‘It’s okay,’ he told her. ‘The nerve-specific pain relievers are easy on the tummy, and it’s not like you’ll need them forever. You also need a hand therapist, and you need her urgently as well, if that hand isn’t to turn into a claw. You think you might be able to find us one of those, Tori?’
‘Dad’s old vet nurse has a daughter who’s a hand therapist,’ Tori said, absurdly pleased. ‘She works in the same clinic as the doctor I use.’
‘There you are, then,’ Jake said. ‘But first…let’s pack that hand in heat before you go to bed. We’ll pack it in hot-water bottles, or heat packs if Rob’s got them. We’ll give you some of that morphine-yes, it has side effects, but I’m thinking this is the last time you’ll take it-and then you’ll sleep. That’s an order.’
And he said it so sternly that, to Tori’s astonishment, Glenda giggled.
‘Yes, Doctor,’ she said.
‘That’s what I like,’ he said. ‘An obedient patient.’
‘Thank you,’ Doreen breathed, and Tori looked from Jake to Glenda and then back to Jake and she thought, I am in such trouble.
Do not trust?
How could she not?
She didn’t have a choice. Concentrate on work, she thought suddenly, fiercely. Jake was being kind because he was a doctor. Maybe she should think of a way she could be useful, too.
‘Rob, tomorrow you and I need to talk about your pet policy,’ she ventured, as Glenda glowed at her and then glowed back at Jake. She looked as if she might be as smitten as Tori was feeling. ‘If you’re giving fire victims time out, what they most need is the people and pets they love. Are you allergic to cats, Jake?’
‘No, but…’
‘But what?’
‘But nothing,’ he told her and shrugged and smiled. ‘There don’t seem to be many buts right now.’
Where was the aloof man she’d met at five-minute dating? He was unbending by the minute.
‘You organise it,’ he said. ‘Tell Rob what he needs to do and he’ll do it. What you’re capable of…are you sure you’re just a vet?’
‘I’m just a vet,’ she said, a trifle unsteadily, but Jake’s smile was making her feel as if she didn’t know what she was any more.
Do not trust.
‘If you’ll excuse me,’ she said unsteadily, ‘I’m really very tired and Rusty will be waiting. Goodnight, all.’
And because the night really was getting blurry-because she didn’t understand how the expression on Jake’s face was making her feel-she rose and fled, just as fast as her dignity allowed her.
CHAPTER FIVE
E XHAUSTION took care of the first part of the night. It almost always did. But despite the wonderful meal, the fabulous bed and the feeling of being nurtured, the demons were never far away. Tori woke as she’d done for the past six months, at three in the morning, to stare wide-eyed into the dark. Remembering a darkness she’d never forget.
Rusty had gone to sleep on her bed. Now, however, he was where he always was at this time of the morning, with his nose hard against the door, waiting for someone to come home.
‘It’s time we both stopped waiting for them,’ she told him, but he whimpered and pawed the door and she rose to let him out, to show him that no one was on the other side of the door.
Rusty had been one of a pack. Maybe she should get a new pup, she thought. Maybe that’d help. Somewhere, sometime, she’d read that a measure of a life well lived was how many good dogs could be fitted in. As a vet and dog lover since childhood, she accepted that for a fundamental truth. But still… To take that last step and move on…
She wasn’t ready and she wasn’t sure Rusty was either.
She walked out onto the verandah and gazed up at the mountains looming above. The moon was vast and full, turning the night into a sepia version of daylight, with the blackened landscape softened, disguised.
Rusty nosed her ankle and whimpered.
‘We shouldn’t be off the ridge,’ she whispered, stooping to hug him. ‘It feels wrong.’
It wasn’t wrong. She had to start her new life. Tomorrow?
But maybe she’d come down too quickly. Right now it felt as if she’d forgotten something very important.
‘Maybe we need to say goodbye,’ she whispered. ‘Come on, Rusty, we can do this. Do this and move on.’
