The Doctor’s Special Touch

CHAPTER NINE

DARCY walked into the refuge and stopped dead.

Ally was scrubbing the kitchenette floor.

The sitting room was deserted. A fire still crackled in the grate, but the only other sign of life was Ally’s backside. It was an unmistakable backside. Her trousers were stretched tight over what was really a very nice posterior. The sleeves of her windcheater were hauled up almost to her shoulders. Her blonde hair was escaping from the twist she’d had it in earlier in the day, and it was wisping forward.

She had a scrubbing brush and a bucket of steaming water, and she was scrubbing as if her life depended on it.

The place stank. That was the only sign that anything was wrong.

Darcy had brought Will Daly down to the hospital to be told there was drama at the refuge, but Will had lost too much blood to leave. He’d had to cross-match and set up a transfusion and it had been half an hour before he’d been able to find out for himself what was happening.

‘Ally,’ he said-tentatively-and she turned. When she saw who it was, she sat back on her heels and she glared.

It was some glare.

‘I might have known,’ she said with loathing. ‘I have two square feet of kitchen floor-space left to scrub and, hooray, here comes the cavalry. The great Dr Rochester, arriving just when he’s most needed. What a hero.’

‘Steady on,’ he said, trying not to smile. ‘Are things OK?’

‘Fine. No thanks to you.’

‘I’ve been busy.’

‘Doing something nice and clean?’ she demanded with gentle mockery. ‘A squashed finger, I hear. I bet someone else scrubbed the floor.’

‘His wife,’ he admitted.

‘How is he?’ she asked, sarcasm fading.

‘Bad. But I’d say it’s mostly repairable bone damage. Not nerve as far as I can tell. It’s Will Daly. He says he knows you.’

‘I went to school with Will.’ She brushed her wispy hair behind her ears. ‘He always beat me at marbles. So he’ll be OK?’

‘He has all major feeling. He’ll need an orthopaedic surgeon.’ He smiled. ‘If he’s lucky, his skill at marbles will hardly be impaired.’

‘Good.’ She managed a smile in return but she was looking distracted. ‘You’ll send him to Melbourne?’

‘I’ve arranged for him to be taken to St Margaret’s tomorrow. They have the best orthopaedic unit and Robert can go with him.’

‘The guy with the face?’

‘Mmm.’ Darcy strolled over and looked down at her shining floor. ‘Is he OK?’

‘He didn’t join in the feast,’ Ally told him. ‘The pain relief you’ve given him is so welcome that all he’s done is sleep.’

Darcy’s smile grew a trifle rueful. ‘I guess we should be thankful for small mercies.’ He gazed down at her for a moment. She looked almost unreal. Sitting on the floor with her scrubbing brush, looking like…

Looking like what? He didn’t know.

Looking like Ally.

He gave himself a swift mental kick. Hell, where were his thoughts? Concentrate on medicine.

‘Robert’s not a priority public patient for transport,’ he told her, struggling back to medical imperatives. Somehow. ‘But his face is urgent and this will get him into the system fast. I couldn’t get him on the chopper with Marilyn this morning, but he can go by road with Will tomorrow. I’ll send Kevin as well. His throat’s fine but he needs urgent psychiatric care. He and Robert can keep each other company.’

He gazed around at the tidy sitting room, and through to the bedrooms beyond. Only one bedroom was still lit, and there was a gentle murmur of a comforting voice coming from the dimly lit bedroom. Betty? ‘Tell me what’s happening here.’

‘Will’s safely in hospital?’ she asked.

‘Yes. I brought him in half an hour ago and they told me I was needed here. I came as fast as I could.’

‘What, you? Needed?’ She seemed to abandon interest in him as she turned back to her scrubbing. ‘I can’t imagine why.’

‘Ally…’

‘Betty’s here,’ she told him. ‘As you can hear. She’s watching Marigold. I’ve given Marigold Maxolon but she’s still retching. I don’t want her left alone. She’s exhausted to the point where she’s almost unconscious, and I don’t want her choking.’

‘You’ve set up a drip?’ he asked cautiously, and she scrubbed a bit more before she answered.

‘A drip. Yes. A drip. Three drips, Dr Rochester. Two very sick kids, another mildly ill and Lorraine. Robert didn’t join in the feast and the others must have cast-iron stomachs. Tell me, was it your idea to send sick children home from hospital and give them a welcome-home feast of chocolate éclairs and lamingtons?’

