Outback Doctors/Outback Engagement/Outback Marriage/Outback Encounter

by Meredith Webber

  ‘I’d come with you, but I’ve got to draft a letter for Tom to send to Annabel.’

  The suggestion was so outrageous Anna had to protest.

  ‘You’re going to draft the letter? Isn’t that taking things a bit too far?’

  ‘Not at all,’ Penny said, waving the letter airily around between them. ‘If I leave it to Tom, he could take ages and we really need to get Annabel up here. Mum and Patience will be up in the holidays soon and it would give them a chance to meet her—and her to meet them.’

  Anna’s thumb slid to press against her engagement ring.

  ‘And my pretend engagement to Tom? How do you intend to handle that?’

  ‘I don’t!’ Penny told her, grinning cheekily. ‘That’s up to you. Or Tom. One of you will have to break it off.’

  She paused and frowned, then added, ‘And you’d better do it soon, otherwise she’ll get here, and someone will mention it, and she might think he’s chosen her on the rebound.’

  ‘Rather than have his sister pick her out of a hat!’ Anna retorted, then she spun around and marched away. Penny could make what she wanted of the snappish reply!

  But as she stormed away, she remembered what had brought her to the vet’s this morning, and a sense of loss threatened to overwhelm her. She climbed back into her car and rested her head against the steering-wheel.

  Poor Cassie, she thought, but then she realised some of the sorrow she felt was self-pity. She pulled herself together and finally remembered she didn’t have keys. Anger at Tom dispelled some of the sadness, but then she began to worry about snakebite antivenin and wonder what the hospital had on hand.

  Suppose he’d been bitten while she sat here feeling sorry for herself…

  Nervous and fearful, she set off through the trees, sure she’d eventually find her way back to her house. The thought of snakes made her jumpy, so she skittered at every rustle of grass, finally reaching home, dishevelled and exhausted, though the exhaustion was more mental than physical.

  There was no sign of Tom, but he’d left a note on the door.

  ‘If you come back before I see you, you can go in. Have removed unwanted guest—a red-bellied black—poisonous enough to kill poor Cassie, but you’d probably have survived a bite.’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t,’ Anna muttered, tearing the note from the door and crumpling it in her hand. ‘I’d have died of fright!’

  And though that might have been a slight exaggeration, it was one more reminder of just how inadequately qualified she was for life in the outback. Annabel would probably have killed the damn snake by biting off its head!

  ‘You’re not setting up for life in the outback,’ Anna reminded herself, then had a further reminder of her future when she played back the messages on her answering-machine.

  ‘Thought I’d drop in and see you next week, darling,’ Philip’s cheery voice announced. ‘My pilot tells me the jet won’t be able to land at your local strip, but there’s a place called Three Gorges we can come into. He’ll arrange onward transport from there and someone will let you know an ETA.’

  ‘Oh, will someone?’ Anna grumped, though the loneliness she had been feeling should have been relieved by this message, and her body should have been producing at least a modicum of excitement at the thought of Philip’s visit.

  But all she felt was a return of the apprehension that seemed to haunt her these days, and though she knew Philip would understand about the pretend engagement, she might have to rehearse just how to explain it to him.

  ‘The only good thing is,’ she said to the answering-machine, which was no more responsive than the cat had ever been, ‘he’s always so busy he won’t stay long, so the locals won’t even know he’s here and I won’t have to explain two fiancés.’

  But this sensible deduction didn’t restore her equilibrium and, as the house was too lonely without her feline friend, she walked over to the hospital, seeking refuge in her office and distraction in some paperwork.

  Philip’s arrival, five days later, caused the kind of stir Anna imagined was usually reserved for visiting royalty. For a start, one of his PR people had seen fit to inform the local newspaper of his arrival, so the midweek paper had a huge bold headline announcing SOUTH AFRICAN TYCOON’S VISIT, followed by speculation on whether he might be considering buying property in the area, or perhaps reopening the long-defunct copper mine.

