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‘How long have you been standing there?’
His eyes shifted away from her accusing narrowed ones. ‘Not long.’
‘How long?’
‘Can we, please, drop this?’ he asked. ‘Look, I have no designs on you so you can rest easy.’
She hugged her knees under the sheet, her expression looking a little downbeat. ‘So … what you’re saying is you don’t find me in the least bit attractive?’
Matt frowned at the edge of insecurity in her tone. ‘Of course I find you attractive,’ he said. ‘You’re very attractive—gorgeous, in fact. Why on earth would you think otherwise?’
She gave her bottom lip a bit of a nibble before she answered. ‘I don’t know … I guess I’m not all that confident on the dating scene. I think I spent too much time sweating over making dinner for my father and my brothers instead of getting hot and sweaty in a nightclub with the rest of my friends. I keep thinking there must be something wrong with me. My ex certainly made it clear I wasn’t enough to hold his interest.’
‘Yeah, well, if you ask me, your ex was a jerk,’ Matt said, pulling down the covers on the queen-sized bed in case he was tempted to cross the floor and pull her into his arms and show her how achingly beautiful she was.
A little silence passed.
‘If the tables had been turned, would you have expected Madeleine to put her life on hold indefinitely?’ Kellie asked.
‘Look, Kellie,’ he said injecting his tone with impatience at her persistence over his lack of a love life. ‘I’m not putting my life on hold. But even if I was, it’s not the same thing. It’s so much harder for women.’
‘How?’ Kellie asked. ‘Grief is grief. I don’t think either gender has an exclusive take on it.’
‘The issue of fertility puts a very definite take on it,’ he pointed out. ‘As a man, if I chose to I can have children at almost any age. Of course, in my twenties, thirties or forties would be ideal, but for women that isn’t the case. They have limited time in which to select a suitable partner to father their child or children.’
‘Did you and Madeleine plan to have children?’
Matt turned from the bed to look at her. ‘It was something we discussed once or twice.’ He looked away again, not comfortable adding how often he had shied away from the topic. Madeleine had been a few more steps ahead of him, now that he thought about it. It had been her idea to get engaged, her idea to bring the wedding forward and very definitely her idea to begin a family straight afterwards. It wasn’t that Madeleine wouldn’t have made a great mother, it was just he had never really seen himself settling down into suburbia in quite the way she had planned. It was a disturbing realisation that two people who had claimed to be in love had not really been in tune with each other’s wants and desires. Was that why he was still punishing himself? he wondered. It wasn’t that he had loved Madeleine too much—it was more that he hadn’t loved her enough …
Kellie lay back on her pillow with her hands propped behind her head. ‘My mother would have loved to be a grandmother,’ she said on the end of little sigh. ‘She told me that being a mother was great but it was so exhausting she couldn’t wait to be a granny so she could hand back the little ones at the end of the day. I feel sad she won’t be around for my babies, to love and indulge them as a doting granny should. My dad will do his best but it won’t be the same, will it?’
Matt sat on the edge of his bed. ‘I’m sure he will do what he can to be a good grandfather,’ he said, rather unhelpfully.
She turned her head to look at him, a soft smile curving her mouth. ‘I’m hoping my time away in the bush will bring about a romance.’
He automatically tensed. ‘So I was right about Tim and Claire?’ he said, clenching his jaw. ‘I knew it. I just knew they wouldn’t be able to help themselves.’
She gave him a blank look. ‘What have Tim and Claire got to do with my father and my aunt?’
It was Matt’s turn to deliver the blank stare. ‘Your father and your aunt?’
‘Yes,’ Kellie said. ‘My aunt has been in love with my father for the last five years, ever since she watched him nurse my mother through her illness. Aunty Kate’s husband left her for another woman years ago, and for as long as I can remember she has always been there for all of us, working tirelessly in the background, dropping in meals or doing loads of washing and ironing without being asked. My father has more or less been oblivious to it because I’ve been there to pick up where she left off. I thought it would be best if I moved out so she could show Dad how much she does for us and for him. He’s a bit on the slow side, if you know what I mean.’
