Dating The Millionaire Doctor

CHAPTER TEN

THEY did the Empire State Building. They had to queue for two hours but at the top she gasped and decreed the view was worth every minute. She produced a camera and took the shots every tourist took, but she insisted on having him front and centre.

‘This is your town,’ she said. ‘I’m visiting Jake’s Manhattan. This is Jake with the Statue of Liberty in the background. Very nice.’

A tourist offered to take a shot of them together and she beamed. ‘That’ll be good for later,’ she decreed, handing over her camera.

‘Later?’ He held her tightly as the German gentleman lined up the shot-because holding her close seemed the right thing to do. Also it was a good excuse to keep her near him. He hadn’t forgotten how good she felt. His body was reminding him every time she came within touching distance.

He could hardly understand her smile, he thought. She must be jet-lagged. She was facing an uncertain future alone and, here she was, cheerfully soaking up every minute of her two-day visit.

She was gorgeous.

But then… ‘This will be a shot of Mummy and Daddy for our baby’s first album,’ she told him as he held her-and desire gave way to something else entirely, a range of emotions he couldn’t begin to understand. But he kept her still, and when he saw the resulting picture he thought no one would know by his fixed smile that he felt as if he’d been punched.

But he did feel as though he’d been punched. No matter how many traffic fumes he’d inhaled last night, he didn’t have his head round this.

This lovely, vibrant woman was carrying his baby.

And she was only here until tomorrow.

Would he go to Australia for the birth? He must, he thought, as Tori went back to snapping views. And what if something happened early? A miscarriage. A problem later in the pregnancy? What sort of antenatal care would she get in Combadeen?

How could he let her go back to Australia?

But how could he not? He had no hold on her. They’d had, what, a two-day relationship. There was no way a future could be based on that.

But still…

Still, he didn’t know what to think.

Finally viewed out, Tori headed to the elevators. A big guy, overweight and overbearing, barged into the elevator beside Tori and pushed her backwards. He saw Tori’s hand instinctively move to protect a bump that wasn’t there yet, and he wanted to move his body in between them and thump the guy into the bargain.

He wanted to say, ‘That’s my kid in there. Watch it.’

More. He wanted to say, ‘That’s my woman, and I’ll thump anyone who touches her.’

Only, of course, he didn’t. He was civilised and careful; he was a senior medico with a responsible job; he was someone who taught nonaggressive solutions to his staff when patients were violent.

More. He was a guy who walked alone.

But he still wanted to punch the guy’s lights out.

His phone rang while he was thinking of it. He answered it as he always did.

‘Dr. Hunter?’

‘Speaking.’

‘Jancey Ian? Her intrathecal catheter’s packed up.’

He paused as the rest of the elevator streamed out around them. Swearing under his breath.

Jancey was a tiny African-American woman in her mid-seventies and she had advanced bone metastases. He’d inserted morphine and local anaesthetic via an intrathecal catheter to stop pain that had been almost unbearable.

But not only did Jancey have crumbling vertebrae from the cancer, she also had severe arthritis. It had taken skill, experience and luck to get the drugs flowing to just the right spot. It’d be a miracle if any of the junior doctors on duty could get the catheter back in.

‘Level of pain?’ he asked, knowing already what the answer would be.

‘Bad.’ Mardi Fry was the senior nurse on the ward. If she said bad it must be hellish.

‘I can’t…’

‘You can.’ Tori was suddenly in front of him, facing him down. She’d only heard his side of the conversation, but obviously she’d guessed the rest. ‘I’m an unexpected and un-invited guest, and I’m a very happy tourist. Don’t you dare leave someone in pain because of me. I’ll take a cab to Central Park. Meet me there if you can.’

‘Tori…’

‘Strawberry Fields at two o’clock,’ she said, heading to the cab rank already and calling back over her shoulder. ‘That’s the bit I most want to see in Central Park. Or back at your apartment at six.’

And she was gone before he could even argue.

