Dating The Millionaire Doctor

CHAPTER SEVEN

SO SHOP she did, while he stood back and watched in something akin to awe. She shopped with professional purpose.

Quilts, cushions, rugs, curtains, blankets, jugs, vases, wall hangings… There was little hesitation; she simply saw an item, beamed, picked it up, stuck it in her trolley, and when her trolley was full she used his arms instead.

‘You’re not leaving much time-or room-for milk and bread,’ he managed, muffled under rugs, and she balanced another rug on top and steered him towards the door.

‘I can get milk and bread after we’ve taken Rob and Glenda home.’

‘You’re definitely leaving the lodge tonight?’ he asked, and she started unloading onto the register and tried to locate her purse among pillows.

‘Of course,’ she said absently. ‘That’s what this is about. I need to get my own place but I don’t want to live with beige. It’s only one step better than grey, and I’m not going there ever again.’

‘It’d be good if you stayed at the lodge a bit longer,’ he said diffidently, but she’d handed over her money, her hands were free and she could respond now with her full attention. She turned and faced him square on, frivolity gone.

‘Good for whom?’

‘You need to rest.’

‘I wouldn’t rest if I went back to the lodge. We both know that. Not with you around.’

The cashier, a bored teenager with lavender spiked hair, looked suddenly less bored.

‘Well, maybe lack of rest has its advantages,’ he ventured, fighting an adolescent urge to blush-but Tori shook her head.

‘Any more than one night and I might get the wrong idea. No strings, Jake. You don’t seriously want them, do you?’

‘I…’ How had they got here, so fast. ‘No.’ Was there any other possible response?

‘There you go, then.’ She was piling stuff back into his arms, tucking a pillow under his chin. ‘Press down or we’ll have pillows all over the car park. Can you manage?’

‘Yes, of course.

‘Then we’re finished,’ she said. ‘Let’s go.’

Conversation finished. She steered the talk onto inanities while they drove back to her new home and unloaded.

He’d never seen colour used to such effect. Within fifteen minutes the drab little relocatable had become home. Outside it was still a shoebox but inside it was the sort of shoebox a man might walk into and smile, because it looked exactly what his vision of Tori’s home should be.

Even Rusty approved. He’d been staring dolefully at the door when they arrived, lying on the beige carpet. Now he was snuggled between two crimson and sky-blue cushions, with a purple throw-rug wrapped snugly around his injured lower half. He looked approving, Jake thought.

He approved as well.

‘It’ll take me a while to organise the curtains,’ Tori said, glowering at the beige Venetian blinds. ‘These might give us privacy but if anyone thinks I’m looking at them for more than a night they have another think coming. Now…’ She glanced at her watch. ‘Half an hour. I need flowers.’

‘Flowers?’

‘There’s a flower farm half a mile from here. You want to come?’

Watch Tori buy flowers or stay here and wait? Of course he wanted to come.

Rusty decided to come this time, so he drove them both to the flower farm and she bought half a dozen daffodils and then two dozen tulips and then about a hundred gerberas in about three minutes, and then she decreed she was finished.

The word sounded too stark. Finished.

She had such courage, he thought, as they loaded the car and set off again. She was amazing. And more and more the thought of her staying in that sterile little relocatable-despite her additions-was almost unbearable.

But her face was set, determined, as though she’d made a decision and nothing was about to deflect her. She felt his glance and met his gaze and smiled, but he knew the smile was an effort.

He was leaving for New York. He couldn’t help her. Even if he could, that’d mean getting involved-and he didn’t do involved.

Did he?

Lots of things had to be thought through, he mused, fighting confusion. But in the meantime there should be something he could do. There must be some way he could help her.

And suddenly there was. They were driving past a farm gate, and a sign, roughly scrawled on a piece of tin propped against the mailbox, made him take his foot off the accelerator. Then, as the idea took hold, he braked, pulled the car onto the verge and stopped.

‘Um, why are we stopping?’ she demanded.

‘We’ve forgotten something both you and Rusty need.’ He was backing into the driveway and finally she saw the sign.

Golden Retriever Puppies. Ten Weeks Old.

