He’d missed a call from Kayla. It was early morning in St Moritz. He imagined how Christmas would play out over there—the magnificent, sophisticated Christmas he’d thought was perfect—and decided he hadn’t missed it one bit.
‘How’s the leg?’ Kayla’s enquiry was perfunctory when he returned the call, and he wondered if she really cared. Was this just a duty phone call?
‘It’s set and healing. I should be back in Sydney in the next couple of days.’
‘That’s good,’ she told him and then proceeded to outline all her very exciting plans for the holiday.
‘Kayla...’ he said as she finished.
‘Yes?’ And he heard the reservation. Did she think he was going to ask her to do something different, mess with her plans?
‘Kayla, this isn’t working,’ he said gently. ‘I just thought...while you’re over there having fun...please don’t think you need to be loyal to me. I think we both know that shouldn’t happen.’
There was a silence. He could almost see her sharp mind processing, considering ramifications.
‘I guess that’s logical,’ she said at last. ‘You and I...we have had fun.’
‘We have.’
‘But it was never serious.’
‘It never was.’ It never had been, he thought. He didn’t do relationships, or not the type of relationship he’d seen some of his colleagues fall into. The type where there was co-dependence.
And Kayla was the same. He heard a sigh and he thought he detected relief. The sound of moving on.
‘I’ll admit I might have more fun here if everyone stops treating me as poor Kayla who’s pining for her boyfriend,’ she admitted.
‘I can’t imagine you pining over anyone.’
‘It’s not my style,’ she agreed, and chuckled. She really was a friend. Just a colleague.
No longer an occasional lover.
‘Okay, then, I’m off to enjoy Christmas,’ she told him. ‘I hope someone gives you pudding, though I can’t imagine it’ll come anywhere near what they’ll give us here. Poor you. But take care of yourself, Marcus. Bye-ee.’
And she was gone.
What was gone with her?
The knowledge that he wanted to be part of that set? He might well want to, he thought, as soon as he got back to Sydney. As soon as he brushed off the dust of this island.
As soon as he stopped thinking of one gorgeous doctor, dancing through Christmas.
And, as if on cue, there was a knock on his door and the doctor in question appeared.
She was still wearing her gorgeous red skirt and her crazy hat. She had a white coat over the top.
‘Good evening, Doctor,’ he said, and she grinned.
‘Thank you,’ she told him. ‘A bit of professional respect, that’s what I like. Every single patient on my list tonight has greeted me with caution, like I might prescribe enemas instead of antibiotics. Even though I swear the only alcohol I had was in the brandy sauce.’ It was said with indignation, followed by a chuckle and if he’d been entranced before he was more so now.
Enthralled, even?
She took his chart from the end of the bed and read it while he watched her. Her chuckle had faded but there was still a trace of a smile on her face. Or maybe that dimple was a permanent feature.
This chameleon doctor, who trekked with her beagle, who’d abseiled down a hole to rescue him, who operated with competence, who’d made Christmas happy for so many...
‘This is great,’ she said as she hung the chart up again. ‘And you’re the end of the line. Not a single spike in temperature for the whole hospital, not even an unexpected tummy ache. Christmas has been a success.’
‘It’s been a success for reasons other than lack of medical repercussions,’ he told her. ‘You’ve done great.’
‘We’ve done great,’ she corrected him. ‘The whole island. Even you with your wrapping.’
‘Even me?’ He managed to sound wounded.
‘I mean especially you,’ she said and grinned. ‘Of course.’
Wow, she was gorgeous. Dammit, why was he in this bed?
‘Elsa, when this is all over, if we can organise it, can I see you again?’ he asked before he knew he was going to say it. Certainly before he’d thought it through.
It was dumb and she reacted accordingly. There was no hesitation in her response. ‘There’s no way that’s likely to happen,’ she told him bluntly. Was he imagining it, or did he hear a note of regret in her voice? ‘In a couple of days you’ll be out of here.’
