Once again Steph stood in front of her wardrobe, and for the second time it was Harry Pritchard causing her indecision.
True, she had a lot of dresses—mostly bought when she’d been married to Martin. He’d loved to take her to the best boutiques and spend extravagant sums of money on her clothes.
So she fitted the image of Martin Quayle’s wife!
And possibly to appease his conscience, though she hadn’t known that at the time…
She flicked through them distastefully and came across a creamy silk shirt she’d always loved, but which Martin had labelled old-fashioned. And somewhere she had good black jeans—designer jeans admittedly, but at least she’d feel comfortable in them. She dug through the rack of clothes, and found them hiding under a jacket.
Unfortunately, Fanny came in as she was spreading this outfit on the bed.
‘Uncle Harry said a dress!’ Fanny said sternly.
‘I know, sweetheart, but these are good, dressing-up jeans.’
‘No!’ The obdurate look, which Steph admitted came from her genes rather than Martin’s, settled on Fanny’s small features. ‘It has to be a dress. I’ll find one.’
Inevitably she chose a vivid emerald green ballgown which Steph had always hated.
‘That’s a dancing dress,’ she told Fanny, ‘not a going-out-to-dinner dress. Honestly, the jeans will do.’
But Fanny was searching again, finally coming up with a slim-fitting black jersey dress, which actually predated Steph’s marriage to Martin, and, though old, was so simple in style it was dateless. She guessed Fanny had been attracted by the thin strip of jet and crystal beading around the deep V-neckline, but it was certainly an acceptable compromise.
‘OK,’ she told her daughter. ‘But now you’ll have to look in the bottom of the wardrobe to find some black shoes to go with it, then in the bottom drawer of my dressing-table for some black stockings or tights as well.’
Fanny was delighted, crawling into the bottom of the wardrobe and playing there for a while before producing the shoes, then crossing to the dressing-table where she pulled out all the stockings and a number of suspender belts Steph had forgotten she owned.
Getting dressed with Fanny’s help took longer than a solo effort, but eventually she was ready.
She studied her unfamiliar self in the mirror, realising how thin she’d got since she’d last worn the dress when she saw the way it clung to her breasts and skimmed down over her hips, suggesting a shape, rather than hugging her figure.
And make-up—how long since she’d worn more than a touch of lip gloss?
The image in the mirror made her nervous and uncertain, but Harry was here already—and Fanny had left to greet him—so she couldn’t put off her grand entrance for much longer.
Harry, crawling around the floor with Fanny on his back, sensed a movement and looked up, taking in long shapely legs encased in sheer black stockings, then a slip of a dress, a duller, denser black, making Steph’s pale skin seem even paler in comparison, and the short red hair even redder.
‘You’re more beautiful than ever.’
He hadn’t meant to say the words—after all, this was to be a business dinner—but they’d slipped out anyway.
‘I’m not sure about compliments from a horse,’ she said, a slight smile tilting her luminous lips.
Which was when Harry realised he was still on all fours, though his rider had dismounted and was now walking around her mother, nodding her approval of the dress.
He collected his senses, not easy as his eyes kept going back to the silky black legs, and stood up.
‘Some dress,’ he said, again forgetting it was a business dinner. ‘Shall we go?’
He waited while she gave last-minute instructions to Tracy, turning to him to ask, ‘Where are we going?’
‘I asked the manager at Dolphin Towers. He recommended Travesty—he said it’s fairly new and, though it has a funny name for a restaurant, the food’s good.’
Steph crossed to the small phone table, pulled out a phone book and looked up the number of the restaurant, writing it down for Tracy. He had a feeling Steph was stalling, putting off the moment when the two of them would be together without the buffer of other people.
But that was ridiculous. She knew she was more than capable of holding her own with him—she’d proved that with the job situation.
‘OK, let’s go,’ she said at last, picking up a minuscule handbag that couldn’t possibly hold more than a handkerchief and her keys. She flashed a smile at him and added, ‘You’ve got the brochures and the figures?’
He nodded, because he did have them in the car. He’d taken them home to study them, then, in the process of finding somewhere special to take Steph—preferably somewhere she wouldn’t have been with Martin—he’d forgotten about them. But, even though she looked like pure pleasure, she wasn’t going to let him forget this was business.
