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‘I get by,’ she settled for. ‘I have learnt that I can blowdry my own hair, that foils every month are not essential, that a massage each week and a pedicure and manicure …’ Her voice sounded strangled for a moment. ‘I am spoilt, as my brothers have always pointed out, and I am trying to learn not to be, but I keep messing up.’
‘Tell me?’
She was surprised when she opened her screwed up eyes, to see that he was smiling.
‘Tell me how you mess up?’
‘I used to eat a lot of takeaway,’ she admitted, and he was still smiling, so she was more honest, and Ross found out that Annika’s idea of takeaway wasn’t the same as his! ‘I had the restaurants deliver.’
‘Can’t you cook?’
‘I’m a fantastic cook,’ Annika answered.
‘That’s right.’ Ross grinned. ‘I remember Iosef saying you were training as a pastry chef … in Paris?’ he checked.
‘I was only there six months.’ Annika wrinkled her nose. ‘I had given up on modelling and I so badly wanted to go. It took me two days to realise I had made a mistake, and then six months to pluck up the courage to admit defeat. I had made such a fuss, begged to go … Like I did for nursing.’
He didn’t understand.
He thought of his own parents—if he’d said that he wanted to study life on Mars they’d have supported him. But then he’d always known what he wanted to do. Maybe if one year it had been Mars, the next Venus and then Pluto, they’d have decided otherwise. Maybe this was tough love that her mother thought she needed to prove that nursing was what she truly wanted to do.
‘So you can cook?’ It was easier to change the subject.
‘Gourmet meals, the most amazing desserts, but a simple dinner for one beats me every time …’ She gave a tight shrug. ‘But I’m slowly learning.’
‘How else have you messed up?’
She couldn’t tell him, but he was still smiling, so maybe she could.
‘I had a credit card,’ she said. ‘I have always had one, but I just sent the bill to our accountants each month …’
‘Not now?’
‘No.’
Her voice was low and throaty, and Ross found himself leaning forward to catch it.
‘It took me three months to work out that they weren’t settling it, and I am still paying off that mistake.’
‘But you love nursing?’ Ross said, and then frowned when she shook her head.
‘I don’t know,’ Annika admitted. ‘Sometimes I don’t even know why I am doing this. It’s the same as when I wanted to be a pastry chef, and then I did jewellery design—that was a mistake too.’
‘Do you think you’ve made a mistake with nursing?’ Ross asked.
Annika gave a tight shrug and then shook her head—he was hardly the person to voice her fears to.
‘You can talk to me, Annika. You can trust that it won’t—’
‘Trust?’ She gave him a wide-eyed look. ‘Why would I trust you?’
It was the strangest answer, and one he wasn’t expecting. Yet why should she trust him? Ross pondered. All he knew was that she could.
‘You need to get home and get some rest,’ Ross settled for—except he couldn’t quite leave it there. ‘How about dinner …?’
And this was where every woman jumped, this was where Ross always kicked himself and told himself to slow down, because normally they never made it to dinner. Normally, about an hour from now, they were pinning the breakfast menu on the nearest hotel door or hot-footing it back to his city abode—only this was Annika, who instead drained her coffee and stood up.
‘No, thank you. It would make things difficult at work.’
‘It would,’ Ross agreed, glad that one of them at least was being sensible.
‘Can I ask that you don’t tell Caroline or anyone about this?’
‘Can I ask that you save these shifts for your days off, or during your holidays?’
‘No.’
They walked out to the car park, to his dusty ute and her powder-blue car. Ross was relaxed and at ease, Annika a ball of tension, so much so that she jumped at the bleep of her keys as she unlocked the car.
‘I’m not going to say anything to Caroline.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Just be careful, okay?’
‘I will.’
‘You can’t mess up on any ward, but especially not on children’s.’
‘I won’t,’ Annika said. ‘I don’t. I am always so, so careful …’ And she was. Her brain hurt because she was so careful, pedantic, and always, always checked. Sometimes it would be easier not to care so.
‘Go home and go to bed,’ Ross said. ‘Will you be okay to drive?’
‘Of course.’
He didn’t want her to drive; he wanted to bundle her into his ute and take her back to the farm, or head back into the coffee shop and talk till three a.m., or, maybe just kiss her?
Except he was being sensible now.
‘Night, then,’ he said.
‘Goodnight.’
Except neither of them moved.
‘Why are you going to Spain?’ Unusually, it was Annika who broke the silence.
‘To sort out a few things.’
‘I’m staying here for a few weeks,’ Annika said, with just a hint of a smile. ‘To sort out a few things.’
‘It will be nice,’ Ross said, ‘when things are a bit more sorted.’
‘Very nice,’ Annika agreed, and wished him goodnight again.
‘If you change your mind …’ He snapped his mouth closed; he really mustn’t go there.
Annika was struggling. She didn’t want to get into her car. She wanted to climb into the ute with him, to forget about sorting things out for a little while. She wanted him to drive her somewhere secluded. She wanted the passion those black eyes promised, wanted out of being staid, and wanted to dive into recklessness.
