KNOWING that Lisa McNeill would still be getting herself settled while Shane went over admission details, Rebecca first went to the gynae floor to see if she could find out any news about Grace. She and Harry had talked about visiting yesterday, but had decided against it.
On Friday Grace had seemed determined on privacy and on holding herself together. She had wanted her mother, and that was all. Now, on asking at the nurses’ station, Rebecca wasn’t surprised to learn that Dr Gaines had been discharged this morning at her own request.
‘There was no reason why not,’ the ward sister explained quietly. ‘Medically it was an easy delivery, and emotionally she didn’t want to stay here a second longer than she needed to. Well, I don’t really need to explain…’
‘No,’ Rebecca agreed. ‘So, did she go home with—?’
‘Her mother,’ Gillian Fielding said.
Rebecca nodded again, and their eyes met briefly. Sister Fielding would know Marcus, of course, as he had surgical patients here all the time. Both women knew that more was going on than just the loss of the baby, devastating though that was. Neither of them had the slightest desire to hurt Grace with gossip or conjecture.
‘I have the number at her mother’s.’ That was all Rebecca said. ‘I expect my father will phone her tonight.’
Up on Maternity, things were much more cheerful. Lisa’s contractions had started in the car and were coming steadily about ten minutes apart. The cervix was about seventy per cent effaced and one centimetre dilated on manual examination, and Lisa was feeling energetic and confident and well able to walk around the corridor to help speed things up. She and Shane had also been shown the special premmie equipment and facilities, and had been told what to expect. These days, a baby coming five weeks early was almost always at low risk for prematurity-related problems.
There was no need for Rebecca to stay at this stage.
‘I’ll be back once things really hot up,’ she promised, and drove home to find Dad there, unpacking his suitcase.
He had driven himself to the airport on Friday morning and had left his car in the long-stay car park over the weekend.
‘Really nice,’ he reported on his two-night stay. ‘The wedding was charming—the whole wedding party actually looked tastefully dressed!’
‘Dad! Even the bridesmaids?’ Rebecca teased.
A veteran of several weddings over the past few years—usually the daughters of old friends—Dad had developed strong feelings on what he called ‘peacock bridesmaids and pavlova brides’. He preferred a simpler look.
They talked about his trip for several minutes more, and then came the hard part.
‘I’m afraid there’s been some very bad news since you left, Dad,’ she began, and felt her eyes fill with the tears she’d tricked herself into forgetting over the weekend.
Half an hour later Dad put down the phone, after speaking to Grace. ‘Yes, she says she’s coming in tomorrow. I didn’t forbid it. She wants to keep busy, and maybe that’s best—just fight her way through life until things gradually get better. You haven’t seen or heard from Marcus since Friday night?’
‘No. I’ve just come from the hospital.’ She explained briefly about Lisa McNeill. ‘I looked for Marcus. He didn’t seem to be about. I don’t know…what I would have said if he had been.’
‘No,’ Dad agreed. ‘It’s…hellish. There’s really nothing we can do to help beyond what Grace actually asks for. Marriages do break down, and often it can happen over the sort of tragedy that should pull people together. It’s early days. We can only hope they sort it out. But, anyway, tell me about your weekend.’
What did one say? Rebecca had had absolutely no practice at this at all, and to her own ears it showed. She stumbled vaguely through something about Muffin and being lazy and Harry taking her to see his skater perform, making sure that she was fumbling in her bag when she said his name so that Dad wouldn’t see…whatever there was in her face to see.
She was vastly relieved when her pager went off.
‘It’s the hospital. It must be Lisa already. I hope there’s not a problem.’
There wasn’t, but things were coming along faster than usual for a first baby.
‘Sorry to have to get you to turn straight round again,’ a nurse said. ‘It looks like it’s going to be an easy delivery, but she’d like to have you here.’
‘And I’d like to be there,’ Rebecca said truthfully. After the loss of Grace’s baby, she needed a happy ending.
‘Will you eat when you get back?’ Dad wanted to know.
‘No, don’t worry about me,’ she answered quickly. ‘I’ll grab something somewhere.’
‘Okey-doke. See you later.’
He gave her a quick peck on the cheek and she felt guilty, remorseful, deceitful.