‘We don’t-’ she gasped.

‘Yes, you do,’ he said, and somehow he knew enough of this woman to realise his gut instinct was right. ‘You had four dogs. You and Rusty have had six months by yourselves, and that’s long enough. I have colleagues with dogs and I know how big a part of their lives they are. And I’ve met golden retrievers. They smile. You live in a place where pets are welcome-yes, I saw the sign-so why not?’

Then, as he saw her face, a mixture of distress and despair, he cut the engine, tilted her chin with his finger and said, ‘Tori, you need something warm and alive and new, something not scarred by what’s gone before. If Rusty hates it…if you hate it, then okay, but I do want you to think about it.’

She still looked distressed. He hesitated, unsure what to say, unsure what his feelings were. Last night this woman had moved him as no one had ever done. If he had longer… If it was possible, maybe she’d even penetrate the armour he’d built up around himself.

But for now, he couldn’t leave her like this. Despite the colour and the flowers, he couldn’t leave her in her strange little relocatable. Relocatable… Even the name seemed wrong.

This woman needed a home. Home was a strange concept for Jake, who’d always regarded home as where he could crash with least effort, but there was something about Tori that said home was much more.

‘Last night changed things,’ he said softly. ‘They say men can take sex as it comes, and maybe they’re right, most of the time, but they’re not talking about what we had last night. It’s bound me to you in some way I can’t begin to figure. It made me feel like part of you is part of me. Whether that’s dumb or not, that’s the way you make me feel. Our lives don’t connect. Not now. Not yet. But I can’t walk away and leave you and Rusty without something of me.’

He glanced again at the sign. Maybe this was a cop-out, he thought, but for now it was all he could do. Anything else scared him stupid. ‘So can I buy you and Rusty a puppy?’ he asked again. ‘From me to you.’

‘So we get to hug a puppy in the middle of the night instead of you,’ she whispered, in a voice that wasn’t quite steady.

‘Instead of nothing,’ he said, and he heard bleakness but he couldn’t help it. He hesitated, and then, because it seemed right, he kissed her, gently on the lips, and forced a smile. ‘Though you can pretend it’s me if you like. I hear golden retrievers make great tongue kissers.’

‘Eww!’

He grinned. The distress on her face faded and the tension between them lessened a little. The kiss seemed to have made things better. It had made them seem…friends as well as lovers?

Friends instead of lovers.

Tori was smiling a little now, but she was chewing her bottom lip, looking at the sign, looking at him, looking at the sign again. Focusing on a puppy.

It was no small thing, he thought, to lose three beloved dogs and then to move forwards.

‘Should I call him Jake?’ she asked, and he blinked.

‘Jake.’

‘Big and warm and a bit shaggy.’

‘Hey!’

‘It fits.’

‘I don’t believe I’m shaggy.’

‘You could be,’ she said. ‘If you loosened up a little. If you forgot to be a Manhattan millionaire.’

‘I’m not!’

‘Rob says you are.’

‘Rob talks too much. I’m just-’

‘A doctor doing his best,’ she said, laughter fading. ‘And your best has been wonderful. You saved Doreen’s life last night. In a way, you’ve saved Glenda’s. You’re wonderful.’

The depth of sincerity in her voice was unmistakable. You’re wonderful. He’d never been given such a compliment-by such a woman. And suddenly the light kiss he’d just given her was no longer enough. He desperately wanted to kiss her again-only this time deeply and long-but she was looking at the sign again, and there was a furrow between her eyes that told him her focus was no longer on him.

He had to back off.

‘I guess…’ she said slowly. ‘I’m not working yet. It’d be a good time to get a pup. And it could really help Rusty.’

Okay, forget the kiss. Concentrate on what was important. ‘It’d be a great time to get a pup, and I’d love to buy one for you.’

‘I’d pay,’ she said quickly.

‘No,’ he said, and he tugged her round to face him again. ‘Manhattan millionaire, Tori. My gift.’

She smiled, a little bit wobbly but a smile for all that. ‘If he’s from a Manhattan millionaire, then he should have a diamond-studded collar.’

‘He’d think it was girlie.’

