Yes, it was the perfect job, in a perfect place—a tropical island paradise. What more could a woman want?
The L-word sneaked into her mind.
Pathetic, that’s what she was!
Had it been seeing Angus that had prompted such a thought?
Of course it must be. Seeing Angus had raised all kinds of spectres, weird spectres considering Angus had never loved her—she’d known that from the start—although back then she had allowed herself to dream…
Not any more!
She pushed her thoughts back into the cobwebby attic. So what if he was on the island? He was at the resort at the other end, nowhere near the camp or medical centre, so there was no reason for them to meet again.
None!
Except that the island was no longer a haven, she admitted to herself in the early hours of the morning when Robbie slept but her own fears came to the fore, tiredness magnifying them.
She’d tried to tell herself she was unsettled because of the Angus incident—because of his escape from the attic of her mind—but, in fact, it was a combination of things that had her so uptight.
So desperately worried!
Seeing Angus had brought back memories of Bobby’s death. Bobby had died of a massive chest infection they’d at first thought was simply flu.
With vulnerable children was there ever ‘simple’ flu?
And then there were the birds…
Her island paradise had become a place of sick children and dead birds!
The combination of words played again and again—like an echo—in Beth’s head as day dawned, grey and wary, outside the window. Now, tired though she was, she tried to put aside emotion and just list the facts.
The celebration of the opening the previous day had been dampened by the fact that the ten-bed hospital attached to the medical centre was half-full. Sick adults were bad enough, but the sick children?
Lily, Jack and Robbie hospitalised here in the medical centre, Danny not well last night. For these children a simple cold was a big concern—flu was even worse.
Bird flu!
Not a fact but an inescapable thought…
The feared words hadn’t yet been spoken but Beth imagined she could hear them murmuring on the soft tropical wind that blew across the island and whispering at her from the palm fronds. The worrying thing, as far as Beth could see, was that no one was doing anything to find out if this might be the flash point of a pandemic.
Charles Wetherby, head of Crocodile Creek Hospital and the prime mover in expanding the medical presence on Wallaby Island, would normally have taken charge, but he’d been distracted by the official events and the dignitaries attending them, to say nothing of the fact that his ward, Lily, was one of the sick children.
Distracted generally, it seemed to Beth, although she didn’t know him well enough to be sure distracted wasn’t part of his usual personality.
As far as the mystery illness was concerned, blood samples had been sent to the mainland for testing—that was a fact—but there were so many different strains of flu, would an ordinary pathology lab on the mainland think to consider bird flu or even have the facility to test for it?
In the pale dawn light Beth sighed, knowing she had to go through with a decision she’d made some time around midnight as she’d sat beside Robbie’s bed, looking at the child but seeing a much smaller and younger child—not Robbie, but Bobby. Later we’ll call him Bob, Angus had said, it’s more manly than Rob.
But Bobby had never grown to be a man, and Angus?
She sighed again.
Angus was a short electric cart ride away, in the luxury resort on the southern end of the island.
Angus was a pathologist who specialised in epidemiology.
Angus would know about bird flu.
She had to go there.
She had to ask him.
Before another child got sick…
Before another child died…
Beth left the small electric cart in the parking lot at the edge of the resort.
‘Stay!’ she said firmly to Garf, the camp’s goofy, golden, curly labradoodle, who considered riding in the carts the best fun in the world and had hurled himself in beside her before she’d left the clinic.
Garf smiled his goofy smile and lay down across the seat.
Not that he’d guard the cart for her—he’d be more likely to encourage someone to steal it so he could have another ride.
Smiling at remembered antics of the dog she’d grown so fond of, she walked along the path through the lush tropical greenery that screened the small cart park from the resort itself, and found herself by the pool. It looked a million miles long and she realised it had been designed to seem as if it was at one with the surrounding sea. At this end, there were chairs set around tables that sheltered under wide umbrellas, and closer to the pool low-slung loungers, where a few people were already soaking up the very early rays of the rising sun.
To her right, the resort hotel rose in terraced steps so in a way it repeated the shape of the rugged mountain beneath which it sheltered.
‘Wow!’
The word escaped her, although she’d been determined not to be impressed by the magnificence of the newly rebuilt resort.
And possibly because she was so nervous over approaching Angus that she’d been concentrating on the setting to exclude Angus-thoughts from her mind, and talking to herself helped.
Then she remembered Robbie Henderson—and Jack and Lily and the other patients—and why she was there. With steady steps and a thundering heart, she made her way towards the building.
‘You are not the wimpy twenty-five-year-old who fell for the first hazel-eyed specialist who looked your way—awed by someone in his position taking notice of a first-year resident,’ she reminded herself, muttering under her breath to emphasise her thoughts. ‘You’re a mature, experienced woman now, a qualified ER doctor and head of the Wallaby Island Medical Centre. All you’re doing is what any sensible medico would do—seeking advice from an expert.’
Who happened to be the love of your life, an inner voice reminded her.
‘Past tense!’ she muttered at the voice, but it had been enough to slow her footsteps and she needed further verbal assurances to get her into the resort.
