The Surgeon's Convenient Fiancée (Medical Romance) (7 page)

‘There is,’ he agreed. ‘Would you like a cup of coffee? We could get one in the main lobby. There’s a coffee-lounge up here in the
OR, but the coffee at this time of the day leaves something to be desired. I’m parched myself.’

‘I’d like that,’ she said, her heart lifting at the prospect of spending a little more time with him, as the thought that she might not see him again for a long time had tempered her previous light mood as the tour had wound up.

They walked back to the nurses’ change room. ‘Two minutes?’ she said to him.

‘I’ll give you three this time,’ he said, grinning.

The time that it took her to comb her hair and put on a little make-up after she had changed back into street clothes took up the three minutes.

She felt awkward with him as they went down in the elevator to the lobby again, worrying about how to thank him finally and how to say goodbye. The thought of having to say goodbye depressed her.

‘If you think you would like to work here, Deirdre, I can direct you to the human resources department to pick up an application form,’ he said when they were in the lobby,
walking towards the tiny coffee-shop. ‘It’s down that way. Follow the signs. What sort of coffee will you have? This is my treat.’

‘I’ll have a
latté
with soy milk, small, please…if they have it,’ she said.

‘They have it.’

Carrying the two cups of coffee, he headed for the main doors. ‘Do you mind if we get a bit of fresh air? It’s not too cold, I hope.’

‘I don’t mind.’ She was warmly dressed, while he had only a cotton lab coat over his scrub suit. The entrance was sheltered from the light drizzle, and they moved to one side of the main doors.

It was good to stand there with him in the cool, brisk air, with her hand round the warm paper cup. They were more or less alone for now.

‘Well…’ he began, ‘do you think you will apply to work here, Deirdre? It’s a good place.’

‘I think I will apply,’ she said pensively. ‘I have a few things to work out first—in my head, as well as from a practical point of view.’

‘Yes, I think you do,’ he agreed.

‘I…I couldn’t work here until other things were working smoothly. I don’t want to bore you with all my difficulties. You’ve been very kind and patient.’ She sipped her coffee pensively, staring out into the rain-slicked street, having the sense that they were enclosed in a little world of their own, from which she did not wish to extricate herself.

‘You don’t bore me, Deirdre,’ he said softly. ‘I’ve enjoyed showing you around. Will you have dinner with me again some time soon?’

‘I…well…’ she said, her heart beating more quickly. More than anything she wanted to have dinner with him. In fact, she clung to the possibility that she would be able to see him again. But she couldn’t do it. ‘I don’t think it would be a good idea for me to go out to dinner with a married man. You see, I’m too susceptible to…um…your attention, and I might make a fool of myself.’

Surprising her, he flung back his head and laughed. ‘I wish you would make a fool of yourself with me, Deirdre of the Sorrows,’ he said. ‘As for being married, I’m not. I was married once, now I’m divorced. I’m not proud of that. My wife left me. She’s now
living with a sheep farmer in New Zealand. She met him over here while she was working as a physiotherapist and he was on holiday from the sheep. He had an accident in his car, touring the back country, and as a consequence of that he eventually met my wife in the course of his treatment. I guess she went for his rugged masculinity, not to mention the time and attention that he paid her.’

This time it was her turn to laugh, such was her relief and the comic nature of his description. ‘I shouldn’t laugh,’ she apologized. ‘Do you mind—about the divorce, I mean?’

‘I minded at the time, particularly for my son. Now I don’t. I have custody of Mark. Sometimes he misses his mother,’ he said, a new note of regret coming into his voice.

‘It’s sad,’ she said.

‘It was my fault,’ he said. ‘I suppose one could describe me as having been a workaholic…not an easy thing for a wife to have to deal with. She, Tony—short for Antonia—used to call me “the twenty-four-seven man” where work was concerned. She was quite right there.’

‘And now?’ Deirdre enquired softly, turning to look at him.

‘I’m learning to temper my ambitious drive, you might say,’ he replied, an odd note of bitterness in his voice.

She wanted to ask him about his son, about the remark that his colleague had made, but knew it was too soon and that it was not her business to ask. If he wanted her to know, he would tell her. For a few moments they sipped their coffee in silence.

