Outback Doctors/Outback Engagement/Outback Marriage/Outback Encounter

by Meredith Webber

  The woman didn’t seem appeased, and Cal guessed she was blaming herself for the episode.

  ‘At least this time he might be old enough to remember how sick they made him, so he’s less likely to cheat again,’ he suggested.

  ‘Blood pressure’s within acceptable limits,’ the nurse announced, and Cal was relieved. The surge of histamine through the blood at the time of an allergic reaction could cause fluid imbalance which immediately impacted on blood pressure.

  But, thanks to Jenny’s quick thinking, this seemed to have been averted. He turned to tell his daughter this and saw the new arrival walk through the door.

  ‘I think you’ll be needed for speeches,’ Blythe said to him, while her brown eyes scanned the small room and took in the situation.

  ‘Allergic reaction? Anaphylactic shock?’ she guessed, picking up the discarded ampoule and reading the label on it. ‘You go, I’ll stay. When did you give him this?’

  Cal checked his watch.

  ‘Six minutes ago—you can repeat it any time you like now, but I doubt it’s necessary.’

  He turned to the nurse.

  ‘I’m sorry, we didn’t have time for introductions. I’m—’

  ‘Callum Whitworth,’ she finished for him. ‘I knew that, and that you were a doctor. I’m glad you were here, though I’ve coped with this kind of emergency before.’ She put out her hand. ‘I’m Meg Molloy.’

  Cal shook her hand, then introduced Blythe. Marty’s mother then joined in the introductions, but Cal sensed impatience in the woman who’d now sidled around to stand beside him.

  ‘They’re waiting for you,’ Blythe reminded him. ‘And the bride has been known to throw a tantrum when things don’t go her way.’

  Cal grinned at the caustic comment and excused himself, taking Jen’s hand and leading her back to the marquee. He was reasonably certain Meg would be able to handle the child from now on, but having a doctor there as well would soothe the mother.

  He returned to his place at the table, smiled reassuringly at the bride, nodded in response to Mark’s querying look, then realised, without the bridesmaid by his side to liven up proceedings with her quick wit, he was going to be doomed to a boring session of speeches.

  ‘And I bet Blythe realised that,’ he muttered to himself, as the bishop rose to bless the union of the happy couple.

  Cal stood obediently, and raised his glass to the two of them then settled back to listen to Mark’s rhapsodies. The speech looked like it would be going on for two days, until some ribald comments from the back of the marquee—to the effect of never getting her to the bridal bed if he didn’t stop yapping—made the proud groom hurry things along.

  Cal knew what came next. Mark proposed a toast to the bridesmaid and it was his place to respond on her behalf, though right now the bridesmaid was conspicuous by her absence.

  He was wondering how to explain when the green-clad figure slipped into the seat beside him.

  ‘Some chap who says he’s with the RFDS came. He was checking out a stockman who’d burnt his arm last week and came up to the clinic when he’d finished.’

  She reached out and took a sip of water and Cal remembered someone telling him his grandfather had arranged for the Royal Flying Doctor Service to have a plane on the ground at Mount Spec while the big crowd was assembled at the station.

  It wouldn’t be taking anything away from the service as the plane and staff would still be on call for emergencies in other parts of the Territory, and no doubt his grandfather had made a substantial donation to the RFDS to have the security of a medical officer present. Though with Mark and himself both here, did they need another doctor?

  Perhaps it was an indication that his grandfather was still unhappy over his decision to go into medicine…

  ‘What are you frowning about? Surely not your speech?’

  Blythe’s question was almost drowned out by the applause as Mark finally finished talking.

  Cal stood and lifted his glass, raising it to his partner.

  ‘Keep it short,’ the person he was representing muttered at him.

  He kept it short, but the people who followed him weren’t as forbearing, rambling on for what seemed like ages.

  ‘Now surely they’re done,’ he whispered to Blythe, when some friend of Mark’s from his high school days had finally sat down.

  ‘Unless there’s someone he went to kindergarten with,’ she retorted. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t have the champagne. I’m sure that last fellow would have sounded funnier if I’d been totally inebriated. I mean, he must have sounded funny to someone. People kept laughing.’

