Bushfire Bride

by Marion Lennox

  ‘Oh, my dear, we were that worried. We didn’t know where you’d got to. We assumed you’d gone home but then Charlie found your husband’s car and it was still locked. We searched, but then the fire brigade boys came in and they said you’d gone back to the hospital and you’ve been working so hard…’

  Everyone was assuming Michael was her husband, Rachel thought. She’d been with him. She wore a wedding ring.

  It didn’t matter. Let them.

  She tried to think of Michael with some degree of caring. Had he managed to save Hubert Witherspoon? She didn’t know and she didn’t much mind. For a moment she almost felt it in her to be sorry for him. He’d left and he’d missed out on…this. This hubbub of caring.

  Penelope.

  The dog flashed back into her mind and she gave a guilty start. Her dog… Michael’s dog was back at the hospital. She half turned, but Hugo was before her.

  ‘Our hospital orderly has taken Penelope home for the night,’ he told her. ‘Jake’s wife has a poodle. We figured they’d get on fine.’

  What was it with this man? He had the ability to read what she was thinking almost as she thought it. The feeling was really, really unnerving.

  ‘This lady’s a real champion,’ someone said behind her, and she recognised one of the men who’d been on the fire truck. There were scores of firefighters here. This must be their refuelling station before they went back to the fire or turned in for the night.

  ‘She’s a hungry real champion,’ Hugo said from behind her. His hand was on her shoulder and for some reason it was a huge support. His warmth gave her shaking legs strength. Somehow his presence made this welcome feel real-as if she was part of all this.

  But it wasn’t real, she told herself a little bit desperately. It was an illusion. She was most definitely not a part of this. She cast Hugo an unsure glance and pulled away from under his hand.

  But then she missed it when he released her. She missed…the contact? The link?

  What?

  ‘Daddy!’ a voice yelled out from the other side of the hall and a tousle-headed, pyjama-clad Toby came bounding through the crowd of locals to greet him. Hugo reached out and caught him, swinging him high in the air.

  ‘Tobes. Why aren’t you in bed?’

  ‘Mrs Partridge made me have an afternoon sleep,’ Toby said, with all the indignation of a small man whose person has been significantly violated. ‘She said we’d all had a nasty shock and she needed a lie-down, too. So I went to sleep. And now I’m wide awake and Mrs Partridge’s helping me make lamingtons for the firefighters to eat tomorrow. Can we stay for a while, Daddy?’

  ‘Yes, we can,’ he told him, hugging him close. ‘Far be it from me to interfere with lamington-making. And we need to wait for Dr Harper to be fed.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because we’re taking her home to stay with us.’

  To stay with them? He had to be kidding.

  He wasn’t. ‘There’s nowhere else.’

  Full to the brim of Irish stew, fresh bread rolls and Toby’s magnificent lamingtons, Rachel was tucked into Hugo’s capacious car with as much room for argument as if she’d been a parcel.

  ‘But why?’

  ‘You’ve already discovered the motel’s full. There’s a couple of beds at the hospital but we need them. While this fire’s burning I want all resources left free for emergencies. Toby and I have a big house at the rear of the hospital and there’s two spare bedrooms.’

  ‘But your wife…’

  ‘I’m a widower,’ he said bluntly. ‘But I’m trustworthy.’ He put on his most trustworthy smile and she had to smile.

  ‘No, but-’

  ‘Exactly. No buts. Can you think of anywhere better?’ He smiled across at her and his smile had her insides doing strange things. Very strange things indeed. This was no trustworthy smile. It looked exactly the opposite.

  But he was still speaking. She had to concentrate. ‘There’s no women’s refuge to be had,’ he was saying. ‘Despite the rumours. The dog pavilion’s closed for the night and something tells me you weren’t very comfortable there last night anyway. And the park benches are exceedingly hard. So it’s us or nothing.’

  ‘We really want you to stay,’ Toby announced from the back seat. ‘Me and Digger like you. Even though your dress looks funny.’

  ‘Gee, thanks.’ She fingered the Crimplene and wondered how it was that the Crimplene was the least odd thing in the succession of things that had happened to her today.