‘It’s not enough to be in love,’ he said very quietly, as though talking to himself. ‘You’ve got to have staying power…and a lot more besides. Anyone can go through a wedding ceremony. It’s what comes after that’s the test, the day-to-day living, the daily grind.’

‘Yes.’

‘One needs tolerance and forgiveness,’ he said. ‘That is, the ability to display those qualities, to feel them. I think it was the poet Goethe who said something about love being an ideal thing, marriage a real thing. One must be easy to live with, and all that that implies—consideration, kindness, respecting the other’s privacy, sharing the tedious
chores of life, good manners, thoughtfulness, integrity… The list goes on. In short, I suppose it adds up to maturity, which is not particularly common.’

‘Yes…’ she said, knowing the quote. ‘I… can’t speak from experience about marriage. I’m sorry about all that’s happened to you. It’s not easy being a single parent. Sometimes I feel as though I’m losing my sanity myself, with all the angst. And they aren’t even my own children…’

Was his son ill, on top of everything else? She pondered that silently.

‘You’ve been very kind in listening to me,’ she added. ‘You obviously have your own problems.’

‘Who doesn’t?’ he said. ‘I don’t trust love, except the love for my son.’ Again, he made that last remark almost inaudibly, as though he were talking to himself. It sounded so sad that she felt impulsively that she wanted to reach out and touch his face. Instead, she stared straight ahead, her hands cupped around the warm coffee, concentrating on raindrops hitting the road.

‘What else do you trust?’ she asked
tentatively, after a moment of silence in which she was aware of her heart beating deeply.

‘I trust in a spark of goodness in the human spirit,’ he said softly. ‘I believe in cultivating that, of recognizing it where I find it…and being thankful.’

Deirdre bit her lower lip, wanting to cry. ‘Surely that’s part of love,’ she protested mildly.

‘Not that insane sort of love that a man can feel for a woman, and then she lets him down…or vice versa. It’s a sort of madness.’

‘I think perhaps you’re talking about passion,’ she said, overcoming her nervousness by a supreme effort, while feeling a stab of something that was, she thought, jealousy for the unknown woman or women for whom he had felt that insane love. ‘It’s a kind of insanity. That’s why the French have a category of crime called
le crime passionel,
which is looked upon leniently because the law recognizes the temporary insanity when such strong emotions are involved. Hopefully, one can also feel a more gentle love as well as the insanity of passion for the same person sometimes.’

‘Maybe.’ He turned to look at her. ‘How do you know all that?’ he said.

They were standing very close, and he leaned forward and put a warm hand on her cold cheek, making her face tingle. ‘You’re cold,’ he murmured.

‘It’s purely theoretical with me—love,’ she said hastily, intensely aware of his warm hand yet, oddly, accepting it as quite normal between them, even though they scarcely knew each other. ‘I imagine that passion is a very rare emotion. I’ve never really loved anyone…a man, that is. I love the children.’

It seemed incongruous that she should be saying those things to this man, yet it seemed to come naturally. Unlike many people, he was easy to talk to. She felt he would not judge her.

‘You’re very sweet,’ he said, stroking his thumb very delicately over her cool skin, and for a moment she held her breath at the sheer pleasure of such an unexpected touch, before he dropped his hand.

‘That makes me sound very bland,’ she said. ‘I hope I’m not that.’

‘No.’

The desire to put her arms up around his neck, in full view of the comings and goings of the hospital entrance, was so strong that she forced herself to concentrate on not doing it.

‘Will you come, then?’ he said. ‘To dinner, I mean?’

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Could I call you this evening to set it up?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But, please, don’t say that if you’ve no real intention of following through because, you see, I don’t trust either sometimes.’

‘I may be a twenty-four-seven man,’ he said ruefully, ‘but I do keep my word.’

‘All right,’ she said, looking up at him, wanting so much to kiss him that she felt weak with the effort of holding back. At the same time, she felt as though she were standing back, looking at herself, surprised at herself.

It was crazy, she knew that, because she didn’t really know him. Being with him felt right…but, then, she knew that feeling could not always be trusted, especially when you hadn’t known a person for very long.
Nonetheless, she trusted her own judgement, her own gut feeling. That was all right, so long as you didn’t break your own rules for personal safety and personal common sense.

