The Surgeon's Proposal

by Lilian Darcy

  She went straight into his arms.

  ‘Hello,’ he said. He brushed his mouth across hers. ‘Nice surprise.’ His arms tightened around her.

  ‘Is it?’ She looked up into his face, so close to hers. ‘Nice, I know, but a surprise?’

  ‘You came right up to me. Didn’t break your stride. You held out your arms.’ His mouth was a fraction of an inch from hers now as he spoke. ‘It was great. I wanted you to do that, but I didn’t think you would.’

  ‘Why not, Dylan?’

  He smiled. ‘Things never happen exactly the way you want them to. I’ve been having this great scenario playing in my head about standing like this with you in the pool, and slowly peeling your swimsuit from your body.’

  ‘And why can’t that happen?’

  ‘Because I’m slowly going to peel your clothes off right here instead.’

  ‘Gee, I walked right into that one, didn’t I?’

  He just laughed, and began to slide the straps of her top off her shoulders. Annabelle closed her eyes and let it happen. His touch made her throb and pulse all over. At first, she was so overwhelmed by sensation that she couldn’t move, but when he slid her top down to her waist, unfastened her skirt and dragged both garments down over her hips, she suddenly wanted to share in his exploration.

  How did he feel? Was his skin as hot and sensitive as hers? Or was it still cool and satiny from his earlier swim? How would he react when she touched him? Would he—?

  Ah, yes! She felt a delicious sense of power as he groaned. Letting her eyelids flutter open for a few seconds, she saw that his eyes were closed and his head was thrown back. He was dragging his teeth across his bottom lip, as if he’d reached a point where pleasure almost became pain.

  Wanting to soothe him, she left his board shorts hanging on his hips, low and precariously positioned, cupped her hands around his jaw and kissed him with soft, tender lips. She loved his hungry response.

  Thirty seconds later, they lost their balance, made it worse by clinging to each other too hard and crashed into the pool, still locked in each other’s arms. Both of them came up laughing.

  ‘Did you do that on purpose?’ he asked.

  ‘No. But I’m glad it happened. It’s lovely.’

  The water felt good, so milky mild in this temperature that there was no shock, just an invigorating freshness. They stood up together, and he brushed the hair back from her face then reached around and unclipped her bra. ‘Don’t need this. Or these…’

  Her top and skirt were still bunched across her hips. He slid them down and she wriggled, helping him. His board shorts had lost their last tenuous hold on his hips as they’d hit the water. He kicked his way out of them, then curled himself low in the water to remove her own clothing.

  The sight of his wet, dark head so close to her upper thighs made something twist deep inside her. She sank back in the water, floating on her back, and shook skirt and top and underwear off her feet. Dylan scooped his arms beneath her and held her against him, looking deep into her eyes.

  ‘So…’ he said.

  ‘So…’ she echoed.

  ‘Funny, the way things turn out!’

  ‘Mmm.’

  Funny, and a little frightening. She could feel him pressed against her in graphic detail. One full breast was cushioned against his chest, and the other nudged his cupped hand as he held her. Her hip was pressed into his stomach, very low down…

  She had slept with Alex, but not until their relationship had already been established and serious, running along in a groove which both of them had already recognised was heading to marriage.

  Alex had always been courteous about it, softening her up with a lavish meal and wine, compliments and attention, as if he had to coax her into it, as if they only made love because of his needs, never hers. It seemed incredible to her now that she’d actually responded to that. She’d liked it. Why? Alex had been right. It had been about his needs. She’d never felt any urgency of desire for him. Was that why she’d responded to his courteous approach?

  With Dylan, it was different. Desire was pulling on her. Desire was telling her to ignore the fact that they didn’t really have a relationship at all. That didn’t seem important at the moment. In fact, she preferred it this way.

  There was no sense of appropriate transactions taking place, the way there had been with Alex. Dinner in exchange for love-making. Marriage in exchange for her good name and breeding. Security in exchange for wifely support and the creation of heirs. Despite all the problems Alex’s proposal had promised to solve, at some deeper level their relationship had hedged her in.

  Now she felt free.

