Outback Doctors/Outback Engagement/Outback Marriage/Outback Encounter

by Meredith Webber

  The flow had her waiting at the table while Connor paid the bill, then they walked out into the car park, their fingers entwined, silence between them as if there was nothing that needed to be said.

  Connor opened the car door and held it for her, releasing her hand only when the time came to close the door. He walked around the hood and climbed in beside her, turning to run his knuckles slowly down her cheek, as he’d done once before.

  But this time the touch was a promise and the excitement Caitlin had been feeling deepened, so desire became a hunger and the option of turning back no longer existed.

  Back at the house, they walked quietly up the steps, but once inside Connor’s control broke. He uttered a hoarse exclamation and took her in his arms, kissing her with a burning intensity that would have frightened her if her own passion hadn’t matched it.

  Tenderness took flight and finesse went out the window as the pent-up emotion of the last twenty-four hours exploded between them. With shaking fingers they stripped off clothes, their own and each other’s, fumbling clumsily, unaware of anything but the need to be naked.

  ‘No!’

  Connor’s muttered word stopped the frenetic action, and Caitlin, shocked by how fast things had moved, needed the support of his hands on her arms to hold her steady.

  He bent his head and kissed her, gently this time.

  ‘Sorry,’ he murmured softly, sliding his tongue across her upper lip. ‘Things got a little out of hand just then, but I will not make love to you—not this first time—in the kitchen.’

  Caitlin smiled and knew he’d felt her lips move against his when he gave her a quick hug, then swung her into his arms and carried her into a part of the house she’d never entered.

  It was darker here than in the kitchen, then he turned into a room with wide doors open onto the veranda. Moonlight flooded in, casting a silvery glow on a very large bed.

  ‘Much better,’ Connor said, setting her down then breathing heavily. ‘That’s if my gallantry in carrying you hasn’t sapped all my energy.’

  Caitlin linked her hands around his neck and drew him down on top of her.

  ‘I don’t think it has,’ she whispered, then she kissed him and there was no further need for conversation.

  Eventually they slept, wrapped together, then, as the moon shifted and the room grew darker, Connor woke.

  Caitlin’s body was tucked against his.

  Safe!

  But even as his mind said the word, he remembered what he’d thought earlier—how he’d had the mad idea of bringing her back here and making love to her to keep her safe. Shame that he’d even thought such a thing rushed through him, and guilt hovered darkly in his mind, although he knew without a doubt he’d made love to Caitlin because of how he felt about her, not as a ruse to keep her from harm.

  And she didn’t know he’d thought the way he had, so no harm had been done, he told himself, yet the taint of his thinking lingered like a shadow on his memories of the pleasure they’d shared.

  So many shadows, he thought as the woman beside him stirred, then settled back to sleep. Though he’d known, even when they’d parted, he’d no longer been in love with Angie, the shadow of her death still fell across his life. And now the attack on Caitlin’s computer was casting a far darker shadow.

  Who could be hurt by her enquiries? If he could answer that question, he might—

  The explosion was so loud he thought it was his house and turned automatically to shield Caitlin with his body.

  ‘Connor! What was it?’

  She was trying to sit up, and now he could hear the alarms ringing at the hospital. He shot out of bed, grabbing for the shorts he kept on a chair—ready for late-night emergencies.

  ‘You stay right here,’ he said to Caitlin, and he took off, thrusting his feet into his casual shoes, hopping to get them on, moving steadily through the house and down the steps, then running across the park towards the hospital.

  The siren calling the volunteer fire crew to work echoed eerily through the night and he thought of the other men who’d be tumbling out of bed and stumbling into the nearest clothes.

  Lights were on all over the hospital and movement indicated the nursing staff were calmly and quietly evacuating patients. Was someone over in the hostel wing, alerting those there? And where was the fire?

  ‘It’s out the back—in Matron’s house.’

  He hadn’t asked the question, but Anne Jackson, wheeling Granny down the front ramp and across the car park to the assembly area, answered anyway.

