Stormbound Surgeon Read online

  She hadn’t expected this to happen.

  To fall in love…

  Because that was what was happening. As though responding to a force beyond her control, she opened her lips to the man who held her. More. She opened her heart.

  It was so right! Her body was melting into his-aching-wanting and welcoming.

  She felt herself sinking into him. Desperate to deepen the kiss. Desperate to grow closer. Though how could they be closer than they were at this minute? Two halves of one sweet whole. They’d been torn asunder by some mystery of fate and could now come together for always.

  Always.

  Joss’s hands were pulling her body ever closer. His kiss deepened and deepened again-and so did the wonder.

  She was like no woman he’d ever kissed, he thought, dazed with the sensation of what was happening to him. And why? She was sodden with sea spray. She wore no trace of make-up and her clothes were shabby and her hair was blown every which way. There were trickles of rainwater running down her nose, merging with the rain on his face where their lips met. She looked about as far from his ideal woman as he could possibly imagine any woman being.

  So how could she be meeting this need-this desperate desire-that until now he’d never known he had?

  He didn’t know. All he knew was that she was…Amy.

  And that was enough.

  And finally-finally-they pulled away, as pull away they had to. The waves were sloshing over their shoes, they were sodden and back on the beach Bertram was starting to bark his anxiety for the world to hear.

  ‘We’re worrying Bertram,’ Amy managed, and her voice was a husky whisper, full of uncertainty.

  ‘Worrying Bertram!’ Joss tried to smile down at the confusion on her face. ‘I’m worrying me.’

  That worked. ‘Hey, I don’t have any infectious diseases.’

  He smiled-but only just. ‘Amy…’

  But she put a finger on his lips to stop him saying more. ‘Don’t.’

  ‘Don’t what?’

  ‘Apologise. It was a magic night. It is a magic night, and I always think magic nights should be sealed with a kiss. Don’t you?’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ he said, dazed. ‘Amy, what the hell happened there?’

  ‘An electric charge?’ Her smile was returning. ‘Moonbeams and water. They pack a lethal charge.’

  They certainly did. ‘Amy, I never meant…’

  ‘Of course you didn’t,’ she said cordially. ‘And neither did I. But Bertram thinks we did and seeing as he’s acting as our chaperon I think we should go back to him. Don’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’ Of course he did. After all, he was cold and he was wet. Why on earth would he want to keep standing here?

  He did. Badly.

  But she was more in control than he was. ‘Let’s go,’ she told him, her voice firming as she took his hand to lead him back to the beach. ‘I have a fiancé to telephone and you have a conference to prepare for.’

  Right. Right!

  Bertram was waiting for them to return to the beach. His conference paper was waiting to be written. The unknown Malcolm was waiting in Bowra.

  His life was waiting for him to get on with it.

  But how the hell was a man to concentrate on writing a conference paper after that? Joss showered and changed into more of his father’s clothes-he’d kill for another pair of jeans, he decided, and wondered for about the thousandth time how Amy put up with no shops. Dried and warm, he returned to the kitchen to find Amy had disappeared.

  ‘I’ve gone to bed,’ the note on the table read. ‘Make yourself some cocoa.’

  Right. Cocoa. When what he needed was…

  Sex?

  No. Not sex. Or not just sex.

  He wanted Amy.

  It was nine o’clock. After the day he’d had he should be exhausted. Maybe he should go to bed, but as he wandered down the passage he heard the shower running in Amy’s bathroom. A vision appeared unbidden…

  Whoa. Unless he was careful here, he’d have to take another shower. This time cold.

  Bertram was nosing at Amy’s bedroom door, whimpering to be let in to visit someone he’d decided very firmly was a friend, and Joss took his collar and pulled him away.

  ‘No. We’re not wanted, boy. She has a fiancé.’

  It was just as well she did, he decided. The last thing he wanted was a tie that could hold him to Iluka. It was bad enough that he had a father here and he’d have to visit every few months.

  But Amy was here.