‘Then,’ she said, her smile widening as she climbed out of the car, ‘let’s see if they have a girl. Jake might need to become Jackie. A golden retriever who doesn’t sniff at diamonds. Jake or Jackie. Let’s see what they have.’

She didn’t choose a Jake. She chose a female and she chose a runt. Or Rusty chose a runt and Tori agreed.

He might have known. There were six pups as big as one another, as energetic as one another, as healthy as one another. There was one bigger than the rest, a male who obviously spent his life trying to round up his litter mates, growing more and more exasperated as his siblings didn’t do what he wanted. And then there was a tiny female who tried gamely to join into the family romp and got knocked over every time. Rusty went straight to her, nose to tail, tail to nose, and they started, tentatively, to play.

‘We nearly put her down,’ the breeder told them, as Tori scooped up the pup in one hand and Rusty in another. ‘My husband wanted to-she’s such a runt-only she kept on fighting for her place at a teat and she has such courage that I couldn’t bear to. But she’s not right,’ she confessed as Tori snuggled her under her chin. ‘Her left ear is weird. It sort of sticks up when it’s supposed to flop. And her tail’s supposed to be long and feathery and I can tell already that it’s not. The older she’s getting the worse it’s looking. If you want her, she’s cheap.’

Neither of them was thinking of money. Jake watched Tori snuggle the little girl to her; he watched her with two dogs in her arms, and he felt great. This was going to work.

Then he got distracted. The biggest pup had been tearing round in circles. He had his litter mates rounded up, but then one of his sisters made a break for it. He darted after her, the others scattered and he had to start the whole process again. He practically beamed as he proceeded to bounce around the circle again.

He didn’t know dogs. His mother had hated them, and now he spent his life at work. A dog was out of the question. But he watched Tori cuddle her two and he thought… He thought…

‘Would you like two pups?’ he asked her. ‘I think the round-up guy’s great.’

Tori’s arms were full of wriggly dog. For a runt the little one had plenty of bounce, and Rusty was wriggling, too. They were practically turning inside out to reach each other.

‘Two,’ Tori gasped. ‘Are you trying to drown me?’ She sank onto the floor and was pounced on by a sea of pups. ‘Oh, Jake, I shouldn’t even think about one.’

She was half laughing, half crying. This was a huge thing for her, Jake thought, as he watched her hug armloads of pups. She’d lost three dogs in the most dreadful of circumstances, and she’d lost so much more. For her now to move on… To learn to love again…

‘It feels like a betrayal,’ she whispered but she hugged her runt closer.

‘Grief has to let you go sometime,’ Jake said softly. ‘What did Auden say? Stop all the clocks? They did stop for you, Tori, but now they need to start again. Nothing is worth stopping the clocks for the rest of your life. And if that means loving again…’

‘Says the man who doesn’t do loving.’

‘How did-’

‘I can guess,’ she whispered, smiling up at him through tears. ‘I’m guessing your parents stuffed you so badly you’ve never got over it. So why don’t you get a pup?’

‘I work fourteen hours a day,’ he said shortly. ‘I can hardly leave one of these guys in a corner of the operating room while I work.’

‘I guess you can’t,’ she said sadly, but then a tiny smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. ‘As opposed to me. I’m a vet. I could take these guys to work. I could manage two dogs.’

‘Not three?’ He was still eyeing the round-up king, circler extraordinaire.

‘Can you imagine that guy in my shoebox?’ she demanded, following his gaze. ‘My yard’s the size of a pocket handkerchief. Even one’s stupid. Maybe I shouldn’t…’

Okay, he needed to focus. Forget the round-up king, he told himself, and he crouched among the puppies so he was right in front of her.

‘It would be my pleasure to buy one of these pups for you,’ he said. ‘Please let me.’

Her gaze met his. Her eyes were glimmering with unshed tears, but she was trying to smile.

‘A birthday gift?’

‘When’s your birthday?’ he demanded, stunned.

‘Today.’

‘You’re kidding!’

