“Don’t ever think that I’m not here to help,” Marshall told her, his voice low and husky.

“Oh, Marsh, but I have problems at the moment,” she answered, feeling the relief as she let the words spill out. “It’s not fair to you, roping you into my life.…”

He had stiffened a little. She felt it as if they’d been pressed length to length, except that it was still just a finger, stroking her hand with an erotic subtlety she’d never imagined before.

“It’s not a question of being roped in, Aimee,” he said very carefully. “If you want me in your life, I want to be there. Is this about Friday night? Are you having regrets?”

The question was too sudden, too unexpected…and since her brother’s news, too accurate. Friday night had been utterly fabulous in itself, but as each hour went by the timing seemed more and more of a disaster.…

Dear Reader,

I always know that a book is working particularly well if a minor character starts demanding that I tell his or her story, too. It could be the hero’s brother or the heroine’s best friend. When I wrote Rebecca and Harry’s story in Her Passion for Dr. Jones, it was Rebecca’s father, Dr. Marshall Irwin, who demanded my attention.

Actually, Marsh wasn’t demanding that I tell his story; he’s not that kind of man. Successful and sure of himself, yes, but not arrogant or brash. Honorable, quietly passionate, gorgeous in a well-seasoned way…Of course I wanted to write about him! His wife had died years earlier while he was still in his thirties and his sense of loss had been so acute that he hadn’t even considered the possibility that he’d fall in love again. But I knew there would be someone out there for him when the time was right—someone with the same sense of family, who was at a similar stage in her own life.

Enter Aimee Hilliard. She’s warm, caring and not afraid of new experiences. She has three grown children whom she worries about. And when she thinks no one is around, she lets down her long hair and dances to rock and roll music in the dark. What on earth could go wrong between these two? Plenty, as they soon find out…

Lilian Darcy

A Nurse in Crisis

Lilian Darcy

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CONTENTS

COVER

LETTER TO READER

TITLE PAGE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

EPILOGUE

COPYRIGHT

CHAPTER ONE

‘IS IT serious, Dad?’ Rebecca Irwin asked quietly.

Marshall met his daughter’s intelligent blue-eyed regard across the reception desk of the GP surgery where they both worked. He rested his hands lightly on the papers there and took a moment to think about her question.

He hadn’t expected it. Not right at this moment. The busy Sydney medical practice was quiet as its staff had left for the day. The computer hummed. Its screen-saver of furry yellow and black caterpillars crawling across a carpet of green leaves was now the most colourful thing in the waiting room.

Practice nurse Aimee Hilliard had been the last person to go, just a minute earlier, leaving only Marshall and his daughter. Marsh planned to phone Aimee tonight, and was quietly confident that she’d be pleased to hear his voice after hours. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d made such a call, although he was taking things slowly…

‘I don’t know yet,’ he answered Rebecca, as a pleasant and surprisingly physical warmth began to grow inside him. ‘I’m starting to think it might be. I’d…’ He hesitated, having to struggle to break down his natural reserve. ‘I’d like it to be, actually.’

Rebecca gasped. ‘Dad! What on earth—?’

She seemed appalled. Marshall felt his scalp tighten. She was staring at him, her mouth open and her eyes wide. In a matter of seconds, something had gone seriously wrong with this conversation.

‘Let’s get this clear,’ she said carefully. ‘I’m talking about Mrs Deutschkron’s test results.’

‘Mrs…?’

‘There.’ She gestured. ‘Under your hand. The pathology reports, and hers is on top. I saw the name a few minutes ago when Bev handed them to you.’

‘I haven’t looked at them yet,’ Marshall confessed, his scalp tightening even further. ‘I hadn’t even realised that hers was on top.’

‘So what were you talking about?’ Rebecca accused.

He was hot, now, as guilty and self-conscious as a child caught stealing lollies. ‘Nothing important.’

But she wasn’t buying it. She ticked his recent statements off on her fingers, one by one. ‘You don’t know yet. You’re starting to think it might be. You’d like it to be.’

‘I can see why you hoped it wasn’t Mrs Deutschkron’s test results,’ he joked heartily.

‘Dad…You meant Aimee, didn’t you?’

‘Yes.’ He nodded briefly. ‘Because I thought that you did.’

There was a rather long silence. ‘Been wondering, actually,’ Rebecca finally said.

She was standing by the door, running her fingers up and down the edges of the wooden Venetian blinds in an irritating manner. Marshall found it irritating, anyway. It was permissible to be irritated with grown-up, married and newly pregnant daughters who asked probing questions at the wrong moment.

Only, he remembered, she hadn’t been asking about his feelings for Aimee Hilliard at all. He’d made the wrong assumption because of the direction in which his own thoughts had been moving, and as a result he now found himself having to talk about their relationship—which wasn’t a word he liked these days because people always said it as if it had such a very significant capital R at the beginning of it—long before he was remotely ready to. So perhaps it was himself he was irritated at?

Yes, undoubtedly.

‘Yet you haven’t said anything,’ Rebecca was now accusing him gently.

‘Because there isn’t anything to say,’ he burst out, goaded beyond endurance.

Unfairly, of course. This was his own fault! Rashly, he ploughed on. That was the danger when you were reserved by inner nature and upbringing. Once you did open your mouth, you didn’t know when to stop!

‘Rebecca, please, don’t put this under that mental microscope of yours!’

‘Microscope?’

He ignored her. ‘I wish the subject hadn’t come up. I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t know how she feels. I’m very rusty at this—’

‘What did you mean, “microscope”?’ Ominous. Her voice wasn’t quite steady.

‘Bad word choice.’

‘You think I—’

‘No! No, Rebecca.’

‘You know that all I care about is your—’

‘Yes, yes, I do know that.’ Marsh steadied himself, remembering too late that her pregnancy, which wasn’t making her nauseous or even particularly fatigued, was making her rather fragile and volatile emotionally at the moment. Both he and Harry, his son-in-law, had been trying unsuccessfully to get her to slow down just a little.

‘I’m sorry,’ he apologised. ‘This is all completely my fault. Can you accept that I’m not ready to talk about it yet, and that when I am—if I am, if there’s anything concrete to say—you’ll be the first to know?’

She nodded brightly. ‘Of course, Dad.’

But the straight line of her mouth seconds later told him that she hadn’t quite forgiven him for the microscope thing, or…perhaps more importantly…for the fact that something new and potentially important was going on in his life and he hadn’t said a word.

‘I’d better head off now,’ she said, a little too abruptly. ‘Harry was going to see a patient on his way home, and I told him I’d get there first and get dinner on. He’ll be worried if I’m not in evidence.’

‘Don’t tire yourself out with elaborate cooking, Becca.’

‘Frozen quiche and garlic bread, and a bag of salad greens,’ she summarised dryly.

‘Good girl!’

‘See you tomorrow.’

A smile came and went too quickly, leaving a frown in its place, and then she’d gone. He could hear her youthful, energetic footsteps scraping on the half-dozen concrete steps that led down to the street. He listened until they faded.

She was too protective of him, that was the trouble. It had been that way for years, since her mother had died when Rebecca had been just fifteen years old. That was thirteen years ago now. Thirteen years…

For a long time, his grief for Joy had been overwhelming, and it had been Rebecca who’d held the family together, helped him to cater for ten-year-old Simon’s needs, nurtured both of them in a hundred different ways.

Three years ago, he’d finally felt ready to consider marriage again, but his choice—made more as a matter of expediency than love, he could now see—had been disastrous. He’d proposed to his live-in housekeeper, who was ten years his junior, but, instead of politely turning him down, she’d acted as if it had been a case of sexual harassment and he’d been badly shaken by his misreading of her.

