‘That’s ridiculous! You don’t know that!’ Kate snapped, irritated beyond reason by too many sensations ricocheting through her body.
And by the fact he always seemed to get things right!
He was holding her just lightly enough that she knew she could break away.
If she wanted to …
‘Don’t I?’ He drew her just slightly closer. ‘Oh, Kate!’ he sighed. ‘You’ve every right to feel vulnerable, but is hiding away from emotion the answer? You’re braver than that, Kate. You’re a fighter. I saw you in action with Jack.’
She didn’t feel like a fighter. She felt like a wimp—weak and feeble, and nervy from the touch of this man’s hands. All she wanted was to lean against him and feel his lips on hers, and let the sensations of a kiss drive all the demons from her mind.
She was obviously quite, quite mad!
She moved away from him, remembering avoidance, but he tugged her closer, then somehow they were in the darkest shadows, and he was kissing her again, kissing her with such ferocious intensity she couldn’t breathe, let alone think.
‘I know you’ve got a good heart that reaches out to touch all those around you,’ he said, what seemed like hours but was probably only minutes later. ‘And I know you’ve been immeasurably hurt by people you loved and by circumstances beyond your control. I understand your fear, my Kateling, but your kisses tell me something else. So if you want me to stop kissing you, then …’
Kate heard his words coming to her through a fog of well-being, and she leaned against the man who still held her in his arms.
‘You’ll have to tell me!’ he said crossly, tucking her closer and pressing his lips against her hair. ‘You’ll have to stop kissing me back.’
‘Not tonight,’ she whispered. ‘Let’s, just for tonight, forget about everything else and kiss again. Maybe we’ll get sick of it—like chocolate if you have too much.’
She felt his chest move as he chuckled, then his hands clasped her head, tilting it up again so his lips could claim hers.
Stupid in the heart, she told herself when, drunk with kisses, they turned and, arm in arm, walked back towards the house.
‘I’ll leave you at your door,’ Hamish announced, as they climbed the front steps. ‘I don’t know about you, but the chocolate analogy didn’t work for me. However, I’ve always had one guiding principle that fits most situations, and that’s never to make a decision at night. An idea that after a few pints is absolutely foolproof and bound to bring in millions is often revealed as flawed in the sober light of day and, though I don’t want to equate women with bright ideas, the same rule works with relationships.’
‘Or non-relationships, as the case may be,’ Kate whispered, thankful she didn’t have to make a decision because the desire humming through her body made thinking nigh impossible.
But, true to his word, he left her at her door, Colleague Hamish back again, placing a chaste kiss on her forehead before opening her door for her and wishing her goodnight, his deep voice with the soft Scots burr making magic of the simple words.
Kate shut her door and leaned against it. She heard his footsteps going along the passageway, bypassing his door, growing fainter as he walked through the kitchen. Was she imagining she could hear the springs on the old settee squeaking?
Was he sitting out there now?
Regretting his gallantry at leaving her at her door?
Half expecting her to join him?
Her body remembered the electric charge their kisses had generated, and yearned for the release and forgetfulness that spending a night with Hamish would surely bring.
But it would only be for a night and after that—awkwardness, embarrassment, regret. All of those and more—the big one—guilt, because casual sex wasn’t her way.
Worse, guilt because he was far too nice a man to use that way.
Kate shook her head, changed into pyjamas and climbed into her lonely bed.
Hamish slumped down onto the settee—again.
He was obviously mad!
Leaving Kate at the door like that—going all gentlemanly when what he should have done was ease the two of them through that bedroom door and let nature resolve the fragile barriers Kate kept erecting between them.
He held his head in his hands and applied pressure to his skull with his fingers, though it wasn’t his brain that was hurting.
It was all the rest of him, hurting in a way he’d never felt before—like an all-over cramp, which proved all the rot you read about love being joyous and uplifting was totally wrong. Love hurt like hell, that was what love did.
If it was love, not some as yet unidentified tropical disease.