‘Sort of,’ she admitted. ‘But that’s what it feels like. My birthday. Like yesterday was one life and today’s the beginning of another. Jake, last night…’

The breeder was watching, a big, broad woman in wellingtons and overalls, waiting for them to make a decision on the puppies. This was hardly the time to talk about last night. But…

‘Last night was great,’ he told her. ‘And tonight…’

‘Not tonight,’ she said, fast. Her puppy wriggled to get down. She released him and the king immediately took it as a personal affront that his huddle of pups had been interfered with. He yapped and started circling again.

‘Jake, last night was last night,’ she said. ‘It was the most wonderful gift. It’s just made me feel alive again, like there’s life still to come. So now… As you said, it’s time to start the clocks again. So yes, Jake, I’d love you to buy me a birthday gift. My lopsided puppy. Itsy, I think, after a song my mother taught me.’

‘Itsy bitsy spider?’ he asked, bemused.

‘That’s the one.’

‘My guy could be Bitsy.’

‘Nice try,’ she said and grinned and lifted up her puppy and held her, only this time it was almost as a shield. ‘One pup. No more.’

There were so many conflicting emotions in his head he didn’t know where to start. Business, he thought, and he grabbed his wallet and made a play of finding his credit card. For suddenly he couldn’t look at her. This woman with her arms full of pup. This woman whose life had been destroyed and was now starting again-while he went back to Manhattan. He need never see her again, he thought, and he felt suddenly, unutterably bleak.

Which was nonsense. He didn’t do relationships, and he surely didn’t do relationships with vets who lived on the far side of the world to him.

And he didn’t do relationships with women he might just end up falling in love with.

But he looked at the play of emotions on her face as Itsy licked and licked. He looked at the errant curl that had escaped the knot she’d tied. Last night those curls had been down. He’d run his fingers through them. Soft as silk…

He wanted her.

‘You want her or not?’ the breeder demanded.

The dog. She was talking about the dog.

‘I think we do,’ he said, still watching Tori. ‘Don’t you, love?’ She blinked. ‘Love?’

‘Figure of speech,’ he said hastily. ‘Don’t you, um…’

‘Tori,’ she said and smiled, and it was as if she could read his thoughts. ‘Dr. Nicholls.’ Her smile held the memory of the night before. It was the smile of a woman who’d taken her man, who knew what he was…

Her man?

He belonged in New York, he thought, trying desperately to ground himself.

Remember relationships, he told himself. They never last. His mother had drilled it into him over and over until it was almost a mantra. ‘Depend on yourself and only yourself. You fall in love and you start being stupid.’

Only his mother had lied. If she’d lied about his father, what else had she lied about?

But maybe in this she was right. Stupid would be taking Tori into his arms right now, and holding her, and…

And what? Carrying her back to New York? He surely couldn’t see Tori in his sleek Manhattan apartment. She’d have to walk Itsy in Central Park.

He’d known her for, what, two days? So maybe in this at least his mother was right. You fall in love and you start being stupid.

He concentrated on payment. He felt Tori look at him for a long moment, and then she turned her attention back to Itsy.

Bitsy was chewing his shoelaces. He glanced down at the little dog and he thought Bitsy was the stupid side of him as well.

The breeder scooped him up and put him back into the pen. Bitsy looked out through the bars as if he’d just been put in solitary confinement.

‘Will he sell?’ He couldn’t help asking.

‘Oh, yeah,’ the breeder said confidently. ‘He’s the best of the litter. I’m thinking, though, that I’ll keep him myself for stud. Look at those bones…’

Bones? All he could see was eyes, looking out through the bars as if he’d personally betrayed him.

He glanced at Tori, who was also looking wistfully at Bitsy-while clutching Itsy and Rusty.

‘I can’t,’ she whispered.

She couldn’t. He could see that. They had to get out of here before they had the whole litter.

‘Just Itsy,’ he said.

‘Just Itsy,’ Tori whispered. ‘Two is enough.’

Two dogs?

That was what she meant. She had her house now. She had her dogs. She’d start a new job, a new life…and he’d go back to New York.

What was wrong with that?

