Rory shook his head.
He had been going to blame her but, seeing the two of them working together, he realised if he had, Jason would have stood up for her. By taking the blame herself, she’d defused the situation that could have developed between himself and his nephew.
Who’d also let Alana get away with calling him ‘Jase’, a nickname which, up to now, only his mother had been allowed to use.
Rory watched the pair, now jostling each other like two children, and though his body had told him more than once that it wouldn’t mind the odd jostle with Alana, this closeness between them was unsettling for other reasons, ones he couldn’t quite figure out—yet—but which were no less strong for being inexplicable.
Had she felt herself to be the subject of his thoughts that she turned, the pale eyes with their dark fringe of lashes looking almost silver in the artificial light?
‘I’m sorry. Did you come down for some reason? Is it time for Jason to go? I should have asked about his curfew times.’
‘What’s curfew?’ Jason asked, standing up and taking the dustpan from Alana. ‘I’ll empty this.’
‘It’s when people have to be off the streets in troubled times, or when kids have to be in bed,’ Alana explained when he returned from the kitchen.
‘Huh!’ the lad scoffed. ‘I don’t have to be in bed at any special time.’
‘No?’
Rory was careful to make the word sound as casual as possible. Regular bedtimes had become lost in the confusion of Alison’s illness and death, but since they’d shifted up to Westside he’d tried to reinstate them. One of the many things Jason had found to rebel against.
‘I’m thirteen now—’ Jason began, but Rory, who’d heard the argument ‘I can tell when I’m tired’ so many times before, held up his hand.
‘We’ll talk about it later. I came down to get you because Drusilla wants to talk to you about what movie you want to see on Friday. Apparently there’s a water fun park not far from here where they show night movies.’
‘Night movies in a swimming pool? Cool, man!’
He shot out the door, then hurtled back seconds later.
‘Thanks for dinner, Alana!’ he said, then disappeared again.
But the uncle remained, and Alana, feeling uncomfortable in his presence, sought the easy way out—Jason as a topic of conversation.
‘He’s a good kid,’ she said. ‘Considering what he’s been through.’
Rory looked startled.
‘He’s talked to you about it—about his mother’s death?’
Alana shrugged.
‘Not much, just mentioned that she had cancer, had an op and chemo, then died anyway.’ She hesitated, then realised there were any number of huge gaps in the story.
‘He didn’t mention a father—I guess as you went down to Sydney when your sister became ill, there wasn’t one around at the time. Does he have one with whom he’s in contact?’
Rory’s blue eyes darkened, and he leaned back against the wall as if suddenly too tired to stand. Alana realised she should have invited him to sit, but she wasn’t sure she wanted an imprint of Rory Forrester’s body left in one of her lounge chairs.
Especially now…
‘Not noticeably so,’ Rory was saying. ‘Paul McAllister walked out on my sister when Jason was eight months old. He wasn’t an easy baby, colicky, hyperactive, never sleeping, and that was excuse enough for Paul. He was a high-flying executive and shouldn’t be expected to handle the broken nights. He believed Alison should have hired a nanny and shut both the nanny and Jason in some far part of the house. Alison’s insistence on looking after the baby herself was another problem between them.’
‘So he walked out. Easy for him!’
‘Exactly, but probably the best thing for my sister. She made a good life for herself and was a wonderful mother to Jason. Until I took the job up here I lived in the next street so, apart from a year when I worked in the UK, Jason has always had a male presence in his life.’
Fighting an inner reminder of just how male that male presence was, Alana came to grips with the conversation.
‘And the father—Paul? He didn’t keep in touch—didn’t see Jason as he grew up?’
‘Never! Not once! No birthday or Christmas presents, no maintenance, and, of course, Alison was too proud to fight for it.’
Alana frowned at him.
‘It happens,’ she said, ‘but there’s something else, isn’t there? You sound as if this man isn’t totally in the past.’