This was all about Harry. She had spent the weekend with Harry while Dad was away. Dad didn’t know about it, and she didn’t know where it was going from here, and now she couldn’t meet Dad’s eye in case he somehow guessed.
Which was stupid because Dad, of all people, would be only too happy to know that she was in love.
‘As long as it worked out,’ Rebecca said to herself aloud as she drove back down Anzac Parade. ‘That’s the crunch. If it’s not going to work out, then I don’t want him to know anything about it at all.’
She didn’t know why she was thinking like this—they’d had a fabulous weekend together, after all—except that this was the end of the nineties and relationships weren’t predictable any more, and she’d given herself to Harry two days ago—that was an old-fashioned idea perhaps, giving yourself to a man, but all the same that was how it felt—and it made a huge difference somehow.
It would matter so much if it turned out to be just a weekend…or just a few weekends, or six months of weekends…and the more it mattered the more likely it seemed that something would go wrong.
She’d already been thinking this way when she’d left Harry in the car park an hour and a half ago. That was why she’d steeled herself very deliberately not to look back at him, holding herself so tightly that her shoulders ached. He mustn’t think that she’d slept with him in order to bind him to her in some way. He mustn’t think she was forcing the pace.
Lisa McNeill was caught in the thick of active labour when Rebecca reached her room, the strong contractions coming so hard on top of each other that it would be difficult to find a brief respite in which to examine her. Lisa was working hard to stay in control, but her legs were shaking now and midwife Alix Bowman only just got to her with a bowl in time as she retched and then vomited.
Shane was coaching Lisa through the contractions with almost equal energy, and it took Rebecca, who was capped and gowned now with well-washed hands, a moment to gather herself and slot in to all the activity.
‘OK…This is it. This is it!’ Lisa suddenly said, and her urge to push was so strong that she fought off any attempt to check her dilatation.
It didn’t matter. As she pulled on her thighs and arched back on the bed, the dark, wet head was already crowning strongly, and Rebecca easily massaged back one edge of the cervix that was curled and getting in the way. Three mighty pushes was all it took to bring out the head, then the shoulders rotated easily and the whole baby slipped out, looking a good sturdy size for dates—as much as six pounds, Rebecca estimated, and already crying.
‘A boy, Lisa,’ she said.
Like Grace’s little lost James.
‘Oh!’ Lisa exclaimed incoherently. ‘Oh…Oh!’ Shane stifled several sobs. Less than three hours ago they’d been thinking of his cycling, not this.
For the next ten minutes or so the room was very busy and noisy. Lisa hadn’t torn at all, but Rebecca had the cord and placenta to deliver and examine while Lisa cradled her new baby on her chest for a few precious moments until he was taken away to be checked by a hospital paediatrician who specialised in premmie babies. This one, though, looked so robust and healthy that he seemed like a fraud.
‘I wouldn’t be surprised if your dates were a bit wrong,’ Rebecca told Lisa. ‘Or perhaps you conceived very early in your cycle.’
It was nice to have some good news to report to Dad when she got home, after stopping to eat a hamburger in the car on the way. It hadn’t been a very sensible solution to dinner, and Dad understandably expressed surprise after he’d heard the brief story of the birth and quizzed her about the state of her stomach.
‘But if you were only going to have that,’ he pointed out, ‘you could have had one at home. We have all the ingredients, and it’s only six-thirty now. I haven’t eaten yet myself. I was just whipping up some spaghetti.’
‘Well, you know, I—I wasn’t sure,’ Rebecca answered, then mumbled something incoherent about having a bath. She didn’t meet his eye, and her cheeks were red.
Marshall watched her go in utter astonishment. She wasn’t behaving naturally at all! It didn’t take him more than a few moments to conclude that it had something to do with Harry. She had been so suspiciously off-hand when mentioning his name and that they’d been out together—even if it had only been to see one of his patients perform in a suburban show.
He’d been wondering for some weeks how she really felt about Harry—all the more so because she seemed to go to such pains to conceal it, which wasn’t like her. For quite some time he’d been afraid that she didn’t like Harry, which would have been awkward. Lately, he’d started to wonder if she liked Harry too much, which could very well be more awkward still. Now…
They’d spent the weekend together.
As soon as the idea struck him, he knew it was true. The knowledge winded him. It shouldn’t have done, of course. He was being horribly overprotective. Harry was a caring, responsible man, and Rebecca was twenty-seven years old.