  The sound of the shower ceased. She’d be drying herself.

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Braden, get a grip. You’re a grown man.’

  ‘Yeah, with grown man urges.’

  ‘She doesn’t want you.’

  ‘I could just towel her back…’

  He was a guest in her house. He wasn’t wanted. He had a bed of his own to go to.

  The phone rang and he hesitated, half expecting-half hoping-Amy would open the door and come out to the kitchen to answer it. And then he realised it was ringing in her bedroom. Damn, she had an extension. What business did she have, having an extension when she was broke?

  He was losing his mind.

  But he didn’t move. He sort of listened-just for a minute.

  And from the other side of the door he heard, ‘Malcolm. How lovely. I was worried about you.’

  Damn.

  He took himself firmly in hand and took himself off to his bed. Alone. She was worried about Malcolm?

  He was worried about himself!

  Amy had herself under control-sort of-and was answering the phone to her fiancé. What had gone on tonight with Joss was an aberration, she told herself firmly. It had nothing to do with her or with her future. It had only been a kiss.

  Which was why she’d made a dash to her bedroom and had locked the door, thankful that her room had an en suite bathroom so she didn’t have to face Joss again tonight.

  It was only a kiss, she said to herself like a mantra. A kiss with no future.

  Her future was here in Iluka. Her future was with Malcolm. Now he’d phoned, as she’d known he would-though it was really unusual for him to ring two hours late.

  ‘I was worried,’ she told him, striving to keep her voice light. ‘When you didn’t ring I thought the telephone lines might be down.’

  ‘No. The lines are fine. But I hear you’ve lost the bridge.’ Malcolm sounded strained, she thought. Unlike him.

  ‘Yes. We’re stranded but we’re fine. Though there was one casualty…’

  ‘A casualty?’ Still that note of anxiety.

  ‘No one we know. A young woman crashed her truck and she was in full labour. She ended up having her baby here in the nursing home.’

  ‘A baby?’ His voice rose in disbelief and Amy thought, He really is worried. For some reason he sounded terrified.

  ‘She’s fine, Malcolm. We all are. David Braden’s son is here and he’s a doctor. He was trapped when the bridge came down and Joss is a fine surgeon. He did a Caesarean, delivering a beautiful little girl, and now he’s on the spot for any medical needs we might have.’

  There was a silence while Malcolm thought that through, then he said, ‘So…the woman’s fine. And the baby?’

  ‘Great. Malcolm, is there anything wrong?’

  ‘No. No. Did the woman say…who she was?’

  Amy frowned. Charlotte hadn’t exactly given permission for her name to be broadcast. If it hadn’t been for the policeman tracking of her licence plates, they still wouldn’t know it. ‘For some reason I don’t think she wants her identity known.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘But I’m afraid she’s as stuck here as we all are. I guess they’ll organise a ferry over the river soon.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You sound…odd.’

  ‘Do I?’ There was another lengthy silence from the end of the line then he added, ‘It must be the distance or something. Water in the line.’

  ‘Is every
thing OK at your end?’ she asked.

  ‘Why wouldn’t it be?’

  ‘No reason.’ But still she had this niggle of a doubt. He sounded distracted.

  ‘You’re OK yourself?’ He still sounded strained.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she said gently. ‘Just a bit tired. It’s been a long day. Goodnight, Malcolm.’

  For some reason he was as eager as she was to end the conversation. ‘Goodnight,’ he told her, and hung up-leaving her staring at the receiver.

  What on earth was going on?

  Amy went to bed but she didn’t sleep. She lay awake and stared at the ceiling, thinking of a kiss.

  This didn’t make any sense. The kiss and how she was responding to it didn’t make sense at all.

  When Malcolm kissed her it didn’t feel like this.

  Maybe it was because Joss was forbidden fruit, she thought bleakly. You always wanted what you couldn’t have-and she couldn’t have Joss.

  Maybe she could open her bedroom door…

  Oh, yeah, great. What was she thinking of? A spot of seduction?

