Stormbound Surgeon Read online

  ‘There is a need,’ he said firmly ‘Amy, will you ring Mary and let her know we’re coming? Let’s go now.’

  Just like that…

  Amy was left staring out at the departing pink Volkswagen feeling hornswoggled.

  She would have coped.

  Maybe she would have coped. If Marigold had come to her, she would have popped her into hospital and rung the doctor in Bowra. But Marigold wouldn’t have come to her.

  There was a huge difference in people’s attitudes to a nurse and a doctor. The locals knew Amy was overworked and they knew she only had nurse’s training. If Joss hadn’t been here, Marigold would have waited. If it had been heart disease…

  It could well have been a disaster.

  Iluka needed a doctor.

  It was never going to have one, Amy thought sadly. Joss would leave and they’d be back to where they’d started. But for now…

  But for now, she’d eaten better than she had for months, she had a warm, comfortably furnished house, a doctor caring for her patients.

  She felt so good she could almost burst.

  ‘Let’s go for a walk,’ she told Bertram, picking up pad and pencil and scribbling Joss a note. She needed to walk some of this happiness off before Joss returned.

  It was still raining.

  ‘That’s what raincoats, galoshes and umbrellas are for,’ she told Bertram. She looked at the dog’s eager face and knew without being told that Bertram was as eager for a walk as she was.

  ‘Then what are we waiting for?’ She took a deep breath. ‘I need to get rid of some energy. Get rid of… I don’t know. Something. Because otherwise your master’s going to walk in the front door and I’ll kiss the guy.’

  And that would never do. Would it?

  Joss returned to find Amy gone.

  ‘Bertram and I are at the beach,’ the note told him. He stared at it for a while as if he didn’t know what to do with it.

  He had work to do.

  He’d just done some work. Marigold was nicely settled in a room next to Lionel. She felt wonderfully at home, she had a diagnosis that she could cope with, her husband was by her side and she was with friends.

  Would that city hospitals could be this good.

  Could he ever be happy as a country doctor? He thought about it. Tonight had felt good. The whole damned thing. Hospitals where everyone knew each other…

  But this would be an impossible place to set up a practice.

  Whoa! What was he thinking about? Setting up here as a country doctor? He was a surgeon. He lived in the city.

  Amy was here.

  Amy was engaged to be married.

  The whole damned thing was a figment of a stupid fancy. Get a grip, Braden, he told himself. What the hell was happening to him?

  Amy was happening to him. Quite simply she was the most gorgeous woman he’d ever met. She affected him as no one else had ever done.

  He didn’t react to women this way.

  Women were ancillary to his life. He’d decided that long ago. He liked having women around but he didn’t do the love thing. The commitment. He had his father’s example of what happened with commitment and there was no way he was travelling down that path.

  So, tempting as it might be to commit himself to some woman-a house, babies, a mortgage, country practice…

  No. It wasn’t tempting in the least. So why was he thinking about it?

  Maybe it was because Amy was so patently unavailable.

  That was it, he decided, and he was a bit relieved to discover a reason. She was engaged to another man. She couldn’t leave this place if she wanted to, so she was absolutely unattainable. Which was probably the reason he wanted her.

  But that nice sensible reason didn’t help much at all. He flicked on his laptop and stared down at his conference notes.

  Life-threatening haemorrhage can be caused by aortic dissection extending into the media of the aorta following a tear in the intuma, resulting in true and false lumina separated by an intimal flap…

  What the hell was he talking about?

  He’d written this a week ago. A lifetime ago. Tonight it wasn’t making any sense at all, because tonight all he could think of was Amy.

  She was down on the beach. With his dog. While he was sitting up here like a fool with some stupid conference notes that no one wanted to hear.

  ‘They’re important,’ he told himself. They represented work he’d been committed to for the last three years.

  ‘I’ll worry about them when I get back to Sydney.’

  ‘You told Dad and Daisy you needed to stay here to get them written.’