Rebecca had been furious on his behalf. At one point he’d had to talk her out of storming around to Tanya’s new flat and demanding back the jewellery he’d given the woman.

‘The jewellery isn’t the issue, Rebecca!’ he’d had to argue urgently. ‘She’s more than welcome to it as some sort of compensation if my behaviour was really so offensive.’

‘Oh, of course it wasn’t!’

‘It’s my own judgement that I’m doubting.’

‘You should be doubting the mental state of the entire female sex over the age of thirty,’ Rebecca had muttered darkly. ‘I am!’

Marshall sighed. He loved his daughter’s passion, and her strong responses, and he knew that his son-in-law had fallen for those same qualities. There were times, however, when it might have been more…convenient…if Rebecca bore less of a resemblance to an angry lioness protecting the pride.

Absently, he looked down at the pathology reports still resting beneath his fingers. That was where this had all started a few minutes ago. Rebecca had wanted to know if Mrs Deutschkron’s prognosis was serious. He picked up the sheet of paper and studied the details, and had the answer to his daughter’s question a moment later—an answer which suddenly dwarfed his concern over Rebecca’s attitude towards his blossoming new relationship with Aimee Hilliard.

It was serious. Far more serious than he’d thought it would be. Hilde Deutschkron had had exploratory surgery last Thursday for suspected cancer, but prior to that she’d seemed relatively fit and with few complaints about her symptoms. He’d had every expectation that any growth found by the surgeons would turn out to be localised and easy to deal with, effectively meaning a permanent cure.

Yet the results provided by Southshore Hospital’s pathology department were unequivocal—cancer of the liver, with the primary tumour not located, which meant a spread of cancer throughout her system. No hope of a cure or of long-term survival. At best, the possibility of chemotherapy, which would prolong the patient’s life for several months. Many people, in these circumstances, made the choice to have no treatment at all.

As yet, she wouldn’t have been told any of this. Usually, it was the surgeon’s job, but since he’d known this patient for such a long time he would do what he’d done once or twice before and phone the surgeon to suggest that he tell Mrs Deutschkron himself. It wasn’t something any doctor looked forward to, but Marshall felt that it would come best from him.

And he couldn’t shake it off, as he usually managed to. Hilde Deutschkron had been a patient at this practice since long before he’d started here, and that had been over twenty years ago. Her three children had been delivered by old Dr Rattigan, who was now retired. Her husband had been a patient here, too, until his death of heart failure six years ago.

Still, perhaps he might have shaken it off more easily if it hadn’t come as such a surprise…

At home, an hour later, the big house where he now lived alone seemed too big, ridiculously big for one man. Simon was still studying in the United States. He’d met an American girl and they were now seriously involved. It seemed all too likely that he’d make his home there permanently.

Rebecca and Harry lived just a short drive away in Surry Hills, but even with the prospect of overnight visits from darling little grandchildren in the not too distant future—and, good heavens, it was difficult to adjust to the idea that he’d be a grandfather soon—he didn’t need all this space. Should he sell and move somewhere smaller?

One of life’s big chances, a decision to make, as Hilde Deutschkron would have to do soon, only her decision was much more grave.

He picked up the phone and dialled Aimee’s number. What would she say if she knew that he could key in the eight digits off by heart now? Would she be pleased? Did she know his number, by any chance?

She answered on the first ring. Her voice was as cool and fluid and sweet as ever, but he hadn’t expected to hear it quite so soon, and was startled into speaking more abruptly than he’d intended.

‘Aimee? It’s Marshall. I’m sorry, I was going to suggest we go out for a coffee later on. We talked about something like that on Sunday, didn’t we? But I wouldn’t be good company tonight, I’m afraid. The news on Hilde Deutschkron wasn’t good…’

‘Oh, no!’

He gave her the details, then added, ‘And, well, as I said, I just wouldn’t be good company.’

‘That’s fine. Of course. I understand completely. Perhaps you should go for a walk or a jog or something.’

‘Good idea,’ he agreed, and a few moments later he’d put down the phone.

‘Or, Marshall, would it help if I—?’ Aimee began.

Too late. She heard a click in her ear, and then the metallic trill of the dial tone. He’d hung up without hearing her belated addition. She took the receiver from her ear and just sat there in her silent house for several long minutes, trying to argue herself out of an absurd disappointment, trying to take herself back to the mood of the weekend they’d just spent together at the ski resort of Perisher in the Snowy Mountains.

Two couples had had to pull out of a trip some friends of Marshall’s had planned, and he’d invited Aimee to join him in taking up the two spare rooms, already booked and paid for. They’d had a thoroughly wonderful time on the slopes and with Marshall’s four friends. Simmering below this, as yet unacknowledged, had been a stirring of the senses she’d forgotten about, hadn’t felt since…when? Her twenties? She already had a strong inkling about its importance.

Marshall had felt it, too. She was quite sure of that. They’d both sensed the unfurling of a physicality which had been dormant in each of them for a long time. But the six-hour journey back to Sydney after the weekend was over, in the four-wheel drive the six of them had rented, had broken the mood somewhat. Everyone had been tired, and the other two women, Penelope and Sandra, had been getting on each other’s nerves.

At her home, Marshall had helped Aimee to carry in her luggage, saying to her quickly at the door, ‘Can’t stop. Geoff’s on a short fuse.’ He’d taken her hands between his and she’d loved the warm, engulfing feel of his touch. Then he’d said something very quick and sketchy about ‘doing something together’ very soon.

His swift, tender kiss had brushed her cheek and the corner of her mouth, lasting only a moment, yet more than twenty-four hours later it still seemed to tingle on her skin.

I’m falling in love with him, Aimee realised. I’m really, truly falling in love with him.

It felt wonderful, and at the same time very, very frightening. She was fifty and he was fifty-one. They both had grown-up children, including each of them a daughter who would soon make them grandparents for the first time. Perhaps, after all, it was good that he’d cried off tonight with that brief phone call. She really had to keep her feet on the ground about this!

For the next hour and a half, Aimee did just that. She did sensible things, like ironing blouses and teatowels, and cleaning the cupboard under the sink. She made herself a mushroom omelette for dinner, and washed the dishes immediately afterwards. She rang her son Thomas, who was doing three months of field research near Cairns, and her daughter Sarah, who was having a very difficult time with her first pregnancy, which had now reached the end of the second trimester.

Sarah fretted over the phone, ‘My friend Louise says she never felt like this. And she thinks I look huge, but the ultrasound showed it’s not twins.’

‘When’s your next appointment?’ Aimee asked her daughter.

‘Next week.’

‘Write down all your concerns so you remember everything you want to ask the doctor. And if you’re really worried, give him a call tomorrow and ask if he can see you sooner.’

It was sensible advice, received with thanks from Sarah.

Then Aimee spoiled it all by pouring herself a glass of white wine—only a small one—letting down her long hair, turning off all the lights except the stained-glass lamp on the end table and dancing with her eyes closed to a compilation tape that Sarah had made for her, featuring Elvis Presley, Roy Orbison and the Rolling Stones.

How old was fifty, anyway? Not old at all! Younger than Mick Jagger. And she’d just spent the weekend skiing, for heaven’s sake!

Then the doorbell rang. It might, in fact, have been ringing for a while. There was no point at all in listening to the Rolling Stones unless you listened to them loud!

Half-empty wineglass in her hand and silver-white hair flowing down her back, she went to answer it, almost hoping that it would be grumpy Gordon Parker from across the street, complaining about the music. Her lounge-room window was open and it was possible that the sound carried that far, although there was a thick screening of trees and shrubs in the way.