‘What’s more, he won’t bite you. He’ll want to help. In fact, it’s probably only because he hasn’t heard about the kids being sick that he hasn’t already offered. And he’s kind, he’s always been kind—work-obsessed but, once distracted from his work, very kind…’
She’d been telling herself these things all night, repeating them over and over again to Garf on the fifteen-minute drive through the rainforest that separated the camp and clinic area from the hotel, but the repetition wasn’t doing much to calm her inner agitation, which churned and twisted in her stomach until she felt physically sick.
‘He’s not answering the phone in his room, but if you go through to the Rainforest Retreat, he could be having breakfast there.’
The polite receptionist, having listened to Beth’s explanation of who she was and whom she wanted, now pointed her in the direction of the Rainforest Retreat, a wide conservatory nestled into the rainforest at the back of the hotel building, huge potted palms and ferns making it hard to tell where the real forest ended and the man-made one began.
Beth paused on the threshold, at first in amazement at the spacious beauty of it and then to look around, peering between the palms, her eyes seeking a tall, dark-haired man whose sole focus, she knew from the past, would be his breakfast.
Whatever Angus did, he did with total concentration—yep, there he was, cutting his half-grapefruit into segments, carefully lifting the flesh, a segment at a time, to his mouth, chewing it while he attacked the next segment.
‘The kitchens in hotels never get it cut right through,’ he’d complained during their weekend honeymoon in a hotel in the city, and from then on it had been her mission in life—or one of them—to ensure his grapef
ruit segments were cut right through.
Although Angus’s morning grapefruit hadn’t been her concern for three years now—three long years…
She was trying to figure out if that made her sad or simply relieved when she saw his concentration falter—his forkful of grapefruit flesh hesitating between the bowl and his mouth. Which was when she realised he had company at the table—company that had been hidden from Beth’s view by a palm frond but was now revealed to be a very attractive woman with long blond hair that swung like a curtain as she turned her head, hiding her perfect features for a moment before swinging back to reveal them again.
Reveal also a certain intimacy with the man who’d returned his concentration to his grapefruit.
Beth’s courage failed and she stood rooted to the spot, wishing there was a palm frond in front of her so no one would see her, or guess at her inability to move.
But she was no longer an anxious first-year resident overawed in the presence of a specialist—she was a competent medical practitioner, and Robbie and the other children needed help.
Now!
Legs aching with reluctance, she forced herself forward, moving like a robot until she reached the table.
The blonde looked up first—way past attractive! Stunning!
If Beth’s heart could have sunk further than her sandals, it would have.
‘I’m sorry to interrupt,’ she said quietly, finally detaching Angus’s attention from his grapefruit, pleased to see he looked as surprised as she felt nervous.
‘Beth?’
The word croaked out, though what emotion caused the hoarseness she couldn’t guess.
‘I’m sorry I couldn’t talk to you properly last night but Danny, the little boy in the back, he wasn’t well and I wanted to get him to bed. How are you, Angus?’ she managed, blurting out the words while clutching her hands tightly in front of her so he wouldn’t see them shaking.
He stared at her and she wondered if he’d written off her presence in the rainforest the previous evening as a bad dream.
His silent regard tightened her tension and she forgot about maturity and experience and bumbled into speech again.
‘I really am sorry to interrupt, but we’ve a crisis at the medical centre and I—’
She saw from his blank expression that he didn’t understand, just seconds before he echoed, ‘Medical centre?’
‘I thought you’d have heard—there was an official opening yesterday, a gala evening last night here at the hotel. The medical centre’s at the other end of the island—an outpost of Crocodile Creek Hospital on the mainland. There’s always been a small centre here on the island but it was extended because after Cyclone Willie the Crocodile Creek Kids’ Camp was rebuilt and expanded, and with the extensions to the resort it seemed sensible to have an efficient and permanent medical presence on the island.’
The words rattled off her tongue, her apprehension firing them at him like bullets from a gun.
‘Crocodile Creek—that’s Charles Wetherby’s set-up—has a rescue service attached—yes, perhaps I did hear something,’ Angus said, not needing to add, to Beth anyway, that if whatever he’d heard didn’t directly concern him or his work then he’d have filed it away under miscellaneous and tucked it into a far corner of his brain.
But now he was frowning at her, the finely drawn dark brows above hazel eyes encroaching on each other, indenting a single frown line above his long, straight nose.
‘And what has this to do with you?’
The question was too sharp and for the first time it occurred to Beth she should have phoned her ex-husband, not run here like a desperate kid, seeking his help. For a desperate kid was what she felt like now, not mature at all, standing in front of Angus like a child in front of the headmaster in his office at school.
Had this thought communicated itself to Angus that he suddenly stood up, pulled out another chair, and told Beth to sit?
In a very headmasterly voice!
But her knees were becoming so unreliable, what with the lack of sleep last night and the strain of seeing—and talking to—Angus again, that she obeyed without question.
At least now she could hide her hands in her lap and he wouldn’t see them shaking.
