A Very Precious Gift

by Meredith Webber

  Phoebe heard the footsteps approaching and knew it was Charles. Looking for Nick, no doubt.

  Anger stirred as she remembered the glares their colleague had been giving her, and the scathing remark he’d made earlier that day about her joining the ranks of ‘Nick’s women’. Well, she’d show him!

  She smiled at Nick as she moved closer, murmured, ‘It’s all in a good cause,’ then stood on tiptoe and kissed him on the lips.

  He reacted as if stung, drawing back so suddenly she felt mortified. Then he must have remembered about the pretence, for he joined in, kissing her with the intensity she’d felt not yesterday in the cafeteria but that first afternoon in the corridor.

  ‘Well, don’t mind me!’

  Charles’s petulant tone penetrated the sensual haze enveloping Phoebe, and with difficulty, she pushed away from Nick.

  And summoned some cool!

  ‘Did you want something, Charles?’ she asked, while covertly licking the taste of Nick from her lower lip.

  The silence which greeted her question made her look directly at Charles—then at Nick. Both men’s attention seemed focussed on her face—her mouth.

  ‘I wondered if you were going home.’ Charles recovered first, though the words came out slightly strangled. ‘I lent my car to Jess—she sold hers before she went away. I thought I might hitch a ride with you.’

  Out of the corner of her eye Phoebe saw Nick, who’d stepped back towards the workbench, throw up his hands in an ‘I give up’ kind of gesture, but Charles had driven her home when she’d had transport problems, and at least it was Jess, not Anne, he was helping out this time.

  Besides which, it might be a good thing. Being close to Charles, even if it was only in the physical confines of a car, might help her regain the balance Nick’s kisses were destroying.

  Though the last one had been her fault…

  ‘Sure, I’ll drop you home,’ she said, ignoring the eye rolling Nick was now doing. ‘I’ll finish clearing up here, then get my things. Fifteen minutes suit you?’

  Charles nodded then walked away, and Phoebe felt the tension wash from her body, leaving her weak-kneed with relief.

  Until Nick turned on her.

  ‘What on earth are you doing?’ he demanded. ‘The moment he crooks his finger, you go running! It’s the “yes, Charles, no, Charles” scenario all over again.’

  ‘It is not!’ Phoebe yelled her denial, then realised she could hardly tell him she’d chosen to drive Charles home in the hope it might reinforce the immunity she seemed to have lost. She did a gathering-herself-together thing again and said, ‘I thought I handled it in a totally mature fashion. I ignored his dig about finding us kissing—’

  ‘But licked your lip in case he’d missed it,’ Nick interjected.

  The reminder caused a momentary glitch in her composure, but she refused to be ruffled.

  ‘I agreed to help him out,’ she finished gamely. ‘As a colleague, Nick David, nothing else.’

  Nick caught back the growling ‘It had better be nothing else’ that had sprung to his lips. Whatever lay between himself and Phoebe was not real, he reminded himself. The very last thing he needed in his life was a complication like Dr Phoebe Moreton. She was too young, too innocent—wouldn’t understand the dating-mating game he played when he needed a distraction.

  Or why he played it, come to that!

  She muttered something that might have been goodbye and swept from the room.

  In high dudgeon, his mother would have said.

  Which reminded him he should phone his mother. She’d be anxious for news of Peter, whom she’d welcomed as a fifth child the first time Nick had brought his mate home from boarding school.

  And that train of thought reminded him of where his responsibilities lay for the next few months—maybe even years. With Peter Carter, patient and long-time best friend.

  The diagnosis of Peter’s melanoma while they’d still been at school had shocked them both, but while Peter had become resigned to it, Nick had never been able to accept that Peter’s death from the disease was inevitable. That the death of any young person was inevitable! Since then, he’d been guided by a determination to do whatever he could to save—or at least prolong—his friend’s life.

  Not that squiring Phoebe to dinner and a ball would distract him too much from this goal—it was only one night, after all.