She slipped back into her room and tugged on jeans and windcheater, then headed out again, her little dog at her heels. She didn’t go out through the house, though. She didn’t want to wake the household, so she slipped out onto the verandah, down through the rose garden, around the corner of the house to the car park-and she barrelled straight into Jake coming in the opposite direction.
For a moment all her breath was pushed out of her. Shock left her speechless. Jake had caught her, steadied her by her shoulders, looked quizzically down at her. Then, as Rusty whimpered, he squatted and patted the little dog under the ear.
‘Hey, it’s okay,’ he told him. ‘I’m a friend.’
Rusty nuzzled his hand and moved closer to Jake’s ankle. Which was surprising all by itself, Tori thought, feeling breathless. Rusty hadn’t responded to anyone since his master’s death.
‘Are you running away?’ Jake asked mildly, looking up at her in polite enquiry. ‘Aren’t you supposed to have a pole with a bandana slung over your shoulder? I don’t think running away’s proper without them.’
‘We’re not going far,’ she managed, struggling to make her voice work. ‘Why are you up?’
‘I couldn’t sleep,’ he said simply. ‘I had a whole lot of my preconceptions stood on their head at dinner. It’s taking a bit of getting my head around.’
‘Like, your father loved you?’
‘There’s a way to go before I’ll believe that,’he said, and his smile faded. ‘Words are easy. But you…You’re going where?’
‘Up to the ridge.’
‘You forgot something?’ He’d straightened. His gaze held hers, serious, compassionate.
‘I… Yes.’
‘Do you want company?’
‘I don’t…’ She faltered. Say no, her head screamed. But there was something about this night. There was something about this man.
‘We left too fast,’ she whispered. ‘Tomorrow Rusty and I will move on-we need to. We’ll start a new life. But for six months we’ve simply been putting one foot in front of another, over and over, and in Rusty’s case we’ve even lost a foot doing it. I thought… Tonight I wanted to just say…’
She faltered but his gaze didn’t waver. He took her hands. ‘Of course you do,’ he said softly. ‘Can I drive you?’
‘I don’t-’
‘If you don’t want company, then I’ll wait here for you to come back,’ he said. ‘If you need to be alone, then I understand-of course I do. I’ll sit here and wait, and see if I can get rid of my own demons, and if you don’t come back by dawn, then I’ll come up to the ridge and demand the ghosts give you back. You belong in the real world, Tori. Tonight the real world will look out for you. I’ll look out for you.’
And she knew that he would. Trust? There was that word again, raising its ugly head, but the night was still and beautiful and Jake was watching her with a look that was nonjudgemental, nonpossessive or needy. It was simply…caring?
The sensation was insidious in its sweetness and there was no way in the wide world she could resist.
‘Then yes, please,’ she whispered, stupid or not. ‘I’d love it if you would come with me.
So they headed up to the ridge, with Jake driving and Rusty cradled on Tori’s knee. Only instead of glancing out the window all the time, as Rusty always did, the little dog kept glancing across at Jake.
As did Tori. She didn’t understand what she was feeling. She mistrusted the instinct that had her accepting his company, but for now Jake’s presence was warm and solid and real, and strangely it made what she wanted to do feel even more right.
They drove past Jake’s darkened farmhouse, the hub
of so much activity over the past six months, and that felt strange. Then they turned into the drive of what once had been her home and that felt worse.
Even the night couldn’t disguise the destruction. Blackened fence posts, massive trees, felled and not yet cleared, a gaping void in the blackened bushland where the house had once been.
A chimney rising out of the ashes like a lone sentinel, a monument to what had happened.
‘I can’t begin to imagine what it must have been like,’ Jake murmured, and Tori shook her head, tears not far away. What was it with this man? She hadn’t cried for six months. How could she cry now?
‘I was in the valley,’ she whispered. ‘I couldn’t get back. The whole mountain was on fire. I was going out of my mind. Everyone with people we love up here was going out of their minds. It took three days before we could get back. Three days…’
He didn’t respond, just looked steadily out at the ruins, and she knew by his silence that he could see how it must have been.
