The Surgeon's Convenient Fiancée (Medical Romance) (13 page)

All her instincts seemed to cry out that it was right for her. She let out a sigh as she reached the top of the stairs.

She heard the kids chattering and laughing, so just had to follow the sound. They seemed to be getting on like the proverbial house on fire, and she smiled to herself. ‘Here’s your hot chocolate,’ she called.

Mark came out of his bedroom and she could see the other two in the room behind him, looking through some CDs. ‘We’ll have it in my computer room, please,’ Mark said, indicating the room next to the bedroom, so she took the tray in there.

‘Thank you, Deirdre,’ he added, taking the tray from her and putting it on a side table. ‘You really don’t mind if I call you Deirdre… Deirdre?’

They grinned at each other and she was touched to see that he blushed. He was really more vulnerable and shy than he let on.
‘Oh, no,’ she said. ‘Unless you want to call me Dee, like Mungo and Fleur do.’

‘I’ll see,’ he said, considering the option. ‘I really like the name Deirdre.’ Then he blurted out, ‘I think it’s really great what you’re doing with those kids…looking after them for such a long time and all that when you’re so young yourself. They’ve told me all about it, and it’s really great. My dad told me about you, too. I mean, they’re not your own kids…’ His voice died away, his face redder.

Quickly Deirdre moved to put him at his ease. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘they really needed me and we liked each other from the beginning. Now I think we love each other. So it’s not really like a job, more a labour of love, so to speak.’ She had to be careful what she said in case he was comparing her to his own mother, so that she did not seem to imply to Mark that his mother did not love him, otherwise she would not have taken off. For one thing, she certainly did not know all the details of their family situation.

‘I wish I had someone like you,’ he said. The wistful note in his voice moved her so
much that her throat constricted with emotion.

‘Maybe we can be friends,’ she said. ‘After all, I’m working with your dad three days a week, so our families can certainly get together, if you would like to.’

‘I would like to,’ he said.

Behind Mark, on a shelf attached to the wall, Deirdre could see a framed photograph of a smiling woman, who she assumed immediately must be Mark’s mother. The woman was beautiful, her skin glowing, her pale blonde hair pulled back away from her face. With her brilliant smile, slightly tanned skin, large, expressive eyes and arched eyebrows, she looked like a movie star.

‘That’s my mother,’ Mark said matter-of-factly, following her gaze. ‘Did my dad tell you about her?’

‘He told me something,’ she said carefully.

‘She’s out of the country,’ he said.

‘You must miss her, especially at Christmastime.’

‘Yes, I do,’ he said pensively. ‘But I’m coming round to the idea that she has to have her own life. I just wish she was closer, that’s
all…in Prospect Bay, or maybe Vancouver… so that I could see her.’

‘Have you told her that?’ Deirdre asked gently, thinking of her own parents and how much she missed them and wished they were home. ‘I expect she misses you.’

‘No, I haven’t told her,’ he said. ‘She’s with a man.’

‘That’s all right,’ Deirdre said. ‘You would just be telling the truth, and very often people appreciate the truth, much more than we all think. We spend a lot of psychological energy telling people that everything’s all right when it isn’t.’

‘Do you think she would come back if I said that?’ he asked. ‘I don’t mean come back to my dad. I think that’s all over—they don’t even like each other any more. I mean, would she come back for me?’

‘I think she very well might,’ Deirdre said, a mixture of emotions making her voice tremble a little as she recognized twinges of jealousy in herself at the image of the beautiful Antonia and the prospect of her being back. ‘You’ll never know if you don’t ask.’

Feeling that she was maybe shooting
herself in the foot, Deirdre nevertheless persisted in giving this rather lost boy some gentle advice. Not that she really thought she herself had much of a chance with Shay, of being anything to him permanently. She just knew that at the moment he did not have a woman in his life and that he appeared to like her. Perhaps it would not matter to her whether his ex-wife were here or not, in terms of any possibilities with him, other than the purely physical ones. Then she recalled how Shay’s eyes lit up when he looked at her, with desire, hungry for her. At those times the tension was almost unbearable because the feeling was reciprocated, yet she was loath to make it obvious. She hoped that her eyes did not blaze at him in the way his did when he looked at her. A lack of reciprocation of her love on his part was something that gave her an odd sense of mourning.

