One Secret Too Many

by Vanessa Grant

  She looked up at him, her eyes wide and nervous. He said softly, ‘It’s all right. I’ll look after you, I’ll protect you.’

  She thought she might follow anywhere if he was leading the way. She watched in a delightful’ haze as he paid the bill, then she took his hand and followed him out to the street. She was hugging her light suit jacket against herself and feeling a cold breeze coming off the shadowed buildings. A man and a woman walked past them, both swaying as they walked, laughing at some secret joke, and Mary could see herself, following where Sam led with his hand gripping hers, and she knew exactly what Emily Derringer would have to say about all of it.

  Sam unlocked the door of his car and Mary panicked, looking at the open door, at Sam’s face with the dark, intense shadows. ‘No, let’s—I want to walk.’

  ‘Here?’ He was smiling at her, laughing a little, and that made it easier to meet his eyes, then to look around and see that it wasn’t the kind of area where you should walk if you wanted to avoid being mugged—or worse.

  ‘Somewhere else? Somewhere there’s grass and trees?’

  He shrugged, and she saw the moment when the tension left him, when he decided that he was not going to take her to whatever dark place it was that he had planned for her seduction.

  He took her to Lost Lagoon. It was quiet with the lights reflecting on water, a twisting path for their feet to follow as they moved away from buildings, alongside the trees. There were sounds of wildlife, but they were gentle sounds. Birds, she supposed, although everything should be asleep by this hour.

  Tonight was totally out of character, and never to be repeated again. She knew why she was here. For the first time in her life she had the opportunity to be anonymous, to be impulsive and crazy. For one short weekend it was irresistible. Also, perhaps she was hiding from the repercussions of that meeting with the agent today. The contract signed. The book, impossibly, going to press.

  It was so dark now that there was no way that she could see even the form of his face when she looked at him. But his hand had slipped from hers and he was walking with sureness in the dark, his arm around her waist, her body leaning against his just a little. She found herself asking again, ‘What are you running away from tonight?’

  ‘Other people’s tragedies.’ Although he spoke lightly, she thought his words were serious.

  Her father spent much of his life with other people’s pains, but this man was no healer of souls. Too many of his emotions were held tightly inside, although she thought it would be good to have him close if you needed raw strength of spirit.

  ‘Somebody died?’ She knew it was true.

  ‘Are you a psychic?’ His laughter was forced.

  ‘Only with you,’ she said.

  ‘Alex? What is your real name?’ He released her, became a black shadow an arm’s length away, his voice strained. ‘Do you have some witch’s vision that lets you look inside me?’

  She reached out, felt her fingers touching the scar, feeling the rough crease it made on his face. ‘I feel as if I’ve known you forever. Does that bother you?’ She saw that it did. ‘I’m no danger to you. I don’t even have a last name, nor do you. I’m just someone you dreamed, and I’ll be gone when you wake up.’

  ‘Some dream,’ he said roughly, catching her face between his hands, covering her lips with a half-angry kiss that suddenly gentled into a fleeting, teasing caress. ‘I’ve never had a dream like you before.’

  Then he wasn’t touching her at all. Her hand dropped away from him and she was standing filled with a nervous excitement, her lips tingling and parted as if waiting for his kiss again.

  He turned away. She found herself following, her feet somehow sure on the black path. She swallowed, closed her lips, tried to feel as if a man’s hard kiss meant nothing. She pictured him in the living room of the house she lived in, with her father in his cleric’s collar and her mother’s sharp eyes watching. He didn’t fit, would never fit.

  But tonight she was Alex, and Alex could never fit into Mary’s place. She said softly, ‘Will it make it easier if I tell you my secret? You can laugh, and I won’t mind.’

  He was still, held by her voice, and she told him, ‘Alex is my fantasy name. I wrote a book ,an used Alex Diamond for a pen-name. I never thought it would sell. But—I came down to Vancouver, from the North Coast, to tell my agent that it’s impossible, that I can’t sell the book after all’ She shook her head, the hair flying around, and said wildly, ‘But somehow I signed the damned thing, the contract. I shouldn’t have, but I did.’

