'I merely bore him children who he adored, got him addicted to my cooking and then said I was coming home,' Donna said. 'That's not dragging.'
'It's almost dragging,' Doris retorted, wrinkling her brow as she concentrated on getting her legs higher. 'And you had to go off the island to find someone. Our Susan can't do that.'
'She did do that,' Donna retorted. 'She found Sam in London.'
'No,' Doris said. 'She found Grant. The twins' father.'
'Same thing,' Donna said. 'Identical twins.'
'They're not the same,' Susie snapped.
'Would you have fallen for him if he didn't look like Grant?' Donna asked.
'No.' She swallowed and regrouped. 'That is...I haven't fallen for him.'
'Pull the other leg,' Donna said. 'You're glowing. You're head over heels in love.'
'But you can't leave,' Muriel said anxiously.
'Then she'll just have to do what I did with my Nick,' Donna said. 'Blackmail him...I mean, coerce him gently into seeing what's good for him.'
'He's a specialist,' Doris retorted. 'He's an orthopaedic surgeon. He couldn't make a living on this island. The council's saying now they mightn't even have the money to rebuild the bridge. How could we cope without Susie?'
'We'd survive,' Donna said stoutly—but she sounded unsure.
'Of course you would.' Finally Susie managed to get a word in. 'You might have to because if you start organising my love life any more I might leave in a huff and you'll never see me again.'
'You couldn't leave us,' Doris said.
'You couldn't leave Brenda,' Muriel added.
Donna looked doubtfully at her friend. 'She might have to,' she said softly. 'Susie, you need to do what you need to do.'
'Well, I would,' Susie retorted, really flustered. 'If I had to leave the island then, of course, I would. But I don't need to. You're all talking nonsense. Just because I'm enjoying myself a little...'
'You're falling in love,' Donna said.
'I'm not,' she said stoutly. 'To fall in love is ridiculous. Yes, he's a personable guy. He's a skilled doctor and that's great. He's the twins' uncle and I need to be nice to him. And I don't mind admitting that.. .that...'
'Don't say any more,' Donna begged. 'At least...not to everyone. Just to me.'
'She can talk to us,' Doris said, offended. 'We're family.'
'The whole island's family,' Muriel retorted. 'That's the problem.' She brightened. 'Maybe we could make Dr Sam one of us. An honorary islander.'
'And have him taking half the responsibility for pilates?' Donna demanded. 'Or have him practise medicine with a patient base of five hundred and no hospital?'
'It does sound a bit rough,' Doris said. 'He could do it as a retirement job but he's hardly ready for retirement.'
'He's not, is he?' Susie said, struggling to keep her voice even. 'Neither is he in the least interested in any sort of job here. So butt out everyone. This is my business, and no one else's. I was dumb to even start it. I was dumb to think that I could possibly have a bit of fun without the whole island taking over and making a haystack out of a needle or whatever stupid analogy I'm trying to think up. And pilates is over as of now, because I have to go and take a cold shower before I hit someone. Before I hit three someones in particular. Doris, I refuse to take you out of the trapeze. May you hang there until your legs drop off.' She leaned over the control panel of Muriel's exercise bike and moved the dial to 'Mountain— Extreme'. And she stalked over to Donna's reformer and heaved another four springs onto the counterweight.
'There,' she snapped. 'You've all just graduated. I'm out of here. You don't need me at all.'
She stalked out of the room and slammed the door after her. She leaned heavily on the door and counted to ten.
She went back in.
They were exactly as she'd left them, staring at the doorway in consternation.
'I would have got us all off,' Donna said.
'Sure you would,' Susie said wearily, and lifted the weights free. 'You could all get by just fine without me. As I can get by fine without Sam. The thing is that you don't have to prove it.'
CHAPTER NINE
She couldn't take a cold shower.
She went through the remainder of exercises with her group of three. She bade them goodbye. Donna wanted to stay, looking desperate for a talk, but Susie was having none of it.
