Lily's Scandal

by Marion Lennox

  And somehow … for some reason he hated this hospital thinking she was … his one-night stand.

  Sydney Harbour Hospital. It should read Sydney Scandal Central, he thought. Any hint of gossip was through the place in minutes. A team of skilled medics working long hours under intense pressure, in teams where they were thrown together in emotionally charged scenarios over and over, made for a hotbed of scandal. Up until now he hadn’t added to it.

  It drove him crazy, though, the fact that he was being watched all the time. ‘When’s our aloof Dr Williams going to crack and prove he’s human?’

  He was aware he was a target; he was aware there were bets—first woman to break his icy barricade. Even a couple of the gay guys had tried.

  The gossips would be relentless now, he thought. A one-night stand … They wouldn’t stop.

  And Lily? She’d signed up for four weeks’ work and she was labelled from this moment forth.

  She was in his bed. They’d find that out in about two seconds flat. Other medics lived in his apartment block, Kirribilli Views. Hell, his cleaning lady was due in there this afternoon. By the time she’d finished dusting, the news would be all over Sydney.

  ‘She’s not a one-night stand,’ he found himself saying, before he even knew he intended saying it. ‘I already told Dr Lockheart that. I’ve known Lily for years.’

  ‘Years?’ Finn raised his brows in disbelief. Finn Kennedy made stronger doctors than Luke nervous, Luke thought. The man just had to raise one of those supercilious eyebrows and minions were supposed to quake.

  But Luke was still thinking of Lily retching. This was no time for quaking. Or for disbelief.

  ‘Why do you think she’s here?’ he demanded. ‘We wanted to see if we could make a go of it.’

  ‘You were checking her records.’

  ‘I was making sure they’d got her address right. We used a boarding-house address as cover, intending to keep our relationship private a bit longer.’

  ‘By snogging on the on-call couch?’

  ‘Yeah, that wasn’t exactly wise,’ he admitted. ‘She was waiting for me after finishing work. I found her and …’ He closed his eyes. ‘The kid had just died. Sure, what happened was inappropriate, but Lily’s a big-hearted woman. She held me first, asked questions later.’

  ‘You’re in a relationship. What the—?’

  ‘This hospital thinks it knows everything about me,’ Luke said wearily. ‘It doesn’t.’

  The door to his office was open. Their voices were carrying, which was just what Luke intended.

  Everyone knew what had happened in the on-call room. They were labelling Lily because of it, but if they thought Lily and Luke were in an established relationship she’d be treated with respect. He’d already hinted at it to Evie. Why not take it further?

  Maybe this was the least he could do. Where women were concerned he always did the least he could do, he thought grimly, but this time …

  ‘You bring your woman to work here without telling us about the relationship?’ For some reason Finn’s disbelief was giving way to anger.

  ‘What of it?’ It was Evie, just passing. Like half the hospital. How many medics used this corridor, and how carrying was Finn’s voice?

  Answer—very carrying.

  ‘It’s deception,’ Finn growled.

  ‘What, not telling us who he’s sleeping with?’ Evie demanded. ‘What gives us the right to know?’

  ‘We’re a team.’

  ‘If we are you have an odd way of treating team members,’ Evie snapped. ‘Leave Luke alone. It’s his business.’

  ‘If he wants to bring his—’

  ‘Luke’s your friend,’ Evie said, closing the door. ‘You want to make this worse?’

  ‘I have a patient being sedated,’ Luke said warily. Sparks flew whenever these two got close and he didn’t want to be in the middle. He needed to leave. Now.

  ‘I’m so pleased,’ Evie was saying warmly, and she hugged him. ‘She’s a very competent nurse. I agree you should have told us, but …’ she cast a disparaging glance at Finn ‘… I can see why you wouldn’t. She looked bad though when she left this morning. Is she okay?’

  ‘She has gastro,’ Luke said. ‘Remind me to speak to Admin. She’ll have got it here; she’ll get paid for time off or I’ll take it further.’

  ‘She needs time off?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where is she now?’ Finn growled, and Luke fixed his friend with a challenging stare.