  ‘Why not sell it?’

  She said wryly, ‘The book’s not exactly the sort of thing a minister’s daughter should write. I called it Holy Murder, and it’s totally fictitious, although I have to admit that the villain does resemble Mr Warbothle, not that I meant him to, but—and it’s a love story, too. When I wrote it I never really expected to see it in print, so I let my imagination go. And if it ever got into print, someone would realise that it was me.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because the murder took place in church-in the Sunday school, actually, during the service. And—oh, just everything! It’s impossible! Everyone will read it, just to see what it said. Then they’d start wondering, aloud, whether I was writing about myself—how else could I—? Well, then my father would be upset by the talk, and my mother would be angry.’

  ‘And Emily Derringer?’ he suggested. She was amazed that he remembered about Emily.

  ‘Oh, yes, Emily would get in on the act. She’d read it first, terribly shocked, and lend it to everyone else with the steamy passages marked.’

  He grinned. ‘Sounds like a book worth reading.’ She pushed at her hair with both hands, a frantic gesture that revealed more than she knew yet failed to tame the soft cloud of her hair, ‘I could never stay at home if that book came out and people found out.’

  ‘Then leave home. Move out.’

  ‘You make that sound so easy, as if—’ He talked like a man who had no home, who could never understand her hesitation. ‘Let’s forget it. Let’s talk about ships or—anything else.’ She bit her lip, said, ‘You must think I’m a coward, afraid of what people—’

  He was staring at her. She felt abruptly conscious of her own body, She shook her hair back and he said raggedly, ‘I’d better take you back to—’

  ‘No, not yet.’ She would never see him again, never know the touch of his lips on her flesh, his body against hers. ‘Dance with me again. Just once.’ He was still silent and she said, ‘I know there’s no music, but—’ She went into his arms, closing her eyes and hearing the music that wasn’t there.

  He had called her the pirate’s wench. Sam’s wench, she thought, moving so that her curves fitted more closely against him. She tipped her head back, looking up at him, their feet moving on soft grass. They glided away from the light, deep into a secret darkness where the trees sheltered the world from them. Her lips parted and his head bent, touching her mouth with a soft promise.

  ‘Alex. . . Alexandra. . . You should have a knight on a white charger.’

  ‘Knights are very overrated,’ she murmured, her lips burning as they brushed against his. He had said he would protect her, and despite her innocence she knew what he meant. A good thing, she thought wildly, because things were slipping away, Mary was slipping away, and Alex was a reckless wench.

  CHAPTER TWO

  IF ANYONE was responsible for Sam’s decision to turn down a posting as surgeon at the hospital, it was probably Jake. His friend turned up in emergency one night, frowning and abstracted as if he were in the midst of some artistic inspiration.

  Sam’s whites were rumpled from a busy shift, his chin showing the shadow of his beard. Technically, it was his day off, but as usual he was filling in for one of the residents. He gave Jake a comprehensive look. ‘Social call? Broken leg?’

  ‘Nope. My Indian blood keeps me healthy.’

  Sam scrawled something incomprehensible on a form; ‘How’s Jenny? And t
he baby?’ He was glad to see Jake, but typically he concealed his pleasure.

  ‘They’re fine. Jenny wants to know when you’re coming to dinner, We haven’t seen you in over a month.’

  ‘Sorry.’ The form went on to a pile of similarly incomprehensible papers and he started filling out another. ‘I’ve been pretty busy.’

  ‘This isn’t your territory, is it? Aren’t you surgery these days? How many hours a week are you putting in?’ Sam shrugged the questions off and Jake persisted, ‘Anywhere around here we can talk?’

  In the little staff kitchen lake refused coffee. ‘I think you mix disinfectant with the water. You look terrible, Sam. Quade’s worried about you, too. He says you’re driving yourself harder than ever.’

  Sam frowned, knowing he would not put up with this from anyone else. Jake had to stop talking when a patient came into emergency with a cut hand. Stitches and calming words, a couple of pain-killing pills. Jake was still waiting afterwards and Sam sighed, asking, ‘Is this really your business?’