Gordon was only a year or two older than she was, but he was always on about ‘young people today’, and she always felt highly defensive on behalf of Sarah and Thomas and her youngest son William, who weren’t ‘lazy and rude and undisciplined’ at all.

Here I come, Gordon Parker, and I’m going to vigorously defend my right to listen to ‘Paint It Black’ in the privacy of my own home at eight o’clock in the evening, although I may agree to turn down the volume a notch or two!

She opened the door.

‘Uh…’ Marshall Irwin began awkwardly.

Aimee gasped, and it was probably fortunate that she didn’t have any pockets in her old black cotton and Lycra leggings to stuff the wineglass into, slurp of Chardonnay included. ‘Marshall! Come in…’

He looked achingly good, incredibly masculine and a lot better than Mick Jagger. He’d obviously been jogging, though he was only slightly out of breath. A dark blue T-shirt clung closely to a sinewy and nicely muscled frame. Loose black twill-weave running shorts showed off legs that were no strangers to exercise. They were brown, knotty, strong and roughened by dark hair. It was only two weeks until Sydney’s well-known ‘City to Surf’ race, which he entered every year.

In the surgery, he usually wore glasses. Aimee liked the aura of experience and wisdom which the rectangular wire frames lent to his face. At the moment he wasn’t wearing them and she could see his eyes, and it was starting to be a distinct possibility that she liked those even better than the glasses. They were blue, like the blue of willow-pattern china, steady and twinkling and…uncertain.

‘Should I?’ he said. ‘You look as if you’re…’ He stopped.

Having a party? Oh, hell, this was embarrassing! Lonely widow, dancing her heart out in the dark. Secret women’s business, indeed!

‘I’m not,’ Aimee said. ‘At least, I was, but…’

‘Sorry?’

‘Please, come in!’ She practically dragged him through the doorway by both hands, with the wineglass pressed between her fingers and his. ‘I was…dancing, that’s all.’

‘Paint It Black’ came to an end, and ‘Pretty Woman’ came on instead. Following her down the hallway, Marshall laughed. ‘Dancing? All by yourself?’

‘I know. It’s—’

‘Delightful! It’s absolutely delightful, Aimee,’ he repeated softly, and before she knew it he’d taken the wine-glass from her hand and plonked it down on the sideboard, then whirled her to face him. He took her hands in his and began rocking along with her to the jaunty, driving beat. He was good at it, unselfconscious and naturally attuned to the rhythm. ‘Do you do it often?’

‘No!’ she denied frantically, then added, opting for greater honesty, ‘But I often feel that I should. When I do it, it’s so nice. Not really a lonely feeling, dancing alone, because it’s so exhilarating, and I usually phone Sarah or someone afterwards, and anyway William only left home at the beginning of the year…’

‘Did he join in?’

‘No, he laughed at me! But in a nice way. He thinks the Rolling Stones are dreadfully old-fashioned. He likes Radiohead and Smashing Pumpkins and Powderfinger.’

‘I’m impressed at the way you can reel off the names!’

The home-made tape came to an end, making the last few notes of the song wobble before they cut off, and the silence was too sudden. They both stood in the centre of the room like boats beached by a low tide.

‘Ah-h-h!’ Aimee said to break it, lifting her hair up onto her head to cool her neck. She was more breathless than Marshall had been after his jog.

‘I had to come,’ he said, his voice suddenly low and serious.

She looked up at him, alarmed.

‘No,’ he hastened to answer her. ‘Nothing’s happened. But when I told you I wouldn’t be good company because of feeling low over Mrs Deutschkron’s prognosis, I realised…I can already tell this isn’t going to come out right!…that that was exactly why I should want to see you, and why I did want to see you. Damn!’

‘Marshall?’

‘I was right. It hardly sounds like a compliment, does it? That I was down, so I wanted to inflict it on you and added your house to the route of my evening jog. Oh, but, Aimee, I don’t want to waste any more time on explanations! I don’t! This is what I want…’

He pulled her into his arms slowly, with grace and care, as if it was something he hadn’t done in a long time but had no doubts about the rightness of doing now.

Coming up against his chest, still breathless, Aimee had no doubts either. Her body and her heart were responding more strongly than she’d thought they had the power to do. Her heart was pounding, in fact, and her breathing was light and fluttery. They were both a little sweaty and damp, both dressed in soft clothing that clung intimately.

But before she had time to map the places their bodies touched with such electrifying effect, he was kissing her. Not the rather courteous, old-fashioned press of his lips to the corner of her mouth that he’d given her on Sunday evening, but a real, honest-to-goodness, hot, passionate smooch.

It felt…wonderful! And very quickly much more than a smooch. A…A…There wasn’t a better word in any language she knew.

Oh, stop thinking about it, Aimee!

She did, and just gave herself to the endless moment instead. Slowly, his arms came fully around her, one hand resting against her hip at first, then sliding across to lazily trace the curve of her rear, still satisfactorily taut and shapely beneath the close-fitting leggings.

Marsh’s other hand had crossed her back and kneaded her shoulder, and she had to arch and stretch her neck up to reach him with her own mouth, creating a strangely pleasant feeling that she’d topple backwards if he didn’t have her so tightly and preciously enclosed in his arms.

His face was a little rough. His body was firm, and still hot from his run. His mouth was confident, as if now that he’d jumped in at the deep end he’d remembered that he was good at this.

And he was good at it! She hadn’t realised until now that kissing was a talent like any other, and some people had that talent in spades.

He had a better talent than she did, too, of keeping track of a conversation, because when he finally broke away to ask, ‘Do you understand that it’s a compliment, Aimee?’ she didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. Of course a kiss was a compliment!

‘I mean the fact that I needed to come,’ he explained, after seeing her confused expression. ‘It wasn’t planned. I was jogging and I was heading in this direction, and it suddenly just wasn’t possible not to come down your street and front up at your door and demand a cup of tea.’

‘You haven’t done that yet.’

‘Can I do it now? This business of Mrs Deutschkron is still eating at me.’

‘Oh, Marshall!’ She reached up and pushed a stray lock of dark hair, thickly threaded with grey, back from his forehead. ‘Of course it is! I’m so sorry, and here I am, dancing away like a maniac.’

She stroked her fingers down his jaw and neck, felt the beating of his blood briefly, then let them rest softly on his shoulder as she searched his face.

‘Don’t apologise,’ he said. ‘You hardly know her, and probably know nothing of her history.’

‘No, I don’t.’

He opened his mouth as if to launch into a story, then shook his head. ‘We won’t talk about it tonight. That’s not why I came. I really just wanted…’ he paused, then looked straight down into her eyes ‘…to be with you, Aimee.’

‘I’m glad,’ she managed breathlessly. ‘Come through, and I’ll make the tea.’

The mood had changed, but it was just as pleasant. They sat at the big kitchen table, talked about all sorts of things and drank their tea, warming their legs and hands in front of an old-fashioned electric fire.

It was the kind, at least fifty years old, that was shaped like a fireplace and had fake coals lit from beneath to make them ‘glow’, and was so ugly and silly that it had acquired the status of an antique by this time, and Aimee was perversely fond of it. It had once belonged to her grandmother. She liked it for practical reasons, too. A July night in Sydney could be chilly.

Marshall seemed to appreciate it. He stuck his bare legs out until they were so close to the heat that they practically sizzled, and when he finally looked at his watch and took note of the time his jaw dropped. ‘It can’t be ten!’

‘I know,’ she agreed. ‘But it is. I’ll drive you home.’

‘No…’

‘Yes. Please.’

