A Doctor Beyond Compare

by MELANIE MILBURNE

No, right now I’d like to kiss you, a tiny voice said inside her head, but she very quickly stomped on it—hard. What on earth was wrong with her? He was laughing at her behind those green-blue eyes and here she was, fighting an attraction for him she just didn’t understand.

  ‘No…no, of course not, I was just—’

  Suddenly he was standing way too close. Way too close to escape. Way too close to even breathe. She looked up into those sea-green eyes and swallowed as she pressed herself even further back against the sink until her spine protested at the pressure. The atmosphere was so heavy she could even hear the faint dripping of the kitchen tap behind her.

  ‘W-what are you d-doing?’ she stammered.

  His chest was almost but not quite touching hers. She had only to breathe out fully and her breasts would brush his hard body. She felt as if she was going to drown in the unfathomable depths of his eyes as he leaned in even closer. She could smell the clean ocean saltiness of his skin and hair as well as the faint musk of a male who had been hard at it physically and hadn’t yet showered. It was heady and intoxicating and made her suddenly ache to experience first-hand what his mouth would taste and feel like against hers. Her eyelids fluttered closed and her mouth opened just a fraction in anticipation of his kiss when she felt his arm brush past her waist to reach for the tap behind her. Her eyes sprang open at the sound of the tap being tightened.

  ‘I was turning off the tap,’ he said, stepping back from her. ‘What did you think I was doing?’

  ‘I…I…’ She floundered for a moment. The tap? He was turning off the dripping tap? She could feel her face flaming. Oh, God! She’d been almost begging him to kiss her.

  ‘This is a hot summer,’ he said. ‘It might not rain for months and the town water supply will be seriously compromised if you don’t make sure every tap is turned off properly. And that means no long showers, either. If there’s a bush fire in the district we won’t be able to handle it if everyone in town uses water indiscriminately.’

  ‘Is there anything else you need to tell me to make me feel even more incompetent?’ she bit back crossly. ‘I mean, apart from me being too much of an idiot to turn a tap off properly without the sort of brute strength someone like you obviously takes for granted?’

  ‘Did I call you incompetent?’

  ‘Not in so many words, but you imply it all the time.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Down on the beach you thought me incapable of managing Belinda. You said with my level of confidence in the water I was hardly likely to help her. I wouldn’t have even hurt my knee if you hadn’t insisted I run back to town for help. You should have gone for help since you’re supposedly the super athlete around here.’

  ‘By the time the ambulance got there the tide would have already been lapping at Belinda’s feet. How do you think you would have handled that?’ he asked, a tiny flicker of anger burning in his eyes as he stared her down.

  ‘If you had gone instead of me the ambulance would have been there a whole lot faster so that’s a moot point,’ she argued. ‘I had to run in bare feet with an injured knee. You had trainers with you. It was wrong of you to send me. It compromised the patient’s safety as well as mine.’

  ‘That’s a whole lot of rubbish and you damn well know it,’ he threw back, his tone tight with tension. ‘I acted entirely appropriately under the circumstances. I assessed the risks and made the decision I thought would produce the best outcome for the patient’s safety.’

  ‘While seriously compromising mine,’ she said.

  ‘You know what your problem is?’ he said, his jaw now visibly taut.

  She gave him a churlish look. ‘No, but no doubt you are going to tell me in point-by-point detail.’

  ‘Damn right I am,’ he growled back. ‘From what I’ve seen so far you are a city chick with a serious attitude problem. From the moment you drove into town you’ve looked down your snooty little nose at everyone and everything. You’re impulsive and irresponsible. That little near-drowning stunt down at the beach is a case in point. Apart from a few surfers who were too far out to help, you were on an unpatrolled beach, which with your inability to swim even enough to save yourself was just asking for trouble.’

  ‘I can so swim!’ Holly defended herself, secretly hoping he would never ask to see the evidence of her true capabilities. She knew that paddling around the toddlers’ pool hardly qualified her for the Commonwealth Games, but she hated the fact that he had found yet another fault in her.

  ‘How far can you swim?’ he asked.

