Outback Doctors/Outback Engagement/Outback Marriage/Outback Encounter

by Meredith Webber

  Caitlin hesitated, and Connor, perhaps sensing the reason for her hesitation, said, ‘Go on.’

  She did, but reluctantly, still feeling his opposition. ‘Say all the children had the same ancestor, but as well as the five who contracted the disease there were another forty children with the same blood lines, and maybe twenty of them would have been within the peak age group for developing leukaemia.’

  ‘So you’d DNA-test the ones who didn’t get it as well as the ones who did?’ Sue said, and Caitlin nodded.

  ‘But first,’ she warned, ‘I’ve got to find out if such bloodlines exist. If they don’t then that’s another theory gone west and I have to start again.’

  ‘Maybe you could DNA-test the whole town,’ Sue suggested. ‘Get a mighty sample to play with.’

  ‘I think there are ethical constraints there,’ Connor reminded her.

  ‘And Caitlin’s already mentioned the cost,’ Mike added.

  ‘And time!’ Sue was now arguing against herself. ‘Didn’t I read where a DNA test could take up to six weeks?’

  Caitlin answered her.

  ‘Yes, but new processes are being developed all the time, including one where quite complicated tests can be done in two days. Instead of the results being printed out in the familiar ‘‘bar code’’ result, the make-up of the DNA is shown as letters of the alphabet.’

  ‘And I thought bar codes were for supermarkets,’ Sue said, rising to her feet again. ‘I want you all to stop this conversation right now while I dish up the dinner, then you can explain to me, Caitlin. It’s time my brain had something more challenging than Lego houses and nursery rhymes.’

  But the dinner conversation wasn’t on genetic testing; instead, it ranged far and wide, only returning to the reason for Caitlin’s presence in the town when they were sipping their coffee.

  ‘I know you’ve both been avoiding the subject,’ Sue said, looking first at Connor, then at Caitlin. ‘But I’m serious about wanting to know more about DNA and your project, Caitlin. I’m happy at the moment, being at home with the kids, but I do want to go back to nursing eventually and I don’t want to be left too far behind. Forgetting the technical stuff for the moment, what are you going to do once you’ve done your family trees and got your samples?’

  ‘I can look at both similarities and differences in their genetic make-up. I’m actually working from the premise of a viral cause and trying to find out why it affects some people and not others.’

  ‘What genetic structure predisposes one person to be immune while others aren’t? Yes, I can see that,’ Mike said.

  Caitlin smiled at him, pleased by his interest, praying for his support. She had a feeling she’d need plenty of that in the future—particularly with Connor so against her work.

  ‘The benefit of a small town is that—’

  ‘You’re likely to have a common pool of breeding stock,’ Sue said slowly. ‘Fertile ground for a geneticist.’

  ‘Makes us sound like a mob of cattle,’ Mike protested. ‘I’m glad I’m an outsider.’

  ‘But I’m not,’ Sue said.

  Caitlin heard constraint in her voice and felt a coolness in the air, as if the easy camaraderie between them had been stirred by a chill wind. She glanced at Connor, who had warned her about this, and read the condemnation in his eyes.

  ‘Being from the town doesn’t automatically put your children on a danger list. In fact, there may never be a danger list!’ he said to Sue, leaning a little closer to her as if to offer physical comfort. ‘As Caitlin said before, she might prove nothing—it’s just a theory and so many theories lead to dead ends.’

  ‘But if it did turn into something, I’d certainly want you and the children tested,’ Mike said. ‘Even if we discovered there was a genetic possibility of one of them contracting ALL. At least then we’d know to keep an eye on him or her—have regular blood tests taken. It would be a safeguard.’

  ‘But the fear…’ Sue whispered, the words only a breath above a whisper.

  Connor glanced at Caitlin and read the dawning comprehension in her eyes. He should have felt satisfaction, but sympathised instead. Until she spoke—angered, he was certain, by her own moment of doubt.

  ‘So do I not proceed because it’s going to dangle the sword of Damocles above some heads?’ she demanded. ‘Do we deny ourselves the slim possibility of finding a clue to the prevention of one form of cancer because we don’t want to upset the town?’

