The Marriage Gamble

by Meredith Webber

  She was rambling, but that was only because Mike still had hold of her and, though totally impersonal, his touch was destroying whatever remnants of equilibrium she’d retained after this most confusing and emotional day.

  ‘But you are?’

  Jacinta frowned up at him.

  Are what? Couldn’t he hear?

  ‘Here after hours?’ he clarified, a slight pucker of the skin between his eyebrows threatening imminent disapproval.

  ‘Not often. Paperwork. You know.’

  She tried for airy nonchalance and would have been more successful if he hadn’t still been holding her and she’d been able to step away from him—wave her arms about a bit.

  Suspicion warred with a feeling Mike didn’t want to name. Calling it attraction would be ridiculous. He was intrigued by the woman, nothing more. And paperwork was a reasonable reason to work late—so why did she seem so wary about admitting it?

  And he should let go of her, no matter how warm and velvety to the touch her skin might seem.

  He forced his fingers loose.

  ‘Sorry,’ he muttered when he saw red marks on her arms where his hands had been. ‘I keep grabbing you, but it’s self-preservation—fear you might accidentally step on my toe.’

  He hoped he didn’t sound as if he was mumbling—the words had seemed a bit uncertain in his head.

  ‘That’s OK,’ Jacinta said, so sweetly he wondered if he’d imagined the virago. ‘Why don’t you go on up the steps so there’s no possibility of an accident? I’ll stay here, set the alarm, lock up and then follow. It is a narrow stairway.’

  Was she making excuses for him or teasing him? Mike wasn’t sure, but the suggestion was sensible, particularly as it removed him from Jacinta’s immediate vicinity on a temporary basis at least. He climbed the stairs, aware the dim light was all the entrance offered. He added ‘Better lighting’ to the list he kept forgetting to write down.

  Maybe he was losing it.

  He could see the headlines now. BUSINESS MAGNATE BURNT OUT AT THIRTY-EIGHT! CLINIC EMPIRE COLLAPSES.

  ‘I don’t suppose you know who Karen is?’ he said gloomily, when Jacinta joined him and they turned towards the wine bar.

  ‘Karen in your office? The one who’s just had the baby? Actually, I popped in to see her for a minute while I was at the hospital. Saw the baby, too! He’s a gorgeous little boy.’

  She sighed as if seeing a baby was the most blissful occurrence in the world.

  ‘Does she handle your emails? Is that why you asked?’

  Jacinta stopped walking and turned to frown at him.

  ‘Oh, no, that can’t be right. I know she’d pass on anything I sent to her. She’s been to Abbott Road herself—when her husband jammed his thumb in the car door and she came to pick him up because he couldn’t drive. Fainted at the sight of blood, poor man. Karen was sure he’d pass out during the delivery, but apparently he came through like a trouper.’

  Mike folded his lips tightly together and gritted his teeth so he didn’t say anything stupid, but if he’d been disconcerted earlier about some of the things he didn’t know about his employees—about his business, in fact—he was now furious. Here was this woman, employed to be a doctor, nothing else, prattling on about someone who worked in his office, miles from the city, as if they were second-best friends. She not only knew who Karen was, but apparently knew Karen’s entire family!

  If he could just place this Karen…

  He closed his eyes and tried to visualise the staff in the big room he occasionally walked through on his way to see Barry or Chris or Jill. Could he see anyone in the picture with a bulging stomach?

  ‘Yow! Hell!’

  He was vaguely aware of Jacinta starting as he yelled, but the pain in his toe was so excruciating he couldn’t worry about startling someone. He slumped onto the wrought-iron seat someone had placed practically in the middle of the mall, its legs at such an angle that any unsuspecting passer-by could stub his toe on it.

  ‘You must have seen it!’ Jacinta said, and he could hardly tell her about the red haze of anger, or about closing his eyes as he’d tried to picture Karen.

  ‘Well, I didn’t,’ he snapped, his hands clutching his slipper while the fire in his toe diminished slightly.

