Stormbound Surgeon

by Marion Lennox

  ‘There’s no need to sound like a prophet of doom,’ he snapped. ‘It’ll rain for forty days and forty nights so collect your cats and dogs and unicorns and build a boat…’

  She chuckled. ‘OK. When it stops raining. But it’ll take some time to get the bridge repaired. Maybe we can get a ferry working.’

  ‘I could get out by helicopter.’ But he sounded dubious and for good reason.

  ‘Even when it stops raining I doubt you’ll persuade one to land here unless it’s an emergency. Being weary of watching your father and his new wife cuddle each other might not fit into the category of emergency.’

  ‘The sea…’

  ‘Have you seen the harbour? There’s no way a boat’s putting to sea until this weather dies.’ She shrugged. ‘Sure, there are boats which will bring supplies when the weather backs off but until then… I’m afraid you’re stuck with us, Joss.’

  He liked the way she said his name, he decided. It was sort of lilting. Different.

  But he had more important things to think of than lilting voices. His own voice took on a hint of desperation. ‘I can’t go back to stay with Dad and Daisy. I’m going around the twist!’

  ‘That bad?’

  ‘They hold hands. Over the breakfast table!’

  Amy choked on laughter. ‘So you’re not a romantic, Dr Braden. Well, I never. And you with that T-shirt.’

  He had the grace to grin. ‘OK. Despite the T-shirt, I’m not a romantic. Is there a hotel in town?’

  ‘Nope.’

  Sigh. ‘I don’t suppose there’s a room available here.’

  ‘You don’t suppose your father would be mortally offended if you stayed in a nursing home rather than with him?’

  He would. Damn.

  But she was thinking for him. ‘What excuse did you give-when you left so suddenly?’

  ‘That I had to prepare a talk for a conference. It was worrying me so I thought I’d get back early to Sydney to do some preparation.’ Then, at her look, Joss gave an exasperated sigh. ‘It’s the truth. I do.’

  ‘I believe you.’ Another chuckle. ‘Though thousands wouldn’t. But you’ve solved your own problem.’

  ‘I have?’

  She hesitated, and then said slowly, as if she wasn’t sure she was doing the right thing but wanted to anyway, ‘If you need privacy then maybe you can stay at my place. It’s a great isolated spot for writing conference material.’

  ‘Don’t you live here?’

  ‘Are you kidding?’ She smiled, and he thought suddenly she shed years when she smiled. She really was extraordinarily lovely. ‘Give me a break. I’m twenty-eight years old. I’m not quite ready to live in a retirement home full time.’

  Twenty-eight… What was a twenty-eight-year-old incredibly skilled theatre nurse doing in a place like Iluka?

  Caring for a husband? For parents? Unconsciously he found his eyes drifting to the third finger of her left hand. Which was tucked in the folds of her dress. Damn.

  ‘Um…so where do you live?’

  ‘Millionaire’s Row.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Didn’t your father show you round the town?’

  ‘Yes…’ He thought back and then his eyes widened. ‘Don’t tell me you live in one of those.’

  There could be no mistaking his meaning. Amy chuckled again and shrugged. ‘Of course. I live in the biggest and the most ostentatious mansion of them all, and I do so all on my lonesome. I have nine spare bedrooms and three whole spas you can choose from. You can have one and your dog another. You can tell your father that you need to be alone to write-and you can be. You can sit and write conference notes to your heart’s content and we need never see each other. If that’s what you want.’

  Of course it was what he wanted. Wasn’t it? But…that smile…

  Damn, there was so much here that he didn’t understand.

  ‘Tell you what,’ she said. ‘I have heaps to do and you have a baby and a dog to check, and maybe you need to see Sergeant Packer about your car-or what’s left of it. Lunch is at twelve and you’re very welcome to eat with us. I’m off at two. If you can keep yourself amused until then, I’ll take you home.’

  ‘You make me sound like a stray puppy,’ he complained, and her smile widened.

  ‘That’s how you sound.’

  ‘Hey…’

  Her grey eyes twinkled. ‘I know. Nurse subordination to doctors has never been my strong point. Dreadful, isn’t it? Are you sure you don’t want to reconsider?’

