The Australian's Proposal (Mills & Boon By Request): The Doctor's Marriage Wish / The Playboy Doctor's Proposal / The Nurse He's Been Waiting For (11 page)

Harry might be there tonight.

She’d ask Harry about her mother. Say she was a friend of a friend in Melbourne—from a long time ago.

‘Hi you two.’

Mike and Emily greeted them, and Kate was relieved to see Emily was at last taking some time off. She worked in Theatre when Cal was operating and did shifts in other parts of the hospital, but mostly Kate had met her in the ICU where Emily had spent her free time fretting over Jack.

So her presence at the fire party was not only good for her, it meant she had at last accepted he was stable and his recovery would continue.

Susie unfolded the blanket she’d been carrying and spread it by the fire. She and Kate settled on it, though they had to move only minutes later when Megan and Hamish and Hamish’s guitar arrived, all three joining Susie and Kate on the blanket that had become, in Kate’s eyes, almost minuscule.

Not that Hamish was bothering her—not deliberately. Oh, no, he was being Colleague Hamish again, cheerful, chatty, making Megan laugh at silly jokes, asking her about Jackson’s progress, although every member of the hospital staff personally checked Jackson’s progress every day.

‘He’s coming home tomorrow,’ Megan said happily. ‘Well, home to Christina’s house with me. I’m not sure how I’ll manage, what with Mum over in Townsville with Dad.’

‘You know we’ll all do anything we can to help you with Jackson,’ Susie said, putting her arm around Megan and giving her a hug. ‘Anything you want, just yell, and half the staff will come running.’

Megan nodded.

‘You’ve all been so kind—and with Jack, too, although he’s still too sick for me to tell him all that happened.’

She turned to Hamish.

‘Should I tell him?’

‘About having Lucky at the rodeo?’

So Hamish’s ability to read minds wasn’t restricted to reading hers, Kate thought as Megan nodded.

But how would he reply? Kate held her breath, glad Megan hadn’t asked her.

‘I think you will eventually,’ Hamish said. ‘Not necessarily right away. But one day there’ll come a time and you’ll know it’s the right time. Then you’ll tell him and he’ll understand.’

He took one of Megan’s hands and held it in both of his.

‘You’ve been very sick, too, and have been through tremendous emotional pressure, so think about yourself as well as Jack and Jackson. Do what’s right for Megan sometimes, not just what’s right for them—or for your parents. That’s been a burden you carried on your own for far too long.’

Megan rested her head on his shoulder, and Kate heard her whispered thanks.

Kate was glad of the shadows as she blinked moisture from her eyes. Colleague Hamish was definitely something special as doctors went.

Drinks were passed around and Hamish shifted from the blanket, settling on a rock nearby and strumming lightly on his guitar. People started singing, soft ballads they’d obviously sung before, around other fires blazing on the beach. But the togetherness of it made Kate feel lost and alone again, and she remembered why she’d come on contract—and why she’d come at all.

She looked towards Hamish—strumming quietly on his rock. Could she forget her quest? Go back to Scotland with him?

Did it matter who her father was?

She no longer knew the answer to that one, and not knowing made her feel more lost than ever.

Helpless.

She waited until Susie had gone to get more wine and Megan stood up to talk to Emily and Mike, then she slipped away, heading for where the casuarina trees threw shadows across the top of the beach—shadows deep enough to hide her departure.

‘Leaving so early? I’ll walk you home.’

Brian’s voice came from the very deepest of the shadows and, certain she hadn’t seen him approaching as she’d walked up the beach, she wondered if he’d been standing there.

Watching …

A shiver she didn’t understand feathered down her spine, and when Hamish spoke from close behind her, she was so relieved she nearly flew into his arms.

‘Sorry, had to say goodbye to Mike,’ he said, catching up with her and slipping his arm around her waist. ‘Oh, hi, Brian! You going down to join the party?’

‘Well, I was but then I saw Kate leaving and thought I’d walk her home.’

‘Kind of you, but I’d already offered. You go and join the fun.’ Hamish’s arm tightened, drawing Kate closer to his body.

‘Oh, well, I guess I might as well,’ Brian said, and he walked slowly out of the shadows towards the beach.

