He’d been through hell.
She pulled back on her hand, afraid she was hurting him, but his grip tightened.
‘But you found her,’ she said softly, and he nodded.
‘I found her in the back bedroom and the curtains were burning. The window had exploded inward. And she had bare feet. Bare feet!’
‘Hugo-’
‘I should have come last night. I should have thought of Sue-Ellen then.’ He groaned. ‘Hell, I should have-’
‘You’re one man,’ she said gently.
‘I went to the beach.’
‘There was no danger last night. And other people checked. Gary loved her and he checked. She sent him away. There was nothing else you could do. You know that.’
‘But today-’
‘Today you came. You came in time. They’re saying on the beach that Sue-Ellen refused to evacuate. Do you think she would have evacuated if you’d ordered her to? You’re not omnipotent, Hugo. You’re human. You’re a doctor and a really fine one at that, but you’re still human.’ She took his palms into her hands and looked down. He was burned but not too badly. Still… Her face twisted. Dear God, he’d come so close. ‘You’re a lovely, lovely man,’ she whispered. ‘The best… Oh, God, Hugo if I’d lost you…’
He wasn’t hearing. He was still with Sue-Ellen.
‘I thought she was stable,’ he said bleakly. ‘Sensible. Last time I saw her… I was out here three days ago when the fires first threatened. She talked about evacuation plans. So why didn’t I check?’
‘Because you can’t be everything to everyone,’ she said softly. Then, because she couldn’t bear to watch the pain in his eyes any more, she took his face in her hands and kissed him-softly, on each eyelid in turn. ‘Sue-Ellen made her own decision not to leave her animals. That’s her responsibility. Back at the beach… Sam called her a schizo-a mental case-and if that’s the way you regarded her then, yes, you were responsible for her because she wasn’t responsible for herself. You should have locked her up and taken total control. But you said she was a person capable of her own decisions.’
‘Yes, but-’
‘But nothing.’ Rachel’s voice was urgent now. She could see the self-loathing in Hugo’s eyes and she wasn’t having any of it. He was hurt, this man. She could put bandages on his hands but it wasn’t enough. What hurt more than a heart?
‘Sue-Ellen knew the dangers. Sam and Gary both said she’d been warned. She chose to stay.’
‘She was ill.’
‘Would you have locked her in a mental institution?’
‘No, but-’
‘But nothing. Sue-Ellen lived independently and she was hurt, making that life for herself. I won’t have you blaming yourself, Dr McInnes.’
He looked up at her, and the beginning of an exhausted smile crossed his face. Just a trace.
‘Bossy, aren’t we?’
‘It’s what I do best,’ she said softly, and smiled back at him.
Hugo gazed up at her. Really looked. His burned hand came up and brushed the curls from her face. They were tumbling every which way from under her hard hat.
She’d be smoke-grimed, she thought-black with soot and sand and smoke. But Hugo’s eyes were holding her and his fingers traced her cheekbone gently-a feather touch.
‘You’re so beautiful.’
‘Beautiful and bossy?’ she asked in a voice that wasn’t quite steady.
‘That’s the one. Rachel…’
‘What?’
‘I need to kiss you,’ he told her.
And what was a girl to say to a request like that?
She kissed him.
More than that, she gave her heart. Right there and then.
Or maybe it had been given in those awful moments on the beach, under the sodden blanket with the fire roaring overhead, thinking that somewhere out here was Hugo. Her love…
Her love.
There was another love. Craig. That hadn’t disappeared-it never could. There was still commitment, still pain, but it didn’t stop this flowering that was happening within her right now.
Dottie had said it was time she moved on. Put Craig behind her. But it wasn’t like that. She hadn’t been able to put Craig behind her for eight long years.
And she couldn’t now. She didn’t need to.
Because Craig was still with her. Craig was a part of who she was, a part of her loving. She held Hugo’s dear, scorched face in her hands and she kissed him with all the love in her heart and she knew that this was no betrayal.
This was an extension of loving. A wealth of love. Broadening, expanding her heart, to take in Toby and Cowral and Penelope and Digger and Sue-Ellen and maybe a few crazy goats clustered around and a confused pup called Pudge.
And Hugo.
She kissed him and found herself melting. Not just her lips. Her whole life, melting away and reforming. Regrouping. Stronger, richer, deeper.
Love…
He tasted of fire. He tasted of heat and want and aching need.
He tasted of… Hugo.
Her fingers held him, curled into his hair, clinging, letting his mouth devour her, knowing that for him this kiss was as affirmation of life as well as love.
Knowing for him this was the only way to move forward.
Through love.
Love was…here. Love was now.
Love was Hugo.
There was no time for each other. Not now.
They held each other for as long as they could, desperately taking what they most needed from this precious contact. But, of course, there was more needed of them this day than the care of Sue-Ellen.
The fire chief stood behind them and coughed and waited. He’d given them space. He was a wise man and he’d seen their need. He’d directed his team away from them as the chopper left and had given them as much time as he could, but needs were breaking through.