  But Joss was sure. He definitely didn’t want to spend any more time with his father and Daisy.

  And the more he saw of Amy Freye, the more he thought a few days in the same house wouldn’t be such a bad idea.

  Was he mad? What on earth was he thinking?

  ‘Um…no, I won’t reconsider,’ he told her, and she laughed. It was as if she knew what he was thinking, and the feeling was distinctly disconcerting.

  ‘Until two o’clock,’ she told him-and left him to make of her what he would.

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE house was stunning.

  Amy drove Joss and Bertram out to Millionaire’s Row and turned her car off the road into a driveway leading to a mansion. As she had said, it was the most ostentatious house on Millionaire’s Row. Which left him more confused than ever. Amy’s car looked as if her next date was with the wrecker. Her dress was faded and shabby. She looked as if she hadn’t a penny to bless herself with, yet the house she lived in was extraordinary.

  Or maybe extraordinary was an understatement.

  It was set back from the beach but it had maybe a quarter of a mile of beachfront all of its own. The house was two storeys high and huge. It was built of something like white marble and the entire edifice glistened in the rain like some sort of miniature palace.

  Or maybe not so miniature…

  ‘Wow,’ he said, stunned, and Amy looked across at him and smiled.

  ‘Welcome to my humble abode.’ Her smile was mocking.

  ‘It’s…’

  ‘Ostentatious? Over the top? Don’t I know it.’ She pulled into one bay of what appeared to be an eight-or ten-car garage and switched off the engine. The car spluttered to a halt, and a puff of black smoke spat out from under the bonnet.

  ‘Um…about your priorities…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You don’t think you might do with one bedroom less and get yourself a new car?’

  She appeared offended. ‘What’s wrong with my car?’

  ‘Er…nothing.’ He hesitated and then decided on honesty. ‘Well, actually-everything.’

  ‘Bertram likes it.’ She swung herself out of the car and opened the rear door for Bertram. She ran a hand under the silky velvet of his ears as he nosed his way out of his comfortable back seat, and the big dog shivered with pleasure. Amy grinned. ‘If your dog likes it, who are you to quibble? He’s a gentleman of taste if ever I saw one.’

  Joss smiled in return. Her grin was infectious. Gorgeous! ‘Bertram likes smells and there’d be enough smells in your car to last a dog a lifetime. I reckon there are four or five generations of smells in that back seat.’

  But she wasn’t listening to criticisms of her ancient car. She was intent on Bertram’s wonderful ears. ‘He’s lovely.’

  ‘You don’t have ten dogs of your own?’

  ‘No.’ Her voice clipped off short at that, as if collecting herself, and Joss gave her a strange look. There were so many things here that he didn’t understand.

  ‘Come through.’ She flicked a switch and the garage doors slid shut behind them, and then she walked up the wide steps into the house. ‘Welcome to my world.’

  It grew more astonishing by the minute.

  The house was vast but it contained barely a scrap of furniture. Joss walked through a wide passage leading to room after room, and each door led to a barren space. ‘What the…?’

  ‘I only live in the back section of the house,’ she told him over her shoulde
r as she walked. ‘Don’t worry. There’s a spare bed.’

  He was staring around him and he was stunned. ‘You own this whole house?’

  ‘Sort of.’ She was leading the way into a vast kitchen-living area. Here was a simple table and two chairs, two armchairs which had seen better days and a television set. Black and white. Nothing else.

  It grew curiouser and curiouser. He grew curiouser and curiouser.

  ‘You’ll have to explain.’

  ‘Why?’

  Why? Of course she didn’t need to explain anything. He was her guest. She was doing him a favour by putting him up. But…

  ‘I’m intrigued,’ he admitted, and she grinned.

  ‘Good. I like my men intrigued.’

  He was more intrigued by the minute, he thought faintly. She was a total enigma. And when she smiled… Whew!

  ‘Will you tell me?’

  ‘It’s a long story.’

  ‘By the look of the weather I have forty days and forty nights to listen.’