‘I won’t be annoying and argue the point,’ he conceded. ‘A ride home does sound a lot more pleasant than a jog, now that my legs are so warm and relaxed.’

They went out through the lounge room side by side, and there wasn’t quite enough room as they passed the sideboard. He bumped it, and the glasses and china inside it rattled.

So did the half-empty wineglass she’d put down on the top of it two hours ago.

‘Oops.’ He reached a hand out to steady the glass and noticed the wine still sloshing inside. There was a tiny pause, then he said lightly, ‘You never finished it.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ she answered him. But it came out just a little too hastily, and then she only made it worse by adding self-consciously, ‘I don’t often drink alone.’

‘Oh, no, I wasn’t suggesting…’ He didn’t finish the sentence, and there was a tinge of awkwardness in the atmosphere.

Why did I say that? Aimee scolded herself inwardly. I don’t often drink alone, but saying it only made it sound as if I did.

The moment passed as she reached the front door and opened it to let in a draught of chilly air.

‘Brr!’ Marshall said. ‘Definitely too cold for running shorts!’

They talked about the weather for the whole car journey to his place. Only five minutes between their two houses, so it wasn’t so disastrous a subject, but Aimee still felt an odd discomfort and disappointment. Was she still smarting over that silly exchange about the wine?

Surely not! What was it, then? It had something to do with the wine.

Outside Marshall’s gracious old house his kiss was brief and he didn’t ask her in.

Driving home alone, Aimee probed at what she felt in the same way that she might have probed at a sore tooth with her tongue, and finally concluded in her mind. It’s still early days. That’s what rattled me about him noticing the wine. For a moment there, he did wonder, and it’s early days in what’s going on between us. We’ve both lived full lives before this.

She thought about her twenty-six year marriage to Alan. It had been a relatively happy one. She’d entered into it with too many stars in her eyes, of course, at the age of twenty. Then they’d weathered some disappointments, disagreements, coolnesses, ongoing differences in outlook that they’d never really addressed. That sort of thing changed a woman’s perspective, influenced the person she became.

Neither of us comes without baggage, Aimee realised. We both have children. Previous marriages. Past grief. Complicated finances. It wouldn’t take much, at this stage, to make the whole thing seem wrong, or just too hard.

Letting herself into her house, she saw that the ‘on’ light was still glowing on her sound system. She turned it off. No more dancing tonight. Time to go to bed.

CHAPTER TWO

‘SORRY…I’m going to interfere, Dad,’ Rebecca said.

‘Go ahead,’ Marshall invited.

He’d known this had been coming when she’d suggested they have lunch together, but he’d accepted her suggestion with an innocent face and had proposed the local Asian noodle house. Now Rebecca was toying with a plate of Pad Thai and making a very obvious effort to be calm and pleasant.

He waited as she gathered her thoughts, and wondered with a distant sort of curiosity about how he was going to react to what she had to say.

She was still struggling.

‘It’s about Aimee, isn’t it?’ he prompted helpfully.

‘Yes.’ She looked up. The noodles were still untouched. ‘And it’s not that I don’t like her. You know that. She seems very nice and, of course, I’ve known her for longer than you have, since we met when we were both working at Southshore Health Centre.’

‘But,’ he supplied, still helpfully.

‘Just…be careful. Perhaps you don’t need me to say it. Probably you don’t. You’re an experienced, sensible man.’

‘Thank you!’

‘But I know how hard it can be when two people are working together. Harry and I nearly didn’t reach the finish line a couple of times. Well, more than a couple! And it’s not as if you’re two carefree young lovers, who—’

‘We’re not lovers at all,’ Marsh cut in deliberately, feeling a sudden need to assert himself. He wasn’t a fool when it came to human relationships, and he was a private man. This was his business.

His daughter’s uncomfortable shifting in her seat and sudden apparently starving attention to her noodles gave him a pinch of satisfaction. Rebecca had made her case, he now considered.

‘I take your point, Rebecca,’ he went on, making a conscious effort not to increase the gulf in understanding between them. ‘And, of course, you’re right. To a certain extent. Yes, we have more issues to consider at this point in our lives than a couple of twenty-year-olds. But I hope, as you say, that we have more good sense as well. I’m not sure what’s happening yet, and I don’t want office memos to be issued on the subject.’

‘Of course not! I won’t say a word. Even to Harry, if you don’t want me to,’ she promised extravagantly.

‘I’d prefer that, yes, at this stage.’ He nodded, and saw her eyes widen a little.

She hadn’t expected him to take her up on that overenthusiastic offer to keep a secret from her own husband, but he really didn’t want it gossiped about for the moment, not even between husband and wife, and if that didn’t convince her that he was being appropriately cautious, what would?

Everyone in the practice knew that they had been away for the weekend recently, of course, but he’d presented the event as what it essentially had been—a group of friends enjoying two days of winter sports, not a romantic interlude.

‘You know I’m only saying this because I care about you, Dad,’ Rebecca said, her voice suddenly husky with tenderness.

And he did know it, too. As well, he was guiltily aware that he’d once interfered in her relationship with Harry for exactly the same reason, and the result might have been disastrous on that occasion if Harry hadn’t completely ignored his sage advice.

‘Shall we change the subject?’ he offered, and she greeted the suggestion with relief.

Marshall wondered later, as they returned to the surgery together, if she realised how relentlessly her words were laying siege to his inner equilibrium. In many ways he was as wary as his daughter about this new thing that had so unexpectedly entered his life. Rebecca had no reason to accuse him of not being careful.

If dwelling on things, and replaying conversations—and silences—over and over in one’s mind were signs of being careful, then he was being positively obsessive. That stupid business of Aimee’s wineglass the other night, for example. He could have kicked himself for that unforgivable moment of hesitation.

He could tell she was afraid he suspected her of being a secret drinker, and he didn’t. She’d given him no reason to. Not at the snowfields or at work here in Sydney. Not during the three times they’d been out together. So why that moment of suspicion, flashing through his mind, that he hadn’t managed to hide?

‘Because I’m a doctor, I suppose,’ he concluded, muttering to himself. ‘I’ve had patients who did drink, when sometimes it was the last thing you’d suspect.’

Like fifty-eight-year-old Joan Allyson, who was first on his list this afternoon.

‘How are you, Joan?’ he greeted her, as she sat down in the chair opposite his desk.

‘Fighting fit, I hope,’ she answered, and she looked it. Short grey hair, trim, energetic figure, dangling earrings of a pretty red to match her red trouser suit. She had come straight from work, and was due back there after her appointment. ‘I’m just here for my annual check-up.’

She’d been very good about such things for the past seven years, but it hadn’t always been that way. She’d started drinking heavily about fifteen years ago, after a painful divorce, but she’d hidden it so carefully at first that no one had suspected. Not her grown-up children. Not her colleagues at the insurance company where she’d worked. Not even her family doctor!

Until she’d turned up one day with gout, indicated by her symptoms of pain and confirmed by the test Marshall had done, revealing high uric acid levels. At that point he’d suspected very strongly, but his questions on the issue had brought only flat denial.

After that, it had got worse and everyone knew. Her two children had each come to see him in turn to ask if there was anything they or he could do. Without her willingness to admit to a problem, of course, there hadn’t been. Her health had deteriorated. There had been more severe episodes of gout, and treatment for venereal disease. She’d lost her job.

Finally, and he still wasn’t sure what the trigger had been, although he suspected another one-night stand which had turned bad, she’d come to him of her own volition and had asked for help. She’d heard of a drug called Antabuse, which caused any alcohol intake to create strong feelings of nausea, and she’d been keen to try it. He’d prescribed it for her, but had also urged her to join Alcoholics Anonymous.

