Erin lowered her gaze from his. ‘It’s not that I don’t care about the patients. I do. They are someone’s son or daughter, mother or father, uncle or aunt, cousin or niece, nephew—whatever. I never forget that while I’m treating them. I’m always thinking of the people waiting on the other side of A&E’s doors: what they’re feeling, the hope, the dread and the disbelief that something terrible has happened to the person they love, that they might never be the same again, or even worse not survive.’
‘I know,’ he said, resting his hands on her shoulders. ‘I feel that too. But that’s why I’m so committed to improving the system.’
She looked up into his clear, green eyes. ‘I don’t want you to think I’m deliberately being obstructive. It’s just that I…I don’t think I have anything further to offer than initial assessment and treatment.’
‘I think you’re once again underestimating yourself, Erin,’ he said. ‘I realise you’re not as comfortable as some of the others at relating to the patients and their relatives, but that is a skill that can be worked at over time.’
‘I’ve never been a people person,’ she said. ‘I like my own company.’
‘You seemed to enjoy mine a few minutes ago,’ he said with a wry smile.
Erin gave him a look of mild reproach. ‘Yes, well, you do have a rather persuasive manner about you at times.’
He grinned at her again. ‘Just you wait until I really lay on the charm. You won’t know what hit you.’
Erin tried to suppress a little bubble of excitement that rose in her, but even so it was impossible to ignore the flutter of her pulse at his words. She was already floundering in an unfamiliar sea of sensual temptation. She had lost her bearings the first time he’d kissed her, and each of his subsequent kisses had made her cling to him like a raft. She had never experienced anything like it before. Her response to him was so out of character. She had certainly been attracted to the occasional man in the past, but only in a passing manner. She had never been in love. She wasn’t sure if she had the capacity to allow someone to get that close to her. If they did, and then abandoned her, she knew she would be devastated, just as devastated as she had been each time her mother had let her down in the past. She had learned to rely on no one but herself. She felt safe that way.
Eamon Chapman, however, was threatening to disrupt that sense of safety. From the moment she had met him, he had challenged her. It was like fire meeting ice. She could feel herself melting a little further every time he was near her. Like right now, standing with his warm hands resting on her shoulders, his intense green eyes meshing with hers, the promise of passion in the sensual curve of his mouth. His body was half a step away from touching her from chest to thigh. If she let her breath out fully, her breasts would be almost brushing his chest.
‘I’m not sure this is what I need right now,’ she said, unable to hold his gaze in case her eyes belied her words. ‘Maybe it’s not what either of us need at this point. You have an important job to do. I don’t want to distract you from it. I don’t want to be distracted from my work, either.’
He seemed to wait a beat or two before he spoke, his eyes steadily holding hers. ‘Erin, how would you feel about looking at my suggestions for the department on neutral ground?’
She looked at him warily. ‘What do you mean?’
‘There’s a meeting being held this Saturday in the Southern Highlands,’ he said. ‘It’s a one-day conference I’ve organised for A&E specialists in the area on follow-through care. You might have seen it advertised in the doctors’ room. I want you to think about coming. You might find it more useful than the breakfast meetings here. I’ve invited a couple of specialists from interstate to speak on how their departments have coped with the changes so far.’
She drew her bottom lip into her mouth, holding it there for a moment before she released it. ‘I don’t know.’
He took her hand again and gave it a gentle squeeze. ‘Think about it, Erin. We could drive down together early on Saturday. I could take you to meet my parents after the conference. They’re only a few kilometres away from the hotel where the meeting is being held. I have my own cottage on their property, which has two bedrooms, so you don’t have to feel too crowded. It would only be for one night in any case.’
Her brown eyes eyed him narrowly. ‘Why would you want me to meet your parents?’
He smiled at her. ‘Isn’t that what a guy does when he’s seriously attracted to a girl?’
She bit her lip again. ‘I don’t know. I’d have to find someone to feed Molly for me.’
‘If you can’t find someone, you could always bring her along. My parents wouldn’t mind. They love animals.’
She let out a sigh. ‘Are you always so intent on getting your own way?’