  ‘I need to go back to work.’

  ‘I thought you were off duty.’

  ‘I have paperwork to do, and I don’t want to leave our new mother for too long. Mary’s there now but I don’t like to leave her on her own. I’ll stay for an hour but…’

  ‘Then we have an hour. Tell me.’

  Amy made a cup of tea first. Hell, she really did have nothing, he thought as he watched her spoon tea leaves into a battered teapot and pour the tea into two chipped mugs. Nothing.

  Poor little rich girl…

  ‘This house was my stepfather’s,’ she told him.

  Joss took his mug of tea and sat, and Bertram flopped down beside him. It seemed almost ridiculous to sit in this vast room. Somewhere there should be a closet where this furniture should fit.

  It wouldn’t need to be a very big closet.

  ‘Was?’

  She sank into the opposite chair and by the look on her face he knew she was very glad to sit. Once more there was the impression of exhaustion. She looked like someone who had driven herself hard, for a very long time.

  ‘Was?’ he said again, and she nodded.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘It’s mine-on the condition that I live in it for ten years.’

  He stared around in distaste. ‘He didn’t leave you any furniture?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then…’ He hesitated. ‘You haven’t thought of maybe selling the place and buying something smaller?’

  ‘Didn’t you listen? I said I had to live in it for ten years.’

  He thought that over. ‘So you’re broke.’

  ‘Yes. Absolutely. It costs a fortune to keep this place.’

  ‘Maybe you could take in lodgers.’

  ‘Lodgers don’t come to live in Iluka.’ She hesitated and then sighed. She sat leaning forward, cradling her mug as if she was gaining warmth from its contents. As indeed she was. The house was damp and chill. It needed heating…

  ‘Don’t even think about it,’ Amy told him, seeing where he was looking. The central-heating panels almost mocked them. ‘Have you any idea of what it costs to heat this place?’

  ‘Why don’t lodgers come to live in Iluka?’

  ‘The same reason no one comes to live in Iluka. Except for retirees.’

  ‘You’ll have to explain.’

  ‘The town has nothing.’

  ‘Now, that’s something else I don’t understand,’ he complained. ‘My father’s married Daisy and seems delighted with the idea of coming to live here. There’s a solid residential population…’

  ‘On half-acre blocks which are zoned residential. We have a general store, a post office and nothing else. No one else has ever been allowed to build here.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘My stepfather owned the whole bluff and he put caveats on everything.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So there’s no land under half an acre available for sale. Ever. That means this strip along the beach has been bought by millionaires and it’s used at peak holiday times. The rest has been bought by retirees living their rural dream. But for many it’s turned into a nightmare.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘There’s nothing here.’ She spread her hands. ‘People come here and see the dream-golf courses, bowling clubs, miles and miles of golden beaches-so they buy and they build. But then they discover they need other services. Medical services. Entertainment. Shops. And there’s nothing. There’s no school so there’s no young population. No land’s ever been allocated for commercial premises. There’s just nothing. So couples retire here for the dream and when one of them gets sick…’ She hesitated. ‘Well, until I built the nursing home it was a disaster. It meant they had to move on.’

  ‘That’s something else I don’t understand,’ he complained. ‘You built the nursing home? How did you do that when you can’t even afford a decent teacup?’

  Amy rose and crossed to a kitchen drawer, found what she was looking for and handed it over.

  He read in silence. ‘To my stepdaughter, Amy Freye, I leave my home, White-Breakers.

  ‘I also leave her the land on Shipwreck Bluff and sufficient funds to build a forty-bed nursing home…’

  He read to the end, confusion mounting. Then he laid it aside and looked up to find her watching him.

  ‘Now do you see?’

  ‘I do-sort of.’

  ‘This place was desperate for a nursing home. There’s been huge numbers of couples for whom it’s been a tragedy in the past, couples where one has ended up in a nursing home in Bowra because they were too frail to cope at home but the other was stuck here until the end. And each time, as isolation and helplessness set in, my stepfather would offer to buy them out of their property for far less than they’d paid. He did it over and over. He found it a real little gold mine.’

