The Marriage Gamble

by Meredith Webber

  They rounded the corner into the lane, lit here and there but still sufficiently shadowed that a couple of steps took them into a patch of darkness.

  ‘Thank heavens,’ Mike whispered, turning her so their bodies faced each other. ‘I’d never have made it back to the cars.’

  And with a hunger that matched what she’d heard in his voice, he put his arms around her, drew her close and bent to kiss her.

  Lights like fireworks exploded in her head, and she clung to him, exploring his mouth, his tongue, his cheeks, his chin and neck with kisses eager for as much sensory knowledge of him as she could gain through lips on skin.

  ‘Bloody hell, Jacinta Ford, do you have any idea what you do to me?’

  Actually, being so close, she had a pretty good idea. She just couldn’t find the breath to speak so once again she nodded, then realised she shouldn’t have—much too forward when she barely knew the man—so she shook her head, before allowing him to put his arm around her shoulders and steer her down the lane.

  What on earth was she doing?

  ‘No, it’s no good!’ she mumbled. ‘Apart from anything else, I just don’t have time for an affair right now. I’ve got too much on, with “Optional Extras” still getting off the ground, the new house about to open and the “Kids Helping Kids” thing starting to happen…’

  She must have betrayed her agitation in more than the words for once again he eased her to a standstill and turned her into his arms, restarting the fireworks with his demanding kiss.

  But why give in to those demands?

  The whisper was so weak Jacinta managed to avoid it, and plunged into the volcano once again.

  It took for ever, but they reached the car park eventually, and the sensor lights flooded their two cars, the sudden brilliance making Jacinta pull away from Mike’s body—but only slightly. If she pulled away too far she’d probably collapse, given the way her knees were trembling.

  ‘We’ll go in my car,’ he announced, speaking for the first time since he’d asked his question.

  ‘Go where?’ Jacinta asked, though what she should have said was no.

  ‘To your place, of course,’ he said, while his car flashed lights and made a noise to indicate he’d unlocked it. ‘I’d take you to mine,’ he added, opening the passenger side door while retaining his firm grip on Jacinta, ‘but my father lives with me and he never goes to bed before midnight and he’d be sure to ask questions that would probably embarrass you.’

  In what way? Jacinta wanted to ask, but the ‘to your place’ thing had better be sorted out first.

  ‘I live at home—I mean, where I’ve always lived—with my mother.’

  Mike stared at her in disbelief.

  ‘You still live at home? With your mother?’It was the incredulity that did it. ‘Well, you still live with your father,’ Jacinta snapped at him, ducking out from under his encircling arm and marching across to unlock her own car. Though, of course, she needed keys and they were somewhere in the bottom of her handbag. If she could only train herself to put them in the same compartment every time! ‘Bloody hell!’

  ‘My sentiments exactly. In fact, I used it first!’

  She looked up from her scrabbling to find Mike standing behind her, and the funny little smile playing around his lips made her ache to nestle back into his arms—though in a less sexual way than she’d nestled earlier.

  ‘I suppose it is funny,’ she admitted, finally finding the keys and unlocking the car door. ‘Though the fact that we both have inconvenient parents might be for the best. It wasn’t ever going to be a good idea, was it, Mike?’

  Sadness washed away the last flickerings of the heat of her desire.

  She’s right, Mike’s head told his body. In fact, a relationship with her would be darned inconvenient.

  And very short term, given his accountant’s news about selling Abbott Road and Jacinta’s likely reaction to it.

  ‘I’m going back to my real job tomorrow and, though we didn’t get around to discussing your ideas on cost-cutting, I’ve spoken to Carmel about running the place with just two doctors. She thinks it will work, if only on a temporary basis.’

  Jacinta’s head dipped forward, and the silky hair swung down to hide whatever expression was on her face. But the gesture spoke of disappointment—because of the downsizing of the clinic or because she wouldn’t be seeing him the following day?

  He reached out and brushed his hand across her hair.

