The Surgeon's Convenient Fiancée (Medical Romance) (17 page)

‘All right,’ she said, nodding.

‘I’ll call you on your mobile,’ he said quickly. ‘I have someone sleeping over at my apartment with Mark, so he won’t be alone.’ He squeezed her hand, then let it go, just as they heard Fiona coming back. ‘I’m burning up, wanting to be with you.’

‘Excuse me.’ Deirdre left the room then, going to the bathroom to splash cold water on her face and to wash her hands, which she saw were trembling. Already she was in a situation where she could not resist him, where she longed for him constantly. The thought of being with him later, in her own small bed in her own room, filled her with agitated anticipation, so that she hardly knew what to do with herself. Absently she raked a brush though her hair and stared at herself in the bathroom mirror, at her eyes that were wide and expectant, nervous and soft with the love she felt for him. Maybe it was obvious to others as well.

When she had calmed down she went back into the dining room and found Fiona and Shay in conversation about Scottish poetry.
Fiona had been a teacher of English literature during her working life.

Shay stood up. ‘We must go,’ he said. ‘Thank you again for your hospitality.’

There were handshakes all around again at the front door as they departed.

‘He’s really lovely,’ Fiona said thoughtfully a few minutes later when she helped Deirdre clear up and stack crockery in the dish washer. ‘His ex-wife lost a good man there.’

‘She used to call him the twenty-four-seven man, so he told me, because he worked such long hours,’ Deirdre said.

‘I can imagine it,’ Fiona said. ‘It’s not easy to live with, but unfortunately that’s what you get when you marry a doctor. They have to put some perspective in their lives, otherwise the job takes over. Hang onto him, if you can. I got the impression that he’s besotted with you.’

Deirdre laughed. ‘Oh, go on!’ she said.

‘I’m serious.’

‘I wish you were right,’ she said wistfully.

‘I think I am right.’

‘He doesn’t tell me that,’ Deirdre said
pointedly. She knew that he wanted to sleep with her, but there might not be anything else to it.

‘Do you love him?’ Fiona asked.

‘Oh, yes. Madly. I’m frightened of getting hurt, but I think I’m more frightened of not allowing myself to be in a position to get hurt.’

‘You mean you’re going to jump in at the deep end where he’s concerned?’ Fiona said.

‘Yes, that’s just it,’ Deirdre said.

‘Good for you. And good luck to you.’

* * *

Deirdre thought of Fiona’s words when she quietly opened the door to Shay at half past ten, when the house was quiet, the children asleep and the cat curled up in her basket in the kitchen.

He took her in his arms and kissed her as soon as the door was closed, then she took his hand and led him to her room, which was on the ground floor, away from the other two bedrooms. Very quietly she closed the door of her room until the latch clicked into place and then she turned the key in the lock.

‘God, I want you.’ Shay breathed the words in her ear as he held her tautly against him.
He kissed her forehead, her cheeks, her closed eyelids, then her mouth, as his hands slid down over her hips, pulling her against him.

She had had a bath and washed her hair, and the delicate scent of her perfume filled the small space of her room as he slipped her dressing-gown off her shoulders so that it fell to the floor with a soft sound like a sigh. Only the thin silk of her nightdress separated her skin from the touch of his hands, and she took in a sharp breath as he smoothed his hands over her breasts, the touch making her weak with longing.

They did not want to talk much, so as not to wake Mungo and Fleur. Silently he lifted the nightdress over her head and then buried his face in the curve of her neck, holding her naked body against him. He was shaking, she could feel it, and she felt humble, aware of an answering trembling within herself, of anticipation. Quickly he undressed beside her. When they came together, skin against skin, she let out a small moan of longing. ‘Shay, Shay…I’m so glad you came back,’ she whispered.

‘So am I,’ he said.

They lay on the bed, where she had folded back the covers to expose the cool linen sheets.

As before, he took care that she would not become pregnant, which was just as well as she did not take the contraceptive pill. Urgently they came together and she welcomed his weight on her. ‘I can’t get enough of you,’ he said. ‘I can’t get you out of my mind.’

Blissfully happy, she gave herself up to him. When the swell of passion was over, they lay satiated in each other’s arms, side by side.

