He didn’t have any and he knew it. He and Ernest headed for the kitchen and closed the door, and it was all he could do not to lock it after him.
Dinner was steak, chips and salad—Blake’s staple diet. Every evening he followed almost the same routine. He threw frozen chips in the oven, had a quick shower and then emerged to fry steak and toss a bit of salad. It was an unexciting diet but it kept him alive.
Nell wasn’t complaining. Wrapped in her voluminous crimson bathrobe, she walked into the kitchen and wrinkled her nose in appreciation.
‘Yum. No one told me you could cook.’
‘It’s hardly gourmet cooking.’ He looked up from his frying-pan and found her eyes doing a careful assessment of him—from the toes up. The sensation was unnerving, to say the least. ‘How…how do you like your steak?’
‘Medium. So I’m sure it’s dead.’ She sniffed her appreciation. ‘And chips, too. Wow! What a man!’
‘You’ll make me go all bashful,’ he told her, grinning and trying desperately not to do just that. He was practically acting like a schoolboy! ‘Sit down.’ He went back to concentrating on his steak, but he was searingly aware of Nell’s eyes following his every move.
‘You can have some wine if you like,’ she told him. ‘I’ve slept all afternoon, and it’s my turn to be on call, so you can eat and drink all you like and then fall into bed.’
Wonderful thought. Ridiculous thought!
‘I need to go back to the hospital. I haven’t done my rounds yet.’
‘I can do those for you.’
‘They’re my responsibility.’
‘You’re sharing responsibility, remember?’ She smiled up at him as he placed a loaded plate in front of her, and her smile made his guts move sideways. ‘With me. And you’ve worked all afternoon while I’ve slept.’
‘You’re not doing my ward rounds.’
She glared. ‘I’ll sulk.’
‘Sulk away.’
‘I’ll ring up Jonas and tell him you’re not co-operating.’
‘Fate worse than death. I can cope.’
‘I’ll strip naked!’
Blake’s eyes flew wide at that, and she chortled. ‘Got you there. That is a fate worse than death.’ She looked down at her very pregnant bulge. ‘And maybe you’re right to back away in horror. Sexy I ain’t.’
Sexy she most certainly was, with her gorgeous crimson robe and her tousled curls and her wide green eyes, but he wasn’t saying that for the world.
‘So tell me about your wife,’ she said conversationally, ignoring his astonishment and popping a chip into her mouth. ‘What was she like?’
That was enough to kill any vestige of amusement. ‘You don’t want to know about my wife.’
‘Of course I want to know about your wife.’ Another chip went the way of its predecessor and she twinkled. ‘I’m the world’s biggest sticky beak—that’s me—and Jonas and Em told me just enough to be tantalising.’
‘Well, get untantalised. I’m not talking.’
‘Why not?’
He ate half his steak before answering, but his silence didn’t work. Instead of being abashed, she was eyeing him like an inquisitive sparrow, and her probing laughter was almost impossible to resist. She ate and watched him, and he had the feeling she was laughing inside at his reticence. Finally he laid down his knife and fork and glared.
‘You tell me first.’
‘Tell you what?’
‘I assume there’s been a man in your life.’ He was goaded into asking this. He didn’t want to know, he told himself, but it might shut her up. And…he wouldn’t mind knowing.
‘You mean the father of my baby?’
‘That’d be the one.’ He lifted his fork again and pierced another slice of steak. Trying to pretend it didn’t matter.
‘You don’t want to know about him. It’s boring.’
‘Then you don’t want to know about my wife.’
She tilted her chin and regarded him across the table—considering. ‘If I tell you mine, will you tell me yours?’
‘We’d bore each other stupid.’
‘But Emily says you’ve locked away what’s happened and won’t talk about it and it’s driving you crazy.’
He grimaced at that. ‘Em should mind her own business.’
‘Em’s a wonderful doctor. She cares.’