  ‘I’ll phone you,’ he found himself promising, ‘and I’ll also make sure every one of my “minions” as you call them, knows you’re to be put through to me at any time.’

  Mike slipped his fingers under her chin and tilted her head up so she had to look at him.

  ‘This isn’t goodbye,’ he added softly, then, ignoring the warnings of consequences which his head was yelling at him, he bent and kissed her gently on the lips.

  Felt the tremble in the so soft flesh and heard the whisper of a sigh before she kissed him back.

  ‘My father might have gone to bed,’ he muttered gruffly, when she eased herself away from his body, leaving him feel more frustrated than he’d been through all his recent months—years by now—of celibacy.

  But Jacinta was having none of him.

  ‘Even if it was a good idea—which it isn’t—it’s too soon. But now you know I work for you, maybe I’ll see you around some time.’

  Her small shoulders lifted in a slight shrug, the movement reminding him how fragile her bones had felt when he’d grasped those shoulders earlier. A small, neat, compact package, but with a fire that he suspected had already singed him.

  He touched his finger to her nose.

  ‘Goodnight, then, little brown mouse.’

  Ha! Tempted out a smile!

  ‘Goodnight, boss!’ she responded, getting her own back on him.

  He held the car door for her, closed it, then waited while she started the engine, backed out and drove swiftly up the lane. The temptation to follow her—to perhaps catch a glimpse of her as she alighted from her car—was so strong it shocked him back to reality.

  She was right. Getting involved was not a good idea. Virtually impossible, given both their circumstances. Jacinta Ford was not the kind of woman one could take to a hotel room for a quick couple of hours, neither did he think she’d take kindly to him setting her up in an apartment somewhere.

  But as he drove home his mind ranged through the apartments he owned. Places he’d bought as investments.

  He could say he’d shifted into one of them…

  If one happened to be unleased at present…

  Made a mental note not only to check out investment apartment leases but to take more control of his own affairs.

  He parked the car, locked the garage and walked into the house through the kitchen, where his father was sitting at the table, book propped against the sugar basin, enjoying a cup of tea.

  He crossed ‘Check out apartment leases’ off the list, as his father asked, ‘Been out with Jaclyn?’

  ‘Jacinta,’ Mike corrected automatically, thinking more that he couldn’t leave his father to rattle around in this big house on his own.

  ‘Jacinta? Got a new one or did I get the name wrong? Surely you’re not taking out a Jaclyn and a Jacinta at the same time? Seems risky to me, lad. The names are way too close.’

  Mike found himself smiling at his father, though if there was anything even vaguely amusing about the situation with Jacinta, he had yet to find it.

  ‘Actually, it was business.’ More or less! ‘She’s the doctor I was telling you about. The one who insisted I go back to Abbott Road.’

  ‘Not a bad idea, going back to your beginnings now and then,’ his father said, but his eyes were straying to the book and Mike knew that for once he could escape further questioning.

  The prospect of going to work lacked its usual delight for Jacinta, and she snuggled deeper into her mattress, trying to bury memories of the previous evening.
r />   ‘I’m off,’ she heard her mother call, and though she knew Fizzy was in the house, no doubt asleep now daylight hours had come, Jacinta felt an aloneness as if the house had emptied of all life and, in doing so, had emptied her as well.

  ‘Stuff and nonsense!’ she muttered, forcing herself out of the bed and into the shower. ‘Ridiculous fancies!’

  Then, because these mutterings didn’t seem to be doing any good, she dredged up an old expletive from her teenage years and tried that instead.

  But it lacked the sense of daring it had provided back then, so she dressed and went grumpily down the stairs to the kitchen, cheering up only when she saw Fizzy wasn’t still sleeping but was in the process of cooking what looked like a delicious breakfast.

  ‘I asked your mother about your favourite foods,’ she said shyly. ‘You’ve been so good to me—to all of us. I cooked bacon and pancakes and there’s maple syrup and also some hash browns. I cheated with them and bought some frozen ones yesterday, but your mother said they were very good.’

