And certainly not on any regular basis!
Feeling obliged to protest, Kenzie offered her usual excuse.
‘But it’s formal, Muriel, you know that, and you also know that I packed for a job on a tropical island, not a luxury escape.’
A light tap on the door interrupted the argument.
‘That’ll be the masseuse. Let her in, and put out my medication, then go and find something to wear. Shall we say my room, at seven? We can have a drink before we go down.’
As the masseuse was already setting up her table, Kenzie dealt out the evening tablets—blood-pressure medication, statins for her high cholesterol, and tonight a weekly tablet to maintain her bone density. She put them all into a small medicine cup, set a glass of water beside it, and left the room.
Idly, as the elevator descended to the ground floor, she wondered if DocSays ate in one of the dining rooms—specifically, the Sapphire?
She pushed the thought away—she was off men—and concentrated on clothes.
If she could find a tuk-tuk outside the palace, she’d have time to get down to the markets in the little village. Not that formal wear was a common feature on any of the stalls, but if she could find a pretty sarong that went with one of her tank tops, she could tie it around her waist and look at least presentable.
The sarong was a light, gauzy cotton in swirling shades of blue, green and purple. With a silky, black tank top and her good black sandals, it would do at a push, but the idea of eating in a formal dining room with the wealthy guests of the palace was daunting to a girl from the bush, where formal meant wearing something on your feet.
* * *
Muriel was delighted to see her, admiring her outfit and her nous in achieving it. She poured a small glass of champagne for each of them and toasted the success of her first riding ‘lesson’.
They went down to dinner arm in arm, Muriel sweeping Kenzie into the dining room as if she were a close friend.
And Kenzie found herself pleased to have Muriel with her, for the grandeur of the place—the smaller dining room at that—was almost overwhelming. She’d grown used to the beautiful grand entrance with its gold-streaked black marble floors, the potted orchids peeping from behind soft ferns, but this was something else.
It lived up to its name of sapphire, for it was decorated, almost entirely, in blue. Pale eggshell-blue walls that looked as if they were lined with velvet, darker blue upholstered chairs that made the white napery look so much more vivid. And the crystal glassware on the table sparkled, refracting light from the elegant chandelier into thousands of bright, winking, stars.
Hadn’t Muriel read the line about ancillary staff knowing their place? This was definitely not Kenzie’s place...
But of course Muriel wouldn’t have read it! As if she would read something as insignificant as a brochure.
But the maître d’ was probably word perfect in it. He raised one perfectly trimmed eyebrow, and would have led them to a table in the far corner had Muriel not protested and insisted she sit by the window.
‘Oh, and there’s that nice man!’ she cried in delight. ‘Let’s ask him to join us.’
The eyebrow rose again, and Kenzie managed to mumble, ‘Dr McLeod,’ to prevent further strain to the small arc of hair.
And for all she’d hoped the invitation would be refused, as she slipped into her seat she saw him rise and cross the room towards them.
He smiled down at Muriel and raised the glass of red wine he held in one hand in a silent toast.
‘So, how was the rest of your ride?’ he asked.
‘Wonderful! Great fun! I’m doing it again and next time Kenzie will ride beside me and still hold the leading rein, but that’s just for safety.’
Kenzie opened her mouth to protest that they might be taking things a little too fast, but Muriel’s raised hand stopped any protest.
‘I haven’t got time to be footling around in a paddock for days on end,’ she said. ‘I want to be a rider, which means I need to hurry things along.’
* * *
Alex took the chair a waiter had pulled to the table for him, and smiled at the two women. He had a feeling the younger of them wished he’d declined the invitation, yet it was she he’d been drawn towards—wanting to see her again, speak to her.
Was it a symptom of his boredom that the young woman intrigued him so much? Laughing at the nurses’ use of his app, introducing herself in an echo of his stuffy announcement of his own name?
Or was it that she was just so attractive?