‘She sticks her nose in—’
‘Where it’s not wanted. That’s what good doctors do. You know as well as I do that the worst problems present as a grazed knee or a request for hayfever tablets, and then, if you leave a chink of silence at the end there’s an “Oh, by the way, Doctor…” and out it all comes. Something really major, like they’re feeling suicidal or they have a lump in their groin. And if you don’t leave that chink, there’s trouble.’
‘But I don’t need—’
‘You do need.’ Nell’s smile faded and the look she directed at Blake was searching and concerned. ‘Em’s right. You’ve locked everything up and it’s doing damage.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘So just tell me.’
‘You tell me,’ he said, goaded. ‘If you have your life so under control…’
‘I don’t have my life under control.’
‘Tell me about your baby’s father.’
She took a deep breath. ‘And you agree to tell me about your wife?’
He sighed, pushed to the limit. ‘If I tell you, will you get off my back?’
‘Never another word,’ she said virtuously. ‘Cross my heart and hope to break a leg.’
‘Then tell me about yourself first,’ he muttered, and tried to think back to how this conversation had ever got started. He should draw back right now. But she was sitting across the table from him, eating chip after chip, and her eyes were smiling and kind.
Damn it, he did want to know about her, and if the price was simply telling her about Sylvia…
He could wear it, he thought. Maybe.
‘Who’s the baby’s father?’ he growled. And waited.
To his surprise, her response took a long time coming. Nell finished her meal, pushed her plate away and sat looking down at the table for a long, long time.
She was as reluctant as he was, Blake thought, and the knowledge surprised him. Sylvia…well, Sylvia was a tragedy, but surely there was no tragedy with Nell. An indiscretion, maybe, but…
‘I thought my baby’s father was my husband.’ Her soft voice cut across his thoughts and his eyes flew to hers.
‘What?’
‘Silly, wasn’t I?’ She gave a self-deprecating grin, but her laughter was completely gone. It was a forced grin. A smile of humiliation.
‘Will you explain?’
‘Maybe I need to go back…to go back further.’
‘I have time.’ He glanced at his watch. There was half an hour before he’d told the nursing staff he’d be back, and if she took all that time then maybe he wouldn’t have to talk about Sylvia.
‘Richard was the son of my grandfather’s accountant.’
‘I see.’ But Blake didn’t. ‘Your grandfather was the local doctor here.’
‘That’s right.’ She took a deep breath. ‘He certainly was. But he hated me. As did my grandmother.’
‘Surely not.’
‘Of course they did. Ask anyone. My mother was their only child. She was brought up in a house of repression and dislike, and she got herself into trouble. With me. Then she disappeared, leaving my grandparents with what they termed the consequence of sin. It was their Christian duty to rear me but no one ever said they had to like it. They couldn’t look their neighbours in the eye while I was around, and I couldn’t leave.’
‘Hell,’ Blake said faintly, and Nell nodded.
‘It was hell. My mother left when she was fifteen, and I should have left then, too. But somehow…’ She sighed and looked up, meeting Blake’s eyes over the table. ‘I was good at school,’ she told him. ‘The teachers were kind, and I guess in so
me strange way I thought that maybe if I became a doctor—someone of worth like my grandfather—then I’d gain my grandparents’ approval. I might have known it could never happen.’
He nodded. ‘And so?’
Nell shrugged. ‘So I worked my butt off, I won a scholarship to university, became a doctor and once I’d left, I never came home. Until my grandmother died.’
‘Which was?’
‘Two years back.’
‘That’s right.’ His brow cleared. ‘I’d just arrived in town. She was the old lady out on Beacon Point.’
‘That’s the one. My grandfather had died some years before and I contacted her then—while I was still at university. But she told me not to come home for the funeral because my grandfather wouldn’t have wanted me there. So I didn’t. But I came home to bury my grandmother. She had no one else.’
‘And…’
‘And I met Richard.’ She sighed. ‘He was with his father when they told me I’d inherited everything from my grandparents’ estate.’
‘So your grandparents were fond of you after all.’