  ‘I wouldn’t mind,’ she told herself honestly and then bit her lip. Where would that lead her? To a broken engagement and desperate unhappiness when Joss left.

  As he surely would.

  ‘But I could just have fun-for a while. For a few short days while the bridge is down…’

  Fun? She’d never had fun. She’d forgotten the meaning of the word. From the time her father had died the world had become a dangerous and threatening place, where the only way to survive was sheer, grinding hard work.

  She had six years to go.

  And after that? Marriage to Malcolm…

  They might even marry earlier, she thought, and there was a note of desperation entering her thoughts now. Malcolm had been pushing for them to marry straight away. He’d have to stay in Bowra as his practice was there, and she was stuck at Iluka, but he could come at weekends. A weekend marriage…

  It didn’t excite her at all.

  Malcolm didn’t excite her.

  ‘It’s because he’s familiar,’ she told the dark. She knew him as well as she knew a pair of old socks. But… She thought about it. Tonight he’d been different. Not different in the way Joss was different but different all the same.

  She didn’t know what had got into Malcolm tonight.

  ‘Maybe I don’t know all there is to know about him. Maybe he’ll turn into a James Bond in disguise. Or a Joss…’

  The thought made her smile.

  But it didn’t make her go to sleep-and it wasn’t Malcolm she was thinking about as she tossed and turned in the night.

  It was very definitely Joss.

  Joss had had a huge day. He’d almost been killed, he’d almost been swept away in the river, he’d fallen in love…

  Hey! Where had that come from?

  ‘You’re imagining things,’ he told the dark. Love? What did he know about love?

  He only knew that Amy was the most beautiful woman he’d ever met.

  But she wasn’t beautiful, he decided, trying to see things dispassionately. Not in the conventional way. She was too careless of her appearance to be classed as beautiful.

  But when she smiled…

  ‘Beautiful,’ Joss told his pillow, and he groaned as he turned over yet again and tried for elusive sleep. ‘Just beautiful.’

  At two in the morning the phone rang. Joss was still awake, so he heard it, and he heard Amy’s soft voice answering. Something at the hospital? By the time Amy knocked at his door he was already reaching for his father’s spare dressing-gown.

  ‘Problems?’

  It was hard to concentrate on problems. He didn’t have his lamp on and Amy was lit by the hall light. She was wearing a long nightgown, trailing down to bare feet. It was cut low in the front and her curls were wisping down to her breasts. It was the first time he’d seen her with unbraided hair and the sight almost took his breath away. She looked sort of ethereal. Gorgeous…

  But she was already hauling her hair back into a knot, ready for what lay ahead. ‘Joss, can you help?’

  That was what he was there for. He was almost grateful to be asked. Any more staring into the dark and he was in danger of losing his mind.

  Any more staring at the woman in front of him and he’d definitely lose his mind.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘A child. A little girl…’

  He stared at that. ‘A child? In Iluka?’

  ‘We do have them. Just not many. Margy Crammond has her granddaughter staying with her. Emma’s six years old and she’s woken feeling dreadful. Margy says she can’t walk.’

  ‘Yeah?’ He tossed aside his dressing-gown, hauled off his pyjama jacket and reached for his dad’s Fair Isle sweater. His mind shifted straight into emergency mode. He was already sifting and discarding diagnoses, so much so that he didn’t even wince as the amazing patterned sweater slipped over his head. Joss was a doctor first and foremost, and an emergency had him putting everything else aside.

  Or almost. Amy’s damned negligee was almost transparent…

  Concentrate!

  ‘What do you think the options are?’ he asked. ‘Hysteria?’ Paraplegia in children was so unusual the first suspicion was a psychological diagnosis rather than a physical one.

  But Amy was shaking her head. ‘Margy seems to think it’s something more serious. Hysteria would be unusual at two in the morning-though she is homesick. She’s been staying with her grandparents for a week and was supposed to be going home today. She’s a bit upset that she can’t. But Margy said she was sound asleep a couple of hours ago when they went to bed and she’s woken in trouble.’