Naturally attractive, just herself, with no apparent effort to attract—
Well, maybe a little lipstick on beautifully shaped lips, a touch of eyeliner accentuating the smiling blue eyes, but none of the studied and worked-at perfection of most of the women he knew.
Whatever it was, she’d somehow awoken something inside him—something he’d always doubted existed...
There was certainly something about her...
But Muriel was his hostess.
‘I’m called Alex,’ he said to her. ‘I don’t think I ever did that proper introduction, and I know you’re Muriel. Are you here convalescing?’
She smiled her sunny smile.
‘You could say that. I did have a small operation—just the smallest of tucks, you know—but really it’s a break from my usual life, which, until I got up close and personal with a horse today, had become very boring, and sometimes seemed totally pointless.’
‘And the horse has changed all that?’ Alex teased gently, and the woman virtually glowed with delight.
‘But of course it has!’ she said. ‘Kenzie tells me there are horses I can hire to ride in Central Park in New York, and even Hyde Park in London. I can ride just about anywhere!’
‘Have you ridden in these places?’ Alex asked, turning to bring the woman for whom he’d changed tables into the conversation.
She smiled at him, curving pink lips to reveal perfect teeth, a smile dancing in the blue eyes.
‘Not yet,’ she said, ‘but it’s definitely waiting for me in the future.’
‘Bucket list?’
‘I don’t think people my age are too worried about bucket lists,’ she said, a little frown turning the words serious. ‘I’m more into planning my immediate future right now.’
‘Which is?’
He wasn’t sure why he’d asked.
Politeness?
Not that she gave him time to ponder such things, coming out with, ‘Getting married and having children,’ with such alacrity he was taken aback.
‘It’s not my ambition,’ Kenzie continued, trying to explain the unexpected response she’d given to his question, partly because it had shocked her as much as her dinner companions.
‘My ambition was to become a surgical nurse, not that that could ever happen when I also wanted to work as close as possible to my home, and small country hospitals don’t have surgeons.’
She paused before adding, ‘Well, we do have the flying surgeon come in every six weeks, but he brings his own nurse. Anyway, now my family situation has changed I’ve got to do something about producing a couple of children, and my father would prefer it if they were legitimate, hence the marriage part.’
She shrugged, as if her explanation needed no further trimmings.
‘I quite understand your father’s feelings,’ Muriel said, breaking the silence this far too personal statement had produced, but as Alex could find no follow-up it wasn’t broken for long.
A waiter saved the day, arriving to collect the menus and take orders, but as the menus were still unopened on the table, Muriel waved him away.
She also took charge, telling them both to decide what they were eating so they could get back to Kenzie’s problem.
‘It’s hardly a problem,’ Kenzie retorted, then blushed and looked down at her menu
, adding, in a very small voice, ‘Well, I suppose it is in a way.’
She looked positively woebegone, but before he could assure her she’d have no trouble finding any number of men to marry, Muriel interrupted with a stern, ‘Decide what you want to eat!’
Having been raised by his grandmother, obedience to older women was second nature to Alex, so he perused the menu and decided on a meen molee—fish curry, delicately simmered in coconut milk, according to the menu.
‘I’m not that adventurous,’ Kenzie said, ‘but the green chicken curry sounds delicious.’
Muriel opted for the yellow vegetarian curry and when the waiter appeared asked him for enough rice for all three of them.
‘And wine, of course—no, make it champagne. Kenzie and I had a little toast earlier, but we need a full bottle with you here, Alex.’
Alex smiled to himself. It could have been his grandmother talking, never thinking to ask his preference—never imagining, he sometimes thought—that it could possibly differ from hers, bless her.
But he felt a twinge of sadness at the thought. His mother had died far too young, leaving him to be brought up by his grandmother. She’d been strict about his keeping to the values of his name—the Monroe name, of course—but always fair, and ready to support him whatever path he took in life.