  The mental argument made him sigh, and he sought diversion in work, crossing to the bench and finding the file Phoebe had put away. She’d been making her own notes on the sections she’d taken during the day. It was the kind of thing he’d done in his early days in dermatology, when he’d first entered the specialty programme.

  ‘Oh, damn!’ he muttered, belatedly remembering what it was he’d meant to tell her.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHARLES was waiting for Phoebe in the corridor. She expected more recriminations over her blatant exhibitionism with Nick, but Charles was subdued. Perhaps even distracted.

  Don’t start feeling sorry for him again, she warned herself, then studied him covertly as they walked out.

  His blond good looks would have qualified him for male-model status, but why, when she’d first started working here, she’d found them more appealing than the dark, brooding beauty of Nick’s features…

  You recognised the playboy in Nick—all senses on instant alert, she reminded herself.

  ‘…is looking for a new car, but it might take a while and as she lives out in the suburbs it seemed…’

  Belatedly, Phoebe realised Charles had been talking—presumably about Jess and her transportation problems.

  ‘But isn’t it putting you out?’ she asked. ‘How are you supposed to get around?’

  With great forbearance, she didn’t add, ‘and run after Anne?’

  She glanced towards him as she asked the question and saw a faint wash of colour creep into his cheeks.

  ‘She’ll bring the car back this evening,’ he said. ‘Actually, there are a few private sales of vehicles that sound all right advertised in the local paper. I offered to help her check them out this evening. With both of us there, one can drive the second car if she decides to buy something.’

  Phoebe felt a sense of déjà vu. This was exactly the kind of thing he’d done for Anne, often breaking an arrangement he’d already made with Phoebe to dance attendance on his ex-wife. Was he using Jess in retaliation to Phoebe’s behaviour towards Nick?

  She searched inside herself but could find no negative reaction to the thought.

  Surely she should care?

  It was Nick’s fault. He’d caused such disorder in her senses she could no longer think straight, let alone react!

  ‘You’re playing with fire, you know.’

  Once again, she had to haul herself out of deep introspection to focus on Charles’s conversation.

  ‘Driving you home?’ she quipped, although she knew damn well what he meant. Hadn’t she been telling herself much the same thing?

  ‘Fooling around with Nick. You’re not in his league, Phoebe. You don’t understand the rules of the games men like Nick play.’

  ‘I didn’t understand the rules of the game you played, Charles,’ she said bitterly, as every word he spoke punched into her like bullets, reinforcing what her common sense already knew but hurting nonetheless. ‘You acted as if you liked me, as if I was special to you, but never took it further—always holding me at arm’s length, putting me second to Anne.’

  Her accusation ended the conversation. She unlocked the car and climbed in, waited until he’d adjusted his seat belt, then drove out of the car park.

  Silence stretched between them, taut and uncomfortable.

  I’ll stop this nonsense with Nick, she decided, easing her way into a line of traffic held up at lights at an intersection ahead of them. Tell him I won’t go to the ball.

  ‘You might as well know I’ve asked Jess to accompany me to the ball. I assume you won’t be accompanying me.’

/>   First bullets, and now a slap in the face! Phoebe forgot all her good intentions.

  ‘Of course I won’t, I’m going with Nick,’ she said brightly, then the devil inside her prompted her to get a little of her own back. ‘Which reminds me, it’s late night shopping tonight. Do you mind if I drop you at the bus stop? I saw a to-die-for dress in Rochelle’s window and tonight might be the only chance I have to try it on. I’d be upset if I left it until the weekend and found it was sold.’

  If the murderous expression on her companion’s face was any guide, she’d scored!

  ‘Drop me at the shopping centre, I’ll get a cab,’ he said, through lips so thinned the words barely filtered through.

  ‘Great!’ Phoebe enthused. ‘I’m so sorry about this but I knew you’d understand.’

  Charles didn’t look particularly understanding.

  Enraged might better describe his expression.

  Perhaps she should have added ‘After all, you’ve done it to me often enough’ to make sure he got the point.

  She swung off the road and into the huge parking area of the suburban shopping centre they both used. It wasn’t far from here to Charles’s townhouse, a few dollars in a cab, but guilt pricked regardless.