She climbed out of the car, and he didn’t follow as she made her way carefully over the ruins. Jake knew instinctively that she didn’t want him to follow. Rusty came with her, limping by her side, but he had the right. This had been home for both of them.
Home.
If she could turn back time…
If only she hadn’t trusted.
She picked her way across the rubble to the chimney stack. The fireplace was almost intact. A few bricks at the corner had fallen when a roof beam had dropped across the mantel-that’s how Rusty had lost his leg.
She placed her fingers on the ledge above the fire cavity. There’d been a wooden mantel resting here, and on it an ancient clock that never kept time, pictures of her parents on their wedding day, pictures of Tori and Micki as kids, her graduation photo, Micki at some glamorous, want-to-be-model shoot.
This hearth had been the heart of their home, and in the end this small fireplace had succeeded in saving one little dog. One small thread to connect her past to her future.
At least Micki and her father had thought she was coming, she thought bleakly, letting herself think back as she so seldom allowed herself to do. That was the only thing that kept her sane-that last, frantic call from Micki.
‘Tori, the fire’s on this side of the ridge.’
‘I’ve rung emergency services,’ she’d said, as she pushed her van past the speed limit, heading into smoke so thick she knew she’d have trouble getting through. ‘The fire trucks are on their way. I’m on my way. Stay cool.’
Stay cool. It had been their farewell line for ever, between two sisters and taken up as a joke by their father.
She’d said it then, with love; her sister had laughed, and she knew her father and Micki had died knowing she was moving heaven and earth to get to them.
And suddenly it was okay. Their ghosts were here now. She could feel them, a soft and gentle presence. It was right to come tonight, she thought.
She’d loved her family more than life itself, and they were still with her, in this place. Rusty was by her side, pressing against her, a link to them. She knelt and fondled him.
‘We can go on,’ she whispered. ‘I can’t forgive Toby, but maybe…maybe I can forgive myself for trusting him. Dad and Micki trusted him, too. They wouldn’t want me to beat myself up forever.’
Jake was waiting. Life was waiting. The night was still and warm, and the moon’s gentle beams were almost a blessing.
It was time to go.
She straightened and turned. Jake was at the edge of the clearing, watching gravely from the shadows.
‘I’m all right,’ she said, managing a smile. ‘I’m not about to wail or rend my garments.’
‘I’m pleased to hear it.’
‘Thank you for coming.’
‘It was my honour,’ he said gravely, and it was so much the right thing to say that she caught her breath. She picked her way back over the ruins but he met her halfway, catching her hands as she stumbled and helping her the last few steps.
‘Okay?’ he asked softly, and she managed a smile and a sniff, and if she left her hand in his, then who could blame her?
‘It was so lovely here,’ she whispered. ‘I can’t tell you. My mum and dad, my sister, our friends, our dogs, chooks…’
‘Chooks?’
‘Hens. All sorts. My dad bred Rhode Island Reds. They spent their lives clucking around the orchard. Can I show you the orchard?’
She didn’t wait for an answer, but led him around the pile of rubble to a stand of small trees behind the house site. The fruit trees stood out from the trees he’d been seeing over and over up here on the ridge, for they weren’t burned. They were a mass of blossom in the moonlight, on a bed of deep, green grass.
‘The orchard’s deciduous,’ she said simply. ‘Not native. They were so green in the summer that they didn’t burn. The grass under them was dry and it burned but the trees themselves didn’t catch. So now we have cherry blossom, and apple blossom, and peach. Micki and I had a big log swing hanging on the peach. One day I’ll hang that swing again.’ Her voice faltered. ‘I hope.’
‘You’d want to live here again?’
‘It’s my community,’ she said simply. ‘My home. Rusty thinks so, too.’
But Rusty wasn’t looking around him. He was pressed against Jake’s leg. He was forming a new allegiance, Tori thought.
