The Marriage Gamble

by Meredith Webber

  ‘That girl’s pregnant!’

  She’d been so absorbed in her calculations she hadn’t heard Michael’s—Mike’s—approach. Now she turned and was disconcerted to find him so close, his craggy face with its sharply delineated slashes of cheekbone and stubbornly jutting chin within kissing distance, if she leaned just a little forward.

  Kissing distance! You’re out of your mind.

  ‘Yes!’ she said, recalling what he’d said but too bewildered by the kissing thing to expand on her agreement.

  ‘She’s only a child!’

  ‘She’s thirteen.’

  ‘That’s only twelve months older than my daughter.’

  Jacinta thought back to the biographical notes on Michael Trent, which she’d read before approaching him. Daughter, Elizabeth, by first—and so far only—wife, Lauren. Now Lauren Court, having divorced this hunk for some unfathomable reason and remarried, this time to someone even wealthier than her first husband.

  But knowing all this didn’t help. He was looking at her as if he expected her to say something, and her mind, after throwing up the fairly useless information about the man’s daughter, had shut down.

  ‘It happens,’ she said weakly, professional discretion protecting Fizzy’s story.

  ‘She’s gone into one of the consulting rooms.’ Mike had moved closer, no doubt so he could continue to speak softly, but his proximity was worsening the problem with her brain. Particularly as he was now close enough for her to see some blue, or maybe it was green, in eyes she’d originally labelled grey.

  ‘It’s my consulting room. I told her to go in there. She’s tired, and she might have a sleep if she lies down on the examination table.’

  ‘But you’ve got drugs in there—you told me so yourself. And instruments.’

  ‘Fizzy won’t touch anything,’ Jacinta protested, as his suspicion released her from the spell of closeness and multicoloured eyes.

  ‘Oh, no?’

  The disbelief in the question fired Jacinta’s anger.

  ‘You’re the boss! Go and see for yourself if you don’t believe me,’ she snapped. ‘Although almost as much as a good night’s sleep, that young woman needs to know someone trusts her, and you poking your head in could destroy all the weeks of work I’ve done in convincing her to trust me.’

  Mike shook his head and looked down at the fiery little creature who was almost daring him to check on the teenager. There was another word—termagant—he thought would fit Jacinta Ford. He wasn’t sure exactly what it meant, but it seemed to suit. Here she was, five feet four if she was an inch, and one of his employees, glaring up at him with such defiance he was tempted to…

  Laugh! That was the word he needed, though two words— ‘kiss her’ —had popped first into his head.

  He returned resolutely to his painting.

  Kiss her?

  Last night she’d appeared reasonably attractive—neat—but today? With a knitted beanie of some kind covering her shiny hair and paint smudged liberally across her unremarkable features, she certainly wasn’t a candidate for kissing. But, given the thought had surfaced, he’d better stay away—put distance between them—in case it should recur and he give in to it.

  Kissing her was as ridiculous as spending a perfectly good Sunday painting the walls of this waiting room. For Pete’s sake! If he’d wanted the place painted, he had contractors who’d have done it with no mess, no fuss and at practically no cost, when you considered it wasn’t that big a room.

  And if he sold the building, it would be demolished, so the painting was a wasted effort.

  ‘It’s, like, a good place. Like, you know, safe.’

  The young man—Dean—who’d been delegated to help him work around the doors mumbled the words in what Mike recognised, from contact with the offspring of his friends, as typical male teenage-speak.

  But recognising the dialect didn’t help him understand the content.

  ‘Safe? Safe for you?’

  ‘Nah.’

  Mike glanced towards the lad, certain there must be more to come, but Dean was focussed on his work, frowning in concentration as he carefully brought paint right up to the architrave around the door.

  ‘Who, then?’ Mike asked, when he decided he had to know more.

  ‘Kids like Fizzy. Lots of kids.’

  Kids? This Dean had to be what—as old as Libby? He wasn’t as tall as she was, but boys often developed later.

