Dr Graham's Marriage

by Meredith Webber

  She'd have stamped her foot as well, but remembered, just in time, the delicate stiletto heels on the new sandals so made do with a fierce glare instead.

  And just to make sure Alana let the subject drop, she repeated the main point.

  'Alex Graham means nothing to me!'

  'That's good,' Kirsten said, coming out of the bar—no doubt, attracted by the yelling! 'Because the man I saw asleep on the bed is in there, having a drink with a willowy brunette. Diane someone, I think he said when he introduced her to Mickey.'

  'Maybe we should go to the Blue Room—we can take a cab,' Alana suggested, but no matter how shaky her insides might be feeling, Gabi knew the new her had to go through with this, or the whole facade would crumble and she'd be back to being a colourless cipher before her campaign had properly started.

  'Nonsense,' she replied, leading the way into the bar, pausing as she'd seen Kirsten sometimes do, just inside the door, so the foyer lights shone on her, spotlighting her entrance.

  Then with long gliding steps, and praying the sandals didn't fall off, she moved towards the bar, eyes focussed on Mickey behind it so she didn't have to see who else was there.

  The gleam of approval in his eyes boosted her flagging confidence.

  'Can you do something aqua?' she asked, when he'd complimented her on her appearance. Mickey was owner of the bar and bistro but he preferred serving drinks to all other aspects of his job—maybe because it put him into the position of confidant to so many of the tenants. 'Something to match my top, but alcoholic as well.'

  Mickey raised his eyebrows at this bold decision, coming from the least alcohol-tolerant of the three friends, but he made no comment. Though a growly noise from the far end of the bar, where two figures sat in relative gloom, gave Gabi an immense sense of satisfaction. She just hoped there was going to be enough alcohol in the drink Mickey produced to help her carry on this charade of disinterest.

  But not so much she fell off her stool!

  Though why should Alex's presence make her feel uneasy when she was, as she'd reminded Alana, long over him?

  Kirsten and Alana had settled on stools on either side of her and now joined in the spirit of the evening, ordering outrageous cocktails.

  'I wonder who else is off duty and not doing anything special,' Kirsten mused, when they'd toasted each other, tried each other's drinks and finally agreed on the CDs they wanted Mickey to stack.

  The apartment block was home to mostly single and mostly medical people, who usually made up the main ingredients of an impromptu party in Mickey's bar.

  Alana's eyes gleamed.

  'We could have a party!'

  'You can't have a party,' Mickey said, returning with an antipasto platter to set in front of them.

  Alana wrapped him in her smile and murmured, 'Of course we can, Mickey, darling. We'll all be good. The last time wasn't our fault. It was those dentists caused the trouble. And to think His Nibs encouraged them to take that vacant flat because he thought they'd raise the tone of the place. As if we'd even think of wearing bedpans on our heads. In fact, I don't own one—and I can't remember ever nicking one, even in my student days.'

  'I'm not talking about the last party—' Mickey began.

  Kirsten said at the same moment, 'They were orthodontists, not dentists, and one of them was quite cute. In fact, if I hadn't been so hung up over Josh, I might even have—'

  'No party!' Mickey reiterated.

  'Well, not a party but a few drinks,' Alana conceded. 'Pass us the phone, Mickey. Daisy will be working but I'll see who else is around. Anyone met the new guy on the third floor? Ingrid always scopes out the newcomers and her comment was a roll of very expressive eyes and a long Swedish wolf whistle. Do Swedes have wolves that whistle?'

  'Well, that rules him out of contention anyway,' Gabi said, not distracted by the question of whistling wolves. 'If Ingrid's got him in her sights, no one else stands a chance. Why Her Highness employed a woman as gorgeous as Ingrid to be a nanny to the twins is beyond me! Talk about putting temptation in His Nibs's way.'

  'Ah, but His Nibs knows which side his bread's buttered on,' Alana reminded her, slurping slush from the bottom of her glass. 'Think of all he'd lose if he even thought about a quick fling with the nanny.'