‘Not a good idea, huh?’

‘Not.’

‘If it’s any consolation, I didn’t order the lamingtons.’

‘It’s not a consolation.’ She gave her floor a final swipe and then sat back and surveyed her work. ‘Finished. Darcy, haul that window wider. It stinks in here.’

‘You’ve only just noticed?’

Her glare returned. ‘I haven’t only just noticed, as a matter of fact. And as well as this place stinking, I stink as well. Marigold was sick all over me.’

‘Why isn’t Cornelia scrubbing?’ he asked, and got a look that said he was thick.

‘The smell of vomit makes Cornelia retch,’ she told him. ‘Which is a lot of use, I don’t think. And scrubbing floors isn’t in Betty’s job description unless it’s in a hospital and it’s imperative, and even then she’d rather not. So she’s caring for the sick. Which leaves the massage therapist scrubbing.’

‘Good old massage therapist.’ He couldn’t help it. The corners of his mouth twitched all by themselves. ‘Did they train you in scrubbology in massage school?’

‘Where would you like this brush?’ she asked, and raised it.

He laughed and stretched out a hand to help pull her up. ‘Hell, Ally, I’m sorry.’ And then his nose wrinkled.

‘Don’t say it.’ She heaved her bucket over to the sink. ‘Well, that’s it for me. Dr Rochester has arrived and I can go back to being a massage therapist.’ She wiped her hands on her trousers and took a deep breath. ‘Enough. I’m out of here. I’ve written up all medications on the chart I’ve left with Betty. Check what I’ve done. They’re your patients and I shouldn’t have interfered, but if you will hare round the country fixing broken fingers when you should be down here scrubbing floors…’

‘I wasn’t just fixing broken fingers.’

‘No?’ She turned back to him and raised her eyebrows. ‘If you’re about to tell me that you stopped for a while to admire the moon over the sea then I don’t want to know.’

‘I was organising accommodation.’

She stared at him. And then she seemed to come to a decision. ‘This is nothing to do with me,’ she told him. ‘You need to check your patients. I need to slope off home and have a shower.’

‘Do I need to check the patients immediately?’

‘Unless you trust me.’

‘I do trust you.’

She blinked. ‘I…’

‘Of course I trust you. You’re a fine doctor.’

‘I’m not a doctor.’

He let that one slide. It was obviously ridiculous and both of them knew it.

‘I’ve been organising accommodation,’ he told her, cutting her off before she could figure out what to say next. ‘Long-term accommodation for everyone. Including accommodation for you and your mother.’

She blinked again, owlish in astonishment. ‘Sorry?’

‘You heard.’

‘You’ve been arranging accommodation for me and my mother?’

‘I assume that’s what you want,’ he told her, watching her face. ‘A furnished house where you can have your mother with you?’

She was dumbfounded and it showed. ‘What do you know about my mother?’

‘A lot,’ he told her, his voice gentling. He was treading on eggshells here and he was aware of it. It behoved him to be very, very careful. ‘I talked to Sue today.’

‘Sue?’

‘Marilyn’s daughter. She was very fond of you when you were kids.’

Ally’s suspicious face softened. ‘I… She was great. Sue and her mum and her dad. They were wonderful. That’s why…’

‘Why you outed yourself as a doctor to help Marilyn?’

‘It might have been.’ She hesitated, as if she was considering whether to talk or not. ‘What did Sue say?’

‘Not much. But enough. What she and Betty and you yourself told me made me make a few more enquiries.’

‘You have no right.’

‘No,’ he said seriously. ‘I don’t have any right. But it’s a hell of a story, Ally. Your mum had it so tough. Your grandfather washed his hands of her and abandoned her to Jerry. She couldn’t break away herself but she gave you into your grandfather’s keeping because she was afraid for your welfare. Her life must have been the pits.’

‘She let me go,’ Ally whispered. She turned away, ostensibly to lift the empty bucket from the sink but he knew in reality it was to give herself some space. Her voice was so low he could hardly hear it. ‘As a child, I didn’t realise what a sacrifice it must have been,’ she whispered. ‘The whole thing. Leaving my grandfather in the first place so I wasn’t aborted, and then swallowing her pride and bringing me back.’