  ‘So I lied. I stayed here to be near Amy.’

  ‘Amy’s engaged to another man.’

  Damn.

  He was going nuts, he decided. With a groan he pushed away his laptop, grabbed a coat that he’d seen hanging in the back porch and headed out the front door toward the beach.

  The beach was wonderful. She always loved it. The seashore here was wild and windswept. In the summer millionaires parked their sunbeds here and concentrated on their tans but in winter she had it all to herself. The sand stretched away for miles in either direction. Her beach.

  And tonight she had Bertram. That was special. The rain had eased a little-it was still stinging her face but not so much that she minded. She’d jogged down to the beach, Joss’s dog loping beside her, and by the time she reached the sand she was warm and flushed and triumphant.

  It had been a truly excellent day.

  She’d helped deliver a baby. The weight of her financial need had been lifted by magic. She had furniture, she had heating, she had enough to eat…

  ‘He’s solved all my problems in one fell swoop,’ she told Bertram, hurling a stick along the sand and watching in delight as the big dog went flying through the rain to fetch it back for what must surely be the hundredth time.

  He loved it as much as she did.

  Maybe she could get a dog.

  Did Malcolm like dogs? She thought about that and decided probably not. Bertram hurled himself into the waves after another stick and came lunging back up the beach to her, then shook himself, sending seawater all over her.

  No. Malcolm would definitely not like dogs.

  Malcolm…

  He hadn’t rung tonight, she thought, frowning. He always rang, at seven every night. If he didn’t find her at home he rang her at the nursing home.

  Maybe the flooding had caused problems. Maybe the Bowra line was out of order.

  She’d ring him when she got in. Or then again, maybe she wouldn’t, she decided. It was ridiculous to speak to him on the phone every night. It was just a habit they’d got into.

  Malcolm was just a habit.

  No. Malcolm was just…Malcolm.

  As opposed to Joss?

  Now, that was a stupid way of thinking. When the rain ceased and a ferry could be established, Joss would be gone. Malcolm was all she had, so she should take care of the relationship.

  She’d phone tonight.

  Or tomorrow night.

  Whatever.

  She was a dark shadow outlined against the sea. The moon was struggling to emerge from behind clouds. There were faint glimmers breaking through, sending shards of silver light across the waves. Amy was tossing sticks for Bertram and Bertram was running himself ragged, wild with excitement.

  Joss stayed where he was among the dunes, watching woman and dog. They made a great pair, he thought. Amy was enjoying herself. Her body language as she bent over the dog, as she stooped to lift his stick and throw…she was soaking in every minute of this.

  She should have a dog of her own.

  Where could he get her one?

  That was a crazy thought. For heaven’s sake, he didn’t know that she liked dogs. Maybe she was just being polite.

  He didn’t think so.

  She was…lovely.

  But he was being stupid. Fanciful. This was a Cinderella type of situation, he told himself harsh
ly. He was attracted to Amy because she was deserving and she was beautiful and she was unattainable. Would he be as attracted if she was available? Surely not.

  She was committed to living in this dump for the next six years. What man would go near her knowing that?

  Malcolm would. Obviously. And it wasn’t such a dump.

  ‘It’s the ends of the earth.’

  ‘This beach is lovely.’

  ‘Look around,’ he told himself harshly. The rain had stopped momentarily and the moon was full out. The beach stretched away for miles, as far as the eye could see. The moonlight played over the sodden sand, the wind whipped the waves into a frenzy and…

  And nothing and nothing and nothing. There was only Amy and his dog. There was nothing else for miles.

  Why would anyone ever come to this place through choice?

  The millionaires did, he thought, looking back up the beach to the show of ostentatious wealth lining the foreshore. But the houses obviously belonged to those who valued their privacy. The millionaires came through choice. The elderly retirees who lived behind the sand dunes had come because they’d been conned.

  This isolation must have been why Amy’s stepfather had built the place, Joss decided. It would be why all these mansions had been built. There were no shops to speak of and even the retirees who lived here weren’t provided for. Here there was absolute seclusion.