Still…Still…At times he could be almost as passionate as his daughter, and he now knew the most awful temptation to get his car over to Surry Hills, hammer on his junior partner’s door, seize him by the collar, threaten violence and demand to know his intentions.
He resisted it at once…and then resisted it repeatedly all evening, while Rebecca spent an hour in the bath and another hour outside playing with Muffin, before retiring to her room at a suspiciously early hour ‘to read’. Theatrical yawn. ‘I’m sorry, Dad. I’m so tired.’
Marshall sighed aloud after she’d gone, feeling more helpless than fatherhood had made him since Joy’s death twelve years ago. It was horrible! Whatever had happened during their weekend together, she didn’t look as if she was feeling happy about it.
Damn Harry! If he hurts her, I’ll…Or is she just confused? Oh, Rebecca! Oh, Harry!
All his instincts and urges were alarmingly primitive, and if there was, in fact, something sensible and practical and wise that he ought to be doing about all this, he was at a complete loss, right now, to know what it was.
The following day was one of the most difficult ones ever known in the practice of Irwin, Gaines, Jones and Irwin. Grace was back on board, getting through by sheer force of will. The practice dealt frequently with babies, young children and pregnant women, and it was something which Grace just had to face.
‘I know you think I should have taken leave,’ she said at one point to Marshall, Rebecca, Andrea and Julie in the kitchen, her tone an incongruous mixture of fierceness and apology. ‘But it wouldn’t have been any easier to come back after a week, or two weeks, or a month. In fact, I think it’s easier now.’
Her body language shouted the fact that she didn’t want to talk at length about what was going on in her life, and everyone could only respect that wish.
Meanwhile, Rebecca couldn’t help wondering if Grace’s last words applied to her own situation. Was it easier now, with Harry, when they hadn’t had a chance to talk and she was so wary and scared that she could hardly meet his eye naturally? Or would it be easier in a week, or two weeks, or a month, when she would know what he thought and felt once their weekend together had receded into the past?
She hoped by then, at least, that Dad’s eyes wouldn’t be fixed anxiously on her the way they’d been at regular intervals through the day, while he kept looking as if he had something important to say but didn’t know how to start. When he and Harry spent a good part of their lunch-break shut away together in Dad’s office, she had to remind herself very sternly that they’d surely only be talking about patients or recent articles in the AMA journal, or something similarly professional, so she had not the remotest reason to wonder what was being said.
She had to remind herself even more strongly of this when Harry emerged at last, looking thoughtful and determined and—possibly just a projection of her own state—more than a little hot under the collar.
Later, meeting Dad over the kettle as they both came in search of a cup of tea, she felt so on edge that she began to say impulsively, ‘Dad, if there’s something you want to—’ But she was interrupted by Andrea, bustling in. Cheerful and chunky and blonde, she wasn’t the most perceptive person in the world at times, and was quite oblivious now to the fact that she was unwanted.
In hindsight, however, Rebecca was glad she hadn’t been able to complete her sentence. She didn’t want Dad to guess just how much Harry was tormenting her.
Tuesday, at Southshore, was in many ways an easier day. She reported to Julius Marr that Grace seemed to be handling the return to work quite well, although Marcus’s name had not been mentioned and she was still staying at her mother’s.
The tall, loose-limbed GP shook his head. ‘If I knew Marcus any better, maybe I’d try to talk to him, but as it is…’
‘I know,’ Rebecca agreed. ‘That’s how we feel, too—that there ought to be a way we can help, by getting one of them at least to talk it through. But Grace doesn’t want to, and we hardly know Marcus.’
‘Which is odd, that last thing,’ Julius mused, lifting his jutting chin and looking into the middle distance. ‘Because there are people I’ve seen a lot less of than Marcus Gaines that I’d happily say I knew reasonably well.’
‘Perhaps that’s part of the problem,’ Rebecca answered. ‘He’s so reserved, and she just…can’t talk at the moment, I don’t think. They’ve got no meeting point. But if they can find one…If they really love each other…’
‘That’s the crunch, isn’t it?’ Julius agreed. ‘If they really love each other.’
‘And that’s something we don’t know.’
