by Tina Beckett
Her senses were exploding.
His mouth enveloped hers and all she could do was taste him, feel him, want him. She was kissing with a fierceness that almost frightened her.
She’d never been out of control with her boyfriends. She dated ‘nice’ boys.
This was no nice boy. This was a man who was as hungry as she was, as demanding, as committed...
Hungry? Demanding? Committed? That described her. She could be none of those things, yet right now she was all three. She surrendered herself to his kiss and she gloried in it. Her fingers entwined themselves in his hair, tugging him closer. She was standing on tiptoe but his arms were around her waist, pulling her up, so the kiss could sink deeper...
She was on fire.
Hugo... His name was a whisper, a shout, a declaration all by itself. Pollyanna Hargreaves was right out of her comfort zone. She was right out of control.
If he picked her up and carried her to his bed right now, would she submit?
There was no submit about it. If she had her way it’d be Polly who’d be doing the carrying. She wanted him!
She couldn’t have him. Even as the crazy idea hit, the need to carry this straight through to the bedroom, he was putting her back.
It was a wrench like no other. Their mouths parted and she felt...lost.
‘I need to go.’ His voice was ragged. ‘Terry needs...’
‘Y...yes.’
He took a step back, turned away and then paused and turned back. ‘That wasn’t a casual kiss.’
‘You could have fooled me,’ she managed and he gave a twisted smile.
‘Polly, what I’m feeling...’
And suddenly it was out there, this thing between them. Lust, love—whatever. Only it couldn’t be love, Polly thought dazedly, because they’d only known each other for three days and no one fell in love that fast.
Lust, then. The way she was feeling...certainly it was lust.
‘Yeah, I’m feeling it, too,’ she managed. ‘So it’s just as well you’re going away soon because I’m just over a possessive boyfriend. And I don’t do casual affairs, or family either, for that matter, and you have a daughter...’
‘A niece.’
‘A niece.’ She closed her eyes as she corrected herself. A waif-like kid who Hugo loved. Why did that make him seem more sexy, not less?
Why was Ruby suddenly in the equation?
‘Hugo, I don’t do family,’ she said again and surprisingly her voice sounded almost calm. ‘That’s why I’m here—to get away from ties.’
‘This isn’t some kind of trap.’ He said it fast.
Trap? How could she ever think of a kiss as a trap?
‘Of course it’s not,’ she agreed. ‘It was a kiss, simply that. Excellent surgical skills always turn me on, Dr Denver.’
‘So if I had warts on my nose, a sagging middle and a disinclination to wash, but I removed an appendix with style, you’d still turn into a puddle of molten passion?’
He was smiling, making things light, and she had to too. ‘You’d better believe it.’
‘So, on a scale of one to ten...speedy repair of ingrown toenail?’
‘Ooh, don’t talk dirty,’ she managed and scraped up a grin. ‘Next you’ll be talking laparoscopic gallstone removal and I have no defences.’
He chuckled but it sounded forced. He was as shaken as she was, she thought.
But they were apart now. Work was waiting and they both knew it.
‘Bed,’ he said and she blinked.
‘Is that an order?’
‘I guess it is.’
‘You’re not my doctor.’ It suddenly seemed important—incredibly important—to make that clear.
‘I know.’ He hesitated. ‘And in two weeks I won’t be your colleague.’
‘And I’ll be on the other side of the world.’
‘Really? Where?’
‘Sudan, maybe. Ethiopia.’
‘With Type One Diabetes?’ He sounded incredulous.
‘I can cope.’
‘Polly...’
‘Don’t fuss.’
‘I’m not fussing.’ Except he was, she thought, and she also thought, with a modicum of self-knowledge, that she’d driven him to fuss. It was like someone with one leg declaring they intended to be a tightrope walker.
She could probably do it.
Her parents would worry.
This man might too, and by making such a declaration...it had been like a slap. Fuss if you dare; it’ll give me an excuse to run.