  ‘I heard it was to do with diamonds,’ Barb at the supermarket confided to Anna when she was in buying some extra provisions for Philip’s stay. ‘That someone had found a diamond pipe—that’s a funny thing to call it—nearby and this bloke’s coming to stake a claim.’

  Anna suppressed a smile at the thought of Philip physically staking anything. She also hoped he was travelling with his usual entourage, which would include a cook. His cooks invariably carried their own provisions with them, so it wouldn’t matter that Anna couldn’t get smoked salmon or Beluga caviar at Merriwee’s only supermarket.

  ‘That your bloke flying in?’

  It was probably inevitable she’d bump into Tom as she walked out, while the thought of Philip as a ‘bloke’—and he’d been twice described this way now—made her shake her head.

  ‘It’s not? I thought for sure it was! I mean, how many tycoons named Philip can there be in the world, especially ones with an interest in Merriwee?’

  By now Anna was so confused—physically as well as mentally—she couldn’t reply. Not that her lack of comment stopped Tom. In fact, he continued, as if afraid the silence might bite him if he let it lie between them.

  ‘I guess from the look on your face it is him. Will it cause a problem? Do you want me to explain to him, man to man, about the engagement? I could take him up the pub for a beer.’

  Another impossible image somersaulted through Anna’s mind but, in fact, it was exactly what happened when Philip finally arrived, late on Friday afternoon. The helicopter bringing him and his party from Three Gorges was unable to land at the hospital because Anna was organising the emergency evacuation of a heart-attack victim.

  ‘I’ve told him to come down over at Tom’s place,’ Jess reported to Anna, who was battling her own nerves and a serious drop in electrolytes in her patient’s body. ‘I’ve phoned Tom and warned him.’

  ‘How come you’ve been talking to a helicopter pilot? And how do you know he can land at Tom’s?’ Anna took her attention away from the patient for long enough to question Jess’s authority.

  Jess grinned.

  ‘The pilot’s my husband and he’s landed there before. He picked me up from there after work one day. You see, he’s not supposed to land in the hospital grounds, though he has done it once or twice.’

  Anna would have liked to have asked how Jess’s husband came to be flying Philip into town, but it had all become too complicated, and her patient needed too much of her attention for her to be diverted into unimportant issues.

  Though the nausea in her stomach suggested the meeting between Tom and Philip didn’t quite fall into the ‘unimportant issue’ category.

  Two hours later the helicopter she was waiting for finally arrived, but it was still another hour before she was satisfied her patient was stable enough to move.

  Anna watched the bulky emergency aircraft lift off the ground, but felt no easing of the tension that had gathered in her shoulders during the long battle to save her patient’s life. What she’d really like to do was go home, have a long soak in a hot bath, then go to bed, but, although it was now after nine, Philip would still be expecting her. Regular phone calls from the motel to the hospital had left her in no doubt about that!

  Jess had passed on most of the messages, though Anna had got away long enough to speak to him herself.

  ‘I’ve brought Carl with me—was he with me before you left? He’s a chef who trained at a top restaurant in London. I found him at a fishing lodge in Scotland, would you believe?’

  Anna did believe. It was the kind of thing Philip did, picking up people a
ll over the world and adding them to his entourage. In a way, she realised, he’d done much the same with her.

  And her parents…

  And cousin Joe, Uncle Fred’s son…

  And her friend Gay…

  They mightn’t all travel with him, but they were members of what Philip considered his ‘people’, and, she had to admit, he took care of them well.

  As the lights from the helicopter became fainter, she moved away, not returning to the hospital but heading to her little house. Another fiancé might have been waiting there—wanting to be alone with her when she finally finished work—but that wasn’t Philip’s way. He was a social animal, happiest in a crowd, surrounded by friends both old and new.

  ‘He’ll have all the guests at the motel and probably half the staff eating Carl’s food by now,’ she muttered to herself as she wearily stripped off her dirty clothes and stepped under the shower.

  Then, in spite of the warmth of the water, she shivered, hoping Grace and Carrie were still at Tom’s and not part of Philip’s party. It was one thing to believe he’d understand the false engagement when she told him of it, but for him to hear it from someone else…

  ‘It’s OK, I explained about the engagement and he understands.’