So Grace was still in her thoughts at Southshore, but at least she didn’t have to confront Harry. She had hoped so much that he would phone last night, but he hadn’t, and because she was conscious of waiting for a call for two hours—while carefully pretending to Dad not to be doing any such thing—she was very glad today that she was going out with David Shannon and a group of doctors from his hospital tonight.
‘Just a casual, friendly meal’ he’d called it, making it sound safe from anyone’s perspective, and it turned out to be exactly that.
She learned when she got home from the evening at ten that this time Harry had phoned. Dad was very vague about it, though. Annoyingly so.
‘He said it wasn’t important. I told him—Well, that you’d gone out. Did you have a good time?’
‘Yes, lovely. Although David is perhaps…’ She hesitated.
‘Not Dr Right?’ Dad filled in helpfully.
Since when had he thought of her male friends in such terms?
‘I was going to say,’ she clarified severely, ‘that he perhaps wasn’t the most interesting person I’d ever met, actually!’
‘Oh. Right. Sorry,’ Dad mumbled awkwardly, then went off in rather a hurry, calling the kitten, leaving Rebecca frustrated and at a loss.
Harry didn’t phone again all week so she didn’t see him again until Friday. And now we’re at work so it scarcely counts, she said to herself miserably. Is he just going to let it all slide? How can he? Have I been a fool? We seemed to need each other, to understand each other, so completely last weekend. Surely it wasn’t just because of how we felt about Grace? And surely he wasn’t deliberately using me? Could he be the kind of man who loses interest in a woman as soon as he’s slept with her? It sounds so ugly, just like Matt would have been…Oh, why did I let this happen?
As if I could have done anything else. It sneaked up on me. I didn’t decide to love him.
Once more the day seemed long. They didn’t finish until twenty to seven so Bev and Deirdre had already left when the last three patients were ushered out.
There was one person still left in the waiting-room, however. Marcus Gaines.
Rebecca was the first to see him, and she felt a huge surge of hope for Grace as he rose from where he’d been sitting and greeted her briefly. He’d aged by years in the past week, it seemed, and again this gave her cause for further hope. If he was suffering like this then that had to give him a starting point with Grace, if Grace could only see it…
Here Grace was. ‘I’ll see you next week, then, Mr Massey,’ she said brightly. ‘You’ll ring and make a follow-up appointment on Monday?’
‘Right-oh,’ answered the man in his sixties as he opened the front door.
Grace put his file on the front desk, and only then did she turn and see Marcus. Her face went white and she froze.
‘Grace!’ Marcus’s voice was hoarse with strain and desperation.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘You know! I’ve been ringing all week and you won’t come to the phone. I didn’t want to have this out in front of your mother or I would have gone there. We have to talk!’
‘No, Marcus. I can’t. I’m…sorry. I just can’t!’ Grace answered, each word sounding as if she had to bite down on a knife blade to say it.
She closed her fist tightly over her car keys, wrenched open the front door and fled. Marcus’s strong shoulders crumpled and he buried his face in his hands.
‘This is hell,’ he rasped, lifting his head again. ‘I love her. And I know she loves me. I can’t lose her! But if she won’t speak to me…What am I going to do?’
‘Give her time, Marcus,’ Harry said huskily, stepping into the waiting room. He was on his own. He must have heard Grace and Marcus and had ushered his final patient quietly out the side door which was only rarely used. ‘You just have to give her time,’ he repeated.
Marcus nodded slowly. ‘It looks as if I have little choice,’ he answered, his handsome face stiff. ‘Though it goes against the grain. I didn’t give her much time before I proposed. Four weeks. It just seemed so obvious to me that we were meant to be together. She was—is—everything I wanted in a woman. In a wife. And now…I’ve ruined it all, and if time is what she wants, then, yes, I’ll find the right way to give it to her—as much as she needs. What else can I do?’
He was talking to himself more than to Rebecca or Harry.
‘Marcus…’ Harry began, but it was too late. The obstetrician had left as abruptly as his wife.
‘Call him back,’ Rebecca suggested. ‘He can’t have gone far.’
‘No…’ Harry shook his head. ‘I don’t know what I was going to say, anyway.’
‘I think what you did say was right,’ Rebecca told him quietly.
‘You think so? Pretty trite advice. Time…’
‘Things are sometimes trite because they’re true,’ she pointed out. ‘It’s obvious that she needs time. Maybe it’s not all she needs, but I get the impression that the very last thing she’ll respond to is him laying siege to her, trying to force her into a talk or a confrontation or a reconciliation. Just now, though, for the first time, I felt hopeful for the two of them—that eventually they’ll work it out.’