He said goodnight to Tracy, kissed Fanny and felt the delight of her soft plump arms around his neck, then escorted Steph out to the car, careful not to touch her in case the desire building inside him might escalate out of control if he felt the softness of her skin, or was close enough to smell the scent of her beneath the faint beguiling perfume she was wearing.
‘I think I’ll buy the office furniture and associated necessities,’ he said, once settled behind the wheel and determined to damp down the flames with business talk. ‘Bob was telling me there’s a company willing to supply all the suites at a very good rate, then we can rent the medical equipment I’ll need. That way we can upgrade as new inventions and innovations occur.’
Steph ignored the jab of pain the ‘Bob was telling me’ caused, and concentrated on the rest of the statement. The mix of ‘I’ and ‘we’.
How seductive that ‘we’ sounded to her thwarted ambition of becoming a surgeon. True, she might not have gone into Harry’s sub-specialty, but…
‘That was a big sigh,’ Harry said. ‘Is it so hard to agree that buying furniture but hiring equipment might be the way to go?’
She had to smile.
‘It was a sigh for something else—for what might have been, Harry.’
‘Surgery?’ he guessed, and his prescience caused a stiffening of her muscles and a prickling of the hair at the nape of her neck.
‘Did you do a course on mind-reading while you were away?’ she asked, desperate to keep the atmosphere light.
‘No.’ He glanced her way. ‘But it was such a passion with you, I can’t help wondering what happened. I know you mentioned Fanny, and understand you couldn’t have done your registrar years with a tiny baby, but—’
‘I didn’t have to get pregnant right then?’ she finished for him, hoping she’d learnt to keep the bitterness out of her voice. ‘No. I didn’t.’
Harry heard the blend of regret and pain and knew there was no way she would regret having had her daughter. But if she hadn’t wanted to get pregnant, what had gone wrong?
He thought back, reconstructing the past through new eyes since Steph had mentioned Martin’s pursuit of her—and her contention that it had only been when Harry himself had become interested that Martin had swept her off her feet.
All Martin had ever wanted, as far as his medical career had been concerned, had been to qualify, gain some hospital experience in Brisbane, then return to Summerland to run the hospital his father had built for him. Martin had seen it as the start of an empire—and himself as the head of a national chain of private hospitals.
And Steph couldn’t have done her specialty years in Summerland. Summerland General wasn’t a teaching hospital.
‘Weren’t you on the Pill?’ he demanded, when his thoughts had led him to an unpalatable possibility.
‘I went off it for three months—it’s what most of us doctors advise women to do from time to time.’
And Martin had been in charge of contraception, Harry guessed, though he didn’t say it, merely reaching out to take Steph’s hand and feeling the coldness of her fingers although the night, now the rain had stopped, was quite warm.
Steph slipped her hand out of Harry’s, but his mind was occupied with thoughts of the man who’d been his best friend. Had finding out about Martin’s infidelities affected Steph to such an extent she’d let bitterness colour her memories of the man? That could explain her animosity to the Quayles.
Or was she right? Harry had to admit Martin had been spoilt and used to getting his own way. But had he been devious enough to marry Steph purely because Harry had been falling in love with her? Sly enough to use a pregnancy to prevent her doing surgery? It had all happened so quickly—courtship, marriage, pregnancy—then, in a little over a year, Martin had died.
The problem was, the more Harry reconstructed Martin, the more he had to think about Bob, and being inextricably tied to Bob meant he didn’t want to be harbouring suspicions about the man.
‘Wasn’t that the place?’
Steph’s sudden comment brought him out of his reverie. He pulled over, checked for traffic, then swung the car around in a U-turn, pulling up a couple of car spaces past the entrance.
‘Thanks,’ he said, climbing out and walking around the bonnet to open the door for her.
‘Thank you,’ she said, and when she kissed him lightly on the cheek, he knew it was for more than his politeness in opening the door. She’d called him a mind-reader, but had she sensed his thoughts? Were the old bonds between them still so strong they could follow each other’s emotional shifts?
He rather hoped not, as some of his emotional shifts were practically X-rated.
He took her arm to walk into the restaurant, pleased she didn’t draw away, though displeased by his own mental warning that holding her arm was as close as he was going to get.
She was as wary as a cat, and her mood changes as unpredictable as the weather, while suspicion about his involvement with the Quayles was probably providing her with more than adequate armour against any advance he might make.
The tables at Travesty were set apart, small groves of potted greenery providing privacy between them.