  Anna had pulled up outside the motel, surprised to find a space—there were so many cars parked there. Then, as Tom’s voice came out of the darkness, she wondered if it had been coincidence.

  ‘I heard the emergency chopper taking off and came out to shift my car so you could have my space and not have to walk too far. Half the town’s come along to meet the great tycoon.’

  She’d felt a little glow of pleasure when he’d explained about the parking space—it was such a Tom kind of thing for him to have done—but his presence was far from reassuring. In fact, his presence was causing such upheaval in her body she wanted to get back into her car and drive away.

  Perhaps back to Melbourne!

  ‘Anyway, as I said, when Philip arrived I took him and his crew up to the pub—old Mavis there was delighted to have so many extra drinkers. I got him on his own and explained the situation to him, man to man.’

  Perth was further away than Melbourne—she’d drive to Perth!

  ‘So, are you coming in?’

  ‘Are you going back in there?’ Anna asked, and, now her eyes had adjusted to the dimly lit footpath, saw him hesitate.

  ‘I think he’ll expect me to,’ he said, his voice gruff with some emotion Anna couldn’t understand. ‘You see, he’s told people you’re a friend he’s dropped in to see—he hasn’t mentioned your engagement. He did it as a favour to me, Anna, nothing more, but if you go in and I don’t, people might notice.’

  ‘They wouldn’t if I broke off this stupid engagement right now!’ Anna snapped at him, knowing there was no way her nerves could stand the strain of being in the same room with both Tom and Philip.

  ‘Or I could get a call. Yes, we’ll do that. You can go in, say you met me coming out and I’ve had to go out of town to see a—a sick stud bull would be best. I don’t do a lot of night calls so it has to be something important.’

  ‘A sick stud bull,’ Anna repeated, and, though she should have been glad Tom had thought of this excuse and wouldn’t be there to witness her meeting with Philip, she was far from easy over telling more outright lies than had already been propagated. ‘This is ridiculous!’

  ‘Yes, isn’t it?’ Tom said, then he reached out and drew her close, pressing her body hard against his. For a moment Anna assumed it was simply more of Tom’s tactile stuff, but then he kissed her, burning her lips with a passion she’d never felt before but which her body recognised and returned a hundredfold.

  Some tiny cell in her brain registered that there were worse things than being in the same room with Tom and Philip, but the rest of her brain—and all her body—was enjoying the kiss too much to let the killjoy cell ruin the moment.

  Then, what could have been a minute or an aeon later, Tom’s hands shifted to her shoulders, and he eased their bodies apart.

  ‘Goodbye,’ he said, running his forefinger down the line of her cheek, and tracing her jaw bone. ‘Goodbye, my beautiful Anna.’

  The huskiness in his voice told her he meant it, and her heart grew heavy in her chest.

  But why would Tom be saying goodbye?

  Had Philip said something to him?

  Or maybe Tom was going to get into his car and drive away. Maybe he was driving to Perth…

  Telling herself she wouldn’t get any answers from watching his car drive off, Anna walked into the motel, past the deserted reception desk, following the sound of voices and laughter.

  ‘Darling girl, how are you? Exhausted, I bet! Come here and sit down. I’ve got champagne chilled to exactly the right temperature and a glass is what you need to perk you up.’

  Philip’s lips met her cheek with a chaste kiss, and with his arm protectively around her shoulders he led her into the mêlée. There must have been thirty or forty people crammed into the motel’s small dining room, most of the faces familiar though Anna couldn’t put names to more than a dozen.

  A dozen that included Grace and Carrie.

  As if feeling her tension, Philip gave her a reassuring squeeze.

  ‘I won’t say a word,’ he whispered, and Anna realised he was enjoying both the sensation his arrival in town had caused and the role Tom had persuaded him to play.

  ‘Actually,’ he whispered, ‘I was relieved to meet your vet. It was the photo of the two of you, sent on to me by my clipping service, that prompted me to come.’

