‘I haven’t decided,’ she said, but the wide grey eyes with their dark fringe of lashes didn’t meet his and he didn’t quite believe her.
Steph turned away because she’d never been able to hide anything from Harry. But, to a certain extent, she’d spoken the truth. She wasn’t sure about her future.
What she was sure about was that she loved Harry. She ached for him in a way she’d never felt before—with a depth of longing she hadn’t realised could exist.
And it made her stupid—running her hands over letters he’d handled, touching his signature as if it could somehow connect her to him.
But Harry had betrayed her—as surely as Martin had done years earlier—aligning himself with Bob, all but seducing her so he could do Bob’s bidding.
Though, she would admit honestly, when her interminable musings reached this point, she’d done a bit of the seducing herself. It hadn’t all been Harry…
Another thing she was sure about was that she had to get away. Away from Harry. And from any chance of seeing Harry, and, wherever she went, she’d also need distraction—something to keep her mind occupied and fully focussed so thoughts and images of Harry didn’t keep popping into her head.
As far as occupation was concerned, she was hoping the decision would be made for her.
That one operation, assisting Harry, had reminded her how much she’d enjoyed surgery and, seeking a good reason to escape a city she now considered too small for the two of them, she’d written to the board which chose likely candidates to take up surgical residency positions as the first step towards specialising, asking if she could be considered.
‘You’ve done what?’ Harry roared at her when, in order to bring up the possibility of Rebecca coming to work for him, she admitted she’d made this move.
They were in the tearoom, and she backed away from his anger, fetching up against the sink.
‘Applied to be considered for a surgical residency. If the board agrees. I’ll take the primary exams next year, and if I do well in those I’ll be given a place on the programme.’
‘But you’ll have to go to Brisbane—or further north to another teaching hospital. And you’ll need a general residency while you do your primaries. And you’ll be either working or studying all the time—what about Fanny?’
They were in the small tearoom which seemed to become smaller by the minute as Harry loured and glowered and growled at her.
‘I can live with Mum and Bill—that’s her new husband. Bill was a widower, and he has a huge house with a self-contained flat where Fanny and I can stay. But Mum will be there to take care of her while I’m at work.’
‘And what about your house here in Summerland?’
‘I’ll rent it out to pay the mortgage—Tracy has friends who’ll move in with her.’
‘Do you want to do surgery so badly you’d uproot Fanny and set yourself four years of really hard work when you’ll barely get a chance to see her, let alone spend quality time with her?’
No, I don’t, was the honest answer, but she couldn’t tell him that.
‘I’ll make it work,’ she said, tilting her chin and daring him to argue.
‘Only if you run yourself ragged. And for what? A job that will continue to take you away from Fanny—a job where you can be called in at all hours of the day or night so you miss the important things in her life?’
His voice had softened, as if the anger had run out of him, and he stepped towards her.
‘Isn’t there something else—something less taxing—you can do? Aren’t there other options you could consider?’
He didn’t mention the Quayles but Steph could feel them hovering in the background of the conversation.
She could also feel the electricity they’d generated in the restaurant garden still vibrating like plucked guitar strings in the air between them.
‘I don’t think it’s any of your business,’ she said, as coolly as she could manage, given the heat searing through her body.
‘No?’
The word hovered between them for less than a second, then Harry overtook it, one step bringing him close enough to grasp her shoulders and draw her firmly into his arms. And as his head, bending towards hers, blocked out the light, she knew that not only was he going to kiss her, but she was going to kiss him back.
And the consequences be damned. She’d sort them out later.
Hard, hot and urgent, his lips took command, mastering hers with such effortless ease she felt her boneless body slump against him.
She wound her arms around his neck, clinging to the anchoring strength of his solidity as she responded with all the pent-up emotion that had tormented her for the past few weeks.
His tongue flicked against her lips, seeking entrance to the warm cavern of her mouth. With a thrill of pleasure almost illicit in its power, she touched her tongue to his, tasted him, then let the invasion continue. Trembling now, she clung harder, while Harry led her nerves on an exhilarating dance, teasing first her mouth, then the soft, responsive spot behind her left ear, his moist tongue delving into the hollow at the base of her throat. And when she murmured her delight, silencing her with another assault on her lips.
One of his hands slid under her T-shirt, up towards her breasts, cupping the heavy, swelling mounds in turn, brushing at her nipples until she wanted to rip off her clothes—her bra—and feel those wandering fingers on her skin. Then that torment stopped, and the roving hand was at her waist, releasing the stud at her waist, sliding down the zip.
‘I want to feel you—need to feel you, Steph,’ he murmured, so huskily the words were like sandpaper on her skin. Then his mouth stopped any protest she might have made, and the clever surgeon’s fingers slid beneath the elastic of her knickers, and she shivered in anticipation of his touch.
‘Touch me!’
It was an order, and she knew she must obey before he’d do the same to her and relieve the unbearable tension building in her body. With one arm still around his neck for support, she reached between their tight-pressed bodies, found evidence of how he felt and, with fingers shaking with uncertainty, slowly and carefully followed the outline of his arousal through the fine silky material of his trousers.
