The rest of the morning’s list passed without incident and although Jack maintained his cool formal distance, she’d caught him looking at her once or twice, a small frown settling between his dark brows. She imagined he was regretting his offer to stay over the previous night, silently dreading it leaking out into the hospital gossip network.
It wasn’t as if she was under any illusions as to her supermodel potential, and she was the first to admit she didn’t even come close to his ex’s designer elegance, but did he have to make it so obvious he wasn’t interested?
Although she knew it was petty of her, she couldn’t help feeling a little disappointed he hadn’t even tried to make a move on her while they’d shared her bed. Most men would have had a quick grope at the very least, but not Jack. He had kept his trousers on and his hands to himself all night.
She peered at herself in the female change-room mirror and grimaced. She had surgical-cap hair and not a scrap of makeup on, not even lip gloss.
She ran her hands over her hips and sighed. She hadn’t been to the gym in months and it was starting to show, and with Christmas just around the corner she knew it could only get worse.
‘Right, my girl.’ She addressed her reflection with determination. ‘You are going on a diet and exercise programme, effective immediately.’
Her car was hot from being parked in the sun all day but Becky refused to be daunted. She drove to her flat and, after cautiously checking each room, quickly changed into running gear, scooped up the new keys she’d had cut that morning and jogged outside into the golden light of the evening.
She was ashamed of how breathless she was after simply running to the corner of her street. Ben had been telling her for years how important it was to get and stay fit but she’d never made the time to do it properly. He’d even suggested self-defence classes but she’d laughed at him, telling him the only wrestling she wanted to do with a man was the type that led to marriage and kids.
She knew it was probably terribly old-fashioned of her but all she had really ever wanted was to settle down and bring up a family, the way her parents had done for her and Ben. In her hurry to achieve her dream, she had blundered into three disastrous relationships, each one ending sourly. It still made her cringe to think of how she’d acted so impulsively, hurting three quite decent men in the process.
It wasn’t that she didn’t love her career—she did, and had even chosen it for its practicality—but she still secretly longed for that once-in-a-lifetime connection with one special person. What was life about if not companionship and intimacy? She didn’t want to spend the rest of her life putting people to sleep during the day and coming home to sleep alone at night. Last night had shown her that, if nothing else. Waking up next to Jack had been so special, even though he hadn’t touched her.
She’d watched him for ages before he’d woken up, studying his features, wishing she’d had the courage to reach out and trace her fingers over the dark shadows under his eyes which always seemed to be there…
She stopped running and took several deep breaths as her thoughts caught up. What was she thinking? That Jack was that special person she’d been waiting for all her life?
No!
Not Jack Colcannon.
She choked back a laugh. She couldn’t possibly fall in love with her brother’s best friend. Ben would be appalled. Her parents would be…
No.
Jack wasn’t marriage material. He was more the date-them-and-drop-them type. She couldn’t imagine him allowing himself to feel anything but disdain for her. He couldn’t even bring himself to call her by her preferred name.
Besides, he was practically an honorary brother. He’d seen her with braces and break-outs on her skin, for heaven’s sake!
Except there was that one time twelve years ago, when he hadn’t acted quite like a brother…
‘I haven’t got time to take you for a driving lesson,’ Ben had said. ‘Ask Jack. He won’t mind.’
Becky had pouted at her brother. ‘Jack is a guest, I can’t ask him.’
‘Jack is practically a member of our family. He’s been here for the last four weekends in a row. Surely you don’t have to be shy around him now.’
‘I’m not shy!’
Ben had given an amused chuckle as he’d spread out the weekend paper. ‘No, that you’re not. Go on, get out of here, brat, and ask him to teach you to reverse park. I’m resigning.’
She’d swung away in resentment. How like her brother to remind her of her failure to grasp the basic skills of reverse parking. So, she’d run into a few cars. So what? How else was she going to learn how to do it?
‘Jack?’ She found him under the shade of one of the elm trees in the garden, reading a medical journal. ‘Can I ask you something?’
