He needed to retrieve her purse, and he might as well move it before handing the keys back to Doug.
It took him three minutes to get it started and Doug came out to help. They shifted it and then stood looking at it in disgust, not only because it was blood-soaked.
‘She’s driven that thing from Adelaide,’ Sam said at last. ‘How?’
‘Blind faith,’ Doug said. ‘Some wrecking yard must have paid her to cart it away.’
It was structurally sound, Sam thought, but only just. Once upon a time it had been a little blue sedan, but its original panels had been replaced with whatever anyone could find. Some were painted bright orange with anti-rust. Some looked like they’d been attacked by a sledgehammer.
When running, the car sounded like a wheezing camel. Even the drive from entrance to car park was bumpy.
‘There’s a roadworthy sticker on the front,’ Doug said. ‘You reckon that’s because she needs to prove it to the cops half a dozen times a day?’ He grinned. ‘Never mind, it did its job. It got your dog here in time. Girl and car both need a medal.’
‘Yeah,’ Sam said absently. ‘I need to fix this.’
He bade Doug goodnight and headed back to his Jeep. It was a grubby surfer truck but compared to Zoe’s it was luxurious.
He should go back to the hospital. Friday was a normal working day. In eight hours he’d be on the wards.
Zoe would be there in six.
Zoe...
His head was doing strange things.
He climbed into his truck and headed where he always headed when he needed to clear his mind.
The beach was deserted. A full moon hung in a cloudless sky. His board lay where he’d dumped it hours ago. Just as well the tide had been going out, he thought, but, then, he’d been granted a miracle and a surfboard would have been a small price to pay for Bonnie’s life.
He needed to pay...something.
The hoons in the beach buggy would pay. Zoe had got a clear view of them, the hire-car logo, even part of the number plate. Doug had already made a call to the cops.
But Zoe?
What was it about her that twisted something inside him?
‘Maybe the fact that she saved your dog?’ he said drily, out loud. ‘Maybe that’d make anyone seem special.’
But there was something about her...
A heroic run with a dog far too big for her. An anger that he’d deserved.
But more. What?
Where were his thoughts taking him?
He was trying hard to haul them back on track. Sam Webster was a man who walked alone. He’d had one disastrous relationship. He’d loved Emily, but he hadn’t been able to protect her from herself. She’d died because of it, leaving him gutted and guilty and alone.
That night replayed in his head, over and over. Emily had had a stressful day in the wards and had come home to a letter saying she’d missed a promotion. Her mood had been foul as they’d headed to the beach. There’d been a storm and the surf had been unpredictable. He’d suggested a close-to-shore swim instead of their usual surf, but Emily had been coldly determined.
‘The surf’s fine. Sure, it’s dumping but we’re experienced enough to know which waves to leave alone. I’ve had enough people telling me what I can’t do today. Surf with me, Sam, or leave me be.’
He let her be. He was fed up. In truth he’d been growing more and more fed up with Emily’s erratic mood swings and her insistence that everything be done her way. He watched Emily for a while but she’d gone far out, waiting for the perfect wave, so he and Bonnie headed along the beach to walk out their wait.
They turned just as Emily lost patience and caught a wave she must have known was dangerous.
He remembered yelling. He remembered seeing Emily rise, catching the beginning of the curving swell, and he remembered seeing her look towards the beach, towards him. She waved and her wave was almost triumphant.
And then the wave sucked her high, curled and tossed her onto the sandbank with a force that even today made him shudder.
Enough. Don’t think about it. That had been five years ago. Surely the memory should have faded by now. And what was he doing, thinking of it tonight?
Because he’d met Zoe?
This was crazy. Where his thoughts were taking him was just plain weird. She was just another woman and there were plenty of women in his life. Half his colleagues were female. He had his mother, his sisters, his workmates, and for years their position in his life had been carefully compartmentalised.
Zoe...the way he was feeling...it didn’t fit.
Maybe it was because he owed her, he decided. He did owe her, big time, and Sam Webster always paid his debts.
Her car was a wreck.
Excellent. His mind cleared. He had a way to pay his debt and move on.
And he needed to move on, because for some reason it felt really important that he stop thinking about Zoe Payne. He needed to pay the debt and get her out of his mind.
CHAPTER THREE
ZOE SLEPT FITFULLY, waking during the night to flashbacks—to dune buggies crashing down, to Sam’s haunted face, to the thoughts of the mess in her car. She slept enough to function, however. Uniformed and professional, she hit the wards with determined cheer—and found she was a minor celebrity.
She’d been at Gold Coast City for almost a week. Her new colleagues had been friendly enough but she still felt very much an outsider. This morning, though, Ros, the ward clerk, met her with a beaming smile and practically boomed her welcome.
‘Here she is, our Zoe the lifesaver. You’ve saved our Bonnie!’
‘Our Bonnie?’ she said faintly.
‘Everyone in the hospital loves Bonnie,’ Ros told her. ‘When she’s not surfing with Sam, she comes in as a companion dog. We use her for the oldies or for distressed kids. If Sam tells her to stay with a needy patient she treats them as her new best friend until Sam comes to pick her up again. I can’t tell you how many patients she’s calmed and comforted. And the hoons nearly killed her.’