  ‘Yes. If you had a wife or a girl it would be her business. Since you’re so damned determined to keep everyone out of your life, it’s got to be me. Don’t you think it’s time you grew up and left the shelter of this great institution? If you don’t want to specialise, Quade says it’s time you got out into general practice.’

  Sam rubbed at the scar where a muscle wanted to twitch when he was tired. ‘Damn it, Jake! I might have been overworking a bit, but—Quade’s short-sighted about this. Nothing will satisfy him but seeing me move out into general practice. He’s got this notion—’

  Jake could see someone coming through the emergency doors and knew that Sam would be busy again in a minute. Jake’s voice turned harsh. ‘I think it’s more than overwork. I think you’re afraid to go out into the real world. You’ve been hiding for years—going to sea, going up into the bush, university dorms, hospitals. You’ve gone anywhere you could to avoid any hint of family life.’

  If the hospital had become a hiding-place for him, it was a comfortable refuge, one he liked, But Jake’s words kept echoing in Sam’s mind, reinforced by his own knowledge that he was drinking too much coffee, getting too little sleep. If he kept it up, he’d have high blood-pressure and an ulcer himself. For the first time in his adult life, Sam found himself thinking about buying a house, getting furniture, making a home.

  Alone, of course, He had no intention of sharing his life with anybody, although perhaps he would get a dog. He grinned at a vision of himself as an aging general practitioner with his pipe and his dog, a fireplace and a hearthrug. An old man who sometimes dreamed about the girl with silky brown hair, her cool, pale flesh burning under his kisses.

  Her memory had the elusive magic of a dream, although it wasn’t the kind of dreaming that Sam was accustomed to. He had spent more than one night dreaming his way through intricate surgery. He could not remember ever dreaming before about a woman who smiled and tipped her head back so that her hair flowed softly over her shoulders; waking with his heart thundering hard and wild in his breast—not with the terror of childhood nightmares, but with the joy of anticipation.

  Sometimes there had been a woman in his life, although never anyone who mattered. In the last few years, the risks of casual affairs had become high enough that Sam had become almost celibate. He put his energy into the hospital.

  Alex. But that was not really her name. One crazy night, and he would never see her again. He knew enough psychology to realise why she had such strong appeal, why she haunted his sleep. She was the perfect woman, alluring and sensuous, yet comfortably impossible. He didn’t know her name, wouldn’t know where to start looking for her. She didn’t exist.

  He confronted an odd fear in himself. If he left the hospital, went into private practice, the patients would be the same people week after week, year after year. He would get to know them, form relationships among them. In an impersonal way, it would be almost like developing a family.

  Yet the idea of moving out of the hospital had been haunting him for weeks, ever since the day Quade had approached him, saying, ‘I’ve got a GP from the North Coast in my office. I want you to talk to him.’

  A general clinic, three doctors, and the practice growing so that they needed four now. They required a good surgeon, but one who didn’t mind taking on a varied case-load. The clinic was too small to keep a surgeon busy full-time. Quade’s recommendation of Sam’s surgical ability had been important. Sam had talked to the GP, and had been tempted but wary. He’d stalled on his decision.

  Later, Quade had taken him aside to insist that the variety would be good for him, and now Jake was getting on the bandwagon. He had to decide soon, but he had been uneasy from the beginning. He was used to the hospital, and hadn’t the faintest idea how to go about setting up a home for himself outside.

  And now, Alex. Alex was from up north, but surely it wasn’t likely that she would turn up in this particular town. Lots of towns in the north.

  Maybe it was Jake’s visit that finally pushed Sam into saying yes. Or the vision of a fireplace of his own? More likely, a desire to prove to both Jake and Quade that he was not afraid to leave the hospital. That was a joke, a thirty-eight-year-old man trying to prove that he had no fears. Jake would laugh about that.

  Alex wouldn’t laugh. He had a rather frightening feeling that she would understand, and he was glad that their single night was an isolated, never-to-be-repeated event, a woman who would stay in his dreams, never again in his arms.