  Until he got out when she stopped near the cab rank, then leaned back into the car to ask, ‘Would you have needed this desperate dash to the shops if you’d been going to the ball with me?’

  The door slammed shut before she could answer his taunt, and she had to relieve her anger with an unladylike oath only she could hear.

  Once parked, she walked towards the low-set building, pondering the question he’d asked. He wasn’t to know that she’d first seen the red dress when she’d been in the exclusive boutique, trying on the demure black one she’d bought to wear to the ball with Charles.

  ‘Isn’t it divine?’ Rochelle had enthused, but Phoebe had imagined Charles’s horrified reaction if she’d dared to wear such a shimmery, sexy, seductive slip of satin, and had shied away from it. However, it was exactly the kind of dress Nick’s gorgeous blondes would wear. Which was, she realised now, why Charles’s question had angered her! It was on a par with the ‘joining the ranks of Nick’s women’ remark he’d made earlier!

  But did she care?

  No way!

  Her pace increased, her feet rushing her towards the siren call of The Dress.

  Heavens, but her life was taking on some capital letters. The Dress. The Kiss.

  Heat simmered inside her at the memory. Memories!

  ‘Concentrate on The Dress today,’ she chided herself, then she smiled at the passer-by who’d caught her talking to herself.

  ‘Wow!’

  Rochelle’s reaction to a red-satin-clad Phoebe didn’t do much to alleviate the doubts she herself was having.

  ‘It’s very low,’ she told Rochelle, peering dubiously down at the expanse of white breast showing in the cleavage.

  ‘Only from your perspective because you’re looking straight down,’ Rochelle reminded her. ‘Stop trying to tug it higher and look at yourself in the mirror. That’s how other people will see you.’

  Phoebe steeled herself for another glance at her reflection.

  Nothing had changed since she’d last looked. There, opposite her, was a stranger—a sultry, sexy, curvy stranger in a dress that shrieked seduction.

  ‘I—I couldn’t wear it,’ she stuttered, as embarrassment for the person in the mirror made her blush. ‘It probably looks gorgeous on someone slim but it’s practically indecent on me.’

  ‘Nonsense!’ Rochelle told her. ‘It’s made for someone like you. Skinny women don’t do anything for dresses like this, In fact, I wouldn’t sell it to someone less, well, less well-endowed, shall we say?’

  The scorching heat in Phoebe’s cheeks told her, without looking, that her blush had deepened. Any minute now she’d be as red as the dress.

  ‘Special occasion?’ Rochelle asked, twitching at the skirt where a slit revealed a brave length of white thigh.

  Was it?

  ‘Yes!’ Phoebe heard herself saying, so much challenge in her voice she barely recognised it.

  ‘Well, that’s just the dress you want for it!’ Rochelle assured her. ‘You’ll knock him dead, whoever he is.’

  The words should have provided assurance, but instead confused Phoebe even more. It was to show Charles that she coveted the dress, wasn’t it?

  But the man dropping dead with delighted surprise in her mental image wasn’t Charles. And perhaps fainting would be a better analogy than dropping dead…

  She studied her image more dispassionately this time and accepted, finally, that buying this dress had nothing to do with Charles, and a whole lot to do with Nick.

  Though the danger implicit in playing games with Nick made her shiver at her own temerity.

  ‘I’ll take it,’ she said, turning resolutely away from the mirror in case she weakened.

  ‘You’ll need shoes,’ Rochelle reminded her, helping Phoebe with the zip. ‘I saw a divine pair of vivid red sandals with high spike heels in that little shoe shop next to the deli.’

  Phoebe took a deep breath. The dress was going to put pressure on her credit card. Add shoes, and her budget for the next three months would be blown. Did she really want to do this?

  Especially when instinct suggested the monetary price she’d pay for the dress and spike-heeled shoes might turn out to be the least of her worries.

  ‘I’ll wrap it?’ Rochelle said, when Phoebe slipped the dress out through the door of the changing room.

  Another deep breath—and an anticipatory thrill as she imagined Nick’s reaction to this very different Phoebe.

