‘IDIOT!’ Harry chastised himself in the car forty minutes later as he drove away from Centennial Park and back to his own house, a modest but attractive terrace in Surry Hills. ‘Damned great idiot!’
And yet, looking back on the evening, he didn’t see how he could possibly have escaped kissing Rebecca as he had. From the moment he’d found the old black and white cat lying on the steps of a neighbour’s front path, too much had been stripped away. He’d had no protection left against the clamouring demands of his male response to her.
Even so, the strength of what he’d felt as he’d held her in his arms and joined with her in that aching, endless kiss had taken him by surprise. He’d known all along that he was attracted to her, beyond the angry fire that generated so many sparks. He had felt the feeling grow steadily, but the surge of raging, triumphant desire that the touch of her mouth had released in him had been stunning, shocking…and impossible.
How he’d restrained himself from kissing her again outside her father’s house just now, he didn’t know. And what he was going to do about the whole thing from now on didn’t bear thinking about.
Didn’t require thinking about, really. He knew quite well that he couldn’t allow tonight’s passionate release to repeat itself. She was Dr Irwin’s daughter, and he was still far from convinced that it was in her own best interests, or that of the practice as a whole, to have her working there.
They hadn’t touched on that issue at all tonight, but if Gus’s fatal illness hadn’t intervened they would have done because Marshall had something to say about it, and he was fairly certain that in those circumstances he and Rebecca would have ended up in the middle of another blazing row instead of the kiss of the century.
Rebecca herself didn’t know that, of course. Marshall himself had hinted quite plainly that she didn’t know there was any practice business on the agenda for this evening.
I must ring Marsh tomorrow and find out what he was going to propose. Hopefully he’ll have talked it over with Rebecca herself by then. We need to get this resolved, he thought as he turned into the narrow rear lane that led to the garage behind his house. I need to get it resolved, he amended more decisively a moment later. Because, for the first time in his life, he wanted something without being sure that he was prepared to take the risk of going for it.
Rebecca couldn’t sleep. She wasn’t surprised. Who could, after a kiss like that? After an evening like that!
She and Dad had exchanged a long, silent hug in the hall. Neither had wanted to talk about Gus just now, but the silence had left Rebecca with plenty of opportunity to wonder if it was at all possible for Dad to smell Harry’s aftershave, clinging to her skin.
She’d shed his jacket in the car with aching reluctance, and not just because the night had cooled off markedly. No, she’d wanted to keep the jacket—wear it all night—because the sense it gave her of him surrounding her, of his scent and his warmth and his maleness, was so wonderful. She’d never felt this way about a man’s body!
‘Not cold, gypsy?’ That was all Dad had said to her.
‘Harry lent me his jacket.’ It felt delicious just to say it.
Dad had been on his way up to bed and she didn’t delay him, just assured him, ‘I feel a lot better now. Harry’s parents were wonderful.’
‘I’m glad…’
‘But I’m not sleepy yet. Think I’ll have some hot chocolate and read a book.’
She’d done that for over an hour, and knew it was horribly late. Still sleep wouldn’t come. In bed, with the light off, she relived the touch of Harry’s mouth over and over again, relived the broad press of his chest against her breasts and the hard warm weave of his arm muscles as he’d held her, the scent of him, the taste of him, the sound of his quickened breathing.
At that moment, giddy and drained and aching, anything seemed possible—anything, as long as it led to more of those heady, melting moments in his arms. Their past hostility seemed foolish, and the future—seeing him, being with him—tasted sweet with promise.
When she did finally fall asleep at almost two, she had a smile on her lips.
A rude awakening came two hours later. Her pager went off. One of Grace’s patients was ready to have her baby. She groped for the phone and rang her after-hours answering service to get the number, thinking groggily, If it’s Mrs O’Donaghue, it’s her first and I can probably go home to sleep, but if it’s Mrs Mikulic…
It was Mrs Mikulic, and she was expecting her third. ‘Seems to be hotting up pretty fast, Dr Irwin,’ she said, sounding a little panicky. ‘Michael timed the last two contractions at less than two minutes apart, and it…uh-h…feels pretty…uh-h…intense.’ She began to pant.
