Dating The Millionaire Doctor

by Marion Lennox

  She took a deep breath. ‘Please, Jake,’ she said again. ‘I’m exhausted and I need to go to bed. Thank you for a wonderful day.’ Her fingers crept once again to her Celtic knot. ‘Thank you for my chain. I’ll keep it for ever. But now…’ Another deep breath.

  ‘Now I’m going into your bedroom,’ she said softly, steadying. ‘And I’m going to bed. Alone. That’s the way it has to be. We both know that. I guess when I wake up in the morning you’ll be gone to work. So I’ll get on my plane tomorrow and I won’t look back. Yes, you’ll want to see our baby. We can work that out later. But we need to do it in a way where I can be normal and civil, and the fact that I had the best night of my life with you, and I’m thinking entirely inappropriate thoughts, can be forgotten. Please, Jake, that’s what I need. So goodnight.’

  And before he could guess what she intended, she took three swift steps towards him. She took his face in her hands and she kissed him, fast and hard, on the mouth. Then, before he had a chance to respond, before he could hold her as he needed to hold her, she pushed herself away.

  ‘Goodnight, Jake,’ she said, firmly and steadily. ‘And goodbye.’

  And she was gone, into his bedroom, closing the door firmly behind her.

  And he knew he couldn’t follow.

  It was all very well being angry and virtuous and sure. Anger and virtue and certainty lasted all the way until the door was shut, and then she just felt miserable.

  Nothing else. Just plain bad.

  He’d asked her to marry him and she’d refused.

  She’d hardly had a choice, she told herself, fighting to drum up anger again.

  What had she hoped for?

  And there was the crux. The biggie. Hope. Finally she was acknowledging exactly what she’d hoped for.

  She loved him. She’d told herself that one night together was simply a way of moving on, but it was so much more, and that was regardless of her pregnancy. He’d said he thought he loved her but he didn’t know what it meant.

  Love.

  She thought back to Jake holding her as they’d buried a little koala named Manya. She thought of the way he’d held Glenda’s hand, of the way he’d laughed at Bitsy.

  She thought of Jake in the ward, talking through a procedure to the patient he was about to anaesthetise, carefully so there could be no misunderstanding. She knew he’d be wonderful.

  She thought of the way Jake’s body felt against hers.

  ‘Oh, enough, you’re behaving like a moonstruck teenager,’ she scolded herself. ‘You’ve come all this way and he’s been lovely. He’s taken you sightseeing. He’s given you a beautiful piece of jewellery. He’s reacted to our baby with honour. He even tried to figure out how he could love you. What else do you want from the man?’

  Nothing.

  Jake lay on the too-hard settee and stared up at his blank ceiling. Running the conversation over and over in his head.

  Love…

  Yes, he’d said it, but Tori had known he hadn’t meant it and she must be right. Love would be something you learned over months or, more probably, years, a gradual build-up of trust and affection. It surely wasn’t what he and Tori had. A one-and-a-half-minute date, followed by one night of passion.

  Unbidden, the words of his mother crept back into his subconscious.

  ‘I fell in love with your father on one meeting. One meeting! How ridiculous was that? He carted me off to some strange country, to a life I had no way of dealing with, and look what happened. Love at first sight? Don’t make me laugh.’

  Nothing made sense. The night was too long, the settee was too hard, the concept of love and of home was too difficult to get his head around.

  That Tori could say she loved him, that she could possibly throw her heart where her head should be, seemed unreal. And if she felt like that, then why wouldn’t she marry him?

  Should he have insisted he love her? Do the romantic-hero thing?

  If he did that he’d be no better than his father.

  But he no longer believed in his father as the villain. He no longer knew what he believed in. He was getting into territory that was simply too hard.

  And the hardest thing…

  The hardest thing was that Tori was right through that door. His woman.

  She wasn’t his woman. He had no rights.

  She felt like his woman.