  Kirsten sipped at her drink and nodded.

  'A precious bit of his anatomy for a start,' she said, and all three chuckled.

  But Alana didn't get the phone, and the arrival shortly afterwards of Graham and Madeleine Frost—unofficial building managers by virtue of Madeleine's father owning it, and disrespectfully known to the friends as His Nibs and Her Highness—explained why Mickey had been so adamant in refusing them a celebration in the bar.

  'Private do, huh?' Alana asked him, but Mickey moved away to the far side of the bar, which looked over the bistro area, without answering.

  'Big brass with the Frosts,' Kirsten commented, and Gabi nodded as she recognised several specialist consultants and their wives or husbands in the group. But the surprise came when Alex and his companion stood up and walked around the bar to join the newcomers.

  Gabi tried to rationalise it.

  Alex and Graham had always been friendly. In fact, in the early days, as the only two married couples in the building, they'd often made up a foursome at dinner.

  So it was natural he might join them.

  And other hospital bigwigs?

  A gnawing sense of disaster began in Gabi's gut and worked its way outward until she had to rub the goose-bumps off her arms.

  No, it couldn't be that he was back for good. He was here to see his mother—nothing more. After all, it was his determination to do his specialty studies overseas that had caused the problem even before she'd fallen pregnant. Then she'd wanted him to put his plans off, at least until she'd had the baby at home, with friends and family around her, but Alex had been adamant that they go.

  'Hey! No brooding.' Kirsten's voice brought her out of the memories. 'Self-focussed people look ahead, not backwards.'

  'What makes you think I'm looking backwards,' Gabi retorted. Ha! Self-focussed person standing up for herself! 'I was thinking we could have the party at my place. Mickey will send up pizzas. Let's go, girls. We can phone around from there.'

  She just hoped when—she refused to consider an 'if— Alex returned, the party would be so riotous he'd regret messing with her new life.

  Hoped the party would be so riotous she'd forget the memories of the past his return had flung in her face.

  *

  Alex heard the noise as soon as he got out of the lift and hesitated, not for the first time regretting the impulse that had made him force the issue with Gabi and insist on staying in the flat.

  Not that there had been any viable alternative. His mother would have been devastated if he'd stayed in a hotel because she'd have assumed, not without reason, given his behaviour earlier in her relationship with her new husband, that he wouldn't stay at their old home because of Fred. But, in fact, it was Diane Kennedy's interest in him that made him steer clear of the placeman interest he didn't return but couldn't blatantly repulse, considering their step-relationship.

  As if he didn't have enough complications in his life...

  Tiredness tensed his gut and bunched the muscles in his shoulders but, from the noise, the good night's sleep he'd been hoping to get when he'd put Diane in a cab was as likely as his mother recovering from the chronic myelocytic leukaemia from which she was suffering. Though at present she was responding to treatment, so at least she had a temporary respite. He doubted he'd get even that.

  He leant against the wall in the foyer, gathering strength before opening the door and plunging into the noise. Considering alternatives.

  A hotel?

  Without luggage? Not even a toothbrush?

  Maybe he'd sleep through the noise—he was tired enough.

  Damn it all, he needed sleep. How the hell could he decide what he was going to do next when he'd had about three hou
rs' sleep in the last thirty-six?

  At least tonight's informal conversation with Rod Griffiths, head of all the intensive care units at Royal Westside, had been encouraging. Should Alex decide to stay here, he'd be able to slot into a specialist programme in the new year—two months away.

  If he decided to stay...

  An image of Gabi as he'd seen her in the bar popped obligingly into his head.

  Damn her, too. What the hell did she think she was playing at, going around in clothes like that?

  And drinking cocktails, when she knew she didn't have a head for alcohol?

  Dark anger he had no right to feel flared, propelling him across the foyer where he unlocked and pushed open the door. The wall of noise stopped him momentarily, then he recognised Alana among the revellers and, certain she must be behind the transformation of Gabi from a quiet, self-effacing person to the siren he'd seen in the bar, he strode towards her.

