GR ARRIVES the following morning and it’s as if nothing ever happened—and I mean nothing! He’s as cool and noncommittal as he was the first week I was working with him, talking about patients and operations and plans for the day and week.
And it’s killing me.
It’s not that we’ve been kissing and canoodling all the way to work recently, but there was a warmth in the car, and a teasing kind of tension as if a lot of lovely secrets lay between us, like parcels waiting to be unwrapped.
This morning the air is cool enough for me to grow icicles on my ears. I tell myself this is good—that a breakup was inevitable and at least with Alex here I’ll have other things to worry about apart from heartbreak.
But GR’s been kind and I behaved badly last night, so as we pull up at the roadhouse I reach out and touch his arm.
‘I’m sorry if I said things that upset you last night. I was a bit overwrought.’
‘Just a bit,’ he teases, the ice melting in an instant. He covers my hand with his. ‘You’ve a tough time ahead, Blue,’ he adds, turning so he can look into my eyes. ‘And a heap of emotional stuff to sort out with Alex. What worries me most is that I might have inadvertently made that hard for you, saying things about women O and G specialists, which were purely personal opinions. Going back to Argentina with your father makes sense. It’s not for ever—you can slot back into the O and G programme when you get return.’
He sighs, then adds, ‘The trouble is, Blue, you’re so darned stubborn you’d turn down an opportunity like that just to prove me wrong.’
I feel like biting him, but make do with words instead.
‘I might be stubborn, but you’re so darned stupid you can’t see that I’m in love with you! That I turned down the opportunity not because of a stupid job but because I didn’t want to be parted from you! I know you don’t feel the same way and that it’s too soon, and not the way love should happen but, there, now you know.’
I get out of the car and almost slam the buckling metal but remember just in time. I stride into the roadhouse—I’d have stalked, only you need high heels for a really good stalk and I’m back in elastic-sided boots—and order bacon, eggs, tomatoes and hot chocolate for breakfast.
Michael, who’s already at a table, looks nauseous. Unfortunately the plane incident hasn’t helped his motion sickness at all.
‘You’ve got to be joking!’ he says. ‘Hot chocolate with all that grease.’
‘Grease is good,’ I tell him, as GR joins us in time to give the waitress his order.
But he doesn’t comment on my breakfast when it arrives, and we eat in silence, Michael sipping at his coffee and making occasional comments about the other early morning customers.
I try to read GR’s face. In fact, for the rest of the day, whenever we’re together, I attempt that impossible task. He’s back to bland—no emotion whatsoever, so if he’s horrified by my impassioned declaration of love, he’s not showing it.
I spend the day in limbo—love declared but not acknowledged. GR has to go out to his property from the airport so Michael drives me back to the nurses’ quarters. I borrow Gran’s car and visit Alex that night. He seems a nice man, and more and more I come to realise that he genuinely loved my mother.
And more and more I have to think what I’d have done under the same circumstances. Loving GR as I do, I can put myself in my mother’s place. So would I have left, knowing I was pregnant with a child who could cause problems in my loved one’s life?
I can’t answer that, but feel closer to my mother than I ever have before.
‘Now I know about you, I am sure she said what she did—about not loving me—to protect me,’ Alex says as we sit over coffee in the dining room. ‘Love is such a strong emotion, it confuses us at times.’
‘You can say that again,’ I tell him, and he looks a little confused. Spanish is his first language so some of our clichés might not translate.
‘You are saying you’re confused? About Gregor?’
I nod, and suddenly I’m having a father-daughter conversation with a father I hadn’t known I had, pouring out my heart to a man I barely know.
‘I am going there this weekend,’ Alex says, when I finish my tale of woe. ‘You will also be at his ranch?’
This is news to me, though GR did say something yesterday about showing Alex his cattle.
Gran’s back at the quarters when I return, and she knows about this as well. Apparently we’re all to go out there—Alex, Charles, Gran, me—all playing happy families.
‘It would have been nice if someone had asked me,’ I grouch at GR when we meet for lunch after the morning consultations in his Bilbarra rooms.
‘I did and you said yes,’ GR tells me, ‘but as you’ve been inhabiting a world of your own the last few days, it probably didn’t sink in.’
‘Well, I don’t want to go.’ I’m still grouching, and sulking, too, most probably. Wouldn’t anyone who’d declared their love on Thursday morning—very early!—if by Friday lunchtime the recipient of the declaration was still ignoring it?
‘Of course you don’t,’ GR says soothingly, then he adds, with just a hint of a quirk, ‘But you will, because otherwise you won’t know what might be going on and it’ll drive you mad.’
He can’t know me that well in such a short time! I wail to myself, while delivering a really good glare in his direction.
So we all go out to the property on Saturday morning, and GR takes Alex on a tour. As I haven’t seen much more than the lily pool, I tag along in the back seat of the vehicle. Which also gives me a chance to gaze longingly at the back of GR’s head.
Love is really strange, isn’t it? That even the back of a perfectly normal head could be the focus of such attention?
We return a little after two, and Elizabeth feeds us a magnificent—if slightly late—lunch, after which the older members of the party retire to squatters’ chairs on the veranda.
‘Come for a ride, Blue?’
GR’s frowning, though he must know I’ll say yes. I told him last time how much I missed riding.