He raised her chin with his fingers. ‘You know something, Erin? You have a habit of pushing me away with one hand while tugging me towards you with the other.’
‘I’m not even touching you,’ Erin argued. ‘You’re the one holding me.’
He dropped his hands. ‘I’m not touching you now.’
‘It feels like you are,’ she said without thinking.
He smiled a disarming smile. ‘Now, that’s really interesting, because I can still feel your lips on mine.’
Erin looked at his mouth, and her insides turned to mush all over again. He was so heart-stoppingly gorgeous. His smile could melt steel; just one look from those forest-green eyes could send her pulse soaring out of control. His body was so vitally alive, so intensely male. She could still feel his hard male contours against her softer ones. Her body was still reverberating with the pounding of his blood where he had pressed his need to hers. It made her wonder what would happen if they actually did make love. She was a trained doctor; she knew the female form, she understood sexual response. But somehow she knew making love with Eamon Chapman would be far more enthralling than anything she had felt or imagined.
But why was he pursuing her when he could have anyone he wanted? She’d seen the way the women on the staff looked at him. She had even heard some of the racy comments in the staff toilets about his physical assets. She was the last person he should be interested in, which made her wonder if he had an entirely different motive. Could she risk a relationship with him no matter what the cost?
She brought her gaze back to his. ‘I guess I must be quite a novelty to someone like you.’
‘Why do you say that?’ he asked.
She gave a little shrug. ‘I’m not able to offer you anything other than, well, you know…? An affair.’
His eyes darkened as they held hers. ‘So you’re considering having an affair—as you call it—with me?’
Erin disguised a little swallow. ‘That’s what you want, isn’t it?’
He continued to hold her gaze with the mesmerising force of his. ‘I would be lying if I said I wasn’t interested in taking our relationship to the next level,’ he said. ‘You’ve seen and felt the evidence for yourself.’
She gave him a wry look. ‘Indeed.’
He smiled as he brushed a strand of her hair back from her forehead. ‘We don’t have to rush into anything you’re not ready for. I get the sense you’re not very experienced. You can’t be, if you haven’t dated for seven years. But I respect that. In fact, I find it rather sweet.’
‘The novelty factor.’ She let out her breath on an exaggerated sigh as she lowered her eyes. ‘I knew it.’
He raised her chin, locking his gaze with hers, his expression serious. ‘No. Don’t keep underselling yourself like that. You are a very beautiful and desirable young woman. Why do you have such low self-esteem? Has someone hurt you in the past?’
Erin moved out of his hold, hugging her arms across her middle. ‘I can’t help being the way I am. I’ve just never seen myself locked into a long-term relationship. I don’t think I could handle the whole suburban thing: prams and pets, picnics on the weekend. I like my own space.’
‘I’m not offering yo
u “for ever”, Erin,’ he said. ‘It’s way too early to be thinking along those lines. I’m just talking about “for now”.’
She drew in her lips as she surveyed his features. ‘I can’t help feeling this is more about your goals for the department than anything else. Michelle Oliver intimated as such. “By fair means or foul”, she said.’
Eamon shook his head. ‘No, that’s not what this is about. I admit, I do want you to adopt my strategies for change, but do you see me kissing anyone else around here?’
Erin wanted to believe this was for real, that his attraction to her was just as genuine as hers for him. ‘I’m just trying to be sensible about this,’ she said. ‘We want different things. How could a relationship between us work?’
‘It will work because of what happens when we do this,’ he said, placing his mouth over hers in a lingering kiss.
Erin felt her lips swell with immediate longing, and as he slowly pulled away her lips clung to his as if they never wanted to let go. She looked up at him, her heart feeling a squeezing tightness as she thought of the day when he would walk away from her and take up with someone else—someone more attractive, someone who wanted to settle down and play happy families, someone who would fit in with his well-to-do family. How would she feel if she was to run into him from time to time, like Sherrie Mason did? Could she see him as a friend, someone she had once dated but had moved on from without ill feelings or regret? Erin couldn’t see how she would be able to do it without feeling robbed of something, without feeling insanely jealous that someone else was enjoying his kisses and his touch, experiencing his lovemaking. What was wrong with her? It wasn’t as if she was prepared to offer him anything permanent. If the grapes she eventually reaped were too sour for her taste, wasn’t that her problem, rather than his?