Donna was a part of the problem, she thought. When Donna had made her decision in Port Lincoln to come back here, would she have come if she hadn't been here? No, Susie decided. As well as Susie's friendship, Donna also needed some sort of medical security for her large family.
So she was part of the trap.
'But it's not a trap,' she said to herself as she closed the door on the last of them. They were assuming something that wasn't happening. They were assuming she was attracted to Sam.
Yeah, OK, that wasn't such a baseless assumption, she admitted. She was head over heels attracted to Sam. But that didn't mean she'd lose her head and fall for him the same stupid way she'd fallen for his brother. She was simply enjoying his company while he was here. Soon he'd be gone and she'd be left with...with...
With her kids, with Brenda, with her friends, her work, her island. Not such a bad deal. She didn't need Sam.
But she'd see him tonight. She'd promised to take him prawning. That was good. Activity rather than talk. Talk was dangerous. Getting to know him was dangerous.
It was for such a short time. Surely it couldn't hurt to let her defences down a little...
Her phone went. She flipped it open, then tried to suppress a little fillip of pleasure when Sam's name came up on the screen.
'Hi,' she said, and then made it more formal. 'Good morning. Can I help you?'
. 'I've got an ingrown toenail,' he said, and she heard him smile.
'I'm sorry to hear it,' she said cautiously. 'Does it need urgent air evacuation to the mainland?'
He chuckled. She liked his chuckle.
'Nope.'
'It can't be very ingrown,' she said. 'You were walking OK last night.'
'It's not my toe.'
'But it's your toenail?' Drat being formal. She was smiling with him, thinking he shared her sense of the ridiculous. She liked it that she could make him chuckle, and she loved it that he made her smile right back.
'It's Dottie Carmichael's toenail.'
'And Dottie Carmichael's toe?'
'You have it in one, Einstein,' he said, and she could still hear him smile. 'But she's pretty anxious about exposing her private parts to a male doctor.'
'Her private parts being her toe?'
'That's the one.'
'Tell her I'll see her tomorrow,' she said.
'The pain's unbearable, Doc,' Sam said, and Susie heard Dottie's querulous tone mimicked to a nicety. 'I dunno when I've been more relieved than when I thought, Thank God, we have two medics on the island—one can be anaesthetist and one can be surgeon.'
'You're kidding.'
'Nope,' Sam said. 'She's sitting on our waiting steps with her foot swathed in a bandage so big I thought at the very least she had a balloon-sized lymphoedema. But no. Just one slightly pinkish toe. She's waiting for you to hotfoot it over here and put her out of her misery.'
'I'm in the middle of pilates.'
'You're at the end of your pilates,' Sam said patiently. 'Dottie told me. You have three one-hour sessions every Tuesday morning, you finish at twelve so at twelve-twenty— which would be in about ten minutes—you're free for lifesaving surgery.'
'Says Dottie?'
'Says Dottie. Does this island run every minute of your life?'
'Yes,' she said, and she sighed. 'It does.'
'I'll tell her to come back tomorrow.'
'No,' she said. 'I may as well come now.'
'Do the twins come home for lunch?'
'No.'
'Then we could have a sandwich on the beach after our life-saving surgery.'
'I don't know whether
that's wise.'
'It might take too long,' Sam said, ready to agree. 'We'll schedule two hours but there's recovery time as well, and then there's counselling of traumatised relatives. Maybe we'd better make it dinner.'
'Maybe we'd better make it neither.'
He heard it then. The smile in his voice faded. 'Is there something wrong?'
'No. I...'
'Of course I can put Dottie off.'
'I may as well do it now.'
'Then what's bothering you?'
'Just... Nothing,' she said. 'Nothing at all. Sorry, Sam, I've just had a big morning.'
'Did something happen at Pilates?' It was a serious question. He somehow knew her, she thought. She didn't know how, but somehow he saw inside her, in a way no one else ever had. Certainly not Grant. More and more she thought that comparing them was unfair. They were two different people. Sam made her smile, and he watched her smile and it gave him pleasure.
