Bushfire Bride

CHAPTER FIVE

IT WAS harder work than she’d thought it would be.

Rachel had been working in an emergency department for the last four years, coping with emergencies. These weren’t emergencies. She had to scour her brain for the things she’d learned in basic training-how to dress and treat leg ulcers, how to look after a man who was suffering long-term effects of the cortisone he’d taken after suffering rheumatoid arthritis for forty years, how to ease the passing of an old lady-ninety-eight, her bed card said, but she was still able to smile and grasp Rachel’s hand in greeting-a lady who might only have days left to live.

Rachel had asked Hugo to let her do this, so he had left her to it. She hadn’t realised until he’d gone that it had been quite an act of faith. Of trust.

‘I’ll come back and collect you at lunchtime,’ he’d told her, and had gone off to see to his town patients and his firefighters. He was needed.

So was she. She couldn’t think about Hugo. She had enough to concentrate on herself.

But the oldies were lovely. They helped her all the way. Don was at her side, and everyone knew the routine.

‘Dr Hugo uses that sort of dressing,’ she was told by a patient, the very elderly Mrs Collins, before Don could open his mouth. She cast him a sideways grin and started wrapping Mrs Collins’s ulcer with the dressing the old lady had pointed at.

‘Do I get the feeling this place would run on its own if we weren’t here?’ she asked. 86

‘We learn to be self-sufficient,’ Don told her. ‘There’s days when Hugo can’t come.’

‘When he’s on holidays?’

‘When there are emergencies in the town he can’t come,’ Don told her. ‘Only then. Our Dr McInnes doesn’t do holidays.’

‘What, never?’

‘He last took a holiday three years ago.’ Don bent and helped her adjust the dressing. Mrs Collins, eighty-nine and very, very interested in this yellow doctor, was listening avidly as she was treated. ‘I don’t think he knows the meaning of the word holiday. Christine takes Toby to New York to visit his grandmother during school holidays-paid for by Hugo-and that’s it.’

‘It sounds a pretty dreary life.’

‘It’s a better life now than when he was married,’ Don said bluntly. ‘Some marriages are the pits.’

Hmm. ‘Should you be saying this to me?’ Rachel raised her eyebrows at the bearded nurse and Don grinned.

‘Nope. But if we can’t gossip, what’s the use of living? Isn’t that right, Mrs Collins?’

‘That’s dead right.’ Sheila Collins’s old eyes perused Rachel and suddenly she leaned over and grabbed her hand. She held it up.

‘You’re married yourself?’ she demanded, and Rachel met her look square on.

‘Yes.’

‘Not separated or anything?’

‘No.’

‘So when this fire is over and the road’s cleared, you’ll go back to your husband.’

There was only one answer to that. ‘Of course I will.’

The old lady’s look was steady. News must travel fast in this town. Everyone was really well informed. Frighteningly well informed. ‘They say you were fighting with your husband at the dog show. They say he’s a creep and a bully. And he left our Kim for dead.’

‘No one here knows my husband,’ Rachel said steadily.

‘First impressions…’

There were places Rachel wasn’t prepared to go. No one needed explanations. ‘No one here knows him,’ she said again.

‘Stay out of her space, Sheila,’ Don said sternly. ‘Or you just might get iodine on those legs.’

Sheila’s eyes narrowed. She stared at Rachel for a moment longer and then gave a cackle of laughter. ‘Oh, sure. I guess it’d serve me right if I do. But it’s not just me who’s curious. She wants to know about our Dr McInnes as much as we want to know about her.’

‘Then tell her.’ Don was in his fifties or maybe a little older. He looked contented, Rachel thought. He looked like a nurse who’d spent his life caring for people in a small town-and who was content to do so for as long as he could.

The feeling was suddenly…nice. Living in Cowral would be a good life, she thought. She’d never considered country medical practice. Maybe she…

Maybe after…

No.

‘Our Dr Hugo made a bad marriage,’ Sheila told her, and Rachel forced herself to concentrate. Not that that was very hard. Sheila was right. She really did want to know.