‘Go to the hospital, Mrs Mikulic,’ Rebecca said, feeling herself swim up into greater alertness. She wouldn’t be getting back to sleep for a while. ‘Get yourself checked in and I’ll meet you there as soon as I can.’
She grabbed a quick shower, hoping it wouldn’t wake Dad. She needed it, though, to give her a jolt of energy. Then she scribbled him a quick note in case this took longer than expected, and left it on the kitchen table.
Southshore Hospital was quiet—except for the maternity department, which seemed to be firing on all cylinders. There were at least eight women in active labour, and even as Rebecca hurried down the corridor towards Mr and Mrs Mikulic in room five she heard the oddly mechanical cry of a newborn from one of the delivery rooms.
‘Dr Irwin?’ a thickly moustached man of about thirty demanded anxiously of her as she breasted the doorway.
‘Yes.’ She held out her hand. ‘Sorry, we haven’t met before.’ She turned to her patient. ‘But Dr Gaines has told me all about your history, Mrs Mikulic, and that the baby’s going to be a boy.’
‘Again!’ The mother smiled wryly.
‘You were hoping for a girl this time…’
‘Well, we were,’ Mr Mikulic answered for his wife, ‘but, really, as long as he’s healthy…Three boys will be great.’
The baby was healthy, and didn’t keep them in suspense for long on the issue. Helen Mikulic reached full dilation just fifteen minutes after Rebecca first examined her, although she had to push heroically then. A hard-working twenty minutes of it brought the head safely out. Another push and the shoulders turned easily, and moments later the whole slippery, purple little body was safely in Rebecca’s hands.
Soon afterwards, with the drama over, bed and a late sleep-in began to beckon.
No such luck. A call from the answer service conveyed the fact that Grace’s other patient was in labour now as well. Alison O’Donaghue was expecting her first, and had been in slow early labour since about lunchtime the previous day. Now, at last, the pains were only five minutes apart, and Rebecca could tell over the phone that Alison was keen to come in. She sounded tired and discouraged already at how slowly things were progressing.
‘Will it all get going now?’ she wanted to know on the phone. ‘I’ll have the baby by lunchtime, won’t I? I mean, that’ll be twenty-four hours…’
‘We’ll see how it’s coming along.’ That was all Rebecca could promise.
The O’Donaghues lived a good ten minutes’ drive from the hospital so she went to the ward kitchen for a coffee to pick her energy up, and there was Dad’s old friend Gareth Searle on the same errand.
‘Are you between babies or between contractions, Rebecca?’ he teased, filling his cup from the bubbling stainless-steel urn.
‘Between babies. How about you?’
‘Just one baby for me. So far at least. Looks like a busy night here. But mine’s in active labour and eight centimetres dilated at last count so I’ll be needed pretty soon. By the way, I’m very pleased to hear that you’re coming to work for us.’
‘I’m…sorry?’ Rebecca said blankly.
‘At least…’ He’d seen her face. ‘Sorry, I guess it’s not quite a done deal. You’ll want to have a talk with us about hours, take a look at our set-up, but Marshall seemed to think you’d have no problems with the idea. Was he wrong?’
Instinctively, she closed ranks with her father. ‘No. No, of course he wasn’t. It’s…It’s…But, as you say, it’s not quite a done deal.’
‘Dr Searle?’ said a nurse in the doorway.
He took a gulp of his coffee, then poured the rest down the sink as he said, ‘Looks like I’m required. Anyway, look forward to talking to you soon.’
Alone in the kitchen, Rebecca’s head was whirling and her cheeks were on fire. Gareth Searle thought she was coming to work for him? At Southshore Health Centre? And he’d obviously been talking to Dad.
Taken by surprise, she felt instantly betrayed. Just what kind of horse-trading had been going on behind her back? Was this Dad’s idea? She very much doubted it! Harry was the one who didn’t believe she fitted into the practice. At some level, she was quite positive this came from him.