‘She couldn’t break away, though, could she?’

‘Jerry was the only security she knew. My grandfather wouldn’t exactly have killed the fatted lamb when she reappeared with me. His anger was vicious and it’s a wonder he agreed to keep me at all.’ She swallowed. ‘And then…when I was small I was stupid enough to resent her. Stupid enough to hate her for sending me back to my grandfather. I even sided with my father.’

‘Your father wanted you?’

‘My father always wanted me to stay with them,’ she told him, scrubbing at the sink with a dishcloth. ‘It was only my mother who was afraid for me. I was sick when I was four-an infection that turned septic-and it frightened her. Apparently she threatened them. She said if they didn’t let her leave me with my grandfather, she’d go to the police. She’d tell them everything she knew about Jerry. But she went back. And by the time my grandfather died, my mother was ill.’

‘She’s been diagnosed with almost crippling depressive illness,’ he said gently-and waited.

At the sink, Ally was pleating the dishcloth with care. ‘How did you find that out?’

‘The locals knew your mother was institutionalised-that’s why you were put into foster care when you were twelve. But now…’

‘She hasn’t been in an institution for six years,’ she whispered. ‘Not since I graduated as a doctor.’

‘I know that.’

‘How?’ The dishcloth was being folded into smaller and smaller pleats.

‘I have friends in the mental health services.’ He shrugged. ‘And in the police force. Sergeant Matheson obtained the case notes from Jerry’s arrest when you were twelve, and we went from there. And I know. It’s totally unprofessional, but when I made some tentative enquiries about your mother and added that I was worried about you, I got an earful. About how you’d taken her out of the institution the minute you started earning. You put everything into her care.’

‘I tried to give her a life,’ she whispered. ‘She gave me one.’

‘But-’

‘But nothing,’ she said, suddenly turning fierce. She turned on him then, her anger blazing. ‘Fifteen. Fifteen! Seduced by a man who was twenty years older than her. Kicked out of home by her father, forced to live with that…with that…’ Words failed her. She took a deep breath, fighting fury. ‘And then she gave me up. She gave up her little girl. I remember, you know. I remember her bringing me here and Grandpa being cold as ice and her sobbing and saying he had to take care of me, it was his duty. She said it was Grandpa’s duty to care for me but it was more than that. It was his duty to care for her.’

‘But it’s not your duty.’

‘Don’t give me that,’ she flashed. ‘Don’t.’

He hesitated. He was pushing too hard, he decided. Change tack.

‘Tell me about you and medicine,’ he said, and waited.

There was a long silence. It stretched on and on. She wasn’t going to answer him, he thought, but then…

‘I decided it was the only way,’ she told him. She was leaning against the bench, her hands clenching and reclenching at her sides. He felt an almost overwhelming urge to walk forward and take those clenching hands in his, but he didn’t. There was a look on her face that told him she’d run a mile.

‘From the time I was little, I was taught that medicine was the answer,’ she said dully. ‘My mother said Grandpa could look after me because he was a doctor. She couldn’t look after me but Grandpa could. So I figured the way I could look after us was to be a doctor, too. Maybe I was naïve. But Grandpa… He kept saying Mum could have been a success. She could have been a doctor. It was like all our problems wouldn’t exist if only she’d studied medicine. Stupid, isn’t it? But it was something I held onto through the whole nightmare of childhood. When I was with Grandpa and I was miserable, I read his textbooks. When I went into foster care, I studied and studied. If I could just get to be a doctor, I thought, it’d solve all our problems. I could take care of my mother like no one ever had. I could take care of both of us.’

‘But…it didn’t work?’

‘No,’ she said flatly. ‘Of course it didn’t. It was a child’s dream. It was my grandfather’s horrid legacy and it backfired.’

‘What went wrong?’

‘Mum came to live with me,’ she said drearily, as if it was old history that had long lost interest through retelling. ‘Yeah, I was a hot-shot medical intern. I worked hard and I earned more than enough to keep us both and it was all supposed to be good. But I couldn’t get close to her. She’d look at me like she was seeing something else. She sat in my gorgeous apartment, day after day, and she did nothing. She just sat. Like she was already dead. And then…’

She faltered, but somehow she forced herself to go on.