Well, making him smile gave her pleasure as well. Damn the islanders, she thought. They had no business unsettling her. Sam was nice and he was a friend and he was the twins' uncle. He'd be gone in a week or less. So, dammit, she was going to enjoy it now.
'I'm being dumb,' she said, forcing herself to sound bright and chirpy. 'I'll be right over. You get the surgery ready. Do you think we should call for a few blood donors in case we run short?'
'If we have you, then Dottie and I need nothing else,' Sam said softly, and he ended the call before she could respond.
She should go straight over. But instead she sat on the seat outside her pilates clinic and watched the sea for a minute.
'If we have you, we heed nothing else.'
The smile had gone from his voice. She'd heard his tone change.
He was serious.
Nonsense, she told herself bracingly. Nonsense, nonsense, nonsense.
A week and nothing more. Get on with it.
Dottie's ingrown toenail awaited.
'When's Effie coming?'
They'd finished their lifesaving surgery. They'd done a house call together. Then they'd bought sandwiches at the general store and ice creams. They were now sitting on what was left of the bridge, dangling their legs over the edge and watching the tide swirl in underneath them.
She felt like a kid on holiday. The sun was warm on her shoulders. The ice cream was great. Sam was sitting beside her, loose-limbed, relaxed, carefree. Feeding crumbs from his cone to the minnows below.
'Friday,' he said, and she had to think about what she'd asked.
Effie was coming on Friday. Great. Or was it?
'How long do you think she'll stay?' she asked.
'Doris has us both booked in for three days. That means we leave on Monday.'
'Oh.'
They concentrated on their ice creams for a bit.
'How much did Grant hurt you?' he asked, casually, as if it didn't matter too much if she didn't want to answer. 'I mean...I know he left you pregnant, but.. .were you really in love with him?'
'I was pretty young,' she said diffidently.
'That means he hurt you a lot.'
'I was pretty dumb.'
'There's a difference between dumb and innocent.'
'Grant was young, too.'
'Grant would have been twenty-eight. What were you? Twenty-one?'
'I... Yes.'
'And you promised to marry him?'
'Like I said, I was dumb.'
'I'm so sorry.'
'There's no need for you to be sorry,' she said, with asperity. 'You're not responsible for your brother.'
'No, but he's messing with my future.'
'How?'
'I'm falling in love with you,' he said softly, and the world stilled.
'No,' she said at last. 'You can't.'
'Why can't I?'
'Because...'
'Of Grant?'
'Yes,' she said helplessly. 'No. For all sorts of reasons. I can't even begin to explain.'
'If I found a way through all those reasons,' he said softly, feeding more of his cone to the shoal of waiting fish, 'would you think that maybe I just might?'
'You just might.. .what?'
'Fall in love with you.'
'Grant told me he was in love with me.'
'Grant was a liar.'
'He was your brother.'
'He was a liar,' Sam said heavily. 'He lived for nothing but himself. You know, ever since he died I've been feeling...desolate. I've been trying to figure it out. I see my patients, often elderly people at the end of their lives, but sometimes younger ones, kids with carcinomas, ghastly stuff. And I get emotionally involved and I feel sick when they die. But with Grant...'
He hesitated. 'I've figured it out. I spent sessions with a shrink trying to sort it and I couldn't—I've been thick with depression and I didn't know why. But here.. .I've suddenly seen it. Grant's life was an absolute waste. It wasn't that his death was a tragedy—maybe I could have dealt with that more easily. But from the time he was born he thought of nothing but himself. He lied and he cheated and he trampled on people. It was all such a stupid, stupid waste. So I haven't been grieving that he's dead. I've been grieving that he never lived.'
'Sam...'
'I bet he never fed fish ice-cream cone,' he said, and broke off another piece. And another. And then... Catastrophe. The remainder of his cone cracked. His hardly eaten double scoop of chocolate ice cream slipped through the remainder of his cone and fell into the water. The minnows bolted in panic and the blob of chocolate sank slowly to the bottom.
'Aargh,' Sam said.
'You can share mine,' Susie said.
He looked at her with adoration. 'I love you,' Sam said.