‘I love you, Shay,’ she said softly, unable to constrain herself. ‘I love you so much.’

For a few moments he did not say anything, then he said soberly, ‘That’s a pity. I wish you wouldn’t.’

‘Why?’ she said, a shadow coming over her happiness, a foreboding.

‘Because I can’t promise you anything,’ he said, as he stroked her hair and explored the contours of her face with his fingers in the darkness of the room as she lay warmly against him. She could not see his expression, could only sense a tension in him. ‘As
you know, my reputation for permanence is not good.’

‘I wouldn’t say that. Anyway, I’m not asking for anything permanent. I’m not asking for anything except to be with you once in a while,’ she said, searching for the words with which to explain herself adequately. ‘You don’t have to promise me anything.’

‘You’re very sweet,’ he murmured softly, his lips against her ear, sending tremors of awareness through her.

‘Am I? I can’t help loving you,’ she said. ‘Just accept it as a fact, Shay. You don’t have to do anything about it. I…just want you to know. Did you think I could make love to you like this without being in love with you? If you think that, you don’t know much about women.’ As she lay there beside him, in the warmth of his arms, she felt that he was slipping away from her, at the same time that she basked in the afterglow of their love-making. ‘At least,’ she added thoughtfully, ‘not the average, everyday sort of woman, who is not trying to trade herself off for something. There are those women, I admit. I’ve known some of them. I’m an average,
everyday woman, someone who can be hurt. I… don’t think I’m capable of trading myself. So…you see…you don’t have to think of it as some sort of transaction. I shall remain an independent being and think for myself. I trust what I feel, Shay, even if you don’t trust what you feel.’

‘Perhaps I don’t know much,’ he said.

‘I can’t not say it, I can’t pretend that I don’t care,’ she said, ‘that it’s all just physical.’

Shay pulled her head against his neck and stroked her hair. ‘Don’t try to analyse it,’ he said. ‘Just let it be for now.’

‘All right,’ she said softly, enjoying the closeness and the feel of him in her arms.

‘I’m obsessed with you, my love,’ he said. ‘It must have been fate that brought you across my path.’

‘Maybe it was,’ she whispered back, not wanting to question out loud why he called her ‘my love’, when he did not love her. Perhaps it was just another expression to him, like ‘sweetheart’. As he said, why try to analyse it? What she did know was that something marvellous and remarkable had happened to her in knowing him.

‘Let’s just live for the moment,’ he said. ‘Don’t question it.’

‘I still love you, all the same,’ she murmured. ‘Don’t forget that.’

When he had gone and she lay curled up cosily in her bed, missing him, she thought of everything they had said. It was unsettling that he had said ‘I wish you wouldn’t’ when she had told him that she loved him. It seemed cold and matter-of-fact somehow, even though she knew he was not a cold person but a warm and loving one. Now she wanted to cry, yet fought back the feeling. For now she would just accept the situation as it was. The need to explain herself to him had prevented her from keeping silent. Now that she had explained herself, perhaps they could just accept each other for what they were for the moment.

Perhaps he was right, that they should just live for the moment. After all, one could not force the future. And she did not have much idea of what the future held for her. That he did not love her in the way that she loved him
was perhaps not important. He wanted to be with her, was obsessed by her, as he put it. With that thought, she drifted into sleep.

T
HE NEXT DAYS
, and then the weeks, seemed to go by like greased lightning for Deirdre. With work, her home life, looking after the children, being with Shay as much as possible, trying to have a social life, going to see the counsellor, she felt like a juggler who was keeping a lot of balls in the air. Sometimes she felt that if she were to drop one of them, all the others would come tumbling down as well. Yet her mental state was lifting.

Jerry came and went in the course of his business, while she kept a low profile where he was concerned and did not breathe a word about Fiona’s business and the question of the future custody of the children. Most of the time she, Deirdre, hoped that the situation would not arise in which she would have to take over custody of the children before they reached the age of eighteen. Since children
of sixteen could leave home of their own free will, and a parent was not legally obliged to support a child over the age of sixteen, perhaps a nasty confrontation with Jerry would never arise.

Their cleaning lady, Alice Brenner, who had been with them for years, did a lot to keep the two homes in order to make it possible for Deirdre to work without being too anxious about the home front.