‘Me, too,’ he agreed. ‘What does that make us?’
‘Optimists?’ she suggested dryly.
‘More than that…’
But he only shrugged, and silence fell all through the empty rooms of the practice. It was the first time they’d been alone together since Sunday afternoon, and she was almost painfully aware of it.
She didn’t know what to do. Leave? They were both ready—overdue, in fact—to lock up for the day. And yet the last thing she wanted was just to drift off, as if they had nothing to do with each other and nothing to say. What on earth had happened since Sunday?
‘Well…’
The word dropped from her lips almost without her volition, and she found herself bustling off down the corridor to check the windows in each room and make sure that everything was switched off. Behind her, she could hear Harry setting the answering machine for the weekend.
When she arrived back in the waiting-room he was at the front door, holding it open for her. She was just about to brush past him, steeling herself against the reaction to his closeness which she knew was inevitable, then they both heard tottering, hesitant footsteps just outside, punctuated by the staccato knock of a stick on cement.
‘Hello…’ Harry muttered. ‘Who’s this?’
‘Oh, Doctor, thank goodness!’
It was Irene MacInerney, and she was far too agitated and upset to think of flirting with Dr Jones today, although as usual she was very smartly and neatly dressed.
‘What is it, Mrs MacInerney?’ Harry asked, but then he and Rebecca both saw the problem.
The ninety-six-year-old’s lower calf was bleeding profusely, and the fragile, almost transparent skin was torn back like a strip of soggy paper. Blood had soaked through the knee-high stocking she’d been wearing, which was now rolled down to her ankle.
‘I’m a silly, silly old thing,’ she was saying, close to tears. ‘I got up on a step stool to try and reach my top cupboard—I should have waited for my son to come and do it for me—and I had one of my dizzies and fell, and my shoe heel must have scraped my ankle and look at me!’
Harry had already bounded down the steps to reach her, taking her elbow and putting an arm around her shoulders so he could pilot her up the steps.
‘Don’t go scolding yourself and getting upset, Mrs Mac,’ he ordered her gently. ‘Just tell me, is anything else hurting? Your hip or your thigh?’
‘No…’
‘And you can walk quite normally?’
‘Apart from the trail of blood I’m leaving at every step. People will think someone’s been attacked! Oh, I’m so silly!’
Lucky, though. She hadn’t broken any bones, which was almost a miracle given her age. Rebecca held the door open and Harry got their patient safely into a treatment room then helped her to lie down while Rebecca got the equipment they would need to tape and dress the leg.
In many ways it wasn’t as bad as it looked. If a young person had produced that much blood, stitches would probably have been needed, but this was quite a shallow scrape. On the other hand, Mrs MacInerney’s skin was so very fine and fragile that the job of stretching it back into position and taping the wound closed was both delicate and time-consuming.
Really, it was well within the capabilities of a single doctor, but somehow neither Harry nor Rebecca thought of suggesting to the other that they should leave, and Rebecca happily took on the role of assistant, cutting the tape to the length Harry required and distracting Mrs MacInerney with conversation.
Meanwhile, she was badly distracted herself—by the sight of Harry at work over the injury. She hadn’t seen him like this before, so focused and careful. How could those strong fingers be so delicate and meticulous? He was doing a superb job…as he’d done last weekend with his hands in a very different context.
How can I possibly think about that now? Rebecca scolded herself.
‘I’ve spoilt your evening,’ Mrs MacInerney was saying. ‘Oh, I’m such a nuisance!’
‘You haven’t spoiled anything, Mrs Mac,’ Harry said soothingly, then added, ‘OK, Rebecca, about five centimetres, thank you.’
‘Here you go.’
Their fingers brushed and their eyes met. Rebecca felt heat rise in her face at once and thought in despair, Oh, why does my face give so much away? I should start wearing a mask when I’m with him! She knew he’d seen the colour in her cheeks.
‘There’s a lot of evening left yet,’ Harry said in a significant way. Looking at Mrs MacInerney. Speaking to Rebecca.
She flushed and dropped her gaze. She wasn’t going to take suggestive comments from him when things were so unclear between them. She definitely wasn’t going to take such things in the middle of a delicate piece of skin repair.