Since then, she hadn’t looked back. Now, seven years since her last drink, she had a well-paid and satisfying job in the administration of the Sydney Opera House, her health was good and on this visit she had some news as well.

‘I’m particularly hoping everything’s all right today,’ she said, ‘because I’m getting married in six weeks.’

‘Oh, Joan, that’s marvellous!’ Marshall said, and meant it. ‘Congratulations!’

She beamed, and the warmth in the room was palpable. Marshall was honest enough to admit to himself that if it hadn’t been for the advent of Aimee in his life, he wouldn’t be basking quite so strongly in the reflected glow of Joan’s obvious happiness. But, to be truthful, he did find it very encouraging that love could run smoothly on the far side of fifty!

‘He’s a violinist with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra,’ Joan went on. ‘And he’s got an adventurous spirit. We’re going to East Africa for our honeymoon. Will we need any vaccinations?’

‘Yes, I’m sure you will, but I’ll have to check the most up-to-date information,’ he told her. ‘Why don’t you make an appointment for next week? I’ll make sure I have what you need in stock. Meanwhile…’

He gave her a thorough check-up, including a pap smear and a good listen to her chest and heart. In a minute, Aimee would take some blood to be tested for lipids, and he finished his own part of the check-up with, ‘How long since you had a mammogram—do you remember?’

She made a face. ‘I was afraid you’d say that.’

‘I can easily check it in your file.’

‘No, I know perfectly well I’m due for one.’

‘The mammography screening unit at Southshore Health Centre would be the easiest place to go.’

‘Will I have to wait? I’d really like to have it over with before the wedding.’

‘That shouldn’t be a problem. But do you really hate it so much? It doesn’t hurt very badly, does it?’

‘Spoken like a man,’ she teased. ‘Yes, it does hurt a fair bit, especially if you have largish breasts, on top of which it’s not remotely dignified. Oh, I’ll be glad I’ve done it, but it’s not exactly something to look forward to.’

‘I suppose not,’ he agreed on a laugh. ‘Rest assured, though, we males of the species have our own unique and painful medical indignities to endure!’

‘True,’ she conceded.

The rest of the afternoon’s patients were routine, with some more interesting than others. After over twenty years in general practice, Marshall was used to the rhythm and flow of the work. If he’d been a composer, he could have written a piece of music to express it.

Intertwining pastoral melodies for all those rather benign things like children’s ear infections, annual flu shots, blood-pressure measurements. The interest lay in the way he got to know his patients year by year as he watched the wheels of their lives slowly turn. Patients he’d known as children were now grown up and married with families of their own. Patients he’d first seen in their fifties were now making decisions about retirement homes.

Then there would be plodding underbeat for the cases that few doctors could find interesting. Patients who came once to have a cut stitched or an ear syringed and were never seen again. People who needed a medical examination for work or insurance purposes and had phoned this practice purely because it was on a list of approved ones in the area.

There would be a burst of joyful song for wanted pregnancies, good test results, serious illnesses cured. And, finally, there’d be the keening of violins for the patients that broke your heart.

Like Hilde Deutschkron. He’d spoken to her surgeon on Tuesday morning. Today was Thursday, and she’d been discharged from the hospital this morning as planned.

After his last office appointment for the day, Marshall drove to her small house several streets back from the beach at Bondi and knocked at the front door.

Mrs Deutschkron’s daughter, Marianne, answered. She was an attractive dark-haired woman of about thirty-eight, and Marshall had seen her a few times years ago for minor illnesses when she’d still been living at home. Since then, she’d led an interesting life as a journalist, with several stints of living and working overseas. She wasn’t married, and he was pleased to find that she’d taken time off work to help her mother convalesce. Mrs Deutschkron’s two sons lived in Melbourne and he knew she got lonely at times.

‘How are you, Marianne?’ he said. ‘I don’t suppose you remember me…’

‘Of course I do, Dr Irwin!’ she said with a confident smile. ‘How could I forget the man who came at me with a cauterising thingy that time I had that strange lump on my little finger that kept bleeding if I bumped it?’

‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘I’d forgotten all about that. We never really decided what it was, did we? The cauterising didn’t work, I remember, and it came back. You had to have it cut out under local anaesthetic at Southshore Hospital.’

‘I’m amazed you remember!’

‘Only because it stumped me, and the doctors at Southshore, too. Did it ever come back after the surgery?’

‘No, but I still have the scar.’ She stuck her little finger up in the air, then lowered her voice and said, ‘Come through. Mum’s on the couch, though I think she should really be in bed. She’s not feeling very good, and she’s anxious to hear your report. Do you have all the results or whatever everyone was waiting for?’

‘Yes, I do,’ he said, following her down the rather dark corridor. ‘Uh, would it be too much trouble to ask for some tea?’

‘Of course not. Straight away?’

‘If you don’t mind.’

Marianne nodded, and he saw that she understood. There was a brief flare of well-schooled alarm in her eyes. Marshall didn’t really need tea, but he wanted to break the news to Mrs Deutschkron alone. He had no doubt she’d need her daughter later, but for those first few moments…

‘Hello, Mrs Deutschkron!’ he said, coming into the thickly decorated sitting-room. There was a floral lounge suite, photos and knick-knacks everywhere, two shelves of books, vases of silk flowers, and all of it immaculately dust-free. ‘Marianne says you’re not feeling too good?’

‘Would you be?’ she retorted weakly. She’d lost weight since he’d last seen her, just before the surgery, and it was starting to show in the loose fit of her clothing, though there had been a time, long before he’d known her, when she had been far, far thinner than this.

‘You have some news for me, don’t you?’ It came out abruptly, coloured by the accent she hadn’t lost even after more than fifty years away from her native Germany.

‘Yes, I do.’ He sat down in the armchair at right angles to the couch where she lay, her legs and torso covered in a mohair blanket. ‘And not good news, I’m afraid.’

He knew she wouldn’t appreciate prevarication. Even his tiny pause now was pounced on.

‘Don’t keep me in suspense, then!’

‘There was cancer throughout your liver, and the surgeon was unable to locate the primary tumour. That means the cancer didn’t originate in the liver. It has metastasised from a primary tumour elsewhere. Chemotherapy is an option for you, but it won’t be a cure. It’ll give you several more months, that’s all. I’m sorry, Hilde, there’s no easy way to say this.’

She’d taken a sharp in-breath as she’d understood the truth, and now she was nodding slowly. ‘I’m dying, then.’

‘Yes. It was a surprise. Had you been feeling more discomfort and pain than you told me about?’

‘Ach! Pain!’ she said dismissively. ‘It’s relative, isn’t it? Where’s Marianne? You sent her off to the kitchen, didn’t you?’

‘Yes, I did.’

‘Thank you…’

They could both hear the rattle of bone china teacups on their matching saucers, and the sound of cupboard doors opening and shutting. ‘Shall I call her in?’ Marshall asked.

‘No, let her wait for the kettle. I’ll just…digest this.’

She sat in silence, thinking, and he waited, wondering whether to reach out and touch her hand. He decided after a moment that she wouldn’t appreciate it, and stayed where he was.

Then she looked up. ‘So, may I articulate this situation more precisely?’

‘Of course, Hilde. Any questions, anything at all…’

‘I’m seventy-two years old. I am dying from a cancer that has spread throughout my body. I can choose to let death come soon…How soon?’

‘A few months,’ he offered. ‘Three or four, perhaps. It’s very hard to say.’

‘Or, by having a course of chemotherapy, I can live longer. Again, how much longer?’

‘Three or four months more. I’m sorry, it’s so hard to be specific. Everyone is different.’

‘The chemotherapy will make me sick.’