‘Why?’

‘He didn’t have much of a home life, our Doc Hugo,’ Sheila said. ‘His mother was a right little cow-only after what she could get. She lit out for the city as soon as she could and we never saw her again. But Hugo used to come down here. Old Dr McInnes had been here for as long as anyone can remember, and whenever his mother wanted to get rid of him-which was often-Hugo used to come down to stay. He loved his grandpa. Then the old man had a stroke soon after Hugo qualified as a doctor, and Hugo came for good. I don’t think he had much choice. He came because he loved the old man and then he was sort of stuck.’

So he hadn’t come through choice…

‘He was really unsettled at first.’ Don took over the tale then. They were a pair, Rachel thought-the nurse who looked like he’d be more at home on a logging truck than in a nursing home, and the ancient lady whose bright eyes gleamed with intelligence. And…mischief? ‘The old man was ill for a couple of years,’ Don continued, with only a sideways glance and a twinkle to show he knew exactly what Rachel was thinking. ‘Hugo was here, helping him. It must have been a huge shock after practising medicine in Sydney.’

‘But then he met Beth,’ the old lady chipped in. ‘Christine and Beth. They came down here to paint. Their parents were divorced. Their father had a fishing shack here so living was cheap. They had nothing to bless themselves with, but they thought they were the best thing since sliced bread. Their mother has a studio in New York and that’s how they dressed-like they’d just walked off the streets of Manhattan. They complained because no one knew how to make decent coffee.’

‘They were exotic and they were gorgeous,’ Don added. ‘They were also really, really expensive. Their paintings were incomprehensible and pretty soon they latched onto the idea that one of them should marry our doctor.’

‘And of course he was so bored that he fell for it,’ Sheila told her. This was a story told in tandem. The fact that there seemed to be some urgency about it was strange, but that was the way Rachel was hearing it. Maybe it was the way she was meant to be hearing it. ‘He was feeling trapped by the needs of this community-by the needs of his grandfather. Beth was gorgeous and reminded him of a life he’d left behind. And after his parents’ example I don’t think he knew what a decent marriage was. So he married her. And had Toby.’

‘Damned stupid…’ Don shook his head. He looked sideways at Rachel as if figuring out how much to tell-and then obviously decided that, unprofessional or not, he was going to tell anyway. ‘It was never going to work. Beth married Hugo for all the wrong reasons and personally I don’t think Hugo knew the right reasons to marry, either. Neither of them really knew what marriage was. Beth filled that house with all that weird stuff. She spent a fortune but still it didn’t make her happy. She left him twice. Then, when she found she was pregnant, she walked out for ever. She wanted an abortion but he hated the idea. She compromised by leaving him. No, I know it doesn’t make sense but, then, Beth didn’t make sense to herself. She wasn’t living with Hugo when Toby was born. She was living with some painter up in Sydney.’

‘But still bleeding him dry,’ Sheila added.

‘And then she died.’ Don looked sick at the memory. ‘She had eclampsia. Apparently she and the guy she was living with were drinking too much. She didn’t care about the baby-but it wasn’t Toby who ended up suffering. She ignored the symptoms until she was far gone. Toby was born by Caesarean section but it was too late and that left our Hugo feeling dreadful. Guilt. He hadn’t tried to make her come home. And Christine made the guilt worse.’

‘Christine,’ Rachel whispered.

‘Of course, Christine.’ Don shrugged. ‘She stays on in this town because that’s where she owns a house but she hates the place. Her paintings don’t sell. She spends any money she gets on stupid things. You’d feel sorry for her if she wasn’t so damned…superior. She’s got no money of her own. She lives here and she won’t let anyone forget Beth. She makes Hugo’s guilt worse. ‘‘My Beth’’, she keeps saying as she shoves that shrine of a house down their throats. ‘‘We must never forget Toby’s mother.’’ The fact that they fought like cat and dog when Beth was alive…’

‘She wants to marry Hugo.’ Sheila was totally absorbed in her tale. Her ulcers were almost completely bandaged now but the old lady had a captive audience until they were finished and she wasn’t letting go. ‘And little by little she’s wearing him down. Hugo has to let Toby spend time with Christine. It’s the only contact the kid has with his mother’s family. And she guilts him into keeping that house just as it was…’

Enough, Rachel thought, beginning to feel just a little desperate. The bandages were in place. This was entirely improper-doctor gossiping about another doctor with that doctor’s patients and a nurse. Rachel rose to her feet and tried to look determined.