‘I passed my obstetric exam,’ she told him. ‘By that time I was starting to treat her as part of the furniture. I was hardly trying to reach her any more. Anyway, the night of my exam results, I came home jubilant, bringing champagne and lobster and chocolates. The guy I was dating came with me. He was a neurosurgeon and I was an obstetrician. Two fantastic success stories. Still Mum just sat there. Just…looking. And that night…’ Her voice hushed almost to a whisper. ‘That night she attempted suicide.’

‘Ally…’ He made a move toward her but she flinched. As if she was afraid. He stilled. He mustn’t push. He mustn’t. This was far too important.

‘She left a note.’ Ally swallowed and stared down at her hands. ‘She said that I had a life now, just like Grandpa’s, and she was proud of me. But my life had nothing to do with her. Nothing had anything to do with her. I was a success and I didn’t need her. I’d never needed her. She’d stuffed everything.’

‘Hell, Ally.’

‘I didn’t know what to do,’ she whispered. ‘All the reasons I’d done medicine… Suddenly they didn’t mean anything. She took an overdose of aspirin-hardly an inspired choice for a suicide. She went into kidney failure and for a week I thought I’d lost her. My boyfriend told me if she lived then I should walk away. Get her committed back to that awful place she’d been in. It would have been so easy. But I sat through that awful week and I thought of all the people who’d walked away from her in the past. And I couldn’t.’

‘Of course you couldn’t,’ he said gently, and she flashed a suspicious look at him as if she thought he was humouring a child. But she continued, her voice full of remembered pain.

‘Anyway… One of the nurses in the birth unit I was working in was a trained massage therapist,’ she told him. ‘I used to watch her rubbing the babies and massaging the mothers who were traumatised by the births and couldn’t sleep. Liselle did her massages in her own time, but she loved doing them and so did the mothers and babies. When I’d been sitting in Intensive Care for three days, waiting to see if Mum would live, Liselle came to see me. I was exhausted past reason. So she just sat there, and she rubbed my hands and my shoulders and I felt myself relax. It gave me a tiny time out, but I so needed it. It was like a window out of a nightmare. And then I went in and I gently massaged Mum’s face and neck-and she opened her eyes and she smiled at me. It was the best moment.’

‘But…’ He was trying to understand. ‘Your medicine…’

‘My medicine wasn’t as important as my mother,’ she told him. ‘I took myself out and bought a massage book and I sat with her and I tried to reach her through touch. All the pills she was taking were useless. Touch reached her when nothing else would.’

‘Medicine-’

‘Oh, medicine works,’ she told him, with a flash of something that might almost be humour. ‘I’m not saying you’re not needed, Dr Rochester. There’s not a lot of call for massage when you’re treating squashed fingers or obstructed labour. But for me, for now, massage works. Over the last couple of years I’ve sold everything I could to keep us afloat, and I’ve been back to college, learning massage as a professional.’ She smiled then, a faint half-smile that was suddenly almost embarrassed.

‘This time it was different,’ she told him. ‘It was something I could talk to my mother about. I came home every night and we discussed what was happening. I practised on her. Do you know how good that felt? It was wonderful. And the miracle is that she started learning, too. Just a little. Slowly. I practised on her and she practised on me. And by the time I qualified as a full remedial therapist, she had a certificate as well. She’s a relaxation masseuse. Qualified. It may not seem very much to you, but I can’t tell you…’ Her voice broke. ‘I can’t tell you…’

She didn’t have to tell him anything. He gazed at her face, and he saw a mixed-up combination of happiness and uncertainty and hope. Hope for a future she was working desperately hard to embrace.

No. She didn’t need to tell him anything, he thought. He already knew.

He was falling in love.

Wrong.

He’d fallen in love.

When had it happened? He didn’t know. He only knew that it had.

After Rachel had died, he’d thought it could never happen again-and maybe it hadn’t. Because what he was feeling for Ally was a far, far different thing than the emotions he’d felt for Rachel.

Different but the same?

Two wonderful women. Two wonderful loves.

One who’d died six long years ago, and one who was gloriously, wonderfully alive.

And this was Ally. Ally, who’d pitted herself against the world and who was still fighting. Who stood there looking bereft and defiant and filthy and workworn and exhausted-and the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. The most beautiful woman in the world.

