Grace!
He shook his head, unable to deny the attraction that still stirred within his body.
What was happening to him? Why had his body chosen this of all times to remind him of his physical needs?
And chosen Grace of all women?
He guessed a psychologist would tell him it was because the grieving process was finally over, but he knew what had kept him celibate since Nikki’s death had been as much guilt as grief. Guilt for the pain he’d caused her. Yes, there’d been grief as well, grief that someone as young and lovely as Nikki should have to die. Grief for the child he’d lost. And grief for the friendship he’d damaged somewhere along the way in his relationship with Nikki.
He looked at Grace, knowing a similar close friendship was at risk here.
Grace! Every now and then, in the past, he’d caught a fleeting glimpse of another Grace behind the laughing, bubbly exterior most people saw—a glimpse of a Grace that disturbed him in some way.
Tonight, learning about her father—thinking about a small child flying all the way from Ireland to Australia in search of the love she hadn’t found—he’d found a clue to the hidden Grace and understood a little of the pain and tears behind the laughter.
So now, more than ever, he didn’t want to hurt her …
‘Did I sleep?’
Grace peered blearily around her. They were in the emergency entrance at the hospital and, outside the car, Harry was holding the rear door while a couple of orderlies lifted Troy onto a stretcher.
‘Like a log,’ Harry told her, his smile lifting the lines tiredness had drawn on his face.
‘No, stay right where you are,’ he added, as she began to unbuckle her seat belt. ‘I’m taking you home. Quite apart from the fact you’re exhausted, you’re so filthy you’re the last thing anyone would want in a hospital.’
‘You’re not so sprucy clean yourself,’ Grace retorted, taking in the mud streaks on the wet shirt that clung to Harry’s chest.
Then, remembering, she clutched his dinner jacket more tightly.
Pathetic, that’s what she was, but the filthy, ragged garment in her hands had become some kind of talisman.
Though it would hardly have the power to ward off a cyclone.
‘Willie?’ she asked, looking beyond the well-lit area to where the wind still lashed the trees and threw rain horizontally against the building.
‘Definitely heading our way.’ Harry watched the orderlies wheel Troy towards the hospital, obviously torn between wanting to follow and getting Grace home. ‘We’re down to hourly warnings.’
‘Then I’ve got work to do,’ Grace said, unbuckling her seat belt once again. ‘You go with Troy, I’ll grab a hospital car, go home and change, then see what’s happening on the evacuation front. I assume the SES crews started with the nursing home down by the river, so most of those people should be in the civic centre hall by now. I’ll get the list and organise for all the others to be collected or chivvied into shifting under their own steam.’
She’d opened the car door while she’d proposed this eminently sensible plan, but Harry took the door from her grasp, used one firm hand to push her back into the seat and shut the door again.
‘I’ll take you home,’ he repeated. ‘Two minutes to see someone’s attending to Troy and I’ll be right back. We need to do the individual evacuations on our list together. We discussed this in the contingency meetings. You’ll need police presence to get some of those stubborn elderly die-hards in the most flimsy of old houses to move.’
Grace acknowledged his point with a pathetically weak smile. Battling wind and rain and an approaching cyclone was bad enough, but battling all the conflicting emotions the evening had stirred up at the same time was making the job doubly—no, a hundred times—more difficult.
Harry followed Troy’s stretcher into A and E, where the scene resembled something from the film set of a disaster movie.
Only this wasn’t a movie, it was real.
‘How’s it going?’ he asked Charles, who had rolled towards him as Troy was taken into a treatment cubicle.
‘It looks worse than it is. I think we’ve got things under control, although we’ve some badly injured people here in the hospital. There’s one young woman with head injuries. Thank heavens Alistair—you know Alistair? Gina’s cousin?—was here. He’s a neurosurgeon with skills far beyond anyone we have on staff. He’s put her into an induced coma for the moment—who knows how she’ll wake up? We lost one young girl, and that last patient …’ Charles paused and shook his head. ‘She died before she got here.’
He seemed to have aged, but Harry understood that—he felt about a hundred years old himself.