If it hadn’t been for last night, she might have been able to deal with the thing fairly calmly and sensibly. After all, she’d known from day one what Harry’s qualms were. He’d been honest about them—then. But the way he’d kissed her, listened to her, understood her, jarred brutally against what Gareth Searle had just told her.
To think he could have been…seemed…so wonderful last night when all along, underneath, he’d known about this…
She could only see it as a manoeuvre to oust her.
Downing her coffee without even tasting it, she was ready for the O’Donaghues when they arrived some minutes later.
‘I don’t like this,’ Mrs O’Donaghue whimpered, slumped in the wheelchair that had brought her up from the accident and emergency entrance. Then she joked feebly, ‘Can’t I come back and do it tomorrow?’
Rebecca left the couple alone while Mrs O’Donaghue put on a gown, then came back to examine her, hoping for the patient’s sake that she’d have some good news. Unfortunately, she didn’t. The baby’s heartbeat was strong and steady, but after nearly eighteen hours of mild but steady labour Mrs O’Donaghue was still only one centimetre dilated. She had a very long way to go, and the baby was also presenting ‘sunny side up’—in other words, with the back of its head against Mrs O’Donaghue’s spine, a position which could markedly increase her discomfort.
‘Things do seem to be going quite slowly. If you’d like to go home again, you can, Mrs O’Donaghue,’ she offered.
The suggestion wasn’t well received. ‘Home? Oh, please, no! That’d be like starting all over again.’
‘That’s fine, then, if you want to stay in. How about walking for a while around the corridors? That often helps speed things up.’
‘But I’m so tired already…’
‘How about having a lie-down for a while, darling?’ Graham O’Donaghue said anxiously, ‘and then we’ll try the walking?’
‘OK.’ She nodded with a watery smile.
Rebecca went to check on Michael Mikulic junior in the nursery—doing beautifully—then headed home, suspecting it would be some hours before she was needed back at the hospital again. It was only just dawn, and Dad was still asleep. Gratefully, she folded herself back into bed, and was by now so tired that she conked out at once and stayed that way for several hours, deeply asleep. Awaking to a late breakfast, she found that Dad had gone out, which left her frustrated as she couldn’t forget Gareth Searle’s cheerful words about ‘coming to work for us’.
Picking up the phone, she rang Harry, but there was no answer. Perhaps that was for the best because she knew what she’d have said to him!
Now, though, the angry words gathered inside her, making a painful knot. She spent a restless day. Dad didn’t come back, and she remembered now that he’d been invited to a wedding in Newcastle, over two hours’ drive away. In fact, looking at the note she’d left for him, she now found added to it, alongside a tiny sketch of wedding bells, ‘See you whenever!’
Meanwhile, the hospital could phone at any time with news of Mrs O’Donaghue, and there seemed no point in embarking on something—a walk through the park, say, or some shopping—which she’d then have to abandon at a moment’s notice.
The hospital didn’t phone, though, and finally she rang the labour ward herself, to hear from midwife Denise Clews, ‘We were just about to ring you. She’s had a long day, steady contractions at about three to five minutes apart and intense enough that she can’t get comfortable, but she’s still only three centimetres and her waters haven’t broken yet. She hasn’t wanted pain relief so far, but now she’s getting very discouraged. We popped her on a monitor, but there was no sign of distress from the baby. Do you want to come in and talk about options with her?’
‘Yes, I’ll be right there.’
‘I’m just exhausted, that’s all,’ Mrs O’Donaghue said tearfully, after another examination showed a gain of half a centimetre’s dilatation in the past hour. ‘I haven’t slept in thirty-six hours—and I had a bad night then anyway. And now I’m getting nowhere! Not even near halfway.’
‘I know.’ Rebecca nodded.
‘No, you don’t!’ Alison stormed.
‘OK. I’m sorry. I can imagine,’ Rebecca soothed in reply. ‘Let’s talk about options. You could have some mild pain relief and try to get some rest, but that might slow things down even more. Or we could give you a synthetic hormone to try and speed things up. There’s also epidural anaesthesia, which again might slow you down but would give you very thorough pain relief. You could perhaps even sleep.’