‘Should about do it.’ He echoed her own professional tone, but as she looked down at the spool of tape she was aware of his gaze, drifting to her at every spare moment. ‘Now, you’re up to date on your tetanus shots, aren’t you, Mrs Mac?’ he said next.
‘Yes, because of the silly cut I got in the garden, back when my daughter-in-law gave me the New Guinea impatiens plants.’
‘OK, yes, I remember. That’s good, but I’m going to put you on an antibiotic because if this got infected it could get way out of control, and I want you back on Tuesday so we can look at the dressing. I’m afraid it’s going to be slow to heal.’
‘Well, I’ll just have to resign myself to seeing a lot of you, then, won’t I, Dr Jones?’
‘Aha!’ He pounced on the flirting tone. ‘You’re starting to feel better! Now, is there someone who can come over and look after you for the evening?’
‘My son. He was coming anyway. He’s probably on his way. He’s very good to me!’
‘I know he is,’ Harry answered.
This was what allowed Mrs MacInerney to live alone successfully, and she was very appreciative and proud of the loving support she received from each of her three children.
‘We’d better walk you back, then,’ Harry said.
‘Could I take my other knee-high off first?’ Mrs MacInerney said. ‘I don’t want to look strange.’
‘Rebecca, would you mind writing out that script for her while we start off? Don’t want to rush things! Your dad’s…er…been telling me he doesn’t think rushing things is a good idea,’ he finished significantly.
‘Has he?’ she said rather huskily, understanding. Oh, Dad… She added helplessly, ‘You know, Harry, Dad’s not always right! He can be—’
‘Clever, distinguished, generous…’
‘All that,’ she agreed, confused now.
‘And dead wrong about his daughter?’
‘Oh, dead wrong about his daughter,’ Rebecca agreed, then looked at Mrs MacInerney. What on earth was she making of this cryptic yet patently significant exchange? Fortunately she was still absorbed in rolling down her knee-high and replacing her shoe on the uninjured leg.
It was another ten minutes before she was safely seated on her couch with her bandaged leg propped on a footstool, and this was the sight that greeted her son John when he walked through the front door.
‘Oh, Mum, no! What have you done?’
Harry and Rebecca left their elderly patient to tell the story, after Harry had told her firmly, ‘None of this “silly” business, OK? You’ll know next time that the step stool isn’t a good idea. Mr MacInerney, maybe it needs to live at your place from now on.’
‘Sounds that way!’ her son said.
‘And now…’ Harry said ominously to Rebecca as soon as they’d regained the street, along which a fresh sea breeze blew to cool the hot golden evening.
‘Yes?’ she returned, as impatient as he was. ‘Dad’s been meddling, hasn’t he?’
‘He had a long talk to me on Monday.’
‘I gathered that.’
‘He’d guessed…’
‘About the—?’
‘Weekend,’ he finished with a nod. It seemed entirely natural for them to complete each other’s sentences like this. ‘He didn’t…uh…threaten me with anything terrible.’ A smile played lightly on his face. ‘Though I think he wanted to!’
Rebecca’s face burned. ‘Right,’ she said faintly.
‘But as I…er…implied a few minutes ago, he did suggest that it would be advisable if I didn’t rush you into anything…and if I made absolutely sure of what we both felt, before putting you in any position where you could possibly be hurt.’
‘Oh, God, it’s too late for that,’ she muttered.
He misunderstood. ‘Too late?’ he rasped. ‘What do you mean? That David you were out with when I rang the other night…?’ The pained, jealous ring in his voice was unmistakable.
‘No, Harry!’ she said frantically, taking an urgent pace towards him. They could have touched now with only the tiniest effort, but they didn’t. ‘Too late to make sure I couldn’t be hurt,’ she clarified. ‘I—You already have a terrible power to hurt me, Harry,’ she admitted honestly, the colour flaring once again in her face.
Oh, God, it was terrible once you’d slept with a man, and she’d known it would be like this for her. The searing truths from inside her heart could only come tumbling forth fully formed into words. She finished, ‘I think I’ve been a mess of about a hundred different painful feelings since the day we met.’
‘So let’s get this quite clear,’ Harry said cautiously. ‘Do you need time, Rebecca?’