‘Was, but not is!’ Rory ground out. ‘Now, thirteen years later, he’s decided he’s Jason’s father.’
‘He wants the boy back?’
Rory nodded, then he sighed.
‘And he’ll probably get him,’ he said grimly. ‘If I can’t pull some miracle out of the hat to convince the courts he’s better off with me.’
He nodded abruptly at her, as if he felt he’d said too much, and opened the door, turning back, as his nephew had, to say an abrupt, ‘Thanks.’ Then departing before she could refuse to accept his gratitude.
Alana picked up the lampshade, grimaced at it, then found a rubbish bag and shoved it in, realising, as she tied the yellow tape, that it was probably the last reminder of her relationship with Brian.
She chuckled to herself. During the five years they’d spent together, Brian had dominated every aspect of her life—including choice of furnishings. Desperately in love—or perhaps, after the death of her mother, desperately in need of someone to love—she’d thought only of pleasing him, so she’d praised his choices, been guided by his advice and had never questioned that he would always be right.
Until she’d been walking past the local vet’s surgery one afternoon and heard an argument over a cat. Stubby had come into her life! Agreeing with the vet that a healthy if tailless cat shouldn’t be put down, she’d carried the animal home, only to find after five years with the man that Brian hated all animals.
He’d insisted she take it back to the vet’s but in an iconoclastic dropping of scales from her eyes, she’d seen Brian as he really was, a bumptious, domineering egomaniac.
She’d packed her clothes, taken the lamp—because she’d only recently bought it and had paid for it even though it had been his choice—and the cat, and had walked out, staying first with Gabi and Alex, then moving into this flat when it had become vacant.
Five years ago!
Had it really been five years since she’d made that great escape? And what had happened in her life since then?
Plenty at work, but as far as relationships were concerned, not a thing. Oh, she’d been out with various men, some lasting one date, others a few months, but nothing more meaningful than a few laughs and the sharing of good times.
She swung the rubbish bag as she made her way down to the big garbage bins outside the basement car park. Did the lamp’s destruction signal freedom at last? An escape from the shadows Brian had cast over her life?
Alana didn’t really believe she’d been nursing any subconscious hangover from the relationship, though Gabi, Kirsten and Daisy had all at times suggested she might be. Kirsten had even gone so far as to point out that only someone who’d gone into a bad relationship with a man because she’d been physically attracted to him could possibly spout the rubbish Alana did about love growing out of friendship and trust, while Daisy had often remarked that physical attraction was very definitely part of falling in love and she was wrong to deny it a place in the equation.
Ha! Wrong, was she?
She didn’t think so.
Anyway, the meeting with Jeremy on Friday night might signal a whole new beginning.
She smiled to herself, but the excitement dimmed a little when she remembered the other offer she’d had for Friday night.
Damn Rory Forrester for intruding into her thoughts! Surely she hadn’t got one shadow finally out of her life, only to find another one sneaking in while the door was still open…
CHAPTER SIX
THE week passed swiftly, partly because Jason’s advent into Alana’s life meant her usual activities, even a visit to the vet with the rabbit, took a little longer than usual. It also helped that she’d decided to keep herself so busy at work she barely had time to notice Rory’s regular—and so far extremely punctual—presence in her ward.
Bessie Oliver had been transferred to a respite bed in a nursing home while arrangements for her to move into the new hostel were completed, but an influx of new geriatric patients highlighted the need for more specialised geriatric services, either at Royal Westside, or in some other city hospital.
So when Ted Ryan, who shared her concern for her elderly patients, came in to see a new admission on Friday afternoon, she all but dragged him into the small doctors’ office off the ward to talk to him about it.
Only to find Rory already there, using the computer, though he doubtless had a much superior machine—and a secretary—in his office on the fourth floor.
‘Alana, Ted.’
He nodded to both of them, but his voice was ultra-cool—cold cool, not Jason’s cool—while his face was a frozen mask of displeasure.