  Connor skirted the building, and saw flames licking along the wall of the old timber house, spreading fast and furiously from what remained of Caitlin’s beautiful red car.

  ‘I’ve checked the house, the lady doctor’s not in there.’ Geoff Page, the wardsman on duty, was playing a heavy fire-hose on the section of the hospital building nearest the house. ‘I thought it was better to save the hospital than worry about the house.’

  Connor nodded to him, fighting a gut-wrenching nausea brought on by the destruction and the fearful thought of what might have been.

  He went through the kitchen, filled with smoke, but from outside, not within, and continued down the veranda of the hostel wing, where he was pleased to find an aide had already woken the seven occupants and was herding them along the veranda in the other direction, to the assembly point on that side of the building.

  Anne met him as he walked into the hospital proper.

  ‘Everyone’s out, Connor,’ she said. ‘All of them OK. We had to release Warwick’s leg from traction, but kept him in his bed. Mrs Rennie’s in a wheelchair, with a drip stand so we could keep the drip running, and Granny’s in her bed. Bert Cannaway and Pat Hobson both walked.’

  ‘Do you know what happened?’ Connor asked, and Anne shook her head.

  ‘Just an explosion out the back—huge noise—everyone woke up. Geoff came in and said it was Caitlin’s car. I didn’t stop to look, just got everyone out. Then I rang Mike.’

  ‘You did the right thing,’ Connor said, thinking of where the fire was and the likelihood of it spreading. ‘I’ll just take a look out the back then check our patients.’

  He was about to walk away when Mike came through the front door.

  ‘I’m going to check out the back,’ he told Mike. ‘Anne will fill you in.’

  Connor walked back to where flames had now engulfed the small house. The firemen had arrived and while two hoses were pumping water onto the flames, two more were making sure the hospital itself was too wet to catch light should a flaming ember hit it.

  ‘How’s your gas enclosure holding up?’ Bill Reynolds, the man in charge of this shift of firefighters, asked.

  ‘I’m checking it now,’ Connor told him, leading the way to where, with Bill’s advice and help, the hospital had recently built a fireproof shed to hold its supply of medical gases.

  The outer brick skin was warm to the touch, but Connor knew the insulating layers within the bricks would be keeping the gas tanks at a safe temperature.

  Assured that things were under control, and the hospital building relatively safe, he skirted back around the building to check on patients.

  Caitlin was standing in a patch of shadow just beyond the car park, the white of her shirt and the gleam of her golden hair identifying her to him.

  He detoured that way and took her in his arms, holding her close for a moment.

  ‘It’s my house?’ she said, her voice telling him she already knew the answer.

  ‘Yes.’

  What else was there to say?

  ‘And my car?’

  No emotion, just a deadness in her usually vibrant tones that hurt him more than tears would have done.

  ‘The hospital insurance should cover it,’ he told her, and she turned away, moving out of the circle of his arms.

  ‘That’s not the point, is it, Connor?’ she said bleakly. ‘You were right. By stubbornly staying on I put all the patients, staff and hostel pe
ople at risk. I should have gone.’

  She walked away, not towards his house but to the cluster of nurses and patients.

  Every cell in Connor’s body urged him to follow her, but he knew he couldn’t. He might only have five hospitalised patients at the moment, but all five of them would be traumatised to some degree by what had happened, and the elderly hostel-dwellers also deserved his attention.

  The sun was up, shining with unnecessary brightness, before he left the hospital, after being assured there was no further risk of danger and having settled the occupants back inside. Setting up the weights for Warwick’s leg had taken longest, but now everyone was settled, most of the patients sleeping.

  Ned Withers had fixed crime tape—incongruous in a quiet country town—around the burnt-out vehicle and one look at the destruction made Connor’s heart hurt for Caitlin. The door of the house was open, the living room a watery mess, but there was no sign of her laptop, luggage or clothing.

  He made his way tiredly back to his place, regret that he hadn’t been able to be with her eating at him. He’d seen her again briefly when she’d helped bring the patients back inside, then later she’d been sitting on Granny’s bed, talking quietly to her and Mrs Rennie, who were now sharing a room. But then she’d left, with nothing more than a nod in his direction.