‘I must get back to work,’ he said, leaning forward quickly to kiss her on the cheek. The brief touch of his warm lips on her cool cheek sent tingles through her.

When he drew back from her they looked at each other for a long moment, as though they could not understand what had happened between them. ‘I’m glad I almost ran you down,’ he said, taking a step back, away from her. ‘Take care.’

Quickly he was gone, striding away from her, back into the hospital, with one backward glance.

‘So am I,’ she whispered. ‘So am I.’

Soon she would walk back to her parents’ home for a while, her own home. For the next few moments she would stay here and let this sink in, that it was not a dream that she had met Dr Shay Melburne. There was a feeling of being punch-drunk from the shock of having her life taking a new turn at such
short notice, particularly when she had, such a short time ago, been in despair.

She leaned against the wall, facing away from the hospital entrance, and drank what was left of the almost cold coffee, needing to give herself time to think. Before going home she would go into the human resources department and get a job application form. Once she had it in her possession she would take her time over filling it in. She would do the sensible thing, would work out to her own satisfaction, and that of the people who depended on her, how she was going to be able to work part time and be a mother to two children as well. Perhaps after working part time for a few months, to see how it would go, she could consider increasing her hours.

It was obvious to her now that she should have sought counselling when she had lost her job, because it had been a shock, a great anxiety, as well as a blow to her self-confidence and esteem. At the time, her father had not been well and had had to undergo the operation for the removal of part of his gut, so she had thrown herself into helping her parents. Although it had taken her mind off her
own dilemma, nothing had been resolved for her as an individual. Then, having the need to earn money, she had taken the job caring for Mungo and Fleur. Maybe it was now time to seek that belated counselling. It would be a great relief to talk to someone, as she had unburdened herself to Shay, to get some feedback.

Yes, something was wrong indeed with her mental equilibrium—even just admitting it brought a certain relief. But somehow she was now beginning to differentiate between the wood and the trees.

S
LOWLY
D
EIRDRE WALKED
to her parents’ house, hardly aware of the drizzle that misted her hair. There was so much to think about, yet this time she was very careful to look both ways before she crossed a street.

Maybe she needed to see a psychiatrist, she speculated soberly, still thinking about the counselling, before she should contemplate going to work in a hospital. She had had two major losses in her life at the same time: the loss of her job and then the loss of her parents when they had left the country. Although they would be back before too long, sometimes it seemed as though they were gone for ever, and she mourned them. The stress of loss was the greatest that one had to bear.

Even though her mood had lifted after meeting Shay, blurting out her troubles to him, she could not be sure that the more
upbeat mood would last if he were to pull back out of her life. After all, she couldn’t say that he was really in her life. No doubt he felt guilty at having almost run her down. At the time, she had taken all the blame without question, or felt she had. He had kissed her on the cheek, but so what? A lot of people kissed, and it seemed to mean nothing to them, a sort of affectation to which she did not subscribe herself. To her, a kiss did mean something special. So her mind chattered, her thoughts moving back and forth, this way and that.

Often when she came near to her own house she had the irrational hope that her parents would be there, that one of them would open the door and give her a hug. Even though they phoned her often, sent e-mails and regular mail frequently, she never stopped missing them—it was not the same as seeing someone. If they had been there, all this angst with her job would have been easier to bear, because she would have had two wise people to talk to, apart from Fiona. She had some friends, of course, but since she had left nursing they had dispersed somewhat and did not
meet as frequently. It was also difficult to go out in the evenings when you had children to take care of. Granny McGregor had done a lot of childminding, of course, but somehow she, Deirdre, had felt responsible. Gradually you could find yourself socially isolated.

There was someone to greet her at the house; Mollykins, their ginger, black and white cat who queened it over the house, came and went through a cat flap during the day, on most days. It meant that she, Deirdre, had to visit the house frequently when she wasn’t sleeping there, to open and close the cat flap as she could not let the cat out at night. There were coyotes at large that ate cats, that lived in the forested areas and came out in the evenings into the built-up areas.