  He was struggling to understand. ‘Surely they didn’t have to sell their properties back to him. Surely they could have sold on the open market?’

  ‘With the restrictions on the place? No. It’s better now, but then… Then it was impossible.’

  ‘So where do you fit in?’

  ‘I don’t.’

  That made Joss raise his eyebrows. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘My stepfather and I…didn’t get on.’

  ‘Why doesn’t that surprise me?’

  Amy gave a mirthless laugh, then stooped to give Bertram a hug. Like she needed to hug someone. Something.

  She hadn’t had enough hugs in her life, Joss thought with sudden insight and he put a hand out as if to touch her…

  It was an instinctive reaction and it didn’t make sense. She looked at his hand, surprised, and he finally drew it away. It was as if he’d surprised himself. Which he had.

  ‘So tell me why he’s left you this-and tell me why you’re in trouble.’

  She blinked and blinked again. The concern in his voice was enough to shake her foundations.

  No one was concerned for her. No one. Not even Malcolm.

  ‘I…I need to get back.’

  ‘No.’ He stood and lifted the mug from her hands, placed it on the sink and then put his hands on her shoulders. Gently he pressed her into the opposite chair, then sat down himself. His eyes didn’t leave hers. They were probing and caring and kind-and she felt tears catch behind her eyes. Damn, she never cried. It must be the pressure and the emotions of the morning, she thought. Or…something.

  But Joss was still watching her. Waiting.

  ‘I… It’s just… I’m fine. The terms of the will…’

  ‘Are draconian.’

  ‘I guess.’ She shook her head. ‘You have no idea.’

  ‘So tell me.’

  She shrugged and then settled in for the long haul. ‘My mother married my stepfather when I was nine years old. We came here. But we soon learned that my stepfather was a control freak. He was…appalling. My mother’s health was precarious at the best of times. He bullied her,
he manipulated her-and he hated me.’

  ‘Because you were feisty?’

  ‘Feisty?’ Amy looked startled and then gave a reluctant chuckle. ‘Well, maybe I was. I only know that my own father had taught me that the world was my oyster, and here was my stepfather drilling into me that I was only a girl, and I wasn’t even to be educated because that was such a waste. There wasn’t a school here so I had to do my lessons by correspondence but he took delight in interrupting. In controlling, controlling, controlling.’

  Joss thought it through-to the obvious, but dreadful next step. He thought about it for a moment and then decided, hell, he’d risk it. In his years as a doctor he’d learned it was better to confront the worst-case scenario head on. So he asked.

  ‘He didn’t abuse you?’

  That shocked her out of her introspection. She took a deep breath and shook her head. She might be shocked by the bluntness of his question, but the idea wasn’t incredible. ‘No,’ she told him. ‘Apart from hitting me-which he did a lot-he didn’t touch me. But…’ She shuddered then, as if confessing something that had been hidden for a very long time. ‘The awful thing is that it’s not such a stupid question. I’m sure he wanted to. The way he looked at me. It was only…that was the only matter in which my mother stood up to him. If he ever touched me-like that-she’d have gone straight to the police, she told him, and she meant it. So he hated me from a distance. Oh, he hated me.’

  ‘So you left?’

  ‘As soon as I was fifteen I was out of here. Somehow I ended up in a city refuge, I met some great people and I managed to get myself educated. There’s help if homeless kids want it badly enough. Which I did. I would have liked to have done medicine but that was impossible so I made it nursing. But my mother…she wasn’t allowed to contact me, and she was getting worse. Medically there was nothing here for her. So my mother and many more of the population here were being screwed by my stepfather for everything they had, and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it. I wasn’t allowed home unless I promised I’d give up nursing and stay here permanently.’

  ‘The man was a megalomaniac,’ he said, stunned, and she nodded.

  ‘He was.’ She shrugged. ‘Maybe I should have come home but I didn’t know-couldn’t guess-how ill my mother was. When my mother died I was so angry… But at least, or so I thought, I’d never have to have anything more to do with my stepfather. But my independence still rankled. It must have, because when he died he left this crazy will.’