  ‘So what are you intending, caveman?’ he muttered into the night. ‘Go and stake your claim? You’ve done enough damage. You have a surgical list longer than your arm waiting for you in the morning. It’s not fair on your patients if you don’t sleep.’

  Somehow he managed to switch off, and sleep.

  But he couldn’t turn off his dreams.

  She woke and she knew he’d gone. The cool-grey apartment practically echoed.

  She’d thought-maybe she’d hoped-that she’d wake when he left and she could say goodbye, but it had been almost dawn before she’d drifted into troubled sleep. Her exhausted body had finally demanded what it needed and Jake’s bedside clock was telling her it was eight o’clock.

  She threw back the covers and padded out to the living room, cautiously, just to see, but the sleek leather settee was back being a sleek leather settee. The spare bedding was neatly folded, ready to be stored back in the bedroom closet.

  There was a note on the bench.

  Catheter trouble again. Travel safe. I’ll be in touch.

  A farewell note. How romantic. She crumpled it and slid it into the trash.

  The kitchenette was squeaky clean, not even a dirty coffee mug to tell her he’d breakfasted before he’d left. She touched the designer kettle. It was cold. Really cold. He hadn’t even had coffee here.

  If she lived here she wouldn’t have her morning coffee here either, she decided. This place was awful.

  He’d come home tonight to this, she thought, feeling more dismal by the minute as the cool of the apartment-and the lack of Jake-soaked into her. She’d have changed the sheets and put hers in the commercial laundry basket she’d seen near the entrance. Maybe by the time Jake got home the laundry would already have been collected, cleaned and returned.

  Nothing would remain of her visit.

  There should be something.

  Stupid or not, she wanted there to be something.

  Her fingers moved instinctively to her throat, to her chain, to something she knew she’d treasure for ever. She loved her chain. She loved that Jake had given it to her. She should have refused-but how strong could a woman be?

  Not strong enough.

  ‘I should leave him something,’ she said, gazing helplessly around at the designer chic. ‘I can’t leave him with grey.’

  And then a thought.

  ‘I did it for me,’ she murmured to herself. ‘How hard would it be in New York?

  ‘Soho maybe?

  ‘I’d need a cab. Maybe I’d need two.

  ‘I’d also need time.

  ‘So what are you waiting for?’ she demanded of herself. ‘Jake wanted me to make a home here. Maybe I can do that, only not quite the way he imagined.’

  He knew when her plane took off for he’d checked the Qantas® web site. In truth he checked it half a dozen times, and if he hadn’t been pushed to his limit with his surgical list maybe he’d have cracked and headed to the airport. ‘Just to say goodbye,’ he told himself and wondered why he had to tell himself that. Surely it was obvious.

  But the hands of the clock slipped inexorably around and six o’clock was suddenly right there.

  ‘Not quite ready to knock off yet,’ said the surgeon he was working with, and Jake thought, How bad did he have it? How often had he glanced up at the clock on the operating room wall?

  He didn’t have it bad. It was only…

  It was only that it was now one minute past six. The plane would be taxiing to the runway.

  Tori was gone.

  She could see the Statue of Liberty from the plane, lit up and beautiful.

  She snif
fed and the man in the seat next to her smiled in sympathy and handed over a tissue.

  ‘Thank you,’ she managed and sniffed again and groped in her purse. ‘It’s very nice of you but I have a handkerchief.’

  It was one in the morning before Jake finally finished. He was wrecked, emotionally and physically, and by the time he reached his apartment his legs didn’t want to work any more.

  He worked out in the basement gym most mornings. He hadn’t this morning. One lost workout and his legs were turning to jelly.

  Or maybe it was because of one lost Tori.

  ‘See, that’s what you can’t think,’ he told himself. ‘That kind of thinking does no one any good.’

  But he rode the elevator and he thought those kinds of thoughts all the way up.

  How soon could he go to Australia?

  What use was going to Australia? He belonged here. Here was home.

  Home. He turned the key in the lock and thought it was no such thing. It was grey.

  He was starting to feel ill. He’d had Tori here and he’d let her go. Leaving him with grey.