‘How’s everything out there? Did you get everyone off the mountain?’
Harry nodded then looked around again, looking ahead, not thinking back. He’d done enough of that lately.
‘You’ve obviously cleared the walking wounded. Where are they?’
‘If they weren’t locals with homes to go to, they were sent to the civic centre hall. Volunteers there are providing food and hot drinks.’
Charles paused then added, ‘Actually, if you’re going that way and I’m sure you will be some time, you might take the belongings we haven’t matched to patients with you and see if you can find owners for them at the hall. The gear’s in Reception.’
Someone called to Charles, who wheeled away, while Harry strode through to Reception, aware he’d been longer than the two minutes he’d promised Grace. Perhaps she’d fallen asleep again.
Wet, squashed, some muddy, the belongings rescued from the bus formed a sorry-looking heap on the floor in one corner of the usually immaculate reception area. How was he going to ferry this lot out to the car? He’d walked through from the corridor, thinking about the belongings, and now saw the two people who stood beside it.
Georgie Turner and Alistair—the doctor Charles had mentioned. They would have been working flat out since the casualties had begun coming in, but they weren’t thinking medicine now. Georgie was staring down at the small, muddy backpack in her hands. She’d emptied it—a pathetic bundle of child’s clothing and a ragged teddy bear had tumbled out and were lying at her feet.
While he watched, she knelt and lifted the teddy bear. The face she raised to him was terror-stricken.
‘Max was on that bus,’ she whispered.
‘Your Max?’
Harry found himself staring helplessly at her. Georgie’s beloved Max—hell’s teeth, they all loved Max.
‘Harry, have you found any kids?’ Georgie demanded. And then the remaining colour drained out of her face. ‘He’s not … he’s not one of the bodies, is he? Oh, God, please …’
‘He’s not,’ Harry said, crossing swiftly to her, kneeling and gripping her hands. ‘Georgie, I’ve been up there. We searched the surrounding area. We found no kids.’
‘His dad … Ron’s on the run. They might both …’
‘I know Ron, Georgie. He wasn’t on the bus.’
‘But he might be hiding. He might—’
‘Georgie, any person in that bus would be far too battered to be thinking about hiding. And the wind’s unbelievable. Ron might be afraid of jail but there are worse things than jail, and staying out in the rainforest tonight would be one of them.’
‘But Max is definitely there,’ Georgie faltered. She looked up at Harry. ‘He is,’ she said dully, hugging the bear tighter. ‘This is Spike. Max has just stopped carrying Spike round but Spike’s never far from him.’
Behind them the phone rang, but the pile of child-size clothes on the floor reminded Harry of something.
‘There’s a shoe,’ he told her, looking through the mass of wet belongings and not finding it. ‘I’ll just ask someone.’
He left the reception area, remembering the bridesmaid, Hannah, had found the shoe. Where was it now? He tracked it down at the desk of the children’s ward.
The shoe was small and very muddy, with an orange fish
painted on it, the eye of the fish camouflaging a small hole.
Harry held it in his hand and hurried back to Georgie, showing her the shoe then seeing a quick shake of her head.
‘That’s not Max’s.’
Her dismissal of it was so definite, Harry shoved the shoe into his pocket to think about later.
‘We’ve got to go back out there,’ Georgie added.
Images of young Max, a kid who’d had enough problems in his life thanks to his wastrel, drug-running father, alone in the bush, maybe injured, definitely wet, and probably terrified, flashed through Harry’s mind. His gut knotted as he realised the impossibility of doing what she’d suggested.
‘There’s a tree across the road—we can’t get through. I’d go myself and walk in, Georgie, but I can’t leave town right now.’
He could feel her anguish—felt his own tearing him apart—but his duty had to be to the town, not to one small boy lost in the bush while a cyclone ripped the forest to shreds above his head.
‘Of course you can’t, go but I can. I’m going out there now.’
He saw the determination in her eyes, but could he stop her?
