This particular week, Tuesday and Wednesday were just as bad, so Sally had little time to be brooding over kisses, and her body was tired enough for the physical effect of Grant Hudson to be minimised.
Handleable!
By Thursday she was able to leave early, taking time off to make up for extra hours she'd worked over the weekend. She was even able to concentrate on study and congratulated herself for getting back on track.
So the tap on the study door startled her and when Eddie, at twenty-one the youngest of her brothers, poked his head around the jamb, she let fly.
'Damn it, Eddie, you nearly gave me heart failure. I was so deep in the books I didn't hear you coming. Couldn't you have walked more loudly, or coughed?'
Eddie grinned at her, but it was another voice that said, 'I'll remember that next time.'
'Someone to see you, Sally,' Eddie added, when she'd already realised that and couldn't say she wasn't at home.
Grant's head appeared behind Eddie's and this time his lips weren't smiling, and his eyes were cold and hard.
'I need to speak to you,' he said, his voice making it quite clear—in case she'd missed the message in his eyes—that it wasn't a social call.
With a supreme effort of will, Sally didn't raise her hands to flatten down her hair although she knew her habit of running her fingers through it as she read would have left it standing up every which way.
She did, however, tighten the belt of her ratty old bathrobe, and regret not studying in something more...conventional?
'I suppose, as you're already here, I can't say no.' She waved Eddie away as she made the grudging reply. 'If you shift the pile of books off that chair you can sit down.'
A short afternoon sleep must have alleviated the numbing effects of tiredness, for her body was in full response mode again, nerves twittering away inside her, organs behaving badly.
She watched the man lift the books then look around for somewhere to put them.
'Use the floor,' she suggested, then let herself enjoy the sight of his long body bending, with extraordinary grace for a tall man, to set the pile on the floor.
But when he finally sat, and faced her, she forgot enjoyment. Grant Hudson was angry. Radiating tension so palpable she could feel the waves zinging against her already sensitised skin.
'I believe the mixed-sex changing rooms were your idea,' he began, spitting the words out through clenched teeth.
Uh-oh!
Unable to think of anything to say—after all, the man was right—Sally remained silent.
'Well, haven't you anything to say for yourself?' he demanded.
She held out her hands.
'What do you want me to say? Yes, it was my idea. That it?'
The look he gave her should have shrivelled her skin.
'You know I've been against it. Right from when I first arrived. You were even good enough to tell me I should see Flo about it, but somehow you didn't see fit to explain it was your campaign among the surgical staff that resulted in this ridiculous trial.'
He stood up, as if his anger was too hard to handle sitting down, but if he hoped to pace, he was out of luck. The piles of books all over the floor created too many obstacles for really forceful pacing.
He loomed over her instead.
'Well?' he demanded again.
'Well, what?' she retorted, getting tired of his browbeating attitude. 'You're making accusations, Dr Hudson, not asking questions. Do you want me to justify the idea? I'm sure if Flo's told you how we came to the decision, she's already given you my arguments.'
'I shouldn't have had to hear them from Flo!' he stormed, tripping over a prescription guide as the urge to pace overcame the obvious pitfalls. 'You should have had the decency to tell me.'
Sally rolled her chair back a little as the trip had landed him upright, but much closer to her desk.
'So you could yell at me like you're doing now?'
'I am not yelling,' he said, gritted teeth distorting the words.
'Of course you're yelling,' she told him. 'Yells can be just as menacing when they're quiet as when they're loud.'
She saw his reaction in the way he turned away from her, groaning his frustration, rubbing his hands through his hair, doing a little limited pacing before finally slumping back into the chair.
'Let's start again,' he said, after a pause long enough for him to have counted to ten at least ten times. 'According to Flo, because you're the one who promoted the mixed-changing rooms idea, you could also call off the trial before the three months is up.'
Sally, who'd felt a slight pang of sympathy for his frustration—having often felt it herself—forgot sympathy and rallied to the cause.
'Why would I want to do that?' she demanded.
'Because they're not working,' her boss declared.
'Who said?'
He blinked at her, as if he didn't understand the question, then hesitated, and she guessed he was discarding his original reply—'Me'—in favour of something more persuasive.
'I suppose it was some wonderful feminist idea,' he muttered. 'Equal rights in bars, women astronauts, then storming the last bastions of male exclusivity, hospital changing rooms.'
'It had nothing to do with feminism!' she told him. 'As if anyone cares about that in a hospital where females have been the prime force since time began. And the trial had the support of all the surgeons, male and female.'
His disbelieving look told her what he thought of that statement, though he didn't openly question it.
'Then how about you tell me why you wanted it?' he suggested.
She'd argued her case for so long, and so often, it should have been easy, but Grant's presence in her home, in the study she considered her own private sanctum, was unsettling her.
'It makes sense to me to change with other surgeons. That way, discussions of new techniques, talk of what's happening in surgery, is passed around.'
'It's passed around at medical specialists' meetings,' he reminded her. 'Far more often and far more effectively than it is in a changing room.'