  ‘We’ll do something about that tomorrow,’ Hugo announced. ‘But for now, we’d be very pleased if you took up our offer of accommodation, Dr Harper. What about it?’

  What about it? There was only one answer to that. She had no choice.

  ‘Yes, please,’ she said, and decided then and there that arguing was out of the question.

  Things were entirely out of her hands.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE house they took her to was a big old timber home in the same grounds as the hospital. It had wide verandas all around and a garden that in the dim light cast by the hospital nightlights looked overgrown and rambling. Digger was lying on the front steps. When they arrived he rushed down to greet them, his whole body quivering in delight. Hugo pushed open the front door, Rachel walked inside as he followed, carrying Toby-and she stopped still in astonishment.

  This wasn’t a home. It was an artwork.

  A magnificent artwork.

  Like something out of Vogue, it had been furnished with exquisite taste. In rich reds and golds, every piece of furnishing was richly ornate and highly decorative. The floor was sleekly polished with gorgeous Persian rugs scattered at artistic intervals. There were elegant pieces of sculpture, carefully placed. The settees and chairs were colour co-ordinated with dainty matching cushions, artfully arranged. Heavy brocade curtains were held back, looped and looped again with vast gold tassels that hung to the floor.

  Good grief!

  This wasn’t a doctor’s residence. It wasn’t a child’s residence.

  It was frankly…scary.

  But Hugo seemed oblivious, both to his surroundings and to her reaction. ‘Toby, would you show Dr Harper where she’ll sleep?’ he asked. ‘I’ll put the coffee on.’ He disappeared in the direction of the kitchen while Toby towed her through to the back of the house.

  The further she went the more awful it became.

  ‘This room’s where my daddy sleeps and this is where Digger and I sleep,’ Toby told her, and Rachel had glimpses of two rooms with the same amazing furnishings. He towed her further. ‘You can have this room or this room.’

  It made no difference which. Gorgeous brocade beds with hugely rich furnishings. Huge gold bows of something like velvet with threads of something shining and metallic hung at each corner of the bed. The beds looked like they took half an hour of intense concentration and a degree in interior design to make each morning!

  Ugh.

  ‘Do you and your daddy like…um…really decorated houses?’ she asked, as Toby stood and waited for her verdict.

  His small face furrowed in concentration. ‘Why?’

  ‘Your whole house is sort of…frilly. And red. And gold. You guys must really like red and gold, huh?’

  ‘I like purple,’ Toby told her.

  ‘So Daddy likes red and gold?’

  ‘I think he likes blue.’ Toby considered some more. ‘Or maybe yellow. Mr Addington at the bank has a really yellow car and whenever my dad sees it he whistles and says what a beauty.’

  ‘So why is your house red and gold?’

  ‘My mummy decorated the house,’ Toby told her. ‘My mummy died just after I was born. Daddy was really sad.’

  ‘I guess he would be.’ Rachel’s face softened. ‘Losing your mummy would be really hard.’

  ‘Yeah, but I didn’t know her,’ Toby said with the blunt pragmatism of a six-year-old. ‘My daddy says Aunty Christine looks like her. The photos are a bit the same. And Aunty Christine
loves this house. She comes in here and looks at it and cries.’

  Oh, great…

  ‘Aunty Christine says Digger shouldn’t come into the house because he messes it up but Daddy said he put his foot down over that, whatever that means,’ Toby told her. ‘And I want a Darth Vader poster on my bedroom wall ’cos Daddy and I love that movie, but Aunty Christine says my mummy would hate it and I mustn’t even ask Daddy because it’d make him sad. Do you think it’d make him sad? Or is it something else he’d put his foot down about?’

  ‘Maybe.’ This wasn’t a conversation she should get drawn into, she decided. Not when she’d known these people for not much more than two minutes.

  There was lots of background here that she didn’t understand.

  But at least she had a bed, she decided, brightening. An amazing bed. She’d had a truly excellent meal. She could put up with a little red and gold opulence.

  She sat down on the bed. It gave under her weight. She gave a tentative bounce and the bed bounced back.