‘I could stay.’ He still had two weeks’ leave.
That brought a rueful smile. ‘What, and hike on that leg? Not a hope. You’d be stuck in the local guesthouse, bored to snores.’
‘But I could take you out to dinner.’
‘Which would lead where?’ She shrugged and he saw her dredge up a smile from somewhere. Trying to keep it light. ‘Marc, you and I both know the rules. Doctors don’t hit on patients. Patients don’t hit on doctors. Especially when both of them are full of Christmas punch.’
‘Asking you out to dinner isn’t exactly hitting on you.’ He felt like swearing. He was at such a disadvantage, sitting in bed in his borrowed pyjamas. Thankfully, they weren’t Linus Larsen’s purple ones, but persuading this woman to go out with him could well take more finesse than even the finest pyjamas conveyed. Someone had found him a shirt and loose trousers to wear to dinner but he’d put his pyjama boxers and T-shirt back on when he’d returned to bed. Now he wished he hadn’t, but he also knew it wouldn’t have made a blind bit of difference what he wore.
‘Dating is encompassed in the same rules,’ she said firmly. ‘Thanks, Marc, but no. I don’t do casual dating.’
‘Does it have to be casual?’ Again it was said before he thought it through, and he winced even as the words came out. Was he talking about being serious? Now? He saw her withdraw a little and any last vestige of her smile vanished.
‘You have a girlfriend.’
‘I don’t.’ He needed to clear this up. ‘Things between Kayla and me were pretty much over even before this happened. This accident’s just made our split formal.’
‘What, she dumped you because you couldn’t go to St Moritz?’ She sounded incensed.
‘No, it was a mutual dumping,’ he told her, ‘of a tepid relationship. Maybe like the relationship the nurses tell me you have with Tony.’
She stared at him in astonishment. ‘You’ve been gossiping.’
‘I was encouraged to talk while my bed was made,’ he said virtuously. ‘And talking involves questions. The nurse was very pleased with my progress.’
That won a chuckle, but then her voice turned rueful. ‘Well, I wish the dumping could be mutual. Tony’s a local kelp farmer, dependable, stolid, and after one date he’s utterly convinced that we can marry and raise a whole lot of little kelp farmers.’ She sighed. ‘But, moving on, your love life is nothing to do with me, and vice versa. Maybe if I’m over in Sydney on a case we can catch up, but you staying for two weeks just so we can date... It’s not going to happen.’
‘Why not?’ He knew his approach was clumsy, but he was struggling here.
‘Because at the end of the two weeks you’d go back to Sydney and I...’ She hesitated and he saw a struggle to be honest. And honesty won. ‘I could get even more unsettled than I am now.’
His gaze met hers and held it for a long moment. She tilted her chin and then dropped it.
‘So tell me,’ he said gently. ‘Elsa, why are you unsettled?’
Maybe it was the brandy sauce. Or maybe it was because it was the end of a long day and she was still riding a wave of confidence.
Or maybe it was because it was Christmas and she was relaxed and he was just there.
Regardless, he saw her hesitate and then shrug and decide to go for it.
/>
‘Because this island has seven hundred residents and it’s too darned small,’ she told him, and then she closed her eyes and shook her head. ‘No. That’s not fair. Gannet Island is what it is. It’s always been remote, and I knew what I was in for when I came back here.’
‘You came back for your grandpa?’
‘I came back because this is my home. Because the islanders are my family. Because they’ve loved and supported me from the moment I arrived here aged all of seven, so how could I possibly leave them now? I can’t, and mostly it’s okay except when I think maybe I wouldn’t mind dating and having fun and being taken out to a restaurant where the proprietor doesn’t skip the bill as long as I give him a consult on the way out as to how to manage his hormonal teenage daughter, or what to do with his infected toe.’
‘That happens?’ he asked, stunned, and she managed a wry smile.