Hmm.
She went to point two.
'Surgeons who'll be working together can discuss the operation ahead of them. Last-minute details, suggestions.'
'Do we do that?'
'If you mean you and me "we", then, no, we don't,' Sally said, anger building as he continued to snipe at her. 'But that might have something to do with the fact that you always change in the far corner of the room, out of everyone's way. I discuss what's ahead with Jerry and Andy—'
She was about to add 'and Daniel' but that wasn't true as she avoided changing near Daniel, usually going into a shower cubicle if he was in the room.
'Not Daniel?'
Of course Grant had picked up on it. Did he know her habits? Could she lie?
'All the other surgeons,' she replied, hoping she sounded casual and carefree enough for him to miss the evasion.
'So you'd say the trial was working?'
Sally tried to gauge his mood. He'd certainly calmed down but she sensed he was ready to pounce on her first unwary statement. She considered the—to her—unnatural silence in the mixed changing rooms.
'Perhaps not as well as I'd expected,' she admitted. 'But it's early days. Everyone has to get used to it.'
'Everyone won't have a chance to get used to it, Dr Cochrane,' Grant said softly. 'I want it stopped. I want the normal routine restored. Now. This week.'
'Why?'
She looked at him as she asked the question, her brown eyes puzzled where before they'd been wary. Grant tried desperately to think of an irrefutable argument. He could hardly say that while seeing her partly clad body had a bad effect on him, seeing partly clad men changing near her was even worse torture.
After all, it was ridiculous to be lusting after Sally's body. And he certainly had no right to feel proprietorial about it.
'Because it's not working,' he stated flatly. 'You said so yourself. The surgeons change in almost total s
ilence. The men are constrained because women are present and, no doubt, the women are feeling exactly the same way.'
'You have no idea what the women are thinking,' she reminded him.
'And don't I know it!' he told her. 'But I'm reasonably certain only a woman could possibly have seen any benefit in the idea.'
'Of course that's the case.'
He was taken aback to find her agreeing with him, and before he could recover ground she struck.
'That's because the majority of surgeons are men. They already change with each other. They've always had the interchange of ideas, the discussion about the upcoming operation, the talk afterwards of how an op could have been bettered.'
She glanced at him, as if checking to see he was listening, then continued. 'There might be only one woman on each team and with the old system she gets none of that feedback. She might discuss similar things with the nurses, but then a week later the male surgeon she's working with mentions she's using an instrument they'd decided to discard in favour of something else and she realises the changing-room talk has passed her by again.'
She had a point but there was no way he could concede it without losing his primary objective.
'So now no one gets feedback because of the total silence?'
The golden gleams in her dark eyes flared briefly, and he guessed she'd been about to ease the rein on her temper, then she smiled instead—all sweetness and light. 'Not even once they get used to it?'
'I don't think they will get used to it,' he said bluntly. Gold flares and cute smiles weren't going to put him off track. 'I'm sure most of the men feel as I do—'
'Which is?' she interrupted, her eyes guileless now, and therefore doubly dangerous.
'Embarrassed!' he said bluntly. 'It's not quite a sports locker room situation, the changing rooms. We're not in the habit of parading stark naked around the place, but from time to time we might walk out of the shower cubicle in the nude to get clean clothes from a locker. We can't do that with women present.'
He hesitated, then decided to get it all off his chest.
'And then there's the other angle. Where to look when you're talking to a female colleague who's half-clad. What's normal and what's considered inappropriate behaviour? We poor bloody men can't win in those situations.'
For a moment he thought he had her, thought she was about to smile—perhaps give in—but when she did speak he realised how far wide of the mark he'd been.
Which confirmed how little he knew about women in general and this one in particular.
'So what you're saying is that women surgeons should continue to miss out on info-sharing to save the males a smidgen of embarrassment.' The dark gaze swept across his face. 'You might have to do better than that to convince Flo to stop the trial.'
Infuriated all over again, Grant stood up, inadvertently kicking over another pile of books.
'I should have known better than to waste my time talking to you,' he stormed, bending automatically and stacking the books back in a pile again. 'You're the most stubborn, argumentative female it's ever been my misfortune to know!'
And whatever Sally had to say about that was lost when the brother who'd shown him in—Eddie, he thought—reappeared, and said, 'Is your visitor staying to dinner, Sally?'
Grant wasn't sure which of their denials came first, but both the 'no's were equally forceful.
Eddie was apparently unfazed by this, simply murmuring, 'Pity! It's Phil's turn to cook and he's made a Moroccan thing with chicken and olives and apricots. Smells good enough to eat.'
And with this weak joke, he wandered off, leaving Grant to find his own way out of the old house. A way that took him past the kitchen where the delicious smell issuing forth made him regret his decision.
He still hadn't shopped!
The mixed changing rooms remained but Sally realised Grant had made his own arrangements, altering operating rosters so she was rarely on the same operating team as he was. She wondered if he'd also managed to exclude the women from other specialties who used the room, or if she'd been the only target.
