The Doctor's Destiny

by Meredith Webber

  ‘It needn’t be for ever,’ Jason said nervously. ‘But you do like him, don’t you? And he likes you and I like you because you don’t fuss over me, so if he’s got to marry someone it might as well be you.’

  He looked anxiously at Alana and added, ‘That’s unless just thinking about it makes you want to puke.’

  Alana closed her eyes, but when she opened them again, she was still standing in the nurses’ station in Eight B, and most of the staff were also standing there, drawn by the drama being played out in front of them. Heaven sent, most of them would think, to enliven their working day.

  ‘Well, does the idea make you want to puke?’ Will prompted, and Alana stole a look at Rory.

  He remained impassively silent, his face so wiped of all emotion he might have been wearing a mask.

  ‘Not puke exactly,’ she ventured, and thought she saw a tiny movement of his lips that just might have been a quickly mastered smile. ‘But how does your uncle feel about this idea, Jason? Doesn’t he have some say in it?’

  Jason, perhaps sensing victory, beamed at her.

  ‘Oh, he says he doesn’t mind. He said if he has to marry someone to keep me, he’d rather you than Drusilla or Rosemary. Boy, are those two spitting nails. You should have heard them. I bet by the time we get home they’ve both packed up and gone.’

  ‘That might save A and E a couple of murder victims,’ Rory murmured, while Alana turned and waved her hands to shift the audience on.

  ‘Show’s over, gang,’ she said, but no one moved, and Mrs Cross, who’d been on her way to see her husband when the fun had begun, said, ‘No, it isn’t. You haven’t answered the boy. You can’t expect us to witness the proposal without letting us know your answer.’

  ‘My answer?’ Alana said—it was more of a squeak actually. Her voice wasn’t working too well. ‘And who do you suggest I answer? The proposer, or the poor man who’ll be stuck with me if I say yes?’

  ‘I could manage to live with it,’ Rory said, and this time he smiled, his eyes dancing with so much delight it was all Alana could do not to shout with the joy of it all.

  ‘So it’s a yes?’ Mrs Cross persisted, and Alana, not wanting to leave Jason out, turned to him and said, ‘It’s a great idea, Jase, but right now I’ve got a lot of work to do before I finish my shift. Let’s talk about it later—at home.’

  He flashed a smile at her, his ears returning to their normal colour, then, as he accompanied his uncle out of the ward, he swung back to her.

  ‘We could keep both flats then I could use yours as my bachelor pad, and Marcus could come over for jam sessions.’

  ‘We’ll talk about it later,’ Alana said firmly, while behind Jason’s back Rory’s face was a mask of horror as he mouthed ‘bachelor pad?’ at her.

  ‘Later,’ Alana repeated, but this time, when she turned back to the desk, prepared to hustle the staff back to work, a burst of clapping broke out and she stood there, flushed with embarrassment, as people, both friends and visitors she barely knew, all wished her well.

  The interruption meant it was close to five before Alana left the ward, but as she walked out the staff exit a tall, dark-haired figure with a straight, strong profile peeled himself off the wall and strode to meet her.

  ‘I was beginning to think you’d sneaked out another door,’ Rory said, taking her hand and leading her not towards the footpath but back into the hospital gardens.

  Heart a-thump with unexpected excitement, Alana followed, eventually gathering enough breath to ask, ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Just over here,’ he told her, acting so in control and manly her knees went weak.

  Again!

  ‘I need to talk to you, and if we go home we’ll either have Jason organising our lives, or Gabi and Kirsten making wedding plans, or Daisy fretting over the psychological implications of all of this, plus Drusilla and Rosemary having hysterics as they pack.’

  They’d reached a garden seat, set so far back beneath the hanging boughs of a yellow jasmine Alana had never noticed it.

  ‘Sit!’ he ordered, and though the order was abrupt, Alana read uncertainty in it.

  ‘Will I have to “stay” as well?’ she teased, turning to look into his eyes. He sighed, took her in his arms and drew her hard against his chest.

  ‘I hope to hell you will,’ he murmured, his lips nuzzling her ear. ‘But given all that’s been going on, I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to put a couple of oceans and a continent or two between yourself and the Forrester-McAllister duo. The Forrester part particularly.’

  ‘The only thing you’ve been guilty of was wanting the best for Jason,’ Alana reminded him, shifting her head so the nuzzling lips met her own questing ones.

  The kiss, a proper one this time, sent heat sizzling through her body, while Rory’s fingers, threading into her hair so pins popped out and it tumbled to her shoulders, held her captive in a prison she might never want to leave.

  Eventually they broke apart and Alana was grateful for the garden seat because her knees had become very unreliable again. Especially as Rory, far from looking happy, or even satisfied, post-kiss, was eyeing her with a gravity that added butterflies to the mish-mash of stuff going on inside her body.

  ‘Jason’s pushed you into this,’ he began, then hesitated, looking out across the grounds to where the lights were coming on in the car park. ‘He’s made it very hard for you to say no. But you can. We’d work out something else. Or we could get married to satisfy the court then annul it if you wanted—’

  ‘Hey!’ Alana shifted so she could look into his face, and pressed a finger against his lips to hush him up.

  She smiled, though her insides were so nervously over-wrought by now it was an effort.

  ‘I think annulment only works if we don’t have sex, and if there’s one great advantage to us being married—this is after Saturday night and due consideration of all aspects of it—it would have to be that we can legally go to bed together and enjoy whatever happens there. So annulment’s out.’

  She paused for breath, looking hopefully into his face, but his mask-look was back.

  She tried again.

  ‘So, if we get married, I’d say it has to be for keeps, which suits me because, although I may not have mentioned it, I love you, Rory Forrester. At first I thought it was just lust—you know, an overwhelming physical attraction—but then I saw you being you, caring for Jason, being kind to Drusilla and Rosemary when any normal man would have tossed them out, even putting up with Kirsten and Gabi interfering in your life.’

  She shrugged to lighten the mood and added, ‘Actually, now I think about all those things, I have to wonder if you’re normal.’

  This time she used a kiss as punctuation, before adding, ‘But, normal or not, I still love you. There—that’s said. Now it’s your turn.’

  Rory looked so horrified she laughed.

  ‘It can’t be that bad. You managed to say some very nice things on Saturday night. And I don’t need protestations of undying love, just an acknowledgement that you might feel something for me—that’d be a start.’

  Rory wrapped his arm around her and drew her close to his body.

  ‘Something for you?’ he said huskily. ‘I guess you could say that. In fact, I feel so much love for you I’m terrified marriage might mean I’ll lose you. It’s not just me you’d be marrying, Alana, but Jason as well—a young man at the very start of his teenage years. Think about it very carefully, because I can’t promise you there won’t be problems or that we’ll always agree about what’s best for him. And he definitely won’t always agree about what’s best for him, and that’ll cause more problems.’

  ‘Trying to scare me off?’ Alana whispered, nestling against his warm, solid body. She turned to smile at him. ‘It’s not working. Remember what you said earlier—about Jason pushing me into it? Well, he didn’t. All he did was free us from the terrible bind we found ourselves in. He made his choice and left us free to love each other. I k
now it won’t always be easy, but that only makes the challenge greater, and the prize so much more valuable.’

  ‘The prize!’ Rory murmured, dropping kisses on her hair. ‘And what would that be, my darling?’

  ‘Love!’ Alana told him. ‘Like this.’

  And she turned and claimed his lips and told him things for which there were no words.

  ISBN: 978-1-4603-5734-7

  THE DOCTOR’S DESTINY

  First North American Publication 2003

  Copyright © 2003 by Meredith Webber

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