They made a fast visit to a pet shop to buy Itsy supplies. Then they headed back to the shoebox to drop off the flowers. They also did two medical consultations. It seemed that word had already spread that Dr. Nicholls had moved into Shoebox Mansions. They arrived back to find a border collie with a grass seed in its paw, and a corgi with flatulence, dogs and owners waiting patiently at her front door.

To Jake’s surprise Tori took it in her stride-in fact, she even seemed pleased. While Rusty and Itsy explored their miniscule backyard Tori sat on the doorstep and turned into a vet again. While Jake and the owner held the big, docile collie still, she carefully tweezed out a cruel-looking hayseed. She cleaned the paw and disinfected it.

She then told the corgi’s owner where to buy charcoal tablets, and to add a little yoghurt to her meals. Both owners went away happy.

‘You’ll be inundated,’ Jake said, thinking of his mother; of the way she’d hated patients’ demands.

‘I like it,’ she said simply. ‘It makes me feel like I belong.’

He thought of his work; of the careful distance he kept. He worked long hours, but to have someone approach him out of context, a neighbour, someone in his gym…

This wasn’t his world.

Tori wasn’t his world, he thought. But how could he leave her?

Maybe he couldn’t.

It was a bit after five before they arrived back at the hospital to pick up Rob and Glenda.

‘We’re a wee bit late,’ Tori said, starting to apologise, but then Glenda spotted Itsy and no apologies were necessary.

Glenda was beaming. The new painkillers were obviously working. The tight lines of pain around her eyes had eased and, even though she was still cradling her arm, there was a huge sense of relief about her. Doreen had gone through the surgery with flying colours. The cardiologist had spoken to her and had been completely reassuring and Rob had promised to take her to see her tonight.

‘And the hand therapist is wonderful,’ she told them. ‘He didn’t do very much-he says I need really good pain control first and he’s only going to work within the limits of what doesn’t hurt-but he massaged really gently and I did tiny exercises, and already it’s feeling better. He’s given me a sheet of exercises to do at home, but I’m to come here every day because he says if we hadn’t caught it now there might be long-term loss of function.’

There might already be a little, Jake thought, but he watched Glenda’s shining eyes and thought a little loss of function would be nothing now that the pain was relieved.

‘So we’re both going to be okay,’ Glenda said happily. ‘But Dr. Fulton says we have to persuade you to stay here. She says anaesthetists make great pain specialists, and this valley needs a pain specialist so badly and if you’re anything like your father you’d be wonderful. She says there’re so many burns victims with long-term problems, long-term pain, that we all need you.’

And suddenly they were all looking at him. Glenda, Rob, Tori…even Rusty and Itsy.

‘No,’ he said, really fast, and Glenda’s face fell. Tori’s face didn’t change, but he thought he saw the smallest quiver…

Don’t go there.

‘We need to get back to the lodge,’ he said, still too fast, and Glenda took the hint and turned her attention back to Itsy.

‘Is Itsy coming to stay?’

‘I’m only coming back to get my car,’ Tori told them. ‘I’ve moved into my new house. Itsy and Rusty and I need to go home.’

Home. There was that word again.

‘Oh, my dear, that’s a shame,’ Glenda said, throwing Jake a reproachful look-as if somehow he could have persuaded her to stay but had chosen not to. ‘Oh, and Itsy would have made the lodge much more fun.’

‘Where’s your cat?’ Tori asked her. ‘Pickles?’

‘In the cattery on James Street,’ Glenda said. ‘But-’

‘Then let’s go spring him and take him back with us.’ Tori grinned happily at them all. ‘Rob says the rule is no animals but I’m thinking he’s the manager and Jake’s the owner. Jake, your stepmother set the lodge up as an indulgence for the wealthy. That’s gone out the window. What it needs now is to be a place people can come to recover. If I were you I’d think about pushing that aspect hard. Even when the fire’s forgotten there’ll always be people who need an interim place, between hospital and home. Pets are the first thing. Rob could make individual runs attached to the bedrooms. Guests can contain their own pet as much as they like, but still take it for runs or cuddle it in bed at night.’ She hugged Itsy and Rusty. ‘Like I do. It’ll be great.’

And there it was again, that queer lurch he didn’t know what to do with.

