‘But…’
‘No more buts.’ Quinn Gallagher put a finger on her lips and pressed her mouth firmly closed. ‘Meet me in five minutes below the window,’ he grinned. ‘Should I bring my ladder—or will you let down your hair?’
Despite herself, Fern heard herself give a low chuckle in response. This man was ridiculous.
This man was dangerous.
The thought flashed through her mind with the clarity of white light. It almost made her gasp.
‘No. I…’
It was too late. Quinn was already striding toward the door, his back turned to her.
‘Five minutes,’ he said over his shoulder as he reached the door. Five minutes to your date with doom…
This was ridiculous.
Fern pushed back the bedclothes completely and checked Maud once again. Her check was unnecessary. Quinn’s examination two minutes before had been thorough enough.
She didn’t want to sit on the verandah and drink tea with this unknown doctor. Why on earth should she?
Because she badly wanted a drink and she also wanted to stretch her legs. It made sense.
So?
‘So have a cup of tea with the man,’ she muttered angrily to herself. ‘It hardly means anything.’
If it hardly meant anything, why were her knees like jelly?
There was no need for her knees to shake.
The tea on the verandah was innocent in the extreme. Fern and Quinn sat in comfortable cane chairs, a wicker table between them, and sipped tea as if it was midafternoon and Fern was paying a social call
It was ridiculous.
It was also a great way to break the tension.
Over her teacup Fern caught Quinn’s eye and her mouth twitched into laughter.
His eyes laughed right back.
‘I’m sorry I can’t offer you a cucumber sandwich,’ he grinned. ‘The maid’s off duty.’
‘It’s a lack,’ Fern said sadly, ‘but I can make do.’
‘I thought of wearing a frilly apron and starched cap myself.’ Quinn’s mournful tone exactly matched hers. ‘But try as I might I can’t convince myself that frills become me. I make a much better butler. If you’d like to go round to the front door and ring the bell I’ll show you my true butling style. Mind, at three in the morning I’ll probably ask icily for your calling card and see you off the premises.’
Fern choked.
There was silence again but this time the silence was comfortable. Something was fitting round Fern like a lovely, comforting cloak.
Something that she’d never felt before…
She finished her tea slowly, glancing back into Maud’s room every few moments as she sipped. Finally, reluctantly, she finished her cup, placing it back on the wicker table, and rose.
Strangely she was loath to move. This night was her wedding night—and she was on the verandah of another man’s house feeling that here was someone who…
Stop it, Fern! Stop it!
What was her errant mind thinking? She was crazy!
‘Thank you…Thank you for the tea,’ she said stiffly. ‘I should go back in…’
And then she stopped as something wet and cold touched her ankle.
Fern stepped back in surprise and looked down.
She was wearing sandals and her ankles were exposed. Nuzzling the bare skin above her feet was a tiny wallaby, only half-grown.
‘For heaven’s sake…’
Fern knelt down. The tiny creature showed not the least fear. He transferred his nose to Fern’s hand and nuzzled these strange new smells with equal interest.
‘Where did you come from?’ Fern asked with delight. She looked up at Quinn. ‘Is he a pet?’
‘No.’ Quinn was smiling down at her, the warmth in his eyes directed at Fern rather than the wallaby. He leaned over and scooped up the little creature. ‘This is one of Jessie’s babies and he’s getting very bold in his old age.’
‘Old age!’
‘He’s been here four months. He’s practically a grown-up now.’
Quinn walked over to the edge of the verandah. Hanging from the rail was a wide woollen pouch which looked very like a sweater with the neck and arms sewn up. It was looped over the verandah rail at such a position that the tiny wallaby could jump in or out whenever he chose.
Quinn tucked the little creature inside. The joey squirmed in a wriggling mass of heaving sweater and gangly limbs—and then his eyes peeped out once again.
‘It’s too early to sleep,’ his eyes seemed to be saying. ‘If you two are chatting, why can’t I?’
Quinn grinned and with two fingers gently pushed the damp little nose down. Like a jack in the box, the nose sprang straight back up.
‘He’s starting to guess he’s a nocturnal animal,’ Quinn smiled. ‘Someone brought him to Jess after they hit his mum with a car. She’s been hand-feeding him—but she’s started putting him out here at night so he can get used to a bit of night grazing.’
‘Jess…’ Fern frowned. ‘Jess lives here?’
‘Sure.’ Quinn gestured to the huge house behind them. ‘This place is enormous. Jess has taken over the east wing for her animals, and the west wing’s for humans. It works well—apart from the odd escape. Even then, the sight of a baby wallaby or an echidna waddling down the corridors only seems to keep my patients stirred.’
‘I don’t know what the Health Commission would say about that,’ Fern said doubtfully, and Quinn grinned again.
‘The Health Commission, bless their bureaucratic little hearts, are far, far away and, anyway, if they closed Jess’s and my operations down now they’d have a war on their hands. Barega would declare itself a republic and design its own flag on the spot. Jess and I are providing a better medical service to the island than it’s had in years.’
‘I guess…’
Words died away.
The night was warm around them. The huge, golden moon was a glittering jewel hanging low over the ocean, its soft light casting a tunnel of gold across the distant waves.