Jack put the journal down and lifted his head, his green eyes meeting hers. ‘Sure, Rebecca. What’s on your mind?’
She shifted from foot to foot like the awkward schoolgirl she was. Something about Jack always made her feel a bit self-conscious. She knew his father was a cosmetic surgeon and she couldn’t help wondering if Jack thought she could do with some work herself. A little liposuction wouldn’t go astray, and as for her breasts, which had been a bit slow on the uptake…
‘I was wondering if you’d take me for a driving lesson,’ she said. ‘Ben has given up on me and my test is next month and—’
He got to his feet, his tall lean body casting a shadow over her five-foot-five frame.
‘I guess I’ve got nothing better to do,’ he said.
‘Thanks,’ she said, and added under her breath, ‘I think.’
‘Which car?’
‘Can we take yours?’ she asked, suddenly beaming up at him. ‘I think I need to practise on a manual. Mum’s is automatic and it’s just not the same.’
She followed him out to where his car was parked and, after positioning her learner plates on the rear and front of the car, slipped behind the wheel.
‘Wow,’ she said, running her hands over the shiny dashboard. ‘This is so cool. A real sports car!’
‘Where do you want to drive to?’ Jack asked.
She swivelled in her seat to face him. ‘I would love to drive past Amelia Brockhurst’s place out on the Ridgeway road. She’ll be green with envy when she sees me driving this.’
A few bunny-hopping minutes later Becky felt as if she’d more or less got the hang of the gears and drove with increasing confidence out towards the Ridgeway road.
‘Driving in a straight line is no real test of your ability,’ Jack said. ‘You need to practise some of the manoeuvres the examiner will be looking out for, like parking and hill starts.’
‘OK,’ she said, ‘I’ll do a hill start on the next hill we come to.’
Within a few minutes they came to an intersection with a stop sign and a steep incline.
‘Will this do?’ she asked, swinging a glance his way.
‘Show me your stuff,’ he said, bracing himself.
The car coughed and jerked as she let out the clutch, but somehow she managed to get over the hill without stalling, although there was a slight smell of burning clutch-plate lingering in the air.
‘Hey! Am I good or what?’ she crowed delightedly. ‘Wait till I tell Ben. He thinks I’m hopeless at hill starts.’
‘Let’s do a reverse park,’ Jack suggested. ‘Drive on a bit until we come to somewhere suitable.’
‘Somewhere suitable’ turned out to be an old quarry where some forty-four-gallon drums had been left abandoned. Jack got out of the car to position them the approximate distance so she could practise.
‘Turn the wheel now,’ he directed, but she hit the drum regardless.
‘I can’t do it!’
‘Yes, you can,’ he said, getting back into the passenger seat, making an obvious effort not to notice the scratch on his paintwork. ‘Now, try once more. Put your indicator on and swing the wheel to the right.’
She did as he instructed and managed t
o position the car without touching the drum.
‘Did I pass?’ She looked at him hopefully.
‘Not until you do it on the other side,’ he said.
‘The other side?’ She gaped at him. ‘But I can’t do it on the other side!’
‘You have to be able to do it on both sides,’ he said. ‘What about one-way streets? You have to prove you can do it no matter what direction the traffic flows.’
She bit her lip in concentration and started to reverse, but the drum connected with the bumper bar and toppled over.
‘Oops!’
‘Try it again,’ Jack said.
She tried it again but this time she almost flattened the drum. She bent her head to the steering-wheel and groaned in despair. ‘I’m going to fail. I just know I am.’
‘No, you’re not,’ Jack said, touching her on the shoulder to bring her gaze back to his. ‘You can do this. I know you can.’
Becky could feel the warmth of his long fingers through the thin cotton of her top. Her eyes flicked to his mouth, her tongue snaking out to moisten her lips.
‘Do you really think I can do it?’ she whispered into the air that separated them.