‘Doc…’ He coughed a couple of times and tried again. ‘Doc…’
They broke apart. Sort of. Battered and filthy, they sat in the mud and looked up at him, and the fire chief gave them a grin which said the incongruous picture they made was hardly lost on him.
‘Geez, whatever turns you on, Doc,’ he said to Hugo. ‘Me, I like my missus in a sexy negligee but if you like ’em covered with soot-well, each to his own. But kinky is what I call it.’
Rachel blushed. She blushed from the roots of her hair to the tips of her toes and she tried to haul away, but Hugo was having none of it. His hand tightened around her waist and he grinned.
‘Sexiest lady I know.’
‘Isn’t she just.’ The fire-chief’s grin broadened. ‘We’ll have her up on our calendar next year, hard hat included. Look, I’m sorry to disturb you…’
‘You’d think we could have a bit of privacy,’ Hugo complained. He seemed suddenly almost jovial. ‘We’ve searched so hard to find it. And here we are with only thirty goats, one dog and twenty odd firefighters as an audience.’ His smile faded, just a bit, but it didn’t leave his eyes completely. ‘Don’t tell me. Problems?’
‘No major ones.’ The chief wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and something suspiciously like moisture smeared his cheek. ‘We’ve been so bloody lucky. It’s amazing. But…’
‘But?’
‘One of the teams down at the river are saying some of the guys are suffering from smoke inhalation. And the publican’s wife…she tried to hook up the hose as the first of the heavy smoke hit the town but she was working blind and she fell over the tap. She sounds like she’s broken her toe.’
A broken toe…
‘Is that all?’ Hugo asked in voice that was none too steady.
‘That’s all, Doc,’ the chief told him. ‘For now. You guys might have time to continue this…discussion later if you need to. But for now I’m afraid Cowral wants you both to be doctors.’
Hugo smiled and turned back to Rachel. To his love. ‘Can we be doctors for a bit?’ Hugo asked her. He held Rachel close and the express
ion in his eyes told her all she ever needed to know about this man. There was no need for anything else. Just Hugo. His feel. His touch. His eyes.
And the way he looked at her.
‘What do you think, my love?’ he whispered. ‘Can we be doctors for a bit?’
‘As long as we stay being more than just doctors underneath,’ she answered, her eyes smiling and holding and loving. ‘As long as we stay just as we are.’ And then her smile broke into a chuckle of love and laughter and joy. ‘Only maybe a little bit cleaner.’
They worked then, through the rest of that long, long day. Because, of course, it wasn’t just firefighters with smoke inhalation and Maddie Forsyth’s broken toe. The town was in firefighting mode. There were minor burns everywhere. Exhaustion. Dehydration. Stress.
Hugo and Rachel worked together and separately. They saw an endless stream of patients, one after another. The little hospital was a clearing-house through which most of the town’s population passed at some time during the day.
Toby was there from time to time, brought in by Myra just to see that Daddy and Rachel were still there. Still fine.
Toby and Myra came with three dogs. Because of course they couldn’t leave the shaky Pudge at the farm. Hugo had scooped him up and carried him into town beneath his fire-crew jacket and had handed him over to Myra to fuss over. Amazingly, the two big dogs seemed to sense the little dog’s distress and now Pudge was the centre of a two-dog, housekeeper and small boy circle of protection. By his second visit into the hospital the puppy’s tail was starting to wag again.
‘I’ll telephone Melbourne and tell them to pass the news on to Sue-Ellen,’ Hugo told Rachel as Myra herded her charges outdoors again. ‘It’ll do her more good than medicine.’
In the middle of all this…he could find time to think laterally about Sue-Ellen. That was what country practice was all about, Rachel thought as she returned to washing ash out of a firefighter’s eyes. Country practice was medicine from textbooks-plus the rest.
It was healing-just for her.
They worked far into the night. The townsfolk had gone home from the beach. The wind died, and about ten o’clock the hoped-for change blew through softly from the south. The air temperature dropped to almost cool and there was a spattering of blessed rain.
But still they worked. A team had been organised to go from house to house, checking, not for spot fires now but on people’s health. The elderly and those at risk had had a day where they’d been tested to the limit. They could go home now and maybe collapse with exhaustion, stress, smoke inhalation, minor injuries…
So everyone was checked. Cowral looked after its own. And as each problem was reported, it was passed on to the medical team.
At two a.m. Rachel finally arrived back in the kitchen of the doctors’ residence. Myra had taken Toby and all three dogs out to her place for the night. There were casseroles sitting on the kitchen table-of course-but Rachel was beyond eating. She sat and stared at nothing. At nothing at all.
And fifteen minutes later Hugo walked in.
He was as exhausted as she was. He appeared at the screen door and his face was grey with fatigue. She rose and looked at him. Just…looked. And what passed between them…
It was a vow. It was confirmation of all they had come through that day.
It was the start of their life together.
‘Rachel,’ he said at last, and it was as if it was a blessing.
‘Hugo,’ she whispered, and walked straight into his arms.
There was no time then for anything but love.
There was no time for talking. No time for anything but filling this aching, searing need. Holding. Finding their rightful place.