‘I’m sure I need to see someone else.’

‘No matter who you see they’ll tell you the same thing,’ Sheila retorted. ‘Our Dr McInnes is being railroaded into marriage with another like the first. And she’s not even a decent artist. What she does is horrible.’

Rachel was left wondering what was horrible. The thought of such a marriage-or Christine’s artwork?

Maybe she knew.

‘How did it go?’

Hugo collected her half an hour after he’d said he would. He’d been delayed by a minor crisis, he told her, but the look on his face told Rachel it hadn’t been minor. He looked strained past endurance.

‘What’s wrong?’ she asked, but he shook his head. Whatever it was, he didn’t intend to share it.

‘How did you manage at the nursing home?’ he asked, changing the subject with more bluntness than tact.

She hesitated but his face was shuttered. This was a man accustomed to working on his own, she thought. He carried the responsibility for this town’s health on his shoulders alone.

She could share but only as much as he wished her to share, and maybe it wasn’t fair to push when she was here for such a short time.

So she concentrated on now. On the present.

‘I love your oldies,’ she told him. ‘I now know not only their medical histories but also the history of everyone in Cowral.’

He managed a smile at that. ‘Including mine?’

‘Of course, including yours.’ She settled into the passenger seat of his comfortable old family sedan and smiled across at him. She wanted him to smile. She wanted to take that look of strain away from around his eyes. ‘How can you doubt it?’

‘So…’ He grimaced. ‘Have they worked out your love life yet?’

‘Mine?’ She raised her eyebrows at that. ‘I don’t have a love life.’

‘You have a husband.’

‘That’s right,’ she said, and somehow kept her voice steady as he looked across at her.

‘A husband. A love life. They’re not the same thing?’

Were they? Once they were. A long time ago…

‘Where are we going now?’ she asked. He wasn’t the only one who could change the subject. It was high time to move on from what was suddenly dangerous ground.

‘I’ll drop you at home for lunch and a rest while I-’

‘While you keep working.’

‘That’s the plan.’

She shook her head. ‘Nope. As plans go, it sucks.’

‘Sorry?’

‘I slept this morning while you worked. I’ve done a whole three hours’ work while you, I suspect, have done about six. So why is it that now I get to be bored while you play doctor?’

He thought about it. ‘You don’t have to be bored. You could take Penelope for a walk.’

‘I walked my feet off last night. I don’t intend to walk anywhere for six months.’

‘Then what do you want to do?’

‘Have lunch now and then do something useful,’ she said promptly. ‘If I’m trapped in your house for the whole afternoon I might be forced to do something dire-like strip the brocade wallpaper from the living room.’

It had been the wrong thing to say. His face sort of set.

‘Whoops,’ Rachel said, not sounding in the least contrite. ‘Don’t tell me you like brocade.’

‘I’m very grateful to Christine,’ he said stiffly, which was a strange answer to a question that had hardly been asked.

‘I’m grateful to Christine, too,’ she told him, refusing to be dismayed into a guilty conscience ‘But I’m not wearing brocade because of it. Or even the clothes she chose.’

‘You’ll hurt her feelings.’

‘Really?’ She looked at him in disbelief. ‘Is that why you stick with the brocade? You really think that she’d be devastated if you said, ‘‘Thank you, Christine, you’re very thoughtful but I don’t like red and gold brocade. I like yellow.’’’

He frowned. ‘What are you talking about? I don’t like yellow.’

‘Toby says you like yellow.’

‘I don’t.’