  ‘Other people Mark went to school with, I bet,’ Cal told her, then was interrupted by Jenny for a second time.

  ‘Dad, Sam says we’re not going to you for Christmas, and you promised this year we could. He says now Mark’s married you’ll have to shift out of the house, and without Mrs Robertson to look after us and cook dinner and stuff, we can’t come.’

  Jenny’s grey eyes, eerily familiar from his daily view of his own in the mirror, were pleading with him to deny it, but although he hadn’t said anything about the holidays, he’d been wondering how to break it to the children that he might not be able to have them.

  As he tried to find a noncommittal answer, he was aware of an increased interest on his left-hand side. The bridesmaid was listening very closely and, no doubt, preparing some cutting remark should he be foolish enough to disappoint his daughter.

  ‘Of course you’ll still come to me,’ he assured Jenny, and had his reward in a radiant smile. She danced triumphantly back to her table, and waggled her fingers to him as she sat down.

  ‘Well, at least you’ve made someone happy today!’ Blythe remarked.

  The sting in the tail of the remark added to his gloom.

  ‘She’s probably more pleased about proving Sam wrong than coming to me for the holidays,’ he said. ‘Last time they came to Creamunna they complained non-stop about how boring it was and how there was nothing to do. But at least with Mrs Robertson, Mark’s housekeeper, there, they were fed regularly and well. Mark’s been assuming I’ll stay on in the house, but once he and Lileth return—’

  ‘If he and Lileth return,’ his partner reminded him. ‘Did you get a locum for the time Mark will be away? Maybe he or she will like the place and be willing to stay on.’

  Cal turned to her and shook his head.

  ‘A locum? What planet did you drop from?’ he demanded. ‘Haven’t you heard about the difficulties of getting doctors to serve in the bush—about the plight of rural communities who can’t get any kind of regular medical services? Why do you think Mark was working on his own for so long? He had to wait until a new chum like me, who actually likes living in the bush, came along.’

  A little crease, not large enough to call a frown, had skewed one honey-coloured eyebrow and once again the thought of kissing her sabotaged Cal’s brain.

  ‘New chum?’ Blythe’s question brought him back to reality. ‘You’re hardly a youngster—what are you—thirty-eight? Forty? Why are you a new chum?’

  Cal sighed. He’d carefully got away from this conversation much earlier, but now they’d come full circle.

  ‘I’m only thirty-six,’ he began, deciding he needed to get that straight from the start. ‘I started late.’ He shook his head at the waiter who was offering to fill his glass. ‘And before you launch into a series of questions about either my career or my private life, I think you should see what Lileth wants. She’s been trying to attract your attention for a few minutes.’

  Blythe was happy to escape. Somehow she’d managed to eat a little of her meal and, hopefully, function like a rational human, but the man had set all her nerve endings in a tizz, and it had been a considerable effort to maintain what might pass for polite conversation.

  OK, so she’d had lapses, she admitted to herself as she followed Lileth to a tented powder room. But on the whole she felt she’d done quite well.

  �
��Where did you and Callum disappear to?’

  The first question was fired at Blythe with such an unmistakable note of censure Blythe had to bite back the urge to make a totally inappropriate reply.

  Instead, she meekly explained the situation with the sick child.

  But far from offering thanks or praise, Lileth pressed on with her interrogation.

  ‘Where did you get the dress?’ was the next question, as the bride subsided onto a chair so Blythe could fix some loose flowers in her hair.

  Blythe briefly considered the truth then ruthlessly dismissed it—going for an evasion that wasn’t quite a lie.

  ‘Grace provided it,’ she said, crossing her fingers and hoping Grace and Lileth hadn’t spoken.

  ‘How are you getting on with Cal?’

  Boy! Three minutes, three questions, and all of them doozeys!

  ‘It might be easier to take one of the flowers out altogether,’ Blythe said, knowing any changes to her appearance on this special day would distract Lileth.