‘I didn’t want any of that. I was so determined! But now it sounds good. Maybe I’ll go for the epidural.’
‘First, though, I’m going to rupture your membrane because that can speed things up, too.’
She took a special hook and barely had to brush the membrane with it in order to release a gush of fluid—fluid which should have been clear and pale but instead, on this occasion, was stained a dark, ugly green. Denise saw it at once, and they exchanged a look.
Graham O’Donaghue was watching as well. ‘Is that…what it’s supposed to look like?’ he said.
‘Not quite,’ said Rebecca. ‘It means the baby’s had a bowel movement in the uterus, which is usually a sign of distress.’
‘Distress? What does that mean?’ Alison O’Donaghue suddenly forgot about her pain and fatigue.
‘It’s all right. The monitor shows that the heart rate is still good, but it means we’ll have to hurry the baby up a bit. I’m afraid you may need a Caesarean.’
Mrs O’Donaghue took the news well. In fact, she almost seemed pleased because it put a limit on the process—and the pain.
‘Is there anyone in particular you’d like to call for a Caesar?’ Denise said to Rebecca quietly.
‘No, just whoever’s available. I’d rather not do it myself. The head’s well down and it’s a big baby. It might be tricky.’
‘I think Marcus Gaines is already here. He’s just finished another Caesar in theatre one.’
‘Marcus Gaines?’ Rebecca echoed blankly. He and Grace were supposed to be away. Denise must have made a mistake.
She hadn’t, though.
Another check on the foetal monitor a few minutes later showed that the O’Donaghue baby’s heart rate was beginning to dip markedly with each contraction so there was no question now that a Caesarean was the safest route to take, and under general anaesthesia to speed things up. Caesareans were possible, and done frequently, under epidural. It was great for the mother to be conscious and alert at the birth, but this form of anaesthesia took longer to administer and to take effect.
Accordingly, the anaesthetist was called and Mrs O’Donaghue was quickly wheeled to theatre two to prepare her for surgery, with her anxious husband now relegated to the corridor where he could see something of what was going on through the windows.
Rebecca and Denise both prepared to assist, and just as the patient was ready Marcus Gaines did indeed sweep through the doors as if impatient to begin. He was clearly in a black mood, and Rebecca concluded it was fortunate that Mrs O’Donaghue was under general anaesthesia. The atmosphere in theatre two was not pleasant.
‘Why did you wait so long?’ he demanded of Rebecca as he began the incision, then waved away her attempt to reply.
She swallowed her anger. They hadn’t waited! The monitor had shown no signs of distress at first, and many first labours went longer than this with no complications. It was only the staining of the waters which had signalled a potential problem, and then had come the tell-tale dropping of the foetal heart rate.
Was he always this unfair? She’d only met him once or twice.
And why, for heaven’s sake, was he here when he was supposed to be in Katoomba, having a romantic weekend with Grace?
‘It’s a girl,’ he announced a few minutes later. ‘Looking good…’
‘No sign that she’s inhaled any of the meconium,’ Rebecca said after a few more moments. The baby’s breathing was clear and without effort, and there was no sound of congestion in the lungs.
Rebecca and a nurse had suctioned out the baby’s nose and mouth with extreme care, and wiped her little face well before giving her any encouragement to breathe. Meconium in the lungs could be dangerous, and even fatal, in a newborn, clogging the delicate folds of lung tissue and leading to a type of pneumonia. The danger would not be fully past until the baby was a few days old, when they’d safely be able to conclude that nothing had been breathed in.
Dr Gaines had already delivered the placenta and was preparing to stitch the incision, against the backdrop of healthy newborn cries and businesslike action from the rest of the team.
Rebecca was soon able to take the baby over to the window, where Graham O’Donaghue looked in helplessly. She gave him the thumbs-up sign. He grinned back and nodded, intensely relieved. In a few minutes he’d get his first chance to hold his new daughter, while his wife was still under anaesthesia.