It was almost as if it was a path, waiting to be trod.
This was a magic night. Her wedding night…
Fern gave herself a mental shake. The feeling of warmth creeping over her had nothing to do with the fact that it was her wedding night. She looked up at Quinn and found him watching her, the wide, generous mouth twisting into a smile that was half-questioning.
‘What is it, Fern?’ he asked gently, and to her horror she felt the pinprick of tears behind her eyes.
It was just that she was tired. It had to be.
Fern turned deliberately away to look in at Maud. Maud stirred in her sleep and sighed, then settled back into slumber. Maud didn’t need her, thank heaven, but Fern wanted to return to her aunt, for all that. She felt as if there was something inside her that was close to breaking and she didn’t know what.
‘I’ll…I’ll get back to bed,’ she whispered.
‘You can go to sleep safely now,’ Quinn told her. ‘I’ll watch the monitors but I’m sure she’ll be fine.’
‘But when will you sleep?’
‘I sleep on my feet,’ he grinned. ‘I’m trained as an emergency medicine specialist and until last year ran Casualty at St Martin’s in Maybroe. Part of the training is coping with sleep deprivation. If I saw eight hours sleep in a row I wouldn’t know what to do with it.’
‘But…’ Fern stared. ‘St Martin’s…If you were in charge there…’
If Quinn was in charge of Casualty at St Martin’s then he had to be good. St Martin’s was one of the biggest emergency hospitals in Australia, coping not only with local trauma but also the complex trauma from almost everywhere else. A man breaking his spine in the Simpson Desert would probably be transported to St Martin’s, and the hospital had a neo-natal team that brought desperately ill babies from all over Australia.
‘So what on earth are you doing here?’ Fern whispered.
‘R and R,’ Quinn smiled. ‘Change of pace.’
‘But…your skills are wasted here,’ Fern managed.
‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘That’s in the eye of the beholder and if I’m the beholder I don’t think I am. Someone else stepped into my shoes with enthusiasm as soon as I left St Martin’s. Here, though…Well, even the locally raised doctor refuses to come home to look after her own people on Barega.’
‘That’s unfair,’ Fern whispered. ‘I can’t…’
‘Can’t come home?’
‘No.’
There was a groan from around the corner of the verandah. Silence as if the groaner was waiting for a reaction and then another groan. Louder.
Sam…
Quinn grimaced and motioned to Fern to stay where she was while he went to investigate.
‘I should go…’ she whispered.
‘No.’ Quinn ran his hair through his brown-gold hair in a gesture of exasperation. ‘If you go then your beloved Sam will likely as not berate you—going on past performance—and I don’t want raised voices in Frank’s room.’
‘F-fine.’
Quinn smiled as though he knew exactly what she was thinking. He placed a hand firmly on her shoulder
and pressed her back into her chair—and then left.
Fern was alone.
She should make her escape while she could. Fern should walk right back into Maud’s ward and close the door behind her.
Fern did no such thing. She couldn’t. The night was drifting into something resembling a dream. It had little to do with reality. The moonlight shone on her face and held her in thrall while she waited for Quinn to return.
She didn’t have long to wait.
Quinn was back in two minutes, hands dug deep in his pockets and the laughter lines gone from his eyes.
‘What…what was wrong?’ Fern asked.
‘Your beloved has a sore stomach.’ Quinn grimaced. ‘He wants drugs to remove the pain and he grew very hostile when I told him he risked making himself ill again if he had painkillers. My assurance that half the island must have stomach-ache tonight—and they weren’t writhing round in hospital beds demanding drugs—went down like a lead balloon.’
‘I…I can imagine it would,’ Fern said faintly.
‘What the hell do you see in him?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘You heard me,’ Quinn said harshly. ‘The man’s nothing but a self-opinionated, hypochondriacal bore, and you’re planning to marry him?’ His voice rose on a note of incredulity.
‘That’s my business.’
‘Oh, sure,’ he mocked. ‘But I’m asking anyway and if you don’t tell me I’ll ask louder and louder until that boyfriend of yours yells out that we’re disturbing his beauty sleep.’
‘That’s unfair.’
‘You’re right.’ Quinn’s infectious grin flashed out once again. ‘But life’s like that, Dr Rycroft. Most unfair. Now, are you going to tell me or is my voice going higher…?’
‘I love Sam…’
‘Nonsense.’
‘I do,’ Fern said hotly. ‘Look, I don’t know what you’re on about, but marriage isn’t…shouldn’t be like it is in the movies. Real love isn’t like that. I mean, if you fall romantically in love with someone how can you tell who you’re ending up with? Sam and I have known each other since we were teenagers. We have the same backgrounds. The same ideals. And when we’re in the city we can talk about the island and remember…’
‘You mean you’re marrying the man because you’re homesick?’ Quinn’s mobile brows were disappearing into his hair.
‘No. Yes…Look, this is ridiculous,’ Fern said desperately. ‘You have no right to interfere…’
‘I have a right to stop a tragedy,’ Quinn said grimly. He reached out and took her hands in his, not gently. ‘Good grief, woman, you could do better than that noise-box. Do you have any idea just how beautiful you are?’