  He pushed the door wide and it was anything but.

  It was decorated by Tori.

  It might not be the same stuff she’d bought in Melbourne but it was as close as made no difference. Back in Australia she’d transformed a beige relocatable home into a riot of colour and life.

  Here it was-a riot.

  Colours, colours and more colours. Cushions, lamps, throws, vases, prints, weird and wonderful statues, a Persian carpet almost completely covering the cool grey tiles, an imitation log fire!

  It was too much. It was…wonderful.

  He found himself smiling, moving through the room, fingering things that were tactile as well as lovely. It was warm, inviting and wonderful.

  His table had been moved against the wall. It was covered with a rich tapestry, and a vast mirror set behind it so it reflected the warmth of the lamps.

  There was an antique desk against the far wall. The books he’d swept onto the floor last night were neatly stacked, ready to be used again.

  And then…

  A faint noise had him moving to the bedroom. He opened the door and a small brown cat stalked out, looking suspicious and curious and eager, all at once. A half-grown cat, fawn with a tip of white on its tail.

  It was followed by another brown cat, even smaller, but this one had no tip.

  Burmese? He wasn’t sure of his cats. They looked like Siamese cats, he thought, only different.

  The first one sniffed his shoes, then carefully wound its way round and round his ankles.

  The second one sat and watched, acting superior.

  Cats…

  There was a note on his bed-on top of the riot of an amazing patchwork quilt.

  I looked for another Celtic love knot but couldn’t find one. These are my alternative. Meet Ferdy and Freddy. They’re from the pet store on the note stuck on their litter tray. I paid double their asking price on condition that if you really don’t want them they’ll take them back. But I’d recommend keeping them. They keep each other company all day and when you get home…well, they might just mean you do come home.

  He found himself grinning. Ferdy and Freddy.

  Ferdy-or was it Freddy?-yowled. His brother joined in, then both of them set their tails high and stalked over to the fridge.

  What was he supposed to do with cats?

  Bemused, he opened the fridge, and found what he was supposed to do with cats. Tori had thought of everything.

  ‘You’ll have to go back,’ he told them as he fed them, but he couldn’t do it tonight.

  When would he find time to take them back tomorrow?

  He had work to do before he went to bed. There was a case he needed to look up for the next day.

  He sat down at his new desk and opened a textbook.

  Ferdy was on his knee in seconds, followed by Freddy.

  How was a man supposed to work when he was…when he was home?

  Where was Tori right now? Somewhere around Hawaii?

  Not that far.

  Too far.

  This place was wonderful.

  It was missing something.

  ‘I don’t think I can,’ he told the cats, fondling two ears. Fondling four ears.

  ‘Impossible. My work is here.

  ‘Yes, but…

  ‘She’s just given me two more complications.

  ‘I can handle complications.’

  He couldn’t, though, he thought, or not immediately. It’d take some thought.

  ‘Love takes time,’ he told the cats. ‘Months. Maybe years.’

  Years didn’t bear thinking of.

  He closed his eyes. This was crazy. He was a man who walked alone.

  Ferdy dug his claws into his thigh and gently kneaded.

  ‘I don’t do pets,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘I don’t do…love?’

  He had this all the wrong way round. He’d go to sleep and he’d wake up in the morning being sensible.

  Maybe, or maybe not.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  T HE operation on Harley had been long and perilous. The big schnauzer was only seven years old, but the liver abscess he’d developed was as unexpected as it was lethal and the only option if he was to survive was to remove part of the liver.

  At least Tori was no longer working by herself. Her new workplace had specialist canine surgeons. She’d been able to call for help, and then work as the assistant of a far more experienced surgeon.

  All the same, she was exhausted.

  She should be feeling perky and full of energy at five months pregnant, she told herself, but it wasn’t happening. Try as she might, she couldn’t be perky. Ever since she’d come back from New York-okay, even before that, ever since Jake left, she conceded-there’d been something exhausting her that wasn’t pregnancy. Something was trying to tug her back into the grey fog she’d been in after the fire.