Reluctantly, because standing hip to hip with Hamish was very comforting, Kate drew away from her rescuer.

‘I might have wanted to walk home with Brian,’ she told him, angry because she couldn’t handle the way Hamish changed from colleague to, well, some kind of lover with such consummate ease.

‘You could have said so,’ Hamish pointed out. ‘You could have said, “Thanks but, no, thanks, Hamish, I’m going home with Brian.”’

‘I wouldn’t have gone
home
with Brian,’ Kate retorted. ‘Not the way you make it sound.’

‘Even to avoid me? Because that’s what you’re doing, isn’t it, Kate?’

She heard his pain but had to argue.

‘It’s best that way.’

Hamish put his arm around her and drew her close again.

‘Is it? I don’t think so. And is it just me you’re avoiding or are you afraid to let anyone, even colleagues, get close to you
in case you’re hurt again? Is that why you walked away from the fire? Is that why you’ve suddenly got doubts about finding your father?’

‘That’s ridiculous! You don’t know that!’ Kate snapped, irritated beyond reason by too many sensations ricocheting through her body.

And by the fact he always seemed to get things right!

He was holding her just lightly enough that she knew she could break away.

If she wanted to …

‘Don’t I?’ He drew her just slightly closer. ‘Oh, Kate!’ he sighed. ‘You’ve every right to feel vulnerable, but is hiding away from emotion the answer? You’re braver than that, Kate. You’re a fighter. I saw you in action with Jack.’

She didn’t feel like a fighter. She felt like a wimp—weak and feeble, and nervy from the touch of this man’s hands. All she wanted was to lean against him and feel his lips on hers, and let the sensations of a kiss drive all the demons from her mind.

She was obviously quite, quite mad!

She moved away from him, remembering avoidance, but he tugged her closer, then somehow they were in the darkest shadows, and he was kissing her again, kissing her with such ferocious intensity she couldn’t breathe, let alone think.

‘I know you’ve got a good heart that reaches out to touch all those around you,’ he said, what seemed like hours but was probably only minutes later. ‘And I know you’ve been immeasurably hurt by people you loved and by circumstances beyond your control. I understand your fear, my Kateling, but your kisses tell me something else. So if you want me to stop kissing you, then …’

Kate heard his words coming to her through a fog of well-being, and she leaned against the man who still held her in his arms.

‘You’ll have to tell me!’ he said crossly, tucking her closer and pressing his lips against her hair. ‘You’ll have to stop kissing me back.’

‘Not tonight,’ she whispered. ‘Let’s, just for tonight, forget about everything else and kiss again. Maybe we’ll get sick of it—like chocolate if you have too much.’

She felt his chest move as he chuckled, then his hands clasped her head, tilting it up again so his lips could claim hers.

Stupid in the heart, she told herself when, drunk with kisses, they turned and, arm in arm, walked back towards the house.

‘I’ll leave you at your door,’ Hamish announced, as they climbed the front steps. ‘I don’t know about you, but the chocolate analogy didn’t work for me. However, I’ve always had one guiding principle that fits most situations, and that’s never to make a decision at night. An idea that after a few pints is absolutely foolproof and bound to bring in millions is often revealed as flawed in the sober light of day and, though I don’t want to equate women with bright ideas, the same rule works with relationships.’

‘Or non-relationships, as the case may be,’ Kate whispered, thankful she didn’t have to make a decision because the desire humming through her body made thinking nigh impossible.

But, true to his word, he left her at her door, Colleague Hamish back again, placing a chaste kiss on her forehead before opening her door for her and wishing her goodnight, his deep voice with the soft Scots burr making magic of the simple words.

Kate shut her door and leaned against it. She heard his footsteps going along the passageway, bypassing his door, growing fainter as he walked through the kitchen. Was she imagining she could hear the springs on the old settee squeaking?

Was he sitting out there now?

Regretting his gallantry at leaving her at her door?

Half expecting her to join him?

Her body remembered the electric charge their kisses had
generated, and yearned for the release and forgetfulness that spending a night with Hamish would surely bring.

But it would only be for a night and after that—awkwardness, embarrassment, regret. All of those and more—the big one—guilt, because casual sex wasn’t her way.

Worse, guilt because he was far too nice a man to use that way.