‘You don’t like Mr Addington’s yellow car?’

The corners of his mouth twitched. The look of strain eased a bit and Rachel found herself smiling inside. Good. ‘Who told you about Mr Addington’s car?’ he demanded.

‘Toby. You do like it?’

‘Of course I like it. It’s a Ferrari.’

‘Is that all you like about it? You’d like it better in red and gold?’ She cocked her head to one side. ‘Michael’s Aston Martin is red. I hate that car.’

He raised his brows at that. Seemingly intrigued. ‘So what is it with you and Michael? You hate his dog. You hate his car. You fight with the man in public and he abandons you in a town with a bushfire threatening.’

How did she answer that? She couldn’t. She managed a shrug. ‘So?’

The coldness of her tone didn’t deflect him. He was still being nosy. ‘I don’t see that you have much of a marriage, Dr Harper.’

Should she tell him? No, she decided. His reaction to such a story was a complication she could do without. She hated telling people. She hated the way their faces shuttered down with shock and disbelief.

It was so much better to use Michael as a scapegoat. A pseudo-husband to hide the reality of pain. It was none of Hugo’s business after all.

‘I don’t hate Penelope,’ she told him, concentrating on the least of her issues with Michael. ‘Whatever gave you that idea?’

‘You don’t love her!’

‘She’s sort of…goofy.’ She grinned, moving right on. Steering fast from very dangerous personal relationships. ‘Come on, Dr McInnes. Share your work with me. Don’t sentence me to an afternoon with my goofy dog and your brocade walls.’

‘I was planning to go out to the fire front,’ Hugo told her. ‘There’s a command post out there. The teams are starting to show effects of smoke inhalation, heat exhaustion, burns. And the adrenaline isn’t letting them stop.’

‘Can I come with you?’

Those mobile eyebrows rose right up again. ‘In those clothes?’

She looked down at herself. ‘Maybe not,’ she agreed cautiously. ‘Maybe Mrs Sanderson could find me something a wee bit more suitable.’

‘Maybe we’ll grab a sandwich and then drop by the fire station,’ he told her, the smile she was beginning to know and to love resurfacing from behind his eyes. ‘I don’t think even Mrs Sanderson does a couturier line in yellow firefighting apparel.’

The fire front was closer than they had expected.

Cowral Bay was on a spit about five miles from The Narrows, the mile-wide strip of land connecting Cowral to the mainland.

The Narrows were covered in mountainous bushland and all of it was burning. Hugo had expected to drive through to the far side of the first ridge, but there were roadblocks just as the land started to rise, and he was waved to a command post that had been brought further south.

‘Hell.’ Hugo pulled off the road and they stared together up at the ridge. The wind had died a little, which meant the billowing smoke was spiralling skyward and they could see flames bursting up over the mountains.

And for the first time, Rachel got nervous.

Up until now the fire had been a sort of backdrop to her real worries. It was the reason she was stuck here and nothing else. Australians were accustomed to bushfires and this was a bushfire. In bush.

But maybe it could turn to something worse?

She stared down at herself. The officer manning the fire station had equipped her with heavy-duty overalls and big leather boots, and she carried a hard hat. She’d looked at herself in the mirror and had hooted with laughter. But now…now she wasn’t laughing.

‘This is big,’ she whispered, and Hugo looked over at her and nodded.

‘We lost a firefighter this morning.’

‘You lost…’

‘The wind changed,’ he told her. ‘He was trying to back-burn and he’d gone too far from his team. He was cut off and there was nothing anyone could do to save him. They brought his body down just before I came to find you.’

She swallowed. No wonder he’d looked strained.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I just did.’

There’d been no need, Rachel thought. Or there had been a need-a desperate need-but Hugo had been on his own for too long to realise it. Sharing trauma, talking about it, was the only way to cope in emergency medicine. But Hugo coped alone. Somehow.

‘What can I do?’ she asked in a small voice, and he looked across at her, assessing.