Marcus still wore a black expression as he worked with his intricate suturing, but everyone else had relaxed a little now that the baby was looking so good. Under cover of two nurses conversing, Rebecca asked him, ‘Weren’t you and Grace supposed to be away? I’m covering for her. That’s why I’m here.’
Marcus looked very much as if he wished she hadn’t asked, but she didn’t care.
‘We came back,’ he said abruptly. ‘It…wasn’t working out.’ There was a tiny pause. ‘The place we were staying at was horrible. Grace is at home. I rang about a patient I was particularly concerned with and was just in time to come in and deliver her by Caesarean. Does that explain things?’
‘Yes, I was just concerned about Grace, that’s all.’
Again there was a beat of silence, then Marcus said, ‘Grace is fine.’
She’s not. I know she’s not, Rebecca thought. But he’s made it quite clear he thinks it’s none of my business. I don’t believe their bed-and-breakfast was ‘horrible’. Grace was so looking forward to it! But I guess it is none of my business so there’s nothing I can do…
That argument did not, however, apply to what Gareth Searle had said this morning. That was her business, and she’d been able to do nothing about it all day. The fact was knotted even more tightly inside her now because of this new concern over Marcus and Grace.
It was just after seven when she left the hospital, having stayed around to give a full report to Graham O’Donaghue on his precious new daughter, and she knew Dad wouldn’t be home yet. She also knew where Harry Jones lived.
Too wound up to consider the wisdom of the action—it had, after all, been a very long, very emotional and very exhausting twenty-four hours—she roared up Anzac Parade from the hospital and turned off into the maze of Surry Hills streets that led to his house, fully prepared to do battle.
He was home, but evidently hadn’t been for long because he greeted her at the door dressed only in jeans.
Only in jeans. The droplets of water gathering on his shoulders from his shower-wet hair didn’t even count as accessories, let alone as adequate covering for that impossibly broad and masculine chest. It hardly helped her mood that she was immediately mesmerised by the silky thatch of black hair that spread between his dark brown nipples.
And even his humour got her back up tonight. ‘I guess we’re even now.’ He grinned. ‘Although I’d argue that my jeans give away a bit less than your towel did that time. Hi…’
She ignored the caress in that last word and refused to spend any time on small talk. ‘What’s going on, Harry?’ she demanded.
‘Uh…You tell me. I’ve just got back from tennis and I’ve had a shower. Come in.’
She turned to glare at the street behind her. It was crowded with parked cars on both sides, and there were several people coming and going. Yes, all right, of course, she had to come in. She could scarcely have a shouting match with him here on his front doorstep.
He led the way down a narrow front hall, half-filled by the stairs that climbed to the upper floor, and she was too impatient for the truth to take any time observing the place. She got a vague impression of art on the walls and a clean, light colour scheme in paint and furnishings against polished golden floorboards, before reaching his kitchen and fielding his offer of a drink.
‘No, thanks. I won’t be here long.’
‘Oh. Right. Well, in that case, you won’t mind if I have one,’ Harry said mildly, pulling a beer from the fridge.
His pulse had leapt at the sight of Rebecca on his front step, though he’d hidden the fact well. He’d needed to! He’d decided quite categorically last night that his attraction to Rebecca Irwin was going nowhere—or, rather, that he couldn’t possibly take the risk of letting it go somewhere.
He’d also decided—and this already seemed foolish—that nipping the feeling in the bud ought not to be that difficult if he was really firm about it. He was a man, after all. Men were classically able to divorce lust from any other aspect of their lives…weren’t they?
Perhaps not. He’d felt the most absurd exultation on seeing her at the door, and the fact that she looked tired and somewhat wilted in her soft black pants and cream knit blouse didn’t do a thing to lessen the feeling. In fact, it only added an unsettling thread of concern to the lethal mix inside him. She’d had a bad night. A bad day. Her hair was a glorious messy tangle of dark colour. She’d come to him again for what she’d needed from him last night—caring and support—and he ached to give it to her, with the touch of his hands and lips against every inch of her.