  Intrigued as well as puzzled, Mike persisted.

  ‘But not for you?’

  ‘Nah!’

  Dean squatted down to take his brush-strokes to floor level, and Mike waited, sure there’d be more this time.

  He wasn’t disappointed.

  ‘I don’t get sick.’

  Ah! So Abbott Road had gained some kind of kudos among young people and was considered ‘safe’. Safe from what?

  Police raids?

  Was employee number four hundred and seventy-two handing out more than gout tablets to her patients? He glanced around, thinking he’d better ask Jacinta right now, but she’d disappeared.

  ‘Where did Dr Ford go?’

  Dean glanced around, as if checking it was him Mike was questioning.

  ‘Jacinta? Dunno.’

  She couldn’t be in one of the consulting rooms as she’d have had to walk past him and Dean. Maybe she’d gone out the back—but he could hardly go after her out there and hover outside the washroom, waiting for her to come out.

  He added another note to his mental list, then realised he should have been making it a written one. Apart from ‘Who is Karen?’, he couldn’t remember a thing he had on it.

  Jacinta parked her car behind the building and rested her head on the steering-wheel. Finding some upholstery tacks had been a good excuse to escape for a while, but now she had to go back in and pretend the presence of her ultimate boss, to whom she’d been unforgivably rude several times, wasn’t affecting her in any way.

  She could waste a little more time finding a hammer. There was a neat pack of tools in the boot of her car—something the car manufacturers had kindly provided for her. A toolkit would have a hammer.

  Of course, it didn’t, but it did have a fairly hefty-looking implement she assumed was for loosening wheel nuts, should she ever be struck by an urge to change a car tyre.

  If held in the right way, it would make a reasonable hammer.

  ‘Well, that certainly makes a better weapon than a paint-roller, but I thought, as I was helping you out on this project, you might have given up the physical attack option.’

  The cry she let out was more a squeak of terror than anything else. Coming from the sunlit yard into the gloom of the passage, she’d failed to see Mike, then his voice had scraped along already raw nerves.

  ‘Don’t do that!’ she said, brandishing the tool at him. ‘Creeping up on people! I could have died of fright.’

  ‘It was hardly creeping up as I was in front of you,’ Mike pointed out with faultless logic. Then he took in the plastic bag she was carrying and peered more closely at her face. ‘Have you been out? To a shop? Looking like that?’

  Jacinta bit back a groan, stiffened her spine and glared at her boss.

  ‘I needed some upholstery tacks,’ she said in her snootiest manner. ‘And looks are really very unimportant in my scale of priorities.’

  Having delivered this cutting rejoinder, she was about to march past him when another thought struck her.

  ‘Not that you’re in any position to comment on other people’s appearances.’ She did a long and very obvious survey of him, top to toe—bare and swollen—then back up again, over paint-spotted trousers, paint-splashed chest—she really must stop looking at that chest—to smudged face and…

  Smiling grey eyes?

  His eyes were smiling at her?

  And was that slight twitch of his lips the beginnings of a lip smile? The real thing?

  ‘Pax?’ he said, using a word she hadn’t heard since she’d been at s
chool. He held out his hand.

  ‘Pax,’ she agreed, but one hand had the bag of tacks and the other the wrench, so all she could do was smile right back at him.

  ‘Jacinta, could you come? Fizzy’s sick.’

  The alarm in Will’s voice made her forget smiles and she rushed past Mike, heading for her consulting room.

  Fizzy was indeed being sick, but the blood spreading across the sheet on the examination table was far more worrying.

  Dean had found a stainless-steel basin and, though white-faced with horror and probably his own nausea, was grimly holding it in front of Fizzy as she retched and moaned.

  ‘Spontaneous abortion,’ Jacinta muttered to Mike, who’d followed her into the room. ‘It will be quicker to drive her to the hospital than wait for an ambulance. Could you take Dean outside while I do what I can here? Then I’ll get you and the boys to carry her out to the car.’