‘Probably.’

‘And I’ll lose my hair.’ She touched the grey knot on top of her head.

‘No, actually, you won’t with this particular treatment.’

‘Ah, a plus! Not that my hair is so magnificent!’

They both smiled a little. In the kitchen, the kettle began to sing. Mrs Deutschkron was silent.

‘I’ve fought death before, you know,’ she said suddenly. ‘In Berlin, in the war, and in a place in Poland which I won’t name!’

‘I know you have.’ He nodded. Of her entire extended family, she had been the only survivor of those nightmare years in Europe, and had come to Australia in 1947, aged twenty.

‘But do I wish to fight it now? That is what I have to decide.’

Marianne came in with teacups, cosy-covered pot, milk, sugar and a plate of biscuits on a tray.

‘What is it you have to decide, Mum?’ she said.

When she heard, she burst into tears.

‘She’s urging her mother to have the treatment, but I’m not sure if that’s best,’ Marshall told Aimee. ‘As you know, a lot of people react very badly to it. I hope Mrs Deutschkron feels able to make her own decision.’

‘Her daughter cares about her?’

‘Oh, very much. Which can make people selfish sometimes.’

‘And the reverse. It can make people sacrifice their own desires and needs.’

‘I have a sense that Mrs Deutschkron is going to think about it all very carefully before she makes up her mind. I’ve told her there’s no rush. She needs to be healed from the surgery first. I’ll wait a few weeks before I press her for a decision.’

‘Yes, it’s not something to rush, is it?’

They stood in silence for a moment, and Aimee felt the sleeve of Marshall’s shirt warm against her bare arm. Although it was only the end of July, this Friday afternoon was sunny and mild, and she’d taken off her light jacket to reveal a black-and-white-striped knit shirt beneath. Zebra stripes. Appropriate for a visit to the zoo.

She hadn’t understood, at first, when Marshall had suggested the idea. ‘Since we’re both off work on Friday afternoon, can I extend the dinner plan we’ve already made to include something else?’ he’d said to her the previous day, catching her during a quiet moment in the corridor at the practice.

‘That would be lovely,’ she’d answered, having had to conceal just how much her heart had jumped with pleasure at the thought of spending more time with him. Quite shamelessly, she hadn’t cared a bit what it was! An invitation to help him fill out his tax return? Delightful! A trip to the local garage to get the spare tyre fixed? A dream come true!

‘I’d like to introduce you to Felix, you see.’

‘Felix…’ she’d echoed blankly. Who was that? Not his son, she knew. A brother? Evidently someone important…

But he’d grinned. ‘Can’t quite call him a friend. More of a protégée.’

‘Ah.’ She’d nodded seriously. A young medical student from a disadvantaged background, perhaps? But that didn’t seem…

‘I sponsor him. The name’s not official, by the way. He’s a black-necked stork at the Taronga Park Zoo. I’ve told him all about you and he’s dying to look you over.’

‘Oh, Marshall!’

Another grin, quite shameless.

‘You really had me going there!’

‘I know, but I’m very fond of the zoo. I’m a “zoo friend”, and a diamond sponsor member. There’s a collared peccary at the Western Plains Zoo with whom I have a special relationship as well.’

‘And what’s his name?’ Aimee had asked, entering into the spirit of the thing.

‘Hers. Calliope.’

‘Felix and Calliope,’ she said. ‘The sort of names one considers calling one’s children, and then doesn’t dare, in suburban Australia, in case they’re teased at school.’

‘Exactly. Will you come?’

‘I’d love to!’

So here they were, watching Felix and the other birds disporting themselves in the still, greenish, dust-covered water of this pond from their viewpoint on the boardwalk bridge that crossed over it. Felix certainly was a handsome fellow, with his long, salmon-pink legs, lethally curved black bill and green and purple iridescent neck and head. He had a white breast with a black back and belly, and when he spread his wings the big white feathers spread like fingers.

Taronga Park had to be one of the world’s most beautiful zoos. Situated on land that sloped down towards the harbour, amidst a jungle of semi-tropical greenery, it had magnificent views from numerous vantage points, taking in the blue-green water and the constant plying to and fro of sailboats and ferries and ships, the black fretwork of the Harbour Bridge in the distance, and that other landmark which could have been a clipper ship in full rig but was, in fact, the Opera House.

‘Almost criminal to leave the place to tourists,’ Marshall commented as they crossed the boardwalk bridge and set off in the direction of the reptiles.

‘It is, isn’t it?’ Aimee agreed. ‘I haven’t been here since the children were preteens, and that’s too long. Why are locals, in every part of the world, so blasé about the treats that their home town has to offer?’

‘Inertia?’ he suggested. ‘Our senses and our imaginations get dulled by the daily routine. It’s something I decided to teach myself after Joy’s death…Oh, it’s trite when you say it, but true on a level I didn’t understand before I’d felt that grief. To strive to live each day, not merely exist. I brought some cousins from England here several years ago, and that’s when I decided to get involved with the place.’

‘Zoos need people like you,’ she told him. ‘I’m afraid I…do coast a bit perhaps. I have my garden, the children and now my work. But nothing else that I’m really energetic about, or committed to.’

‘Nonsense, Aimee!’ he said. ‘You seem like one of the most alive people I know, not openly passionate about things like my daughter is, bless her, but game for whatever comes your way—like the skiing on the weekend. And you’re thoughtful, perceptive—’

‘Stop!’ she protested. ‘I wasn’t fishing for that.’

‘I know you weren’t,’ he said, a little gruffly, ‘but I wanted to say it all the same.’

He looked across at her, a fresh sea breeze ruffling his hair for a moment before they passed into the interior display of reptiles, and she couldn’t miss the heat in his expression. It made her insides dissolve like melting chocolate to realise that he was happy to show what he felt this way.

She let her own gaze linger on features that were starting to be so familiar and important. His blue eyes with the laugh lines at their corners. A straight line of a mouth that could curve to express so many subtle nuances of humour and opinion—quizzical interest, amused irony, studious patience.

And then he slipped his hand into hers and all she could think about was that, the smooth touch of his palm engulfing her fingers, his shoulder nudging hers as they walked and the dry, pleasant timbre of his English voice.

They stayed at the zoo for nearly three hours, then he dropped her home to change, picking her up again an hour and a half later to take her to dinner. They’d arranged this meal at one of Sydney’s most exclusive harbour-side restaurants more than three weeks ago, before Marshall had even suggested the skiing trip that had taken place last weekend.

Thinking back to the cautious way Marshall had explained, back at the beginning of the month, that the booking for the restaurant needed to be made well in advance for a Friday night, Aimee marvelled at how far their connection to each other had advanced in so short a time.

Then he hadn’t been certain that they’d both still want an intimate dinner like this three weeks into the future. Now she felt a rich wash of pleasure just at being with him like this, loving the way he shared his feelings about the working week…and even the way he brazenly stole one of her oysters fifteen minutes later when their appetisers arrived. He would never have done that—and he wouldn’t have grinned like a little boy as he’d done it—if they hadn’t felt so right in each other’s company.

It was a magic, sophisticated evening after the frivolity of their trip to the zoo. He wore grey—a dark grey suit, with a steel-grey shirt and tie, simply cut but with a quiet distinction of style that could only have come from one of Sydney’s best men’s outfitters.

She loved dressing up for him, matching his subtle elegance, wearing clingy, simply cut black, with her pale, silvery hair folded and pinned high on her head. She’d had to ransack her jewellery box for things she hadn’t needed—or bothered…to wear for years. A necklace of silver and garnets which had belonged to her grandmother. Matching earrings. A bracelet engraved with a subtle, filigree design.