  ‘I…’ she faltered for a nanosecond ‘…a fair distance.’

  ‘What sort of distance are we talking about? Two metres or two kilometres?’

  ‘What business is that of yours? It wasn’t stipulated on the application form that I had to be able to swim the length of the Baronga Beach in order to qualify for the post.’

  ‘No, but it would help me to know your true capabilities so if an emergency occurs I will know how to manage it. This is a seaside town with its fair share of boating accidents. We had a drowning only last year, and in a place as small as this it affects everybody.’ He scraped a hand through his salty hair, his tone softening a fraction. ‘Look, if you need a hand with learning to swim I can give you a few lessons. There’s a small shallow lake behind the sand dunes a little further down the coast. We could go through the basics there and build your confidence.’

  ‘I don’t need your help,’ she said, folding her arms across her chest. ‘And I am not lacking in confidence.’

  Holly could tell he didn’t believe her, which made her all the more angry towards him. She could just imagine how he would conduct his lessons with her, laughing at her for being so hopeless as soon as he witnessed her floundering out of her depth. Maybe that was why he was offering in the first place, not because he was concerned for her safety, but just so that he could make even more of a fool of her.

  ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘If you want to drown in a puddle of water, go right ahead. But I’m not so sure I’d want to give you the kiss of life. You might end up biting my tongue off.’

  ‘If you so much as dare to put your mouth anywhere near mine—drowning or not—I will do more than bite your tongue off!’ she threatened with a fiery glare.

  The air started to crackle with some indefinable tension as soon as her spluttering tirade left her lips. Holly could feel it like an invisible energy suddenly pulsating between their bodies. She could feel the tension growing in his body, standing so close. She could even see it in his blue-green gaze as it clashed and warred with hers.

  ‘What gave you the idea that I would want to kiss you?’ he asked.

  She blinked at him for a moment. God, she thought. Do I look that bad without make-up? Yes, her hair was a mess and her freckles were no doubt all on show, but surely she wasn’t totally undesirable. Or was she?

  She quickly rustled up some much-needed feminine reassurance. Make-up or no make-up, she knew she had a figure that turned heads. She should know; it had cost her a fortune in gym memberships to get and maintain it.

  She tilted her chin. ‘You’re a man, aren’t you?’

  ‘I was the last time I looked.’

  For some reason Holly couldn’t stop her gaze dipping to where the evidence of his maleness was housed behind the thin fabric of his board shorts.

  She forced her gaze upwards with an effort, but she knew that the tiny swallowing movement of her throat probably betrayed her.

  ‘And I’m not gay, if that’s what you’re thinking,’ he said, filling the little silence.

  ‘I—I wasn’t thinking…that…’

  ‘What were you thinking?’

  There was nothing she could do to drag her eyes away from the magnetism of his. She felt ensnared by his gaze, making her feel vulnerable and exposed, as if he was seeing right inside her to where the real and very low level of confidence she possessed was secretly hidden. She’d worked so hard all her life to come across as self-assured and conf
ident in all situations, but it was all a ruse and somehow she sensed he knew it.

  ‘What were you thinking, Holly?’ he repeated.

  ‘Um…nothing…I was thinking nothing.’ She gave her hands a dismissive little flap and shifted her gaze. ‘You have a perfect right to consider me unattractive and I understand completely and—’

  ‘I don’t recall saying you were unattractive.’

  Her head came back up. ‘But you said you…you know…wouldn’t want to…to…’

  ‘Kiss you?’ Cameron asked, his eyes going to the soft bow of her mouth almost of their own volition.

  She ran her tongue over her dry lips in a nervous gesture that somehow surprised him. He had her picked as a street-smart city girl who was well practised in the art of seduction, but right now she looked like a teenager about to get her first proper kiss. Her cheeks were softly flushed and her melted-chocolate eyes seemed to be almost alight with sparks of tentative anticipation.

  ‘Do you want me to kiss you, Holly?’ he asked, the movement of air from his mouth as he spoke brushing across her face like a caress.

  She gave an almost undetectable little swallow as he brought his head down a fraction closer. ‘D-do you want to kiss me?’ she asked, her voice barely more than a husky whisper.

