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IT WAS the best night’s sleep Candace had had in months, and it lasted until almost five the next morning. This meant she had plenty of time to iron a skirt and blouse, have another shower and eat breakfast on the deck, watching the sun rise over the sea. She was ready for Steve Colton at eight-thirty.
He was prompt, and if she’d had any sort of a theory overnight that yesterday’s intuitive sense of chemistry had been only a product of her jet-lagged disorientation, that theory was knocked on the head at once.
The chemistry was still there, invisible, intangible, lighter than air, yet as real as a third person with them in the room. Neither of them acknowledged it in any way. They didn’t get close enough to touch. Any eye contact they chanced to make was snapped apart again in milliseconds.
But, oh, it was there, and she was convinced he felt it, too.
She spent half an hour with Terry at the Narralee District Hospital. He had earned a certain seniority, having been a visiting medical officer in general surgery here for over twenty-five years, but in fact there wasn’t the official hierarchy of medical staff that Candace was used to.
There wasn’t very much that she was used to at all! It was quite a contrast to come from a 600-bed high-rise American city hospital to this low, rambling, red-brick building, which housed a mere fifty beds.
‘And six of those are political,’ Terry said darkly.
‘Political?’
‘They’re not beds at all, in most people’s definition. We have six reclining chairs where day-surgery patients recover until we’re satisfied that fluids are going in one end and coming out the other. But those six chairs make the numbers look better, so beds they’ve become and beds they’ll remain.’
He sounded tired and tense, and Candace longed to urge him, Go. Someone else can show me around.
Steve Colton, maybe? He’d muttered something about ‘errands’ after he’d deposited her into Terry’s care, and then he had disappeared. She was disturbed to realise that she was wondering, in the back of her mind, when she’d see him again.
She wanted to tell Terry, The tour can wait. I know you’re anxious to be on your way.
Terry was taking his wife, Myrna, up to Sydney today for a consultation with a top oncologist. The result of her second mammogram and fine-needle aspiration had come back yesterday afternoon, and there was no longer any doubt about the diagnosis. It was breast cancer.
They could only hope that it had been caught early, and Terry was clearly racked with worry. He was also behaving stubbornly in his insistence on a tour and a talk. He must feel as if he had let Candace down by not meeting her at the airport yesterday, and was determined to make up for it.
Accepting that she would only delay his departure if she kept apologising for her bad timing, Candace tried to ask a few intelligent questions and keep the pace brisk.
‘No full-time doctors here at all?’
‘No, we manage purely with Visiting Medical Officers. The local GPs cover the emergency department and the on-call roster, assist with surgery and handle anaesthesia. Steve probably mentioned that.’
‘Yes, he did, but not in any detail.’
‘Then there are about half a dozen of us who handle various specialities, travelling between several small hospitals in the region, as you’ll be doing. You can work out your own timetable, within certain constraints. Linda Gardner has space in her rooms, and will share her staff with you.’
‘Yes, Steve told me. Thanks for arranging it. I’m looking forward to meeting her.’
‘You’ll like her, I think. She’s married with two teenagers.’
‘We’ll have something in common in that area, then!’
‘Basically, you’ll probably want to operate one day a week here in Narralee, and a day every fortnight at Harpoon Bay and Shoalwater.’
‘A slower pace than I’m used to.’
‘Enjoy it!’
‘Oh, I intend to.’
The hospital had already created a pleasing impression. Its red-tiled roof had pale green lichen growing on it, attesting to its comfortable age. Above what must once have been the main entrance, the date ‘1936’ was carved. Mature eucalyptus trees shaded thick couch-grass lawns, and windows tinted with a gold reflective film ran all along one side of the building.
Most of the windows were open, providing a volume of fresh, mild air that was unheard of in Candace’s experience. In Boston, winters were arctic, summers were steamy and hospitals had air-conditioning.
With its pink walls and mottled linoleum floors, the place was too clean and cheerful to be called shabby, and there was an atmosphere of peace, underlaid by a low buzz of unhurried activity which suggested that hospitals didn’t have to be nearly as dramatic and hectic as they always seemed on prime-time television.
Terry doggedly tramped the building from one end to the other on their tour. He showed Candace the eight-bed maternity unit, which opened onto a shaded veranda. He took her through the four-bed high-dependency unit, the agedcare rehab beds, day surgery, the pharmacy, Emergency and Physio. He even took her past the tiny chapel and even tinier kiosk, which was open for just one hour each day. Finally, he pointed out the electrical plant room.