She was asleep when he found her, right where she’d said she’d be, in Central Park, snoozing on a bench in the weak autumn sunlight, with a bag of uneaten bagels on her knee. He touched her on the shoulder and she opened her eyes and smiled at him.

He thought back to the number of dates he’d had to interrupt for medical necessity. There’d always been reproof. But Tori was smiling at him as if this was a whole new date.

‘Hey, it’s only two o’clock,’ she said. ‘Well done. All fixed?’

‘Piece of cake,’ he said. ‘Catheter went in like a dream.’ In fact, it had been a nightmare, but it was okay now. Jancey was out of pain and asleep.

She searched his face, and he thought she saw the truth, but she said nothing. No recriminations. No questions

A woman in a million.

‘So what were you dreaming of?’ he asked.

‘Names.’

‘Names?’

‘Baby names,’ she said, as if he was a little bit thick. ‘For some reason now I’m in Strawberry Fields I’m thinking Jude. But I’m also thinking maybe Elizabeth for my mother?’

‘You don’t sound sure.’

‘And why would I be sure? This baby’s the size of a peanut, and do you know how many books there are on children’s names? If you help me we’ll barely get through them.’

‘Do you want me to help?’

There was a moment’s silence, and then, carefully, as if she was bestowing a huge honour on him, she broke her bagel in half.

‘Share,’ she said. ‘That’s why I’m here. Though I have to say if your mother was Gertie it’s not going to happen.’

‘It’s not, but I don’t think I want anyone called after my mother anyway.’

‘That’s right, she was a horror,’ Tori said cheerfully, bestowing his parentage the attention it deserved. Which in itself was strangely healing. ‘That makes life easier. Can we go to Tiffany’s now?’

So they went to Tiffany’s, a place Jake had never been to. Yes, it was famous, but it was definitely a girl place. He felt like waiting outside, only then he couldn’t watch Tori enjoy herself, which was growing more and more unthinkable.

So in he went. The doorman welcomed them and the unobtrusive staff watched with indulgent eyes. Of all the women in here Tori stood out. She was a woman with no rings on her fingers, nothing, no jewellery at all.

But Tori wasn’t looking at anything she might buy. She was intent on the fantasy.

‘Oh, wow,’ she breathed, as she reached a display case of tiaras that must be worth a king’s ransom. Or several kings’ ransoms, he thought, as he checked out the prices.

‘Aren’t they wonderful,’ Tori said, giggling. ‘What if you were wearing it and it fell off in the mud?’

‘I don’t think there’s any mud where any of these are going.’

‘No,’ she said, suddenly disapproving. ‘They’ll be worn once a year, maybe, twice tops, and the rest of the time they’ll be stuck in a safe. There they’ll just sit until something like the fire happens, and what a waste.’

She had a different perspective, he thought, as he watched her move from jewel to jewel. She was loving looking at these beautiful things, but there was no wistfulness in her eyes at all.

She’d lost everything, and yet she wanted nothing.

‘Look at this,’ she breathed, and he looked more closely and was as stunned as she was.

It was the most amazing ring he’d ever seen. Its centre was a diamond, perfectly cut as a heart, and so large it took his breath away. Every facet glistened and sparkled. On the outer edge of the heart were five rubies, set into white gold to glitter at each extremity. Surrounding them was a ring of smaller diamonds; though, thinking on, they were only small in comparison to the central stone.

The ring was ostentatious and it was ridiculous and it’d take more muscle than most women had in their ring finger to wear it without complaint-but for all that it was quite extraordinarily lovely. And it didn’t even have a price tag.

‘Oh, wow,’ Tori breathed. ‘What a knuckle duster.’ She giggled again-and then she looked sideways at it. ‘You know, it’s like something absolutely exquisite, but blown up,’ she said slowly. ‘A little version would be just perfect, but this… It’s wonderful but it’s crazy.’

‘You’d never want something like this.’