  ‘At home,’ he said. ‘In my bed.’

  ‘How wonderful,’ Evie said happily. ‘Lily and Luke … Ooh, I love it.’ She cast a cheeky look at Finn. ‘Maybe it’s time you tried a solid relationship, Mr Kennedy.’

  ‘In your dreams,’ Finn snapped.

  ‘Aren’t you having one?’ Luke asked.

  ‘He’s been seen with Mariette from Accounts,’ Evie said, disparagingly. ‘Not exactly a long-term proposition, that one.’

  ‘Will you butt out?’ Finn was almost explosive.

  ‘Like you butted out of Luke’s love life?’ Evie retorted. ‘Certainly, Mr Kennedy. Can I walk you to Theatre, Dr Williams?’

  ‘Yes,’ Luke said with relief.

  ‘And tell me about Lily on the way. Leave nothing out. First sight, first touch, first kiss. The whole romantic fantasy.’

  Fantasy, Luke thought. She had it right there.

  Lily woke as someone was vacuuming right through the door.

  There were sunbeams on her counterpane. Her counterpane?

  She was lying in the middle of a king-sized bed, on down-filled pillows, ensconced in crisp, white sheets and fleecy blankets.

  The room was spacious, painted in cool soft greys, with white drapes—masculine but not too harsh.

  The focus of the room was the floor-length picture windows, and through the windows Sydney Harbour.

  She could see the Manly ferry chugging across the harbour. She could see the opera house.

  A sunbeam was on her nose.

  The cramps had stopped. She wriggled, very carefully. The nausea had gone as well.

  She’d died and gone to heaven.

  She was in Luke Williams’s bed.

  It didn’t matter whose bed she was in, she decided. Anyone with a bed like this was a friend for life.

  Was she more like her mother than she’d thought?

  Even that concept wasn’t enough to spoil what she was feeling right now. Like life might be possible again.

  A tap on the door. ‘Come in.’ She hauled her sheets to her chin, expecting … Luke? Instead a chubby little lady in a floral pinafore peered round the door, looking anxious.

  ‘Are you awake, dear? I didn’t want to disturb you, only I popped my nose round the door an hour ago and saw you hadn’t drunk anything. I think Dr Williams would like you to drink. Would you like a cup of tea?’

  Lily thought about it. She had many things to think about, but right now tea was pretty much the limit of her brain power.

  ‘I’d love one.’

  ‘With lots of sugar.’ The lady beamed. ‘I’m Gladys Henderson and I do for Dr Williams. I do for other doctors in this apartment block as well but he’s my favourite. But he’s in my bad books for not telling me you were coming. They tell me you’ve had quite the romance and then you just start doing night duty and no one knew. And now to get this nasty bug … But we’re all so pleased for Dr Williams. He’s ever so nice and we’ve been thinking he goes up to that farm of his all the time with only his old uncle, and he stares at nothing and just thinks and thinks about that poor young wife of his. But she’s four years dead, and we’re so pleased … well, not pleased she’s dead, of course, but pleased as Punch that he’s got a young lady. And that’s enough from me; you don’t want me standing here gabbling for ever. I’ll make you a nice cup of tea and plump your pillows and then you settle down and sleep until the doctor comes home. Ooh, I do love a good romance.’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  LUKE’S l
ist went overtime. There were always complications, he thought. The problem with being a plastic surgeon with a decent reputation was that he was sent other people’s mistakes. Repairs of repairs … He hated it.

  His real work, his passion, was repairs that made a huge difference to people’s lives. Birth defects, accidents, improving the aesthetic results after disfiguring cancer surgery.

  He’d refused at first to do cosmetic surgery but there was a need. The lines blurred between vanity and distress and he couldn’t say no.

  Regardless, he left the hospital as he always did on a Wednesdays, feeling that his time could be better utilised. Feeling that there should be something more.

  Like going home to Hannah and their little boy?