Ally.

What he really wanted to do was to walk forward and take her into his arms. Right now. The sensation was almost overpowering and he had to physically haul himself back. She wasn’t ready. He knew she wasn’t ready.

‘How’s your mother now?’ he asked, carefully, as if he might break something infinitely precious.

‘She’s with friends. But she’s happy. She’s cut right back on her medication. She smiles. She’s cooking a little. She’s seeing massage clients.’

‘My friend told me that she’s changed unbelievably.’

‘Your friend?’

‘Harry Rubenstein at Lawry Hospital.’

Her eyes lit. ‘You talked to Harry?’

‘Harry’s a friend from way back. I tracked your mum through the institution records and they said she’d been discharged into Harry’s care.’

‘Harry’s been wonderful,’ she told him. ‘It was Harry who suggested we might come back here. My mother was happy here once, and Harry thought it might help her even more.’

‘Did Harry advise you to give up medicine?’ he asked incredulously, and she shook her head.

‘Of course he didn’t. But I figured it out for myself. Like someone slapping you over the face with a wet fish-finally you get the obvious. Sure, make my mother better by recreating my grandfather. By flaunting what she could have been in her face. I don’t think so.’

‘You’re never your grandfather.’

‘I tried to be.’ She sighed. ‘Anyway, that’s my story. It’s why I’m here. My mother’s being cared for by friends for the first few weeks while I get myself settled.’

‘Until you can offer your mother stability again.’

‘Harry told you that?’ Her anger flashed out. ‘He takes a lot on himself.’

‘He’s no longer your mother’s treating psychiatrist,’ Darcy said gently. ‘But he cares about you both. Deeply. And I don’t blame him.’ He hesitated. ‘Can we go somewhere to talk?’

‘No.’ She swallowed and he saw another flash of fear behind her eyes. What was she afraid of? Him? The thought was almost unbearable. ‘These people need you to stay here,’ she told him.

‘I-’

‘If you have something to say, say it now. Here.’

‘I told you. I’ve found you somewhere to live. I’ve found everyone a place to live.’

Silence. The tap was dripping behind her-a steady plink, plink. It was starting to worry him.

Or maybe…it wasn’t the tap that was worrying him. He didn’t know how the hell to start. He didn’t understand her fear.

He had to say what she needed to know.

‘You knew that Jerry’s father owned much of the land around here?’ he said at last.

She nodded. Still distrustful.

‘I’ve been asking questions of the locals this afternoon,’ he told her. ‘It seems the old man still owns property.’

‘The land on the ridge.’

‘More. There’s a farm on the promontory before you get to the lighthouse. There’s a manager on it and it’s where the Hatfields used to stay when they came to town. It’s run as a dairy farm-it could be really productive, but the word is that it was being kept for Jerry in case he ever wanted a respectable living.’

‘Why didn’t Jerry take his people there?’ Ally asked, puzzled. ‘Instead of up to the ridge.’

‘Jerry’s been hiding. He was even hiding from his father. The old man’s so angry I suspect if he’d known what Jerry was doing he would have turned his son in to the police himself.’

‘How do you know this?’ She was holding herself rigid, Darcy thought. She still looked as if she was about to run.

‘I talked to him,’ Darcy told her. ‘I went out and spoke to the manager who’s about a hundred, and he phoned old man Hatfield who’s about a hundred and ten.’

‘But…why?’

‘I want that farm for these people,’ Darcy told her, and she gasped.

‘You’re kidding.’ And then, as she thought about it: ‘He’d never agree. All old man Hatfield cares about is profit.’

‘He cares about his name. According to the police, he helped Jerry escape overseas and he’s helped him relocate at other times. Now…’

‘Now what?’

‘Now he’s deeply ashamed. The farm’s neglected. The rates haven’t been paid. My suggestion-with the backing of the local councillors-is that the farm be signed over to the joint ownership of the people of Jerry’s community, on the understanding that they don’t press any charges against him.’

She thought about that, and seemed to find it wanting. ‘Are there any charges they can lay against Jerry? Other than the ones that are already outstanding?’

‘Who knows?’ Darcy said. ‘We certainly implied there were.’

‘We? Who’s we?’

‘Me and Sergeant Matheson.’

‘What on earth is this all to do with you?’ she demanded, and he smiled.