  After years of hospital life, the change came suddenly and with frightening smoothness. There was really no one to say goodbye to, only Quade and Jake. Little to pack, just a few boxes sent up by courier. Himself, driving north on a two-day trip that moved his life from the familiar to the strange.

  The North Coast. He’d always liked the tall evergreens, the frontier feeling of being away from the city. Crazy, because he’d been a city brat as a child, but those months out in the bushes of the Queen Charlottes had bred in him a love of the wild Canadian North.

  In his new work, he found himself fitting into the clinic with little feeling of strangeness. The staff had the same brisk efficiency that he was used to in the hospital, although he found the personal questions disconcerting.

  ‘Where are you from? Isn’t that an American accent?’

  ‘Is your wife coming up to join you?’

  ‘Where are you staying. . .? Oh, looking for a house? Why, I know of—’

  It took about half a day for everyone in the clinic to know that he was not bringing a wife or girlfriend up to live with him, was thinking of looking for a house to buy, and did not have any pets. He must be getting soft, or old. The amS who had left Vancouver a few days ago would never have answered any of the personal questions.

  His first Thursday had him dashing from the clinic to the hospital in response to an emergency call. A car accident, a bad one. At first he wasn’t sure if he could save the life of the boy who had been in the passenger seat. At one point in the surgery, the anaesthetist said, ‘That’s it. He’s going. I’m losing him.’ But Sam refused to give up and, ill the end, miraculously, the boy survived surgery.

  The kid had injuries that took more than sewing. Sam spent most of the evening in intensive care, not able to do much except will the boy to fight his way through and live. Just before midnight he left to get some sleep. He was afraid he would have to take the kid back into surgery, and he knew he needed rest first.

  He was woken again at three in the morning. Once more to surgery, and again the kid somehow managed to hold on to his life. Afterwards, Sam dictated notes on the case into a microphone at the nursing station, blinking and seeing double and realising that he was sleepier than he had thought.

  ‘Dr Dempsey?’ It was the night nurse who had helped him in intensive care. ‘Dr Dempsey? Would you mind talking to the other boy for a minute? The one who was driving? He’s Dr Box’s patient, but he wanted to see you.’

  The boy’s
name was Neil MacKenzie. He had been lucky enough to get off with a broken arm and a cut head. He was seventeen, which meant that he was old enough to be tried as an adult, old enough to go to gaol for car theft. That could easily be keeping him awake.

  ‘Pain?’ asked Sam, looking down at the boy’s pale face.

  ‘Naw.’ Neil MacKenzie winced as he shook his head, the blond curls lying trapped against his forehead by the bandage. ‘I just wanted to know about Ripper.’

  ‘Ripper?’ Sam slipped his hands in his pockets, blinked, and tried not to look as if he was in a burry to get back to his bed.

  ‘My buddy. Is he bad? Is he gonna make it?’

  ‘I’m hoping he will.’ Sam folded his arms across his chest, watching the boy, the tiredness gone.

  ‘If he dies, it’s my fault.’ The young voice trembled. ‘The whole bloody thing was my idea. We bad a bet that I couldn’t get into that Chrysler and hot-wire it before the guy came back out of the pub.’

  So Neil had won the bet, but he might have killed his friend. ‘He might make it,’ said Sam, his voice gentle under the roughness. ‘If he can fight his way through the next twelve hours, I’m hoping he’ll be out of danger.’

  Neil MacKenzie. Not quite your ordinary troublemaker. Sam took a look at his chart before he left the floor. No next of kin given. Someone had made a note that he was a ward of the court. Another street kid, thought Sam, feeling a crazy kind of kinship with the boy.

  By the next evening Ripper was out of danger, so over the weekend Sam went house-hunting and discovered that he enjoyed poking through old houses. He couldn’t remember eyer doing anything like this before in his life. He looked at some of the modern, spacious homes on Graham Avenue, but it was the old pre-war homes that really appealed to him with their dormer attic-rooms and their sprawling inefficiency.

  He had almost decided to make an offer for the two-storey wooden house overlooking the harbour. Lord knew what he would do with all that room, but he had his lips open to make an offer when he frightened himself with a mental picture of Alex drying her hair in front of the fireplace.