  No. Time had left him ceasing to miss Hannah. In truth, their marriage had been … problematic. He didn’t miss her as if he was missing part of himself. He missed what could have been without even knowing what that was.

  He was going home now to another woman.

  She might not still be there. She might have had her sleep and gone back to that appalling boarding house.

  He’d fetch her back.

  Um … no. It was none of his business where she was living.

  But now half the hospital believed she was his long-term lover. And it was his business. He’d compromised her reputation. Maybe some kind of primitive instinct was kicking in, making him feel …

  Dumb? Too chivalrous for words? He hadn’t even had sex with her.

  But the whole hospital thought he had, and he wasn’t doing logic right now. He swung into the underground car park as Mrs Henderson was loading her buckets into the back of her cleaning van.

  ‘Oh, Dr Williams, I’m so pleased you’re home,’ she said. ‘I’ve been popping in to check on your young lady all afternoon and I didn’t like to leave until you got home so I thought I’d do Dr Teo’s spring cleaning. His place has been wanting a good going over for ever. But she’s looking a little better. I gave her a nice boiled egg and she managed to eat most of it. She wanted to get dressed an hour ago but I said you wouldn’t hear of it and if she tried I’d ring you. So she’s gone back to sleep like a good girl. And she’s lovely.’ She beamed. ‘Just lovely. I knew you’d find someone someday but I had no idea that you’d already found her … Lovely, lovely, lovely.’

  He opened the door looking like a little boy expecting a bogeyman. If she wasn’t so discombobulated, she would have laughed.

  The last time she’d seen this man he’d been totally in control and she very much hadn’t been. She still wasn’t, but he looked like a man thrown overboard without a lifeline.

  She shoved herself up on her pillows … on his pillows, she reminded herself … and tried to look dignified.

  Gladys had helped her shower and change into her nightgown. It was quite a respectable nightgown. It wasn’t respectable enough for greeting the man the whole hospital thought she’d slept with. Who’d held her paper bag.

  ‘Thank you for the bed,’ she said with as much dignity as she could muster. ‘I’ll get up now. I would have left sooner but Gladys was threatening strait-jackets.’

  ‘And you didn’t feel well enough?’

  ‘There was that. It’s a powerful little bug.’

  ‘It hit most people harder than you.’

  ‘Gee, that makes me feel better.’

  ‘Sorry.’ He wasn’t sure where to take it from here, she thought. Neither was she.

  ‘I will get up now,’ she said.

  ‘There’s no need.’

  Really? The thought of wriggling further down on these gorgeous pillows was almost irresistible—but this wasn’t her bed. It was Luke Williams’s bed.

  ‘Gladys seems to think I’m your long-lost lover,’ she managed. ‘The sooner I’m out of here the better.’

  ‘The whole hospital thinks you’re my long-lost lover. It’s not such a bad idea.’

  She thought about that. Or she tried to think about it. Her brain was ever so fuzzily … well, fuzzy.

  What he’d said was a very fuzzy statement.

  ‘From whose point of view?’ she said at last.

  He ventured further into the room, looking suddenly businesslike. Professional. Doctor approaching patient with an action plan. ‘From both of our points of view if you intend fulfilling your contract,’ he said briskly. ‘We were caught in a position that was less than dignified. If we were long-term lovers, the hospital grapevine would think it was funny and get over it. For a man and woman who met each other only hours before, it’s like a great big neon light’s appeared over your head saying “Condemn”.’

  There was much in that to think about. Condemn. It was a heavy word. Condemnation was how she was thinking of herself, in the fragments of time the gastro had given her to contemplate the matter.

  But her self-image wasn’t this man’s problem. She’d held him. She’d wanted him as much as he’d wanted her. It was up to her to handle the consequences. ‘I can handle a bit of condemnation,’ she said, wondering if she could.

  She thought of all the insults thrown in her direction since her father had died. She was her mother’s daughter, therefore she was a Scarlet Woman by default. It had even ended her relationship with Charlie the Accountant, the man she’d dated for three years but who’d jibbed when expectations had turned to marriage.

  ‘Sorry, Lily, but I can’t handle your reputation.’