‘He’s probably not quite ready to move on,’ he said pragmatically. ‘You can’t force him.’
‘I know, but Aunty Kate loves him,’ she said. ‘She’s loved him for years. I’ve known it, my brothers have known it even though they are about as emotionally deficient as boys can be, but my father seems completely ignorant of it.’
‘Then perhaps it was a good move of yours to come out to the bush,’ he said. ‘You sound to me like the glue that holds your family together.’
‘I’d never thought of it quite like that. That’s great way to put it.’ Her smile faded a little as she asked, ‘But what if they fall apart while I’m gone?’
‘I’m sure they won’t,’ Matt said. ‘They’ve probably got into a pattern of learned helplessness. They’ll soon snap out of it.’
‘Yes, well, that’s the plan,’ she said with another little smile.
Matt could see that Kellie was a warm-hearted person who had a mission in life to spread love and goodwill to others. He also knew from what she had briefly intimated that her love life was lacking something, but it didn’t mean he was the person to step up to the plate to take the next ball, certainly not with the whole of Culwulla Creek on the sidelines, cheering him on.
Anyway, life was so damned capricious.
Doctors knew that more than most. They diagnosed terminal illnesses on a weekly, sometimes even daily basis. He had done it himself. So many faces drifted past him, shocked faces, devastated faces, faces that communicated their frustration in their but-I’ve-not-done-all-I’ve-set-out-to-do expressions of despair.
They were all the same, just like him: cheated of what life had promised but had failed to deliver.
Was it his fault?
No, and the rational part of him knew Madeleine’s death wasn’t really his fault. It was the driver running the red light, it was the rush hour, it was a hundred other things that had been going on in the universe at that particular moment, but yet still he felt somehow responsible. What if she had been thinking about him at that moment and not seen the car on her right? What if she had been thinking about the seemingly endless list of jobs to do before their wedding? Or, like him, having last-minute doubts? It had been a stressful time, especially as Madeleine hadn’t wanted to take any time off school and therefore everything had had to be packed into those last couple of days before the term finished. What if he had done more of those little jobs for her so she hadn’t been so rushed off her feet?
The what-ifs had been what had kept him awake most nights in those early days and tortured far too many of his days as well. Work out here in the bush was his only panacea and so far it had done a reasonable job … well, it had until Kellie had come to town with her big smile and adorable dimples.
‘We’d better get some sleep,’ he said, feigning a yawn. ‘The first flight is at eight. I organised it when I went out earlier. We were lucky as there were only two seats left.’
‘I hope I get the window one,’ she said, turning on her side and propping herself on her elbow.
Matt decided it would be wise to turn out the lamp as soon as he could so he didn’t have to keep staring into those beautiful brown eyes. The soft light in the room made her gaze melting and soft, so soft he could feel himself drowning in it every time she looked at him. He muttered something about using the bathroom and came out a few minutes later dressed in the other bathrobe provided by the hotel. She was still lying facing him, her eyes widening slightly when he got between the covers without taking off the bathrobe.
‘You’re going to cook, wearing that to bed,’ she informed him knowledgably. ‘I had to toss mine off hours ago.’
I wish you hadn’t reminded me of that, Matt thought as he turned off the lamp and flopped down on the pillow. The thought of her satin skin covered only by the thin threads of a cotton sheet was almost too much for his mind to cope with.
There was barely a beat of silence before her voice split the silence.
‘Matt?’
He affected a bored, I’m-almost-asleep tone. ‘Hmm?’
‘Do you think you could leave the lamp on?’ she asked in a beseeching whisper.
Even though his eyes were closed Matt still rolled them behind his eyelids. ‘What on earth for? Do you want to read or something? It’s close to three in the morning.’
‘No but it’s so dark in here …’
He thumped the pillow to reshape it. ‘It’s supposed to be dark,’ he said dryly. ‘It’s the middle of the night.’
‘Yes, but I like to be able to see my way to the bathroom,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to break a leg or something, stumbling in the dark.’