‘This is lovely,’ Steph said, her face lighting up with such honest delight Harry felt his chest cramp with the love he felt for her.
Then she looked at him—really looked—and added, ‘You haven’t brought the papers—the comparisons.’
Now his chest cramped with a different emotion. She might be relenting—slightly—in the war she’d declared on him earlier, but now she was reminding him this was business.
And that there was a big gap between a truce between them and acceptance back into her life as a friend.
As more than a friend?
Steph sat at the table they’d been allocated and watched Harry walk back out of the restaurant.
He looked fantastic, in a dark suit with a casual turtle-necked sweater beneath it, the dull maroon of the sweater complementing his olive skin and silky black hair.
As well as stirring that bit of her she’d thought dead for ever, he was intriguing her in other ways because though he was, in many ways, still Harry the friend she’d once have trusted with her life, he was an enigma as well.
Driving over here, he’d taken her hand, and she’d known he’d understood, without her having to say the words, what had happened between her and Martin that had put an end to her chance to specialise in surgery. He’d even seemed to understand how difficult it still was for her to reconcile the love she had for the child she’d borne from that unwanted pregnancy with the lingering bitterness of thwarted ambition.
Though he probably couldn’t understand her resentment of Martin, who, she was now sure, had deliberately planned for it to happen.
But as Harry walked back in, pink plastic folders in hand, she pushed the past back to where it belonged and smiled, because the joy she felt at seeing him again—spending time with him—superseded even her suspicion of him.
He, however, couldn’t be feeling the same joy, because he plunked the folders on the table, passed her a menu and said, ‘Let’s order then get down to business.’
And Steph, who’d been the one to remind him this was a business dinner, squelched the disappointment inside her and obediently studied the menu, her disappointment soon diminished by the sheer pleasure of deciding what to eat.
Harry had been determined to be as businesslike as she apparently wanted him to be, but when he saw her face light up as she pondered her choice, he forgot businesslike, wanting only to keep her looking as happy as she looked right now.
‘There are far too many choices,’ she finally said, turning to him with her face still glowing with delight. ‘What are you having?’
They debated the various options—fish or fowl, meat or vegetarian—finally deciding to share a seafood platter. Well, Harry decided, and though Steph nodded enthusiastically, she had another look at the menu and the glow faded from her face.
‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s the most expensive thing on the menu and you’re already going into debt to set up your rooms. I know I told you to go into more debt to pay me, but I’ll earn whatever you pay me, Harry. I’ll do a good job for you. But this is different. Ordering the platter is sheer extravagance.’
He reached out and took her hand.
‘I’m not actually broke,’ he said apologetically. ‘In fact, though I might have to borrow a little money to get set up, it won’t be much. I’ve done quite well, and do have another source of income to back up my own savings, so one extravagant night out won’t do any harm. And as you’ve already pointed out, if things look like they’re going bad, I can do more rejuvenation work.’
She shrugged, as if ashamed she’d once put down his business, then frowned at him.
‘What work do you mainly want to do? And what were you doing in Paris? Why would there be more children with facial injuries there than anywhere else in the world?’
He hesitated for a moment, then, knowing Steph would persist until she got a satisfactory answer, he told her.
‘We, the general public, see the children—and adults, of course—who’ve lost limbs as a result of exploding land mines—anti-personnel mines they call them—on television all the time. And a lot of specialists and prosthetics manufacturers donate time and equipment to these people. But many of those injured have facial scars and deformities as well, where bits of shrapnel have flown up and gouged out not only flesh but bone as well.’
Her eyes widened, but urged him to go on.
‘There’s a clinic in Paris where children from the war-torn areas of Europe are brought. The specialists there use a technique of taking bone from another part of the child’s body, usually the hip bone, shaping it, then grafting it into place to give definition back to the face.’
‘Because kids can cope with a prosthetic arm or leg, but to carry a distorted face through life would be terribly destructive to their self-esteem?’
‘Exactly,’ Harry said, relishing the warmth of the hand she’d laid gently over his as he’d talked about the children.
‘So, tell me more. Does the bone grow? That would be much better than plating or screwing bone together because there’d be no need to follow-up operations. Do you get rejection problems? What are the risks?’
Business was discarded—and any hope of a romantic evening also went west—as Steph demanded to know more and more about the work he’d done. Her excitement shimmered like an aura around her and he realised she’d probably been isolated from this kind of conversation for too long.