Erin’s beeper sounded, fracturing the silence with its shrill pulse of urgency. She glanced down at the small screen and grimaced. ‘I need to get back. There’s another MVA on its way.’
When Erin got home she felt too wired for bed. She had never been particularly good at sleeping during the day. The street she lived on was relatively quiet, but in the distance she could still hear the rumble of traffic, the occasional tooting horn, or, because the hospital was only a couple of suburbs away, a police or ambulance siren. Each time a siren sounded, she would jerk upright, her heart jump-starting with adrenalin.
After she fed Molly she got on her treadmill and ran for forty minutes, enjoying the mindlessness of running nowhere. But, once she was finished and had showered and put on her pyjama bottoms and a cotton T-shirt, she still didn’t feel anywhere near ready to switch off.
She drummed her fingers on the balcony rail as she watched the harbour with all its bustling activity, a restlessness consuming her that was unlike anything she had felt before. Her eyes kept wandering of their own volition to next door. She knew there was no possibility of Eamon being home at this hour. She hadn’t seen his car in the car park downstairs, which meant he had left before she got home. He wouldn’t have had much sleep, she thought in empathy. He had left A&E soon after the MVA victim had stabilised enough to be transferred to Intensive Care, which would have given him two hours, three at the most, to rest before he was back at the department.
She wandered back into the apartment, but just as she was about to lie down her phone began to ring from the charger on the kitchen bench. She picked it up, her spirits plummeting even further when she saw her mother’s name on the caller ID. ‘Mum, how are you?’ she said in a toneless voice.
‘Ez, I’ve got a big surprise for you,’ Leah Taylor said.
Erin felt her spine stiffen in apprehension. ‘Oh? What is it?’
‘I’m here in Sydney,’ Leah said in excitement. ‘I got one of those cheap flights. It cost less than the taxi from the airport. I flew in first thing.’
Erin’s palm moistened against the phone she was holding. ‘So…where are you staying?’
‘Ez-zie!’ Her mother’s voice had a whining edge of reproach to it. ‘Where do you think I’m staying? With you, of course. I’m downstairs right now. I wanted to surprise you. Are you surprised?’
‘Totally blown away,’ Erin said flatly.
‘So are you going to let me in or not?’
‘Are you alone?’ Erin asked.
‘Yeah, I got rid of that creep Brad. He was pinching my… Er, I mean, he was cheating on me.’
Erin closed her eyes as she leant back against the pantry door. ‘So how long are you going to be in Sydney?’ she asked, silently dreading the answer.
‘I haven’t made any firm plans,’ Leah said. ‘Hey, are you going to open the door or what?’
Erin pushed herself away from the pantry door and reached for the security pad with dread weighing heavily in her chest. ‘I’m on the fifteenth floor, apartment 1503. And don’t smoke in the lift.’
When she opened the apartment door to her mother’s knock, Erin tried not to show any emotion, but inside her heart felt as if it had been seized by an artery clamp. Her mother was stick-thin; her once-chestnut hair was now bottle blonde with grey roots showing through, like the silver trail of a snail. Her skin was wrinkled beyond her years, weathered by too much sun, too many cigarettes and too many illicit substances. She was wearing black jeans that were so tight they looked like they had been sprayed on, her leopard-print top showing what would have been a cleavage if her weight was in the normal range.
Leah stepped past her into the apartment and, turning, put her bag down and placed her hand on one hip, jutting it forward like a catwalk model. ‘Aren’t you going to give me a hug?’ she asked.
Erin closed the door. ‘Sure,’ she said, stepping forward and hugging her mother in an embrace that felt awkward and unnatural and heartbreakingly unfamiliar. How many times had she longed for affection as a young child and been pushed away? How many times had she cried herself to sleep at night in yet another stranger’s house, not knowing where her mother was or even if she would ever come back to claim her?