Of course, she had been aware that at first Shay had tried to hide his lust for her, or whatever it was, but as time had gone by he had given way to it.

She could not tell Mark that she was in love with his father, yet maybe she didn’t have
to. He was an intelligent and astute boy who would obviously be wondering about her relationship with his father, putting two and two together and coming up with four. The more he saw of the two of them together, the more obvious it would become.

‘What about…him?’ Mark said hesitantly. ‘The man?’

‘That’s something about which she will have to decide,’ Deirdre said. ‘You don’t have to do anything about him, or worry about him. After all, you were part of your mother’s life long before he appeared on the scene. You have a right to have your say.’ Then she laughed deprecatingly. ‘It’s easy to give someone else advice, isn’t it, Mark? That’s what I’m doing. It’s not so easy to get one’s own life in order. I think it helps to listen to advice and comment, even if you don’t follow it. It’s nice that someone else should take the time to think about what’s happening to you. I go to a counsellor myself, and just hearing myself talk is a great eye-opener. I think afterwards, Did I really think that, or feel that? You gain insight, which is what really changes things…if you let it.’

‘I’m having counselling too,’ he said. ‘Why…why are you having counselling—if you don’t mind me asking?’ His blush deepened, and Deirdre had the urge, which she resisted, to give him a hug. Maybe that would come later, when and if she got to know him better.

‘Well…’ she began, wondering how she could put it, ‘I was under a lot of stress because I wanted to go back to work as a nurse, and didn’t see how I could do it. I suppose you could say that I had…have…too many responsibilities and not enough time for myself. Something like that. And my parents and brother are out of the country, so I feel alone sometimes. It’s not easy to explain.’

‘I know what you mean,’ he said, very seriously.

‘I just knew that something was wrong,’ she said, ‘and I didn’t know what to do about it. I knew I needed help.’

‘I know that feeling,’ he said quietly, sadly.

‘Hey, Dee!’ Fleur came into the room, her face flushed and excited. ‘We don’t have to go yet, do we? We’re having so much fun.’

‘Not just yet,’ she said, ‘but I don’t want to
leave it too late, as I have to drive us home and the old car might give me trouble if there’s snow on the road. I’ll call up to you when it’s time to go. Here’s some hot chocolate for you.’

‘OK. Thanks.’

‘See you later, Mark,’ she said, smiling at him.

As she went down the stairs, Deirdre smiled to herself at the irony of giving advice to someone else when she herself found her own life more than she could comfortably cope with at the moment.

An hour later, when she and Shay had spent an enjoyable time talking to each other in front of the fire in the sitting room about everything that occurred to them, laughing a lot, it was time to depart. They had managed to skirt around anything really very personal. Many times Deirdre had had to remind herself of the brief time that she had known Shay, yet it seemed that somehow the idea of him had always been in her consciousness, as though in shadow, just out of reach, all her life. It was a very odd feeling and, contemplating it, she wondered if she were
going mad. She understood that love, attraction could do strange things to you. It was almost a sense of precognition.

She could see through the windows that a light snow was still falling, although not settling much on the ground, not enough to make the roads particularly dangerous.

‘Have you snow tyres on your car?’ Shay asked her as he helped her into her coat in the front hall. The children were just outside the front door, their outer gear on, throwing snowballs at each other with the meagre amount of snow that they could collect from shrubs and grass.

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘When you’re going down the hill,’ he said, ‘it’s better to stay in first gear, right down to the flat ground, because the road here can be very slippery, even if it doesn’t look it. There’s black ice sometimes, so you take care.’

Touched by his concern, Deirdre smiled up at him. ‘I’ll keep that advice in mind,’ she said. ‘Thank you so much, Shay, for a great dinner and a lovely evening. I haven’t enjoyed
myself so much for a very long time. I…I’ll see you at work.’

‘Thank you for coming,’ he said. ‘It’s been delightful for me and for Mark.’ He bent forward and kissed her, moving his lips warmly and gently over hers, putting a hand up to stroke her hair in a gesture that was totally intimate and loving. ‘If you’re wondering, this is not the home I had with Antonia. That was sold. Neither Mark nor I were particularly attached to it, and we didn’t want to stay there with all the memories, some of which were not good. Mark and I chose this house—we fell in love with it, you might say.’