  'Alex!' she said, acknowledging him with a smile and a nod of her head, but then ignoring his presence as she continued to dance with a youth who didn't look old enough to shave.

  Alex looked around. Once Gabi knew he was back she'd turn down the music. But he couldn't see her, and his anger built again so when Alana, apparently deciding she'd ignored him long enough, tapped him on the shoulder, he spun towards her.

  'Where is she?' he demanded.

  'In the bathroom,' Alana said calmly.

  Too calmly?

  'But you'll never sleep with this racket going on,' Alana continued. 'Here's the key to my flat. Just leave the door on the latch so I can get in later. The spare bed's made up.'

  He wanted to ask who she thought she was, giving him orders in his own flat, but even through the exhaustion and anger he was feeling he knew it wouldn't be fair. For all that his name was on the lease, it was Gabi who'd paid the rent for the last twelve months.

  And if the Gabi he'd pictured when he'd made the decision to come home—the Gabi his friends had assured him had no new man in her life—no longer existed, then that was his problem.

  He took the key, thanked Alana and headed for the second bedroom to retrieve some clean clothes and his toilet gear. The bathroom door was shut, but anyone could be in there. And the door to the main bedroom was shut as well.

  It's none of your damn business where she is, who she's with or what she does, he reminded himself, but now his stomach muscles were as bunched as his shoulders, and he ached to hit someone—anyone—just for the pure physical release of the tension he was feeling.

  CHAPTER THREE

  'No! Who could be so inhuman as to put on music at this hour?' Gabi grumbled to herself, lifting an arm still weighed down with tiredness out from under the bedclothes so she could squint at her watch.

  Three o'clock?

  She could see, and the light wasn't on, so it was definitely daylight. Had she slept all day?

  And what day would that be, pray tell?

  The confusion, partnered by a dull ache behind her eyes and a voracious hunger, suggested she might have had one glass of wine too many the previous evening. She closed her eyes as the daylight made them smart.

  Maybe two glasses too many the previous evening.

  The previous evening...

  She tried to piece it together.

  Drinks at Mickey's—was blue alcohol more potent than other colours? Then a party in the flat. People had come from everywhere...

  Had someone stayed over? Was that someone responsible for the noise in the kitchen?

  Cautiously, she checked the other side of her wide queen-size bed. Totally unrumpled so, no, she hadn't done anything terminally stupid.

  She pressed her hand against her forehead. There was definitely someone in the flat because she could smell coffee, and coffee seemed like a very good idea.

  Coffee and aspirin.

  Now!

  She slithered out of bed and blearily pulled open the doors of her wardrobe, reaching her hand in for her old bathrobe which should have been on a hook at the far end. Feeling nothing, she forced her eyes to focus, then swore as a vast empty space met her eyes.

  Someone had stolen all her clothes! Was the thief still in the flat?

  Putting on music and making coffee?

  She slapped her forehead at her own stupidity. 'I don't think so!'

  Then, slowly, because she'd been exhausted by the time she'd fallen into bed and her sleep had been deeper than usual, memories of the events of the previous day returned. Packages and plastic bags stacked in the corner of the room reminded her of what she'd done, and she wasn't sure whether to be horrified at her behaviour or to laugh out loud.

  All because of a needle-stick injury?

  And no donor blood.

  And six months of waiting before she'd know, though statistically the chances, even if the donor was positive, were so minimal as to almost not count.

  She wouldn't think about that. Right now, the priority seemed to be clothes.

  More memories returned. She'd bought a robe in the lingerie shop. A long black satin robe, rich with silk embroidery, including, if she remembered rightly, an image of a golden dragon standing upright on the back, his smiling head resting on one shoulder.

  She shuffled through the bags, found the robe, shook it out and slipped into it. The cool material slid sensuously across her skin, making her feel like a million dollars. Well, half a million—there was still the headache. Across the hall for a quick teeth-clean and hair-brush—holy cow, had she really had her hair dyed in stripes? Then out to the kitchen to investigate the coffee. At this stage she was beyond caring who had made it—as long as they were willing to share.