  There’d be no children here spoiling the sand on sunny days-imposing their noisy presence on this super-wealth. In Australia, where it wasn’t possible to own a private beach, this was the best this tiny pocket of elite millionaires could do. They’d built their houses and they were screwing the rest of the population to maintain their fabulous lifestyle. For six weeks a year.

  He was getting bitter.

  He was also getting cold, he thought, and gave himself a mental shake. He had better things to do than stand here and think about Amy’s problems. He had a conference paper to write.

  Ha!

  The conference paper could wait. He took a deep breath and turned his face into the wind. Digging his hands deep into his pockets, he went to join his dog.

  And Amy.

  She saw him coming.

  Joss was hunched into an ancient overcoat, and for a moment as he came down the sand hill toward him she had a vision of her father. The man who’d loved her and died, leaving her to her dreadful stepfather.

  She’d loved her father. He’d been one special man.

  ‘What?’ He reached her and found she was smiling, but it was an odd sort of smile, tinged with sadness. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

  ‘Maybe I have.’ She pulled herself together. ‘It’s that coat.’ She thought about not saying anything but then decided to tell him anyway. ‘It was my father’s-not my stepfather’s but my father’s. My mother kept it and then loaned it to Robbie. Robbie was our gardener.’

  ‘You were fond of Robbie?’

  ‘He’s a lovely old man. My friend. I had to let him go-there’s no money to keep him. One of the local farmers puts a couple of sheep on my grass now and that’s the extent of my gardening. Meanwhile, Robbie’s living in a council flat in Bowra and I know he’s miserable. I tried to make him keep the coat but he wouldn’t.’ She gave a twisted little smile. ‘He said to keep it until I can have him back again. As if… But I know he misses me as much as I miss him. And he’s so broke. My stepfather should have set up a superannuation fund for him, but loyalty to his staff wasn’t his style.’

  ‘You don’t sound like you spend much time polishing your stepfather’s headstone.’

  ‘I leave that for the nephews.’

  ‘They loved him?’

  ‘They loved his money.’ She grimaced. ‘Anyway, it’s too good a night to think about my stepfather. Isn’t this fabulous?’

  Fabulous?

  It had started to rain again and there was a cold trickle running down his nose. The wind was making a mockery of his hood-it had blown back and his hair was damp and windblown. The smell of the sea was all around them and the breakers were roaring into the night.

  It was fabulous, he decided, and he glanced down at Amy and found her smile had changed.

  ‘You like it, too,’ she said on a note of satisfaction. ‘I thought you would.’

  ‘It’s great.’

  ‘There was no need for my stepfather and his cronies to make this beach so exclusive,’ she said reflectively. ‘You could have thousands of people here and still find a spot where you can be alone. There’s miles and miles of beach…’ She put back her arm and tossed Bertram’s stick with all her might along the beach. The dog put back his ears and flew. ‘And it’s all ours. Sometimes…sometimes I feel rich.’

  ‘Hmm.’

  ‘How can you bear to go back to Sydney?’

  ‘I can’t,’ he said promptly. ‘I think I’ll stay here.’

  ‘And become a beachcomber?’

  ‘There are worse fates.’

  ‘You wouldn’t miss your surgery?’

  Of course he would. They both knew it. Beachcombing was a dream. Beachcombing with Amy.

  ‘Do you want to walk out on the rocks?’ she asked, seeing Joss’s face and having enough sense to change the subject. ‘It’s great-though you might get your feet wet.’

  ‘Wetter,’ he muttered. His shoes had sunk into the wet sand and he could feel the damp creeping into his socks. ‘Well, why not?’

  ‘Excellent.’ Amy grinned and grabbed his hand. ‘Follow me.’

  The feel of her hand changed things.

  Follow her…

  She was leading him to a rocky outcrop which spiked up out of the breakers. ‘It’s a bit dangerous,’ she warned. ‘If you don’t know where you’re going, you can get into trouble. So hang on.’