The phone rang but, far from jolting them out of their heated embrace, it seemed to accelerate the need for speed—to race to the inevitable conclusion. But Steph heard her own voice on the answering machine as it picked up the call, and the jolt she needed finally came.
She drew back, remembering the other answering machine and the message she’d never clarified.
‘What did Bob ask you to ask me?’
The dazed look in Harry’s dark eyes turned to puzzlement.
‘Bob? Ask me to ask you? I haven’t a clue. Dammit, Steph, we’re about to make love and you drag Bob Quayle into the conversation!’
Steph stepped away, snapping closed the stud on her jeans, drawing up the zip.
‘The other time we got this far—or nearly this far,’ she reminded him, ‘Bob had asked you to ask me something.’
Harry shook his head. Much more of this and he’d need a holiday in a quiet padded cell. He tried to think back, but his thought processes had been blocked by libidinous overload, and his brain was too busy bemoaning the cessation of pleasurable activities to remember past a couple of minutes ago.
‘The answering-machine message,’ Steph elaborated, but it still didn’t help.
‘Oh, forget it, then!’ she stormed, spinning around and stamping belligerently away. She paused halfway out the door, and hope re-ignited in Harry’s heart—and other parts of his anatomy. Only to die when she said, ‘I’ve written out a list of the patients who want appointments and why they want to see you. You might go through it and work out if they’re day surgery or theatre patients, then write down the time you’ll need for the various operations. Then, as soon as I have your theatre times, I can slot them in as possible appointments and confirm after the consultation.’
Harry knew he
was frowning—probably ferociously—but how the hell…?
‘How the hell can you behave like this?’ he demanded when he realised thinking about the question wasn’t going to achieve much. ‘Prepared to make love to me one minute, icily cold the next, then discussing patients as if nothing whatsoever had happened between us.’
‘I can behave like this because I’m a professional!’ she snapped. ‘Anyway, nothing did happen between us, Harry Pritchard. And nothing will while you’re Bob Quayle’s messenger boy—even if you can’t remember the messages.’
With the new mention of the hospital owner, something clicked in Harry’s beleaguered brain.
‘All Bob wanted me to ask you was if they could have Fanny for longer visits—maybe even overnight sometimes.’
He stepped towards Steph as he spoke, wanting desperately to get things right between them. ‘Would that be too hard to allow? Couldn’t you concede them that much?’
But far from getting things right, he’d made them worse. He knew that the instant colour flared in her cheeks and anger sparked from her silvery eyes like minute glinting arrows, sent to pierce his skin.
‘The last time I allowed Fanny to stay overnight with the Quayles, they took her to Disneyland!’
The bitter words hit him harder than the angry arrows, but the message they conveyed must have lost something in transmission.
‘Disneyland, USA?’ he guessed, to Steph’s back as she was packing up the papers on the reception desk with swift, angry movements.
‘That’s the place!’
The words were shot at him with the force and venom of a snake strike.
‘But you can’t go there on an overnight visit,’ he protested, as the conversation made even less sense the longer it continued.
‘Exactly!’ Steph snapped, thrusting the straps of her capacious handbag across one shoulder and marching towards the door.
Harry made to follow, but the phone rang again. Perhaps it was just as well, as he really needed to get his brain back into function mode before he could follow up on Steph’s accusations.
The phone call, from a woman who wanted information on laser treatment, reminded him of the questions Steph had asked—about patients and procedures and operating times. He pulled the list she’d left for him closer and studied it, seeing the number of requests for simple procedures as well as the appointments for people wanting complex surgery.
Laser treatments and simple procedures for preventing wrinkles or smoothing out those already present were more in the realm of a dermatologist, but he knew there wasn’t one in Summerland. Specialist beauty clinics offered a range of these treatments, where trained technicians worked under the supervision of a specialist. He’d have to find out if such a place existed in the growing city, then check out the qualifications of its staff before recommending it.
He sighed. The amount of work in setting up the practice went far beyond anything he’d envisioned. In fact, without Steph, he wouldn’t have got as far as he had.
Could he persuade her to stay? Find enough work to justify employing her? Not as a receptionist—she’d already refused to accept the professional wages she’d first insisted he pay her, taking only what a receptionist would earn. But for a lot of his surgical procedures he’d require an assistant, and she had sufficient surgical experience—and was good enough—to take that job.
Perhaps they could incorporate some beauty treatments into the practice’s work, treatments a qualified GP could do under supervision…
He shook his head in disbelief at the way his thoughts were turning, but when he considered the alternative—Steph shifting away from Summerland, not seeing her—the inner devastation he felt suggested he should look more closely at the idea.
Steph collected Fanny from kindy and drove home. The letter from the surgical board was in the mail box. With tactful kindness, it advised her their training programme was already full and the waiting-list of doctors wanting to join it so long it was unlikely she’d be accepted within the next few years.
‘Damn!’ she muttered, scrunching the piece of paper into a ball and hurling it at the front door.
‘Bad word, Mummy!’ Fanny chided, and, looking down at her daughter, Steph shook her head, acknowledging Harry had been right. Being accepted would mean four years of long hours, hard work and a heap of study. And success would bring even longer and more erratic hours, which wouldn’t be fair on Fanny.