Her face lost its beam and creased in distress. ‘Of all the...well, never mind, we heard the cops have already charged them. The report from the vet half an hour ago said Bonnie’s on the mend, and Sam says to tell you he left your purse downstairs in the safe in Admin for you to collect when you go off duty. How lucky was it that you were there? Callie says you saved her.’
‘I was glad to help,’ Zoe muttered, embarrassed, and headed to changeover fast, only to be met with more congratulations and thanks.
It went on all day. She was tired, she was still feeling fragile, but by the time her shift ended she seemed to be best friends with everyone in the hospital.
At three she was done. Yay, Friday. The weekend stretched before her, and even fatigue didn’t stop it seeming endless with possibilities. Her first weekend here. Her first time alone.
It felt fantastic.
She walked down to Admin to collect her purse, and hummed as she hit the lifts. Last night had been horrible, but the outcome looked good. This job seemed great. She’d been rostered onto the paediatric ward for older kids. She’d been run off her feet all day—which she loved—and somehow what had happened last night seemed to have made her accepted as a part of the Gold Coast team faster than she’d thought possible.
She had an almost irresistible urge to ring Dean and gloat.
How childish was that? She grinned, the doors of the lift opened at the administration floor—and Sam Webster was waiting for her.
Sort of.
This was a different Sam Webster.
Last night he’d looked every inch a surfer. Now he looked every inch a cardiologist.
He must have been consulting rather than operating, she thought, dazed. He was wearing the most beautiful suit�
�Italian, she thought, and then wondered wryly what she would know about Italian suits. But the sleek, blue, pinstriped suit looked like it was moulded to him. His shirt was crisp, white, expensive-looking, and the only hint that he worked with kids was the elephants embroidered on his blue silk tie.
This was an image that would give frantic parents reassurance that they were in the hands of the best.
He looked the best.
Why was she standing here, gawking, when she should be doing, saying...something?
She managed a smile and moved forward, squashing the dumb, irrational wish that she wasn’t in her nursing pants and baggy top, that her hair was free and not hauled into a practical work knot, that she had some decent make-up on—and she didn’t look like she’d just come off a long, hard shift.
‘Hi,’ she managed. ‘They tell me Bonnie’s still good. Actually, everyone tells me Bonnie’s still good. I hadn’t realised she was a celebrity.’
‘She has good friends,’ he said, smiling at her in such a way that her heart did a crazy twist. ‘She made a new very good friend last night. Callie told me your shift finished at three. I came down to make sure you got your purse.’
‘I’m getting it now,’ she said, uselessly, and then couldn’t think of anything else to say.
He had a faint mark on his cheek. Callie was right, the fingermarks had faded, but the bruise was still there. It made her want to crawl under the floor and stay there.
‘It doesn’t hurt,’ he said, and grinned, and she flushed. How did he know what she was thinking?
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Sorry that it doesn’t hurt?’
‘Of course not.’ Her chin tilted a bit and she regained her bearings. If he was going to tease...
‘I’ve fixed your car,’ he told her, and his grin faded but the faint, teasing mischief was still behind his eyes. ‘Come and see.’
‘It’s not at the vet’s?’
‘The least I could do was bring it back here. Grab your purse and I’ll show you where.’ Then, as she still hesitated—what was it with this man that had her disconcerted?—he smiled at the girl at the desk, who handed over her purse, having obviously been listening to every word of their conversation, and he ushered her out to the car park.
That made her feel even more disconcerted. He was so...gorgeous. She was in her nurse’s uniform.
People were glancing at them, smiling at Sam, smiling at her as if she was somehow attached to Sam. It felt weird.
‘You didn’t have to fix my car,’ she told him as he led her across the car park. ‘How did you get it done so fast?’
‘What do you do when you’re faced with a laundry basket full of dirty shirts and you need a clean shirt straight away?’ he asked.
‘I...’ Uh-oh. What she suddenly suspected was dumb—wasn’t it? Surely.
‘You buy a new one,’ he told her, confirming her lunatic thought in five words. ‘Or, in your case, a good second-hand one because I thought a brand-new one might be a bit over the top.’ And he stopped and motioned to a small white sedan parked right next to where they were standing. It was the same model as hers, only about twenty years younger. It was about a hundred years less battered.
‘It’s two years old,’ he told her, ‘but it’s a take-a-little-old-lady-to-church-on-Sunday vehicle. The local dealer had a son born with a mitral valve disorder. I’m still running routine checks on Dan’s son after successful surgery, but he’s doing brilliantly, and Dan’s assured me this vehicle is almost as good as his kid’s heart.’
‘You bought me a car?’
‘I need to thank you,’ he said gently. ‘You saved my dog’s life. Doug and I could barely get your car started last night and we thought it’d cost more to clean than you’d get for it if you sold it. I’m a surgeon and a well-qualified one at that. I’m not married. I have no kids. All I have is my dog. Thanks to your actions last night I still have her. I can easily afford to do this, and I hope you’ll accept with pleasure.’