‘If you really want to help…’

‘I said I did, didn’t I?’ she snapped, suddenly angry. ‘I’m a member of your medical team, Dr McInnes. A team. You’re not on your own. Get used to it.’

‘I didn’t mean…’

‘Just use me,’ she said wearily. ‘Use me.’

He cast her another strange look. But the situation was dire. It was true. He did need her.

‘The team who were with Barry when he died…they’re still out there. They’re due to come in at two. I’d like to see them all. There’ll be real trauma. None of them would come off duty until their shift changed but I said I’d be available.’

‘And you want teams to be briefed?’

‘Last year in bushfire season I had a volunteer go home after suffering smoke inhalation. He didn’t tell anyone he was having trouble breathing, then started coughing uncontrollably. By the time I saw him it was almost too late. I want the dangers spelled out to everyone, whether they’ve heard it five times or not. I want them to know to keep fluids on board. The professionals-even the well-trained volunteers-have been augmented now by helpers who mean well but haven’t got two clues as to personal safety. They’re working in teams but they get good ideas and go off by themselves. The guy this morning… He’s in his sixties and he runs-ran-the local hardware store. He thought he knew it all. The fire chief has taken it hard. He’s taken the volunteers through the safety drill but I want the medical bits spelled out in words of one syllable. I don’t want any more deaths.’

‘I can do that.’

‘Make it sound dire,’ Hugo told her. ‘There’s no second chances out there.’

‘I can do dire.’ She nodded. There was no laughter between them now. There was only medical need.

Which was how, half an hour later, overalled and booted and wearing her hard hat for heaven’s sake- ‘We wear them all the time when we’re on duty,’ she’d been told. ‘It’s a habit that makes sense not to break.’ -Rachel found herself lecturing to a group of people who looked as out of place as she was.

Hugo was with the team of firefighters who’d lost their friend. She was with everyone else. Trying to sound knowledgeable. And authoritative.

She did. It was amazing what you could do when needs must.

‘You stay hydrated,’ she ordered. ‘You carry water all the time. You never remove your hard hat. Ever. You keep your protective clothing on no matter how hot you get. You feel unwell for any reason, you get back here. For any reason. You start to cough, I want you back at base. You get any chest pain, a sore throat, your legs start aching-anything at all-you get back here fast. There’s no medals for heroics. If you put your life at risk you’ll put your whole team at risk. Now, before you go I want you to run past me individually and tell me a really brief medical history, and if there’s anything at all you’re vaguely worried about, you tell me now. You hear? Now!’

‘She’s amazing,’ one of the firefighters told Hugo.

Miriam was one of the semi-trained volunteers. She’d been on the front line with Barry and she was suffering a nasty burn on her hand as well as shock from that morning’s trauma. Hugo had what he needed to treat her on the spot but, having cleaned and dressed her burn, he was sending the woman home. Now they stood together in the clearing, watching Rachel assessing her firefighters thirty feet away. Each catching their breath before they moved on.

‘She is amazing,’ Hugo agreed. They could hear her voice, raised in authority. ‘Bossy!’

‘You’d think she’d been trained to do it.’

‘Be bossy?’ Hugo smiled. ‘Maybe she has.’

‘I wish I’d been a bit bossy,’ Miriam said, and there was a load of bitterness and regret in her voice. ‘Barry knew what we were told to do. We were just mopping up after backburning. If anything gets away, call for help, we were told, but when it flared he started fighting like a madman. The rest of us were retreating and he took it as a personal challenge. Then it was all around him. If I’d been a bit bossier…’

‘Barry wouldn’t have taken it from you,’ Hugo said gently. Miriam was usually a clerk in the shire offices. She was so out of place here it was almost ridiculous. ‘He’d never take orders from someone without authority.’

‘He’d have taken orders from your Rachel,’ Miriam told him. ‘You just have to hear her. She seems…in charge.’

She did.

