The Heart Surgeon's Proposal

by Meredith Webber

  ‘The unit staff are sticking together, confident it was the right decision—but the staff working on the baby ward are finding things tough. I think probably the other staff members were already a little jealous that some staff had been singled out to care for our babies and children, so they’ve been making snide remarks. But I think the main problem is going to come from the hospital hierarchy.’

  ‘Where there’s also been envy of our funding and grumblings about our special treatment all along,’ Annie said. ‘But it’s nothing we can’t cope with,’ she added determinedly. ‘I’d be more worried about how it’s affecting Phil.’

  Though it wasn’t phrased as a question, Maggie knew it was one, and she sighed.

  ‘I honestly don’t know,’ she admitted. ‘He’s been all but living at the hospital since Amy was readmitted, and when we do talk it’s about work.’

  She paused then said to Alex, ‘You know him better than the rest of us, but my impression of Phil is that he keeps things bottled up inside him. He’s all the bright playboy on the outside—though there’s been precious little of that lately—but what’s going on inside is a deep, dark and probably very gloomy mystery.’

  Annie, perhaps hearing a faint shadow of despair in the words, put her arm around Maggie’s shoulders and gave her a hug.

  ‘And I suppose you’ve just gone on being Maggie, quietly doing your job and keeping everyone focussed on work, no matter what’s going on around you.’

  ‘Oh, Phil’s done that, too,’ Maggie said, trying desperately to swallow the lump of misery Annie’s sympathy had brought to her throat. Self-pity, that was all it was. ‘And Rachel! Even Kurt’s been heard to speak his mind on the subject. All the team have hung tough.’

  Alex had moved to the kitchen bench and was filling the kettle with water, and Annie took the opportunity of his distraction to ask another, quieter, question.

  ‘You and Phil?’ she whispered, and Maggie shook her head. Annie was the only person she’d told about her night with Phil, and eventually Annie—well, all the team but Annie first—would have to know about her pregnancy.

  If it continued past the first trimester…

  But right now there was a crisis at the hospital—two crises really, although Amy was certainly getting better so she hardly counted—and that was where everyone’s attention should be focussed.

  ‘Black, two sugars?’ Alex said, turning from the bench with the jar of coffee in his hand.

  ‘No, tea for me, thanks, Alex,’ Maggie told him, then seeing the look of disbelief on both their faces, she told them the story she’d rehearsed on Phil.

  ‘I bet Phil I could give up coffee,’ she said, her voice quavering slightly as she remembered the context of that conversation and the delicate stage their discussion had reached when it had all been halted by Amy’s return to hospital.

  ‘How do you like your tea, then?’ Alex asked, and Maggie smiled at him.

  ‘Black, two sugars, but weak, because to tell you the truth I hate tea. I’d just as soon drink hot water with two sugars, but people would think I was crazy so I wave the tea bag over the top of the cup.’

  She was aware Annie was watching her closely and wondered if she could possibly suspect.

  From giving up coffee and only drinking very weak tea?

  Surely not!

  ‘I was going to have you two and Rod and Henry to dinner tonight to welcome you back, but even if Phil gets away from the hospital he’ll probably feel more like sleeping than being polite to guests,’ Maggie said, hoping to divert Annie’s attention—just in case she was harbouring suspicious thoughts!

  ‘We’re tired, too,’ Annie said, ‘but knowing Alex, he’ll be taking Phil’s place at the hospital before I’ve even unpacked our bags.’

  She paused then smiled.

  ‘In fact, I might pop up there myself before I unpack. Just so anyone still considering whatever rumours Dr Ellis spread knows I’m around and I intend to fight back.’

  Maggie felt a genuine smile spread across her face for the first time, it seemed, in weeks.

  ‘It’s good to have you guys back,’ she said, and knew they knew she meant it.

  They sat down at the table and drank the tea and coffee Alex had made, talking now about the mountains to the west of Sydney and the wonderful time the honeymooners had had exploring them.