  Cameron fought with himself for a long moment. This was total madness. He wasn’t in the market for an intimate relationship and certainly not with someone who was more than likely going to hightail it back to the city before the month was out, let alone the whole year. He’d been down this pathway before. It had taken months to get over Lenore’s decision to choose the city over him and he didn’t want to make the same mistake twice.

  He wished he could just step back from Holly and leave it to his imagination to conjure up the taste and feel of her in his arms, but something about her up-tilted face, with its dusting of tiny freckles, threw his self-control completely off course. Before he could stop it, his head came down even further, his eyes closing in time with hers as his lips found the unbelievable softness of her mouth.

  Holly sighed as his mouth brushed against hers in a gentle exploratory kiss. She had been kissed too many times to recall each and every one but, for all that, she was certain no one had ever kissed her quite the way Cameron McCarrick did. His lips moved against hers with a sensual slowness that was totally captivating, making her breathless for more. She opened her mouth at the first stroke of his tongue along the seam of her lips and a heady rush filled her at the feel of that firm, insistent, very male warmth penetrating her softness to delve into and possess every secret place.

  She felt his hands go to her hips and pull her closer, the probe of his aroused body sending a wave of wanting right through her. She could feel the silk of need between her thighs, her response to him so unrestrained it almost frightened her. Julian had been a methodical lover and she had certainly experienced pleasure in his arms, but never throughout his textbook-perfect repertoire had she felt this overwhelming urgency of need so quickly and so unrestrainedly.

  She pressed herself even closer, relishing the sensation as Cameron’s warm hands moved from her hips to the underside of her ribcage, not quite touching her breasts but close enough to build the anticipation of him doing so to fever pitch. She could feel the tight points of her breasts aching for his touch and her stomach gave a little flip of delight when he deepened the kiss as if his self-control had just slipped a fraction.

  His mouth ground against hers without restraint, his earlier gentleness replaced by a fiery burst of male need that she could feel pulsing against her lower body.

  His tongue swept over hers and captured it in an erotic dance that left her sagging against him with need. Her hands went to his waist and then, with a brazenness she had not realised she possessed, she touched him through his thin board shorts, stroking her fingers along his engorged length.

  He suddenly wrenched his mouth off hers and held her from him, his breathing uneven as his eyes met hers.

  ‘I don’t think this is such a good idea.’

  ‘You have someone else?’ The question was out before she could stop it.

  It was a moment or two before he answered. ‘No.’

  ‘So…’ Holly wished she could control the heat in her cheeks but, without the screen of foundation, what could a girl do? ‘You’ve still got feelings for your ex?’ she asked.

  Again he paused for a fraction of time before he answered firmly, ‘No.’

  ‘I see…’

  ‘I know this goes against the grain of what most men my age say they want, but I really want more out of life than one-night stands,’ he said. ‘I want to settle down and have kids, to bring them up to appreciate the true value and quality of life. I don’t believe you can get that quality of life in the city. But I have yet to find a woman who thinks and feels the same.’

  Holly was more than a little surprised by his revelation. He was what—thirty-two or -three? Most men, including her ex-fiancé before he landed his socialite bride, were out there bedding every woman they could while they could get away with it, while way down here on the southern New South Wales coast was a guy who wanted to have what she had longed for all her life but had been denied. Her sense of family had been more or less destroyed by her parents’ acrimonious divorce, and yet in a deep part of her she still hoped that somewhere out there was a man who had the same core values as she: a longing for connection, for intimacy, for loving stability in which to feel secure and grow in self-confidence.

  ‘I’m sorry, Holly, but if you want a quick tumble in the sack to pass the time you’ve picked the wrong guy,’ he said as he scraped a hand through his hair.

  Holly’s anger came to her rescue. ‘You think me so desperate that I would consent to sleeping with you?’

  One of his brows lifted a fraction at her venomous tone but she was undaunted. ‘For your ego’s information, I am not here in search of a husband or, for that matter, even a lover. I don’t even like you. You are everything I most detest in a man. You’re scruffy and unpolished and you have the arrested development of a pre-adolescent.’