  Mike reacted to the urgency in her voice, touching Dean lightly on the shoulder then guiding him towards the door.

  ‘Go and tip that out and rinse out the bowl. She might need it in the car,’ he told the still shaken lad.

  He turned to Will.

  ‘I’ll drive so Jacinta can look after Fizzy. Can you two guys keep going with the painting?’

  He must be mad—he knew that. He’d figured out by now the three were most likely street kids. And to leave two of them here, unsupervised, in a medical clinic? The doors to the reception area and the other two consulting rooms might be locked, but these kids could probably pick a lock faster than he could use a key.

  ‘Mike, we’re ready. My car’s out the back—that’s the easiest way.’

  Jacinta’s voice reminded him of the first priority—getting Fizzy to the hospital.

  ‘I can carry her on my own,’ he added to Will. ‘Could you go on ahead and open the back door of the car? Get the basin from Dean on the way. I’ll get back to finish the painting as soon as I can.’

  Fizzy was swathed in a coat and a blanket but still shivering from either blood loss or shock.

  ‘I’ve started a saline drip but didn’t want to give her anything else until a specialist has seen her.’

  Jacinta was holding the bag of saline in her hand and, though undoubtedly the scruffiest doctor he’d seen in some time, looked efficient and in control.

  ‘I’ll walk beside you so we don’t pull out the catheter.’

  He lifted the girl, so light she might have been an infant, and made his way swiftly across the waiting room, down the passage and out into the yard. Both boys were hovering anxiously by the car.

  ‘She’ll be OK,’ Jacinta assured them. ‘She’ll probably lose the baby but when this happens it usually means there was something wrong with it and it wouldn’t have survived anyway. It’s not something doctors can predict and it’s nobody’s fault. All we have to think about is getting Fizzy well again.’

  She glanced towards Mike who’d settled Fizzy in the back seat of her car. He’d think her totally irresponsible if she left Will and Dean on their own in the clinic, yet if she suggested they leave because she had to lock the place she’d be destroying a lot of the trust she’d so painstakingly built up between them.

  Indecision joined her urgency and she felt a momentary rush of panic.

  ‘I told the lads I’d get back to give them a hand as soon as I’ve dropped you off.’

  Mike’s words were so unexpected, so startling, that Jacinta suspected her jaw had dropped.

  ‘In you get,’ he added. ‘We’ve got to get going.’

  He walked around to the driver’s door, held out his hand for the car keys and nodded to the boys.

  ‘Shut and lock the back door behind you when you go back in,’ he said to them. ‘You don’t know what weirdos might be hanging around these back alleys.’

  He started the car and reversed expertly out of the back yard.

  ‘I assume we’re going to the Royal Women’s,’ he said.

  Fizzy protested as Jacinta agreed with the destination.

  ‘We have to go there, love,’ she said gently, wrapping her arm around Fizzy and holding her tight. ‘You need proper care, care that I can’t give you. You’ll have an ultrasound and the specialist will check what’s happening. If they can’t save the baby, you may need a minor operation to clean things out. I can’t do it in the surgery, Fizzy, but I’ll be there for you and you can come to my place when you’re ready to come out. We’ll give that as your address. I’ll say you’re my ward. We’ll work it out.’

  She was so intent on offering comfort to the distraught girl that she failed to consider what effect her words were having on their chauffeur. But though he’d said he was going back to the clinic to help the boys, when Fizzy had been taken to Theatre and Jacinta had completed all the booking formalities, he was right there, in the waiting room.

  Waiting!

  ‘You’ll say she’s your ward? You’ve given false information to the hospital authorities? Are you mad?’

  The deep voice, though muted to a gruff whisper, was still powerful and Jacinta glanced around.

  ‘Hush!’ she muttered at him. ‘Anyway, you should be gone. Those boys are on their own and the painting will never get finished. I’ll walk out to the car with you and explain.’

  He muttered something that sounded like, ‘You’d better,’ but Jacinta was too busy working out what she could and couldn’t tell to take much notice of the threat.