It wasn’t fair.
‘Go,’ she told him. ‘Work’s waiting. The chopper should be here soon.’
‘Yes.’ But still there was hesitation.
‘The kiss was a mistake,’ she said. ‘An aberration.’
‘We both know it was no such thing, but I can’t push. I have no right. Polly...’
‘Go,’ she said. ‘No such thing or not, I’m completely uninterested.’
* * *
Hugo headed back to the hospital feeling...empty. Gutted?
What had just happened?
He’d been knocked back. He’d kissed her. She’d responded with passion but that passion had given way to sense. She was fiercely independent and wanted to be more so. He had a commitment that would tie him here for life.
He was trapped here. How could he possibly ask a woman to share this trap?
Maybe he could move back to Sydney. Maybe he could pick up the strings of the life he’d known before. He moved in the circles Polly moved in...
Except she wasn’t going back to Sydney. She was escaping family and he had Ruby. The life he had in Sydney was over.
The thought of Sydney was like a siren song. He could go back to performing the surgery he’d trained for. He was picking up his family medicine skills here, but the surgical skills he’d fought to gain...to let them fade...
He had no choice but to let them go. Ruby had lost far more than he had. He could take Ruby back to Sydney—of course he could—but apartment life wouldn’t suit her or Hamster. He’d be back working twelve-hour days. Ruby wouldn’t be surrounded by people who cared about her.
His trap had firmly closed.
He sighed and squared his shoulders and headed up the ramp to the hospital entrance.
A wallaby was sitting by the door.
‘Popped in for a check-up?’ he asked the little creature. The wallaby seemed to be admiring her reflection in the glass door. ‘Or is there anything more urgent I can help you with?’
The wallaby turned and gazed at him, almost thoughtfully. They stared at each other for a long moment and then the helicopter appeared, low and fast, from the east. The wallaby looked up at the sky, looked again at Hugo and then bounded off, back down the ramp and into the bush.
Back to freedom. No ties there.
‘I’m not jealous,’ Hugo muttered as he headed through the doors and made his way to the waiting Terry. ‘I can make a life here.’
Without Polly?
‘And that’s a stupid thought,’ he told himself. ‘You made that decision well before Polly came on the scene. How one red-headed, flibbertigibbet doctor can mess with your equanimity...’
‘A flibbertigibbet?’ he demanded of himself and he must have said the word too loud because Joe was waiting for him and he raised his brows in enquiry.
‘The wallaby,’ he explained. ‘She was looking at her reflection in the glass door. She’s headed back to the bush now. I thought she might have a medical issue, but she was probably just checking her mascara. Flibbertigibbet. Wallabies are like that.’
‘Yes, Doctor,’ Joe said cautiously. ‘Mate, are you...okay?’
‘Never better,’ he murmured. ‘One more day of work
and then I’m off for Christmas holidays. Bring it on.’
‘You can’t wait to get out of here?’
‘How can you doubt it?’ he demanded, but he thought of Polly standing on the veranda looking after him and he knew that doubt was totally justified.
* * *
Polly stayed on the veranda for a very long time.
The kiss stayed with her.
She sank into one of the big cane chairs and Hamster licked her hand and put his big boofy head on her knee. It was almost as if he knew she needed comfort.
Why did she need comfort? What possible reason was there to feel bereft?
Just because someone had kissed her...
Just because someone was impossible.
She should leave now. That was what part of her felt like doing—packing her little sports car and driving away, fast.
That was fear talking—and why was she fearful?
Where was the new brave Polly now? The intrepid Polly who’d walked away from her family, who’d vowed to be independent, who’d hankered after a life free of the obligations of loving?
It had all seemed so simple back in Sydney. Toss in her hospital job. Declare her independence to her parents. Start treating herself as a grown-up.
She wasn’t feeling grown-up now. She was feeling...just a little bit stupid.