‘Sorry, I didn’t know anyone was in here.’ Alana blurted out, coping with the usual physical manifestations of seeing Rory, as well as shock at the forbidding look on his face. Speech seemed the best option. ‘I wanted to talk to Ted about this new influx of geriatric patients. There was talk of St Mary’s Hospital, on the other side of the river, setting up a special geriatric department, but it apparently hasn’t happened, or we wouldn’t still be getting so many elderly patients.’
She hesitated then added, ‘But we could talk in the tearoom if we’re disturbing you.’
Rory waved his hand as if to say it didn’t matter, and Ted, obviously not afflicted with goose-bumps, took it as an invitation to stay.
‘It is set up,’ Ted said, coming further into the room and propping himself against the desk so she could have the second chair. ‘But it’s like motorways—by the time they’re built, they’re never wide enough. St Mary’s specialist geriatric ward filled up the day it opened and has been full ever since.’
‘Why? Are they taking chronic patients as well as acute cases, or using beds for respite until nursing-home placements can be found?’
‘They’re taking chronic cases, certainly. As we do with people like Mr Briggs, and your friend Bessie Oliver.’
‘But they’re admitted with an acute condition,’ Alana reminded him. ‘Something that needs to be treated immediately so their general health is stabilised.’
‘I imagine the same thing’s happening at St Mary’s.’
‘So, might not a city this size need a special geriatric ward here as well as at St Mary’s?’ Rory asked.
Alana flashed a smile at him.
‘Of course it does, but try to convince the State Minister for Health of it. Senior physicians have been trying to get funding for years. The latest argument is that it’s discriminatory—age discrimination—and very definitely not the thing to do.’
‘Then how did the other hospital—St Mary’s—get funding?
‘Some of it’s private,’ Ted explained. ‘The rest was part of an arrangement with a previous government and it’s tied into hospice funding as well. St Mary’s runs a hospice, not on site at the hospital but in a suburban area nearby.’
Rory nodded.
‘It’s not my field, but I’ve plenty of older patients and I can see the discrimination point. Not so much as a discrimination issue but from the social side of things, surely someone like Mrs Armstrong would be happier in a ward with younger people around her than in a ward totally made up of her peers, some of whom would undoubtedly be senile?’
Alana, who’d come far enough into the small room to lean on the back of the chair, nodded her agreement.
‘Yes, but what’s the answer? You did a round earlier. With this sudden spell of hot weather we’ve had nine admissions in three days of elderly people who’ve become dehydrated, either because they’re simply not drinking enough water or because they’ve eaten food which has probably gone off and given themselves acute diarrhoea. In one case, an elderly woman who lived alone fell, and lay on the floor for thirty-six hours before a neighbour who hadn’t seen her around called the police. That was Mrs Reid—the potassium levels in her blood were high enough to have killed her by the time she was brought in. With Mr Hepchik, it’s caused renal failure as well, and Mrs McConachie was admitted with such severe arrhythmia she wasn’t expected to live through the night.’
‘So you’re virtually a geriatric ward anyway? Is that what you’re saying?’
Alana shrugged.
‘Not really, but, yes, we are heavily weighted with older patients, and they stay longer than younger ones because it’s easier to stabilise them in Eight B than shift them around to other parts of the hospital. What bothers me is that so many of their admissions are preventable. If the hospital had specialised geriatric services, we could help integrate the community services already available—home help, community nursing, meals-on-wheels—so older people living on their own would have a kind of umbrella of care over them at all times.’
‘I like that idea,’ Ted said, beaming his usual cheerful and approving smile in Alana’s direction. ‘And the phrase— “umbrella of care”—do you mind if I borrow it for a paper I’m writing?’
Alana nodded her agreement, but her attention was focussed on Rory, who seemed far less enamoured of the notion. In fact, from the scowl on his face, she’d have to guess he hated it.