  'Alex?'

  How the hell had she forgotten that part of yesterday's upheavals? It was coming back to her in flashes—Alex outside the flat, in Mickey's with Diane. She hadn't seen him after that...

  Her eyes narrowed with suspicion as she wondered just where he'd spent the night.

  Not that it was any of her business.

  What was her business was hiding the stupid reaction of her body now it had realised just who was making coffee. It was nothing more than conditioning—like Pavlov's dogs salivating when bells rang.

  Well, her days of salivating were over. The new Gabi was strong enough to ignore whatever physical demons Alex's presence could produce within her.

  The silence had gone on long enough so she went for safety.

  'How's your mother? Have you seen her today?'

  He nodded.

  'I spent a couple of hours there this morning. Fred came in to have lunch with her, so I left them alone.'

  Gabi opened her mouth to suggest that spending more time with Fred and his mother—seeing them together— might help his relationship with Fred, but she remembered, just in time, that his relationship with Fred was also none of her business.

  'Coffee?'

  The suggestion was so welcome she couldn't help smiling at him.

  'It's what brought me out here. Three o'clock! I've never slept this late.'

  'You've never stayed awake so long after night duty,' Alex said, and Gabi had to use the raised-eyebrow thing again to remind him he no longer knew what she did or didn't do.

  And, if the quick frown tugging his own eyebrows closer was any indication, he'd got the message. He poured her coffee and pushed the mug across the kitchen divider to where she'd perched on a stool.

  Silence pressed around them once again, growing thicker by the minute and threaded with old-familiar-type signals, and, on her side at least, the wretched Pavlovian responses. She had to break the tension before it strangled her.

  'So, how was Scotland?'

  Oh, please! Couldn't she do better than that?

  'Cold and wet when I left.'

  Something in his voice suggested this had been more the norm than otherwise and, knowing how much he loved being outdoors, she had to ask.

  'Doesn't sound like your kind of place. Though surely you'd looked into the weather patterns before y
ou chose Edinburgh. Was it anything like you'd expected, or were you disappointed?'

  'The hospital and work itself was great, and on good weekends there's fantastic walking in the hills or along the coastline. You can take a train an hour's journey from the city—in any direction—and be in beautiful country, Gabi.'

  He meant it, and she knew he'd have enjoyed the explorations, but there was something else in his voice which suggested it hadn't all been sheer joy.

  'Were you homesick?'

  He looked startled, then his dark eyes scanned her face, as if trying to read a hidden message there. And did the shrug mean he hadn't found it—or that he found the question too stupid to answer?

  'I'm staying home.' The words came out so abruptly they gave the impression they'd escaped without him meaning them to.

  So abruptly that Gabi was confused.

  'You mean you're shifting over to your mother's place?' She felt relieved and guilty all at once. Guilt won. 'You don't have to. You can stay here. After all, it won't be for long.'

  Wrong answer?

  From the way he was frowning now, maybe she'd misheard the question—though it hadn't really been a question, had it?

  She tightened the sash on the beautiful robe because, now she considered it, the frown seemed to be directed towards her cleavage, which looked OK from where she sat but might have been gaping from Alex's side of the divider.

  'I mean I'm staying here for good—I'm not going back to Scotland. Well, not in the foreseeable future.'

  The words shocked Gabi so much she almost stuttered, finally managing to get out, 'Have you spoken to your mother's doctor? Is she worse than they'd previously thought? I know a cure's unlikely, but I thought...I assumed...'

  'She could live for years? Of course she could—and hopefully she will.'

  'So why come home?' Gabi demanded.

  What she really meant was why barge in and mess up her life—again—just when she was finally getting sorted. But saying that might give him satisfaction. Self-focussed women played it cool.

  Alex's shrug suggested he didn't have an answer, but Alex was a planner—not a spur-of-the-moment man—so he had an answer all right. He just wasn't going to share it…