  And she wasn’t going to be tugged, she told herself fiercely as she worked. She had great friends, a lovely new job, caring colleagues; she’d just saved Harley, and Rusty and Itsy were waiting for her back home. Doreen and Glenda cared for the dogs during the day, but the dogs knew who their mistress was and when Tori arrived they almost turned inside out with joy.

  They’d be expecting her now. Tori glanced at her watch and winced. She still needed to talk to Harley’s owners, and stop off and buy something for tea, and then collect the dogs…and the tiredness was insidious.

  Two more days ’til the weekend, she promised herself, two more days until she could spend the whole time at home. But the weekend brought more problems. Most of the population of the relocatable village spent their weekends up on the ridge, working on their new homes, but for some reason her head still wouldn’t let her go there. And there was the other thing. At the weekend she had time to think of Jake.

  The surgeon was closing. ‘It’s as good as we can get,’ he told her. ‘You want to go tell Harley’s mum and dad the good news?’

  Of course she did. She pinned on a bright smile and opened the door-and Jake was in the waiting room.

  He was reading a copy of Horse & Hound, as though it was totally riveting.

  Harley’s owners, an elderly couple who’d been frantic about their dog, sprang to their feet. Jake gave her a tiny smile, acknowledging her priorities, and retreated again to his horses. Or hounds.

  ‘Hi,’ Tori said, as much to him as to Paul and Ida Clemens, and then somehow forced herself back to professional mode. ‘It’s okay,’ she told them quickly. ‘More than okay. It’s good. We’ve taken about twenty percent of the liver but that includes a wide margin of healthy tissue. We’re sure we have it all. As long as we can keep his cholesterol under control there’s no reason why he shouldn’t live happily into a ripe old age.’

  The elderly couple stared at her in silence for a long moment-and then Paul put his hands on his face and sank back into his chair. The elderly farmer’s sho
ulders shook with silent sobs. His wife sat down and hugged him. Tori produced a box of tissues and Paul grabbed about a dozen.

  He needed them all.

  They waited then, all of them, for Paul to recover. Tori was achingly aware of Jake watching from the sidelines, but she couldn’t hurry this. Paul and Ida had lost their farm in the fires. They’d barely survived by holding blankets over their heads as they lay in shallows of their dam. Harley had been under the blankets with them.

  If they needed time, she’d give them all the time in the world.

  Finally Paul had himself under control-or almost. He sat while Ida held his hand, and while Tori gently repeated the good news. Then their questions started. She repeated the initial diagnosis. Hypercholesterolemia-massively elevated cholesterol-had caused the liver abscess. Schnauzers were genetically prone to it, and of course Paul and Ida had treated Harley as a human before the fires, and afterwards they could refuse his pleading eyes nothing. So Harley had eaten cheese and sausages and chocolate, and finally his liver had started to disintegrate under the strain.

  ‘So you think you can resist now?’ Tori asked them, and Ida managed a strained smile.

  ‘Once upon a time we were firm parents,’ she said. ‘We can go back to that. Can’t we, Paul?’

  ‘I guess…’

  ‘And we move into our new home next week.’ Ida was sounding firmer, ready to move on. ‘We’ll be able to take Harley home to somewhere permanent.’

  ‘No chocolate?’ Paul said.

  ‘No chocolate,’ Ida said and looked speculatively at Paul’s rotund girth. ‘I have the men in my life back, and I’m not risking anything again, thank you very much. Can we see him?’

  ‘Of course you can. Our nurse will be taking him through into recovery,’ Tori said-and they thanked her and Tori was left with Jake. He put down Horse & Hound.

  ‘Hi,’ she managed finally, but it didn’t come out properly. ‘Um, why are you here?’

  ‘You’re supposed to say, “Welcome.”’

  ‘You’re very welcome,’ she said, and he was. Could he feel it, she wondered. Just how welcome he was?

  ‘I was hoping for five minutes of your time.’