There’d been other doctors at the clinic where she’d worked, but only sharing duty with her one night a week, and from what he’d seen of Friday nights, there wouldn’t have been much opportunity to talk shop.
So he fed her hunger for information, then fed her literally, peeling prawns and offering them to her, still talking, egged on by her keen interest.
‘No! Eat yourself,’ she finally protested. ‘I’m going to tackle the sand-crab.’
She smiled across the table at him—a genuine, heart-felt smile.
‘I must have sounded desperate,’ she said, a little rueful now. ‘But, Harry, it’s just so long since I’ve sat and talked medicine with someone—and to hear about the things you’ve done…’ She shrugged. ‘I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t envious.’
And Harry, who’d always thought of Steph as someone who could have had it all—in fact, when she’d married Martin he’d assumed she would have it all—felt the grip of pain for what she’d lost.
‘But you have got Fanny,’ he reminded her, and was rewarded with a warm smile.
‘Yes, I have got Fanny,’ she said, and although the words shone with the love she felt for her daughter, beneath that sparkling polish he glimpsed patches of the dusty tarnish of regret.
They finished the meal, then did settle down to discuss business, both ordering coffee while Harry talked Steph into trying a slice of chocolate and macadamia torte as well.
‘So, now that’s sorted, how are you going to get known?’ Steph asked him, licking a last piece of sweetness from her lips.
Harry was looking at her, but the blank expression on his face suggested he hadn’t heard a word she’d said.
‘You’ll need referrals so you get patients. Your savings might pay for the rooms and furniture but for ongoing income you’ll need paying customers,’ she reminded him.
She saw the little frown appear and guessed he was dragging his mind back from wherever it had been.
‘I know a couple of GPs in the area, and now doctors are allowed to advertise—to the extent they can announce they’ve opened an office—I thought I’d do that.’
Steph shook her head.
‘Not enough!’ she said firmly. ‘You need to join the local branch of the medical association, and there’s a specialists group here in Summerland as well. Then maybe a letter to all the GPs in the area, letting them know you’re in town but, more importantly, telling them the kind of work you’ve done, the experience you’ve had, who you’ve worked under—things like that.’
He smiled at her and she felt a hot wave of blood colour her cheeks.
‘Of course, you’d already thought of that,’ she mumbled.
He reached out and took her hand, stilling the fingers that had been playing nervously with her discarded napkin.
‘I had, but thank you anyway. Thank you for caring enough to be interested in whether I get patients or not.’
The warmth of his touch burned into her and the urge to turn her hand, grasp his fingers, and drag him across the table so she could kiss him properly was so unexpected she was left breathless—as breathless as she’d have been if the kiss had happened.
She had to get out of here—away from Harry—before more bizarre notions occurred to her.
‘I should be getting home,’ she said, removing her hand from temptation and pushing back her chair.
‘Yes!’ Harry stood up, and came around the table to hold her chair, then push it back under the table.
Contrarily disappointed that he didn’t argue, she walked beside him towards the door, going on ahead when he paused to pay the bill but lingering on the path as the sweet scent of some hidden plant attracted her attention.
Drawn to it, she stepped off the path into the shadows, seeking among the rich banks of greenery for the white flowers of a star jasmine—for surely nothing else could be as subtly enticing.
‘Hiding from me?’
Harry’s voice barely broke the evening stillness, though the husky tones of his whisper caused agitation in her heart.
‘Looking for the jasmine. I was going to pinch a bit of it. It grows from a cutting and if I planted it just below my front veranda I could enjoy that heavenly perfume every night.’
‘Still a girl who loves the simple pleasures,’ Harry murmured, coming closer and encircling her, but loosely, with his arms.
‘Hardly a girl,’ Steph managed, as Harry’s nearness caused the breathlessness again.
‘No, you’re right,’ he said, looking down into her face. ‘You’re a woman—and all woman, Steph.’
Then he kissed her, and this time she didn’t have to tempt him, or even wonder what he was feeling, because this kiss was full of heat and hunger, and it burned deep down into her body, setting her aflame with so much desire a tiny moan escaped from way back in her throat, a moan of frustration that she couldn’t press her body closer, feel his skin on hers, find the ultimate fulfilment that was part of being a woman.
A part she’d all but forgotten…