We head off in a different direction to the one we took last time, but eventually end up at the same pool. The sun’s sinking behind low mountains to the west and the vivid purple and orange of the sunset is reflected in the water.
We dismount for the horses to have a drink, then tie them up and sit down on the grass, hands linked around our knees. I want him so badly I feel as if I’m on fire, but there’s so much unresolved.
My mother ran from the man she loved, sacrificing herself for him. I don’t think I’m that noble—in fact, I know I’m not—but Alex loved my mother and how GR feels is a mystery.
‘I spoke to Alex yesterday afternoon, and I think we’ve worked things out.’ GR breaks the silence. He’s not touching me but I can feel the shimmery heat our bodies generate vibrating in the air between us.
But his statement is confusing so I can’t let myself be distracted by shimmery heat.
‘What kind of things did you have to work out with Alex?’ I ask, genuinely puzzled.
GR turns to me and smiles.
‘Practical things, Blue,’ he says gently, and he leans forward and kisses me on the lips. ‘Like how you can get to know him better without going back with him now, and when we can both get away to Argentina so you can see whatever it is you’re likely to inherit and decide what you want to do about it.’
He touches my hair, my cheek and draws a finger about the line of my lips. ‘I was wrong to think you could do all that on your own.’
I must be frowning really ferociously because his finger now moves to smooth away my frown lines. I’m going to need so much botox I should consider changing specialties.
‘What are you talking about?’ I demand. ‘Why should we both go to Argentina?’
He smiles and kisses me again.
‘Because you don’t want to be separated from me. You said so yourself. And when I thought about it, I realised I didn’t want to be separated from you either, so I took things from there. Alex will go home in a week or so, fix up his business matters, then come back and stay for six weeks out here on the property. That way he’ll have something to do—he’s really keen to see how we do things here and he’ll probably go back up to Rosebud as well—and you’ll be able to spend time with him. Then, when you finish your six months, I’ll get a couple of months’ leave and we’ll both go to Argentina.’
If you think this is easing the frown lines, you’re wrong. I’m frowning even more now, trying to make sense of all this. I replay the conversation in my head and pick on the most confusing bit of it.
‘You don’t want to be separated from me?’ I repeat, turning so I can see the smallest glimmer of reaction. ‘Why?’
He smiles and his eyes twinkle, and my heart dances in my chest, causing such a commotion I forget to breathe.
‘Because I love you, Hillary Green. I thought you’d know that.’
‘How?’ I demand. ‘By mental telepathy? You might be able to read my thoughts, but I’ve never been able to get inside your head.’
I would probably continue this aggrieved conversation, but he kisses me. Once he has me too breathless to speak, he draws away, stroking his knuckles down my cheek, watching my face—even blushing slightly—as he speaks.
‘I haven’t said it? Told you how much I’ve come to care for you? How much I long to see you every morning, to hear your voice and see your eyes flash when I aggravate you? I love you, Hillary, so deeply it terrifies me at times, while at others I feel I want to leap about and shout your name.’
GR leaping and shouting? I’m momentarily distracted, then he breathes my name a second time, a tender, whispered, love-impassioned, ‘Hillary!
‘See, I can use your name. No more distancing myself from you, though I think I’ll always call you Blue, because that’s how I think of you in my heart.’
The words are husky with emotion and brush shivers down my spine. He draws me close, kisses me again, murmurs more of love and loving, then shows me how he feels.
‘It’s funny,’ he says later, now the stars are out above us—diamond bright in a velvet sky. ‘I’d believed in love for a long time, but always thought it would come like friendship does, slowly building like the first flicker of a campfire until it became a source of all-over warmth.’
He gathers me in his arms again, kisses me, then adds, ‘I didn’t expect a comet—zooming into my life, sending heat and vibrations through the air. It wasn’t the gentle flicker of a match set to a campfire but a conflagration, Blue, and every human instinct warned me to stand back. But I couldn’t resist the comet’s lure. I love you!’
We do go back to the homestead at some time that night, but not to sleep in separate beds. It’s time everyone knew about our love. But love doesn’t stop you worrying, I discover. In fact, I have more to worry about now. Curled up beside the warm body of the man I’m going to marry, I start to worry about our children if I keep working for him as his partner. I wouldn’t want both of us in the same small plane, you see, in case it crashed and the children became orphans.
Of course, if I give up work altogether, GR’s won the argument about women doing O and G then dropping out, so that’s impossible.
‘Bilbarra and the surrounding district is large enough to expand the private practice,’ a deep voice says.
I peer through the darkness as Gregor moves and props himself against the pillows, pulling me close so my head is on his chest.
‘What are you talking about?’ I demand, certain he can’t read my mind when he’s asleep.
‘Your future as a specialist,’ he says, and though it’s dark I know he’s smiling. ‘I know you’re worrying about it, and you’re too good at what you do to stop practising, so when we have a family you can take over the private practice here in Bilbarra—do a couple of days a week—and I’ll stay on as the FOG.’
OK, so he can read my mind while he’s asleep.
But can he read my next thought?
‘With one proviso,’ I tell him, and wait.
He kisses me, a long, smoochy kiss.
‘As long as the department only sends male registrars?’ he guesses, and we both laugh.