‘I’m a family doctor, Ally. I look for cures. Ever since yesterday I’ve been worrying about these people, thinking that their long-term trauma is going to be intense. They’ve been living together for years. They have no support. Split into separate units, I suspect they’d go the way of your mother.’ She winced and his voice gentled. ‘You know that’s right.’

‘I…I guess.’

‘Anyway…’ He still wasn’t sure how she was taking this but he had to continue. ‘While the councillors were talking about this-’

‘The councillors?’

‘Our town council consists of six people,’ he said. ‘Sergeant Matheson, Fred, Elaine, Myrtle, Hilda and me. You know them all. They certainly know you. The sergeant says he’s the only one who hasn’t had a massage yet and he wants the situation rectified.’

Her look of confusion deepened. ‘So what were they talking about? Besides massage.’

‘The farm, of course. And then you.’

‘Me?’

He wanted to hug her. She stood there looking like a waif, a bereft child, but…more. She was all woman, he thought. A complicated mix of baggage, a magnificent masseuse, a doctor, a loving daughter, a spitfire who’d go after Jerry with a gun if she had to. A beautiful, desirable woman.

Ally.

He had to stay focussed. For the moment he had to stay focussed on not loving Ally.

Impossible ask.

‘Ally, there’s a fisherman’s cottage down on the harbour,’ he told her. ‘Two up, two down. It belonged to Elspeth Murdoch who died last year and left it to be used by the council as they see fit. If we ever get funding we might set it up as a tourist information centre, but meanwhile it’s furnished, it’s lovely and it’s vacant. We thought of it when we were trying to figure out where we could relocate Jerry’s lot, but of course it isn’t big enough. But then we thought of you.’

‘I can’t afford to rent anything yet.’

‘That’s just it.’ He smiled, trying desperately to ease the tension in her eyes. ‘The council has decided it needs a caretaker. We’re offering it to your mother and to you.’

She stared, unbelieving. ‘Why?’

‘You feel badly about your mother,’ he told her, his eyes not leaving her face. ‘This town feels badly about you. There’s a lot of guilty consciences round here. There’s people who are whipping themselves that they didn’t guess it was Jerry Hatfield come back to the ridge. And there are people who believe they should have stood up to your grandfather all those years ago-and then to your father when he took you away from where you belong.’

‘But-’

‘Your mother will be welcomed home with all honour, Ally,’ he told her. ‘You know that.’

She looked dumbfounded.

‘What…what should I do?’ she asked, and she sounded so lost that he had to steel himself to stay still. But some things were impossible not to say.

‘You could let me kiss you,’ he told her.

And waited.

‘Kiss…’

‘I’m falling in love with you, Ally.’

Mistake. He watched her face slam closed, shuttered against something that hurt.

‘No.’

‘No?’

‘I can’t…’ She took a deep breath and then slowly turned back to the sink and laid her dishcloth down. When she turned back to him her face was inscrutable. Blank as a clean slate.

‘You can’t buy another doctor for this town,’ she told him. ‘Not with your cottage. Not with you.’

He froze.

‘I’m not trying to buy another doctor.’

‘I’m not going back to medicine.’

‘You can’t help yourself,’ he said gently, gesturing through to the dimly lit bedroom. ‘Tonight…could you walk away?’

‘I must.’

‘Would your mother deny you the right to be a doctor?’

‘My mother denies me nothing. She never has.’

‘So she’d support-’

‘I don’t want to be a doctor,’ she told him, anger surging. ‘I’m a massage therapist. It works. I love it. I love making people feel good. I love helping.’

‘You helped tonight.’

‘And now you’re here and I can leave.’

‘You can’t walk away from what you are,’ he told her. ‘And you can’t walk away from me.’

Her breath drew in on an angry hiss. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

He hesitated but it had to be said. ‘It seems crazy, I know. It seems way too sudden. But I just have to look at you-your beauty, your courage, your humour… Ally, I can’t help myself. I’ve fallen head over heels in love with you.’

Her face closed. He’d known it would. It was way too soon.

‘Well, I don’t love you,’ she snapped. ‘Why the hell would I? Men. I’ve had three of them in my life. My father, my grandfather and Jerry. Why would I possibly want more?’

‘You had a boyfriend when you passed your obstetric exam,’ he said, and her face stilled.