She stared at the car. It was little and white and clean. It looked a very nice car. It looked very dependable.
It looked sensible.
She thought back to the bucket of bolts she’d driven from Adelaide. She thought of all the times she’d had to stop.
She’d bought a mechanic’s manual in Adelaide before she’d left and she’d studied it with one of her sisters’ boyfriends. She’d spent half the time she’d taken to get here sitting on the roadside studying that book or ringing her sister’s boyfriend and having him talk her through what she needed to do.
She looked again at the little white car.
I hope you’ll accept with pleasure.
Why not? She had no doubt this guy could afford to buy her a car. It’d be years before she could afford one this good—and she had saved his dog.
‘But it’s not my car,’ she heard herself say, before the sensible side of her could do any more sensible thinking.
‘This is better.’ He was eyeing her sideways, like she was a sandwich short of a picnic.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s lovely. I dare say there’s some other little old lady who’ll love driving it to church on Sundays.’ She took a deep breath. ‘But not me. It’s a great offer, but it’s way out of bounds of what’s reasonable. I don’t want to be indebted—’
‘Neither do I,’ he said flatly.
‘You shouldn’t feel indebted. I saved your dog for your dog, not for you. Besides, this is ridiculous. Pay for cleaning, yes, but a new car?’
‘It’s not a new car.’
‘Okay, it’s not, but I’m still not accepting it. And, yes, I know you can afford it but I’d still feel indebted.’
She took a deep breath, seeing that he really wanted her to accept it, knowing that, yes, to this man on consultant’s wages this car was a small thing, knowing that also for some reason indebtedness was almost as big a deal for him as it was for her. But for him to hand his obligation over to her...
She thought of the indescribable pleasure she’d felt when she’d slipped behind the wheel of her battered little vehicle and she thought that feeling was far too important to let go. There was no way she was giving that feeling up just to make this man feel better.
‘I love my little car,’ she said.
‘That’s crazy. It’s a bomb.’
She’d slapped him once. She wouldn’t slap him again, even though her slapping fingers itched. Besides, she conceded, he was right. It was a bomb—but it was her bomb.
He’d gone to a lot of trouble to buy this car for her, she conceded. Anger was inappropriate. He deserved an explanation, even though she didn’t much want to give it.
‘I haven’t had very much money,’ she told him. ‘Nor...nor have I had much independence. My car is the first big thing I’ve ever owned. For me. I know it’s a wreck but I bought it with my eyes wide-open.
‘My sister’s dating a mechanic. Susy spent her summer sunbaking on our back lawn while Tony mooned over her, so I persuaded him to teach me about cars while he mooned. I’ve learned a whole lot about the insides of cars. I have a great car manual. I have excellent tools and it gives me huge pride to keep her running.’ Another deep breath. ‘You don’t know how much pride.’
‘Is this because of the kidney transplant?’ he asked, and her world stood still.
Kidney transplant.
The words hung.
He knew, she thought, stunned beyond belief. No one here was supposed to know.
A new life. That’s what this was supposed to be. From the time she was eight years old, when she’d first come home from school feeling dreadful, Zoe Payne had been categorised as a renal patient. That’s how she’d been treated. As an invalid. She’d been cosseted by her parents and her siblings, by her teachers and doctors and nurses and the kids
around her.
Her kidneys had finally failed completely. There’d been the agonising wait and then a transplant that had failed as well.
That was when her parents had thought she was going to die.
The wait then had been interminable. She’d held on by a thread while her two sisters and her brother had grown through adolescence into adulthood, while the kids she’d met in the brief times she’d gone to school had lived normal lives, taken risks, got colds that hadn’t landed them in hospital, hadn’t been cocooned with worry and with care.
And then, finally, miraculously, she’d had a transplant that worked.
‘You have your whole life ahead of you now,’ her renal surgeon had told her at her last check-up. ‘Career, babies, the world’s there for you to do what you’d like with. Go for it.’
Only, of course, that wasn’t possible. Not when her parents still panicked every time she coughed, while her siblings still treated her as if she was made of glass, while Dean still treated her as something to protect for ever.
All this she thought in one appalling moment as she stared at Sam and thought, How did he know?
She’d come all the way to Queensland because no one here would know. She’d be normal.
Even her car... Her parents had mortgaged everything to cover her medical treatment and she’d ask them for nothing more. Adults bought their own cars, and she was an independent adult. This was her life now, to do with what she wanted.
And she wasn’t a renal patient.
‘I’m sorry,’ Sam said, and she knew he was reading her face. ‘Doug and I saw the scar last night, so of course I checked out your arms.’
Of course.
She was so careful. She wore long-sleeved shirts to cover the scars from years of dialysis, and she’d never voluntarily show anyone the unmistakeable renal scar that ran from behind her arm to under her breastbone. But she hadn’t been careful when faced with a dying dog. She’d taken off her shirt to treat Bonnie, and she was paying the price now.
‘I’m fine now,’ she managed, and Sam nodded.
Gold Coast Angels: A Doctor's Redemption Page 4