  Wild, too, in a way she’d never let herself feel before. Vic had always been the wild one. Annabelle had felt constrained to be the opposite—the one who’d given support to Mum, the one who’d pleased Dad by working hard towards a good career, the one who’d set an example in the hope of reining her sister in.

  There was no one for whom to set an example tonight, no transactions laid out on the table. There was just her and Dylan, a sultry night and the caress of the water.

  Funny, the way things turned out.

  Suddenly, she wasn’t frightened any more at all. She wanted it, and she wanted it to be like this—open-ended, non-contractual and, above all, physical.

  ‘You’re beautiful, Annabelle,’ Dylan said softly. His black eyes glinted and danced with reflected light from the surface of the pool.

  ‘I’m not,’ she answered automatically. ‘I—’

  ‘Don’t argue. Don’t. You’re beautiful. Don’t know whether to stand here kissing every inch of your wet skin for another hour or whether to take you to bed right now. Help me decide. We’re going to bed, right?’

  ‘If we weren’t, I wouldn’t have let you—’

  ‘Didn’t think so.’ He smiled. ‘Appreciate that about you. No games. I hate games.’

  ‘Then take me to bed now, Dylan.’

  He carried her as far as the grass just beyond the pool gate, then set her on her feet and reached for the towel hung over the pool fence. Annabelle didn’t want to lose his touch, not for a second. She pulled on his hips, feeling the swift, satisfying brush of his arousal across her stomach. He shuddered and his arm came around her back, anchoring her wet breasts and chill-hardened nipples against his chest.

  With the towel left dangling in one hand, he kissed her—kissed her mouth and her neck, her throat and her breasts. They stood entwined together like that for a long time, cool and wet and naked, lost in the taste and feel of each other. When finally he dragged his mouth from hers and wrapped the towel around them both, she was almost dry, and so was he.

  ‘What was this towel for? I’ve forgotten,’ he said.

  ‘To make love on, I presumed,’ she teased. ‘Like a picnic blanket.’

  He didn’t answer, but his grin was wicked, and the glint in his dark eyes was even wickeder. One flick of his outstretched arms laid the big, fluffy towel on the grass.

  Annabelle gasped. ‘Dylan, I didn’t mean it.’

  ‘Too bad. You shouldn’t say things you don’t mean to a man in my condition. A man, what’s more, who was anticipating this eagerly enough to think of protection.’ Annabelle heard the crackle of a small packet in his hand.

  ‘The neighbours—’ she protested.

  ‘Won’t see a thing. It’s dark.’

  He touched her teasingly, his hands light and seductive. Annabelle knew he must have felt the way she shuddered, the way she moulded herself against him and responded.

  ‘Do you mind that I was thinking ahead?’ he asked.

  ‘I was, too. But I hadn’t…come up with anything. So, no, I don’t mind.’

  ‘Good…’ She hardly realised what he was doing until he had her on the ground, pinned beneath him and looking up into his grinning face.

  He traced the tip of his finger over her lips, along her jaw, down her throat and between her breasts, then he cupped her—so lightly that his
touch felt like the brush of some silky fabric.

  ‘Decision time, Annabelle,’ he said softly. ‘Do you want to go inside?’

  ‘No…’

  ‘Good,’ he said again, then propped himself up on his elbows, on either side of her ribs. ‘Because neither do I.’

  Wild. It was wild. A fever of hands and mouths, pressure and rhythm that caught Annabelle up in a tornado of sensation and didn’t let her go until both of them had reached a passionate release. In its aftermath, she lay there on the rumpled towel still throbbing, hot and swollen, clinging to him as if he were her life-raft in a huge black ocean.

  She felt shaken by the realisation of how close she’d come to never knowing that a man and a woman could come together this powerfully. The chemistry between herself and Alex had been wrong, and she’d never realised it. Couldn’t have realised it until she’d experienced a chemistry that was right.

  Suddenly, she felt sorry for the other man. All his wealth and professional success, his sense of control and of his own importance—that fatal combination of character traits which had encouraged him to select her as his future wife and then turn on her the moment he felt she’d let him down. All of that added up to so little that was truly important.