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘Maybe this bud here, then I can use the hair pins from it to secure the loose one.’

  So the big question was averted and by the time Blythe accompanied her stepsister back to the table, the change in music indicated it was time for dancing.

  ‘Will the safety pins stand up to some gentle movement around the floor?’ Cal asked as, with the formal part of the wedding completed, the bride and groom took centre stage on the small dance-floor. ‘I mightn’t know the etiquette book by heart, but I remember enough from my own long-ago foray down the aisle to know we’re expected to join the happy couple.’

  ‘And you reckon I’m cynical!’ Blythe retorted. ‘Anyway, you put the pins in place so be it on your own head if they come loose.’

  He chuckled and stood up, holding her chair as she rose to her feet. Then she was in his arms and being whirled, albeit gingerly, around the small floor. Years of dance lessons and using dance routines for exercise ensured her feet moved in time to the music and stayed out of reach of his, but they were the only parts of her body behaving with decency and decorum. The rest of her wanted to lean into the man, to feel the solidity of his body against hers, while her mind took flight into the realm of unreality where the mildest of the fantasies owed much to Cinderella’s attendance at the Prince’s ball.

  ‘The music’s stopped.’

  The fairy-tale came to an abrupt end, and she stepped hastily away from her partner.

  ‘Good music,’ she muttered, hoping he’d think the fairly innocuous tunes produced by the disc jockey who’d replaced the string quartet would explain her distraction.

  The silence which greeted this remark made her look directly at him. He wasn’t smiling, though his face looked relaxed, but his eyes had a puzzled wariness, easily recognisable as it was much the way she felt herself.

  ‘Dance with your old man?’

  Brian’s voice made her turn and by the time she looked back to excuse herself, Cal had disappeared.

  Brian danced well, and she knew his steps, so she was able to concentrate her mental efforts on why Cal was affecting her the way he was.

  He was certainly good-looking but she’d worked with good-looking men at the hospital day in and day out.

  He was tall, and well built, but so were at least a proportion of those same men.

  He was hardly a sparkling conversationalist—being more argumentative than she was, which was saying something. And he certainly hadn’t shown the slightest indication he might be interested in her!

  So why had her body wanted to lean on him? Why were her nerves skittering about under her skin like electricity across a pool of water?

  ‘Frustration?’

  She realised she’d answered her own question aloud when Brian corrected her.

  ‘No, dear, it’s not so much frustration as lack of time to make suitable arrangements.’

  Suitable arrangements?

  Images of herself clad in a black silk negligee, lounging back against satin pillows, popped obligingly into Blythe’s mind.

  She stared blankly at her stepfather, hoping she hadn’t blurted out more of her thoughts.

  ‘Mumps or not, Mary-Lynne has to be in Sydney on Tuesday,’ he said, apparently continuing the conversation Blythe had missed while considering Cal Whitworth and black silk negligees. ‘She doesn’t have to go into her office, but with her home computer she can finalise all the details of the deal and it can go ahead.’

  Mary-Lynne worked in the finance industry, putting together parcels of obscene amounts of money for huge development projects.

  ‘So what’s the problem?’ Blythe asked, relieved to find she wasn’t in the spotlight.

  ‘She doesn’t want to fly back in her grandfather’s plane with the other wedding guests—being swollen and them all knowing about it. She says she wouldn’t feel right.’

  ‘She can fly back to Darwin on the mail plane with me tomorrow, then on a regular airline flight from there. It won’t worry me and she’s not contagious—well, not highly so—so there shouldn’t be a problem with the airline.’

  ‘Except there are no seats available on the mail plane or on any flights out of Darwin until Wednesday even if she could get there,’ Brian said, the music ending in time for Blythe to hear the mournful note in his voice. ‘That’s why we wondered, your mother and I, if you’d be so kind… Lorice is asking Callum now and I said I’d talk to you…’

  ‘I think I’d better sit down,’ Blythe told him. ‘I can’t make head or tail of this conversation. Later, someone can explain it to me, but not until I’ve had some of that coffee I can smell.’