‘It feels like a home, not just a house, and it’s beautiful,’ she said, glad that he had told her, as she had indeed been wondering. She returned his kiss gently, not touching him otherwise, closing her eyes, aware of the children through the slightly open doorway that let in a blast of cold air.

‘If you have an answer for me,’ he murmured, holding her gaze intently so that she could not look away, ‘please, put me out of my suspense. If you can take me as you find me, we may be all right together. I prefer to
be up-front and honest, and I would be lying if I said I could offer you any kind of future. But I find you totally captivating. I’m not sure why, I can’t put it into words right now—and I can’t imagine what you see in a cynic like me, although I know that you do see something.’

With burning cheeks, wishing she could deal with this in a cool, sophisticated way, Deirdre moistened her dry lips with her tongue. Her emotions were moving her this way and that, so that she felt like an animal in a cage, pacing up and down. Yet it was a confinement that she wanted because it would be with the man she loved. Yes, she had to admit it fully now. It thrilled and frightened her at the same time, and she knew she could not tell him of her love, not yet, because it left her totally vulnerable and she was not sure that she wanted him to know that now.

‘I…I’m not a very sophisticated person when it comes to being propositioned by a man,’ she said, trying to make light of it, when her heart was pounding with an unfamiliar excitement and a fear that she might
blow it. ‘It’s not something that happens every day.’

When he grinned down at her, she felt herself going weak at the knees again. ‘I like you just the way you are,’ he said. ‘I don’t want a hard, calculating, cynical woman.’

‘But you’re a cynic,’ she said. ‘You said it yourself.’

‘Two cynics don’t go well together, I think,’ he said. ‘I have a strong suspicion that you could soften me, Deirdre, if you wanted to.’

The attraction between them was so strong that she knew she could not refuse…it was unthinkable. Yet it was so much more than a pure physical attraction for her. Very slowly she drew on her thin leather driving gloves over hands that were trembling, stalling for time.

She took in a deep, tremulous breath and let it out on a sigh. Her throat felt tight with emotion, so that she was not sure she could even speak. Glad of the dim, soft light in the hall, so that her hectic colour was not so apparent, she cleared her throat. ‘The answer’s yes,’ she said, feeling her cheeks flush an even darker colour and hearing her own
voice high-pitched with nervousness. ‘But… not yet. I need to get used to the idea. You understand?’

‘Yes.’ He whispered the word, as his eyes seemed to burn into hers and he caressed her cheek with his warm hand. ‘Darling…sweetheart.’

‘Did you…did you call your wife that?’ The words came out as of their own volition. ‘I think I’m jealous of her.’

‘No, I didn’t call her either of those words. I called her “honey”, mostly, a word that has long since lost its appeal,’ he said softly. ‘All that is over. I’m a different person now. Things were dead between us long before we decided to part. We kept up a home for Mark. You don’t have to be jealous, believe me, although I’m flattered. You’re a very lovely woman, Deirdre, in all respects. You don’t have any idea, do you?’

She shook her head. ‘You can tell me as often as you like,’ she said.

‘I’ll wait for you,’ he said. Then he kissed her again, while the kids shouted and laughed outside, as though they thought it was perfectly all right for the older generation to be
taking such a long time to say goodnight, if they thought about it at all.

‘I…don’t know whether being your lover adds to my dilemmas or detracts from them,’ she said, daring to utter her thoughts, with a deprecating laugh.

‘We’ll work to make it the latter, shall we?’ he said, his mouth quirking in the slight smile that she found so attractive, his eyes warm.

‘You want to be honest, Shay. So do I. Will it make my life more complex?’

‘I expect it will. In a good way, I hope,’ he said. ‘I want to be good to you and good for you, Deirdre. If you want to talk, I’ll be there to listen.’

‘Thank you,’ she said.

‘I never cease to marvel and be glad that you literally crossed my path,’ he said.

As she, Mungo and Fleur got into her car, after Shay had brushed off the snow from all windows with a garden broom, Mark said, ‘Be careful going down the mountain. It’s what the newscasters call treacherous.’