‘Not to the extent that it might put your baby at risk. You’re right about a newborn baby being too much for Ned—how old is he, anyway?’
‘I don’t know,’ Neena admitted. ‘We only knew Maisie was as old as she was because five years ago she got a letter from the Queen and one from the prime minister as well. Our local member of parliament had sussed out her birth date and got hold of a birth certificate. He sent the required letters off to the powers that be and she was delighted. So, given Maisie’s age, I suppose Ned must be close to eighty.’
Mak heaved a sigh and headed down the front steps, Neena following. So much for talking about her problems! Far from helping her, she’d only made things more complicated somehow.
Although…
‘Why are you so interested in my care arrangements for the baby?’ she demanded, reaching the vehicle and turning to face the man she’d thought might help. ‘Believe me, they will be beyond criticism in case you’re thinking some court might give your sister custody.’
Mak looked at her, dark eyes flashing anger at him—as soon take a tiger cub from his mother as take her baby from Neena.
‘That was the last thing on my mind,’ he told her. ‘We’d been talking about your work arrangements and I wondered how easy or difficult it might be to get help out here, that’s all.’
But he could see she didn’t believe him and as they drove in silence the short distance to the surgery, he knew the precarious links of trust he’d managed to build between the pair of them were broken.
Beyond repair?
He didn’t know, though even on such short acquaintance he suspected he wouldn’t have to wait long to find out. She was a woman who tended to speak her mind.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘FRIDAY I go to Baranock to see my gynaecologist,’ Neena informed him, stopping outside the surgery but not opening the door. ‘I usually close the surgery for the morning then work afternoons and some evening appointments, but if you want to be on duty you could work the morning.’
Mak stared at her. He’d spent the journey thinking about broken trust and all she’d been worried about had been her patient schedule.
Had he dithered too long that she was speaking again?
‘Of course, you might prefer to go out to the site and talk to the different foremen out there or work on your thesis. You’re under no obligation to me.’
None of the options she’d offered so far had any appeal, perhaps because he was more worried about the programme she was suggesting.
‘You drive the two hours to Baranock and back then do a full day’s work? Aren’t you worried about the consequences of getting overtired?’
‘And making a bad diagnosis?’ she challenged. ‘You didn’t work twenty-hour days when you were an intern? You didn’t get used to going without sleep?’
The dark eyes that he’d seen fired with desire now flared their anger at him.
‘I wasn’t six months pregnant,’ he growled. ‘And I wasn’t thinking of a wrong diagnosis but of your health.’
‘Or the baby’s,’ she muttered, and now she did open the car door.
He put his hand on her arm to stop her getting out, touching the soft skin, feeling flesh and fine bones beneath it.
‘There’s another alternative. I’ll drive you to Baranock and back. That way you might get to doze on the journey, then we’ll share the patients later in the day—or I could do the lot. And I am not thinking wholly of the baby, but of your health as well. What good will you be to him or her if you’ve wrecked your own health before the baby even arrives?’
She studied him for a moment, as if trying to assess the truth or otherwise of his words, then a smile lit up her face and it seemed to Mak that another sun had risen in the sky.
He forgot the embargo on shaking his head and shook it in disbelief at his thoughts.
‘Can we go in your swanky car? It’s bitumen all the way—no four-wheel-driving. It’s years since I’ve been in a decent car. I checked it out. Real leather seats! After driving this old loaner and even my tank, it would be bliss!’
Mak shook his head again, now unable to believe that this woman could envisage such delight from something as ordinary as his vehicle.
‘We’ll go in my car,’ he promised, and now she did get out, stepping light-heartedly towards the surgery door, practically skipping with delight. Mak watched her go—he seemed to be doing that a lot these days—just watched as Neena walked away from him, Neena in so many moods, so many guises. How long would it take to get to know a woman like her? A lifetime?
The week proceeded relatively smoothly—well, smoothly compared to Mak’s introduction to medical practice in Wymaralong. On Wednesday afternoon, they were called out to another accident on a cattle property where a stockman had been crushed against a fence by a large bullock, but once again it was a matter of stabilising the man before sending him off in a plane to a major hospital.
‘With all the callouts like this, wouldn’t it be better to always have two doctors in the town?’ he asked as they drove back to town.
‘Definitely!’ Neena’s reply was prompt. ‘But getting one doctor to stay in a town like this is difficult enough—getting two is virtually impossible. It used to be that the State Health Department employed a doctor full time at the hospital and he had the right to private practice. In those days, he would take in another doctor as a partner so they shared both the hospital workload and the surgery work, and they both made a comfortable living. But with fewer people being treated locally—insurance issues forced the closure of the maternity and surgical wards—the hospital doctor was withdrawn. That happened before my father came.’
‘Have you tried to get a partner?’
He was driving, so he could do no more than glance at Neena as he asked the question. She was looking out the side window, her head turned away, so all he saw was the back of her head and the thick plait of hair. The nerves in his fingers reminded him of how that hair had felt.
‘I did once,’ she said, still not looking at him. Deliberately? ‘Unfortunately he seemed to think that he could share everything—my house, my life, my bed. I suppose if I’d been able to fall in love with him it would have been an ideal situation, but that didn’t happen. In fact, he wasn’t a very nice man, which is something Ned picked up on from the start.’