  Still muttering about Callum and Mary-Lynne, Brian escorted her back to her seat then, after a brief, despairing smile, departed.

  ‘Sway back notwithstanding, your mother can dance,’ Cal said, dropping into the chair beside her. ‘Must be where you get it! But she insisted on more lively steps—she’s left me breathless.’

  Blythe, who’d been hoping for enlightenment rather than praise for her mother’s footwork, studied him. A slight sheen of sweat made the dark hair cling more closely to his head, exaggerating the fine shape of his skull.

  ‘That’s it?’ she said, when he’d nodded yes to coffee and fixed it to his apparent satisfaction. ‘She danced well? Didn’t she ask you something? Talk about something?’

  The grey eyes blinked, perhaps surprised by her vehemence, then he grinned.

  ‘Oh, about giving you a lift to Creamunna? Well, she did mention it, but I told her you were so crotchety and argumentative you’d make the journey a nightmare instead of a delight, and she understood.’

  Blythe was so astounded by the first revelation, she was able to ignore the insults that followed it.

  ‘Give me a lift to Creamunna? I remember Lileth talking about the place. Why in heaven’s name would I want a lift to that one-horse town?’

  The grin widened into a real smile.

  ‘One-doctor town at present—that’s a fair enough comment—but as for horses, we’ve got dozens of them!’

  Blythe felt the anger of frustration—a different frustration—swelling in her chest.

  ‘I do not care how many horses you might or might not have, I have no desire to go to Creamunna!’

  She spaced the words out so even a dim-witted doctor would understand them, but was he fazed? No way! He continued to smile—in fact, he gave a little chuckle.

  ‘Can’t say I blame you,’ he said, his voice positively oozing sympathy. ‘Very small town without much going for it. I guess that’s why it can’t get medical personnel.’

  She wanted to shake him, though, given his size, such a move would be physically impossible.

  ‘I don’t care about your town or its problems. What I want to know is why my mother would think I’d want to go there?’

  ‘Have some coffee. It might calm you down—or at least give you a breathing space. You look as if you’re hyperventilating right now.’ />
  Hyperventilating? Of course she was! She bit back a scream of frustrated rage—damn, there was that word again!

  ‘Apparently, Mary-Lynne needs to get to Sydney, but doesn’t want to fly in the plane with other guests.’

  ‘I know that much!’ Blythe told him, hoping he’d recognise icy disdain when he heard it in a voice.

  ‘So one solution is that she takes your place on the mail plane and flies via Darwin to Brisbane on your ticket and thence to Sydney, while you come to Creamunna with me—’

  ‘I’ve heard that bit of the grand plan as well,’ Blythe snapped. ‘It’s the why Creamunna that needs answering.’

  Cal smiled triumphantly at her.

  ‘Because there’s a bus out of town—you’ll be that much closer to home and the bus only takes twelve hours to Brisbane, but of course Mary-Lynne, swollen and ill, couldn’t sit on the bus, so her coming with me wouldn’t have worked. Your mother explained it all most clearly and, reluctant though I may be to put up with your prickly company, it did make sense.’

  Blythe felt her head spinning.

  ‘It’s ‘‘please, Blythe’’ all over again!’ she muttered. It occurred to her she could have done a direct swap with Mary-Lynne, taking her seat in the private plane, but that would land her in Sydney late at night with no clothes, and she’d have to fork out for a hotel room as well as a flight back to Brisbane.

  Unfortunately, she could see her mother’s impeccable logic in the new arrangement, but that didn’t make her feel any better.

  Neither did the prospect of travelling from one remote bit of the outback to another remote bit of it, in the company of Callum Whitworth, fill her with unalloyed joy. In fact, what she felt was more like apprehension, but when he asked her to dance again, she found herself saying yes.

  CHAPTER THREE

  ONCE back in Cal’s arms, Blythe found the desire to lean had developed into an urge to snuggle—definitely not good. Maybe it was time to put her new approach to men into action—to try out her love ’em and leave ’em plan. It was, in fact, a perfect situation, being attracted to a man she’d never see after tonight—or tomorrow at the very latest.