The Doctor's Unexpected Family Read online

‘Sure? Because it’s about to tip down.’ He had the ladder at its balance point on the final beam, and it teetered.

  She nodded. ‘I’m fine. Sorry about this old garage.’

  ‘I like it, actually. It has character. I can feel it casting its spell. I’m going to start wanting to muck around with tools soon, doing projects.’

  Caroline groaned. ‘Not you, too!’

  ‘Why, you have a prejudice against home handymen?’

  ‘Home handymen who never finish anything, like my Dad, yes!’ Stretching up her hands, she took the ladder and began to ease it to ground level.

  Declan jumped down from the bench and came beside her. ‘Let me now.’

  ‘All right.’

  He stretched in front of her and his shoulder nudged her arm and the side of her breast before she could step back. She caught the warm and oddly pleasing smells of dust, clean cotton and men’s anti-perspirant all mingled together, then heard him let out a grunt as he lowered the foot of the ladder to the concrete floor.

  ‘How heavy is it?’ she asked, from the safe haven of the driveway in front of his car.

  ‘Not heavy at all.’ The ladder’s rubber feet scraped across the concrete as he slid it out the garage door, while the top of it cleared the rafters. Then he swung it to the horizontal and carried it back in. He showed no clumsiness, and no apparent effort. ‘Here?’

  ‘Yes, if you lay it flat, as I said, the boxes can sit on top, and there should still be room for the car if you do decide to garage it. Do you need help bringing the boxes?’

  ‘No.’ He smiled. ‘You probably have to—’

  ‘Pick up Josh. Yes.’ The excuse she should have used an hour ago, thereby avoiding that lovely, dangerous wine.

  ‘It was good of you to help with the ladder. I’ll tell Tom you’ve made me feel very welcome, very settled,’ he drawled, his eyes laughing.

  She laughed back at him, still flustered by her reaction to the way his shoulder had felt against her, and by the ease in the way he dealt with her. He acted as if their shared amused embarrassment over dear Tom gave them a sweet secret, as if it had already turned them into friends. While she was relieved at the way this let Tom off the hook, it had begun to disturb her a little, too.

  Declan McCulloch was an attractive man. She’d noted that. It was an objective fact. But she couldn’t—wouldn’t—must not—feel any personal attraction to him herself.

  Nice, Declan thought, after she’d gone.

  He couldn’t get by, in his working environment, without someone to share a laugh with. Tom might never stop trying too hard. Natalia probably had a better sense of humour in her native Russian than she did in English. Secretary Steph and the three lab technicians he hadn’t managed to have much of a conversation with today, and had no feeling about yet.

  Caroline, on the other hand, seemed intelligent and perceptive and funny, with a solid life of her own beyond the hospital and an odd combination of strength and self-doubt that he liked. An ally, he hoped. Someone to count on.

  He made several trips back and forth with flattened boxes then switched off the garage light and closed the creaky doors. His father’s car had been garaged behind doors like this—ancient doors, made of splintery wood that didn’t get painted often enough, shielding an ancient car, a Morris. It had been held together by sheer Irish bravado and in its final years had been in such bad shape that it had needed to be pushed by Declan and his brothers and sisters almost more than it could be driven.

  Good Lord, he was a long way from home!

  He hooked the padlock through the catch, then turned towards the house. Darkness had fallen completely by this time, and there was no moon tonight. Despite the light spilling from the windows, the house looked solitary.

  Suzy was far away in Sydney.

  She kept to an odd timetable with her writing, rising at four and working at her computer through two bowls of cereal and several cups of coffee until around noon. Then she’d eat lunch and take a long nap until four or even five, awaken, shower and be raring to go.

  She loved to sit in a restaurant or a bar with a group of friends—other writers, musicians, lawyers, anyone with a dynamic temperament and a quick brain—talking for hours. She’d usually roll into bed at around midnight, sometimes later.

  In London, she’d taken him into a world he’d never inhabited before, and he’d enjoyed it enormously. In Sydney, it had been the same. How would they survive the next year, though? Glenfallon was one of those towns mourned in American country music songs, where they rolled up the sidewalks at nine p.m.