‘Oh, if we could keep our cat…’ Glenda said, while he tried to figure what exactly he was feeling.

‘And you know what else? You could organise medical visits,’ Tori said, and she was speaking directly to him now. ‘Maybe you could set up treatment rooms so you could have visiting doctors, physiotherapists, hand therapists, counsellors, anyone you need.’

‘You’re talking staff,’ Jake said, trying to focus on business when he just wanted to focus on Tori.

‘You can afford it,’ she said blithely and grinned. ‘I chose a very cheap pup.’

‘You did.’ He was distracted, but his mind was on what she’d said. Manwillinbah Lodge as a health resort?

He looked at Glenda and he thought, It could work.

Maybe Rob would enjoy the challenge.

Maybe he’d enjoy the challenge, he thought fleetingly, but he stomped on that thought almost before it had a chance to reach the surface.

‘Maybe,’ he said, trying to sound dampening, but neither Tori nor Glenda would be dampened.

‘It’ll be lovely,’ Glenda said, smiling and smiling. ‘Doreen and I will come and stay all the time.’

‘He hasn’t said we can take Pickles yet,’ Rob reminded her

‘Are you allergic to cats?’ Glenda asked, suddenly frowning. ‘Like your stepmother?’

He knew nothing about his stepmother. ‘I’m not allergic,’ he said shortly.

‘Do you like cats?’

‘Yes, but-’

‘Then there’s no problem,’ Rob said.

‘You could buy a cat,’ Tori told him, and they all looked at her. She coloured a little but held her ground. ‘He… Jake said he couldn’t buy a puppy because he works fourteen hours a day.’

‘Do you, dear?’ Glenda demanded. ‘That’s far too long.’

‘Yes, but he could still have a cat,’ Tori said patiently. ‘Or better still, two cats. Cats are fiercely independent but they’re still there when you get home at night.’

‘You need someone,’ Glenda said, and glanced at Tori, who was still colouring, and amended her statement. ‘I mean…something.’

‘I think I know someone with a litter of kittens,’ Tori said.

‘No!’

‘No?’ Tori said cautiously, and he thought he heard laughter behind her tentative query.

‘If I want a cat I can get one in New York.’

‘Yes, but will you?’

‘No.’

‘No?’

‘I don’t have room in my life for anything.’

‘Or anyone?’ Glenda said, forgetting to be innocent, and she was looking from Tori to Jake and back again.

‘No,’ Jake said, steadier this time, and firmer. ‘And Mrs. Matheson will have dinner on. We need to get back.’ And he swung himself into the driver’s seat without another word.

She sat in the passenger seat holding her dogs, while Jake concentrated on driving. Rob and Glenda were chatting in the back seat. Jake was staring straight ahead and she thought there were things in this man’s past that were hurting now.

She’d noticed the way he’d watched the crazy little male pup as he did his round-ups. He’d looked…hungry. She saw the same expression when he glanced at her. As if he was looking at something he wanted but couldn’t have.

Fair enough, she thought. She felt a bit the same. Or, okay, she felt a lot the same.

They collected Pickles from the cattery. The ancient tabby purred with pleasure when Glenda collected him. He eyed the dogs with weary indifference through the bars of his cat cage, as if to say, If this is what I have to put up with to be free, then so be it.

But Tori’s dogs weren’t staying with Pickles at the lodge. She was taking them back to the relocatable tonight. Her new home.

She had an almost irresistible urge to stay at the lodge one more night, but she glanced across at Jake’s set face and she thought, No, one more night would be one night too many.

Maybe last night had been one night too many-but then neither of them had planned it. It had just happened, a primeval need that had shocked them both.

Mrs. Matheson was on the verandah. She walked down to meet them and added her voice to the chorus urging her to stay.

‘No,’ she said, sounding ungracious, suddenly close to tears. She thrust the dogs into Jake’s arms and disappeared inside to fetch her possessions. When she came back out Glenda and Mrs. Matheson and Rob had gone. There was only Jake, leaning against her car. He was holding Itsy, and Rusty was at his feet.

He didn’t look like a millionaire, she thought inconsequentially. He looked a bit rumpled, casual, nice.