  ‘A photo sent on by your clipping service?’ Anna was so stunned her voice had risen to a shrill squeak.

  ‘Hush, I’ll explain later,’ Philip said, waving his free hand towards a waiter who was hovering with a napkin-wrapped bottle of champagne. ‘Have a drink.’

  Anna spun away from him, so she could look him in the face.

  ‘I don’t want a drink, Philip,’ she said crisply. ‘I’m already tired and I’m still on call, so a drink isn’t a good idea. But I do want an explanation. I want to know why you have a clipping service keeping tabs on me.’

  One thing that could be said for Philip, Anna acknowledged as he excused the two of them, explaining he had messages and gifts from Anna’s family to pass on. He could get himself smoothly out of just about any situation.

  Having exhorted those present to keep partying, he ushered her out of the room, past the reception desk and down another corridor to his room.

  Once inside, he closed the door, leaned back on it and took her in his arms, touching her hair, her cheek, her neck.

  ‘Oh, my beautiful Anna,’ he murmured, unknowingly echoing words she’d already heard this evening. ‘It is so good to see you. And so thoughtless of me to let you walk into that rowdy party when we needed time alone.’

  He smiled then kissed her on the lips.

  ‘Hello, my darling.’

  And though the kiss was nice enough, his apology genuinely contrite, she still couldn’t relax.

  Or forget the clipping service…

  ‘A kiss won’t make things better this time, Philip,’ she told him, and felt him stiffen.

  She was startled by his reaction, then wondered if this was the first time she’d ever not allowed herself to be sweet-talked out of anger with him. She’d been angry but had given in when he’d whisked her parents away from their suburban home and installed them in a small mansion in the grounds of his estate. Though later she’d cooled down because she’d imagined they were delighted with their change in circumstances…

  She brushed away the memories. The issue here was the clipping service.

  ‘I can’t believe you’ve got people searching out mentions of my name—sending you reports on my behaviour.’

  ‘It was an accident, sweet thing,’ he said, moving away from her and opening the small refrigerator, which, one glance showed, had been stocked by him or his staff, not the motel. ‘Sit down. You mi
ghtn’t be able to have a drink, but I could do with one. I’ve been very abstemious in there, knowing you’d eventually arrive. I think I deserve one now.’

  She watched him, seeing him with a stranger’s eyes, listening with a stranger’s ears, and wondering if she really knew this man.

  ‘The clipping service clips all kinds of things for me, mainly business information, but information on my competitors as well. When you won the scholarship to university, I asked them to clip items with your name in as well—you know, results, and honours awarded, that kind of thing.’

  Thank heaven I was never arrested in a student protest or for being drunk and disorderly, Anna thought, then Philip was talking again.

  ‘I just forgot to tell them to stop clipping,’ he said, beaming at her and raising his glass towards her. ‘So, when they sent me a photo of you and some stranger, with a heading AUSTRALIA’S LAST ELIGIBLE BACHELOR MEETS HIS MATCH, naturally I was curious.’

  ‘The magazine printed that?’ Anna demanded, as new anger, directed elsewhere this time, fired along her nerves. ‘That double-crossing Carrie! She promised Tom she wouldn’t, in exchange for getting exclusive rights to the wedding photos.’

  ‘The wedding photos?’ Philip repeated, subsiding into a chair. ‘I thought this engagement was pretence.’

  Anna gave an exasperated shrug.

  ‘Of course it is and the wedding is as well. Tom made it up to stop both Carrie and Grace going on about the engagement. As she’s at your party, you’ve probably met Grace—well, Tom made it up because she was suspicious.’

  The whole thing sounded unbelievable even to her own ears so she had no idea how it sounded to Philip, but that wasn’t the point, she remembered.

  The point was the clipping service.

  ‘I still don’t like the feeling you’ve been spying on me,’ Anna told him, then realised she might have pushed too far as Philip’s eyes narrowed and he studied her in a cold manner she’d seen before but had never had directed her way.

  Then he smiled and she wondered if she’d imagined it.