  Suzy had already told him that her timetable would change once she began working on her novel. She planned to keep more regular hours. But would it be as easy as that? How would she fare, in creative terms, without the urban stimulation she was used to?

  Meanwhile, he was alone here, in a town he hadn’t heard of this time last year, in a country he’d never planned to come to. It wasn’t Suzy’s fault. And it wasn’t his. They were making the best of the raw material at hand. Suddenly, however, he felt lonely, and not fully convinced that the loneliness would disappear if Suzy herself appeared magically at the front door.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ‘HAS he said when Suzy will be down?’ Tom asked.

  ‘No, he’s said he doesn’t know yet when she’ll be down, because it’ll depend on rewrites.’

  ‘I wish she’d already finished the TV thing and was ready to start the novel.’

  ‘I think she’s ready personally, it’s the contractual commitment to the TV series that’s the problem. They’re running behind schedule, apparently.’

  ‘Because I’m really keen to organise this barbecue while the weather’s still nice. You know, showcase our wonderful outdoor lifestyle.’

  ‘Is Eileen in Melbourne at the moment, then, Tom?’ Caroline asked gently.

  He blinked. ‘Yes. She went yesterday. How did you know?’

  ‘Oh, the aura of quiet desperation and imminent emotional breakdown might have given me a small clue.’

  ‘That bad?’

  ‘Believe it! Look, he invited me in for a glass of wine the other night…’

  ‘That’s great! You didn’t tell me!’

  No, I kept it to myself, and I’m still not sure why.

  ‘And we had a bit of a heart-to-heart.’

  ‘Even better! If he feels he has friends here in the department…’

  ‘And as I guessed before, it’s just not going to happen, what you’re hoping for. He considered himself settled in London before he met Suzy. He was prepared to move to Sydney for her sake, and to suffer through this rural exile for a year, at most two, but they’re both city-oriented—’

  ‘She wants to bury herself in the bush to wrestle with her great oeuvre.’

  ‘Only until it’s finished. Then, from what he said, his time here will be up and she very clearly sees herself landing back in Sydney with a splash upon the novel’s publication, ready to be the toast of the town.’

  ‘She’s confident!’

  ‘Yes, I got that impression. Confident and urban.’

  ‘We’ll still do the barbecue.’

  ‘Of course. But no big, throbbing hidden agenda with it, Tom, really. And if she’s not available for a couple more weeks, the delay doesn’t matter.’

  ‘No, damn it.’ He beat his fist in his palm. ‘We’ll have it this weekend. Without her. He shouldn’t be condemned to solitary misery just because she’s not here. Natalia wants it this weekend.’

  Everyone wanted it this weekend. Declan himself seemed happy to go along with the plan. Tom asked the rest of the department to invite a few friends who might be likely to become bosom buddies with the new arrival. Since Caroline thought it wise to dilute the atmosphere as much as possible, she co-opted her old friends Emma and Nell, newer friend Kit, and Kit’s and Emma’s husbands, Gian and Pete.

  Natalia and Alexei Akmanov were not fans of gardening. They’d recently put in an in-ground, solar-hea
ted and gorgeously landscaped pool which, along with de luxe barbecue and jarrahwood outdoor furniture, filled their entire back yard.

  It was the perfect setting for a gathering of this kind. Everyone brought swim gear, drinks and a contribution to the meal. There must have been at least forty people present, including Declan himself, by the time Caroline arrived.

  He stood by the barbecue, talking to Alexei, Gian, Pete and a man Caroline didn’t know, which left Caroline’s three friends free to huddle with her near the drinks table and ask questions.

  ‘He looks nice,’ Emma said. ‘Is he?’

  ‘So far. Hasn’t blamed the cyto techs for any of his own mistakes yet.’

  ‘Ouch!’ Kit said. ‘I just had a Pap test on Friday. How many mistakes has he made?’

  ‘None, I hope! No, I just meant he doesn’t seem the type to use medical hierarchy to his own advantage. You’re nurses, Kit, Emma, you know what I mean.’

  ‘Where’s the girlfriend?’

  ‘Yes, I want to meet Suzy Screenwriter.’ Nell gave her wicked, cynical grin.

  ‘I should never have said that to you, Nell!’

  ‘I like it.’