‘Well, then,’ Leah said. ‘Let me look at you.’ She placed her index finger against her mouth, the rest of her fingers propped beneath her chin. ‘You certainly don’t do much to enhance your features, do you, Ez? What is that you’re wearing?’
‘They’re called pyjamas, Mum,’ Erin said, folding her arms across her chest. ‘I was about to go to bed.’
Her mother’s eyebrows, plucked to a single line of hair, rose. ‘At this time of day? What have you been doing all night? Partying?’
Erin rolled her eyes. ‘No, strange as it may seem, I’ve been working. I’m on night shift for the rest of the week.’
Leah plonked herself down on the sofa, swinging one broomstick-thin leg over the other. ‘That’s a pain, because I wanted to spend some time with you.’
‘How nice of you to think of me, Mum, but you’re about three decades too late.’
Leah pursed her lips. ‘You don’t ever give me a break, do you, Erin? You always want to blame me for everything that’s not right in your life.’
Erin unfolded her arms, trying her hardest to rein in her temper, to hold back the avalanche of hurt feelings that was threatening to consume her. ‘Everything is just fine in my life,’ she said. ‘I have a roof over my head, something other than junk food on the table, a full-time job and—’
‘And a cat,’ Leah cut in disparagingly.
‘And I have a man I’m seeing.’ The words spilled out before Erin could stop them. Once they were spoken she felt as if she had committed herself. It felt strange, and yet right somehow.
Leah’s hair-thin brows rose again. ‘Who is it? Another doctor?’
‘Yes, as a matter of fact. He works at Sydney Met. He’s my boss.’
‘Careful, Ez,’ her mother said, hunting in her handbag for cigarettes. ‘You don’t want to complicate your life with men who can hold something over you, like your job. Before you know it, he’ll have you fired for some paltry reason when his interest in you runs out
.’
Erin snatched the cigarettes out of her mother’s hand. ‘No smoking in my apartment,’ she said. ‘If you have to poison your lungs, do it outside on the balcony, but close the sliding doors.’
Leah rolled her eyes as she got off the sofa. She snatched the cigarettes back and went towards the balcony. ‘God, you’re such a party pooper,’ she said. ‘How could I have had a daughter so straight-laced?’
How could I have had a mother so unlike the mother I most needed? Erin thought with an ache deep inside her chest. ‘I’m a doctor, Mum,’ she said, pointedly closing the balcony doors as she joined her mother outside. ‘I have to deal with the results of years of smoking. It’s not a pretty sight, let me tell you.’
Leah blew a plume of smoke past Erin’s right shoulder. ‘You only live once, love,’ she said. ‘Might as well make the most of it.’
‘Well, you’ve certainly done that,’ Erin said, waving a hand in front of her face.
Leah’s weathered face became pinched. ‘You’re so quick to judge. You don’t know what it was like for me.’
Erin folded her arms again. ‘Don’t start, Mum, I haven’t got the violin tuned.’
Leah tossed her cigarette butt down onto the balcony tiles and ground it out with the heel of her snakeskin boots, her mouth pulled so tight it looked like a draw-string purse. ‘One day you’ll be sorry you’ve treated me the way you do. One day when you’re old and all alone with no one who cares about you. That’s what you’re going to end up like, Erin. Do you realise that? You might have a man interested in you now, but how long will that last? You don’t know how to keep a man in your life. You push them away just like you push everyone away. You’re incapable of loving anyone. You don’t even like yourself.’
Erin stalked back inside the apartment. ‘I’m going to bed. Make yourself at home.’
‘I want us to become close, Erin,’ her mother called after her. ‘It’s what I’ve always wanted.’
Erin sent a glance heavenwards and turned back around. She opened her mouth to fling back a stinging retort, but something in the expression on her mother’s gaunt face stopped her. She blew out her breath on a sigh. ‘I want that too, Mum,’ she said, so softly she wasn’t sure her mother even heard it. ‘I want that too.’
Emergency Doctor and Cinderella Page 9