Nonetheless, Fiona continued to hope that Deirdre would marry, and that she would marry Shay. At this, Deirdre merely smiled and did not, of course, breathe a word to Shay or to the children. Fiona stated flatly that she was going to put Deirdre in her will as the guardian of Mungo and Fleur, even without official consent. No doubt Jerry would go on trying to get his hands on some of the money that Moira had left to the children. That was nothing to do with her, Deirdre felt. She didn’t even want to know about it. That was something between Fiona and Jerry and their respective lawyers. Jerry’s neglect of the children made life easier for all of them, in a perverse way.

As the days went by, Mungo and Fleur saw quite a lot of Mark, who often visited with Shay, and gradually it seemed that they were all one family, although no one said anything to that effect. The last thing Deirdre wanted was for Shay and Mark to feel that she wanted to take them over in some way. The cues had to come from them. Certainly, they got along well together and liked each other’s company very much. They went snowshoeing and skiing together in the mountains, as well as to concerts and events in the city. Very gradually, it seemed to her, the Melburnes were coming to like her a lot and to trust her. Mark had as much reason to distrust love as his father did.

Deirdre got into the habit of talking and listening to Mark, drawing him out about his concerns. ‘I’ve written to my mother,’ he told her one day, rather shyly, ‘and told her how much I miss her and wish she would come back here.’

‘Did she…did she reply?’ Deirdre asked, feeling an odd sensation of fear, even though she had suggested to him that he should write such a letter. If Antonia came back,
what would that do to her relationship with Shay, if anything? It was impossible to think that the beautiful Antonia did not still mean something to Shay, in spite of his remarks that there was nothing left of his feelings for her. Perhaps that was the best thing that could happen, because it would give him a better idea of what he wanted, what he really felt about her, Deirdre.

‘She hasn’t actually sent me a letter back yet,’ Mark said. ‘She tends to send me little presents a lot, and just puts a card inside. I’m waiting for a proper letter.’

Deirdre swallowed to try to dispel the nervous lump in her throat. Since she had advised Mark on that course of action, she had fallen more and more deeply in love with his father, had become involved in his life in such a way that she was beginning not to be able to remember what her life had been like without him in it.

‘It’s good to be honest, I think,’ she said to Mark. ‘You’ve told her what you really feel.’

‘If she comes,’ Mark said, blushing, ‘I don’t think it will make a difference to you and
Dad, because I think he loves you, Deirdre. She will really be coming for me.’

‘I don’t know whether he loves me,’ she said, realizing as she uttered the words that a certain sadness had come through in her voice. ‘He doesn’t say so.’

‘Oh, you could say that Dad’s a dark horse,’ he said.

Deirdre had to laugh. ‘I’ll take your word for it, Mark. You’ve known him longer than I have.’

‘I’ll let you know if she’s coming,’ he said.

She wanted to hug him. There was again a certain wistfulness in his voice. ‘I hope for your sake that she does come, Mark,’ she said truthfully. Whatever it did to her and Shay, it was something that had to be confronted.

Towards the end of February, which was raw, wet and dark, as was common on the west coast of Canada, Deirdre found herself working with Shay on a Friday.

‘Can you come for a quick drink?’ he asked her at the end of the operating list, as he removed his face mask and his cotton operating cap outside the operating room where she was washing her hands at the scrub sinks.

‘I’d like to,’ she said, desperate to spend some time alone with him. ‘I’ll have to call Mungo and Fleur to let them know what I’m doing.’

‘We won’t take long,’ he said. ‘I have something I want to discuss with you.’

‘All right,’ she agreed, sensing a tension in him, an odd note in his voice. Perhaps he had heard from Antonia. Maybe she had set a definite date for coming back. Trying to hide her alarm, she smiled tentatively.

‘Meet me down in the lobby,’ he said. ‘I know a little bar where there won’t be many other people at this time.’

Deirdre nodded. ‘Give me twenty minutes,’ she said.

It was raining when they emerged from the hospital into the street. Shay put up a large black umbrella and drew her in beside him, keeping his arm around her shoulders. ‘The bar’s in a side street, within walking distance, if you don’t mind walking.’