  ‘You would!’

  ‘She’s not standing with him, though,’ Kit observed. ‘Is she—?’

  ‘In Sydney. Not here. Tom got stubborn and decided not to wait till she was free.’

  ‘He doesn’t look as if he minds. Declan, that is.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure he does, though. He’s not the kind of man who’d show it, do you think?’

  ‘We don’t know him, Caroline,’ Emma reminded her. ‘You do.’

  ‘Not well, after a week.’

  He glanced across and saw her at that moment, lifted his glass and smiled. She waved back, and felt a sudden sensation of warmth and happiness that she knew was dangerous. She didn’t know him, she reminded herself. Not really.

  And she did know that he was emotionally involved elsewhere. Yet there was a curling tendril of awareness in her that seemed to grow each time she saw him, and that she couldn’t control.

  ‘Kit, Bonnie’s not with you today?’ she asked Kit Di Luzio quickly, as a way of deflecting attention from the new man in town.

  ‘No, Freddie has her. Gian and I knew we wouldn’t have a second’s peace with her around the pool. She’s so confident. I could see her launching herself into the water when we weren’t looking, and forgetting completely that she can’t swim.’

  Kit and Gian had formally adopted three-year-old Bonnie last year. She was Gian’s brother’s child, legacy of a shortlived relationship. Marco Di Luzio hadn’t even known about Bonnie until her mother’s death when Bonnie had been just a few months old.

  Caroline knew that Kit and Gian would like to have a child of their own, too, but Kit had struggled with infertility in a previous relationship, so no one ever teased her or Gian about baby-making as they might have done with another newly married couple.

  Emma and Pete were only recently married, too. Three weeks ago, in fact, after a very cautious courtship and engagement. Pete had had a lot of problems to sort out with his ex-wife, and both he and Emma’s priority had been to make sure his little twin daughters felt settled and secure.

  ‘Jessie and Zoe are swimming like tadpoles, Emma,’ Nell commented, watching Emma’s new stepdaughters.

  ‘I know. Aren’t they gorgeous?’

  ‘Barbecue’s ready, everyone,’ Pete said. He came up and touched Emma on the arm. ‘We’d better get the girls out of the pool.’

  Still thinking about her friends’ weddings, Caroline stayed by the drinks table, sipping her wine spritzer, while the others dissipated in the direction of pool or barbecue.

  She had cried luxuriously on both occasions. She always cried at weddings, and had decided that attempting not to cry only made her worse. It did her good, somehow, to witness the right two people joining themselves in marriage, to remind herself that there were men in the world who weren’t like Robert.

  Robert had phoned a couple of days ago. He wanted to take Josh for a weekend in Sydney, soon. There was a father-and-son rugby coaching clinic coming up at Woodside. Last year, he’d wrestled a reluctant agreement from her that Josh would drop that silly soccer stuff when he reached high school and play Robert’s old game of rugby union instead. Given this agreement, it was understandable that Robert wanted Josh to get a head start with the game.

  Why at Woodside, though?

  It was Robert’s old school. They’d put Josh’s name down there as a baby, but surely Robert wouldn’t expect him to attend now. There was a good private boys’ school here in Glenfallon which should answer any of Robert’s arguments about the importance of plugging their son into the right old boys’ network.

  If Josh went to Woodside, he’d have to go as a boarder, and that would mean—

  ‘Not hungry?’ Declan asked her. She hadn’t even noticed his approach.

  ‘Hungry but not pushy,’ she answered. ‘Happy to wait.’

  ‘You were frowning. I wondered if something was wrong.’

  ‘I’m fine.’ She smiled, then made a point of inhaling the aromas rising from his filled plate. ‘And looking at that lot—emphasis on lot—I’m getting hungrier by the second.’

  ‘Now, if that’s a more-than-broad hint that I’ve taken more than my share, Caroline Archer…’

  ‘What would have given you that idea?’ She felt comfortable teasing Declan, after what he’d said on Monday evening—that Tom’s innocent pressure would be easier to take if he had someone to laugh with.