'You don't know me,' Susie whispered.
'I know you like blueberry ice cream when the only decent ice cream in the whole world is chocolate,' Sam said. 'Yet still I love you.';
'Sam, be serious.'
'I've lost my ice cream. It's very serious.'
'Don't,' she said sharply, and he turned to her and smiled, a gentle, heart-warming smile that made her world stand still.
'Don't?'
'Don't tease.'
'I'm not teasing.'
'Grant asked me to marry him,' she said flatly, and watched his face still.
'But he didn't mean it,' he said at last. 'And I'm not Grant. Neither am I asking you to marry me. There's a whole lot of complicating factors at play here. A major one being this bridge. What do you think our chances are of getting the entire island to evacuate to the mainland?'
'Somewhere between zero and Buckley's.'
'Buckley's?'
'Buckley was a convict early in Australia's European settlement. He escaped for over thirty years but still ended up captured.' Yeah, OK she was rabbiting on, but she was relieved to be on safer ground. 'And Buckley and Nunn was a well-known department store in Melbourne. So when things are hopeless we say we've got Buckley's chance. Or Nunn.'
'I see,' he said cautiously, and she giggled, despite her discomfort, at the ludicrous look of bemusement on his face.
'You'll have to stay a lot longer than a week to learn Australian,' she told him.
'I wouldn't mind staying,' he said.
Her ground was suddenly really, really shaky again. 'Sam, I can't,' she said, panicked. 'I mean...'
'I know you can't,' he said. 'So all I'm saying now is that I've fallen for you. I know it's a disaster that I'm Grant's twin. I know that makes it almost impossible for you. I know also that it's a mess that this island is dependent on you. That makes it almost impossible as well. And the twins and Brenda.. .This Buckley?' he asked cautiously. 'Did he end up hanged?'
'I don't think he did,' Susie said, confused. 'He lived with the native Australians for thirty years and then did a nice line in a lecture tour.'
'There you are, then,' he said. 'So Buckley's isn't impossible.'
'Sam...'
'The only thing that would make it impossible is if you look at me now and say, "Sam, don'
t take this one step further. Don't even think about loving me because I can't ever love you back. Never." Can you say that, Susie?'
'I don't...'
'Neither can I,' he said, and he carefully removed her ice cream from her hands, licked its drips from the edges, leaned forward, kissed her on the nose and handed it back.
'I haven't got a clue. But even if you like blueberry and not chocolate, I think we ought to work on it together.'
'But I can't...'
'Love me?'
'I don't know,' she whispered, and then her phone rang and she swore. 'I haven't got time. I can't think.'
'And I'll not be rushing you,' he said, and he lifted the phone from her top pocket and answered it.
'Ocean Spray Medical Service?'
He listened intently. 'Really? Goodness me. What a catastrophe. No, you just lie down very, very quietly and wait for help. The entire medical contingent of Ocean Spray is on its way. Just as soon as we finish our ice cream.'
He flipped the phone closed and popped it back into her pocket. 'I don't mean to hurry you,' he said, 'but we have an emergency.'
'I... What?'
'You know we told Dottie to go home and put her feet up?'
'I... Yes.'
'It seems she decided to feed the chooks first. Chooks. Do I have that right? That'd be poultry, I'm guessing.'
'Poultry,' she said, deciding to join in. 'That's a bit of a toffy name for chooks.'
'Chooks,' he said again, sounding the name with satisfaction. 'I'm a fast learner. Anyway, Dottie's spilt the chooks' dinner over her bandage and it's soggy and she's sitting on the back step, waiting for us to hotfoot it over there.'
'Gee,' Susie said, trying not to grin. 'Just as well we have a trained US orthopaedic surgeon to hand.'
'Years and years of training,' he said, rising and putting out a hand to help her rise with him. 'Come to this. The culmination of a great and glorious career.'
She shouldn't take his hand. She shouldn't go one step further with this lovely, gentle, laughing man who was the echo of what had almost destroyed her once before.
His Island Bride Page 11