  ‘You must go up there while you’re in Sydney,’ Annie told Maggie. ‘It’s a really beautiful area.’

  ‘I will,’ Maggie promised, thinking a weekend away, on her own, in the mountains, might be the ideal place to think through her future.

  Alex and Annie finished their coffee and departed, leaving Henry in the back yard with Minnie because they were heading not back to Annie’s house but towards the hospital. Having guessed Alex would stay up there, Maggie wasn’t at all surprised to hear Phil’s key in the front door only an hour later.

  She was in the laundry, doing some hand-washing, and he came through the house to find her there.

  ‘The cavalry arrived just in time,’ he said, leaning against the doorjamb and watching her dunk her sweater in soapy water. ‘I doubt I’d have lasted another night without a proper sleep.’

  Maggie looked at the lines lack of sleep and anxiety had drawn on his face, and her heart ached with a need to hold and comfort him.

  Failing that, she could offer practicality.

  ‘Would you like something to eat? I shopped this morning and bought some mini ham and cheese croissants. It would only take a few minutes to heat you a couple, or would you prefer to just fall into bed?’

  ‘Bed, I think,’ he said, but he didn’t move and the word ‘bed’ reverberated around the room, heightening Maggie’s usual awareness of her colleague and suggesting things it shouldn’t.

  She squeezed the soapy water out of the sweater and rinsed it under the tap, then emptied the bucket she’d been using and filled it with clean water, conscious all the time of Phil standing there, watching her.

  Silence stretched between them—though ‘bed’ still whispered in her head—and she tried to think just where they’d been in a very awkward conversation earlier in the week before work had driven all personal matters from both their heads.

  They hadn’t reached any conclusions, she knew that much, and given the sleep deprivation Phil had suffered this week, maybe he’d forgotten the conversation altogether.

  Forgotten he’d guessed the one thing she hadn’t told him about the baby.

  ‘Sleep deprivation hasn’t killed all my brain cells,’ he said, as Maggie once again squeezed water—clean this time—from her sweater. ‘So, once I’ve slept we need to talk, Mags.’

  She glanced his way and saw he looked even more tired than he had earlier, although earlier she wouldn’t have thought it possible. She set the wet sweater down on top of the washing machine and stepped towards him, then put her arms around him and gave him a hug.

  ‘We’ll sort it all out,’ she promised, though she wasn’t sure they could.

  But right now this man needed some reassurance before he slept, and how could she deny it to him?

  His arms closed around her back and he drew her closer, resting his chin on the top of her head.

  ‘I don’t suppose you’d like a snooze yourself,’ he asked, his husky voice and awakening body suggesting he wasn’t nearly as exhausted as she’d thought.

  Before she could think of a casual way to laugh off the suggestion, he eased her away and used his fore-finger to tilt her chin so he could look into her face.

  ‘I wouldn’t do you justice today, but our time will come,’ he said, the words a promise she guessed he intended to keep, then he bent and kissed her on the lips and for a few minutes she forgot all the tangled threads that wove around their lives and gave in to the seduction of that embrace.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  MAGGIE woke early, and though she felt lethargic and was tempted to have a lazy morning in bed, she knew she needed exercise. She’d get Minnie and
go for a walk in the park. No, Minnie had gone to live with Alex at Annie’s house where she’d have Henry for canine company and Rod, who lived in the flat downstairs, to see she was fed when all the humans were held up at work.

  Well, people could walk in the park without a dog—no rule against that.

  Only it didn’t appeal.

  Maybe she would stay in bed.

  Not good for the baby, all this lounging around.

  OK, I’ll walk, she told the nag in her head. But I’ll drive down to the beach and walk there.

  With this decided, she still lingered, reluctant to leave her comfy bed, reliving the magic of the kiss she’d shared with Phil last night. Then a memory of the conversation they’d had before the kiss returned, and she decided she’d be better off being out of the house when he awoke. It was putting off the inevitable, she knew, but she might think more clearly after a brisk walk in the salt air had cleared the cobwebs from her head.