Angus sat down again, pushed his nearly finished grapefruit half away and turned his attention to Beth. Most of his attention, that was. Part of it was focussed on pushing back memories and totally unnecessary observations like how tired she looked and the fact that she always looked smaller when she was tired, and she’d lost weight as well, he was willing to bet, and why, after three years, did his hands still want to touch her, to feel the silky softness of her skin, to peel her clothes off and—?
‘Start with why you’re here,’ he began, hoping practicalities would help him regain control, not only of the situation but of his mind and body. ‘Not here in this room right now, but on this island—connected to this medical centre.’
‘I work there. I’m the permanent doctor at the centre. I saw the job advertised and thought it would be wonderful, just what I needed, something different.’
Far too much information! Admittedly she was flustered—wasn’t he?—but…
He shuffled through his mental miscellaneous file—the Crocodile Creek Kids’ Camp was for children with ongoing health problems or disabilities. Had she chosen to work in a place where she’d be seeing these children because of Bobby?
Of course that would be a factor, though it went deeper than that. On a resort island people—especially these kids—came and went. She wouldn’t have to become too involved with any of them, and if she wasn’t involved she wouldn’t get hurt—Beth’s self-protective instincts coming into full play—the same self-protective instincts that had made her adamant about not having another child…
Although maybe he’d suggested that too early—too soon after Bobby’s death…
‘Angus?’
The woman’s voice—not Beth’s, Sally’s—made him wonder if he’d lingered too long in his thoughts. He was usually better than this—quick on the uptake, fast in decision-making, focussed…
He turned to his companion—tall, elegant, beautiful, clever Sally. She was relatively new on his staff, but they’d been dating occasionally and he’d suggested she attend the conference with him thinking…
He glanced towards Beth, weirdly ashamed at what he’d been thinking then furious with himself for the momentary guilt.
‘Sorry, Sally, this is Beth, my ex-wife.’
‘I’ll leave you to catch up,’ Sally said, in a voice that suggested any chance of them getting to know each other better over the weekend had faded fast.
But though he knew she wanted him to tell her to stay—to touch her on the arm as he said it—he made no move to stop her as she stood up with her coffee and raisin toast and moved through the room to another table on the far side, where other conference attendees were enjoying a far noisier breakfast.
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset anyone,’ Beth said. ‘I’ll explain quickly, then you can explain to…Sally? I’m sure she’ll understand.’
The words made no sense at all to Angus, who failed to see why Beth should be concerned about Sally. Although Beth did have a habit of being concerned about everyone—even in little ways. He’d remembered that, with a twinge of regret, as he’d wrestled with his grapefruit.
‘There’s a bug going around on our side of the island that presents with flu-like symptoms but three of the children, Jack and Robbie from the kids’ camp and Lily, Charles Wetherby’s ward, are quite seriously sick, very high temperatures that we’re having trouble controlling with drugs, and on top of that are the birds. There are dead birds, shearwaters I think they’re called, all around the island.’
She glanced around and added, ‘Probably not here—the groundspeople would clear them away—but over on our side. Lily picked one up and gave it to Charles, thinking he could cure it. We’ve vulnerable children in the camp, Angus, and although no one’
s saying anything, I’m sure in their heads they’re whispering it might be bird flu.’
Her wide-set blue eyes looked pleadingly into his, asking the question she hadn’t put into words.
Would he help?
As if she needed to ask—to plead! He felt a stab of annoyance at her, then remembered that Beth, who’d had so little, would never take anything for granted. And certainly not where he was concerned. Hadn’t he accepted her decision that they should divorce and walked away without another word, burying himself in work, using his ability to focus totally on the problems it presented to blot out the pain, only realising later—too late—that he should have stayed, have argued, have—
But that was in the past and right now she needed help.
‘Do you have transport?’
‘Electric cart parked out the back.’
‘Then let’s go.’
He stood up and reached out to take her hand to help her stand—an automatic action until he saw her flinch away as if his touch might burn her. Pain he thought he’d conquered long ago washed through him.
How had they come to this, he and Beth?
CHAPTER TWO
SKIN prickling with awareness of Angus by her side, Beth led the way back to the cart, then sighed with relief when she saw Garf.
He could sit between them, they could talk about the dog and she wouldn’t have to think of things to say.
‘Good grief, what’s that?’
Beth had to smile. Garf looked more like a tall sheep or a curly goat than a dog.
‘That’s Garf, he loves a ride. Move over, dog!’
Garf had sat up and yapped a welcoming hello. He was now regarding Angus with interest.
Was this a man who knew the exact place to scratch behind a dog’s ear?
‘He’s a labradoodle, a non-allergenic kind of dog,’ Beth replied. ‘The kids love him and when they’re all up and about he’s usually with them. His other great love is riding in carts and it’s impossible to tell him he’s not wanted—he just leaps in.’
To her surprise, Angus and Garf took to each other like old friends, although Angus was firm about not wanting a thirty-odd-kilo dog sitting on his knee.
Children's Doctor, Meant-To-Be Wife Page 2