He had to try …
‘Georgie, there’s a cyclone hitting within hours. There’s no way I can let you go, even if you could get through, which you can’t. The tree’s crashed down across the road not far from the landslide. We were lucky to get the last of the injured out.’
‘I’ll take my dirt bike,’ she snapped. She tried to shove Harry aside but he wouldn’t move.
Harry ignored the fists beating at his chest, trying desperately to think through this dilemma. Georgie could throw her bikes around as competently as she wore the four-inch heels she fancied as her footwear. She’d be wearing a helmet—
As if that would help!
‘Georgie, he might not even be out there. You said yourself it’s not his shoe.’
‘Then there are two kids. Let me past.’
Georgie shoved at him but Harry held her, and made one last attempt to persuade her not to go.
‘We’ve got no proof he’s there. It’s suicide.’
‘We do have proof,’ Alistair said from behind them. ‘We’ve had confirmation Max was on the bus. Suicide or not, there’s a child’s life at stake. I’ll go with her.’
Harry’s mind processed what he knew of Alistair. Gina’s cousin—Harry had met him at a fire party on the beach some months ago when the American had come to visit Gina—or more to check out Gina’s fiancé Cal, the locals had thought.
Stuffed shirt had been Harry’s immediate reaction.
Stuffed shirt who could ride a bike?
The pushing stopped. Georgie whirled to face Alistair, her face a mixture of anguish and fear. ‘You can’t.’
‘Don’t you start saying can’t,’ Alistair said. ‘Harry, the tree’s blocking the road, right? Who else in town has a dirt bike?’
‘I’ve got one,’ Harry told him, thinking it through. If Max was out there …
Maybe he had no choice but to let them go. ‘It’s in the shed, Georgie, fuelled up, key above the door. And be careful, keep in mind at all times that there are open mineshafts on that mountain.’
But Georgie wasn’t listening. She was staring at Alistair.
‘You really can ride?’
‘I can ride.’
‘You’d better not hold me back,’ she snapped.
‘Stop arguing and get going—you don’t have long,’ Harry told them. ‘You’ve got a radio, Georg? Of course not. Here, take mine and I’ll pick up a spare at the station. Your cellphone might or might not work. And take a torch, it’s black as pitch out there. Rev your bikes, he might hear the noise.’
Harry watched them go then pulled the shoe out of his pocket, grasping it in his hand, feeling how small and insubstantial it was.
Were there two children lost in the bush?
Surely not.
But his heart clenched with worry, while his hands fondled the little painted shoe. Georgie had said it was too small for Max. Max was seven, so the shoe would fit …
A two-and-a-half-year-old?
Harry shook his head. Why did thoughts like that creep up on him at the most inopportune times?
And wasn’t he over thinking back?
He tucked the shoe back into his pocket, gathered up a bundle of backpacks and suitcases and headed out to his vehicle, thanking someone who’d come out from behind the reception desk and offered to help carry things.
It wasn’t until he’d packed them into the back of the big vehicle that he realised he’d lost his passenger.
‘If you’re looking for Grace, she went into A and E,’ a nurse standing outside in the wind and rain, trying hard to smoke a cigarette, told him.
Harry was about to walk back inside when Grace emerged from the side door, head bowed and shoulders bent, looking so tired and defeated Harry hurried towards her, anxiety again gnawing at his intestines.
He reached her side and put his arms around her, pulling her into an embrace, holding her tightly as the wind and rain swirled around them.
‘What’s happened?’ he asked as she burrowed her head into his chest as if trying to escape herself.
‘She died.’ The whispered words failed to register for a moment, then Grace lifted her head and looked up into his face. ‘Our woman, Harry. The last one out of the bus. I’ve just seen Mike. She died before they reached the hospital. Massive brain injuries, nothing anyone could do.’
‘Oh, Grace!’ he said, and rocked her in his arms, knowing exhaustion was adding to the regret and hurt of the woman’s death. He’d felt the same extreme reaction when Charles had given him that news.
‘She had a boyfriend on the bus,’ Grace continued. ‘He was seated with her and got out uninjured, but she had to use the bathroom and was in there when it happened. They’re from Germany and now he has to phone her parents.’