  She wasn’t at the house. He checked each room although an air of emptiness had been obvious from the moment he’d walked in. The note was on the kitchen table, missed as he’d hurried to the bedroom. Missed because his subconscious hadn’t wanted to see it?

  Dear Connor, it began—at least she’d called him ‘dear’.

  I’m leaving town. I’d say I’m sorry but that doesn’t begin to cover how I feel—about you, the town, the trouble. I don’t know what lies ahead, just know that you were right about me being here, and that I cannot stay any longer.

  There was a space between the last word and her name, as if there were other things she might have put there. ‘Love’ perhaps?

  Connor crumpled the note in his hand, then straightened it out, reread it and shook his head. It was an unmistakable goodbye, but he couldn’t accept she’d left town, just like that. Without talking to him—or leaving a phone number or address where he could reach her when life returned to normal!

  He phoned Mike to ask what he knew.

  ‘Nothing, Connor. I saw her about an hour or so ago. She asked me for my car keys—then must have brought them back because they’re here on my desk. I said how sorry I was about her car, but you know how it was. There wasn’t really time for chatting. Now I’ve got reams of paperwork to complete. Just what I didn’t need.’

  Connor tried to make a sympathetic noise but concern for Caitlin overrode all other considerations.

  She’d been devastated by the fire—more, he suspected, by the trouble her remaining in town had caused than by the loss of her car.

  So she’d left town.

  How?

  The all-night garage out on the highway had rental cars. Was that why she’d wanted Mike’s car keys? To drive out there and hire a car?

  He phoned the garage but wasn’t pleased to have his guess confirmed.

  ‘One of the lads drove the rental back to the hospital so she could drop off the car she was in,’ the man explained. ‘Clive, it was, but he’s gone off duty now, so I can’t tell you where she was headed.’

  OK, Connor thought, so he was right about the car, but was he right about her leaving town?

  Immediately?

  It didn’t fit with the determined woman who’d been willing to lose her job—and a position he knew she’d fought hard to gain—for the sake of a theory that might or might not prove correct.

  His anxiety was like an internal attack of pins and needles, and he wished he’d taken more notice of her work—of the things she’d told him.

  Smelling smoke, on his body as well as wafting from the hospital, he headed for the bathroom, showered, dressed, then walked back across the park again.

  Caitlin followed the directions the helpful fellow at the garage had given her, leaving the bitumen road for a gravel road that wound in and out between tall trees. The turn-off she was looking for was unmarked, the friendly man had said, but she’d know it by the way a tree had fallen across the track and cars now had to go around the tree.

  ‘Not that many cars go out there—apart from Ezra’s.’

  Caitlin found the track, the tree across it so big that if she hadn’t known about the detour around it, she’d have driven on, assuming it impassable. As she negotiated her way cautiously around the obstacle, she wondered about the sanity of what she was doing. Here she was, still in the clothes she’d worn to dinner at the golf club, reeking of smoke from the fire, tired almost beyond endurance, yet still pursuing the information that had already caused so much trouble in the town.

  Her foot hovered over the brake, then she realised the track was too narrow, too hemmed in by trees, for her to turn the car. She’d have to drive on.

  A couple of hundred metres further on there was a clearing, but now that she could turn around she didn’t, knowing she had to finish what she had started. An ancient wooden house stood in the middle of the clearing, backed up against an assortment of sheds and strange-looking structures, like half-completed windmill towers.

  As she stopped in front of the house, she remembered Ezra Neil was one of the men who still made a living mining gold. The towers must be connected to his mine or mines, she decided, though her knowledge of gold-mining was zilch.

  Mrs Neil appeared as Caitlin got out of the car. The woman stood in the doorway of the house, not coming forward in welcome but not waving Caitlin away either. She just stood and looked at the visitor, making Caitlin feel distinctly uncomfortable.

  ‘I would have phoned first but couldn’t find a number,’ Caitlin told her.