‘Do you need the bathroom?’
‘Not right now, but I might later.’
Matt removed his bathrobe under the cloak of darkness and placed it over the nearest chair before switching on the bedside lamp, turning the dimmer switch as low as it could go. ‘There, it’s on now so close your eyes and go to sleep.’
There was another beat or two of silence.
‘Matt?’
He inwardly groaned. ‘Yes?’
‘Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be totally blind?’ she asked.
He counted to five. ‘Not lately, no.’
He heard the rustle of the bedclothes as she shifted her position. ‘I do, a lot,’ she said. ‘I had a young female patient who was blind from retinoblastoma. She had lost both eyes by the time she was two years old. She told me what it was like, how she has to read people not by their faces or body language but by using other senses. She has to memorise every place she visits. No one can move a single piece of furniture at her house otherwise she’ll bump into it. I think about it a lot—you know how you would have to adjust in so many little ways.’
‘Do we have to talk about this now?’ he asked, smothering a weary yawn, not a feigned one this time.
‘No, it’s just ever since I met her I feel like I have to have light around me,’ she said. ‘It reminds me of what so many people, me included, take for granted.’
‘You do realise you are contributing unnecessarily to global warming?’ he asked.
Kellie turned to look at him. He had dispensed with the bathrobe and was now lying on his back with his eyes closed, his arms propped behind his head, his biceps bulging, and his stomach flat and naked to his waist where the thin cotton sheet was resting. His chest was as tanned as the rest of his body, not entirely hairless but not overly so. The trail of black curly hair burrowed below the sheet to where it loosely covered his groin.
Kellie knew she shouldn’t be staring but it had been a very long time since she had seen a man in such fabulous physical condition. Her pulse fluttered like a trapped moth beneath her skin.
She was less than a metre away from him. She could reach out with one of her hands and slide it down his ridged abdomen; her fingers could splay over his maleness, stirring it to fervent life with the merest brush of her fingertips.
‘It’d be tough, though, don’t you think?’ she asked, forcing her mind away from the temptation of his body. ‘Being blind, I mean.’
Matt opened his eyes and turned to look at her and then wished he hadn’t. The shadow of her cleavage was right in his line of vision and the delicious curves of her breasts were outlined by the sheet tucked against her. Even if he closed his eyes again he knew it would be impossible to erase that vision from his mind.
Possibly for ever.
‘Aren’t you exhausted?’ he said. ‘You’ve had a tough day, by anyone’s standards.’
She wriggled under the bedclothes again and let out a tiny sigh. ‘I guess I am a bit tired …’
Thank God, Matt thought as he watched her eyelids start to droop. He watched as she drifted off, her mouth relaxing into a soft plump curve, her slim form covered by the sheet making him wish he could run his hand over her, exploring every dip and curve of her body.
He clenched his hands into fists, scrunching his eyes shut, but the gentle sound of her breathing kept him awake for most of the night.
Bright morning sunlight pierced Kellie’s eyelids and she sat bolt upright and rubbed at her eyes. ‘Hey,’ she said, glancing at her watch. ‘Aren’t we supposed to have left by now?’
Matt dragged his head off the pillow and looked at the bedside clock through slitted eyes. He muttered a stiff curse and threw off the bedclothes without thinking.
He suddenly saw Kellie’s eyes go wide and then the delicate rise of colour rush up over her face. He reached for the bathrobe he’d discarded the night before and, tying it with more haste than security, lunged for the phone.
Kellie overheard every word of the exchange, realising as the heated conversation went on they would have to hurry or they would miss the only flight to Culwulla Creek that day, which would mean a long road trip in a hire car from Brisbane.
Using the sheet as a cover, she scuttled into the bathroom and tried not to think about what she had seen in that brief lapse when he had leapt from the bed, although she knew it was going to be very hard to erase it from her mind.
Matt was built like a bodybuilder, not the over-the-top anabolic steroids type but the type that sent female pulses soaring. Pumped muscles, leanness where leanness looked best, like on the flat planes of a stomach that looked as if it had been carved from a slab of marble.