Kate shook her head, changed into pyjamas and climbed into her lonely bed.

Hamish slumped down onto the settee—again.

He was obviously mad!

Leaving Kate at the door like that—going all gentlemanly when what he should have done was ease the two of them through that bedroom door and let nature resolve the fragile barriers Kate kept erecting between them.

He held his head in his hands and applied pressure to his skull with his fingers, though it wasn’t his brain that was hurting.

It was all the rest of him, hurting in a way he’d never felt before—like an all-over cramp, which proved all the rot you read about love being joyous and uplifting was totally wrong. Love hurt like hell, that was what love did.

If it
was
love, not some as yet unidentified tropical disease.

Don’t joke about it, this is serious, he told the flippant self that had, up till then, ruled the emotional part of his life.

But if he couldn’t joke, how else to handle it?

Grown men didn’t cry.

Though he didn’t feel like crying. He felt like hitting something, like raging and ranting and yelling at whatever callous Fate had decreed he fall in love right here and right now.

Not only fall in love, but fall in love with probably the only woman on the entire planet who had excellent, viable, irrefutable reasons for not loving him back!

Well, there were probably quite a few women who wouldn’t want him. But only one he wanted …

Sunday in the ED was far quieter than Kate had expected it to be. Hamish, who was on duty elsewhere in the hospital, drifted in, in search of Mrs Grubb’s chocolate-chip cookies, which he swore he could smell somewhere on the premises. He explained that people in country towns really didn’t like bothering doctors on a Sunday.

‘Or perhaps they don’t like giving up their Sundays for minor medical problems when they can just as easily take Monday off work and bother doctors then,’ Kate suggested, and Hamish tutted.

‘So young to be so cynical! It seems you’ve got out of the city just in time. But you’re right in one thing—Monday is always frantically busy.’

‘My day off,’ Kate said smugly, pleased to be handling what could have been an awkward post-kissing conversation with Hamish so well. Or maybe it was Hamish who was directing it so well …

But she kept up her end. ‘Monday and Tuesday this week, then back in ED again from Wednesday through to Saturday,’ she explained with a lot of false cheer.

‘But you’ll miss the rodeo,’ Hamish protested. ‘You’re working this weekend—shouldn’t you be off next weekend?’

Kate shrugged off his concern.

‘I’m a contract worker, and I said when I was employed I’d be happy to work weekend shifts,’ she explained, not adding that she’d thought having weekdays off would be more advantageous in her search.

What search?

Hamish leaned against a convenient wall and studied her.

‘My decision in the sober light of day was that I was wrong in my decision last night,’ he said quietly, and Kate had to smile.

‘So the chocolate-chip cookie search was a scam.’

‘Not entirely. They’re here somewhere—but I did want to see you.’

‘And having seen me?’

‘I thought I’d put a proposition to you. Let’s talk to Charles—no one else—about your family.’

‘But Charles grew up at Wetherby Downs—that’s hundreds of miles away from here.’

‘OK, scrap Charles—talk to Harry. He’ll be discreet. He can find out what you need to know then you can decide whether or not you still want to make contact with your father.’

Kate stared at him.

‘What are you talking about? Why wouldn’t I want to make contact with my father?’

He smiled—the gentle smile that curled around his lips and lurked so sympathetically in his eyes. Yet he couldn’t
know
that the rash, grief-laden impetus that had propelled her thousands of miles north had turned to doubt and dread.

‘I imagine because it finally entered your admittedly beautiful head that maybe a middle-aged man might not want an unknown daughter turning up on his doorstep.’

He came closer and took her hand.

‘I know you care about people, Kate. Care deeply for those you love. That’s been obvious since I first met you. So it’s not so hard to take the next step and imagine how disturbed you must be feeling about disrupting the life of a man you don’t know but might want to care about. Of course you’re wondering and worrying about the damage your appearance in his life might do, not only to him but to his entire family. And, being Kate, you’re prepared to sacrifice your own happiness in order to not disturb his—whoever he might be.’

Kate stared at Hamish, unable to believe this man could so easily read the thoughts that had been festering in her head all week. To the extent that when she’d gone to the library one morning and found old electoral rolls, she hadn’t been unduly disappointed when she hadn’t found her mother’s name—or any voters with the same surname.