‘Are you kidding?’ Again came that infectious chuckle. ‘What’s not to want? Mind, I’d have to find me a sheikh, and sheikhs are in small supply where I come from.’

‘Do you have any jewellery at all?’ he asked, but almost as the words left his mouth he knew he shouldn’t have asked. She’d been working when the fire came through. Nothing had been saved.

Toby, the erstwhile fiancé, had a lot to answer for. Again, Jake found himself dealing with anger.

But the fire was history. Tori had moved on and so should he. And luckily Tori hadn’t heard the question. Her attention was caught yet again.

‘Oh…’

She was peering into a different display section now, where opulence had given way to a far more demure kind of beauty. She seemed totally captivated, not amused this time, but rather stunned.

She was gazing at a Celtic love knot, wrought in gold with silver threads woven through. Compared to the jewellery they’d just looked at, this was tiny, but it was no less beautiful. Slivers of diamond were scattered through the knot, like stones set into rope. It looked rough, almost as though it had been hewn from the earth already formed. It hung on a simple silver chain, and Jake looked at it and then looked at Tori, and her eyes were shining with unshed tears.

‘It’s like my mother’s,’ she whispered. ‘It’s not the same but it’s so close. She wore it always. And it was burned.’ She managed a watery smile. ‘I need to buy it,’ she said simply, and an assistant was sliding it out of the display case before she finished speaking.

Tori reached to touch it with hands that trembled. She ran her fingers across its intricate surface, almost reverently.

‘I’ll take it,’ she said and she hadn’t even looked at the price.

‘Tori…’

She was hardly aware of him. This chain had been a part of her past that was somehow being restored, Jake thought, as he watched her face, and he was feeling just a bit emotional himself. And he knew what he wanted to do. He’d been thinking it ever since he’d walked into the place, and now was the right time.

‘Will you let me?’ he asked, and he laid his hand over hers. ‘It would be my honour and my pleasure-and my pride as well-to buy this for you.’

She turned, puzzled. ‘Why?’

‘You’re the mother of my baby, ’he said simply and surely. In truth there were many emotions at play here, and the fact that Tori was pregnant was only a tiny part of the whole, but it was all he could understand right now.

‘I need to do something to mark this,’ he said softly, though the assistant had melted discreetly away. ‘It’s a piece of jewellery that reminds you of what’s lost. Can it also be something to mark what’s to come?’

She looked up at him then through a mist of tears. She gave a wavering smile-and she sniffed. Oh, for heaven’s sake, he was feeling teary himself. Whoa, that wasn’t going to happen. What was this woman doing to him?

He got practical by handing over a handkerchief. Distracted, she gazed down at it in disbelief. ‘A handkerchief?’

‘What’s wrong with a handkerchief?’

‘Guys do this in romance novels,’ she said faintly. ‘Not in real life. What sort of modern male carries handkerchiefs?’

‘Men who get their laundry done?’ But she wasn’t listening. She was buying time, he thought, fighting to get her emotions in order. She turned her back on him and blew her nose, and when she turned back she had her face straight-or almost. Her eyes were still shimmering.

How had he ever thought she was plain? he wondered. She was quite extraordinarily beautiful.

He wanted her. He wanted her so badly…

‘But I can…I can afford it,’ she said breathlessly. ‘Easily. There’s no need for you to pay.’

‘I know that, but still…will you grant me the honour of buying it for you.’

‘There you go again,’ she said darkly. ‘Romance novels have a lot to answer for. If I didn’t know you made such a lousy five-minute dater I’d suspect you’d been taking chivalry lessons.’

‘No lessons,’ he said. ‘Put it on.’ He lifted it from the velvet and held it out.

Silently she turned so he could fasten it around her neck. He clipped the hook closed, and then, because the temptation was irresistible, he bent and kissed her, lightly on the nape of her neck. Her skin felt smooth and lovely, and for an instant…for just an instant, he felt her lean into him, let herself relax against him, trust him.