  ‘You mean my mother’s reputation? My mother’s behaviour makes me a whore, too?’ Her voice had risen … maybe more than she’d intended.

  ‘No but people look at you. I’m not sure I can handle that for the rest of our lives; people expecting you to turn out like your mother.’

  She’d thrown something at him. Something large and unwieldy that had just happened to be full of water and half-dead Christmas lilies. It had been a satisfactory moment in a very unsatisfactory interview, one that had left her feeling sullied. Mostly because she’d thought she’d loved Charlie and he’d loved her, and how could she have loved someone who thought her mother’s reputation was more important than their relationship?

  But her mother’s reputation was important. It made a difference. Like her reputation was important now, if she was to continue working at the Harbour.

  She was only at the Harbour for four weeks. She could handle this.

  ‘I need a favour,’ Luke said and sat on her bed.

  His bed. She inched back on the pillows.

  She’d held this man, why?

  She knew why she’d held him. It had been the culmination of an appalling time, an appalling emotion. She’d felt a matching need in him and their mutual need had exploded.

  There was no longer mutual need. They were strangers. There wasn’t even attraction.

  Um … yes, there was. He was rumpled after a long day at work. He’d hauled off his tie and his top shirt button was undone, revealing a hint of lean muscle underneath. His dark eyes were shadowed with weariness, and his five o’clock shadow was toe-curlingly sexy.

  If he leaned forward and touched her …

  She’d be out of here so fast he wouldn’t see her go. What she was feeling scared her witless.

  She was not going to become her mother.

  What had he said? I need a favour.

  ‘I don’t owe you,’ she said, cautiously. ‘Or not very much. I mean … it was lovely that you helped me this morning, and you gave me a gorgeous bed to sleep in for the day, but—’

  ‘I’d like you to sleep in it for a month.’

  That was enough to take her breath away. A girl could be properly flummoxed with a statement like that.

  ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘No?’

  ‘It’s a very nice bed,’ she managed. ‘But despite all evidence to the contrary, I keep myself nice.’

  ‘I’m not propositioning you. I have a sofa bed in the living room. This apartment has two bathrooms. This bed can be yours for a month.’

  ‘I have a bed of my own.’r />
  ‘You’re not going back to that doss house.’

  ‘It might be a doss house,’ she said with as much dignity as she could muster, ‘but it’s a prepaid doss house. It’s okay. My bedroom’s almost clean.’

  ‘There are bedbugs.’

  ‘Nonsense. I would have been bitten by now.’

  For answer he tugged her arm forward, slid her sleeve to her elbow and exposed a cluster of red welts. They both looked down at them. Irrefutable evidence. ‘I saw these this morning,’ he said. ‘I rest my case.’

  She stared down at the welts, perplexed. Bedbugs. She had been itchy, she thought. She’d just been too preoccupied to notice.

  ‘Yikes,’ she muttered. ‘And double yikes. I’ll buy insect spray.’

  ‘You don’t get rid of bedbugs with inspect spray. You get rid of them by moving out.’

  ‘Not an option.’

  ‘You have an option. Here.’

  ‘I’m not in the market for a relationship,’ she snapped.

  ‘I told you, I have a very comfortable sofa bed. I’m not in the market for a relationship either.’

  ‘I didn’t even mean to kiss you.’

  ‘Neither did I.’

  They were glaring at each other. He was still holding her arm. A frisson of something … electricity? … was passing between.

  She couldn’t figure it out.

  Why had she kissed him?

  She wanted, quite fiercely, totally inexplicably, to do it again.

  Get a grip, she told herself frantically. Even if her body was operating at ten per cent capacity, she had to think.

  She was so tired. She wanted to go back to sleep.

  But a woman with no money, a woman who was dependent on her next pay cheque, a woman like her, couldn’t sleep.

  She glanced at the bedside clock. Seven-thirty. She was due back at the hospital at eight. She went to toss back the covers and then thought better of it. Her nightgown wasn’t all that long. She didn’t intend to make this situation more personal than it already was.