  ‘We don’t have the phone,’ Mrs Neil replied.

  Caitlin looked around. She’d heard so much about Ezra Neil and, although she’d never seen the man, she didn’t like the idea that he might be lurking somewhere.

  ‘I wondered if I could talk to you about my research,’ she said, unwilling to approach the house without an invitation. ‘About what I’m doing and what I hope to prove.’

  ‘Talk won’t bring Jonah back,’ Mrs Neil told her, then she turned her head a fraction, as if someone in the kitchen had spoken to her. ‘But you’ve come this far so you might as well come in.’

  Caitlin wasn’t sure whether to be pleased or sorry. It was a small victory, but she’d far rather have stayed outside the house where mellow sunshine would make mockery of strange fancies.

  The kitchen, where she entered, was as spic and span as she would have expected Mrs Neil’s kitchen to be, but bare and somehow soulless.

  Another fancy the sunshine might have dispelled!

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’

  ‘No, thank you,’ Caitlin said. ‘I don’t want to keep you long. It’s just that Jonah’s family is the only one that’s missing from my research, and if I can get some details, I’ll be finished and able to leave town.’

  It was impossible to judge whether this information pleased Mrs Neil, as her face was as expressionless as ever.

  ‘You’d better have some tea, then,’ she said, and Caitlin, unwilling to refuse a second time, agreed.

  ‘I’m trying to find out which children had the same bloodlines as the ones who got leukaemia,’ she explained, as Mrs Neil went through the motions of fixing tea. ‘Then I can look at those who didn’t get it to see if there’s any difference in their genetic structure that protected them.’

  She was talking too much, and knew what she was saying was too technical, but the alternative was silence, and she couldn’t have handled that either. Besides, she’d explained all this to the other mothers, why not to Mrs Neil?

  ‘If we could find that out, we could protect children in the future.’

  ‘There’s no future once you’re dead,’ Mrs N
eil decreed, and she turned back to face Caitlin with a small, but no less deadly looking gun in her hand.

  ‘Now, leave your car keys on the table and walk back out the door,’ Mrs Neil ordered. ‘I didn’t want to kill you. It causes too much talk. But you wouldn’t listen, wouldn’t go away.’

  ‘Killing me won’t help,’ Caitlin said, thinking of Connor’s Angie—knowing now how she’d died. Knowing now it wasn’t Ezra she should have feared. ‘Because someone else will come to finish my work. You can’t just keep killing people.’

  ‘Stand up and walk out.’ Mrs Neil’s voice was still as calm as it had been when she’d suggested a cup of tea, but Caitlin felt she must be feeling nervous.

  Did nervous people shoot more readily?

  Or might their hands shake so they’d miss?

  Had Angie stood up when Mrs Neil had produced the gun? Had she thought if she was outside she could run?

  Had she run and fallen down the shaft by accident, or been herded there by this madwoman?

  It wasn’t bravery, or fear of falling down a mine shaft, that kept Caitlin where she was. Given the choice of being shot in a spotlessly clean kitchen or falling down a mine shaft a snake could well have fallen down before her—it was no contest.

  Guns were minor compared to snakes…

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Caitlin said, when Mrs Neil repeated her order. ‘If you’re going to shoot me, you’ll have to do it here, and that’ll make an awful mess of your clean kitchen floor.’

  She looked Mrs Neil directly in the eyes, and hoped she sounded calmer than she felt.

  ‘And as well as that, there’ll be the bullet in my body. You didn’t shoot Angie so you got away with it that time, but a bullet can be traced to a gun. Of course, if the gun is your husband’s, he’ll probably get the blame.’

  ‘Ezra wouldn’t shoot anyone,’ Mrs Neil proclaimed. ‘Ezra’s a saint.’

  ‘Then he wouldn’t want you shooting people, would he?’ Caitlin asked, desperate to keep the woman talking and perhaps win herself a reprieve.

  Any reprieve!

  ‘Ezra doesn’t know about the other one, and when you walk out of here, which you’ll do eventually, my girl, he won’t need to know about you either.’