Now, though, he knew that she was angry, and he should view the distancing effect of this emotion with relief.
But I don’t. God, I want her…What the hell am I going to do?
‘I ran into Gareth Searle at the hospital this morning,’ Rebecca began, and waited for a damning reaction. There wasn’t one.
His face was bland as he took a gulp of his beer. ‘Oh, yes?’ Not that she trusted this apparently innocent reaction!
‘He told me,’ she pressed on angrily, ‘that he was pleased I was coming to work with them at Southshore!’
‘I don’t understand,’ Harry responded blankly.
‘Neither do I!’ she flared.
‘I knew they were interested in someone part time and flexible while we all work through this difficult period with the new housing development. Look, have you talked to your father today?’
‘No, I haven’t seen him.’
‘I tried to ring him this morning—’
‘Why?’
‘Because I knew he had something to talk about last night. A proposition to put. I thought he’d have discussed it with you over breakfast, since we missed out on dinner together last night.’
‘I expect he would have,’ Rebecca answered, ‘but I got called out at four and then slept in, and he had to drive to Newcastle for a wedding and pick up a gift on the way.’
‘I wonder if Gareth and your father talked about you splitting your time between Southshore and us,’ he said slowly, then took another long pull on his beer.
‘Are you really trying to tell me,’ she demanded bluntly, ‘that this isn’t your doing? That you haven’t been using Gareth Searle and Southshore to manoeuvre me out of the practice?’
‘Manoeuvre you?’ He set his beer can down on the kitchen bench with a rebellious thump. ‘Rebecca, the word “manoeuvre” isn’t in the dictionary when it comes to me, and you’d better understand that right now. If I wanted you out of the practice, believe me, there’d be no “manoeuvring”. You’d know up front that I was unhappy about you, and why, and so would your father. Grace, too, for that matter. I think you dividing your time between the two practices would be a great move all round, but not because I’ve got anything to complain of in the way you’ve worked so far.’
‘You knew what I thought at the beginning, and I stand by that. Experience elsewhere would be good for you—and for your father. There have been some awkward moments. But nothing that would cause me to manoeuvre you—or even firmly nudge you with the toe of a big boot—out of the practice.’
‘Right. I see,’ she answered lamely. No one could argue with that degree of energetic indignation and not mean what they said!
He was smiling now. ‘That flappy look suits you, by the way,’ he said.
‘Flappy?’
‘When the wind’s just been taken out of your sails.’
‘Oh.’
‘Seriously, though…’
‘Yes?’
‘Truce, Rebecca?’ he suggested.
‘Truce,’ she said on a sigh, surrendering her anger with the reluctance of someone shedding a protective garment.
They looked at each other. This kitchen wasn’t very big, and feelings were still bouncing around in it like the aftershocks to an earthquake. Now that she had surrendered the feeling, she didn’t want to think about how good it felt not to be angry with him any more.
Leaning back against the sink, he smiled at her lazily. ‘So…staying for dinner?’
‘What are you offering?’ she returned.
The suggestive second meaning to the phrase hadn’t been intentional and she winced inwardly. It was probably obvious that she’d take whatever he was offering very eagerly.
But he didn’t comment on her unfortunate choice of words. Instead, his grin just widened, and a knowing light appeared in his dark eyes. ‘I’m offering a drink first. White wine?’
‘Lovely!’
‘Then spaghetti with sauce from a jar and salad from a plastic bag,’ he said. ‘So the cooking’s not much, but I promise I’ll do a lot better with the entertainment. How does that sound?’
‘Ask me again after I’ve experienced your performance.’ Oh, no! Again!
And this time he echoed huskily, ‘My…performance?’
‘Yes.’ She met his gaze head-on, and brazened her way out of the corner she’d painted herself into. ‘Do you sing with perfect pitch? Play an instrument to concert standard?’