‘No!’ Fern’s voice was a barrier of pain. She tugged her hands back but they were held in a grip of iron. ‘Look, I don’t know what on earth you’re doing…’
‘Well, that makes two of us.’ Quinn stared down at her in the golden moonlight and there was a trace of confusion in the grimness around her eyes. ‘But I know that there’s love and laughter right near the surface behind that practical, sensible mind of yours, Dr Rycroft. And I know one day you’ll wake up with that boring little creep in the next ward and think “what have I done?”‘
‘Why should I?’
‘Because he’s as passionless as a frog,’ Quinn threw back at her, and then that irrepressible laughter surfaced again. He chuckled. ‘Mind, there might be some pretty passionate frogs out there, for all I know. If there are, then your Sam doesn’t compete.’
‘Look, will you let me go?’
‘Do you know how passionate your intended is?’ Quinn asked. ‘You didn’t dash to his rescue at first groan. You hardly gave yourself time to kiss him goodnight—and I wouldn’t mind betting all he gave you was a peck on the cheek.’
‘There’s more to life than passion,’ Fern retorted.
‘“There’s more to life than…”‘ Quinn’s repetition of her words died away to silence.
There was a long, long silence.
Quinn didn’t release the pressure on Fern’s hands for a moment. He stood looking down at her in the moonlight and the expression in his eyes was one of baffled anger.
‘If I was your man…’ he said at last.
‘Well, you’re not.’
The touch of Quinn’s hands on hers was doing strange things to her. Fern pulled back again but his hold only tightened.
‘I’m starting to think you don’t even know what passion is…’ Quinn was almost talking to himself. ‘“There’s more to life than passion,”‘ he repeated.
‘Good grief, woman…’
‘There is!’
‘There might be,’ Quinn agreed, ‘but it sure as heaven helps life along. If you can find someone who makes you feel…’
‘Feel what?’ Fern was past lowering her voice now. She was just plain angry and this man holding her was making her feel torn in two. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
Quinn’s deep eyes darkened. For one more moment he stood looking down at her in the warm night air and then he swore softly to himself.
‘I dare say I’ll regret this in the morning,’ he muttered savagely. ‘But it’s time to show—not tell!’
And he pulled her to him in one swift, effortless movement. His mouth lowered to hers and in the next instant Fern was being ruthlessly kissed.
She should have struggled.
Of course she should have struggled. She didn’t want this man to kiss her. She didn’t…
Fern could never tell afterwards if she lifted her face at the critical moment. She could never tell if she had expected—wanted—what happened as Quinn’s mouth met hers.
All she knew was that some weird feeling was sweeping through her—something connected with the warmth of this man’s strong hands and the feel of his mouth brushing her lips.
Brushing?
The kiss was a gentle brush for only a moment—a feather kiss of a question while she stood still and mute and unable to draw away.
Unable or unwilling?
Who could say? Certainly not Fern Rycroft.
It was like surgical cases Fern had read of where only one anaesthetic took hold during an operation—the anaesthetic that paralysed the body and yet kept every sense still tingling with awareness. Able to feel every pinprick of pain.
Yet this wasn’t pain. The lightness of the kiss had faded. Something deeper was happening here. Something she didn’t understand and had no control over.
Quinn’s hands had released her fingers and were now around her waist, circling her slender body and pulling her in against his hard, muscled thighs. Hi
s lips had stopped their gentle searching. They had moved from gentleness to straight plunder in one savage instant.
And she was responding.
Dear heaven, she could feel herself responding. Fern felt her lips open for him to deepen the kiss, compelled by a force that was stronger than anything she had felt before.
He was so…
So…
So male!
The word drifted through her overwhelmed senses as the only way she could describe him. What was drawing her to him seemed something she had no control over—Eve to Adam…Woman to Man—a primeval, aching need that had nothing to do with sense or responsibility or future security…
No!
From somewhere—somewhere so far back in the recesses of her mind that it was almost lost, Fern found the last vestige of common sense reasserting itself.
She shoved her hands against Quinn Gallagher’s chest and shoved as hard as she could.
She was released and she knew, as his lips left hers and she staggered back from him, that the only thing her traitorous body felt was regret.
‘What…what the heck do you think you’re doing?’ Her breath was coming in panting gasps.
‘Not me…’ he said and, like Fern, Quinn’s voice was shaken to the depths.
He made no move to follow her. Quinn Gallagher stood looking down at Fern in the filtered moonlight and his dark eyes were enigmatic and fathoms deep. ‘We, Fern Rycroft,’ he corrected her gently. ‘I believe we were engaged in a spot of passion. Something you don’t believe in.’
‘No!’ It was a cry from the heart. Fern put her hands to her lips as if she could wipe away his touch. ‘I didn’t…’
‘Didn’t want it?’ Quinn’s mouth quirked. ‘Liar.’
‘I’m not.’
‘Can your Sam make you feel like that?’ Quinn shook his head. He stepped forward and his hand came out to touch her face lightly.
Fern flinched and backed still further.
‘I’m going…I’m going back in to Aunt Maud,’ she whispered.
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