  ‘Did you take another tablet?’

  Of course he hadn’t. He’d taken one at two, then one at four, but he’d been so busy, covering chairs, that six o’clock had come and gone.

  ‘Are they in your pocket? You can take one now. I can slip back to the clinic and get you some water. Then you should go home. Going to the wine bar was a silly idea when you’re in so much pain. What if someone trod on it?’

  Going home was a sensible suggestion but he knew if he didn’t get answers to at least some of the questions this unusual day had thrown up, he would go mad.

  He didn’t need all the answers, just some.

  He wouldn’t ask anything more about Karen. He wasn’t about to admit to not knowing one of his own office staff. However, there were questions about Fizzy and the boys, and about Jacinta’s deliberately offhand reply to his question about her after-hours activities and, now he thought about it, he wouldn’t mind knowing if Adam Lockyer was her boyfriend.

  ‘We’ll go to the wine bar,’ he said. Telling himself his mind could conquer pain, he put his foot gingerly to the ground and tested it by putting weight on it.

  ‘Actually, it’s no worse than it was before,’ he said, surprised into admitting it. ‘Apparently it’s only when it hits something that it really hurts.’

  Jacinta’s look suggested she didn’t believe a word he was saying, but she didn’t argue with him, though she did offer a hand to help him to his feet.

  And he took it, not because he needed it but because he’d remembered just how small and fragile her hand had felt in his the previous evening, and he wanted to know if he’d imagined it.

  He hadn’t, so he kept hold of it, pleased she didn’t try to pull it away.

  Walking hand in hand with him is not a good idea, Jacinta told herself, but she was tired and it had been an emotional day, and to have someone to hold her hand was very comforting.

  Or it would have been, if the hand holding hers wasn’t causing other problems—offering things that went far, far beyond comfort.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THEY reached the wine bar, where Marco greeted Jacinta so warmly she thought maybe she didn’t look as disreputable as she’d imagined she did.

  ‘And Mike,’ he said, putting out both hands to clasp Mike’s with warm enthusiasm. ‘So many years we don’t see you here. You and Lauren, you do all your courting here and then don’t come back. She is well, your lovely lady?’

  Jacinta did another uh-oh, though mentally this time, and looked at Mike to see how he’d handle it.

  ‘Very well,’ Mike said smoothly, ‘though she’s no longer mine. We parted ways six years ago, Marco.’

  Was Marco thrown by this information?

  No way.

  In fact, he seemed pleased, turning to beam at Jacinta.

  ‘So now he comes with you, little one. That is good, no?’

  ‘We’ve been working down at the clinic—painting the walls in case you couldn’t guess—and need to eat, Marco. That’s the extent of the “with me” thing!’

  ‘You didn’t have to sound quite so negative about being with me,’ Mike complained, when Marco had bustled off to fix drinks and get a blackboard menu for them.

  ‘Considering it’s Marco, I probably didn’t sound negative enough. I don’t know what he was like back when you were courting your wife, but I only have to nod at a man I know, usually a patient, and he’s trying to marry me off to him. Marco’s a born matchmaker, and anyone wanting to steer clear of attachments should steer clear of him.’

  She slipped onto a stool, which made her feel slightly taller, but she’d need to be ten feet to be able to handle this situation with anything even close to aplomb. First she’d let him hold her
hand—hadn’t made the slightest effort to withdraw it—and now Marco was making suggestive remarks.

  And Michael Trent was going to start asking questions she didn’t want to have to answer.

  Mike studied her for a moment. She’d slipped onto the stool with the smooth movements of a woman at ease with her body—and with the image she portrayed. She’d spoken to Marco with genuine affection, but no hint of flirtation. In fact, there was no artifice at all in Jacinta—or none that he’d observed.

  She didn’t even appear to be perturbed by the silence which had fallen between them. Certainly hadn’t rushed to fill it. Once again he had to search back through his mind to find what they’d been talking about, but when he replayed her words in his head, a new question arose. One which, for some unfathomable reason, bothered him.