They showered together because to do otherwise was to waste time. Their filthy clothes were shed together-clothes that on any day but this one would have had both doctors struck off the medical register as disgraces to the medical profession. But no one had minded their clothes. They’d been doctors first and foremost. They’d seen to the town’s medical needs.
But now…the need was past. The town’s needs.
There was time now for their own needs.
Time to become lovers.
There was no hesitation. No questions. There were only answers.
Their bodies met in joyful wonder. They washed each other under the stream of warm water, soaping, smiling, learning each other’s bodies in this, the most intimate act of cleaning. Soaping off the layers of grime to reveal bodies that were already known and loved.
His hands were smoothing the soap over her skin and it was the most erotic of sensations. She had the flannel and was rubbing his back, but her body was falling forward, leaning into him, letting her mouth touch his…
Tasting. Wanting.
Needing!
The need was mutual. All-exclusive.
It was as if this man and this woman had been meant for each other-destined-from the beginning of time.
And then they were together in Hugo’s big bed, dry and warmed but still naked, gloriously naked. Skin against skin, holding, holding, narrowing the gap, merging…
Man and woman becoming one.
It had been so long.
Had it ever been this good? Rachel didn’t know. She couldn’t think. She couldn’t compare. What had been between Rachel and Craig was another time. Another life. It had been precious-was still precious-but it was a thing apart.
This was now. This man, her beloved Hugo, holding her as if he loved her.
He did love her. She knew it and she gloried in it.
Craig would not gainsay her this love. Because she loved Craig she knew, with a surety that was a part of her own heart, that she had his blessing. She could feel it.
Her body was doubly blessed.
Dear heaven, the feel of Hugo. The wonder. His big hands were holding her as if she was the most precious thing in the world. His warmth, the smell of him, the taste…
The way her body moulded around him. Opened. Welcomed. He came into her, and their mutual need was overwhelming. The wonder…
The joy.
They slept. How could they not sleep after this day? Their exhaustion was absolute. Sated with loving, they slept entwined, and Rachel fell into a sleep as deep as she’d ever been in.
Ever since the accident-ever since that dreadful day-her sleep had been troubled, disturbed, as if she’d had to stay awake for the next disaster. There would be another disaster. Her world had been pulled from under her feet and she couldn’t trust.
She couldn’t sleep.
But now…in this man’s arms, she slept. Let tomorrow bring what it may. For now there was only this man and his arms and his body and his love.
And Hugo?
It had never been like this with Beth. He’d drifted into marriage with Beth as he’d nearly drifted into marriage with her sister. Stupid. Stupid, stupid.
Yet how could he have known it had been stupid? He’d never known it could be like this. He woke about dawn and his fingers twined gently through Rachel’s tumbled curls. How could he have suspected there was loving like this in the world?
This wonderful woman. This…blessing.
She stirred in sleep, her eyes half opened and she smiled at him. His heart twisted inside him and he gathered her to him with such tenderness. The most precious thing…
Rachel.
Her eyes closed and she snuggled into him. Her breasts moulded to him. He felt desire stir, but exhaustion was still there. Desire could wait, he thought with a growing joy. It could wait an hour or two. There was all the time in the world. This was his Rachel. Rachel…
Murmuring her name into her hair, he drifted back to sleep.
The phone woke them.
It was late. At least eight. The sun was streaming across the brocade quilt. He’d get rid of it, Hugo thought, and then joyously, yes! He’d get rid of every piece of brocade in the house.
This day was the first day of the rest of his life. His life with Rachel.
The phone was ringing.
Rachel.
Medical imperative. Answer the phone. He smiled back at her and then answered the phone.
A woman’s voice, urgent with need.
‘Is Rachel there? Dr Harper? She’s not answering her cellphone. I need to speak to her.’
‘Sure.’ He heard the fear and reacted. His eyes sent Rachel an urgent message and handed her the phone.
Rachel took the receiver and listened.
‘Dottie.’
She was suddenly wide awake, pushing herself up in bed, oblivious of the fact that she was naked. A sunbeam was streaming across her creamy breasts.
Dear God, she was beautiful!
But her voice sounded concerned.
‘No, Dottie, we’re fine. I’m sorry. I should have rung you last night. I might have known you’d see it on the news reports. No. The town’s been left basically intact. We’re safe.’
‘No.’
‘No.’
Then her voice softened with dread. ‘But he can’t… Dottie, he was stable…’
She listened some more and then put her lips tightly together. Her eyes closed as if in pain.
‘Of course I’ll come,’ she whispered. ‘Of course. Just as soon as I can get there.’
The line went dead. Hugo lifted the receiver from Rachel’s suddenly limp grasp and laid it back on the cradle. Then he turned and took her hands in his.
‘What is it, Rachel?’
She opened her eyes and stared at him but she wasn’t seeing him. She was seeing something a long way away. In the far, far distance.
‘It’s Craig,’ she whispered.
‘Craig?’
‘My husband. He’s dying.’
CHAPTER NINE
SOMEHOW, while Hugo helped Rachel put her belongings together and practically force-fed her toast and arranged for someone to drive her…somehow he got it out of her.
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