  The symmetry of the covers was ruined.

  Great.

  ‘Do you do much bouncing?’ she asked Toby, and he looked like he didn’t know what she was talking about.

  ‘You ruin the covers if you bounce,’ he told her. ‘Aunty Christine says so. She says don’t move things. Don’t touch. She says Mummy would have everything perfect.’

  Rachel’s eyes widened. What an extraordinary statement. ‘But…bouncing’s fun. I’m sure your mummy would want you to have fun.’

  ‘Aunty Christine would growl at me if I bounced on my bed.’

  ‘Would she growl at you if you bounced on mine?’

  Toby thought about it. Deeply. ‘I guess she wouldn’t,’ he said at last. ‘You’re a grown-up. She couldn’t growl at you.’

  ‘I’d like to see her try.’ She’d never met the unknown Aunt Christine but already she held her in aversion. And Hugo… What had they created? A shrine to a dead wife and sister when it should be a home.

  She knew-who better?-that life was to be lived by the living. For the living. Not for the dead.

  It could all be taken away so quickly…

  Enough. She bounced again. And smiled at Toby and moved along so that there was room beside her. ‘Want to try?

  ‘Yes,’ Toby said, and went to join her.

  They bounced.

  Digger, watching from the doorway, ventured further in, looking as stunned as it was possible for a goofy dog to look.

  They continued to bounce.

  Digger started to bark and Toby giggled and bounced higher.

  It was great. Stupid but great.

  It had been one heck of a day. Rachel’s emotions had been pushed to the limit. She didn’t know what she was doing here. She didn’t have a clue what was happening to her, but for now…for this minute there was just one crazy time, a tousle-headed child who looked as if he didn’t get enough laughter in his life and Rachel. And Rachel knew she definitely needed more laughter. More bouncing.

  If the springs broke, she’d pay for them, she decided. If the tassels frayed. If the gilt was tarnished. Some things just had to be done, and they had to be done now. She had hold of Toby’s hands and they were bouncing in unison as Digger barked a crazy accompaniment on the side.

  ‘What on earth…?’

  She looked over to the doorway. Hugo was watching them. Stunned. ‘What on earth do you think you’re doing?’

  She refused to give up the moment. Not yet. She’d had a very big day and so had Toby. A vision of Toby’s face as he’d watched them work on Kim came back to her. It was too much horror for a six-year-old to be put to bed with. He needed to sleep with bouncing.

  ‘We’re bouncing, Dr McInnes,’ she told him, then gripped Toby’s hands tighter and bounced again. ‘Care to join us?’

  ‘You’ll break the bedsprings.’

  ‘I’ll pay for them,’ she said nobly. ‘I’m donating one set of bedsprings to the common good. I need a bounce and so does Toby. I’m sure you do, too.’

  ‘I wouldn’t fit,’ he said faintly, and she grinned.

  ‘That’s what you get for showing your guest to a room with a single bed.’

  ‘Daddy’s got a bigger bed,’ Toby volunteered, mid-bounce. ‘Can we can go there?’

  Digger barked again as if he thought that was a truly excellent idea.

  ‘My bed’s for sleeping in,’ Hugo told them, and Rachel grimaced.

  ‘How boring.’

  ‘The kettle’s boiled. Do you want a drink?’

  Rachel considered. She bounced a couple of times and looked down at Toby. He bounced with her and met her look-co-conspirators. Co-bouncers. ‘Do we want a drink, Toby?’

  ‘I’d like some hot chocolate,’ he told her, and bounced again.

  ‘That sounds good.’ Another bounce. ‘Maybe we could stop and bounce again tomorrow night.’

  ‘Are you staying for two nights?’

  She cast a sideways glance at Hugo and bounced a bit more. ‘I may,’ she told him. ‘If I’m not kicked out because of my bouncing habits. I think I’m needed.’

  ‘Because of the fire?’ Toby asked, and she nodded.

  ‘Because of the fire. And because…maybe because you guys could do with a bit of bouncing. Like me.’

  What was happening here?

  Hugo prepared three mugs of hot chocolate and listened to their laughter. He’d backed out of the room fast.