‘Of course. If you stayed, and if we did go out to dinner, it’s just as likely to end that way. With you patiently waiting while I head out to the kitchen to watch someone take off his boot.’
‘Elsa...’
‘It’s fine,’ she said, and there was another of her wry shrugs. ‘I’m over it. Though sometimes I wonder if it’d be nice to be...just normal. But that’s my problem, Dr Pierce, not yours.’
‘But...’
‘No buts.’ She hesitated and then forged on again, totally honest. ‘You know, I do think you’re lovely,’ she told him. ‘That’s a totally unprofessional thing to even think, much less say...’
‘The feeling’s mutual.’
‘Thank you.’ Another of her brisk nods. ‘That does my ego a whole lot of good, and I’ll take it as another Christmas gift. But that’s all. Your life’s in Sydney and my life’s here. There’s not the faintest possibility, even if dating came to something...something more...that anything could come of it.’
‘So you’ll cut me off at the pass now?’
‘I have no choice.’ She met his gaze again, calm and direct. It was supposed to be a look of acceptance but behind that...he knew pain when he saw it. Almost involuntarily, he swung himself out of bed, steadying on his good leg.
‘Elsa...’
‘Don’t you try and stand,’ she said, alarmed. ‘What if you fall? And I don’t need this. Please. Back off, Marc.’
‘Can you really say what you don’t need? Or want?’ He was balancing but only just. He took her hand and held on. One push and he’d be back on the bed.
But Elsa wasn’t pushing. She stared down at their linked hands and he saw her lips quiver. There was an ache there, he thought. An ache that matched his?
‘Don’t,’ she whispered.
‘Do you really want me not to?’
‘No. I mean...’
‘Elsa, professional ethics or not, impossibility or not, I’d really like to kiss you.’
She closed her eyes for a moment and then looked up at him. Her gaze questioning. ‘For Christmas?’
‘If you need an excuse.’
‘Marc, kissing you would be totally illogical.’
‘Like any of the weird and wonderful gifts you’ve organised for everyone else this Christmas,’ he told her. ‘Where’s your Christmas gift, Elsa?’
And that actually brought a smile. Her eyes suddenly danced with laughter. ‘You’re saying a kiss from you is equal to a black geranium?’
‘Better.’
‘Wow,’ she said, and suddenly those dancing eyes met his and something changed.
‘You’d have to prove it.’ Her voice was suddenly decisive.
‘Watch me try,’ he told her and proceeded to do just that.
* * *
What she was doing broke every doctor-patient rule in the book.
Only it was Christmas and she didn’t care. The moment his mouth touched hers she felt herself melting. She felt all sorts of things slipping away.
Mostly common sense.
She was standing in a patient’s room. Her patient was in boxers and a T-shirt, balanced on one leg. He had a gammy shoulder. He should have his arm in a sling, but he had both hands on her waist. He’d tugged her close, so her breasts were moulding to his chest.
His mouth was on hers. Strong, warm, demanding. Totally, totally inappropriate.
Totally, totally delicious.
No.
It was more than delicious, she thought dazedly. It was wonderful. Magical.
She’d been kissed before—of course she had. Tony wasn’t the only guy she’d dated.
It had never felt like this.
The way he held her...the strength of his hands on her waist...the way he’d hesitated as his mouth found hers, as if checking that this was indeed what she wanted...
How could he doubt it? Her lips opened under his and she felt as if she’d been catapulted into another world.
A world where heat met heat. Where desire met desire.
Oh, she wanted him. She ached for him. Her whole body felt as if it was surrendering.
She was surrendering.
She was being kissed and she was kissing. He didn’t need to balance on his bad leg because she was holding him.
Maybe it could count as therapy, she thought, almost hysterically. Helping patient stand. Maybe this was a medical tool designed to make him feel better.
It was surely making her feel better. Every sense seemed to have come alive. Every nerve-ending was tingling.
More. Every single part of her was screaming that she wanted this man, she needed this man, that she wouldn’t mind in the least if they fell back on the bed and...