But what had Miriam said? ‘Your Rachel…’

His Rachel. The words were unnerving. Miriam had meant them to denote that he and Rachel were a team but, looking across and seeing Rachel, it seemed almost more than that. She was listening to an elderly man who was telling her exactly why he should be allowed to fight the fires. Sam Nieve. Hell. It was obvious to anyone the man couldn’t firefight. Hugo half rose to intervene but he didn’t need to. He couldn’t hear what she was telling him, but the man’s shoulders didn’t sag. Instead, his chest puffed out, he removed his helmet and he departed with an air of increased importance. His little car took off in the direction of the town and Hugo gave a sigh of relief.

Sam had a heart condition. He was the last person they’d want on the fire line but he was almost as stubborn as Barry. How had she convinced him?

If anyone could, Rachel could, he thought. The lady was amazing.

His Rachel?

No. The lady was married. The lady was…taken.

They worked solidly for three hours, but then it was time to return to the town. Hugo had patients in hospital and he had a clinic to run. He needed to return. The teams had changed over, the off-duty firefighters had gone back to the town to sleep and the on-duty members were lined up against the fire front.

The doctors would be needed again at change-over-or earlier if emergencies arose-but maybe because of the work they’d done, there’d be less chance of an emergency.

They could only hope.

‘You did really well,’ he told Rachel as they drove homeward, and she flushed.

‘If we’re forming an admiration society, can we make it mutual?’

‘Nope. What did you tell Sam to make him give up his plans to fight fires?’

‘You really want to know?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I used you.’

He raised his brows and grinned. ‘You used me?’

‘I told him you’d lost two patients in two days and there wasn’t room in the funeral parlour for a third. I also told him if you lost someone else you’d be in for a breakdown and it’d be on his head if the town lost its doctor.’

‘Gee, thanks very much,’ he said faintly, but she hadn’t finished yet.

‘I told him brute strength wasn’t all that was needed here. I told him that if the fire worsened, it was really important that everyone’s roof is clear and they have their hoses ready. There are lots of people who are just blind when it comes to this type of thing.’ She grinned, ignoring the fact that his brows had hit his hairline. ‘I suspect, in fact, that Mr Nieve’s own personal gutters around his roof are not as clean as they should be. I seemed to hit a nerve. Anyway, I suggested he contact the local school and borrow a few of the older kids and do a house-to-house check.’

Hugo whistled, seemingly totally astonished. ‘Well done, you.’

‘It’s true,’ she said gently.

‘What’s true?’

‘You really don’t want any more deaths.’

‘What do you think?’

She looked at him, considering. ‘I’m all for them,’ she said at last, teasing for a smile. ‘More deaths mean fewer patients and patients mess up your consulting rooms faster than anything I know.’

He laughed with her, but there wasn’t a true smile behind his eyes.

‘The two deaths…’ she probed gently, and waited. He needed to talk, she suspected. There wouldn’t be a lot of professional support in this one-doctor town.

And it seemed like it was professional support he was uncomfortable with.

She didn’t let him off the hook. She waited and finally he shrugged and started to speak.

‘Last night’s death was expected,’ he told her. ‘It was Annie’s time, but I was fond of her for all that.’ He gave a twisted smile. ‘Annie started making me chocolate cakes when Beth died and we’ve had a weekly chocolate cake ever since. And Barry…Barry was a pompous little prig who didn’t deserve what happened to him. He has a sweet little wife and a couple of obnoxious kids who’ll miss him for ever.’

Silence.

More silence.

‘It’s hard, this country practice,’ Rachel said at last. She was combing pieces of debris from her hair with her fingers. She’d taken her hard hat off before she’d got back in the car, which had been a mistake. The air was thick with falling ash, and most of it seemed to have ended up in her hair. ‘You get attached.’

‘Something you don’t do?’

‘It’s not all that easy getting attached when you work in emergency medicine,’ she agreed. ‘I keep track of some patients but not many.’

‘So when you finish up a shift, the day’s over.’

‘Pretty much.’

‘It’d be a great life,’ Hugo said softly, and Rachel didn’t miss the note of bitterness in his voice.

‘What, so you’d really like to swap?’