Jake.

She had to go.

She thrust her stuff into the trunk and lifted Itsy from Jake’s arms before she got teary. She put the dogs in the crate in the back seat, and she was right to leave.

She was ready to walk away.

‘Jake…thank you,’ she whispered, holding out her hand in an absurdly formal gesture of farewell-but suddenly she couldn’t say anything more because he had her in his arms and he was kissing her, in a crazy way, in a way that said he wanted her, he needed her, she was his woman.

This had nothing to do with reality, she thought wildly, but she let herself be kissed. Of course she let herself be kissed.

And kissed and kissed.

This was still about last night. It was about the letting down of barriers-the beginning of her new life.

It had nothing to do with her wanting this man.

She couldn’t want him. She couldn’t.

But for just a moment, well, maybe for just several moments, she surrendered to him, and she felt her body light from within. She felt beautiful. She felt wanted. Jake was kissing her, holding her, her breasts were moulding to his chest, her feet were hardly touching the ground-and she felt all woman.

And when finally he let her go, when finally he put her away from him and held her at arm’s length, she felt as if her world was shifting.

She felt breathless and bruised…and like she couldn’t bear to walk away.

And it seemed that neither could he. ‘Come to Manhattan with me,’ he said, and her world didn’t just shift; it threatened to roll right over.

‘Come to Manhattan?’

‘Tori, this thing between us…’

‘What…thing?’

‘The thing that says I want you,’ he said simply.

Simple? There was nothing simple about this. What was he asking? She stared up at him, dazed beyond belief.

‘Tori, I don’t understand this,’ he said softly, tugging her close again, kissing her hair. ‘I’ve never felt like this. I’ve never expected to feel like this. But now… I’m due to start work back in Manhattan next week and how can I leave? How can I walk away from you?’

‘I guess…you don’t have to leave,’ she whispered, trying to make sense of what he was saying. ‘You own two houses here.’

‘This is my father’s world, not my world,’ he said, and suddenly he sounded more sure of his ground. He sounded forceful, determined, even a little angry that she could make such a suggestion. ‘I’m an anaesthetist in a large teaching hospital. I’m good at what I do. I’ve worked hard to get there. But you and I…’

‘You and I.’ She said the words slowly. ‘You and I? There’s a “we”? Jake, you don’t have room in your life for a puppy. Yet you ask me…’

‘Plenty of doctors have wives.’

Wives. The word hung between them. It felt like a threat, Tori thought, suddenly bleak beyond description. Plenty of doctors have wives.

Was he asking her to marry him? What a thought. What a way to bring it up if he was.

‘So…these doctor’s wives…they don’t need big yards?’

His brow snapped downwards. ‘What the… That’s not what I’m saying.’

‘So what are you saying? You’re asking me to marry you?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said explosively. ‘I hadn’t even thought of marriage. But the way you make me feel… You just do something to me.’

‘You’re saying it’s my fault?’

‘I’m not talking about fault.’

‘No,’ she said bleakly. ‘But you don’t want this. To feel like this.’

‘I can’t pretend. I never intended to…’

‘Of course you didn’t, and I won’t be proposed to against your better judgement,’ she said, suddenly angry. ‘To be slotted into your life in the few minutes you’re home between work and sleep? In a place where there’s no one I love? How can you ask that of me?’

‘We could take Itsy and Rusty back with us. We could get a larger apartment.’ He raked his hair and she thought, He really hasn’t thought this through. He hadn’t even known he was going to ask her to join him until the words were out of his mouth. Now he was trying to figure out how he could make it work. ‘We could make arrangements,’ he said.

‘I don’t want to make arrangements,’ she snapped. Anger had arrived now, coming to her aid in a red hot mist. He thought he was attracted to her, so he’d take her home, like a puppy from a pet shop, without even doing the groundwork. Plenty of doctors have wives. What sort of statement was that?

‘I’d take up space in your life, Jake Hunter, and you don’t have space to give,’ she told him, knowing she was right, even if it hurt like crazy to say it. ‘My community is here. My work is here. My life is here. It’s not sitting in some drab New York apartment waiting for you to get home at night.’