Um, not in a million years. Not!
Because she didn’t want it?
Because this was a hospital ward and any minute the door could open as a nurse arrived for routine obs. This was a patient and she was a doctor and...
Shut up, Elsa, she told her inner self fiercely. Just let this moment be.
So she did. Her mind shut down and she let herself just kiss. And be kissed.
The kiss was deep and long and magical, and as it finally ended—as all kisses surely must—it was as much as she could do not to weep. But Marc was still holding her. He had her at arm’s length now, smiling into her eyes with such tenderness that...
No! She made a herculean effort to haul herself together. This was way past unprofessional. She could just about get herself struck off the medical register for this.
Right now she was having trouble thinking that it mattered, whether she was struck off or not. For Marc was smiling at her, and that seemed to be the only thing that mattered in the whole world.
But this was still well out of order. This man’s life was in Sydney. It could only ever be a casual fling with a guy who was bored.
Oh, but his smile...
‘About that date...’ he ventured, and she needed to shake her head but all she could do was look up into his dark eyes and sense went right out of the window.
But then reality suddenly slammed back with a vengeance. The hospital speaker system crackled into life and she heard Kim, one of the hospital’s junior nurses. Even through the dodgy hospital intercom she heard the fear in Kim’s tone. ‘Code Blue. Nurses’ station. Code Blue.’
Code Blue!
What was happening with Marc was pure fantasy. This was the reality of her life.
She was out of the door and she was gone.
CHAPTER NINE
WHAT WAS HE supposed to do—go back to bed?
Code Blue was hospital speak almost the world over for ‘Get here fast because someone’s dying’. Usually it meant cardiac infarct—heart failure.
He was a cardiologist. A heart surgeon.
He was a patient. He was wearing matching boxer and T-shirt pyjamas.
The wheelchair was still beside the bed, left there by the footballer who’d brough
t him back from lunch. ‘No one seems to need this, mate. You might as well keep it; it’ll let you get around a bit.’ He glanced at it and discarded the idea almost instantly. It was too clumsy. It’d take too long.
He had no crutches but even if he did he’d be no use to anyone if his shoulder slipped out again. There were rails all along the corridor so ambulant patients could practise their walking. ‘I’m ambulant,’ he said out loud, and managed to hop to the door, grab the rail with his good hand and proceed to demonstrate just how ambulant he really was.
It wasn’t hard to find the source of the Code Blue. Less than a minute’s hobbling had him reaching a turn in the corridor to see a cluster of people outside the nurses’ station.
He could see two nurses, one with a crash cart, another kneeling. Someone on the floor.
Elsa was also kneeling, her crimson skirt flared around her.
‘Grandpa,’ she breathed, and his world seemed to still.
He’d met Robert McCrae—of course he had. The elderly doctor had given him the anaesthetic while Elsa had set his leg, and he’d chatted to him a couple of times over the last couple of days. In his late seventies, he’d thought Robert looked a bit too thin, a bit too pale. Marc had had every intention of cornering him before he left and casually offering a full heart check. ‘Just to reassure Elsa...’ he’d planned to say.
It was too late now. Or was it? ‘Grandpa...’ Elsa murmured again, and there was a hoarse whisper in response.
‘I’ll be fine, girl. Don’t fuss.’
Not dead. Marc had been present at so many cardiac deaths. Why did this seem so personal? Why was his relief so profound?
‘You weren’t breathing.’ That was the nurse by the crash cart. She looked as if she was about to burst into tears.
‘Let me up. Give me a hand, girl,’ Robert attempted to snap at Elsa, but the snap was little more than a whisper and Elsa was having none of it. She had the portable defibrillator at hand, and before he could argue she’d ripped his shirt open.
The old guy could scarcely breathe but he was still indignation personified. ‘This is my best shirt.’
Mistletoe Kiss with the Heart Doctor Page 10