‘Yes. Now, try it again,’ he said, letting his hand fall away. ‘Run alongside the drum as if it is a parked car and now swing your wheels to—’
Crunch.
‘You’re not concentrating, Rebecca,’ Jack said, gritting his teeth.
‘I am concentrating!’ she flashed back in frustration.
‘No, you’re not,’ he said. ‘You’re going at it like a bull at a gate. Take your time and—’
Becky flung open the driver’s door and slammed it behind her, stomping off in a temper fuelled by repeated failure and embarrassment.
‘Rebecca.’ He got out of the car to stride after her.
‘Don’t call me that!’ She swung back to face him. ‘No one but you ever calls me that.’
He set his jaw and eyeballed her determinedly, his hands tightly clenched at his sides.
‘Get back in the car and try it again.’
‘No.’ She folded her arms across her chest, glaring back at him with spirited defiance. ‘You can’t make me.’
Two beats of silence passed.
‘You think not?’ he said, reaching for her, and pulled her towards him ruthlessly.
She stared at the grim line of his mouth for a moment, her stomach hollowing out at the determined glitter in his gaze as it collided with hers.
‘Get in the damn car,’ he ordered, his fingers tightening on her upper arms.
She lifted her chin, her chocolate brown eyes issuing an irresistible challenge. ‘Make me.’
Becky brought herself back to the present with a jolt. She didn’t want to recall that bruising kiss that had led to the stiff unbroken silence as Jack had driven them back to her parents’ property. She didn’t want to remember how his mouth had felt against the softness of hers, how her body had pressed itself against the solid hardness of his as if looking for a lifetime anchor.
She ran all the way back to her flat, gasping for breath as if all the hounds of hell and purgatory and the council dogs’ home were after her, coming to an abrupt halt as she came to the door of her flat.
It was swinging open.
CHAPTER FOUR
BECKY sucked in a breath and stared at the open door for a few moments, weighing up her options. She could call the police but her mobile was on her bed where she’d flung it earlier in her hurry to get changed. The landline was within reach but she wasn’t sure she wanted to enter her flat if there was an unknown assailant inside.
‘Hello?’ she called out in a somewhat forced light breezy tone, as if expecting a long-lost friend to greet her. ‘I’m home!’
She pushed the door open a little further, her eyes widening in shock at the disarray of her flat. Books and papers were scattered and most of the furniture overturned, as if someone had been intent on searching through her possessions for something important.
She stepped over the mess and moved through to the bedroom. She bent to pick up one of her dresses off the floor, a lightning bolt of alarm rocketing through her as she looked at the slash that had rent it in two.
Her eyes went to the mirrored doors of the built-in wardrobe, her heart coming to a complete standstill when she saw what was scrawled across it in one of her blood-red lipsticks.
GET OUT OR DIE BITCH FACE
Becky allowed herself one small swallow, doing her best to keep her head, as icy fear crawled like a long-legged insect right up her spine to settle amongst the fine hairs on the back of her neck, lifting each one in turn.
She reached blindly for the phone and dialled the emergency code.
‘Colcannon,’ Jack answered his mobile as he ran the last block back to his house near Bondi Beach.
‘Jack, it’s me, Ben.’
Jack stopped running. ‘Hey, mate, long time no hear. How are you go—?’
‘Listen to me, Jack.’ Ben cut him off, his voice low and urgent. ‘I can’t talk for long, this call might be traced. I’m in trouble.’
‘What sort of trouble?’ Jack frowned.
‘I can’t tell you all the details,’ Ben said. ‘I’m on a big undercover assignment. The biggest of my career. But someone is trying to flush me out.’
‘Who?’
‘Someone on the inside of the operation is acting as an informant.’ He took a ragged breath and continued, ‘I can’t let this operation slip. It’s at a crucial stage. It’ll be the biggest criminal bust we’ve had in years. It’s vital my identity isn’t revealed.’ He paused for a moment and added, ‘I need your help.’
‘Anything, Ben,’ Jack said. ‘What do you want me to do?’