  She pulled on a tracksuit and grabbed a jacket, knowing the wind could whip coldly off the sea.

  Breakfast first or later? The question was about as much as she could handle this early in the morning, and she’d just decided on later—walk, then breakfast at the beach—when she reached the kitchen and found Phil already there.

  ‘Good morning!’ he said, so cheerfully she had to hide a shudder.

  ‘I think that’s always a matter of individual opinion,’ she muttered at him.

  ‘Not a morning person?’ Phil teased. ‘Shows how chaotic things have been at work that we’ve been living together for a fortnight and I didn’t know.’

  ‘You didn’t need to know,’ Maggie told him, then realised she was pursuing the wrong argument. ‘Anyway, I am—a morning person, I mean. I like mornings. I’m up and I’m going for a walk. Would someone who wasn’t a morning person be doing that?’

  Phil looked around and Maggie knew he’d been about to make a smart remark to Minnie, then realised the little dog was no longer there. And the expression of loss on his face made Maggie realise how much Minnie had meant to him—she’d been part of his image of ‘home’, however temporary that home might have been.

  ‘I’m going down to the beach for a walk—do you want to come?’

  It had to be the surge of pity she’d felt that had made her ask. The last person she needed on a head-clearing excursion was Phil.

  ‘Yes, yes I would. Great place to talk about the wedding. I suppose your folks will want you to have a proper one—with you being their daughter and all. Well, your mother probably would want it. Funny how it is with mothers and brides.’

  ‘Phil!’

  The name came out louder than Maggie had intended, but at least it stopped him rabbiting on and gave her the opportunity to have her say.

  ‘There is no wedding to discuss. We’re not getting married.’

  He stared at her in disbelief.

  ‘Of course we’re getting married. We’re having a baby.’

  The look on his face told Maggie he’d realised this wasn’t exactly a winning argument, but he recovered, coming towards her and taking hold of her hands.

  ‘I put that badly. The thing is, I’ve been thinking about it all week and I’d really like to marry you, Mags, baby or not. We’d be good together. We know and understand each other’s work and the demands it puts on us. Alex is confident of your work so I’m sure he’d offer you a place on the team in the US. Then when I finish my fellowship with him, we’ll still be a team, working together wherever we decide to go.’

  It was so exactly the life Maggie had always envisaged—working in partnership with the man she loved, partnership in the ultimate sense, in marriage and in their careers—that she almost weakened and gave in.

  But this was her dream, not Phil’s, and she doubted it would fill the emptiness in his life.

  And what about the emptiness in her own life if she agreed? What about love?

  Had she said those three words aloud that Phil’s hands tightened on hers?

  She must have, because the blue eyes were serious as he said, ‘I can’t promise that, Mags.’

  ‘So it is all about the baby, in spite of what you just said about us being good together.’

  He frowned down at her.

  ‘You can’t know that and nor do I.’

  ‘Of course I know. Would you have mentioned marriage if I wasn’t pregnant?’

  ‘No, but—’

  ‘There are no buts!’ Maggie said, and she walked away, knowing the dream on offer wasn’t what she wanted after all.

  If Phil wanted to walk with her he could follow, but right now, more than ever, she needed that walk. Needed to think.

  He did follow, protesting every step of the way, so in the end, as she backed the car out of the garage, she turned to him and said, ‘Phil, I’m going for a walk to clear my head and have a think about things. For a start, it’s far too early to be thinking in terms of a living, breathing baby.’

  Her heart squeezed now with a different pain, remembered pain, and she realised, though she’d intended telling him about her previous miscarriages, she couldn’t, fearing it might be an omen of bad luck for this pregnancy.

  ‘Supposing it happens, I understand you want to be involved in the baby’s life, and I appreciate that. But it doesn’t mean you have to take over my life. Anyway, pregnancies last forty weeks—don’t you think we’ve plenty of time to sort out minor details?’