‘The harp,’ he shot back. ‘Amazing what that does to the dexterity of your fingers. It comes in handy in…all sorts of situations…’
Abandoning any pretence about what was going on here, she discovered, as ninety-six-year-old Irene MacInerney obviously had, that it was delicious to flirt with Harry, delicious to be aware of him like this, knowing he was equally aware of her. He touched her frequently as they moved around the kitchen together, brushing an arm across her shoulder as he reached for the packet of spaghetti in a high cupboard, nudging her aside with a hand on her hip when he needed the sink.
By the time the pasta water was boiling, she was boiling too, with all the passion of her nature finding a compelling focus in this clamorous physical awareness of his flagrantly male form.
He hadn’t bothered to put on a shirt. Had he simply forgotten? She certainly wasn’t going to remind him! The sight of that chest of his, those shoulders, those arms, was just too good to resist, and she drank it in, with a possessive ache swelling by the minute inside her.
Oh, she wanted him! And he knew it, too, and was loving every betrayal of what she felt. Those betrayals came frequently, too. Her breathing quickened every time he touched her, and every time they got within inches of each other she found herself swaying towards him as if their attraction to each other was actually magnetic.
‘The pasta will take ten minutes. I’d better go and put on a shirt,’ he said at last.
‘Don’t,’ came her instant reply. Oh, Rebecca!
‘Can I possibly hope that’s a compliment,’ he teased softly, ‘or are you just trying to save me the trouble of going upstairs?’
‘Well, the stairs did look rather steep,’ she answered, refusing to look at him because—as usual—her face gave everything away.
Kiss her now, Harry’s inner man said impatiently, but he heroically delayed the gratification of the moment, knowing it would be all the better for being savoured like this, since it was wonderfully obvious that they both wanted it badly.
‘My legs are pretty tired from tennis,’ he drawled, ‘so if you’re sure you don’t mind…’
‘Quite sure,’ she said, with a spinsterish look that didn’t deceive him for a second. That glorious colour still flared in her cheeks, and her eyes were as big and dark as a cat’s.
‘Thank you,’ he mouthed, deliberately making his lips mimic the form of a kiss.
She laughed. ‘Harry, this is…’
‘Nice?’ he suggested blandly.
‘Very nice!’
The pasta was spitting starchy water out onto the stove. He turned down the gas and managed to turn down his own heat to a sustainable level at the same time. Purely to keep himself from kissing her, he said, ‘So, you said you’d run into Gareth at the hospital. Delivering babies, both of you?’
‘Yes, I was covering for Grace—twice—because she was supposed to be away the whole weekend.’ She frowned, and he saw it.
‘Supposed to be?’
‘Yes. Apparently they came back early. My second delivery turned into an emergency Caesarean, and Marcus was on hand so he did it. I was surprised to see him, and told him so—then wished I hadn’t because he was in a pretty foul mood.’
‘So why did they come back?’ Harry asked.
Rebecca watched him as he went to the fridge to get out a bottle of vinaigrette dressing for the salad. Pottering about in the kitchen like this together, it felt so right and so natural…although there ought to be a law against what jeans did to a male rear end like Harry’s.
‘Well,’ she answered slowly, as he closed the fridge again, ‘Marcus said it was because their bed-and-breakfast turned out to be awful, but I can’t believe that. Surely they’d just have gone elsewhere. To a motel, or something. It was a gorgeous day. I guess if it had been pelting rain I might have believed it, but…’
‘No. Sounds odd, doesn’t it?’ he agreed. ‘I’ve had a bad feeling about those two for a while now.’
‘You mean…seriously bad?’
‘Seriously bad,’ he echoed. ‘Grace isn’t happy. I’m wondering if it all has something to do with the baby.’
‘She said the baby was fine. I’ve been assuming it was her mother. She said they’d had a big fight over her marrying Marcus, and that she didn’t want to make the first move towards reconciliation because her mother would only say “I told you so”.’
‘Which is a dead give-away, if you think about it,’ he pointed out.
‘“I told you so” because Grace did make a mistake in marrying Marcus?’
‘It fits, doesn’t it?’
‘It does,’ she had to agree. ‘Oh, how sad…and horrible…for all four of them.’
‘Four?’
