Marion Lennox - Stormbound Surgeon

With a whoop of sheer loving triumph he swept her up into his arms so he was carrying her down the hall. He was laughing into her gorgeous dancing eyes and she was laughing back at him, loving him, wanting him…

‘Then so be it,’ he told her. ‘So be it, my love. Let’s see if we can make a baby. The way I feel tonight, we might even make quads!’

They were falling onto his bed, their clothes were disappearing. The moonlight was slanting across their bodies, as if in blessing…

Man and woman, becoming one.

Dawn came too soon. Or maybe it wasn’t dawn. Something was ringing.

Joss stirred. Amy was cradled in his arms, her lovely hair was splayed out over his chest and she was cradled against him in love and in peace.

Who said married couples needed double beds? he thought sleepily. Single worked just fine.

‘Um…it’s the telephone.’ Amy lifted her head. ‘Why did we end up in your room when the phone’s in my room?’

‘The world’s in the rest of the house. Here there’s just us.’

Which was fine-but the telephone was ringing.

‘Maybe it’s urgent,’ Joss said.

‘I think we should forget the medical imperatives. Charles the First can give it a shot.’

Charles the First? Oh, right. The ancient doctor with dementia. ‘Maybe.’ But the ringing kept on. ‘Maybe someone’s dead.’

‘There’s not a lot we can do if they’re dead,’ she said practically. ‘Call the undertaker-not us.’

‘Amy…’

She sighed. ‘Hey, I’m the conscientious one, not you.’ She rubbed her face against his bare chest, and her hair felt like silk against his skin. The sensation was unbearably erotic. ‘OK, oh, noble doctor. Go and answer the phone. I’ll keep the bed warm.’

‘Promise?’

She smiled down into his eyes, love and laughter fighting for supremacy. Love won. ‘I promise.’ But she was kissing him so deeply that he couldn’t resist.

The phone stopped. Two minutes later it started again and Joss swore.

‘It’s nine o’clock on a Monday morning,’ Amy told him, still laughing. ‘The world has a right to intrude.’

‘It’s not nine o’clock.’

‘That’s what your watch says.’

‘You’re lying on my watch.’

‘That’s not all I’m lying on. Go and answer the phone.’

‘Did I tell you I love you?’

She beamed. ‘Yes. But tell me again if you like.’

‘I love you.’

‘There you go, then.’ She kissed him lightly on the lips and pushed him away. ‘That makes a hundred and eleven. But tell me again.’

‘I love you.’

‘A hundred and twelve. Go and answer the phone.’

It was Sue-Ellen from the nursing home.

‘The ferry’s operating. Emma’s parents were the first over and they want to know if they can take their daughter home right away.’

Joss groaned. He really did need to check the child first.

‘I’ll be there as soon as I can,’ he told her.

When he returned to his bedroom Amy was gone.

‘Amy?’

‘I’m in the shower.’

‘You promised to keep the bed warm.’

‘I lied. People do.’

He thought about that as he hauled open the bathroom door to find her under a cloud of steam.

‘I don’t,’ he told her.

‘Yeah, right.’

There was only one way to handle insubordination like that. Joss hauled the shower screen wide and swept Amy up into his arms. They stood naked as the water poured over them and he kissed her so hard she lost her breath and had to pummel him away with her fists. Breathless and laughing, she leaned back in his arms and looked up at him with love.

‘If you need to see Emma before she’s discharged, we need to go.’

Damnably they did.

‘Joss…’

‘Mmm?’

‘Thank you for last night.’

‘It’s the first of-’

‘No.’ The laughter died then. ‘Joss, it’s not the first of anything. It’s a one-off. Today you’ll get into your stepmother’s amazing pink Volkswagen and you’ll drive onto the ferry and out of my life.’

‘No.’

‘Yes.’ She struggled to be free and reluctantly he loosed her. Not so much as you’d notice, though. She was still linked within the circle of his arms.

‘I’ve had a long-term engagement,’ she told him. ‘I don’t want another.’

‘But-’

‘No.’ She was holding him close but her voice was urgent. ‘Joss, you know I can’t leave here for six years. This place would die. So many people would lose so much. I can’t hurt them and you wouldn’t want me to.’

He thought about that. In truth, he’d been thinking of little else. Except for how wonderful this woman was.

How he needed to keep her.

‘You can’t stay here,’ she told him.

He thought about that.

‘Joss?’

‘Mmm?’

‘You need to return to Sydney.’

He did. Damnably, he did. There was so much to do.