  And had Vic, after all, with her flamboyant and headlong dance through life, discovered an essence that Annabelle had overlooked?

  After a long interval of lying still, entwined together and saying nothing, Dylan picked up her hand and pressed his lips to her knuckles one by one, and then to each fingertip.

  ‘What are you thinking, Belle? I can hear something ticking in there.’ He knocked lightly on her forehead, then turned it into a caress.

  ‘That maybe I’m starting to understand my sister better than I once did.’

  ‘Yeah? Tell me.’

  ‘Only because—I mean—Gosh! Can’t explain!’

  ‘Try,’ he invited.

  ‘Oh, OK. Um, OK.’

  But she was distracted. The unaccustomed heaviness of sated senses felt too good, and when Dylan stretched out his fingers to brush them across her nipples, she was mesmerised by the sight, and by her own response.

  She tried again. ‘I’m just…thinking about things I’ve missed out on that Vic instinctively knew.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Oh, being a little selfish occasionally. Responding to what feels good. Not asking too many questions.’ She said a bit more, then stopped, wondering if any of it had even made sense, let alone been worth his attention. ‘I’m sorry,’ she finished.

  ‘You’re allowed to talk about her. About anything. Just because my hands like to wander, it doesn’t mean my attention is.’

  ‘Maybe it’s my attention that’s wandering.’

  ‘Where’s it going?’

  ‘Inside. To somewhere a little more comfortable.’

  ‘Sounds good.’

  And it was good. It was fabulous, all over again. They fell asleep on her bed, tangled in each other’s arms, and Annabelle didn’t awaken until the early hours—the darkest hours—when she was jolted from sleep by the sound of glass shattering in her bathroom.

  For several seconds, she was disoriented and panicky. Who was there? What were they doing? Where was Duncan? Safe? Her heart was pounding in her ears, and she covered the distance from deep sleep to high alert far too fast. Then she heard Dylan’s voice, swearing.

  ‘What happened?’ she called.

  But he didn’t hear.

  She rolled clumsily out of bed, still naked and feeling suddenly vulnerable. There was no clothing handy to put on, unless she opened a drawer or wardrobe and scrabbled around in the dark for a T-shirt or a dress.

  Heading for the bedroom door, she croaked, ‘Dylan?’

  ‘I knocked over a bottle of cough medicine and it broke,’ he called. ‘I’m sorry. It’s a real mess.’

  ‘That’s OK, as long as you didn’t cut yourself.’

  She reached the bathroom, just outside her bedroom and to the left, and at that moment he turned on the light. It blinded and disoriented her afresh, and Dylan had his hand shading his eyes, too.

  ‘I shouldn’t have been fumbling around in the dark,’ he said. ‘Should have turned this on straight away. But I didn’t know if the light would wake Duncan up.’

  ‘It wouldn’t have. And apparently the breaking glass hasn’t either.’

  She grabbed a towel, wrapped it around her body and tucked the end down in front, between her breasts. As a covering, it was both uncomfortable and inadequate, and if Duncan did awaken and she had to cuddle him, it would be bound to work loose. Tiptoeing along to his room, however, she saw him still fast asleep.

  Back in the bathroom, she found Dylan picking pieces of lethally sharp brown glass out of the puddle of sticky pink syrup that was still spreading wider beside the basin and threatening to drip onto the floor. The mirrored medicine cabinet above the basin gaped open, and several of the bottles and packets were out of place.

  ‘Got somewhere to put this?’ Dylan asked, holding out the handful of sticky glass slivers he’d collected.

  ‘Here.’ She grabbed one of Duncan’s plastic pouring cups from the side of the tub and gave it to him.

  ‘When I’ve got all the big pieces, we can wash the rest down the sink.’

  ‘What were you looking for in the cabinet?’

  ‘Painkillers.’

  ‘You’ve got a headache?’

  ‘Uh…yes.’ He nodded. Then he frowned.

  ‘I haven’t got anything very strong.’

  ‘Just to take the edge off.’ He controlled a sigh. ‘I should head home, too.’