‘I’d just like to turn off sometimes,’ he told her. ‘This town… I came here for a few years to look after my ailing grandfather and I’ve never been able to leave.’

‘Because you can’t get anyone else to replace you?’

‘Partly.’

‘And partly what else?’ She’d twisted sideways to watch him. They were nearly back in town now-their time for intimacy was almost over and she regretted it. She liked this big, gentle man with the laughing eyes. She liked him a lot. It seemed such a shame that he was meant for…the likes of Christine?

She’d seen the way Christine had looked at Hugo. Hugo may have married one sister but by the look in Christine’s eyes and by the accounts of local gossip he was destined to marry the other.

But Hugo wasn’t talking about Christine. Or he was, but only in that she was part of the tapestry of Toby’s life. ‘Partly because my life is here,’ he told her. ‘Toby’s life. The people here love him. He has Myra and Christine and…so many people. He has the freedom of the place-there’s not a soul in Cowral Bay who doesn’t know who he is and watches out for him.’

‘And in return you watch out for them,’ she said softly. He was concentrating on turning into the hospital car park but it wasn’t the concentration that was causing the set look around his mouth. He cared. He’d certified the deaths of two of Cowral’s own in the past twenty-four hours and it had bitten deep.

Rachel saw deaths most days. She worked in a big city emergency department.

Two deaths wouldn’t affect her like this.

Maybe they should. Maybe she should be more involved.

She was involved enough. How could she be any more involved than she was right now?

She should be home…

‘It must be amazing,’ Hugo said, ‘to leave work at night and be free to go to the movies, go out to a restaurant-do anything you want.’

He had to be kidding. If he knew how much she hated eating out… And when had she last gone to a movie? Going to movies on her own sucked. ‘I have responsibilities,’ she said stiffly, and he nodded.

‘Of course you do. Penelope. Michael.’

‘Michael’s not-’

‘You’re right. Michael’s none of my business.’ He cut her off as he switched off the engine. ‘But I’m interested. What do you do with the rest of your life? How do city doctors without kids operate? It’s a world away from what I know.’

‘You did it once.’

‘It’s so long ago I’ve forgotten. I wouldn’t mind remembering.’

Remembering what? He was talking about the giddy social life Michael enjoyed, Rachel knew, and that was so far away from her own experience that it was ridiculous. She closed her eyes. What was the point in explaining? There wasn’t one. This man had enough on his shoulders without burdening him with her personal tragedy.

‘You wouldn’t be interested,’ she said flatly. ‘And you have work to do. Is there anything else I can do to help?’

He looked at her and once again she had the feeling he saw more than she wanted him to. But he couldn’t know. How could he possibly know about Craig?

He didn’t. Of course he didn’t. He was shaking his head, moving on.

‘You’ve done enough.’

‘You’re doing clinic?’

‘For a couple of hours.’

‘So Toby and I will see you at dinner.’

‘That’s right. So you can take your overalls off, Dr Harper, and turn into a guest again. Exercise your dog or something.’

‘Right.’

‘I’ll see you later.’

End of conversation. But he was still watching her. His eyes still held hers.

He should turn away, she thought. He should get out of the car.

He didn’t. They were somehow…locked?

It was a strange sensation. Stupid. Senseless. He had things to do. She was a married woman and they had no link.

They did have a link. They were just looking at each other. Seeing…

Seeing past the façade. Seeing what was really behind it.

She stared into his face and she could see the battering this man had suffered over the years. The loneliness. The wanting.

How could she see that? She didn’t know. But see it she did, and if she could read so much in his face, how much more could he read in hers?

This was ridiculous. She had things to do. Dogs to walk. Hours to fill before she saw him again.

Ridiculous!

Somehow Rachel managed to break the moment-break the link. She climbed from the car and slammed the door with more force than was needed. The slam was a statement.

‘I’m going to take a shower,’ she told him, and if her voice wasn’t quite steady there wasn’t a darned thing she could do about it. ‘I’ll see you later.’

She walked away, leaving Hugo staring after her.