‘No!’ she almost shouted. ‘No, I do not need time! I know exactly how I feel about you, and what I want.’
‘You love me.’ It wasn’t a question. His confidence might have seemed arrogant if the relief vibrating in his tone hadn’t been so naked and joyous.
‘Yes.’
‘Then, if I take a leaf out of Marcus Gaines’s book and ask you to marry me now, when we’ve known each other for less than three months, you’re saying it won’t be too soon?’
His voice seared into her ear as he took her in his arms and ran his hands with possessive heat over the curves that had writhed under his touch just days ago.
‘Oh, Harry, I’m not a patient person,’ she whispered, closing her eyes and then gasping as his lips trailed down her throat then moved upwards to find her mouth. ‘Dad should have known that…’
‘Neither am I when it comes to you,’ he growled. ‘Nor am I very good at keeping my feelings to myself. Marcus and Grace scared me today. Badly. And then I saw your reaction the moment we touched. Just like mine…It’s been such hell, holding back this week. Coming on top of Sunday when we said goodbye in the doctors’ car park and you didn’t turn back to wave…’
‘Oh, Harry, because I was feeling so overwhelmed,’ she told him. ‘And so scared myself that I hadn’t allowed enough time, that I’d dived in at the deep end too soon. I’d always known it would happen, you see, once I reached that ultimate closeness with a man, and when it did it was even more powerful than I’d imagined.’
‘Oh, was it ever?’ he said fervently, and her insides coiled with secret rapture at the knowledge that it had been just as special and powerful for him.
‘So I felt I had to start putting on the brakes. You saying goodbye to me that day at all was so hard, like being pushed out into the cold after basking for hours in front of a warm fire.’
‘Marry me, then, Rebecca,’ he said urgently. ‘Promise me now that you will so that we both know exactly where we stand.’
‘I will, Harry. You know that…’
They didn’t speak again for quite some time, then Harry said, ‘Can I come over for dinner, then? I want to put your poor father out of his misery, tell him that he can stop having those shotgun wedding nightmares of his. It’s going to make a nice change from the past few months, not having to worry that my attitude towards you is going to ruin my professional relationship with your dad.’
‘Was your attitude to me ever really that negative?’ she asked, with a strong inkling that she knew the answer to this question now.
‘Rebecca,’ he confirmed, deeply serious, ‘from the moment I saw you in that chic little pink Chanel suit—’
‘What?’
‘The pink towel ensemble.’
She laughed. ‘I was picturing it as Donna Karan…’
‘Either way, it was obvious you had exceptionally good taste in towels, and from that moment my attitude towards you was so dangerously positive that it completely panicked me about the future of the practice. On top of that, I could see at once that you and your father had some preconceptions to get rid of where each other was concerned. Now I’ll be in a perfect position to set you both straight!’
‘Smug, aren’t you?’
‘I think men usually are,’ he whispered, ‘when they’ve just got what they most want in the world.’
He nuzzled her nose with his, then brushed her lips, coaxing them to part before covering her mouth with his.
‘You were right to worry about the future of the practice,’ she said after several blissful minutes. ‘It’s not going to look very stable to the outside eye, is it, when the practice goes from being Irwin, Gaines, Jones and Irwin to Irwin, Gaines, Jones and Jones within a matter of months?’
‘Not very stable at all,’ Harry agreed unsteadily. He was finding it increasingly difficult to have a rational conversation, with Rebecca’s lithe, curved and scented body pressed invitingly against him and the sun pouring molten gold into her living hair. She tasted like heaven. ‘But somehow I think when patients hear the reason for it they’ll understand.’
My very worst fears have been realised, he thought hazily and happily. She did change the whole balance of my working relationship with Marshall, and it’s the best thing that ever happened to me.
‘Did you tell your father what time you’d be home tonight?’ he managed to ask.
‘For dinner,’ she said, then frowned. ‘Didn’t you want to come over, too?’
‘I’ve changed my mind,’ he answered. ‘Would he object if you rang and said you were going out with me?’
‘He wouldn’t object,’ she assured him. ‘We’ll tell him our news tomorrow, then?’
‘Sounds good.’
‘And what time should I tell him I’ll be home?’ She knew the answer already. Her eyes were sparkling wickedly. They’d already turned towards the beach. Their cars were parked in the opposite direction, but that didn’t matter.