  She was asking Connor, not Sue, so he answered.

  ‘Nothing is ever that cut and dried. Starting something like this is like casting a stone into a large pond. Who knows how far the ripples will spread, or what they might wash to the surface?’ He reached out and touched her lightly on the hand. ‘I know all the logical arguments and agree that Turalla presents a unique opportunity for your work, but I wish we could foresee the problems.’

  ‘And have strategies set in place to deal with them?’ Mike smiled as he spoke. ‘It’s a great theory, mate, but you know as well as I do it’s near impossible in practice. Like everything else, we’ll have to wait and see—and cope with any fallout if and when it happens. As Caitlin said, she can’t not do the work because something might happen.’

  Connor looked at his friend. Hard to explain that it wasn’t ‘might’ that worried him but a presentiment of danger which he, the most prosaic of men, had never felt before. No, Mike would laugh at him and tell him he must be sickening for something.

  He glanced towards Caitlin who was talking quietly to Sue, about children—healthy children.

  Perhaps he was sickening for something. It would explain a lot of things.

  But not why his eyes were drawn to her face, his ears to her voice—his body, if he didn’t have it under such iron control, to hers!

  ‘Perhaps you’d better take him home,’ Mike suggested, and the two women laughed.

  ‘Was I snoring?’ he countered.

  ‘No,’ Sue assured him. ‘Just not with us. I asked you three times if you’d be golfing on Saturday. It’s my turn, remember.’ She turned to Caitlin. ‘Mike and I take turns to play week and week about—the other minds the kids. Do you play?’

  Caitlin shook her head, fielding a slight stab of regret that she’d never learnt—then reminding herself work was more important to her.

  ‘Not that it matters while I’m up here,’ she replied. ‘I’d prefer to get the research done even if it means working through the weekends.’

  ‘The sooner you finish, the sooner you can be out of the place, is that it?’ Connor asked, and Caitlin spun to face him, reacting to a hardness in the question, not the words.

  ‘But you can’t work all the time,’ Sue told her, before Caitlin could deny Connor’s assertion. ‘Sunday night’s always barbecue night at Connor’s. Half the hospital turns up, so that’s one date you can’t avoid.’

  Caitlin waited for Connor’s eyes to second the invitation, to show some gleam of hospitality if not enthusiasm for her presence. No go! They were as darkly sombre as they’d been earlier when he’d scolded her for not locking the door. Was there another reason why he didn’t want her in Turalla? Perhaps his concern wasn’t for the town—perhaps he had some other agenda.

  ‘We should be on our way,’ was all he said, and Caitlin took the hint, thanking Mike and Sue, promising Sue she’d keep in touch and, yes, meet her for coffee uptown one day. She followed Connor out the door, and felt the cool night air brush against her skin.

  ‘They’re good people,’ he said as he opened the car door for her.

  ‘Do you think I can’t see that?’ she demanded, thinking he was attacking her again, however obliquely.

  He touched her arm, a soothing gesture that failed in its effect—instead, sending ripples of alarm along her nerves.

  ‘Hey, I wasn’t meaning anything beyond those words. They’re nice folk, I like them—that’s the beginning and the end.’

  She looked up at him. He met her eyes and what she saw there mad
e her forget Mike, and Sue, and research—and how to breathe.

  ‘It’s the moonlight,’ she muttered to herself, hoisting her body into the car and pulling the door shut before he had a chance to do his polite bit.

  ‘That’s all?’ he asked when he joined her in the vehicle. She stared at him, then realised he must have heard her words. ‘I hope so,’ he added obscurely.

  She shifted in her seat, made restless by the feeling of confinement in the spacious car. Connor must be taking up too much space, stealing too much air, for his presence to be affecting her like this.

  Half smiling at her own nonsensical thoughts, she studied him. Straight, firm profile—slightly jutting chin. A stubborn man? She’d have guessed that even without the chin. She followed the line of his neck, his shoulder, down his arm to the hand resting easily on the steering-wheel. Long fingers, slim and shapely. Would they have a deceptive strength? Be able to hold a woman captive in an

  iron clasp, yet still caress a breast with a silken touch?