It was a relief to both of them when he finally announced, ‘And now I must pick up Myrna. She’ll be packed and waiting. Steve should be back before too long. Find someone to make you a coffee, and—’
‘I can do coffee on my own, Terry,’ Candace said gently. Several strands of his grey hair had fallen onto the wrong side of his parting, and he was rubbing his stomach as if he had heartburn. ‘Just give Myrna my very best and have a safe trip.’ She almost pushed Terry out through the administration entrance.
She had no trouble over the coffee. Found the nursing staffroom and was at once invited in. She hadn’t finished her mug of unremarkable instant by the time Steve appeared in the doorway ten minutes later, but it didn’t matter.
‘Now, what do you need to get done?’ he asked. ‘Because I’m not seeing patients today, and you know Terry will have my guts for garters when he gets back if I haven’t been looking after you.’
‘He’ll have your…what?’
‘Guts for garters.’ He grinned.
‘That sounds violent.’
‘So you’d better let me look after you, then, hadn’t you?’
‘Apparently!’
‘Good decision.’
‘Right, well, I need to get groceries, open a bank account and buy a car,’ she announced.
Steve raised his eyebrows and grinned, appreciating the way she’d ticked off each item on her finger with such assurance. Perhaps he shouldn’t have teased her with that piece of colourful Australian idiom just now. She didn’t need him to entertain her so deliberately.
‘Need to learn how to drive on the wrong side of the road, too?’ he suggested.
‘Well, yes.’ Now she looked less confident, but the effect was just as attractive.
His expectations for the day notched themselves a little higher, and he was aware that they’d been high enough to begin with.
‘I’ll give you a driving lesson,’ he offered.
OK, now she looked quite panicky. She gave a shriek, but she was smiling as widely as he was. ‘This is going to be a treat for my fellow road-users!’
‘Is that where we should start?’ he asked. ‘With the driving lesson? I can take you somewhere quiet first off then, when you’ve got some confidence, you can do the shuttling round to the bank and the supermarket. I’ll just sit in the passenger seat and give a terrified hiss every now and then…’
‘And slam your foot onto an imaginary brake pedal on the floor. I get the picture. Is it an automatic?’
‘Yes, it is.’
‘And is it insured?’
‘Comprehensively.’
‘OK, let’s do it before I start thinking of excuses. How’s the public transport around here?’
‘Not good enough for commuting between three hospitals more than fifty kilometres apart, every week.’
‘Thought not.’
So he gave her a driving lesson, and it wasn’t nearly as hair-raising as either of them had feared.
I’m not flirting with her, Steve realised. Why is that? I’d planned to.
He had acquired some skill in this area over the years. He was nearly thirty-three, now. His brother Matt, three years his senior and married since the age of twenty-five, kept telling him, ‘Get serious. Don’t miss the boat. Stop going after women who have a use-by date.’
‘Use-by date?’
‘Like Agnetha. Women that you know are going to leave and let you off the hook. There was that other girl from Perth, too. Agnetha wasn’t the first. Settle down!’
And he always found himself thinking, Yeah, obviously. Of course I will…I’m not a hardened bachelor. But not yet. Don’t think I’ve quite come to grips with the married man’s job description yet. When he took on a responsibility—and he was in no doubt that marriage was that—he liked to be sure it was one he was fully equipped to handle.
To prove to himself, and perhaps to Matt as well, that he hadn’t missed the boat, be it kayak or cruise ship or ferry, he flirted with a variety of women. Mutually enjoyable. Nothing heavy-handed. Not threatening to anyone.
He kept it very light, never trespassed into the sorts of overtly sexual references and double meanings that he, along with most women, would have considered sleazy. He conceded that there was probably some truth to Matt’s observation about women with a use-by date as well, although he didn’t like the way his brother had worded it.
Candace Fletcher was only here for a year, and he was fully aware of the fact.
So perhaps this is flirting, he decided. We’re laughing. Teasing each other a little. Only it’s even lighter than usual, so I’m calling it something else.
Why?
Because I don’t want to scare her off.
There was something in her eyes, something in the way she held that full, sensitive mouth. Coupled with the fact of her divorce, he was pretty certain that she would want a man to take things carefully, no matter how sudden and strong the spark was between them, no matter that she was leaving after a year.