‘No way.’ She shook her head. ‘To leave me money would have been unthinkable. Heavens, I might have spent it! But they were so old-fashioned that Gran never thought about making a will in her own right. Grandpa left everything to her, and if she predeceased him then he left it all to charity. I guess he figured that’d cut me right out. But he was too private and too proud to use a lawyer, so he omitted planning for what eventually happened. Gran outlived him. She therefore inherited the lot and failed to make a will in her own right. Which left me with everything. By default.’
‘Lucky you.’
‘Maybe I was.’ She gave a rueful smile. ‘I didn’t know how lucky. But Richard did. His father told him. They were misers, my grandparents, and I was suddenly worth a fortune. Do you see the irony in that? Poor, downtrodden Nell who everyone was told was worthless was suddenly almost a millionaire. Until then all I’d known was hard work. And then—my grandparents were gone and there was Richard.’
Richard… Blake thought back to vague gossip he’d heard just after he’d arrived in Sandy Ridge. And then more recently. The gossip hadn’t been pleasant. ‘Richard Lyons?’
‘That’s the one.’
‘I see.’ He did, too. Hell! ‘And you fell for him?’
‘Richard would have charmed blood from a stone,’ she said bitterly. ‘And I was so stupid I married him.’ She shrugged. ‘You have no idea what it was like… I’d been so damned alone, and my grandparents’ deaths made me feel appalling. Richard was the wrong man at the wrong time. So I was a fool. He’d come here to spend time with his father—in fact, he’d come to ask for money but I didn’t know that. He was desperate and I was the answer to his prayers.’
‘And you married?’
‘We married. Fast. Why wait? he said, and it made sense. I’d been alone too long, and he was so…loving.’ She hugged herself and a shiver ran right through her. Suddenly Blake felt an almost overwhelming need to reach out and touch her—comfort her—but she kept speaking, and somehow he held back.
‘Richard had a dubious accountancy practice back in Sydney,’ she told him. ‘It was near Sydney Central, so he moved into my flat and I kept on with my medicine. But the marriage wasn’t happy. It didn’t take me long to realise what an idiot I’d been. And then, just as I was thinking I should walk away, I became pregnant.’
‘And…’
‘And Richard demanded I have a termination. I wouldn’t—I was so upset—and I caught the flu and I was morning sick and miserable. I was on night duty and my boss sent me home.’ She shrugged. ‘So I came home unexpectedly and it was the old story. I found Richard in bed with someone else.’
‘I…see.’ It was an inane comment but the best he could come up with.
‘You don’t see at all,’ she said bitterly. ‘You don’t know how close I came to throwing it all in. And I mean everything. Suicide had never looked so good. But then I started walking—and walking the streets of Sydney at night when you’re alone is not a good idea. It ended with me being mugged. And finding Ernest. Somehow we pulled ourselves together, we drove back here out to my grandparents’ house and sat on the bluff and looked out to sea—for hours. And then I made a few decisions.’
‘Which were?’
‘To take control,’ she said, and her chin jutted in a way he was coming to know. And like. ‘To stop trying to please everyone and subjugating myself for scraps of affection.’ She took a deep breath and she met Blake’s gaze head on. ‘I had a new little life aboard and I don’t want my baby to have a doormat for a mother. And I had the world’s best dog to take care of. So I headed to the best lawyer I could find. Nick Daniels at Bay Beach. He’s a county court judge now but as a lawyer he’s the best.’
‘He helped you?’
‘He certainly did.’ Nell smiled. ‘I had one piece of luck. I’d walked into the flat and heard Richard and his woman in bed, and I’d walked straight out again without them knowing I’d seen, so Richard still thought I was the adoring stupid little woman. He didn’t have a clue I was onto him. And I was just in time. I rang Richard and told him I’d been called urgently to Bay Beach because a friend was ill. Then Nick and I started asking questions. I discovered so much of mine had been shifted to both our names—ready for Richard to remove everything. Nick was appalled. Apparently Richard had had it organised for months. But I forestalled him, and I won. For the first time in my life I won.’
‘Good for you.’