‘Jake…’

He wanted to kiss her properly, as he needed to kiss her, as she deserved to be kissed, but her moment of weakness was gone. She tugged away, apparently to look in the mirror, but he knew it was more than that. He’d felt her body stiffen.

He’d felt her fear.

Bad move, he thought. Very bad move, considering what he was thinking.

The assistant had melted away again in the emotional stuff-how did they know to do that?-but as Tori moved to the mirror she materialised again, beaming her approval.

‘Will madam take it?’

‘Madam’s taking it,’ Tori said softly, and a slight tremor ran through her, a tremor she couldn’t disguise. ‘Madam fell in love with romance novels when she was thirteen years old and she knows when she’s hooked.’

‘Does this mean you’ll let me buy it for you?’ Jake asked.

‘Why yes,’ she said softly. ‘Yes, I believe it does.’

They bought Chinese takeaway and took it back to the apartment for dinner because Tori was simply too tired to go on.

Jake usually ate at his kitchen bench. His dining table was covered in journals, half-written papers, important work in progress.

He could sort it and stack it neatly, he thought, but that could take half an hour. Or he could make Tori eat at the kitchen bench.

But if this was the only night he had to persuade her, then he needed to move fast. So he cleared the table by the simple expedient of tipping it lengthways. It worked a treat. Hey, when was the last time he’d seen this table? It had cost him a bomb. It was a great table.

Or maybe not, he conceded, thinking on. The table was of cool-grey lacquer, designed to match the apartment’s cool-grey walls. He remembered Tori’s scathing comments about grey. Hmm.

Tori was looking at the mess as they ate, bemused. ‘It’ll take you days to get that back in order.’

‘I have days.’ He’d have all the time in the world after she went home, he thought. If she went home.

How to broach it again?

He didn’t for a while. They shared their food. They both had soda-he’d have liked a beer but Jancey’s catheter might mean he’d be called out again. They listened to music. She liked his music. That was something the decorator hadn’t chosen.

‘What time’s your plane tomorrow?’ he asked.

‘Late afternoon. I figure I’ll sleep in.’

‘No more sightseeing?’

‘I hear Soho’s good,’ she said. ‘But maybe not. You need to go to work, right?’

He did. He’d been trying to figure out how not to need to go to work, but case lists for Monday were always the most complex. If he cancelled, patients would be sent home.

‘You can’t let them down,’ Tori said softly, and he knew she understood.

He was doing a rapid assessment of cases in his head but it wasn’t helping. He’d seen Jack Carver in the cardiac ward on Friday. Jack had severe ulceration on his legs, so severe amputation was becoming an option. He needed shunts to restore blood supply back so they could heal, but he had a cardiac condition and diabetic complications as well. When Jake had done the initial assessment-something he usually avoided but he seemed to be doing it more in the weeks since he’d met Tori-Jack’s wife had been holding her husband’s hand as though if she let go he’d drown.

‘Please,’ she’d said to him. ‘Jack’s all I have. Make him well.’

The risk of Jack losing his leg-or worse-was increasing every day he waited. He couldn’t reschedule, Jake thought grimly. No matter what he wanted personally, he needed to be there tomorrow.

And Jancey would be watching the door, waiting for him. He couldn’t let Jancey down.

‘I could have done with some warning of your visit,’ he growled, but Tori shook her head.

‘I suspect you’d still be as busy even if you were expecting me, and I didn’t want to interrupt your life. I don’t want to interrupt your life. Soho will just be shops. I might go on my own or I might just sleep, but either way, I can take a cab to the airport. I don’t need your company.’

But her voice wobbled a little at that, and he noticed her fingers crept to the chain at her throat.

‘You should stay,’ he said strongly.

‘I need to go home. I need to start my life as I need to go on.’

‘Why not stay here?’

‘We already talked about that.’

‘I’d like to marry you.’

There was a sharp intake of breath. But… ‘You’ve said that before,’ she whispered, still touching her chain. ‘Just because I’m having your baby, it doesn’t make it any better.’