‘Remember me,’ she told him. ‘But not…not with faithfulness. I’m not waiting for you and you’re not waiting for me. We’re free.’

Free.

Once it had seemed the only way to be. Now, as he kissed her one last long time, it seemed a fate worse than any he could think of.

Free?

Where was the joy in that?

They made their way back to the nursing home in almost as deep a silence as the way they’d driven home the previous night.

So much had changed-and yet so little. They reached the nursing home and they were surrounded by need.

Emma’s parents were waiting to see him, desperate to know her poisoning hadn’t caused long-term damage. Charlotte’s father had appeared, wanting to blast someone for his daughter’s unhappiness, Rhonda Coutts’s daughter had come to make sure her mother was being well cared for and was recovering. And more…

There must have been a longer queue on the far side of the river waiting to come to Iluka than the queue on the Iluka side waiting to get out, Joss decided. He fielded one query after another, always conscious that Amy was working close by. Amy was here.

Amy would always be here.

‘Now the ferry’s operating, Daisy’s happy for you to take her car back to Sydney,’ his father told him, and he had to raise a smile to thank her. Driving a pink Volkswagen would get him a few odd looks but those looks were the least of his problems. ‘That is,’ his father added, looking sideways at his son, ‘if you still want to go.’

He didn’t, but it was never going to get easier. Another night like last night and it’d be impossible.

His life was waiting in Sydney. Or…the chance of a new life?

‘He’s going.’ Unnoticed, Amy had come up behind them. She smiled at David, who’d driven in to the nursing home specifically to find his son. ‘He’s being kicked out of his lodgings, so he must.’

That was news to Joss. ‘I’m being kicked out?’

‘Yes.’ Her face was strained and pale but somehow she summoned a smile. ‘It’s far too crowded with two people, one dog and only ten bedrooms. Someone has to go. I drew straws and Joss is it.’

‘Will you keep Bertram?’ Joss demanded suddenly. He couldn’t bear to think of her in that mausoleum alone. But she shook her head.

‘Of course not. He’s your dog.’

‘I’ll buy you a pup.’

‘Thank you, but no.’

And into his head came a faintly remembered line. ‘I want no more of you…’ Where had that come from? Schoolboy Shakespeare? Wherever, it was apt.

It was time to go. He couldn’t commit himself to this woman. At least…not yet.

He still had almost a week of leave left. He could stop at Bowra and then…

‘You look like you’re aching to get back to Sydney already,’ David said, watching Joss’s face. He smiled at Amy and explained. ‘Joss always gets this far-away look when he’s making plans, and he’s making plans now. What’s on back in Sydney?’

‘I’m not sure,’ Joss said slowly. ‘I won’t know until I get there.’

There was one more heartbreaking moment as Joss stood in front of the little Volkswagen ready to leave. Bertram was sticking his head out the window and wagging his tail in anticipation, waiting for Joss to say goodbye.

This was no aching farewell of two star-crossed lovers. Star-crossed lovers didn’t get a look-in at Iluka, where everyone’s life was everyone’s business.

David and Daisy were there, plus almost every nursing-home patient and close to every Iluka resident as well. In these few short days Joss had won Iluka’s heart.

As they’d won his heart. He could see why Amy couldn’t leave.

‘Come back soon,’ they called, and he looked at Amy’s ashen face and thought not.

Not until some of those plans came to fruition.

JOSS spent the first night in Bowra. First there was a long appointment with Henry, Malcolm’s father. To his relief Henry was no Malcolm. The old lawyer was intelligent and interested, and once he learned what Joss intended he couldn’t do enough to help.

‘God knows, that woman has suffered enough,’ the old man told him. ‘When I think of how my stupid son has treated her… And now there’s Charlotte, of all women. I know Charlotte-she’s the daughter of friends of mine. How the hell he managed to keep their relationship secret…

‘By the way, you needn’t worry about Charlotte,’ the old man added grimly. ‘I’ll see to it that Malcolm marries the girl if that’s what she wants. And if she decides not to-and who could blame her? Well, Malcolm will provide for her anyway. He’ll do it if I personally have to cut off his inheritance to see it done.’

‘I think we’ve had enough of inheritances,’ Joss told him, and the old man agreed.

‘Well, let’s sit down and see what can be done about this one. This idea of yours… I never thought- It’ll take courage.’

‘More than courage,’ Joss told him. ‘But do you think it can be done?’

Then there was a meeting with Doris, the Bowra doctor, who greeted him at first with suspicion and in the end with excitement.