‘Which is stupid all by itself,’ she told Hamster. ‘Here I am, less than a week into my new life, and I’m questioning everything. I haven’t given it a chance. And if I left here...where would I run to? Back to my parents? Not in a month of Sundays. Off to Ethiopia? We both know that’s not going to happen. No, all I need to do is stay here, keep my feet firmly on the ground, keep lust solidly damped and get on with my work. And I’ll work better if I sleep now.’
But the kiss was still with her, all around her, enveloping her in its sweetness.
‘Hugo’s back at work and he’s probably forgotten all about it,’ she told Hamster. ‘Men are like that.’
Hamster whined and put a paw on her lap.
‘With one exception,’ she told him generously. ‘And by the way, if Hugo thinks he’s taking you back to that boarding place while he’s away, he has another think coming. You’re staying with me for Christmas.’
Because she didn’t want to be alone?
The question was suddenly out there, insidious, even threatening.
She did want to be alone, she told herself. That was what this whole locum bit was about. She’d been cloistered since birth. She needed to find herself.
She didn’t need Hugo.
‘And he doesn’t need me,’ she told herself, rising and heading indoors, not because she wanted to but because it was sensible and a woman had to be sensible. She had the remnants of a snake bite and a cut hand to take care of. Medicine... That was what she was here for, and that was what she needed to focus on.
‘And nothing else,’ she told herself as she passed the tree in the living room with Ruby’s stack of origami gifts.
She hoped Ruby was having a happy sleepover with her friend tonight.
‘But that’s nothing to do with me either,’ she told Hamster and she took a couple of deep breaths and poured herself a glass of juice for her bedside, because a woman had to be sensible.
‘That’s the new me,’ she told Hamster as she headed for her bedroom. ‘Sensible R Us. I’m Dr Pollyanna Hargreaves, with the frivolous name, but there’s nothing else frivolous about me. I’m here to focus on medicine and nothing else. I will not think about Hugo Denver. Not one bit.’
* * *
She lied.
She went to bed and lay in the dark and all she could think of was Hugo. All she could feel was Hugo. His kiss enveloped her dreams and she tossed and turned and decided that snake bite venom was insidious.
It had turned one sensible doctor into an idiot.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
POLLY WOKE AND rain was thundering on the roof. It wasn’t a shower. This was a deluge.
In Sydney—in fact in any house or hotel she’d ever stayed in—she hardly heard the rain. At most it was a hushed background whisper. Here it was crashing so hard on the iron roof she figured she could sing Christmas carols out loud and no one would hear.
Why not? She did.
Ruby heard her. Two bars into ‘Silent Night’ there was a scratching on the door. She called, ‘Come in,’ and Ruby flew in to land on the bed beside her. Hamster arrived straight after. He was wet. Very wet. He leaped onto her bedcovers and shook and Polly yelped and Ruby gave a tentative giggle. A very tentative giggle.
‘Is he...is he okay?’ she stammered.
Polly surveyed the dog with disgust. He appeared to have taken a mud bath or six.
‘He appears okay. Is there a problem?’
‘He’s scared of thunder. He was outside jumping in puddles when the last bit of thunder came. We got scared.’
‘Where’s your uncle?’ Hamster’s wetness was soaking her feet. So much for a nice invalidish sleep-in, she thought, and resigned herself.
‘He’s over at the hospital.’
‘Why are you home?’
‘There was thunder in the night. I got scared too, so Talia’s mum rang Uncle Hugo and he came and got me.’
So even if they’d indulged in a night of molten passion they would have been hit by kid-interruptus, Polly thought, and then snagged her errant thoughts and shoved them in the place in her brain marked ‘Inappropriate’.
‘It’s raining a lot,’ Ruby said, snuggling into Polly’s bed as if she had every right to be there. ‘Uncle Hugo says it’s raining even in Sydney but it’ll stop by Christmas so that’s okay. And we’re leaving first thing in the morning as long as you’re better. But he says you’re almost better anyway. He says I can stay here with you this morning. He says you have to stay in bed until at least ten o’clock. He says Hamster and I can make you toast but we can’t make you coffee because I’m not allowed to use the kettle yet.’