When she came out dressed in her rinsed-out shorts and top and running shoes he was dressed and ready to go. ‘We have to hurry,’ he said, scooping up his doctor’s bag. ‘They’re holding the flight for us but only because we’re medical personnel.’
The attendant smiled at Matt as he led the way up the gangway. ‘Well done, Dr McNaught,’ she said, ‘and with three minutes to spare.’
Matt gave her a brief smile in return and, nodding in apology to the already seated and belted passengers, indicated for Kellie to precede him. ‘You can have the window seat,’ he said with a deadpan expression. ‘And the armrest too, if you want it.’
Kellie grinned up at him as she wriggled into the seat. ‘Is that a sense of humour I see peeking out from behind that gruff exterior of yours?’ she asked.
His expression remained bland but she saw his lips twitch slightly as he took his seat and began rummaging for his end of the seat belt.
‘Is this what you’re looking for?’ she asked, holding up the clip-in end of the belt, her eyes twinkling mischievously.
Matt took it from her slim warm fingers, his body tingling all over at that merest of touches. She was smiling at him in that impish way of hers, the mixture of tomboy and sexy siren that befuddled his brain and other parts of his anatomy. He could feel the way his groin was already tightening, the ache building even more when she ran her tongue over the pink sheen of her lips in that slightly nervous, uncertain manner of hers. He thought of that soft mouth exploring him, the tip of her tongue tasting the essence of him, licking from him the life force that was banked up inside him to the point of bursting. All night he had thought of her hands skating over him, discovering his contours, feeling the length and deep throbbing pulse of him in the slim sheath of her body, the feminine heart of her convulsing around him as he drove himself to paradise …
Kellie peered at him curiously. ‘Are you all right, Matt?’ she asked.
Matt gave himself a mental shake and resettled in his seat, wincing as he had to accommodate a little more of himself than normal. ‘I’m fine,’ he muttered. ‘These seats are so damned uncomfortable. There’s not enough leg room.’
‘That’s because you’re so tall,’ she said, pushing his elbow off the armrest and smiling at him playfully.
Matt reached for the in-flight magazine in the seat pocket, even though he’d read it a thousand times before. Those long legs of hers were still in his line of vision. He couldn’t help imagining them looped around his, her mouth on his, her tongue mating with his as they strove for mutual fulfilment.
He felt her shoulder lean into him. ‘Interesting article?’ she asked.
He schooled his features into impassivity as he looked at her. ‘Absolutely riveting,’ he said, and turned back to the piece on emu-oil investment.
CHAPTER TEN
RUTH WILLIAMS was at the airstrip when they alighted from the plane. ‘I organised one of Jack Dennis’s boys to take your car to the clinic,’ she said to Matt. ‘I didn’t want to leave it out here overnight, especially with your medical equipment on board. I can give you a lift back into town.’
‘Thanks, Ruth,’ Matt said. ‘That was thoughtful of you.’
Ruth turned to Kellie. ‘You must be exhausted. What a drama to face on your first official day with us.’
‘Yes, it was,’ Kellie said, looking down at herself ruefully. ‘That’s the longest run I’ve ever been on. Next time I’m going to take an overnight backpack just in case.’
Ruth gave her a rueful look. ‘I did warn you things can happen out here in the blink of an eye.’
‘Yes, well, I’m a believer now,’ Kellie said as they made their way to Ruth’s car.
The clinic was fully booked so Ruth dropped off Matt before taking Kellie to the Montgomerys’ cottage so she could get changed and drive herself back to town.
By the time Kellie made it back to the clinic the waiting room was full. Every available chair was taken and three male patients were standing. A small child was howling piteously in one corner, his harried mother doing what she could to placate him while nursing an infant at her breast.
Trish gave Kellie a relieved smile as she ended the call she was on. ‘Welcome to Mayhem Medical Clinic,’ she said. ‘I know you’re not going to believe this, but it’s not always as busy as this.’
Kellie straightened her shoulders. ‘I’m ready for a challenge,’ she said. ‘That’s why I’m here.’