She was about to ask what objections he had to it when Ted was summoned to Eight C. Deciding a tête-à-tête with Rory Forrester wasn’t what she needed, Alana was preparing to follow when his voice, as much as what he said, stopped her stone dead.
‘Is he the “other engagement” you have tonight? Was that why you were seeking the privacy of this room? For a preliminary skirmish? Or to make final arrangements?’
Rory was aware that the answers to these questions were none of his business, and from the look on Alana’s face, she was about to tell him just that. But they’d come roaring out of some inner murk in his mind—presumably the place where he’d been shoving all the things he didn’t want to think about right now.
Or ever, really, though doubtless he’d have to some time.
He eyed the woman who stood just inside the door, staring at him with a mixture of anger and disbelief so strong it was obvious she was having trouble finding the words with which to berate him.
Then her eyes narrowed, and her cheeks grew pink, and the words she’d needed came slicing through the air.
‘Ted Ryan is a friend of mine, and has been for many years, and while I don’t give a flying fig what you think of me, I’ll be damned if I’ll let you smear his good name with some irrational fancy about him being interested in me as anything other than a friend and colleague.’
She spun away, opened the door and strode out, then whipped back around. ‘And I’m not so desperate for a man I’d ever have a relationship with someone else’s husband.’
The door shut—firmly—behind her, and Rory held his head—he still hadn’t had that haircut—in his hands and groaned.
Hell, she was beautiful when she was angry!
And just seeing her had his body behaving in ways it hadn’t behaved for years, while his mind was obviously developing signs of collapse that it had thrown up those stupid suspicions he’d harboured once before about Ted and Alana.
Though she had, with her hand around his wrist, dragged Ted into the room just now. What was a man supposed to think?
As little as possible about Alana Wright was the answer to that question. Right now, Jason was his first priority. He had to help the boy settle into his new life, find his feet at a new school and develop friendships with his peers. In the months preceding Alison’s death, Jason had cut himself off from his friends—perhaps, Daisy Rutherford had suggested, because he hadn’t been able to h
andle their sympathy towards him—but Rory didn’t need Daisy to tell him boys had enough problems getting through adolescence without the added burden of being a loner or misfit.
This concern had prompted Rory to offer to find a job in Sydney so Jason could remain in his old school, but the boy had said he’d rather get away—start somewhere new. Rory could kind of understand this, as he felt a little of it himself.
His pager vibrated against his chest and he remembered he was supposed to be at a specialists’ meeting. Good thing he wasn’t taking the tetchy Miss Wright to dinner—his experience of such meetings suggested he might be very late leaving the hospital.
So late in fact, Rory didn’t get back to Near West until nearly nine when, rather than face fixing himself a meal in an empty flat, he turned into Mickey’s Bar and Bistro, pushing open the door and waiting for his eyes to adjust from the light in the well-illuminated foyer to the dimness of the bar.
He saw the hair first, gleaming like a beacon in the shadows—a cascade of blonde hair frothing around the shoulders of a woman who sat at the far end of the bar, her back to the door, her attention totally focussed on the overdeveloped and trendily dressed male sitting beside her. Not that it could possibly be the woman from the concert. After all, there must be thousands of blondes in Westside. Possibly tens of thousands.
But his body believed it had recognised her, and as he walked towards the bar he wondered if maybe it was an age-related reaction. Once you turned thirty-five, blondes became super-attractive! Didn’t rich old men inevitably choose a blonde as a trophy wife?
The middle-aged man—Mickey—behind the bar approached him, and as Rory introduced himself, the blonde, perhaps hearing his voice, turned.
Alana Wright! It had to be! When fate decided to knock you down, it usually crunched you underfoot.
So she’d turned him down for a date with a too-good-looking-to-be-true body-builder. He had to be one. No one else had shoulders like that. Or maybe he was wearing shoulder pads, like American footballers.
All this flashed through his mind while Mickey—he’d introduced himself by now—waited patiently for his order.
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