‘Your Uncle Hugo is bossy.’
‘Yes,’ Ruby said happily. ‘I like it. My mum wasn’t bossy. One day I had to make her a cup of tea and I burned myself. See my scar?’ She held up a wrist, where a scar showed the burn had been small but significant. ‘Uncle Hugo said Mum shouldn’t have asked me but he said she only did ’cos she was sick. But he’s not sick so he’s allowed to be bossy.’
‘And he’s at the hospital?’
‘Mr Millard’s cow got bogged.’ Ruby was right under the covers now, nudging Hamster’s rear end with her feet. The dog was heaving up and down but grinning his dopey Labrador smile, thunder forgotten. ‘And Mr Millard pulled it out with a rope but he fell over when it came out fast. He broke his arm and Uncle Hugo has to put plaster on it. But Polly, I’ve been looking at our presents and worrying. We won’t have a Christmas tree at the beach. Uncle Hugo says it doesn’t matter but I think we need one.’
‘You definitely need one. You can take mine,’ Polly offered.
‘But what will you and Hamster have?’
‘We’ll chop down a gum tree.’
‘With an axe?’
‘Yes.’
‘Uncle Hugo won’t let you use an axe.’
‘Uncle Hugo’s not the boss of me.’
‘He just doesn’t want us to get burned,’ Ruby said worriedly. ‘You might hurt yourself.
‘I can take care of myself. I’m a grown-up.’
‘My mum was a grown-up and she didn’t take care of herself. She died.’
There was no answer to that. Another clap of thunder rumbled across the valley. Hamster turned into a quivering mess; Polly and Ruby had to hug him and then the whole bed was pretty much a quivering and soggy mess and Polly decided convalescence had knobs on and she might as well get up.
; ‘You would like to take my Christmas tree?’
Ruby looked through to the living room where the sparkling silver tree shimmered with its party lights on full. ‘I don’t want you not to have one,’ she said longingly, ‘but you aren’t allowed to use the axe.’
‘I’ll let Uncle Hugo wield the axe,’ Polly conceded. ‘But we need more decorations. You’re not going to leave me with nothing.’
‘We could buy more tinsel.’
‘Nonsense.’ She was in her element here. Interior decorating had been bred into her—her mother had been making hotel rooms into Christmas-themed fantasies for ever. ‘Let’s leave the silver tree as it is—we’ll pack it tonight for you to take. Then we’ll concentrate on Tree Two. Plus making this house Christmassy for me and Hamster. Let’s go.’
* * *
By two in the afternoon the inhabitants of Wombat Valley were mostly hunkered down. The weather forecast was dire. Leaving the house meant a soaking. Most minor ailments could be put in the worry-about-it-after-Christmas basket, so the population mostly stayed put.
Which meant Hugo didn’t call on Polly for help.
Though maybe he should have, he thought as the day went on. The agreement was that she’d join him in the afternoon so she’d get used to the place and he could assess her work...
Except he had assessed her work and it was excellent. She’d given last night’s anaesthetic with skill. On her tour of the place she’d moved seamlessly between patients, chatting happily, drawing them out without them realising it. Underneath the chat there were carefully planted medical queries, and skilled responses to the replies. She was good.
More, Polly’s reputation had already spread through the Valley. She was the Doc-Who’d-Been-Bitten-Saving-Horace. Horace wasn’t particularly popular but he was a local, and Wombat Valley looked after their own.
So she was already accepted. She already knew her way round the hospital. She could have another full day of rest.
Minding Ruby?
He did feel a bit guilty about that, but he’d assumed Ruby would stay at Talia’s until midday so he hadn’t worried about calling anyone in. And Ruby was quiet. She did her own thing. The monitor was on. He could be home in a heartbeat if he was needed.
