IN CENTENNIAL PARK, the early morning joggers were still jogging, the cyclists were still cycling and there came the regular rhythm of a horse’s hooves flying by at an impressive canter. Opposite the park, a row of stately old houses basked in the sunshine of a perfect Sydney spring morning. It was the sort of morning, Dr Harrison Jones considered, feeling energy and life surging in him like sap rising in a tree, when there’d have to be something wrong with any human being who actually wanted to be indoors.
Cats, it seemed, felt differently. As Harry walked up the path of attractively worn herringbone brick to his senior partner’s door, he could see a tubby old black and white puss, lifting its head and miaowing impatiently, persistently and very loudly to be let in.
At his approach, the cat fled into a huge hydrangea bush, then a second later a ringing, musical voice scolded loudly from behind the door, ‘Go round to the back door, you lazy thing!’
Before the sentence had been completed, the door opened a little more than cat-width to reveal a quite startling display of long female legs, supple female arms and a curvaceous female torso, topped by a frenzied halo of dark hair. This blue-eyed vision was clad only in a very large, very fluffy and very loosely draped pink towel.
She looked Harry full in the face for one moment and shrieked impressively, then the door slammed shut again.
Harry assessed the situation. He assumed that the reprimand about the back door had not been addressed to him. It therefore seemed best to wait. In a few moments, Rebecca Irwin—that amazing vision had to be Rebecca Irwin—would summon her father to answer the door, then unobtrusively retire to her own room, and the episode of the pink towel need not be mentioned by anyone.
This was such an eminently discreet solution to a moment of mild, shared embarrassment that he was startled when the door opened again almost at once, man-width this time.
‘Sorry,’ said Dr Rebecca Irwin with a dazzling smile. ‘I wasn’t talking to you.’ The pink towel was pulled around her a little more tightly now, and its end was tucked in firmly between her rounded and very feminine breasts. One as-if-carelessly splayed hand made quite sure it stayed there. The other hand loitered nonchalantly by her long, smooth thighs, where the towel came to an abrupt end, to forestall any possibility of a revealing split opening up.
‘I hoped you weren’t,’ Harry responded mildly, hoping he sounded more suave and in control than he felt.
‘It was the cat.’
‘Yes, I heard him miaowing.’
‘Where’s he got to now, I wonder?’
‘He dived off into the bushes when I came up the steps.’
‘Oh, he’s an awful old wuss, bless him. He has a perfectly functional cat door round the back.’
‘So I understand.’
There was a strangled quality to Harry’s words, and he wasn’t surprised when she misinterpreted them. ‘You didn’t really think I meant—?’
‘Me?’ he cut in quickly. ‘No. No, I knew exactly who you meant. It’s fine.’
‘Good. I know who you are, of course.’ Her face fell in momentary horror. ‘At least, I hope…Harrison, right?’
‘Harry,’ he urged.
She was clearly relieved. ‘Yes, so please come in. Dad’s on the phone to the garage now. The mechanic seems to have a lot to say, unfortunately, which doesn’t bode well for the state of Dad’s car.’
‘Then it might not be fixed today?’
He had followed her into the house. She really did carry off the pink towel ensemble admirably. With those long legs, those ivory shoulders and that storm-cloud of hair, she could have been a model on a Paris catwalk, except that he couldn’t imagine a model’s look of sulky and supercilious boredom ever crossing Rebecca Irwin’s vibrantly mobile face.
‘Dad’ll have a fit if it’s not,’ she said over her shoulder, still talking about Marshall’s car. ‘He doesn’t often need it during the day, but Georgina Bennett is due for her weekly home visit at lunchtime, and—’
‘I can see Georgina,’ Harry answered. ‘And I can drop Marshall home here after work.’
‘Well, I know, but you know Dad.’ She said it with a fond, protective lilt. ‘He finds it so hard to delegate.’
She turned. They’d entered a spacious living-room where two bay windows let the sunshine in to fall upon an untidy group of light-thirsty potted plants. The furnishings were comfortable rather than luxurious. Grey marble and rust-coloured tiles surrounded an original turn-of-the-century fireplace. Worn but well-polished wood framed glass-fronted built-in bookcases.