‘I think I love you.’

She gazed across the table at him, seemingly bemused. Seemingly astounded. ‘You think?’

‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. ‘Hell, Tori, I haven’t done this before.’

‘Done what?’

‘Become involved.’

‘You sound like it’s happened against your will.’

‘Well, what do you think?’ he said, raking his hair. ‘I don’t have a clue how I’m feeling. But we’re going to be parents. You need to rebuild anyway. You’ve lost everything…’

And finally she reacted with something apart from shock. ‘I haven’t lost everything,’ she retorted, and she tilted her chin and met his gaze levelly and calmly.

‘Okay, you’ve got your dogs,’ he conceded.

‘I’ve got my home.’

‘A relocatable.’

‘I have my community.’ The emotion now was suddenly pure, unmitigated anger. ‘I have my work,’ she said, struggling to stay calm. ‘You have your work, too. It’s important, as my work’s important. But I have more. I have place. My parents lived and worked at Combadeen and so do I. I know every family rebuilding on the ridge. My parents are buried in the Combadeen cemetery. I’ve buried my dogs behind our house. Okay, I’ve been stunned, shocked, gutted by the fires and their aftermath but I’m handling it. And I’m moving on to make a home for myself, in my place, not in some sterile, grey, designer shoebox on the seventeenth floor of a thirty storey tower block.’

‘It’s not-’

‘A shoebox? Yes, it is,’ she retorted. ‘They’re all shoeboxes. It’s what’s around them that matters, and what’s in them. Here, you’d be at work all day every day, and the shoebox would close in on me.’

‘You could work part-time. We could get somewhere a bit bigger. Hell, Tori, you need looking after.’

‘I don’t need looking after.’

‘You’re pregnant.’

‘And I still don’t need looking after.’ Her anger was building rather than subsiding. ‘I have a community who cares. I have friends and I have colleagues. You’ve seen me at a point where I was at my lowest, where the resources of the whole district were stretched to the limit, but don’t judge me on that. Don’t judge Combadeen by that. There’s not one person in Combadeen who’d suggest I live in a grey monument to solitude and go crazy!’

‘You wouldn’t go crazy.’

‘I would if I lived here,’ she said, rising and glowering. ‘So would you, but you don’t live here either. You use it to crash or to study or to take a shower. No one lives in places like this. Living… Jake, you don’t know what living is, and I’m surely not raising my child teaching him this life is normal.’

She closed her eyes then, and she swayed. He was on his feet in an instant, surging around the table to hold her, but her eyes snapped open and she stepped away.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Don’t.’

‘Don’t?’

‘Don’t touch me,’ she whispered. ‘I was a fool to come. The truth was I wanted to see you, as well as needing to tell you about our baby, but it was wrong. You and me… No. There’s no you and me.’

‘Tori…’

‘You’re alone,’ she whispered. ‘And that’s the way you want it. But if I’m alone I’d curl up and die. I need people. I need dogs. I need…life.’

She sighed then and steadied.

‘I’m sorry, Jake,’ she said. ‘Getting angry was dumb. Yelling at you is dumb. You’re doing the best you can.’ She shook her head as if clearing fog. ‘Okay, here’s confession time,’ she said. ‘I’m trying desperately not to fall in love with you. You say you might love me? Well, maybe I know that I could love you. And you know what that means? If I came here, then you’d risk me clinging.’

He didn’t understand. ‘Why would you cling? You have your work.’

‘I’m not talking about my work. I’m talking about needing you, and you needing me. You’re fine with the idea of looking after me. Could you ever admit that you need me?’

‘I…’ There was deathly silence.

‘No,’ she said, and she was fighting now for the composure she’d lost. ‘Enough. This is dumb talk, and we both know it. We’re two mature professionals-we can handle this. Your work is waiting, and my life is waiting. So please, Jake…’

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 sniffed 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.