Confused, she pulled away a little, and walked further into the orchard. A low-hanging cherry branch brushed her hair and blossoms drifted around her. She put her fingers out and caught them, and suddenly she found herself smiling. Rusty had limped over to the base of the oldest tree-the peach. The grass here was thickest. He wriggled down, burrowing his nose in the long grass, and gave a sigh of pure contentment.
It felt good. More, it felt great. For the first time in six months she felt free. The ghosts of her family were all around her, a gentle, loving presence that would do nothing to hold her back.
And Jake was here. Suddenly it seemed right that he was.
‘You’re beautiful,’ Jake said softly, wonderingly, and she smiled at him and shook the branch a little, letting loose another cascade.
‘Beautiful’s how I feel right now,’ she said simply. ‘Thank you.’
‘There’s nothing to thank me for.’ He stepped closer and plucked blossom from her hair. ‘You’re facing your demons all by yourself.’
‘No,’ she said gravely. ‘How can I? Don’t you know that all by yourself is a really bad idea. I sense you’re a loner, Jake Hunter, but loneliness isn’t for now. Not for tonight.’
And then, because she didn’t know why-the night, the warmth, the smell of blossom, the sight of Rusty wriggling contentedly in the grass that was once his favourite place, the feel of this man’s hand brushing her cheek as he lifted blossoms away-for some a reason she would never understand, she stood on her tiptoes and she kissed him.
Loneliness isn’t for now…
For Jake, too, this day had been huge. He’d come to this country to put his property on the market and depart, cutting the links to a father he held in dislike, even contempt.
But things had changed. His view of the past, taught to him by a bitter woman, had been challenged by an unbiased witness and had been found wanting.
There were emotions in his head that matched Tori’s, and now Tori’s tragedy was layered on top of his. He couldn’t figure out what he was feeling.
But he didn’t have to figure it out. Tori was doing it for him. Her mouth was on his, her body was pressed against him, and all he could feel was her sweetness, her gentleness, the beauty of this night.
He wanted her.
And as if she’d read his thoughts…
‘I want you,’ she whispered.
His hands tightened involuntarily on her waist and he was pulling her against him with a hold that was entirely proprietary, entirely sure of what he wanted. Tori.
Quite simply she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever met. She w
as in battered jeans and trainers, an ancient windcheater; her curls were all over the place, her eyes were huge in her too pale face.
She was gorgeous and he wanted her.
This was some sort of magnetic attraction he’d never met before, some primitive link, some compulsion he didn’t fully understand.
Who was he kidding? He did understand it. He wanted her, as simple as that. Something tonight had pulled him to her in a way he didn’t understand, but he wasn’t questioning it. It was the way her hands held his, the way she looked up at him in the moonlight, the way she tugged him closer, closer, so he could no longer see her face, so all he could do was feel the beating of her heart.
They both knew where this was going. They both knew how right this moment was. But…
‘I don’t have a condom on me,’ he said, in a voice so hoarse he hardly recognised it. ‘We can’t-’
‘I’m protected from pregnancy,’ she managed, breathless. ‘So…unless we’re talking multiple partners, we’re okay. Toby and I…we tested.’
‘I’m safe,’ he growled, but sense prevailed enough for him to haul away from her long enough to rake his fingers through his hair. Knowing he should put her away from him. Knowing he must. ‘Tori, you don’t know me. You shouldn’t trust me. You shouldn’t want to.’
‘I know. It’s crazy, stupid, risky, crazy…’
‘You already said crazy.’
‘That means it’s double crazy.’
‘So we stop? We go sensibly back to the lodge?’ He said it trying to keep his voice flat, inflexionless, as though she ought to agree to the sensible option. He was giving her the sensible option.
But who wanted to be sensible? Not Tori.
Sensible was for tomorrow.
She took a deep breath, her eyes not leaving his. She tugged her ancient windcheater up and over her head and she tossed it aside.
Her figure was perfect-and more.
Her bra was beautiful, made of exquisite lace, so white it was almost luminous in the moonlight. Her breasts were framed by the sweetly curving lace; they were soft mounds of perfection and they took his breath away. All of her took his breath away.
Dating The Millionaire Doctor Page 7