There was a thick paperback novel tossed carelessly onto the floral fabric seat of a couch, and a pair of bright, strappy sandals had been kicked under the glass-topped coffee-table. Harry had been in Marshall Irwin’s home before and had enjoyed the atmosphere, but there was something even more welcoming about the place today.
‘Sit down while you wait,’ Rebecca invited. ‘Um…can I get you anything? Coffee?’
‘No, thanks. I’m fine.’
‘I’m sure he won’t be long. But if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got…er…things to do.’
She gave another scintillating smile and waved her hand vaguely, then clapped it quickly back to her chest as the towel threatened to descend. The look of alarm on her face came and went in less than a second.
‘Please, don’t let me keep you,’ he said gravely as he firmly quelled the desire to speculate on how she’d carry it off if the towel did drop. Superbly, he was sure. He couldn’t resist adding, ‘You look stunning in pink, by the way.’
There was a tiny beat of silence before her reply, and her face changed as if she might have been angry. ‘Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind next time I’m shopping,’ she said lightly instead.
A moment later she had left the room and he heard her bare feet padding up the wooden stairs. There came the sound of a door opening and closing, then silence.
Sinking into the giving cushions of the couch, the very capable, very controlled Dr Harrison Jones buried his head in his hands and groaned aloud. He didn’t normally come out with suggestive comments like that to women he hardly knew. He didn’t normally feel his body crawling with heat the moment he laid eyes on an expanse of female skin. And to have it happen with Rebecca Irwin, of all people…
This was going to be a disaster!
It had been a done deal when he’d joined the practice just on six months ago. Marshall’s daughter, Rebecca, would be coming on board in September, after finishing her six-month, hospital-based obstetrics diploma course in the middle of the year, then taking a two-month locum position to help out a friend.
Even then, faint alarm bells had rung. Marsh’s pride in his daughter stuck out a mile. His love, too. That was great, of course. Normal. Wonderful. But would it make for a workable professional relationship when she was joining the practice so soon after qualifying? Harry had his doubts. She was only twenty-seven years old, against his own thirty-four.
He’d pushed those doubts aside, however, as he’d spent time adjusting to Marshall’s routines and attitudes. The polished fifty-year-old was competent and caring, as Harry had soon realised, and they worked together better than he’d dared to hope.
Marsh was keen to try new ideas, always listened and obviously appreciated a quality in Harry which he himself thought of as a strength but which he knew some would consider a liability—his invariable willingness to speak his mind.
‘We can’t function as a team,’ Marsh had said more than once to Harry and to Grace Gaines, the third practice partner, ‘if we don’t air problems and opinions honestly. That’s not to say that tact and sensitivity go out the window. But I value frankness and I want it in my practice.’
Those hadn’t been just words either, Harry had discovered. Grace had confirmed it, too.
‘With old Dr Rattigan,’ she had told Harry several months ago, ‘we were always pussy-footing around, prevaricating to patients and being so “diplomatic” to the office staff that they sometimes didn’t have a clue whether they’d been given a compliment or a reprimand. Marshall used to have to go to hideous lengths sometimes to keep to his own ideas. He was forced to be very protective of his territory, and he hated it. Now that Alan has retired, it’s like a breath of fresh air.’
A breath of fresh air. That was how Rebecca Irwin seemed to Harry. A breath of fresh spring air. Someone who could shriek at being caught in a towel one minute, then handle it with casual poise the next. She was delightful. Clever. Gorgeous. Sparkling.
And dead wrong about her father not being able to delegate. Being able to delegate now after Alan Rattigan’s overdue retirement, that was something Marshall Irwin relished openly.
So it’s just as I feared, Harry thought. They’re both going to have ingrained, outdated opinions about each other. They’re going to be so eager for it to work out well that they’ll be falling over themselves. And so will I! But she’s had so little opportunity to look at alternatives to how her dad works, so little practical experience other than what she’s going to get here with him. It’s not good…not good. And at some point very soon, Marsh is going to want my opinion on the whole thing. She’s starting on Monday. What can I tell him?
One quite impossible thing sprang immediately to mind—‘I hadn’t expected your daughter to be quite so attractive.’