  ‘Why do you want to steer clear of attachments?’ he asked.

  She turned to him with a hint of amusement in her dark eyes, and he suspected he could hear a gurgle of laughter in her voice as she replied.

  ‘I was thinking about you when I said steer clear of Marco. I did some research on the big boss before I found you near the wart painting, and just about every article I read made it very clear that, as far as you were concerned, one marriage was enough for a lifetime.’

  ‘When you consider the high cost of divorce and the damage extensive settlement payments can do to a business, it should be enough for anyone,’ he told her—lectured her maybe—but, considering the disruption this woman had already caused in his life, it was best she understood his feelings on marriage.

  ‘I’m not blaming Lauren,’ he continued, pleased he could now—finally—discuss his divorce in calm, rational tones. ‘She encouraged me to expand into more than one clinic and was entitled to her share, but paying her out put a severe strain on the company’s viability for a few years. When you’ve worked for years to establish financial security, not only for yourself and your own family but for a lot of friends and colleagues and their families, you have to think carefully before putting it all in jeopardy.’

  ‘So you can’t afford a new wife in case things go wrong again? Isn’t that rather a defeatist attitude? Wouldn’t you be better working on the assumption that next time it will work out?’

  Mike frowned at his companion.

  ‘Why should it?’ he demanded, and was going to point out that just as success could breed success, so failure could breed failure, when he caught sight of his companion’s ringless fingers. ‘And you’re what—twenty-six, -seven? And apparently not committed. So what gives you the right to lecture me on marriage?’

  ‘I’m thirty and at least I’m honest enough to admit I’m too involved with my work to have time for a relationship,’ she retorted. ‘Right now, with everything that’s happening, it wouldn’t be fair to any partner, who’d only get the scraps of my attention.’ She hesitated, then the brown eyes looked candidly into his and she added, ‘Though, to be honest, there’s more to it than that. My parents had a wonderful marriage—the love they shared was obvious to everyone. It shone and glittered like crystals in sunlight. So, somehow, I grew up expecting it would happen to me and I waited for it—for the gut-wrenching, heart-seizing, breath-taking advent of love. It never came. I didn’t ever feel that way about a man so, rather than settle for second best…’

  ‘You threw yourself into good works.’

  The soft eyes hardened.

  ‘I did no such thing. I just happen to believe there’s more to medicine than handing out pills and potions. And that doctors in general practice are in the perfect position to help with community problems.’

  She sighed, and her voice softened again as she added, ‘There’s so much to do, Mike, to help kids like Dean and Will and Fizzy, and that’s just one area of concern.’

  Once again he heard the commitment in her voice, and wondered where, along the line, he’d lost his own inner fire. He’d found challenges in expansion, in diversifying, but, as today had proved, in so doing he’d lost touch with where and what he’d started. Lost touch with the people who worked for him. Was that why the fire was gone?

  He was pondering this when Marco arrived with a light beer for him and a glass of wine for Jacinta, and began his explanation of the featured dishes.

  By the time they’d ordered, Mike had forgotten what they’d been discussing—again—mainly because even while deciding between a smoked salmon and avocado sauce or a tomato, olive and anchovy sauce on her penne, Jacinta had poked that little tip of pink tongue between her teeth, and he’d had a sudden flight of fancy about that tongue-tip touching his—perhaps exploring other parts of his body as well.

  You don’t get involved with staff, he reminded himself, so even if she was your type, which she isn’t, she’d be off limits. He tried harder to recall the conversation, then remembered an earlier unfinished one and grasped it.

  ‘Fizzy and the boys. You were going to tell me more about them.’

  ‘Deliberate change in conversation, Dr Trent?’ she said. ‘A switch to something less provocative?’

  Provocative? Damn it all! What had they been discussing?

  ‘However, since you ask, I met Will not long after I started work at the clinic. I’d been working late one night and when I went out to my car I found the security lights weren’t working and I all but fell over him.’