Don’t joke about it, this is serious, he told the flippant self that had, up till then, ruled the emotional part of his life.
But if he couldn’t joke, how else to handle it?
Grown men didn’t cry.
Though he didn’t feel like crying. He felt like hitting something, like raging and ranting and yelling at whatever callous Fate had decreed he fall in love right here and right now.
Not only fall in love, but fall in love with probably the only woman on the entire planet who had excellent, viable, irrefutable reasons for not loving him back!
Well, there were probably quite a few women who wouldn’t want him. But only one he wanted …
Sunday in the ED was far quieter than Kate had expected it to be. Hamish, who was on duty elsewhere in the hospital, drifted in, in search of Mrs Grubb’s chocolate-chip cookies, which he swore he could smell somewhere on the premises. He explained that people in country towns really didn’t like bothering doctors on a Sunday.
‘Or perhaps they don’t like giving up their Sundays for minor medical problems when they can just as easily take Monday off work and bother doctors then,’ Kate suggested, and Hamish tutted.
‘So young to be so cynical! It seems you’ve got out of the city just in time. But you’re right in one thing—Monday is always frantically busy.’
‘My day off,’ Kate said smugly, pleased to be handling what could have been an awkward post-kissing conversation with Hamish so well. Or maybe it was Hamish who was directing it so well …
But she kept up her end. ‘Monday and Tuesday this week, then back in ED again from Wednesday through to Saturday,’ she explained with a lot of false cheer.
‘But you’ll miss the rodeo,’ Hamish protested. ‘You’re working this weekend—shouldn’t you be off next weekend?’
Kate shrugged off his concern.
‘I’m a contract worker, and I said when I was employed I’d be happy to work weekend shifts,’ she explained, not adding that she’d thought having weekdays off would be more advantageous in her search.
What search?
Hamish leaned against a convenient wall and studied her.
‘My decision in the sober light of day was that I was wrong in my decision last night,’ he said quietly, and Kate had to smile.
‘So the chocolate-chip cookie search was a scam.’
‘Not entirely. They’re here somewhere—but I did want to see you.’
‘And having seen me?’
‘I thought I’d put a proposition to you. Let’s talk to Charles—no one else—about your family.’
‘But Charles grew up at Wetherby Downs—that’s hundreds of miles away from here.’
‘OK, scrap Charles—talk to Harry. He’ll be discreet. He can find out what you need to know then you can decide whether or not you still want to make contact with your father.’
Kate stared at him.
‘What are you talking about? Why wouldn’t I want to make contact with my father?’
He smiled—the gentle smile that curled around his lips and lurked so sympathetically in his eyes. Yet he couldn’t know that the rash, grief-laden impetus that had propelled her thousands of miles north had turned to doubt and dread.
‘I imagine because it finally entered your admittedly beautiful head that maybe a middle-aged
man might not want an unknown daughter turning up on his doorstep.’
He came closer and took her hand.
‘I know you care about people, Kate. Care deeply for those you love. That’s been obvious since I first met you. So it’s not so hard to take the next step and imagine how disturbed you must be feeling about disrupting the life of a man you don’t know but might want to care about. Of course you’re wondering and worrying about the damage your appearance in his life might do, not only to him but to his entire family. And, being Kate, you’re prepared to sacrifice your own happiness in order to not disturb his—whoever he might be.’
Kate stared at Hamish, unable to believe this man could so easily read the thoughts that had been festering in her head all week. To the extent that when she’d gone to the library one morning and found old electoral rolls, she hadn’t been unduly disappointed when she hadn’t found her mother’s name—or any voters with the same surname.
‘Go find the cookies!’ she snapped at him, snatching her hands from his grasp and moving crossly away. ‘I hope they make you fat!’
He was right, of course, which was what had made her angry—him being right plus the fact that her mind was now so muddled she was barely aware which way was up.
And most of the muddle was Hamish-oriented.
The more doubts she had about finding her father, the more appealing the idea of a trip to Scotland sounded.
She could always come back. What was one more broken heart?