Not that it bothered her, she told herself. The less she saw of him the better, and the unavoidable morning rounds were a big enough dose of Dr Hudson each day.
Friday came around again. Jerry was on duty for the weekend ahead and Daniel on call. Apart from Saturday night, when she'd be singing again, she'd have an unbroken stretch of study time ahead of her.
And an unbroken stretch of Grant-free hours, the better to steel herself against his appeal.
Yet as she drove home, close to midnight on Saturday, she couldn't resist looking up at the tower. Her eyes counted up the levels while she waited for the traffic light to change to allow her to turn right off the wide riverfront drive and into the street that skirted the hill on which Grant's building stood and led under the railway lines to her home.
Strange that he should live so close.
She thought of the previous weekend, when he'd not only driven her home but had offered comfort the following morning.
Strange that he could prove so human.
Not strange—bad! Far better that he remain inhuman—the robot head of department not a flesh-and-blood man.
It had to be tiredness causing these idle fancies, she decided as the green arrow finally gave her permission to move. She swung die car off the well-lit drive and into the tree-lined side street. Heard the chug of protest, the gasping cough—and silence.
'Bloody car!'
She steered it to the kerb and slapped the steering wheel in frustration. Since the fuel gauge had given up the ghost three months ago, she'd made a point of filling the tank every week.
But this week...
She rested her head on her arms and thought for a moment. She had her mobile and should phone a cab.
Then have the cabbie curse because it was such a short trip?
Or call the auto club and get them to bring petrol?
And wait an hour for them to arrive?
The easiest thing was to walk the few blocks home and get one of the boys to sort out the car tomorrow. The area was a quiet residential one, not known for street kids, hoodlums or drug addicts. In fact, break-ins were so rare they had no insurance excesses.
And the walk would do her good.
If she went up the hill, and cut down the next side street...
She grabbed her handbag, opened the door, climbed out of the car, locked it, swung the keys into her fist, warm and solid feeling, and set out. So it was stupid to walk up the hill then back down again, but she gave in to the impulse, allowing her eyes, once again, to count their way up the floors of the tall building ahead and on her left. Was that Grant's apartment?
The one with the lights still on?
Was this pathetic or not?
She was mocking herself, pointing out it was behaviour more worthy of an adolescent than a mature woman, when the figures appeared from a dark patch of shadow.
Silent and menacing, they grabbed at her handbag, the force spinning her around.
Instinct made her grip it tightly, and she tried to scream, but inhibitions she hadn't known she had turned the noise into a pathetic bleat.
But even that small cry must have spooked her assailants, for their efforts accelerated and she felt a savage blow to her right shoulder, then she was dragged to the ground.
The spectre of rape cleared her mind. She'd wrestled with her brothers all her life. Let them have the bag, and use your feet.
The two instructions came from nowhere, but she obeyed them instantly, flinging her handbag towards the gutter so at least one would have to move towards it, then pulling her knees towards her chest and kicking upward as the second person came towards her.
He flew backward, confirming an instinctive knowledge that they were young and slight.
Built for speed?
Sally didn't wait to find out. She scrambled up and set off, legs pumping, heart heaving, heading towards the lighted car park of the apartment bui
lding.
Footsteps echoed behind her, growing closer, accelerating her panic, so when she reached the lights and dashed towards the wide glass doors that protected the apartment dwellers from intruders, she didn't stop to consider pressing any bell but the one she knew.
Grant Hudson's.
Heard his voice—startled but not sleepy! She registered that much and even felt some relief she hadn't woken him.
'It's Sally. Someone chased me, took my handbag.'
She heard his curse, then something buzzed, but the adrenalin rush was over and her knees gave out, so when he came thundering out through the front doors she was still crouched beneath the doorbells, her body shaking so much she couldn't make her legs work.
'I-I'm sorry,' she managed to stutter. 'I shouldn't have come here, but it was closest. I was scared. The car stopped and I thought I'd walk. Stupid, stupid, stupid thing to do.'
She could feel his hands running over her body, seeking injuries before moving her. It was a normal thing for a doctor to do, but it added to her tension and she shrank back against the wall.
'I'm all right. Not hurt. I need a cab and some money to pay it if you wouldn't mind.'
She looked at him, and saw both anger and confusion in his eyes.
Shouldn't have come here, Sally.
'I'm sorry!' she muttered, but he swept away the apology with a wave of his hand.
Grant squatted on the marble step and tried to make sense of what was happening. He'd felt a hot rush of anger when he'd heard Sally's faltering voice, then fear, colder and sharper than shards of ice, had killed it, and he'd come rushing down to find—
A woman with spiked hair and a sinful red dress so revealing it should have been censored.
Last week it had been shimmering gold and there'd been gold dust in her hair.
What did she do on Saturday nights?
For which she wasn't paid?
And why did the questions make him feel queasy?
He shook his head.
He'd think about them later. Right now, this woman needed help.
'Come on. Let's get you upstairs,' he said and gently eased her to her feet.
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