It was the fault of the pink towel, of course. One didn’t usually encounter one’s new junior practice partner for the first time outfitted in such a manner. If they’d met at the surgery, and she’d been wearing a nice, businesslike suit in any colour but pink—with a white coat on top, perhaps—he wouldn’t have noticed those ivory legs and shoulders, and that hair so dynamic it looked like a swarm of dark bees clustering round her well-shaped head. He wouldn’t have noticed the curves of her figure, exaggerated by the thick, tightly pulled towelling.
He still would have noticed her eyes, though. They were as blue as the Pacific Ocean on a sunny spring day.
This was going to be a total, unmitigated disaster…
Upstairs, in her old bedroom, Rebecca was still smiling. Wryly.
‘So, where’s my Oscar?’ she said aloud to the swing-mirror on top of her dressing-table. ‘Wasn’t that an award-winning performance?’ She still felt quite fluttery, as if recovering from stage fright.
The only genuine thing about it had been the shriek at the beginning when she’d opened the door to find not dear, lazy old Gus but a laid-back, slightly amused and startlingly good-looking man whom she knew must be Dr Harrison Jones.
Dad had said nothing about what he looked like. Well, why would he? Men, and especially men of her father’s generation, just didn’t describe people that way. Undoubtedly, Dad had never consciously noticed how utterly virile his practice partner was, with that long, solid torso, muscles which were developed like an athlete’s and powerfully broad shoulders. Not to mention thick dark hair that clearly refused to do as it was told, white teeth that emphasised the olive of his skin—or was it the other way around? And glinting dark eyes that looked wickedly able to appreciate a good joke—or an under-clad female.
Actually, the slam that had followed the shriek had been genuine, too.
After that…She’d refused to yelp for Dad while she’d scurried upstairs, bathed in a head-to-toe blush. The only choice had been to brazen it out. Quickly redraping the towel, she’d muttered to herself, ‘OK, I’m wearing Donna Karan, and Dr Jones has come for a cocktail.’ Then she’d opened the door again.
‘And I don’t think I could have carried it off any better if I had been wearing Donna Karan,’ she told the mirror, then laughed, blew out a lungful of air and took several more deep breaths.
Letting the towel fall, she reached for the first pieces of clothing she found—an old T-shirt and sweatpants—and put them on quickly.
Downstairs, she heard her father call, ‘We’re off now, Becca.’ Then came the sound of male footsteps and voices.
‘Thanks to me, you’re missing your swim this morning, Harry.’
‘Don’t worry about it…’
Then the door opened and closed again, and she knew she was alone. It was quite a relief, for some reason.
Her thoughts still skittering, she began to wonder about the day. It beckoned delightfully, a last interlude, before starting in the practice which could well be the setting for her entire medical career. Tomorrow she and Dad would be toiling around the car dealerships along Parramatta Road in search of a new car, since her old vehicle hadn’t been worth bringing from Melbourne.
But today…Somehow, she felt unusually alive, with all the vibrancy of spring singing in her blood.
‘So, I’m afraid you hardly got a chance to see Becca,’ Marsh said from the passenger seat of Harry’s car as they drove off.
‘Er, no,’ Harry managed, wondering if there was some humorous intent in the words which he’d entirely failed to detect. He had, in fact, had far more of a chance to see Becca…or a chance to see far more of Becca…than he’d anticipated.
He realised just in time that Marsh wasn’t joking at all. He hadn’t known anything about the towel. On the phone in the kitchen, he’d heard but not seen his daughter come down the stairs to let in the cat. And her shriek, though remarkably expressive, hadn’t been all that loud.
Harry’s mind snagged on that nickname, too. Becca. Another danger sign.
‘Do you always call her that?’ he asked Marshall.
‘Call her…? Oh, Becca?’ Immediately, the older man winced, and gave a nod of understanding. ‘I shouldn’t, should I? Not any more.’
‘Well, yes, she might feel that it compromises her dignity a little in the professional environment,’ Harry agreed carefully, feeling somewhat reassured.
The saving element in this situation was that Marshall was generally so quick on the uptake. If a problem developed, he’d put his finger on it very quickly. He always did.
Except that this was his daughter, his only daughter, which meant that there were no precedents, and a man’s normally competent judgement might very easily go flying out the window. Harry suspected that his would if he had a daughter like Rebecca.