Over dessert and the last of the white wine, Marsh started playing with the bracelet, rolling it around her wrist with his finger so that she could feel the warmth of his skin against hers. It made her want more—more of his touch and his company, more of his conversation, which had all the seasoning of a mature man’s knowledge and experience, yet none of the rigidity and complacency that some of her women friends complained of in their husbands and which Alan had started to display when he’d reached his late fifties.

Perhaps it was because Marshall had been widowed while still in his thirties. His two children had been his closest companions, closest to his heart, and he’d retained their vigour and freshness of outlook. He’d said something about that time in his life that afternoon—that it had been Joy’s death which had taught him how to live.

His own thoughts had been travelling along a sober path as well.

‘I’ve been thinking about what you said earlier today, at the zoo, about sacrifice,’ he said, as their dessert plates were taken away, and she was pleased that he’d remembered their conversation so clearly and had thought it important enough to mull over.

‘Yes?’

‘You’re right,’ he told her. ‘Looking back on my experience, sacrifice is more common when there’s a change or a crisis involving people who care about each other. Knowing how her daughter feels, I wonder if Mrs Deutschkron will do what she thinks is best for herself, or what she thinks is best for Marianne.’

‘You won’t try to influence how she decides?’

‘I hope not. It’s hard. A doctor has to try to present the options in a neutral, factual way so that it truly is the patient’s decision. But if you do know your own opinion, it’s sometimes almost impossible not to let that colour the way you talk about it.’

‘And do you have an opinion in this case?’

Marshall sighed, and let his fingers trail down to rest across the back of her hand. She felt his heat begin to rise all the way up her arm. ‘I’d be inclined to say, “Leave it, and enjoy the time you have left”, but if she decides otherwise, I’ll do everything I can to help her retain her quality of life during the treatment and afterwards, as will her oncologist, of course.’

‘It sounds as if that’s all you can do.’

‘Yes, and I’m sorry we’re still taking about it.’

‘Not still. Again. We haven’t talked about it for hours. And it’s fine, Marsh. I’d hate to think you’d edit your conversation out of a desire to spare me,’ she told him, meaning it.

‘Making sacrifices of your own?’ he teased. ‘Putting up with me to that extent?’

‘It’s a thankless job, but someone has to do it!’

They both laughed.

Outside her house, half an hour later, he left the engine of his car running. Listening to its subtle purr, Aimee began to shape her mouth into a polite thank you, before an equally polite goodnight. Then she rebelled. That wasn’t what she wanted. Not tonight, after the deepening connection created by the time they’d spent together. It wasn’t even ten o’clock yet, and the weekend lay ahead.

‘Turn it off, Marsh, please,’ she begged him boldly. ‘I’d like you to come in.’

‘Would you?’ A light flared in his eyes, and there was a little catch in his voice.

‘We didn’t have coffee at the restaurant,’ she hedged, her courage already slipping. ‘We could talk a bit more, and—’

But he hadn’t heard this last part. The engine was off. He’d opened his door. He was through it, out of the car and bouncing onto his feet. Oh, heavens! Her heart started to beat faster and she was battling to suppress her grin of relief and pleasure. Courage? If she didn’t have it, he certainly did!

He’d wanted her to say that! Wanted it rather badly, if the swiftness of his response was any guide. And he didn’t care that she knew it.

Aimee was laughing as she got out, coming round the front of his streamlined car. And she was planning to say something clever and tender, like there was no point in his getting to the front door first because she had the key, but he didn’t give her the chance to say anything at all.

Instead, he turned suddenly and she cannoned into his mouth, then felt his arms wrapping her in a hug like a huge, friendly bear. She’d never known a kiss to get off to such a flying start, and for the first half-minute of it she was still laughing. Laughing against his lips, then with her head thrown back as he made a trail of moist fire from the edge of her jaw to the top of her collar-bone.

‘What’s funny?’ he growled, pulling off his glasses and sticking them heedlessly in his hip pocket, then glowering at her.

‘You’re so good at this!’

‘I should hope so,’ he growled again, and came back to her mouth for more. Much more. A hungry devouring of her that was so decisive it made her limbs as weak as water. ‘Admittedly, I haven’t been practising lately, but—’

She laughed again, and he frowned. ‘No, seriously, Aimee, is there something that—?’

‘Seriously,’ she whispered, ‘I think this is what’s known as being swept off my feet, Marshall. One minute I’m walking around your car in a very sedate manner, and the next I’m…’ She took in a slightly ragged breath, unable to describe it. ‘And it’s fabulous.’

‘Oh, it is, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘Aimee, I don’t think that…well, that my feet are any closer to the ground than yours are.’

Marshall laughed, a rich, full sound from deep in his diaphragm, and shook his head, his brow slightly furrowed in bemusement as if he couldn’t quite believe that those words of confession had come from his own mouth. Then his lips claimed hers hungrily and fiercely once more, and his hands cupped the curve of her behind, sliding the silky fabric of her dress upwards.

‘Shall we go in?’ she said breathlessly.

‘If you can hold the key steady enough to get it into the lock,’ he answered. ‘I’m not sure that I could!’

She managed it, with his hand still roaming her back and his impatience and eagerness sounding clearly in the rhythm of his breathing. As soon as they were both through the front door, he kicked it shut behind him and engulfed her with his touch once more, turning her mouth into a swollen, tingling mass of nerve endings and her breasts into two aching buds and her insides to sweet, warm jelly.

‘We talked about coffee,’ she almost gasped at him. The words hardly made sense, barely escaped from her lips in recognisable form.

‘I don’t want it,’ he said, still painting her mouth with heat and pressure. A moment later he apparently thought better of the shameless response. ‘That is…’

He stopped and schooled his voice and his expression. Again, she almost laughed. It was the worst performance of upright social manners she’d ever seen!

‘Yes,’ he said, his voice burred with effort. ‘Coffee. Of course. That’s why you invited me in, isn’t it?’

‘It needn’t be. It wasn’t really. Actually, it was the furthest thing from my mind,’ she said in a low voice, hearing her own words with a stab of shock.

It was impossible to pretend. Her meaning was obvious to both of them, and she hadn’t stopped for a moment to think about what she was offering, and why.

Her body. Her bed. Why not? She was a grown, experienced woman, confident in her judgement of character and of her own feelings, and he was her male counterpart. There was no one to disapprove, no one to hurt, few physical risks.

She knew enough of him and his history to be certain that if he’d had a lover since his wife’s death thirteen years ago—and somehow, she doubted he had—then it would have been a woman much like herself, careful in such matters, not someone who slept around.

‘What are you saying, Aimee?’ Marshall demanded softly.

He knew. Of course he did. But she understood that he wanted to make sure that she meant it, and she loved that chivalrous quality in him. He was old-fashioned enough to want to protect a woman from any regret she might feel after the event at having let her body dictate the pace.

But she was old-fashioned enough to blush at the idea of putting it into words. ‘Don’t make me say it,’ she murmured, her eyes wide and honest. ‘Just…just take it, Marshall.’

‘I’d love to,’ he said. ‘Did you plan this?’

‘No. No, not at all.’

Marshall saw the sudden doubt and questioning in her eyes at once, and understood the new feeling.

‘Does that make it…less appealing to you?’ she said to him hesitantly. ‘Would you have preferred me to—I mean, it’s not as if we have to think about—’

‘No.’ He shook his head vigorously, his mind leaping ahead once again to understand her meaning. ‘No, Aimee! Nothing could make you…this…less appealing. And the fact that it was an impulse on your part, and so strong…’

‘Then isn’t that enough?’ she said. ‘There’s no reason in the world why this shouldn’t happen, and every reason why it should. That’s more than enough for me.’