‘Ned got rid of him?’
She turned now, smiling at him, though it wasn’t a real smile, more like something she was trying on for size.
‘It wasn’t the first time Ned removed an undesirable man from my life,’ she said, the smile fading completely as she frowned at her memories. ‘After my father died—I was fifteen—I went a little wild. Maisie was in her eighties and she couldn’t cope—oh, she kept the house going but she, too, was devastated by my father’s death—so Ned stepped in. He got rid of the boy I fancied myself in love with—without recourse to a horsewhip, though that was threatened—and dragged and bullied me back on track. He supervised my homework, came up to school to see my teachers. I suppose what he did was show me that someone cared.’
It had fallen to grizzled old Ned to show the grieving young woman someone cared? Mak didn’t consider himself a sentimental man, but the situation Neena had conjured up made him swallow hard.
‘You lost your father when you were fifteen?’ Mak knew there were other bits of the story that were more unbelievable, but the implications of this one were more relevant to Neena’s situation today—or so he guessed. ‘Lost both parents so young?’
The smile appeared again, but it held little joy.
‘One might be a mistake but two looks like carelessness, doesn’t it?’ she said, trying to make a joke of something that must still bring her pain. And suddenly Mak understood a little better why she’d chosen to keep the baby, why she talked of it as family—her family.
The town came into view and when she looked up at the tinsel strung across the road between the street lights and said, ‘I must get the Christmas dec
orations up,’ he knew the conversation was over, but every little bit of information he gleaned about the woman in the car beside him made him want to know more. It was as if she hid behind a curtain and every now and then lifted a little corner of it so he could take a peek, yet who she really was remained a mystery.
Neena tried to keep her face as blank as possible, although she knew she was frowning inside. For some reason, she kept revealing bits of herself to this man, and she couldn’t work out why. It wasn’t that he pushed or probed—far from it. He was just there and every now and then she’d feel compelled to come out with something about her past.
He must think she was a nut case the way she kept offering these true confessions—thirty-four-year-old virgin indeed! He’d been right to be surprised. Or had his surprise just been a mask to cover some other opinion he might have of such a sexually repressed woman.
She sighed then regretted it when he said, ‘Is the thought of putting up Christmas decorations so tiring?’
Fortunately he was pulling into the car park at the surgery as he spoke—she could get used to this being chauffeured—so there was no need for her to reply. Getting out of the car instead and hurrying inside, hoping they’d be busy enough to not have to see each other for the rest of the day. At least if she wasn’t with him she couldn’t tell him any more stuff about her past…
But she could hardly avoid him when they got home—the combination of the ‘they’ and ‘home’ even in her thoughts causing queasiness in her stomach.
‘So, the Christmas decorations—where do you keep them? And don’t bother telling me you’ll haul them out yourself, because I know Ned wouldn’t let you do that and with him away I’m the man of the house.’
They’d checked on Albert and were walking towards the house when Mak asked the question.
More queasiness over the ‘man of the house’ phrase, but she wasn’t going to let him see that.
‘They’re in a couple of old steamer trunks in the room under the house, but be careful going down there—a snake could have taken up residence.’
‘Great! You’d better come with me.’
‘To chase the snakes?’ she asked, leading him towards the room under the house.
‘No, so I can grab you in my arms again to save you. The last time left an impression I’m unlikely to forget.’
Neena turned to look at him, but it was dusk and very gloomy under the house so she couldn’t see if he was teasing her or maybe flirting.
‘Are you flirting?’
The question just popped out—the same way other things had just popped out since Mak Stavrou had come into her life.
‘I might be,’ he said, sounding very serious, not flirtatious at all. ‘Would you mind?’
‘I think I would,’ she said, opening the door of the storeroom, turning on the light then standing back and banging an old walking stick on the corrugated-iron walls hoping to frighten any snakes away. ‘It’s not something I’m good at and last time I tried it I ended up in trouble, so it’s best you don’t.’
‘You don’t sound at all certain,’ Mak said, taking the walking stick from her and using it to push the boxes and old steamer trunks and wooden chests about on the concrete floor, hoping any snake not frightened by her banging would object to the movement and vamoose.
‘About not wanting to flirt?’ Neena asked, her voice sounding as puzzled as the expression on her face was.
‘Exactly!’ he said. ‘You think you would mind. That’s not a definite no.’
‘And that’s just semantics,’ she retorted. ‘You know there’s nowhere a flirtation can go—you’re here and then you’ll be gone—what’s the point? I might have fallen for one smooth-talking Greek, but to fall for a second one—well, that would be sheer stupidity. Now, are you going to carry those trunks upstairs—the two that say “Christmas Decorations”? Leave them on the front veranda then we’ll have a shower and go up to the pub for tea. So far you’ve only met the sick people in town, it’s time you met some healthy ones.’