She hadn’t been a physically demonstrative woman—not a hugger, and only rarely did he get a kiss, but he’d always known she loved him deeply, as, indeed, he’d loved her.
And now she was going too, and a large part of his life would go with her.
He shook away the sadness his thoughts produced. Monroes didn’t do emotion!
‘And are you here to further your father’s ambition?’
He’d been lost in thoughts of his maternal relative, so wasn’t sure if Muriel’s question had been thrown at him.
Fortunately, Kenzie was quicker on the uptake.
‘No!’ she said firmly. ‘This is just a short break to recharge and regroup. I’ll get on to it when I get home.’
‘You make it sound like a military operation,’ he teased, hoping to see the smile again.
‘Well, not exactly,’ she said earnestly. ‘But I’ve learned you do have to be careful. People are marrying later, and while an older man—say, in his thirties—would be fine, most of them have regular girlfriends by then.’
‘Thirties is old?’ Alex asked, thinking he’d always considered his own age—thirty-five—as still young, not yet middle-aged, let alone old.
‘How old are you?’ he asked, and now she did smile.
‘Twenty-six, but that’s not the point. I know it probably sounds ridiculous to you, but my mother died when I was born, and for years I’ve just kept hoping that my father would marry again and have more children. And now he’s finally fallen in love again but with an older woman—so no children—which leaves it up to me to keep the family business going.’
She paused, studying him as if to make sure he was following.
‘It’s the property, you see,’ she said. ‘It’s been in the family for six generations—through drought and fires and floods—and was built with the blood and sweat and tears of my ancestors. It’s in our lifeblood, and my father desperately wants it to keep going. We have a resident manager, and I’ll run it with him if something happens to my father, but it’s the next generation. I really need to produce them while my father can pass on all his knowledge and the history of the place.’
‘Which a manager couldn’t do,’ Muriel put in. ‘They’d never feel for things the way the family would.”
Kenzie nodded.
‘Or care for it the way the family would,’ she said. ‘We run fifteen thousand head of cattle—Brahmans—up the gulf. They’re a lot of work—we breed them ourselves, castrate them when they’re young, then shift them around according to where the feed is. And then there’s the breeding stock—we turn off about eight thousand a year so you need to replace them—and then there are decisions for the future—drought-proofing, seeking out new markets when prices slump.’
As she’d rattled off all this information, Alex had tried desperately to keep up. The ‘property’ he’d envisaged had been a large house, or maybe a business of some sort—but fifteen thousand cattle plus enough breeders to ‘turn off’—presumably to sell—eight thousand a year?
‘I see!’ he said, rather vaguely as he had no idea how to relate to all this information.
Fortunately, Muriel took up the conversational ball.
‘My second husband had Brahmans—ugly big things they were, too. That dreadful hump. He bred them, took them to shows, won ribbons, which was nice because when he died they put the ribbons on his coffin instead of flowers, which just die anyway.’
By the time Alex had digested this bit of conversation, he was wondering why on earth he’d agreed to join the table. He’d been eating on his own quite happily for two weeks.
He could excuse himself, say he had to check on his grandmother and he’d have his meal sent up, but he knew it would be a lie as her coma-like sleep had deepened late this afternoon and he knew she wouldn’t wake before morning.
Beside which, meeting this slim, upright young woman with the sparkling smile and laughing blue eyes, who’d apparently grown up with fifteen thousand cattle, had certainly banished his boredom. The frank way she spoke of her home and her need to have children to carry on a family tradition not only intrigued him, but it touched on something deep inside him.
The concept of family, he supposed—a concept his grandmother considered of the utmost importance.
So instead of reading stories by solemn Scottish writers to Gran in the morning, he could entertain her with stories of cattle farms.
Cattle properties?
Copyright © 2020 by Meredith Webber
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ISBN: 9781488066276
Winning the Surgeon’s Heart
Copyright © 2020 by Annie Claydon
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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