‘And for me,’ he whispered, and kept on kissing her with an intensity that made both of them tremble, all the way along the corridor to her bedroom.

When they reached her bed, their need reined itself in a little, overtaken by ‘first-night nerves’ that he wasn’t afraid to admit to.

‘If you hear a squeaking sound in a moment, don’t worry,’ he said to her in a low voice, still holding her close. ‘It’ll only be the rust.’

She understood at once, and answered, ‘I can hear it already, only it’s coming from me. Marsh, I’m not—I’ve never—’

‘Let’s make some rules,’ he suggested, lacing his fingers in the small of her back as he held her more loosely.

‘Rules?’

‘Let’s not talk about the past, what we have and haven’t done or felt, and how long since we’ve felt it.’ He made a trail of tiny kisses from her forehead to her ear. ‘Let’s not put any pressure on ourselves or each other to succeed in some Hollywood version of this. We’ve succeeded already.’ His lips brushed her mouth. ‘Everything that happens from this minute on is just a bonus. That means we can take it at whatever pace we want to and that, whatever happens, it’s safe.’

‘Safe…’ she echoed.

‘I know what you’re entrusting to me, Aimee. You know I’m going to look after it with all the care and tenderness it deserves. And what I’m entrusting with you is just as fragile.’

‘Oh…yes. Thank you, Marsh. Thank you for saying it.’

She buried her face in the warmth of his neck for a moment, and heard a rumble of laughter from him, a mixture of relief and happiness and triumph, and she was so astonished and almost disbelieving that she’d managed to find a man like this that she had to pull away and simply look at him, laughing, too, at first until the magic between them made both their faces still.

In the silvery light that seeped into the room through the half-open curtains, his expression was serious and searching, and the lines of experience on his skin were softened so that the strong bone structure beneath was more apparent. The attraction between them was like a measurable force. It ought to have some sort of a scientific scale, she thought vaguely, like earthquakes did, and electricity. Volts or hector-pascals.

It seemed incredible that an attraction like this should be accompanied by such a sense of certainty and peace. On one level, she was a wild cauldron of feeling, but on another, at the centre of her being, there was calm, and those first-night nerves were ebbing by the minute.

Marshall had started to undress her now, with a tender reverence that had her breathing in little flutters as she held herself completely still so that she didn’t miss so much as a moment of sensation. Wanting to touch and explore his skin, she slid his jacket from his shoulders and began to unfasten his steel-grey shirt, then loosened his tie and started on the shirt buttons.

When they stood naked together, he whispered, ‘You’re beautiful.’

She didn’t try to deny it because she was too busy thinking the same about him. The texture of hair on skin, the taste of him, the smell of him…

They sat on the bed and he kissed her again, touched her in places that made her shudder, took his hands away when it became a little too intense and simply held her until she was ready to go further. Even when they were lying together, entwined beneath the sheets, and neither of them could breathe without making a jagged pattern of sound in the air, he was still able to pause, wait, let her become accustomed to the intimacy of it before they took another step.

Aimee hadn’t known it could be like this, that each step could be so thoroughly savoured, like an endless banquet of tiny, exquisitely served courses. She hadn’t known a man could possess such patience, pitted against such sensual need. She hadn’t known that she could lie in his arms afterwards, sated and replete yet still wanting more.

It was the longest, slowest, sweetest and, in the end, most passionate night of love-making she’d ever had.

CHAPTER THREE

‘AIMEE, it’s Peter,’ said her brother on the phone the next morning.

‘Hello, Pete,’ she said, pleased to hear his voice but self-conscious as well. Was it possible that she sounded like a woman who’d enjoyed a tumultuous first night of love-making with her new lover? Undoubtedly! She was still in her nightdress, and her hair was threading loose from the plait she’d hastily woven it into at about midnight last night. Midnight? Maybe later…

Long, silky hair could be a sensual tool. It could be swept teasingly across a man’s chest or provide a cool waterfall for him to run his fingers through. It could also get in the way, hence the hasty plait, but Marshall had openly enjoyed the sight of her sitting up in bed, her torso bared as she efficiently braided the long strands in the soft glow of a single bedside lamp to show her what she was doing.

They hadn’t slept until after the early hours, and her voice on the phone was now lazy and croaky with late sleep and sensual relaxation.

‘Can I come round this morning? Are you free?’ Peter wanted to know.

‘Yes, I am, actually.’

Unfortunately, she could have added, but didn’t. Marshall was on call this weekend, and had had to leave half an hour ago to see a patient at Burradoo Nursing Home who’d fallen and torn the fragile skin along her calf. They hadn’t had time to eat breakfast together, although he’d taken her in his arms in that same imperious, joyous way he’d held her last night, and she’d responded in the same way.

‘I really have to get home after I’ve seen Mrs Bacon,’ he’d said, regret screwing up his face. ‘I’m having the upstairs bathroom redone. The shower’s been leaking and I haven’t been able to use it for a month. I hate baths! There are two contractors coming round this morning to give me quotes for the job. Can I ring you later?’

‘You don’t need to ask, Marshall,’ she’d told him.

And she’d known her eyes had been glowing as she’d said it. He hadn’t seemed to mind. But now he’d gone, and the house felt solitary and just a tiny bit accusatory, too.

What did you do? the quiet rooms seemed to be saying. You didn’t think about it very much, did you? And he’s left his glasses behind…

‘Or I could make it later,’ she heard, and realised she’d missed the first half of Peter’s sentence and possibly another sentence or two before that.

‘Whenever you like,’ she promised vaguely. ‘It’s fine, Peter.’

‘I’ll be straight round, then.’

‘See you soon,’ she answered automatically, and it only struck her after she’d put down the phone that Peter had sounded tense, agitated.

Or was that her guilty imagination?

She had no need to feel guilty, she told herself, as she put Marshall’s glasses carefully in her bag and washed up the evidence of the early morning cup of tea they’d shared. No need at all. It hadn’t been a one-night stand. It had been a beginning, important and meaningful.

Not knowing if Peter had eaten yet—it was only nine o’clock, she saw with some surprise—she began to get out some Saturday brunch things. He’d probably like eggs and bacon. Perhaps a crumpet. Coffee, of course.

Thinking about it, she was surprised he’d phoned so early on a weekend. It was unusual. Could something be wrong? Her breathing suddenly shallower, she ran through the possibilities in her mind. Their parents, Douglas and Dorothy Brent, had retired fifteen years ago to Queensland. Dad was eighty now, and Mum was seventy-six, but if there was bad news from them she wouldn’t have heard it like this, with Pete ringing to ask with a cryptic edge to his voice if he could come round.

Similarly, if there’d been an accident to any member of his family—his wife Annette and their two school-age children, Cameron and Alethea—he’d have said it straight out and not wasted time making the traffic-filled journey from Strathfield.

Yet, focusing on their conversation properly at last instead of on her vividly physical memories of Marshall and the night they’d just shared, she became more and more convinced that this wasn’t just a social visit.

At forty-five, Peter was five years her junior, and they were close. Good friends, she’d have said. She trusted him, loved him, respected him, and was very fond of his family. But they were both busy enough that casual Saturday morning visits to each other, just popping in for a chat and a cuppa, didn’t happen.

He had something to tell her. She was sure of it now, and as she showered and dressed and finished the preparations for breakfast, she couldn’t help feverishly and fruitlessly running through the possibilities.

When he arrived to find her rearranging the napkins on the table on the front terrace for the third time, she’d steeled herself to hear what she was now certain the news had to be. He and Annette were getting a divorce…

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.