  How could he do anything else?

  A bit dangerous…

  She needed her head read, he thought as she clambered over the first of the rocks, towing him behind. There were breakers smashing over the rocks in force. Back on the beach Bertram stood and looked on in concern. There was no way he was following and the look on his face said they were crazy to try.

  But she’d done this a thousand times before.

  The first few rocks were the worst-the foam from the breakers was surging over the slippery surface and they had to time their way between waves. Even then they didn’t quite make it-Joss ended up on the other side with shoes full of water.

  ‘Don’t tell me. It’s low tide now and the next wave will carry us off to our doom. Or we’ll be trapped with the tide rising inch by inch.’

  ‘You’ve been reading too many adventure novels,’ she said severely. “‘The moon was a ghostly galleon, tossed upon stormy seas…” With moonrakers, pirates, chests and chests of jewels, and a heroine chained to the rocks as the tide creeps higher…higher…’

  ‘I seem to remember,’ he said faintly, ‘that “The moon was a ghostly galleon” started a tale of a highwayman.’

  ‘Same difference,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Same criminal hero and a dopey heroine abandoning all for love. But don’t worry. The tide’s full now so it doesn’t get any worse than this, and I’m not about to end it all for anything. Look. Clear rock.’

  It was, too. The outcrop of rock stretched right out into the bay, a breakwater in its own right. And where she was leading him now… It was a channel of rock. The rocks on both sides formed a barrier.

  ‘It’s like Moses and the Red Sea,’ he said, stunned, and she grinned.

  ‘Yep. The parting of the water. This is my very favourite place in the whole world and I love it best when it’s just like this. Wild and stormy and wonderful.’

  Joss didn’t answer. He couldn’t. Maybe it was because he was concentrating on keeping his footing on the slippery rocks-or maybe it was that he was just plain bemused.

  Finally they reached the end-a vast flat rock perched high above the breakers. Amy released his hand to scramble up the last few feet, leaving him to follow. When he
found his feet she was standing right at the end, staring into the moonlight.

  The shafts of moonlight were playing over her face. She looked up and he thought that he’d never seen anything so lovely.

  ‘He makes bright mischief with the moon…’

  Where had that come from?

  Wherever-from a poem deep in the recesses of his schoolboy reading-it suddenly seemed apt.

  Only the pronoun was wrong.

  She makes bright mischief with the moon.

  Amy would be happy wherever she was, whatever she did, he thought. She made the most of her life. She cared.

  She was soaked to the skin. Her braid had come unfastened and her curls were a tangled riot around her face. She was wearing a coat that was too small and clothes that were too old-and she was turning her face into the wind as if she’d been given the world.

  It was too much. It would have been too much for any man.

  He took her hands in his as if to steady himself, and when her body twisted toward him he pulled her close.

  He kissed her.

  Of course he kissed her. There was a compulsion happening here that he had no hope of controlling. He couldn’t even try.

  She was so desirable. So beautiful. So…

  He didn’t know. But there was a damp tendril coiling down her forehead that he had to push softly away. There was salt water on her face that he had to taste… And her lips were soft and pliant and…and waiting.

  Waiting for him.

  She was so lovely.

  His woman…

  ‘Lady, by yonder blessed moon I swear…’

  Moon madness. That’s what this was-the same blessed moon that had caused Romeo to forsake all for his Juliet.

  For heaven’s sake, he was a surgeon-not a poet!

  But he was a poet tonight. Who wouldn’t be with such sweetness in his arms.

  Amy was so right for him. It was as if a part of him had been missing and had found its way home. Each curve of their bodies fitted together as if they knew each other through and through.

  Joss held her close and deepened the kiss-because nothing, ever, had felt so right before.

  And Amy?

  What was she doing? she thought wildly. She’d taken this man to her very special place-her place-the place where she’d sobbed her heart out as a child or come when life had been just too bleak for words. It was a place of sanctuary and of healing.