‘It’s not drab.’

‘What colour is it?’

‘Grey, but-’

‘I rest my case.’

‘Tori, this is stupid.’

‘It is, isn’t it,’ she said, and suddenly, inexplicably, the anger died. For somehow she knew where he was coming from. He was as confused as she was, and as blown away by the unexpectedness of it. ‘I know,’ she said, much more mildly. ‘You’re feeling about me the way I’m feeling about you, like we have something special. But honestly, we don’t. We had a…a frisson. Like a lightning bolt or something that shocked us and made us think we were special. Only you know what happens after lightning hits? You run in case it hits again. You don’t want to be a part of my life, Jake, and I can’t think I could possibly be part of yours. So let’s just get over it.’

There was a long silence while anger dissipated. While sense prevailed.

‘If that’s what you want…’ he said at last.

It’s not what I want, she thought. But what did she want?

She wanted him to sweep her into his arms and carry her off into some magical happy ever after-only he didn’t even have a yard for a dog. Where was the happy ever after in that?

‘We need to say goodbye,’ she said, struggling with her dignity, and Jake looked down into her eyes for a long, long moment and then finally he nodded.

‘We do.’

Her anger was completely gone now. This was Jake, the man she’d loved last night. The man she could still love. The man she might even learn to trust. Anger was gone, but sadness took its place. Regret that a different time, a different place, could have worked.

‘Goodbye,’ he said softly, and she thought, I will not cry, I will not.

But then he smiled down at her and suddenly she didn’t want to cry. She tilted her chin and met his gaze square on. This wasn’t about loss. This wasn’t about grief. It couldn’t be.

Jake had been a watershed, a magical, romantic way to start her new life. He’d been her knight in shining armour, she thought mistily, and while the thought remained she stood on tiptoes and kissed him, lightly this time, and gently.

‘My Lancelot.’

‘Lancelot?’ He sounded confused.

‘You were my white knight, right when I needed you most.’

‘A white knight,’ he said, sounding revolted, and she grinned.

‘Only for two days,’ she said. ‘While I played damsel in distress. Only now I’m not. So thank you, Jake. Off you go, then-back to New York, to your medicine. I wonder if there’re more damsels in distress in Manhattan.’

‘I suspect most women where I come from know how to rescue themselves.’

She didn’t like that. It sounded as though she needed to get a bit of spine. She straightened and she pulled her hands away and she put as much spine in her voice as she could.’

‘I’ll remember you for ever,’ she said, firmly and surely. ‘I’m sure I could have rescued myself, but it was much more fun being rescued by you. Thank you very much, Dr. Hunter. I’m sorry I can’t follow you to Manhattan. I’m sorry I couldn’t buy Bitsy as well as Itsy, and I’m sorry you don’t have a yard. Meanwhile we need to move on. We both have our careers to get back to.’

And somehow she smiled-and he mustn’t know just how hard that smile was-and she climbed into the car and started the engine.

‘Goodbye, Tori,’ Jake said, but her car was already moving.

He felt sick. He stood in the car park of his father’s lodge and watched until he could no longer see her car.

He’d let her go.

He had to. He’d asked her to come with him and she’d refused. What did she expect? That he stay here?

He thought back to the little scene back at Shoebox Mansions, to her impromptu clinic. People needing her. People expecting her to help at any time.

He compartmentalised his life. He’d go nuts if he accepted that kind of need.

But then… He turned and Glenda was on the verandah, watching him watch Tori leave. ‘Oh, my dear,’ she said and he thought, She understands.

How could she understand? She didn’t know him.

She’d known his father.

Community.

No, he thought savagely. What had his mother said? It was insidious. It sucked you in.

His life was in Manhattan and he had no place here.

‘Dinner’s ready,’ Glenda said but her message was much deeper.

‘You go in,’ he told her.

‘We’re waiting for you.’

It’d be a long wait, he thought. He had limits.

He was not his father’s son.

‘We’re waiting,’ Glenda said again, gently, and he gave up and walked inside with her.

He could do dinner. He just couldn’t do the rest of his life.