‘So I did. That was when I was trying to pretend I could be normal. I could put away the past and take control of the future. But it’s not going to happen. I’m happy now, and if you think I’m ever going to put my future in the control of a man-’

‘Ally, I don’t want to control you.’ Damn, why couldn’t he hug her? Why couldn’t he touch her? But her whole stance spoke of fear and he knew to move would be a disaster. ‘I don’t want to change you. If you want to be a massage therapist…’

‘I do.’

‘Then why would I ask you to be anything else? I love you just the way you are, Ally,’ he said softly. ‘How can I not?’

‘Right.’ Her lips tightened. ‘Fine. So what am I supposed to do here? Fall into your arms? Move into my grandfather’s house and play the doctor’s wife?’

‘Hey, Ally.’ He was startled almost into laughter. ‘I don’t think we’re going straight to the blue-rinse, bridge-playing, lording-it-over-the-town-as-the-doctor’s-wife scenario just yet.’

‘Don’t laugh at me.’

‘I’m not laughing at you. I could never laugh at you.’

‘Then why mock me?’

‘I’m not mocking you.’

There was a cough from the bedroom next door. Another. And then the sound of retching.

‘Marigold’s being sick again,’ Ally said, almost conversationally. ‘You’re needed.’

He glanced toward the bedroom but Betty was there and she was surely capable of dealing with a retching child. She hadn’t called him.

How could he leave Ally now, with so much left unsaid?

‘I need you,’ he told her.

‘You need a medical partner. I’m not it.’

‘I need you.’

‘Right.’ Her voice was an angry jeer. ‘You’ve known me for how long?’

‘Long enough.’

‘Leave it.’ She stared at him for a moment-almost desperately-and he took a step toward her.

‘Darcy, don’t.’

He hesitated, but he couldn’t let her go. Not like this. He had to make her see what he was feeling. That he was a human-not some controlling male figure out for what he could get.

Ally moved then, trying to brush past him. His hands reached for her and he touched her face. Gently. With no force. If she wanted to ignore him, she could. She could keep going.

She could leave.

But she paused.

There was a moment’s stillness.

‘Don’t turn me into an ogre, Ally,’ he whispered. ‘I love you. I love you and I’ll do whatever I have to do. I’ll wait for however long it takes.’

And then, before she could move, before she could react, he bent his head and he kissed her.

He kissed her gently. Lightly. It was a feather touch of lips against lips.

And it was unbelievable. Unbelievably sweet. Unbelievably wonderful.

He’d known she’d feel like this, he thought as he cupped her face in his hands and pulled her gently against him.

He loved her.

The knowledge was intensifying by the minute. The certainty. It was like some great triumphant shout.

Or it was some sweet insidious whisper, a warmth of loving that embraced his heart. That seeped from her lips to his and filled his heart with something he’d hardly known he’d been missing.

Warmth meeting warmth.

Need meeting need.

Dear heaven, he loved her. His mouth moved on hers and he felt her respond. Her lips gently parted and her hands moved up to touch his face.

Ally.

Here was his home, he thought with sudden absolute surety. Here was his peace.

Ally.

The kiss couldn’t last. It couldn’t. There was a medical imperative-a sick child-and they both knew it. Ally pulled back, but as she did so he saw her eyes looked dazed. Her fingers lifted to touch her lips where his had pressed, and she looked at him as if she’d never seen him before.

There was a long silence. Things were changing. There was a conversation here, unsaid but real for all that.

A man and a woman and a sudden intense knowledge that things could never be the same again.

His heart was hers and she knew it. But it terrified her. He could see the terror.

‘I don’t… I can’t…’ she managed, and it was almost unbearable not to haul her into his arms and kiss away the dread.

But there was a soft call from the bedroom. ‘Dr Rochester?’ Betty was calling, and he could hear her reluctance. Whether or not she’d guessed what was happening out here, she needed him.

The medical imperative. He had to go.

‘Ally, you can,’ he said softly. ‘Trust me. You can. We both can.’ And then with a last, long, reluctant look he turned away-and it was the hardest thing he’d ever done in his life.

Marigold was waiting. Medicine was waiting.

Before he’d reached the bedroom door she was gone.

She walked out into the night, and had slammed the door closed behind her.

She was gone.