  The absurd fancy made her chuckle.

  ‘Is it a joke worth sharing?’ he asked.

  ‘Definitely not,’ she replied, grateful the shadows hid her burning cheeks.

  ‘Pity!’ he murmured. ‘A good joke can sometimes ease the tension.’

  ‘I’m not tense with you,’ she protested.

  And she didn’t need his drawled, ‘Really?’ to underline the lie.

  ‘Well, you haven’t been exactly welcoming,’ she pointed out.

  ‘No? I thought I’d done the welcome thing quite well.’

  She turned suspiciously towards him and caught the gleam of teeth that told her he was teasing, but she wasn’t ready to concede just yet.

  ‘Towards me, but not my work,’ she argued.

  ‘And is that not possible? Is your work so intertwined with who you are that you daren’t stand alone without it?’

  The smile was gone and she felt his scorn scorch the words. Yet she felt it was important to answer honestly.

  ‘I don’t know!’ she told him. ‘Yes, my work is part of me, but because it’s important to me, not because it’s everything.’

  ‘So, we know there’s no golf, and you don’t put much stock in gourmet dining. What else is there, Caitlin? What other interests do you have?’

  She’d have liked to have said reading, which had always been her favoured pastime, but if he asked her what she’d read recently she’d have been stumped, not having picked up a book for months. Or had it been years?

  ‘I like to walk,’ she said defiantly, thinking of the pleasure she’d found in walking up the road to the bakery.

  ‘Yet you drive a car that gets you from A to B faster than most vehicles.’

  Connor was goading her deliberately, but why?

  ‘I walk when I have time.’ Caitlin said the words bluntly, folded her arms across her chest in what she recognised as a classic defensive gesture and turned to stare out the window.

  Which was a wasted move, she realised as he pulled up in the hospital car park.

  ‘Like you eat when you have time,’ he said softly.

  She turned towards him and he reached out and slid his knuckles gently down her cheek. ‘Has it been so tough, proving yourself in the scientific field? Have you always had to battle to prove you’re as good as any man, or any less beautiful woman?’

  His sympathy was so unexpected a lump formed in her throat and threatened to choke her if she spoke. Shaking her head, she tried a smile instead and turned his words into a weapon.

  ‘Now, don’t go getting soft on me,’ she chided. ‘I can fight my own battles and I’ll take you on if you get in my way, Connor Clarke, so don’t think ‘‘nice’’ will change my mind about staying on in Turalla.’

  He didn’t reply but opened the door. The interior light came on, revealing a smile he hadn’t time to wipe away before she saw it.

  ‘OK. I’ll try to remember that,’ he promised. ‘No more Mr Nice Guy, by order of the management.’

  She knew he was teasing her—and found herself liking it. Shocked by the discovery, she sprang out of the car before he could come close again. They walked together around the hospital building, dimmed lights gleaming through drawn curtains.

  Around the back, the kitchen door was closed. Nellie must have served the supper then gone home. There was a strip of darkness between the large building and her small temporary home and Caitlin was wondering at which point the security lights would come on when something scurried across her feet. She let out an almighty scream and flung herself at Connor.

  He caught her body and she felt his strength and warmth—but couldn’t stop the uncontrollable trembling in her limbs or still the rapid beating of her heart.

  ‘Hey, it was a cat,’ he soothed. ‘I think it was intent on stalking some small prey and we startled it.’

  ‘Not as much as it startled me,’ she mumbled, and tried to pull away, embarrassed by her reaction—and by letting this man see her stupid fears.

  But pulling away wasn’t easy. The hands she’d studied earlier were as strong as she’d suspected, and every bit as tender as they smoothed up and down her arms, her back, and kneaded at her neck, lifting the weight of her hair to touch taut skin.

  ‘It’s OK to get a fright,’ he said quietly, holding her tucked against his body while the fingers of one hand tilted her chin so he could look into her face. ‘Shows you’re human after all.’