  ‘Australians are pretty good at food,’ Declan said. ‘Especially outdoor food. And they’re not afraid of an ethnic mix, I’ve noticed. English sausages, Middle Eastern kebabs, Indonesian satay sticks, Russian piroshki…I felt that as the supposed guest of honour it would be only tactful of me to sample everything, so as not to unwittingly offend.’

  ‘You’re making that up on the spot.’

  ‘Ah, you’re right. It’s pure greed, actually.’

  The only problem was that between a man and a woman teasing was a cousin to flirting, and she knew she could too easily forget the difference. Her gaze drifted from his heaped plate and snagged on his forearm, where the sun glinted on a soft shading of dark gold hair. He wore baggy, sand-coloured shorts that reached to his knees and an open-topped shirt.

  He had a lovely neck.

  A lot of men didn’t. Too thick, or too short. And a lot of women didn’t seem to consider necks. They fixated on pecs, biceps, butts and thighs. However, necks were close to the top of Caroline’s list—lean, smooth, lightly tanned necks, not too long and not too short, curving out into straight shoulders below and a clear jawline above.

  Back off, she told herself. Keep the boundaries in place.

  But she couldn’t make the boundaries too high and strong, or Tom would think she was letting him and Eileen down. It was a fine line to tread.

  ‘Hey, I’m playing tennis next weekend,’ Declan told her. ‘With a couple of doctors I’ve only just met and the husband of the pathology department secretary’s sister. Any idea what that’s about? Nothing to do with Tom, I don’t suppose?’

  ‘Oh, Declan!’

  ‘It’s all right. I like tennis. Although I’ll have to surreptitiously whack balls against the side of your dad’s garage all week to get up my match-winning form.’

  She laughed and, as if getting this reaction had been his only goal in approaching her in the first place, he dismissed her immediately afterwards with a light command. ‘Go on, get some food before it all disappears.’

  When she’d done so, she took care to wander off in another direction, and barely exchanged another word with him for the rest of the afternoon. She noted, though, that he spread his attention very evenly between all the guests who’d been invited to meet him, and that reassured her.

  He hadn’t flirted with her. He was only being polite.

  ‘Caroline, I’ve just been called down to A and E for a fine needle a
spiration,’ Declan said.

  ‘Oh, yes?’ Caroline looked up from the slide she was screening.

  He stood in the doorway of the cyto techs’ office, looking relaxed and cheerful. Was Suzy coming down this weekend? she wondered. Not everyone managed to look relaxed and cheerful this late on a Friday, so it could well be that he had something in particular to look forward to—something which stripped away the end-of-week fatigue that everyone else struggled with. Half an hour ago, for example, she’d heard a crash of metal and glass and some very frustrated swearing issuing from the lab along the corridor.

  ‘Want to come and prep the slides for me?’ he said. ‘This is my first trip down there, and things might be different to what I’m used to.’

  ‘No problem.’ She took a quick look at her watch and saw it was already nearly four-thirty. Not the usual time for a FNA, especially on a Friday. It must be urgent.

  They threaded their way together through a series of stairs, internal corridors and walkways, collecting the relevant trolley from the storage room near Outpatients on their way through. Nell encountered them as they arrived in her department.

  ‘The fine needle?’ she said. ‘Patient in Room Three?’

  ‘You’ve seen her?’ Declan asked.

  Nell nodded tightly. ‘Get a sample if you can,’ she said. ‘If you can’t…’ She let her words trail off, and disappeared into another room.

  Declan shrugged at Caroline, and she clicked her tongue in reply. Nell was rarely very communicative on the job. As for herself and Declan, they weren’t all that communicative either, but somehow it felt different. A shrug and the click of a tongue could speak volumes with the right person, she’d found.

  What had Nell meant by suggesting Declan might not get a sample?

  The patient in Room Three, Alison Scanlon, was just shy of her fortieth birthday, according to the new file just created for her. No previous medical history of relevance. She’d presented in the emergency department half an hour ago, with bleeding just below her armpit.

  The bleeding ‘wouldn’t seem to stop’, she’d said. Now she sat rigidly upright on the edge of the treatment table, pressing a gauze pad to the side of her right breast. She’d been crying, and so had the woman with her—her sister, if family resemblance was any guide. They both had dark blonde hair, small, uptilted noses and freckles on fair skin.