  Hell! He thought about the possibilities-in a place where there were no acute facilities-and he didn’t like them one bit. ‘I’ll go. Where is she?’

  ‘We’ll go,’ Amy told him. ‘This is my town. My people.’

  ‘And you have work tomorrow.’

  ‘We’ll go,’ she said again in a voice that told him he might as well save his breath. She wasn’t listening to arguments. ‘Half a minute while I pull on some jeans.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  THIS was not hysteria.

  Emma Crammond was one sick little girl. By the time they reached Margy and Harry Crammond’s house, the girl’s grandmother was beside herself with worry and her grandfather was coming a very close second.

  ‘She can’t make anything work,’ Margy told them as she led them through the house. She glanced up at Joss with gratitude. The whole town knew who Joss was now. News travelled fast in a small community. ‘Oh, Dr Braden, thank heaven you’re here. She looks just awful.’

  She did.

  The child was still in bed, but she was wide-eyed and frantic. Her breathing was fast and furious-as if she’d just run a marathon-but by her skin pallor Joss could see that she wasn’t getting enough oxygen no matter how hard she breathed. Even from the doorway he could see that she was cyanosed, her skin taking on the tell-tale bluish tinge arising from inadequate oxygen.

  What on earth was wrong?

  They’d travelled in Amy’s car. Joss usually travelled with a basic medical kit but it had been pulped along with the rest of the rear of his car. So he was dependent on Amy. ‘Do we have oxygen?’ he asked, expecting the worst, but Amy was nodding, moving already back to the front door.

  ‘Yes. I’ll get it.’

  She had more than just oxygen. She had a complete and extensive medical kit.

  She was back in seconds, handing Joss a stethoscope as she hauled out the oxygen mask to attach to the cylinder by her side. Whew, Joss thought-and then reminded himself that he should have expected no less. Amy obviously acted as district nurse and was first port of call in emergency for Iluka’s elderly. Oxygen would be something she needed all the time.

  So he had what he required. Now he could concentrate on the child. He needed to concentrate. Her illness was frightening.

  ‘I can’t…’ The little girl was
frantic. She was tossing wildly on the bed-as if trying to escape some unknown demon-and her grandfather was vainly trying to restrain her. ‘My legs… I can’t move them… Oh, I want my mummy.’

  ‘Her mother’s in Bowra.’ Beside the bed, her grandmother was sobbing with fear. ‘Dear God, what’s wrong?’

  ‘Emma, you must hush and keep still while the doctor works,’ Amy told the little girl. She signalled to Harry to stand clear and sat on the bed. ‘I’m fitting a mask over your face to help you breathe. But if you fight it, it won’t help. You must keep still. Do you hear?’

  The little girl nodded, but her terror was still almost palpable.

  ‘We don’t know what’s wrong with you yet.’ Amy was already sliding the mask over the little girl’s face. ‘But here we have Dr Braden who’s stuck in Iluka like you are, because the bridge fell down. So we have our very own Iluka doctor. Isn’t that lucky?’

  Lucky? Yeah, great. Except he didn’t know what was wrong with her. Hell, he was a surgeon, not a physician.

  But he had gone through basic medical training. He’d worked for two years in an emergency department of a busy city hospital before he’d specialised-but this wasn’t fitting into anything he’d ever seen.

  The child was badly cyanosed. Her skin was growing more blue by the minute, which meant she still wasn’t getting enough oxygen. Her heartbeat was rating 170 beats a minute and her breathing was far too fast. Yet she wasn’t running a temperature. She was completely afebrile and both lungs sounded normal.

  The oxygen didn’t seem to be making a difference.

  ‘What’s she eaten tonight?’ Joss asked. This wasn’t making any sense.

  ‘Just what we ate. Roast beef and veggies. Apple pie. Nothing else.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Yes.’

  They’d have three patients here in a minute, Joss thought grimly, and sent an unspoken message to Amy with his eyes. They had to get the pressure off the elderly couple before they collapsed.