  ‘Because of the headache?’

  ‘No, because of Duncan.’

  ‘Oh, right.’

  ‘Best, isn’t it?’

  ‘I hadn’t, um, thought that far ahead. But, yes. You’re right. It’s best.’

  He stopped fishing for bits of glass and looked at her. Looked at her, actually, for the first time since she’d stumbled into the bathroom, blinded by the sudden light. He smiled, too. ‘That doesn’t mean I can’t come back again another night. Quite soon, I’m hoping.’

  She relaxed, and wasn’t sure why she’d been tense in the first place. Just the shock of thinking for several seconds that she had a violent stranger smashing glass in her bathroom at three in the morning?

  ‘I’m hoping it’s soon, too,’ she said. ‘And I’m sorry about your…your headache.’

  Because why would Dylan say he had a headache if he didn’t?

  ‘Annabelle, I’m a little bit worried.’

  ‘Yes, Mum?’

  ‘I’m probably just being silly.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re not. Tell me.’

  ‘Well, I just got my credit-card statement, and none of this quarter’s bills are on it, and it seems as if they should have—’ She broke off to cough, and Annabelle waited. She was standing in the hospital’s main foyer, from where she often phoned Mum during her lunch-break. ‘Except that I haven’t received any reminder notices,’ her mother continued. ‘But what if they cut off the phone?’

  ‘Let’s not worry about that yet,’ Annabelle soothed. The phone obviously hadn’t been cut off yet, since Mum had phoned from her unit. ‘I’m coming over straight after work, after I’ve picked up Duncan, but we’ll be later than usual, because we’ll have to get the bus. The garage said the car won’t be ready until five.’

  ‘All right.’

  The car engine’s recent strange noise had turned into an urgent need for replacement parts which Annabelle knew was going to cost hundreds. She’d taken it back to Dylan’s car mechanic, since the location was convenient and they’d charged a little less than she’d expected last time.

  No more child-care fees after this week, and there’s still some room on the credit card…

  ‘But I gave Dr Calford my credit card,’ Mum was saying. ‘Could he have made a mistake and—? But, no,’ she interrupted herself. ‘That seems impossible. I just can
’t understand why nothing’s appeared on the statement.’

  ‘I’m sure there’s an explanation. Mum, I have to go and get ready for the afternoon list. Just don’t even think about it until I get there, OK? I’m sure it’ll be something to do with the issue date of the statement, that’s all.’

  It had only been ten days since the bills had been paid. Dylan wasn’t operating today. He’d had a seminar to attend in the morning, and a fracture clinic in the afternoon. They’d seen each other on the weekend, and they were seeing each other tonight, and Annabelle was hugging the whole thing to herself like a big box of chocolates that she wasn’t planning to share.

  Happy about it. Happy about him. Happiest because she wasn’t thinking beyond now, tonight or this week. She was just letting it happen—something she’d never done before in her life. When she got back to the nurses’ changing room, there was a note from Dylan in her locker.

  ‘Dropped in but missed you,’ he’d written, in his confident doctor’s scrawl. ‘Was hoping we could grab lunch before my clinic, but Barb mentioned you were running some errands. See you tonight. Dylan.’

  The afternoon’s list was uneventful, the bus was on time at five past three and Annabelle picked Duncan up just fifteen minutes later than usual. This was his last week at Gumnut Playcare, and every time she saw the way his face changed from glowering frustration to sparkling happiness when she arrived there, she was thankful about it. Today, as icing on the cake, there was another ‘incident note’ in his pocket. He’d hit Ryan over the head twice with a block.

  At Mum’s, after another bus ride, he was difficult for much of the time. Wouldn’t stop jumping on the couch and running around and around the living room. When Annabelle got angry with him, he got angry back, and shouted a word he certainly hadn’t learned in her company.

  She ignored it completely, but knew that her voice was tear-filled as she said, ‘What am I going to do with him, Mum?’

  ‘He’s two, love, and he’s active and hungry for life. If he was growing up on a farm, he’d be fine. You’re doing everything right, and we both know he has a loving little heart underneath.’