Are you mad? Of course you don’t want to take that risk!
A loud, demanding car horn cut through her helplessly circling thoughts and she went through to the ambulance bay to meet it, arriving in time to see Georgie Turner pull up on her motorbike behind the car.
‘Bed, Kate. One of my patients about to pop.’
An orderly had already wheeled a bed out to the car, and Grace, who’d been dozing in a treatment room, also appeared.
‘This patient’s mine,’ she said to Kate, helping Georgie settle the woman on the bed. ‘Love deliveries, love babies, and, besides, I’m on duty in the nursery this week so I deserve to be the first to meet this little person.’
‘You’re so clucky it’s a wonder you don’t lay eggs,’ Georgie said to Grace, and, with the help of the husband, the two of them took their patient through to the birthing suites.
‘I’ll shift your car and bring you the keys,’ Kate told the husband, who looked too stunned to really take in what she’d said, but as the keys were dangling from the ignition, it didn’t matter.
Kate parked the car safely in the car park and took the keys in, arriving in time to see the new life emerge into the world. A little girl to take Jackson’s place in the nursery. She looked at the love and wonder on the faces of all those present—even that of Georgie, who must deliver a dozen babies a month.
Everyone loved a newborn—but a new daughter who was twenty-seven?
She made her way back to the ED. So far, coming to Crocodile Creek had thrown up more questions than it had answers.
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘BATMAN AND ROBIN ride again.’
Hamish’s voice startled Kate out of a reverie about the man who had spoken—a man she’d been avoiding, and about whom she definitely should not be thinking!
But though he’d made the joking comment, the coolness in his voice told her he was well aware of her avoidance tactics. And perhaps that he’d been hurt by them.
She glanced at him, but his face gave nothing away. Still, somehow, deep inside she hoped she hadn’t hurt him.
Hamish didn’t deserve that.
‘Why are you doing this flight?’ she asked, her work self ignoring all the palaver going on in her head. ‘Mike’s flying and you’re not on call.’
‘Mike’s got that twenty-four-hour bug that’s been going around. Rex is flying, and the patient’s a child, so why not me?’
Hamish spoke with such exaggerated patience that Kate wanted to grind her teeth.
Batman probably wasn’t a tooth grinder, but Batman probably didn’t get collywobbles in his stomach when he got into the Batmobile with Robin.
With a decidedly unfriendly, though meticulously polite, Robin!
‘The patient’s a child?’
‘Out on Wallaby Island.’ Hamish nodded his confirmation. ‘Apparently the silly kid disobeyed his parents and went wandering out on the reef without protection on his feet.’
‘And?’ Kate prompted, hoping to get more of the story before they took off.
‘Walked on a stonefish.’
‘A stonefish? What on earth’s a stonefish? A fish that eats stones?’
Hamish turned and his cold demeanour cracked to the extent she was sure a small smile slipped out, then quickly disappeared.
Kate felt the chain reaction of quivery delight along the nerves throughout her body, even though what she thought had been a smile might just have been a grimace.
But the quivery delight reminded her why she’d been avoiding him.
‘You’re the Aussie and you don’t know what a stonefish is?’
His question jerked her back to business, and she was about to remind him she was a city person when Rex handed them headsets then began take-off procedures. It was easier to wait until they were in the air to pursue the conversation.
‘A stonefish?’ she prompted Hamish.
Bad move as he smiled at her again, a real smile this time, but quivery delight was soon replaced by concern as he explained.
‘It’s a nasty beastie that looks very like a largish rock. It hides among other largish rocks, so unsuspecting prey rests on it then gets poisoned by venom from one of the glands along the dorsal fin spines.’
‘That’s unbelievable!’ Kate muttered. ‘I mean, I know we have a good range of poisonous snakes and spiders, but I thought, apart from sharks and stinging jellyfish, the seas were fairly safe. Is it bad venom? Do people die?’
‘Never in Australia, although there are recorded cases of deaths overseas.’