  ‘Well, since we’re into character assessments, allow me to make mine,’ he returned, his eyes beginning to glitter at her warningly.

  She folded her arms crossly and gave an exaggerated eye roll. ‘Go ahead. I can hardly wait.’

  ‘In my opinion you are totally unsuitable to this position,’ he said. ‘You’re inexperienced and lack confidence. You are not what I was expecting when I asked for back-up. I have single-handedly run this clinic for months only to find the person they finally send me is a young woman who is more interested in whether her hair is in place than the welfare of her patients.’

  ‘That is not true!’ Holly said, unconsciously flicking a wayward strand of hair out of her face to glare at him. ‘You have no right to say that. This is only my first day working here. How can you possibly assess my capabilities properly in such a short time?’

  His gaze swept over her, lingering for a moment on her bandaged knee before returning to her face. ‘Believe me, I’ve seen enough. You should put that knee up for a while. You won’t be able to drive for a couple of days. I’ll take you with me in the morning.’

  ‘I don’t need a lift. I can make my own arrangements.’

  ‘Have it your way, but let me warn you it’s a long hop to the clinic.’

  Holly watched as he left the room, only releasing her tight breath once she heard the front door open and close again on his exit.

  ‘I’ll show you,’ she muttered as she limped to where she’d left her crutches. She stuffed them under her arms and took three hops before tossing them to one side in disgust as she sat down in front of her laptop computer. ‘If I have to crawl there on my belly, I’ll show you, Cameron McCarrick.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  ‘GOSH, you’re here early,’ Karen said the following morning when Holly turned up at the clinic. ‘I would’ve thought after all the drama yesterday you’d come in
a little later. How is your knee?’

  ‘Fine, I didn’t need crutches after all,’ Holly answered, privately marvelling at the gossip hotline that had obviously been operating overnight, a night in which she’d spent several hours poring over her laptop and the Internet, re-educating herself in the details of Wilson’s disease in between fuming over Cameron McCarrick, all the time trying not to think about that kiss.

  ‘Have you heard how Belinda Proctor is doing?’ she asked the receptionist.

  ‘She’s doing OK. There’s a small fracture of the skull but they’re not talking about surgery. She’s not fully regained consciousness but they don’t think there’ll be any lasting damage.’

  ‘That’s good,’ Holly said. ‘I felt so sorry for her mother.’

  ‘Yeah, she does it tough does poor Sandra.’ Karen reached for some pathology reports on the desk. ‘These came in first thing.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Holly leafed through them, frowning as she read the results.

  ‘Can I get you a cup of tea? I’m just about to have one,’ Karen offered.

  ‘Thanks, that’d be nice.’ Holly looked up from the pathology notes. ‘But can you get me Mr Maynard’s file first? I just want to check something.’

  Karen went to the patient files, extracted the folder and handed it to her, the line of her mouth tight with disapproval. ‘I hope he’s not going to come to the clinic too often. It’ll make things difficult for the other patients.’

  Holly decided against reminding the receptionist that Noel Maynard had the same rights to medical attention as any other patient. It was a sensitive subject and clearly nothing she said was going to change it.

  ‘What time is my first patient?’ she asked instead.

  Karen glanced at the appointment book. ‘About forty minutes.’

  ‘Good. I’ll be in my consulting room if anyone needs me before then,’ Holly said, clutching the folder and doing her best to disguise her limp as she made her way down the hall.

  Once at her desk she opened the patient file and began reading from the start, determined to make sense of Dr Cooper’s notes in order to understand the pathology results Karen had just handed her. She’d been expecting elevated levels of copper to show up in Noel Maynard’s urine specimen as he had been without penicillamine for two months, but the results had come back showing zero levels. That didn’t make sense. In Wilson’s disease the copper levels should have been elevated, even in a spot urine. The pathology report had recommended a repeat test with a twenty-four-hour urine sample. She examined the notes with concentration, reading past his childhood ailments to where Dr Cooper had documented the initial diagnosis of Wilson’s disease.