  ‘It wasn’t false information.’ That was obviously the best place to start if she wanted to rid him of the suspicion she was a liar as well as a fool. ‘I told them to put me down as the contact person and that I’d take responsibility for her.’

  ‘Why?’

  They were outside the main doors of the hospital now, and Jacinta was surprised to see the sun still high in the sky. The day seemed to have been going on for ever.

  ‘Because she doesn’t want any contact with her own family and, as she’s a minor, the hospital would be obliged to make an effort to get in touch with them. But now I’ve gone guarantor, so to speak, the hospital won’t bother—or they shouldn’t. Not for a day or so and by that time she’ll be out.’

  She saw Mike frown and knew he was about to ask why again.

  ‘Look, I’ve got to get back in there in case Fizzy needs me, and you told the boys you’d be back. There’s a back-door key on my car key ring.’ She scrabbled in her handbag which she’d grabbed as they’d left the consulting room. ‘Here’s ten dollars. Get them some junk food for lunch, would you? They’re probably starving and won’t be able to leave the place because they haven’t got keys to get back in.’

  She thrust the note into his hand and fled.

  Mike watched her disappear back through the front entrance. He fancied he could still see the flashes of yellow paint on her jeans long after she’d disappeared into the gloom. Him with no shirt and no shoe and her covered in paint, they’d made a good pair as they’d walked into A and E.

  A good pair?

  He looked down at the ten-dollar note she’d shoved at him. He had the fanciful notion he’d been sucked into a whirlpool, spinning around and around in a situation over which he had absolutely no control.

  Which was ridiculous, because if there was one thing he prided himself on, it was control. Control of his life, his business, his emotions.

  Though maybe he couldn’t be one hundred per cent certain about the business part of that statement right now, but that was because he’d been so involved in setting up the medical site on the internet and going into all the ramifications of providing a medical service by remote control.

  But because he was a controlled kind of person, he could soon fill in the missing gaps.

  Thus assured, slightly, he made his way back to Jacinta’s car, folded himself into a seat built for midgets and tried to work out where he’d find a junk-food outlet. Preferably one with a drive-through service counter so he didn’t have to extricate himself from the car an extra time.

/>   CHAPTER FOUR

  THE sun had finally gone down when Jacinta left the hospital. Fizzy was resting comfortably and had been persuaded to stay in overnight, but only after Jacinta had rung the clinic and asked Mike to despatch Will and Dean to the hospital.

  Now that the two boys were there, and had promised to stay until visiting hours were over, Jacinta was free to finish the job she’d started, however many hours ago it had been. At least Mike wouldn’t be there. According to the boys, they’d completed the painting then he’d driven them to the hospital in her car. He’d left it in the parking area with instructions to the boys to give her the keys, and had taken a cab, presumably back to his own car and then home.

  She found the car, drove back to town and parked behind the clinic, glad of the security light her arrival activated. Unlocking the back door, she snapped on the lights in the passage and disarmed the alarm. The smell of paint was overwhelming. Hopefully it might dissipate a little by morning, or nauseous patients would regret coming in.

  Another key opened the door to the waiting room, but this time she didn’t need to switch on any lights. They were on and what they revealed made her catch her breath in surprise.

  ‘I’m glad you came back. The security firm didn’t give me a key for any internal doors so if I needed a bathroom before I finished, I was going to have to find one up in the mall.’

  Mike was at the far end of the room, an upended chair balanced on the floor in front of him.

  ‘Y-you came b-back?’ Jacinta stuttered. ‘Why?’

  ‘Same reason you did, I suppose. To finish the job.’ He waved his hand around in the air. ‘What do you think?’

  But Jacinta was still taking in the man rather than the room. Thankfully, he was once again wearing a shirt.

  And an old slipper with the toe cut out on his left foot.

  Guilt smote her!

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t give you more tablets!’ she said. ‘If you’d kept taking them it would have been feeling better by now.’