‘I need you to look after Becky. She’s in danger. Big danger.’
Jack felt a chill pass through his body and for some reason he couldn’t get his voice to work immediately.
‘They know her brother is in the ring, but they don’t know which one of us it is. There are a couple of us working undercover. They’re trying to flush me out by targeting her. It’ll blow the operation if I break my cover now. That’s what they want.’
‘They?’ Jack finally managed to croak.
‘It’s a drug operation,’ Ben said. ‘They know someone has infiltrated them but they’re not sure who it is. This is like a process of elimination. A few buttons are getting pressed to see who responds.’
Jack wondered if he should tell Ben about Becky’s intruder the night before, but decided against it. His friend sounded stressed enough as it was, without him adding to it.
‘You’ve got to keep an eye on Becky for me,’ Ben said. ‘I need to know she’s safe at all times.’
‘What about the police?’ Jack suggested. ‘If you’re so worried, shouldn’t she have some sort of official protection?’
‘No!’ Ben’s tone was insistent. ‘We can’t involve the regular force. We have to handle this by ourselves. You’re the only one I trust, Jack. I think someone on the force is feeding this informant. I’m not prepared to take any risks.’
‘You’re starting to really scare me, mate,’ Jack confessed.
‘I’m sorry to involve you, Jack.’ Ben’s tone was hollow with anguish. ‘But you are the only person I know I can trust and who’s in a position to protect Becky.’
‘I’m not sure I’m the right person for the job,’ Jack said after a small but telling silence. ‘Becky and I don’t always see eye to—’
‘If they have to kill her to get to me, they won’t think twice about it,’ Ben interjected bluntly. ‘My parents are overseas and hard to trace, but Becky is a sitting duck. You’ve got to get her out of that flat, Jack. I don’t care how you do it, even if you have to pretend to be in love with her to get her to come and live with you. You can explain it all to her later, but for now the word out on the loop has hinted if she stays in that building another night she’ll be in the morgue by morning.’
Jack felt his stom
ach give a sudden lurch and was surprised his voice came out at all, let alone calmly. ‘Should I tell her she’s in danger?’
‘No…don’t do that,’ Ben said after a short pause. ‘If she knows it’s to do with me, she might do something to lead them to me, something stupid. Just stick like glue to her outside work hours. That’s what a man in love does, right?’
‘She’ll never fall for it,’ Jack warned him. ‘How am I going to convince her to spend time with me when we’ve been at each other’s throats for years?’
‘I’m sure you’ll think of something,’ Ben said. ‘You’ll have to. I don’t think anyone will try anything inside the hospital—they probably wouldn’t get back out past Security if they did. But after hours…’ He let his trailed-off sentence say the rest for him.
‘I’ll do what I can,’ Jack promised.
‘Thanks, mate,’ Ben said. ‘I knew I could call on you. Just don’t let anything happen to her. She’s my kid sister and I love her, brat that she is.’
‘How can I contact you?’
‘You can’t,’ Ben said. ‘I’m taking a risk now in calling you.’
There was a small silence before Ben added, his voice rough with bitten-back emotion, ‘Jack…if anything was to happen to me…you’ll tell my folks I love them, won’t you?’
‘Yes, of course, Ben, of course I would.’ Jack swallowed the restriction in his throat.
‘If I don’t come out of this, don’t let Becky throw herself away on some creep,’ Ben added. ‘She has terrible taste in men. I don’t want to see her get hurt.’
‘I’ll do my best but—’
Ben broke off the connection without saying goodbye, which Jack somehow knew had been deliberate.
He stared at the mobile in his hands for some time, wondering if he’d just imagined the conversation he’d had with his best mate. He knew Ben’s work was dangerous—every cop lived with the threat of death hanging over them in the line of duty—but this time his friend sounded as if he was in well and truly over his head.
The phone began to ring in his hand and he almost dropped it in surprise, his fingers fumbling to answer it.
A Surgeon Worth Waiting For Page 4