‘Drive carefully.’
‘You too.’
They were talking normally—extremely politely, actually—yet their minds were wandering off to dangerous places: lovely, lovely places that there could be no coming back from.
‘Go,’ Ross said, and she felt as if he were kissing her. His eyes certainly were, and her body felt as if he were.
She was shaking as she got in the car, and the key was too slim for the slot. She had to make herself think, had to slow her mind down and turn on the lights and then the ignition.
He was beside her at the traffic lights. Ross was indicating right for the turn to the country; Annika aimed straight for the city.
It took all her strength to go straight on.
CHAPTER FOUR
ELSIE frowned from her pillow when Annika awoke her a week later at six a.m. with a smile.
‘What are you so cheerful about?’ Elsie asked dubiously. She often lived in the past, but sometimes in the morning she clicked to the present, and those were the mornings Annika loved best.
She recognised Annika—oh, not all of the time, sometimes she spat and swore at the intrusion, but some mornings she was Elsie, with beady eyes and a generous glimpse of a once sharp mind.
‘I just am.’
‘How’s the children’s ward?’ Elsie asked. Clearly even in that fog-like existence she mainly inhabited somehow she heard the words Annika said, even if she didn’t appear to at the time.
Annika was especially nice to Elsie. Well, she was nice to all the oldies, but Elsie melted her heart. The old lady had shrunk to four feet tall and there was more fat on a chip. She swore, she spat, she growled, and every now and then she smiled. Annika couldn’t help but spoil her, and sometimes it annoyed the other staff, because many showers had to be done before the day shift appeared, and there really wasn’t time to make drinks, but Elsie loved to have a cup of milky tea before she even thought about moving and Annika always made her one. The old lady sipped on it noisily as Annika sorted out her clothes for the day.
‘It’s different on the children’s ward,’ Annika said. ‘I’m not sure if I like it.’
‘Well, if it isn’t work that’s making you cheerful then I want to know what is. It has to be a man.’
‘I’m just in a good mood.’
‘It’s a man,’ Elsie said. ‘What’s his name?’
‘I’m not saying.’
‘Why not? I tell you about Bertie.’
This was certainly true!
‘Ross.’ Annika helped her onto the shower chair. ‘And that’s all I’m saying.’
‘Are you courting?’
Annika grinned at the old-fashioned word.
‘No,’ Annika said.
‘Has he asked you out?’
‘Sort of,’ Annika said as she wheeled her down to the showers. ‘Just for dinner, but I said no.’
‘So you’re just flirting, then!’ Elsie beamed. ‘Oh, you lucky, lucky girl. I loved flirting.’
‘We’re not flirting, Elsie,’ Annika said. ‘In fact we’re now ignoring each other.’
‘Why would you do that?’
‘Just leave it, Elsie.’
‘Flirt!’ Elsie insisted as Annika pulled her nightgown over her head. ‘Ask him out.’
‘Enough, Elsie,’ Annika attempted, but it was like pulling down a book and having the whole shelf toppling down on you. Elsie was on a roll, telling her exactly what she’d have done, how the worst thing she should do was play it cool.
On and on she went as Annika showered her, though thankfully, once Annika had popped in her teeth, Elsie’s train of thought drifted back to her beloved Bertie, to the sixty wonderful years they had shared, to shy kisses at the dance halls he had taken her to and the agony of him going to war. She talked about how you must never let the sun go down on a row, and she chatted away about Bertie, their wedding night and babies as Annika dressed her, combed her hair, and then wheeled her back to her room.
‘You must miss him,’ Annika said, arranging Elsie’s table, just as she did every morning she worked there, putting her glasses within reach, her little alarm clock, and then Elsie and Bertie’s wedding photo in pride of place.
‘Sometimes,’ Elsie said, and then her eyes were crystal-clear, ‘but only when I’m sane.’
‘Sorry?’
‘I get to relive our moments, over and over …’ Elsie smiled, and then she was gone, back to her own world, the moment of clarity over. She did not talk as Annika wrapped a shawl around her shoulders and put on her slippers.
‘Enjoy it,’ Annika said to her favourite resident.
He had his ticket booked, and four weeks’ unpaid leave reluctantly granted. They had wanted him to take paid leave but, as Ross had pointed out, that was all saved up for his trips to Russia. This hadn’t gone down too well, and Ross had sat through a thinly veiled warning from the Head of Paediatrics—there was no such thing as a part-time consultant and, while his work overseas was admirable, there were plenty of charities here in Australia he could support.
As he walked through the canteen that evening, the conversation played over in his mind. He could feel the tentacles of bureaucracy tightening around him. He wanted this day over, to be back at his farm, where there were no rules other than to make sure the animals were fed.
His intention had been to get some chocolate from the vending machine, but he saw Annika, and thought it would be far more sensible to keep on walking. Instead, he bought a questionable cup of coffee from another machine and, uninvited, went over.
‘Hi!’
He didn’t ask if he could join her; he simply sat down.
She was eating a Greek salad and had pushed all the olives to one side.