‘I’ll do that, it’s my job,’ Harry said, but Grace shook her head.
‘Charles is phoning now—he speaks German so he’ll support the boy. But fancy someone phoning, Harry, to say your daughter’s dead.’
She began to shiver and Harry led her to the car, helping her in, wanting to get her home and dry—and safe.
Safe? Where was safe tonight? Nowhere in Crocodile Creek, that was for sure.
Grace fell asleep again on the short drive to her cottage and this time, when he stopped the car, Harry sat and looked at her for a minute. He had the list and could do the evacuations himself, although that would be pretty stupid as he was likely to be needed other places or would be taking calls that would distract him.
And on top of that, she’d be furious.
He sighed, reached out to push a wet curl off her temple, then got out of the car, walked, with difficulty as the wind was far stronger here on the coast, around the bonnet, then carefully opened the passenger door, slipping his hand inside to hold Grace’s weight so she didn’t slide out.
Her lips opened in a small mew of protest at this disruption, but she didn’t push him away so he reached across her and undid the catch on her seat belt, conscious all the time of the softness of her body and the steady rise and fall of her breasts.
She stirred again as he lifted her out, then she rested her head against his shoulder and drifted back to sleep.
But once inside he had to wake her—had to get her out of her sodden garments for a start.
‘Grace!’
He said her name so softly he was surprised when she opened her eyes immediately. Was it her nursing training kicking in that she could come so instantly awake?
And frowning.
‘Harry? Oh, damn, I fell asleep again. You should have woken me. You’ve carried more than your share of people tonight, and your leg must be killing you.’
‘You don’t weigh much. I’ll set you down and as you still have power, I’ll put the kettle on. I want you to get dry, have a hot drink then gather some things together for yourself. I’ll drop yo
u at the civic centre and you can sleep for a couple of hours.’
He eased her onto her feet just inside the door of her cottage.
‘Sleep?’ She looked so astounded he had to smile.
‘What you’ve been doing in the car. Remember sleep?’
The feeble joke fell flat.
‘I can’t sleep now!’ she muttered at him, then added a glare for good measure. ‘Unless you’re going to sleep as well,’ she dared him. ‘Then I might consider it.’
‘You know I can’t—not right now—but I’ll be only too happy to grab a nap whenever I can. You should be, too, and now’s as good a time as any.’
‘So you can run around on your own, doing all the evacuations I’m supposed to be doing, fielding phone calls and giving orders and generally doing your superhero thing. Well, not on my watch,’ she finished, her usually soft pink lips set in a mutinous line.
He was about to deny the superhero accusation when he realised that was exactly what she wanted. She was turning the argument back on him.
‘Well, fine,’ he grumbled. ‘But you’re not going anywhere until you’ve had a hot drink.’
He stalked towards her kitchen.
Joe had obviously remembered the cyclone preparations from his time working in the town because the windows were all taped with broad adhesive tape, and a note on the kitchen table told them he’d taken Christina to the hospital because he was working there and hadn’t wanted to leave her at the cottage on her own.
‘Also large as she is,’ he’d added, ‘she swears she can still be useful.’
Harry filled the kettle, banging it against the tap because his frustration with Grace’s behaviour still simmered.
‘Stubborn woman!’ he muttered to himself, finding the instant coffee and spooning a generous amount into two cups, adding an equal amount of sugar. It wasn’t sleep but maybe a caffeine and sugar boost would help them tackle what still lay ahead of them this night.
Still grumpy, though not certain if it was because of Grace’s refusal to obey his orders or her repetition of the superhero crack, he was carrying the filled cups and some biscuits he’d found in the pantry through to the living room when a small mumble of frustration made him turn. Grace was slumped on the sofa. She had managed to remove her boots but was now fumbling with the press studs that held her overalls together down the front.
The Australian's Proposal (Mills & Boon By Request): The Doctor's Marriage Wish / The Playboy Doctor's Proposal / The Nurse He's Been Waiting For Page 41