It was Rex who provided this answer, then Hamish took up the explanations.
‘The venom can have nerve, muscle, vascular and myocardial effects. We have antivenin, and normally there’s some in the medical kit out at the island, but apparently when they looked at it, it was out of date.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, doesn’t anyone check these things?’ Kate muttered. ‘Cal insisted we check the medical kits in isolated places when I did a clinic flight with him. Isn’t there a rule that the person with the key to the kit has to check it?’
Hamish nodded.
‘Unfortunately, they’ve had so much trouble with the kit at Wallaby Island, Charles has been thinking of removing it. The island is only a twenty-minute flight away—Look, you can see it now.’
Kate peered out the window at the rounded shape of the island, jutting out of the azure sea, the waters around it paler shades of translucent green.
‘That’s the reef,’ Hamish explained. ‘One of the reasons Wallaby is so popular as a tourist destination is the magnificent fringing reef.’
But although she was stunned by the beauty of the place they were approaching, she was more worried about the child who’d been stung by the stonefish.
Hamish must have been just as worried. The moment they touched down, he was out of his seat, unstrapping a small backpack, another backpack that contained resuscitation gear and the lightweight stretcher.
‘I’ll yell if we need the stretcher,’ he said to Rex, who had come through to open the door. ‘Come on,’ he added to Kate, dropping out of the chopper then racing, doubled over, to where a small group of people was clustered beside the helipad.
The child, eight or nine, Kate judged, was sitting, white-faced, on his mother’s knee, an oxygen mask on his face and one foot in a bucket of water.
Beside the pair, a young man wearing a bright Hawaiian-print shirt stood uncertainly. A second man detached himself from the group and headed towards the helicopter.
Hamish nodded at the young man, acknowledging his presence but at the same time conveying the utmost disapproval.
‘That’s Kurt,’ he muttered to Kate. ‘Wallaby Island’s current keeper of the medical kit. At least he’s done something right, with the hot water.’
‘Hot water?’ Kate echoed.
‘The pressure immobilisation we use for most venoms is useless with stonefish. In fact, it can worsen the pain,’ Hamish explained as he knelt beside the child. ‘Immersing the injured part in hot water—forty to forty-five degrees—is the best thing to do until we can get some antivenin and regional anaesthetic into the patient.’
He’d let his pack slide to the ground and Kate put hers down beside it, grateful resus equipment wasn’t needed. She opened the one Hamish had carried, while Hamish introduced himself to the boy—Jason—and his mother, Julie.
‘It hurts so much,’ the boy whimpered.
Kate found the ampoules of stonefish antivenin easily enough. She broke one open and filled a syringe, while Hamish checked the child, asking questions about allergies and examining the wound.
‘We’ll need another ampoule of the antivenin, Kate,’ he said quietly. ‘We use one for every two puncture wounds and young Jason here has managed to tread on four of the beastie’s thirteen spikes.’
‘This is going to hurt when I prick you, Jason, but it won’t be nearly as bad as the pain from that rotten stonefish, so just hang onto Mum for me while I get it in.’
He injected the antivenin into the muscle on Jason’s thigh, and though the boy did no more than wince at the injection, his mother’s face lost colour and Kate put out a hand to hold her steady.
‘Not much good around needles,’ Julie said weakly, smiling her thanks at Kate.
‘I don’t know anyone who is,’ Kate told her.
‘OK, now we’ll see what we can do to stop some of that pain, young Jason,’ Hamish said. ‘Kate, you’ll see a pack with a sterile syringe of bupivacaine in there somewhere,’ he said. ‘Twenty mils at 25 per cent. That’ll provide a regional block, which works better in these cases than narcotic analgesics.’
Kate found the pack he needed and handed it to him. She watched the child, and Hamish handling him—so gently competent and comforting Kate could see why paediatrics should be his specialty.
The Australian's Proposal (Mills & Boon By Request): The Doctor's Marriage Wish / The Playboy Doctor's Proposal / The Nurse He's Been Waiting For Page 12