  Why?

  He didn’t know. Confusion, he thought. He was definitely confused. The sight of one crazy doctor, gorgeous in her borrowed Crimplene, holding his little son and bouncing as if she were six years old, too…

  Confusion summed it up, he thought. She was like no one he’d ever met.

  She was…gorgeous?

  She was also married. She was wearing a band of gold very definitely on the third finger of her left hand. She was attached to a creep called Michael.

  How attached?

  Married attached.

  But, then…he wore a wedding band as well.

  Why?

  Habit, he guessed. Beth had been dead for almost six years now.

  So why did he keep wearing the ring?

  The vision of Christine came into his head. Beth’s older sister. Christine, who came in every day and cared for Toby, fussed over this house, made sure Toby had a memory of his mother.

  Christine would marry him. He knew that. She was just waiting for him to move on from her sister.

  So he wore a wedding ring.

  ‘It’s time you got over it,’ Christine had told him, but he wasn’t ready. He hadn’t been ready to marry Beth. He hadn’t wanted to marry anyone.

  The memory of his parents’ loveless marriage was always there-his mother, cool and calculating, with eyes only for things of monetary value, and his father who’d had eyes only for women he could bed. He himself had been raised to be self-contained, aloof and indifferent, and only Toby had ever been able to get under his skin.

  The thought of Rachel came back into his vision. Bouncing. Christine would never bounce. Not in a fit.

  Neither would Beth, his ex-wife, have bounced. Neither would his mother.

  Rachel was…different.

  But Rachel had a husband. He thought back to the silver-haired cardiologist he’d met so briefly. The man might be odious, but he was obviously an extremely wealthy and well-connected doctor, and they were married. So Rachel might be bouncing in his spare bedroom with his small son but she had a husband and an Afghan hound and a life back in the city.

  So stop thinking of her like…what?

  Like his father thought of women?

  No. It wasn’t like that. This was something he had never felt before-in truth, he’d never known he could feel this way. Ever. But he was certainly feeling, and the problem was-he couldn’t stop to save himself.

  The hot chocolate was excellent. Exhausted, glowing with exertion from their bouncing, Rachel and Toby enjoyed it equally. Hugo watched them as
he’d watch two kids with their play lunch, and Rachel looked up and caught his eye and said, ‘What?’

  ‘What do you mean-what?’

  ‘What are you grinning at?’

  ‘I was just thinking you and Toby look of an age.’

  ‘Toby is very mature for six.’ She set her mug down on the table and rose to her feet, which all of a sudden didn’t feel too steady. It had been a roller-coaster of a day and she was rolling downward to sleep. ‘And I’m sure it’s Toby’s and my bedtime. Toby had an afternoon nap. I didn’t even have a nap last night.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It’d take far too long to explain,’ she said with dignity. She eyed him with indecision. ‘I suppose you wouldn’t happen to have a spare toothbrush, would you? My gear’s still at the showgrounds.’

  ‘Not only a toothbrush.’ He grinned. ‘While you and Toby were bouncing I made you up a sleeping kit. One pair of pyjamas, slightly large, one brand-new toothbrush and a comb. Everything else you need you’ll find in the guest bathroom.’

  She swallowed. Heck. It was a small enough gesture, but it was enough. The man was thoughtful.

  The man smiled!

  The man was seriously gorgeous.

  ‘Goodnight, then,’ she said, and there was a distinct tremor in her voice.

  His smile died and their eyes met. Something passed between them that was indefinable but it was still…there.

  But there was nothing to say. To try and bring it into the open-this thing…

  Impossible.

  ‘Goodnight,’ he said, and she knew he was thinking no such thing. He was thinking exactly what she was thinking.

  Impossible!

  What was it with her?

  Hugo stood and watched while Rachel walked away from him down the corridor to her bedroom. Her door closed behind her but he stood and watched for a very long time.

  What was it?

  ‘Dottie?’

  ‘My dear, why are you ringing at this time of night?’

  ‘I’m checking.’ Rachel was tucked into her opulent bed, her cellphone resting on her pillow. ‘I just need… Dottie, I need to know…’