‘I’ll have to get a job!’ she said. She didn’t realise she’d spoken the gloomy thought aloud until Fanny said, ‘But you’ve got a job with Uncle Harry. And it’s a good job, because you don’t have to work at night and be tired in the morning, and Uncle Harry likes us, so he’ll let you come to my kindy when there’s something special on.’
She paused, looking expectantly up at her mother.
‘Maybe Uncle Harry could come too, some time. Like when we have a special day for fathers. Remember Grandad was going to come last year, then got busy?’
Steph looked down at the little girl who had her father’s eyes, and the familiar cramp of almost painful love she felt for her daughter threatened to overwhelm her. She blinked back tears, and knelt to hug her.
‘We could ask Uncle Harry,’ she promised, knowing how much the child wanted a father-figure. ‘But he might get busy, too. Uncle Harry’s a surgeon, so he operates on patients. He couldn’t leave a patient on an operating table while he dashes out to visit your kindy.’
‘I suppose not,’ Fanny agreed reluctantly. Then she shook her head, and with her usual determination, added, ‘But I’ll still ask him.’
The opportunity to ask him arrived far sooner than either Fanny or Steph expected, for Uncle Harry arrived in person, a little after six, with two plastic bags filled with take-away containers.
‘I don’t know if you all eat Chinese, but I thought I’d take the chance,’ he said, putting his offerings on the table before swinging Fanny into his arms.
‘I could have had dinner already prepared,’ Steph told him, as her body battled with her mind—one part of her dancing with delight at Harry’s presence, while the other raced suspiciously through possible motives for his appearance.
‘In which case you could have put it in the fridge for tomorrow night.’ Harry’s good humour was undiminished by her cranky attitude. ‘Shall we eat it while it’s hot?’
He looked around.
‘Where’s Tracy?’
‘She’s at the library,’ Fanny informed him, rolling her tongue around the unfamiliar word so a few too many ‘r’s sneaked into it.
‘Studying with friends,’ Steph said, then, as if the words had triggered her own memories, she looked up from where she was unloading the meal and frowned at Harry.
‘We shared so much…were so close, the three of us…’ she whispered, and he saw the sheen of tears in her eyes.
Harry felt his chest grow heavy with pain, and stepped towards her.
‘Steph…’
He wasn’t sure himself whether it was a word of comfort or a plea, but she backed away from him anyway, holding up a hand as if to ward him off.
Fanny broke the tension, taking his hand and leading him into the living room where she’d set out the pieces of a large jigsaw. Then, when the meal was finished, Fanny demanded his presence in the bathroom, ‘Though I can wash myself,’ she assured him.
A bedtime story, goodnights all round and finally Harry and Steph were alone. He apprehensive, and she, if he went on how she looked, wary and defensive.
‘I don’t want to talk about the Quayles,’ she announced, settling into a big armchair and folding her arms.
Harry nodded.
‘That’s OK,’ he said. ‘It’s not why I came.’
‘No?’
Suspicion lengthened the word so it seemed to echo around the room.
‘No!’ he said firmly, then he realised he wasn’t quite sure why he had come. Except that they’d parted badly and he hadn’t wanted to have enmity festering betwe
en them.
And he didn’t want her going to Brisbane, but he wouldn’t mention that.
‘I came because I’ve been thinking about your job situation. Not what you’re doing now—though you’ve been wonderful. But a real job. I’ll be needing a surgical assistant for a lot of operations. It’s not full-time work, but it pays well, and you might pick up other assisting jobs from other surgeons.’
She studied him for a moment, as if trying to read some message behind the words, then said slowly, ‘The medical practice where I do a session for pregnant women has offered me part-time work. If I could arrange hours with them that fit in with your operating schedules…’
Her voice was hushed, as if she didn’t want to hope too hard that this might actually happen.
‘I’ve been given a theatre Tuesdays and Thursdays, eight to twelve—or later if I need it—for major surgery, all day Friday for day surgery,’ he told her, hardly daring to hope himself.
‘You wouldn’t need me Fridays, then, or Mondays and Wednesdays, so I could safely ask for hours on those days.’
Harry nodded, then saw doubt cloud her eyes again.
‘Are there strings attached to this? Is Bob involved? Was it his idea? A new way to bribe me?’
‘Honestly, Steph, you’re paranoid!’ Frustration gave force to his explosive accusation. ‘Can you hear yourself? First you have Bob rendering you unemployed by closing the clinic, now you suspect he’s behind me offering you a job. It doesn’t even make sense. In fact, I think I know why he closed down the clinic and it had nothing to do with rendering you unemployed.’
She looked across at him, frankly disbelieving.
‘I went through the books—remember,’ he told her, taking advantage of her silence to press the point. ‘He owns the building and about a year ago he raised the rent—doubled it. I think he did it hoping the clinic would close. Think about it, Steph. He’s building a hospital only three kilometres from the clinic and including a twenty-four-hour A and E service in the plans.’
She frowned at him.
‘Twelve months ago? That was before I started working there. You think he didn’t want the competition?’
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