE late summer evening Kate stood on the roof terrace outside the bedroom, looking at the view.
Their wedding a few weeks ago had been the most special day of her life, her new community and all the practice staff having turned out in force to celebrate the marriage of two of their doctors. Her father had enjoyed every moment, his friendship with Aileen flourishing, and he was visiting often, talking about retiring to the village in the near future. Fred was ecstatic, taking more time to relax and cut back his hours, content that the Solway Medical Centre was in good hands. James, who had flown up with his wife for the weekend, had told everyone who would listen that he was responsible for bringing the happy couple together. Charlie had waited outside the church, Ben devotedly at his heels, while Lizzie Dalglish had been pushed up from the residential home in her wheelchair, grinning her delight as she sat beside Andrea Milne in pride of place. Louise Kerr, gaining in self-esteem as her health improved, had joined them, while Jenny and Mark had rushed back from their own honeymoon to celebrate. Nic and Hannah had been there and Kyle, still recovering from his own problems, had stood up as Conor’s best man. There hadn’t been a dry eye in Glentown.
Kate smiled, leaning on the railing as her thoughts turned to their honeymoon. They had gone to Africa, visiting the country she had worked in on her last aid agency assignment, meeting former local colleagues and some of the people she had treated, including children she had felt so guilty about but who were facing their futures with amazing fortitude and thankfulness. There had been moments of sadness for Wesley and colleagues lost, but the trip had allowed her to put things in perspective, to balance bad memories with good ones. After that first week spent facing her past, Conor had surprised her with a special three-night visit to the incredible Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania, which had been an unforgettable experience. Then they had spent four days in Kenya, where they had visited the Sheldrick elephant nursery in Nairobi. Kate laughed. Only Hannah and Nic would give someone a orphaned elephant as a wedding present! They had some wonderful photographs to show their friends that evening of their fostered baby elephant enjoying her daily mudbath.
A Doctor Worth Waiting For Page 17