  Jacinta crossed the room to kiss their visitor, while the day grew noticeably brighter.

  This was the kind of reward she wanted from what she did in life. OK, a little sexual gratification might be all right, but to give up the time she spent helping Fizzy and others like her to do a bit of lotus-eating with Mike Trent?

  She sat down at the table, all doubts banished, and tucked into the kind of breakfast she only dreamed about these days. Just lately, even at weekends, there’d been no time for indulgences like cooked breakfasts.

  Fizzy sat opposite her.

  ‘I’ve talked to your mother about the baby and all that. It was best, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Not necessarily best,’ Jacinta said slowly, aware that Fizzy’s emotional state must still be precarious and picking her way through the minefield. ‘But perhaps meant to happen. If you’d gone on to have the baby, going back to school when the new term starts would have been difficult. And with the others at school, you’d have been lonely during the day. Babies aren’t a lot of company, you know.’

  ‘Just a lot of work,’ Fizzy said, and Jacinta knew some of her mother’s words had struck home.

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘If I do really well at school, do you think I can go to university? Mrs Ford was saying the course she did isn’t difficult, and it’d be wicked to think I could do stuff like she does with other kids. I mean, I’ve been there, haven’t I? So they’d have to listen to me.’

  Jacinta chuckled at the girl’s determination.

  ‘They certainly would,’ she agreed, and thanked heaven, and her mother, that Fizzy seemed to be looking so positively towards the future.

  ‘It’s only the school. Whether we’ll get one of those counsellors who want to do a family mediation thing.’

  Aha! Was that what the breakfast was about?

  Jacinta glanced at her watch and decided the clinic wouldn’t fall apart if she was ten minutes late.

  ‘For a number of kids, getting them back with their families is the best option,’ she said. ‘And in a lot of cases, the social workers are so overloaded they don’t go into a particular situation carefully enough, which happened when the social worker at the hospital contacted your mother. They mean well.’

  ‘Yeah!’

  Nothing she could say was going to convince Fizzy, so Jacinta moved on.

  ‘As far as school’s concerned, you’ve already met the principal and the student guidance officers, and they know a little of your background. I doubt you’ll get pressure from them, but if you do at any time, you’ve a good back-up team behind you now. You’ll have Dave and Helen, the house-parents at Ellerslie House, and me and Mum for use in emergencies. If anyone hassles you, walk away—politely. Say you’d like to think about it and get back-up before you have to see the person again.’

  ‘That sounds OK, but will I be able to do it?’

  Jacinta smiled at her.

  ‘Or will instinct take over and you’ll run? Is that what’s worrying you?’

  Fizzy nodded.

  ‘Well, at least you have a choice of places to run to now,’ Jacinta reminded her. ‘The clinic, this house, Mum’s office, or your new house. You don’t know Dave and Helen well now, but they’re wonderful people, there to support you in whatever way they can.’

  She finished her meal while Fizzy chatted about her plans for the day—a shopping expedition with the other young people who’d be shifting into the house to choose furnishings for their bedrooms.

  ‘Now, that I’d love to join,’ she told Fizzy, ‘but only as an onlooker. Poor Bonnie, who’ll have to keep you all within budget, not to mention the limits of good taste.’

  ‘You’re late!’ Carmel’s greeting was to be expected. Jacinta was late, but only by about five minutes. ‘And we’re going to be on a very tight schedule as we’ve only two doctors.’

  Jacinta nodded. She was too busy battling a jumble of sensations—a vague feeling of loss that Mike wasn’t there, a memory of that first unexpected, unasked-for but mind-blowing kiss and a twinge of regret for the way the evening had ended—to argue with Carmel.

  She went into her consulting room and within minutes was calling her first patient.

  ‘I thought it was just the flu but when I got into work I felt much worse,’ Ken, an office worker from across the mall, told her. ‘There’s a couple of us haven’t been the best, so whatever it is must be very catching. I know Pat Richards came to see one of the doctors yesterday.’