Changing gear to turn into Anzac Parade, he knew that he wasn’t ready to relax yet. Marshall’s next words confirmed that his doubts were well founded.
‘It’s going to be marvellous, having her, though. I’m very proud that it’s what she wanted—to come and work with me. It’ll round out the practice nicely. We’ve got my generalist skills, your sports medicine focus and Rebecca and Grace both taking on obstetric work now that Southshore Hospital is stressing a community-based approach in that area. I’m looking forward very much to having her on board.’
‘Yes,’ Harry agreed weakly. ‘It’ll be great.’
The traffic was bad. Marsh hadn’t exactly invited him to air his doubts. Now wasn’t the time or the place. And yet diplomacy that bordered on dishonesty was not his style. He knew that if Marshall asked him straight out for his real opinion, he’d have to give it. He was relieved when the older man turned the conversation to a couple of difficult patients instead.
I should have known, though, that Marsh was too perceptive to be fobbed off like that, he was forced to conclude just four hours later. They’d had a routine morning, crossing paths several times in the corridor or the reception area between patients. Now it was lunchtime and Harry already had his car keys in his hand, on his way to see Georgina Bennett at home. She depended on a weekly visit for her prescription painkillers, and needed a regular check-up as well.
‘The parts are in for the car,’ Marshall announced, coming out of his office. ‘They say it’ll be fixed by five.’
‘Better than you hoped this morning.’
‘Yes, for a wonder. I’d started to wish I’d driven it the extra distance down to Frank Bennett’s back yard. I get the impression when I visit Georgina that they’re quite an operation, and that mere grease and oil changes are wasted on them. You’re going to see her for me?’
‘On my way.’
‘Not just yet, Harry, if you don’t mind. Let’s talk for a bit, first…’
‘Sure.’ He followed his senior partner’s ushering hand through into Marshall’s office.
‘About Rebecca.’
Harry murmured something noncommittal and sat down opposite Marshall, who’d retreated—if that wasn’t too loaded a word—behind his desk. The atmosphere was already a little strained.
Harry found himself examining a container of tongue depressors with unwarranted interest as he waited for Marsh to speak, and then, still waiting, he turned his attention to the proliferation of little stick-on notepads, provided by pharmaceutical reps, piled neatly on one corner of the desk. Although useful, there was something very annoying about them somehow. Now, why was that?
But Marsh had gathered his thoughts now. ‘You know,’ he said slowly, ‘I consider myself a pretty competent man…’
‘No disagreements there,’ Harry answered with a chuckle that didn’t quite ring true.
‘And yet, where my daughter’s concerned, something’s different. It started with her mother’s death, of course, twelve years ago. Rebecca was heroic then—and from then on. There’s no other word for it.’
‘I can imagine.’
‘She was fifteen, and right in the middle of that stage where they don’t want to be seen within half a mile of their parents out in public. But that changed overnight.
‘Simon was only ten, and—no, I’m not going to use the cliché. She wasn’t like a mother to him.’
‘No?’
‘Instead, she was the most wonderful big sister you can imagine. Joy’s death could have scarred us all very badly, but it was Rebecca who kept that from happening. She was too protective of me, of course. Still is.’
‘Understandably,’ Harry offered.
Then suddenly the grateful father was gone and the experienced senior doctor was back. ‘Do you understand, though, Harry?’ Marshall demanded. He leaned forward. ‘I got the impression in the car this morning that you weren’t entirely happy about Rebecca joining the practice. You’ve got qualms, and it’s my fault that we haven’t discussed this earlier. Air them now, please, because you know I won’t thank you for dishonesty. You’re crucial to the future of this practice, and your opinion is extremely important to me.’
Harry sat forward, too. ‘I have got qualms,’ he said, his gaze as fixed and serious as his partner’s. ‘Not about a father and daughter in the same practice as such. A lot of practices work that way. Brother and sister. Married couple. Father and son. And you’ve told me some of Rebecca’s results at university. She’s obviously very bright, capable and committed to medicine.’
‘But?’ Marshall supplied helpfully.
‘But,’ Harry agreed, then put his elbows on the desk, pressed his fingertips together and took a moment to make sure it came out right.
Toiling around the car dealerships on Parramatta Road with Dad tomorrow? Not any more!