  ‘Yes,’ she said firmly, ‘and thanks for the tip about the sandals. I’ll go straight there to try them on.’

  She drove home eyeing the parcels on the passenger seat and wondering if she’d lost her mind. First dumping Charles out of the car when she’d already agreed to drive him home, and then, on a whim, buying not only a red dress but exotic red sandals as well.

  Sexy red sandals.

  The kind of footwear Mindy would wear.

  The thought of her father’s latest wife reminded her that she’d meant to visit him this evening, but by now they’d probably gone out to dinner. As far as she could remember, none of his wives—after her mother who’d been number one in timing but not importance—had ever been able to cook. Coupled with his dislike of having staff living in his house, it made dining out every night a necessity.

  Anyway, now she’d bought the dress, she’d have to keep up the game with Nick at least until the ball. Which meant it wasn’t quite so urgent to visit her father for a booster shot against men like him—and like Nick—who, for all their charm and flirty eyes, had an aura of primal danger about them.

  She’d see her father next week.

  Friday was day-surgery day. Phoebe, feeling bad about her behaviour towards Charles and determined not to let Nick tease him in the car park, arrived early.

  She unlocked the outer door and walked into their suite of rooms, flicking on lights as she went. There was a pile of paper on Sheree’s desk, Nick’s distinctive scrawl across them suggesting he’d worked late last night. Phoebe crossed to the desk at the back of the office which had been designated hers when she’d come to work in the unit.

  ‘The place was only set up for two doctors and it’s taken me years to get the funding for an extra pair of trained hands,’ Nick had explained apologetically when he’d pointed out she wouldn’t have an office.

  A single sheet of paper, centred neatly on her desk, was covered with the same writing.

  Phoebe dropped her handbag into the bottom filing drawer, all the while peering at the note. Not yet willing to read it, although that was stupid. Nick often left her work-related notes, and this was hardly likely to be anything else.

  In the end, she reached out and picked it up, telling herself she couldn’t possibly be suffering palpitations over a letter from he
r boss.

  ‘Phoebe,’ it began. ‘Charles is taking the day surgery today. Admin has promised a nurse, so could you do the morning ward round of our hospitalised patients then sit in on the specialists’ discussion? The visitors from the US will be there, and Malcolm wants someone from our unit to show the flag.’

  Phoebe glanced at the clock. Morning ward rounds began promptly at eight-thirty, but she had plenty of time. She booted up her computer and when the antiquated machine had decided it was ready for work she searched for the files of hospitalised patients.

  Although she regularly visited the clinic’s patients when they were undergoing chemotherapy as inpatients at the hospital, she needed to know exactly where they were up to in their treatment before joining the major ward round of the week.

  Sheree came in as she was sighing over Jackie Stubbings. Jackie had only been sixteen when the deadly cells from an undetected melanoma had spread through her body. Now, after extensive treatment and nearly three years in remission, she was back in hospital, with new tumours in her left lung and brain.

  ‘How’s she doing?’ Sheree asked, seeing the teenager’s file on Phoebe’s screen.

  ‘Radiation has reduced the size of the tumours. I guess the specialists will have new scans to show today. After that they’ll have to decide whether to operate on one or both tumours, when and how, then how much chemo and radiotherapy she’s going to need.’

  ‘Poor kid!’ Sheree said. ‘It’s cases like hers make me wish I worked somewhere else. I know we get all excited about the patients where we do find trouble in time to stop it spreading, but knowing once it’s gone as far as it has with Jackie it’s practically hopeless…It makes me want to get out!’

  ‘I know,’ Phoebe agreed. ‘But we’re saving far more than we’re losing. Look at it from that angle.’

  Sheree shot her a sardonic look.

  ‘You’re a veritable ray of sunshine today. Coming to your senses about Charles has obviously done you some good.’

  Phoebe wasn’t surprised to hear that Sheree knew of the situation between herself and Charles, but the ‘coming to your senses’ phrase puzzled her. She was about to ask what Sheree had meant when Charles walked in and the moment was lost.