  Pat Richards! Mike had seen him but had asked Jacinta’s advice. She’d suggested a chest X-ray for the hacking cough and possible admission to hospital for further tests. But had Pat gone to the hospital?

  ‘I don’t think you should be at work,’ she told Ken. ‘You’ve a high fever, there’s obviously congestion in your chest and you certainly won’t be much use except as a carrier of infection—which your colleagues won’t want.’

  ‘Will you give me a certificate?’ It was the usual question, though this time Jacinta would be pleased to provide it.

  ‘Of course, and also a referral for a chest X-ray. You should get that done today on your way home. Have you a local doctor, someone near your home? I could get the results sent to him or her.’

  Ken provided the name and address of his local GP, took the medical certificate, thanked her and departed, but Jacinta watched him go with an uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach. It was late summer—not the time of the year you’d expect to see many cases of flu or pneumonia.

  If Abbott Road’s patient files had been computerised, she could have looked up Pat Richards and seen whether Mike had suggested hospitalisation. She could still do it later.

  Her next patient was a regular. Jenny Tinsley worked in the pharmacy next door to the Abbott Road building. She was happily pregnant with her first child, and in for her regular antenatal check. Jacinta felt a twinge of envy, and knew it was a biological reaction—a reminder that the urge to procreate was wired into her system.

  An image of Mike Trent flashed obligingly into her head, and she shivered.

  ‘Don’t tell me you’re getting this summer flu that’s going around,’ Jenny said, as Jacinta pronounced herself satisfied with the foetal development and helped Jenny off the examination table.

  ‘Have you noticed a lot of it?’ Jacinta asked, thinking that Ken and Pat were the only patients the clinic had seen, then realising that Mark or Rohan could easily have seen others.

  ‘More than you’d expect for this time of the year,’ Jenny told her. ‘Though I guess with air-conditioning in all the city buildings it spreads easily.’

  Jacinta had her doubts about influenza spreading through air-conditioning, thinking it more likely that people sneezed on each other, but the mention of air-conditioning re-awoke the uneasiness she’d felt earlier. In spite of frequent and compulsory checking of air-conditioning plants, Legionnaires’ disease, an often deadly lung contagion spread through some air-conditioning plants,
was becoming more common. If there was a problem with the cooling plant in the building across the road…

  Jacinta had no time to pursue her worries until early afternoon, when she took a break to eat a sandwich and grab a cup of coffee, using the time without patients to find Pat Richards’s file.

  Mike had recommended hospitalisation for Pat, and Jacinta, checking his personal details, found a home number and dialled it.

  A woman answered, explaining she was Mrs Richards’s mother and, yes, Pat had been admitted to hospital. She named a large private hospital on the outskirts of the city, but didn’t know the name of the doctor treating Pat.

  Jacinta thanked her for the information, and was in turn thanked for caring enough to follow up on a patient’s visit. Not wanting to worry the family unnecessarily, Jacinta accepted her thanks and hung up.

  She phoned the hospital, and was finally put through to Pat Richards’s ward, but the sister there referred her to the specialist who was in charge of the case.

  Muttering to herself about patient privacy and the limiting features of something she usually upheld rigorously, she found the specialist’s number and dialled his office.

  ‘He’s doing rounds at the public hospital at the moment,’ an obliging receptionist told her. ‘But I’ll leave him a message to say you called.’

  Jacinta left her work and home numbers, then added, ‘Could you tell him it’s urgent?’

  No doubt she’d earn his ire if it turned out to be a false alarm, but if Legionnaires’ disease was spreading through the building across the road, the sooner the air-conditioning plant was closed down and checked, the better.

  By six-thirty, when she was preparing to leave, the specialist still hadn’t called. She tried the private hospital again and had him paged, but with no result. She unlocked the reception area, thinking there might be a file somewhere with a home number for the man, but the specialists’ file gave the number as unlisted.

  ‘I already knew that,’ she said crossly to herself. ‘The damn man’s probably out having an after-work drink with colleagues or playing cricket in his back yard with his kids.’