  Then his head bent towards her and his lips brushed hers.

  ‘Very human,’ he added.

  She waited, breath held, for the kiss to develop, for him to finish what he’d begun, but he lifted his head, shook it as if to clear it, then turned her in his arms and guided her towards the house, the light coming on almost immediately.

  The harsh glare made her fears seem stupid, and her fantasies even more ridiculous. She stepped away from him, thanked him politely for escorting her home and hurried forward to open the door.

  It was the light from outside that caught the gleam of white on the floor, a tiny triangle, nothing more, the bulk of the note or envelope hidden by the mat. Caitlin was about to bend and pick it up, thinking Nellie might have come across with a message, or perhaps Melissa had called, then some instinct stopped the movement and instead she stepped inside, putting her foot over the tell-tale gleam—hiding it from Connor.

  She turned on the inside light and glanced around the room. Everything seemed normal.

  ‘Goodnight,’ he said, but hovered as if he half expected her to ask him inside.

  ‘Goodnight, and thanks again,’ she replied, dashing his hopes. As he moved away, she closed the door and slumped against it.

  She looked around the room, realising how little notice she’d taken of it earlier. Last night she’d been too tired, barely registering the polished timber floor, the patterned carpet square, imitation leather lounge chairs.

  She lifted her foot and peered down at the tell-tale scrap of white, wondering if it could have been there when she’d arrived. Maybe she wouldn’t have noticed it in daylight, the white against the pale polished wood. Or perhaps she’d dislodged it with her foot when she’d been walking out earlier this evening—an old piece of paper left by a previous tenant of the house.

  So why didn’t she stop wondering, simply bend down and pick it up? Have a look at it instead of guessing?

  Because a totally unscientific and irrational sixth sense told her not to—to forget about it and go to bed, to kick it under the mat and let it stay there, out of sight and out of mind.

  But would it be? Out of sight perhaps, but not out of mind. With a long sigh she knelt and carefully lifted the edge of the carpet square as if clumsiness might damage what was hidden there. It was a folded piece of paper, with printing and brightly coloured illustrations—a page out of a book of fairy-tales.

  She chuckled softly at her fears and unfolded it but the laughter died on her lips as she stared at the picture. It was familiar enough—Sleeping Beauty i
n her glass case, waiting for the Prince to come and kiss her back to life.

  Only in this illustration the glass box looked like a coffin, and the princess’s hands were folded on her chest in an attitude of death, not sleep. Then, as if the long golden hair might not be enough of a clue, someone had printed ‘Dr O’Shea’ very clumsily beneath the drawing, leaving Caitlin in no doubt as to the message.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CAITLIN crumpled the piece of paper into a ball and flung it across the room.

  ‘So, someone apart from Connor Clarke doesn’t want you in the town.’ She said the words aloud, hoping to make them more believable.

  It didn’t work! Did absolutely nothing to relax the tension in her neck and shoulders, or settle the tumult in her stomach.

  She tried to think, use her brain, work out if the piece of paper had been there all along or had been slipped beneath the door while she’d been out that evening.

  With security lights coming on and Nellie watching?

  But Nellie hadn’t been there just now…

  Not that discovering when it had come made much difference, she decided. Whenever it had arrived, it sure as hell wasn’t a ‘good luck’ message.

  With a puzzled shake of her head and a deep sigh, she headed for her bedroom. She’d sort her preparatory notes into some kind of order—see how Granny’s information looked in various graph forms.

  But as she reached out to switch on the bedroom light, a nameless terror grabbed her, squeezing air from her lungs and making her knees shake uncontrollably.

  ‘Switch on the light,’ she told herself aloud. ‘You have to know.’

  It took a couple of tries but eventually she did it. The computer was in place, its grey shell gleaming softly, the screen blank but comforting in its blankness. Her relief was instantaneous, propelling her across the room to touch the machine, to pat it as if in comfort.

  It was only then she realised her fear had been for it, an inanimate object, not for herself. That the fundamental reaction had been caused not by thoughts of an intruder lurking in the darkness, waiting to harm her in some way, but by the idea of someone messing with her work.