‘Grace. Marcus. Her mother. And there’s a baby due in about two months, Harry.’
‘Yes, there is, isn’t there? I wonder how much that’s contributing to the whole problem…’
By unspoken agreement, they let the subject drop. Without knowing more, there wasn’t a lot to do to help. And Grace’s bright reassurances, coupled with Marcus’s black expression this morning, suggested that the couple themselves would not appreciate well-meant interference. Well, Grace had indicated exactly that in what she’d said about her mother.
Now the pasta had gone off the boil altogether. Harry fiddled with the gas again until it looked right, then turned to her. ‘I estimate we’ve got five minutes.’
‘Until…?’
He came towards her, laced his fingers together in the small of her back and bent towards her face. ‘Until I have to take my mouth…away from yours…in order to put…spaghetti into it,’ he answered, his lips blurred and soft against hers.
Better than last night. Quite definitely better. Last night she’d been drained and upset and not at all sure what she’d wanted beyond the immediate miracle of their joined mouths.
Tonight…Well, she’d had nearly twenty-four hours of living with the memory of his kiss, and somehow her feelings for him had deepened and grown roots with amazing speed in that time. It was like a hum in the air—a hum of understanding that she wanted more.
And, of course, last night he’d been wearing a sweatshirt.
His body was fabulous. Her hands couldn’t get enough of it as she stroked the muscles and sinews of his back, then pushed him away just enough to rake her fingers through that absolutely kissable edible patch of hair in the middle of his chest, that she wanted to nuzzle.
He laughed, a low rumble that bubbled up to make him break away and squash his nose into her cheek. ‘Rebecca, you’re…’
‘I’m what?’
‘I don’t know. So alive. I almost get the feeling you’re quite enjoying this,’ he whispered, and nibbled at her ear.
‘I love it, that’s all. Your passion.’
‘Egoist!’
‘Not just your passion for…this,’ he managed—just—as he swooped down to pull another kiss from her eager lips.
She wanted…fully intended…to pursue the point further, but his mouth was such a fabulous distraction that she couldn’t.
The subject stopped mattering and all that counted in the whole world was the fact that she was here in his arms, already so close to loving him that she doubted she would know when she crossed that invisible and all-important line.
‘This is crazy, isn’t it?’ he said lazily.
‘I know.’
‘Not exactly a power career move—having a fling with the boss’s daughter.’ His voice was like a sensual caress, but she felt as if she’d been slapped. A ‘fling’, he’d phrased it. And she’d been flirting happily with the idea of future love.
‘Is that how you see this?’ she said painfully. ‘As a bad career move, saved only by the fact that it’s a fling and therefore brief?’
‘Rebecca, I was—’
She didn’t let him finish. ‘Perhaps, from what you say, you might feel better about it if I promised to keep it a secret from Dad. Lots of lies and secretive comings and goings in the middle of the night. Would that help?’
Her icy tone left him in no doubt that she wasn’t trying to be helpful.
‘Rebecca, it was meant as a—’
‘No. You’ve already sweet-talked me about your view on me working in the practice. I don’t care if you were joking! Most jokes carry truth at their heart, and yours was no exception. You just can’t get over the fact that I’m Marshall Irwin’s daughter, can you? One way or another, you’re going to make that into a problem, and you were doing that before you even met me.
‘OK, well, you’ve convinced me now. It is a problem, whether we can’t stand each other, or can’t keep our hands off each other. We can’t build a relationship—not a professional one, not a personal one—without my father and my work at the practice getting in the way, it seems, so let’s not try. If Gareth Searle’s got work to offer me at Southshore I’ll take it, and the more hours the better.
‘That seems like the only way we’ll both get over this, without making things difficult for Dad. I’d better go,’ she finished. ‘And you’d better drain this pasta before it turns to mush.’
‘I think you’re overreacting.’
‘I don’t! You’ve got a problem with our relationship, Harry, and I’m not prepared to stick around while you try and solve it. I’m not a “fling with the boss’s daughter”.
I’m me, and if you want me you’d better take that fact seriously!’