  She glanced his way, and saw again the lines of strain on his face, some of them, she knew, caused by her unexpected pregnancy. Then she remembered the stress he’d been under the last few weeks, and regret that she should be providing additional stress made her reach across and touch him lightly on the hand.

  ‘We’ll sort it out, but let’s think things through first—not rush into the first solution that occurs to us.’

  ‘At least you’re saying us!’ he muttered at her, then he sighed, rested his head back against the headrest, and closed his eyes.

  The parking area at the beach was almost deserted, and Maggie, seeing the wind flapping the crossed red flags that indicated the surf was unsafe for swimmers, wondered if the park might not have been the better option for her walk.

  ‘It’s blowing a gale out there,’ she said, but Phil was already opening the car door.

  ‘A nice bracing breeze,’ he said, grinning at her in a way that started the flip-flops again in her heart. ‘Come on!’

  He was still too tired to be trying to sort things out between himself and Maggie, Phil had realised as they’d driven towards the beach. Instead of planning a strategy that might work with a fiercely independent woman like Maggie, he’d gone rushing in with his own assumptions and upset her. Now he’d have to go back to square one and start again.

  The thought made him feel even more tired, but when they reached the beach and he saw the wind thrashing the tops of the swell to white froth, he felt invigorated, as if this cold, blustery weather would blow all his cares away.

  Well, it wouldn’t do that, but it would give him an excuse to put his arm around Maggie and maybe give her a warming kind of cuddle. That idea had taken precedence in his mind and all the rest of the stuff there could go hang for a while.

  ‘Come on, you’ll be blown away if I don’t anchor you to the ground,’ he told her, as she tried to escape the first part of his plan.

  She turned and smiled at him and, with the wind whipping her dark hair across her face and bringing pinkness to her cheeks, she looked so delectable it was all he could do not to kiss her right there and then.

  Caution prevailed, however, and he led her down the concrete steps to the beach, then across the dry sand towards the surf, rolling and crashing onto the shore. It was easier walking on the wet sand and though salt spray caught them occasionally, Maggie didn’t seem to mind the dampness that misted in her hair and sparkled like diamonds in the bright morning sunlight.

  Diamonds! Would she wear a diamond ring? No, she was a red girl. A ruby? Maybe a
square-cut ruby with small diamonds around it. Or a baguette-cut ruby, with baguette diamonds each side. Would she think that too much?

  He had no idea, though he did realise that in spite of Maggie’s protestation that there’d be no wedding his mind was steadfastly following that track. Of course it would, it was the only sensible solution. In fact, it was such a great solution he felt his body responding every time he thought about it.

  He glanced towards her, wondering if the walk was working for her, as far as thinking was concerned. For himself, well, he was thinking, but with her warm, soft body tucked up against his, his thoughts were getting raunchier and raunchier.

  ‘This isn’t working,’ Maggie said, tugging away from him. ‘I can’t think with you so close.’

  ‘No?’

  Given where his mind had been, it wasn’t surprising that hope began to hammer in his heart. Maybe it was hammering harder in other parts of his body, but he was sure it was in his heart as well.

  She looked up at him, brown eyes serious, and though he guessed she’d been feeling some of what he’d been feeling he was sure she was going to lie.

  ‘No!’ she snapped crossly. ‘All I can think about was how good we were in bed together, and how much I’d like to do it again. I know it’s probably just a hormonal thing from the pregnancy, but it’s driving me nuts.’

  Phil held in his whoop of joy, neither did he scoop her into his arms and run with her all the way back to the car, though both options were distinctly appealing. But he was a mature man of thirty-four, not a randy adolescent, so he made do with pulling her towards him and then kissing her so thoroughly he realised that carrying her off the beach might have been a better way to go. Because now, with the kiss broken off so they could breathe, they still had to get home, and if her legs were anywhere near as shaky as his were, just getting back to the car was going to be an effort.

  ‘You want to do this?’ he asked her, as they tumbled into the house, shut the back door and were about to resume kissing.

  ‘So much!’ she whispered, her eyes sparkling with desire, her lips so red and ripe his body ached to devour them.