‘It was, wasn’t it?’ Laughter sprang back. ‘Then I went back to Sydney, kicked Richard out of my flat and I got the king-sized quilt I’d been making. You have no idea how stupid I felt. I’d spent hours and hours making a stupid quilt for a marriage that was nothing but a fraud—and I chopped it up and made it into maternity overalls. And then I made a few more decisions. One of them was that I wanted to work here.’
Blake thought that through. ‘Richard disappeared?’
‘He and his lady had been planning to leave for a while,’ Nell said bitterly. ‘So, yes, they scampered—with lots of clients’ money but, thanks to Nick, not mine.’ She shrugged. ‘He hurt a lot of people.’
‘Including you.’
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘He didn’t hurt me. He woke me up out of my stupor. He made me realise just how damned stupid I’d been and for how long. So I’m almost grateful.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah.’ She chuckled. ‘Except if I saw him again I’d personally castrate the toerag. In the nicest possible way, of course.’
He raised his eyebrows at that. ‘Oh, of course.’
‘And the best thing was, when the police dug really deeply into his background they discovered he’d married before. About ten years ago. Even though it only lasted a few months he’d never bothered to get a divorce, so I wasn’t married after all and I wasn’t in any way responsible for all the debts he’d run up.’ She took a deep breath. ‘So now you know,’ she told him. ‘That’s all. Now, are you going to tell me about you?’
‘Me?’
‘Yep, you, stupid. And your wife. Sylvia.’
‘I…’
‘Fair’s fair and a bargain’s a bargain.’
But then the phone rang. Saved by the bell, Blake thought thankfully, but Nell beat him to the receiver.
‘Dr McKenzie here.’ Then she listened. ‘Right,’ she said at last, her eyes on Blake’s face. ‘We’ll be there in three minutes.’
She replaced the receiver. ‘This doesn’t let you off the hook,’ she told him.
‘No. But what is it?’
She was already moving toward the door. ‘Grace Mayne’s on her way in. Her neighbour found her. She’s unconscious and the ambulance boys thinks she’s dying.’
Hell! Grace…
‘I’ll go,’ Blake snapped, reaching the door at the same time she did.
‘Grace saved my life this morning,’ Nell told him, her voice shaken yet determin
ed. ‘And Aaron’s. We’ll both go.’ She hesitated. ‘And then we’ll come straight back here and take up where we left off.’
The ambulance boys had had a long day today. For minimally trained volunteers it was almost too much. Professional detachment wasn’t in their job description. Bob and Henry stood by the stretcher and almost wrung their hands. They might enjoy a bit of drama, but not when it was as serious as it had been today.
‘What happened?’ Blake demanded answers before he reached Grace’s side. He was moving so fast Nell almost had to trot to keep up with him. The fact that she was wearing her grandpa’s overlong bathrobe didn’t help at all.
But she was determined to keep up. Blake was determined to practise alone, and the only way to break him of the habit was to stick by him. Like glue.
And this was Grace… Oh, no. Grace! No wonder Bob and Henry looked sick. The old lady had held a place in the town’s collective hearts since Nell had first met her. Whenever there’d been trouble, there’d been Grace. Whenever anyone had needed help, she’d been there. She had a heart so big…
Her heart. Please, let it not be her heart, Nell thought. If this morning’s exertions were to kill her… Dear God, no!
But Grace looked dreadful. Blake already had his stethoscope out and his fingers were on the old lady’s wrist, feeling her pulse as soon as he reached her. ‘Does anyone know what happened?’ he demanded again, and the ambulancemen nodded.
‘Her neighbour, Adam Roberts,’ Henry whispered, dragging his eyes from Grace’s chest. It was hardly moving. She was hardly breathing. ‘Adam was on the boat this morning, too.’
‘And?’ Blake’s voice was clipped and decisive, dragging professionalism from him, and with an effort Henry made himself concentrate.
‘Adam said they drove home together as soon as the boat moored,’ he told them. Both ambulancemen were totally focussed on Grace. They hadn’t spared Nell’s startling outfit a glance. In fact, Nell had now shifted from being just another local. They no longer saw her as Nell. They saw her now as another doctor—more help—and the bathrobe didn’t register at all.
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