  ‘He was sleeping in the back yard? In the car park of the clinic? He could have been run over if someone had driven in late at night.’

  Jacinta sipped at her wine, then smiled at him.

  ‘He wasn’t sleeping there, but looking for someone he thought might be using the place to doss down. He’s got a very over-developed sense of responsibility and apparently one of the younger kids hadn’t turned up at the shelter that night and Will had gone out looking for him.’

  Mike shook his head, unable to assimilate the thought of these youngsters, many of them still children, fending for themselves on the street.

  ‘So I helped him look.’

  She made it sound as if it was a normal thing to do—to walk around back alleys with a street kid she’d only just met! Mike was about to protest, when she continued.

  ‘We went on foot first, all around the city centre, then took my car and drove around the parks and outer edges of the city. He was near a bar down the end of Ransome Street, prepared to sell himself for a feed.’

  ‘Or drugs?’

  Jacinta nodded, the smile gone and a look of such sadness on her face Mike reached out and rested his hand on her shoulder.

  ‘Or drugs,’ she admitted. ‘Twelve years old and already addicted. He died a couple of weeks later. By then Will and I were friends, and Dean had joined us in our nightly patrols. They were both clean—free of drugs—and Dean admired the way Will took care not only of the younger kids but of older ones who needed help.’

  ‘They’re how old, those two boys?’

  She smiled again but shifted slightly so that his hand slid away.

  ‘Dean’s fifteen, Will fourteen. They’re both small for their age.’

  She didn’t have to explain why. Malnourishment was the most obvious cause of a child failing to thrive.

  ‘And do you still patrol the streets with them?’

  Jacinta studied him for a moment. Did he really want to know or was he just making conversation?

  ‘Sometimes,’ she admitted. ‘They’re more organised now and have a roster of people who help. Volunteers can phone the different youth shelters to see if any of their regulars haven’t turned up. The shelters share information better, so the volunteers know where to look. Will and Dean still take their turns and that’s how they found Fizzy. They were looking for someone else.’

  ‘But overnight shelter isn’t enough for these kids!’ Mike protested, and Jacinta beamed at him, diverting his mind, momentarily, from the explanation.

  ‘Of course it isn’t. It’s a stop-gap measure, but it’s a starting point as well. The shelters have heaps of information they give
out. Kids who want to get off the street can find out about the help available. The next stage, for them, is permanent accommodation, but it’s hard to organise that when you’re living on a minimum youth allowance.’

  Mike shook his head. His meal looked delicious but he knew he wouldn’t taste it, his mind too full of what Jacinta had forced him to consider to recognise messages from his palate.

  ‘So what’s the answer?’

  ‘Working together,’ she said promptly. ‘The government, the churches and other various charities do what they can, but until recently the whole system lacked cohesion. Some shelters didn’t know others existed, and most of the kids had no idea of the range of options available to them.’

  Talking hadn’t put Jacinta off her food. She was eating her penne—with the smoked salmon sauce—with obvious enjoyment. Mike ate a little of his seafood lasagne, then had to ask.

  ‘So what happened recently?’

  She shot him a look he’d already seen—guilt and doubt combined with a small spark of hope. Then she smiled as if that might make everything OK.

  Which it very nearly did.

  ‘We started a thing called, for want of something smart or clever, “Optional Extras”. I worked through government funding agencies and charities to contact all the youth services in and around the city, while Will and Dean scouted through the street kids for those they knew wanted to get their lives together.’

  She paused but this time the smile was far more doubtful.

  ‘We actually had the first meeting at the clinic—after hours, of course.’

  Luminous brown eyes were fastened on his face, pleading with him to understand, so he knew darned well what was coming.

  ‘We still meet there,’ she admitted, and paused, waiting for a reaction.

  Mike said nothing, wondering just what else might be going on at Abbott Road, then was distracted by the way the colour of her eyes almost exactly matched the colour of her hair.

  ‘I tried to contact you to get permission but, as I think I explained last night, it’s probably easier to speak to the Queen of England than to get through to you.’