On such a gorgeous day, with all the favourable auspices in place, Rebecca decided that life was too short to spend looking at seven different brands of vehicle when she’d already researched the subject pretty thoroughly in car magazines over the past month or two. She knew what was top of her list, with the right price and the right attributes. She didn’t particularly care what colour it came in.
Pink, perhaps, since some people apparently considered she looked good in that colour. She shook her head, grinning, as she washed up the breakfast dishes and thought back on her unusual encounter with Harrison Jones. Probably she ought to be wishing it had never happened. Maybe she ought to be angry with him for teetering on the edge of flirting with her, but somehow it had been almost fun. As long as it wasn’t setting a precedent, of course…
But Harrison Jones was not the subject at issue, she reminded herself hastily. The issue was cars.
If she took one for a test drive and liked it in the flesh, so to speak, why not buy it on the spot this morning and save poor Dad from an experience that he’d undoubtedly loathe? In the Irwin family’s opinion, no sane person actually liked buying a car.
Accordingly, at ten o’clock, after some leisurely housework, she changed from her sweatpants and T-shirt into a smartly styled pale yellow linen suit which positively shouted her car-buying competence and took a taxi to the relevant dealership. She drove out onto Parramatta Road with her brand-new, compact-sized, air-conditioned, dark metallic green toy just on two hours later. The effect of the purchase on her finances was a little painful, but hefty loans were a fact of life these days, for doctors as much as for anyone else.
Almost lunchtime. Traffic building. Dad’s practice half an hour away, in a side street within easy walk of Maroubra Beach. I’ll go and show off the car, and persuade him to come for a quick take-away by the water!
The practice was quiet when Rebecca arrived. Locked, in fact, with a little sign behind the glass door saying, Back at…’ and a clock with red plastic hands, reading 12:45. It was almost that now. Since she had a key, it wasn’t a problem in any case.
She let herself in, grinning privately when she envisaged her father’s face at the sight of the new car. He might think she’d been somewhat hasty…but he’d be extremely relieved that the dreadful deed had been done, all the same.
Voices came from Dad’s office and, still with surprise on her mind, she tiptoed down the corridor—then stopped short.
‘Yes, that’s exactly my point, Marshall,’ came Harrison Jones’s deep and slightly scratchy voice, rising with conviction and confidence. ‘She’s too inexperienced to join a practice in which both you and she have such a strong vested interest in getting on well. It’ll make for just the sorts of problems you’ve told me you so disliked when Alan Rattigan was here. Tactful manoeuvrings and over-concern about hurt feelings, that sort of thing. I’m very happy to hear that you see me as crucial in this practice, and I appreciate that you’ve asked me to be honest about all this. The bottom line, I have to say, is that I’d have suggested she not join the practice…’
Surprise and the car forgotten, Rebecca fled back down the corridor, ears burning, face flaming, throat tightened, too shocked to stay and hear more. She’d heard enough!
It didn’t take much consideration to realise that Dad and Dr Jones were talking about her. And it didn’t take much interpretation to work out that Harrison Jones was laying down the law.
“‘That’s exactly my point, Marshall,’” she echoed through gritted teeth. And his point was that he didn’t want her here.
She paced the empty waiting-room, fuming, her good feeling about the day quite evaporated.
Empire-building. Taking advantage of Dad. It felt, for some reason, like a huge betrayal. The good feeling about that ridiculous incident with the pink towel stopped tickling the corners of her consciousness and her response to Harry Jones now was boiling anger. She felt, though she knew it was illogical, that he must have deliberately set out to break down her defences this morning. She should have slammed the door in his face and left him there until Dad was ready!
He sees me as a threat, presumably. He knows I won’t put up with my father getting bulldozed or manipulated into changes in the practice that he doesn’t really want. He must know that with me here, Dad has an ally and a watchdog. Why is Dad swallowing this?
Will I confront the man? No, not yet! Let him show his hand a little more first! And let me wait and see what Dad’s response is. Perhaps Dad isn’t swallowing it at all, and he’ll tell Harrison Jones exactly where to get off!
She smiled grimly at the pleasing image of the man skulking from Dad’s office with his metaphorical tail between his legs, like a chastened dog.