Perhaps the spark was a little deceptive, too. They might both feel it, but that didn’t mean acting on it would be a good idea. Some instinct told him to tread carefully, and to think before he acted in this case.
I didn’t think twice with Agnetha, and neither did she…
The thought flashed through his mind and disappeared again.
They spent an hour on the quiet roads of Narralee’s newest housing development before Candace announced that she was ready for downtown.
‘Yes, I know you don’t call it that,’ she added.
‘Just town will do.’
‘Tell me how to get there.’
She parked without difficulty in the car park behind the bank and opened her account, then he showed her the supermarket nearest to Taylor’s Beach and they tooled down the aisles with a big metal shopping trolley, which she filled to the brim.
Always an instructive experience, shopping with a woman for the first time. What secret vices did she display in the confectionery aisle? Did she actually cook, or merely reheat in the microwave? Agnetha had lived on rabbit food, Steve considered. Celery and nuts and carrots. Horse food, too. Various flaky things that looked and tasted like chaff.
Candace’s diet held more promise and less obsessiveness. She smelled a rock melon—‘canteloupe’ she called it—with her eyes closed and a heaven-sent expression on her face. Then she put two of them in the trolley, right on top of the frozen chocolate cheesecake. She selected some delicate lamb cutlets and a medallion of pork, and they ended up lying next to the five-pack of lurid yellow chicken-flavoured two-minute noodle soups. She apparently drank hot chocolate, tea, three kinds of juice and four kinds of coffee.
He thought he’d been reasonably subtle in his analysis of her purchases, but he was wrong. When they stood waiting at the checkout, she tilted her head to one side and demanded, ‘So, Doctor, how many points did I lose? About fifty for the cheesecake and the cookies, obviously, but I believe I do have all the food groups represented in reasonable proportion.’
‘I wasn’t—’
‘You were, too! Silently analysing everything that went in the cart. Comparing me to—well, to whoever.’
Agnetha. He almost said it, but managed to stop himself. Felt colour rising into his neck and thought in disbelief, My God, I’m blushing!
‘I thought so!’ said Candace under her breath.
It was a type of audition. She teetered on the edge of resenting it. He had no right to judge and draw conclusions like that!
Then, with more honesty and less bluster, she decided that she was doing exactly the same thing herself. Auditioning him for this imaginary, unlikely affair she couldn’t get out of her head.
So far, he seemed like exactly the right candidate for such a thing, if she was going to consider the question in such cold-blooded terms. He would be easygoing, physical, fun to be with. He’d also possess certain shared understandings that didn’t need talking about, because they worked in the same profession.
Yes, quite definitely an ideal candidate for an affair.
Is this what Mom was thinking about when she told me to go away? That I’d meet someone and have a crazy fling, get my socks sizzled off and come home as revitalised as if I’d been to a health spa for three months? That I’d be over Todd and Brittany? Dear God, over it. That it wouldn’t hurt any more, and twist me up inside with bitterness and resentment and regret…?
The idea was both terrifying and dangerously alluring.
With her breathing shallower than usual, she asked, ‘Are you sure there isn’t anything else you need to do today? This is taking a long time.’
‘My schedule’s clear, so don’t worry about it. Shall we take this lot home to your place and unpack it, then grab some lunch before we do the car?’
‘Sandwiches? We have the makings for them now.’
‘Yep. Great.’
They got to the first car dealership at two, after a lunch so quick and casual Candace might have been sharing it with Maddy. The salesman then spent half an hour addressing himself exclusively to Steve, even when it ought to have been quite clear to him that Candace was the prospective buyer.
‘Do you think he realises why he didn’t make a sale?’ Steve asked her when they left.
She laughed. ‘I handled it. In fact, it was useful. He talked to you while I had an uninterrupted chance to think about whether I really wanted the car.’
‘I take it you didn’t?’
She waggled her hand from side to side. ‘Probably not. Let’s keep looking.’
At the second and third dealerships, she test-drove two vehicles and finally decided on a compact European model, with very low mileage on the odometer. She felt exhilarated and slightly queasy at having parted with so much money so quickly. Still, it didn’t make sense to delay. She was only here for a year. She needed to get organised, get her life sorted out, hit the ground running.
Did this apply to arranging a quick, therapeutic fling as well?