Going to the pub for tea was not a good idea, Mak discovered some time later. The meal was fine, a good steak with plenty of chips, a bowl of salad served with it, and the people he met all friendly enough, though he sensed this was politeness—it would take along time to become a friend of any of them. A genuine friend, as Neena obviously was, talking to the children who stopped by their table to say hello, asking about their pets, chatting to people at neighbouring tables…
It was after the meal that the fun began.
‘You might have told me it was karaoke night,’ he complained to Neena as the MC got the music started. ‘Do we have to stay?’
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Not only stay, but as a visitor to town you’ll be expected to sing a song. But we needn’t stay long. Half an hour at the most. Karaoke not your thing?’
‘I can’t believe it’s anyone’s thing,’ he growled, ‘and there is no way I’m going to sing.’
Unfortunately this statement was drowned out by the MC announcing to everyone present that they were honoured to have the company of the new doctor in town and asking if he’d do the town the honour of singing the first song.
To have refused would have looked churlish so, fighting the flush of either embarrassment or anger that was wanting to surge into his cheeks, Mak stood up, walked to the small stage and took the microphone.
‘Do you have a favourite?’ the MC, a youth who didn’t look old enough to be in a pub, asked him, scrolling the available song titles on the screen.
‘How about “Tie me kangaroo down, sport”,’ Mak asked and saw the look of surprise on the lad’s face.
‘You know that?’
‘Let’s say I know a student version of it so I know the tune, and if the words are up on the screen I can sing them rather than the rude ones.’
‘Well, okay,’ the young fellow said, although he still seemed uncertain that a doctor should be singing such a song.
Presumably the pub patrons felt the same way, for they listened in total silence as Mak launched into the song. He glanced towards Neena and saw she was trying not to laugh, but then the audience joined in the chorus and they were away, everyone shouting out the words of the song. He finished to a roar of approval and loud clapping and, embarrassed by the attention, hurried back to the table, accepting pats on the back and ‘good on yous’ on the way.
‘Well, a man of many talents,’ Neena greeted him. ‘You’ve won a lot of hearts with that song—well, you won them over just getting up to sing, a lot of strangers would have refused.’
‘The other doctor?’ Mak queried, though he wasn’t sure why the memory of the man who’d wanted to share Neena’s bed lingered like a bruise in his head.
‘Oh, he would never have lowered himself to eat at the pub, let alone join in the karaoke.’ She answered easily, most of her attention, Mak guessed, on the new singer up on the stage, a young woman with a sweet voice, singing a popular country and western ballad. But as the song finished and Neena stood up to leave, she looked at him and said, ‘Why on earth would you be thinking of him?’
Mak wondered the same thing himself, but rather than admit it, he just shrugged, said goodnight to the people close to them and followed her out of the pub. Outside, the main street was deserted except for an occasional car driving slowly past. They’d walked the couple of blocks from the house to the pub, so set out to walk back, Neena leading him down a side street then along a lane at the back of the houses.
‘A lot of outback towns have these lanes,’ she told him, as the warm darkness enveloped them. ‘In the old days, everyone kept goats for milk and meat and the goats grazed on the town common by day. Every evening the goat boys would go out and herd them back to town and they’d come down the lanes and into their own back yards. Today, of course, there are feral goats—descendants of the originals—throughout the west.’
Mak tried to imagine it, the goats coming in a herd down the lane, two or three dropping off into t
he back yards of the houses. The big pepper trees under which they walked would have been saplings then, and the streetlights in the main street gas—if indeed there had been streetlights.
‘You like it here?’ he asked, although he really knew the answer, hearing it her voice when she spoke of the town and its people.
‘It’s home to me,’ she said.
‘But you went to the city to study. Weren’t you tempted to stay there?’
She stopped and turned towards him, and though they were in shadow and he couldn’t see her face, he could guess at the expression of disbelief she’d be wearing.
‘Down there with all the noise and pollution and traffic and people?’ she queried. ‘They were the worst years of my life. I was lost. I hated it. All I wanted was to come home, but I had to stay because the people here had faith in me—they believed in me and had made it possible for me to go away and study.’
‘But you admitted you felt under an obligation to them. Surely that coloured your decision to return?’
She shook her head.
‘No, it might have had I found I loved the city, but as it turned out, I knew it wasn’t right for me. All I ever wanted to do the whole time I was there was to come home.’
He heard the loneliness she’d felt in those years in her voice and couldn’t help himself, putting his arms around her and drawing her close.
‘Poor little homesick Neena,’ he said softly, but the physical contact was reawakening the desire he’d been at pains to keep at bay, and as his body heated he held her more tightly, then dropped a kiss on the top of her head.
She didn’t slap his face or move away, so he let his lips roam lower, kissing her forehead, her temple, brushing his lips across her eyelids, learning the feel of her face, the shape of it, through the movement of his mouth across her skin. Right up to her lips…
Move, Neena told herself, but her legs wouldn’t obey the instruction and the rest of her body remained locked in Mak’s embrace. There was something mesmeric about the feel of his lips on her skin, the taste of him as his tongue probed into her mouth. She let him kiss her and from there it was only a very small step to kissing him back, feeling her body come to life as she explored his lips with hers, her hands also exploring now, pressing against his solid back, sliding down to more slender hips, the curve of his buttocks filling her hands.
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