Kitabı oku: «The Doctor Claims His Bride»

CHAPTER ONE

‘YOU still on city time, Sis.’ Susie, one of the Kirri health workers, grinned widely, her teeth white against her chocolate-brown face.

Mia Latham sighed and twirled her hair up, welcoming the light breeze against her very hot and sweaty neck. Jamming her straw hat down hard, she scanned the outback-blue skies for the elusive light plane.

Nothing.

Not a faint dot in the distance, not even a bird. Just heat haze shimmering upwards against wisps of grey smoke from the dry-season fires. She forced her shoulders to relax while muttering, ‘He said eleven o’clock and now it’s almost one.’

‘He on island time.’ Susie leaned back contentedly against the shady eucalypt.

Mia turned and gazed at the sensible indigenous health worker. ‘But I have an immunisation clinic all organised, and we’re keeping people waiting.’

Susie gave her a bemused look. ‘You got no clinic till plane brings vaccines.’ She shrugged. ‘So sit. You can’t do nothing until the plane comes.’

Every cell in Mia’s body rebelled at the practical words. Her ‘to do’ list magnified in her head, the print bold and black, bearing down on her, urging her to do something, anything, to make a dent in it. She’d wanted to be as up to date as possible for when she met the visiting doctor. But at this rate she’d be way behind and she hated having no control over the situation.

She stifled a huge scream of frustration and plonked down awkwardly in the shade next to Susie, her cargo shorts instantly filling with fine, brown dirt. Just great. She might still be on Australian soil but nothing about life up in the far far north of the country, nothing about life on this tiny island resembled anything she’d ever known.

She’d wanted a change. She’d badly needed change but today, her fifth day on the job as a remote area nurse on Kirra Island, left her wondering if what she’d come to was harder than what she’d left.

Impossible.

She wanted remoteness, wanted to work on her own and be as far away as possible from her old life. She just wanted to forget.

She fanned her face and took a long slug of water from the bottle that was a permanent part of her in this heat. And this was the dry season—winter. She didn’t want to think about the dripping humidity just before the big wet.

‘Hear that?’ Susie inclined her head to the right.

Mia couldn’t hear anything. It was so hot that even nature had gone quiet. ‘No.’

‘Listen with all of you,’ Susie chided gently.

Mia let the heat roll over her, let the dust settle on her and strained to hear past the silence of the soporific midday malady. A faint buzzing vibrated in her ears. ‘The plane?’

Susie nodded. ‘That’s right. Him coming now.’

Mia moved forward, preparing to stand.

Susie’s workworn brown hand rested against her forearm, detaining her. ‘Still five minutes, no hurry.’

She forced herself to sit back but most of her wanted to rush out onto the runway and start unpacking boxes the moment the plane had come to a complete halt. She’d never been very good at sitting back and waiting. Even when she’d known in her heart there was nothing she could do to help her mother, she’d hated the waiting. Waiting and watching her die.

The Cessna lined up with the runway and slowly descended, coming in over the thick mangroves and the eucalypts, its small black wheels bouncing on the asphalt, sticky with heat. The pilot immediately opened the window and gave a wave.

Unable to wait a moment longer, Mia launched herself to her feet, leaving Susie under the tree, and she arrived at the low cyclone fence just as the propellers of the plane slowly wound down and stopped. The door on the opposite side of the plane opened. Mia caught sight of a pair of long, tanned, muscular legs, which jumped down and landed on large feet. Feet clad in sturdy work boots with khaki socks that casually gathered down around solid ankles.

It wasn’t the usual uniform of a pilot—they wore long navy trousers. No, these legs looked like they belonged to a bounty hunter, buffalo or crocodile hunter—a man who spent a lot of time outdoors.

Intrigued, she watched as the legs strode around the plane, eating up the distance with commanding ease. Then the owner came into full view and an uncontrollable shock of electric delight raced through her, completely disarming her.

At well over six feet, her crocodile hunter had the natural grace of a man at one with his surroundings, and it radiated from the top of his jet-black hair to the tips of his olive-skinned fingers, which gripped a large cooler in one hand and held a backpack in the other. Three-day stubble hovered around his smiling mouth, fanning out along a firm jaw. Dark brows framed intelligent hazel eyes, whose mesmerising gaze quickly took in his surroundings, acknowledged Susie with a wave and then centred in on her.

Mia’s mouth dried. The intensity of his look made her feel stripped bare and to her horror she dropped her gaze. She took in his broad shoulders, which were covered by a shirt made from locally designed fabric. The emerald green and sea blue of the design accurately depicted the colours of the island’s land and sea, and together they brought out a hint of green in his hazel eyes.

Desperately wanting to look further to what she suspected would be a washboard-flat stomach, her professionalism hauled her gaze upwards and with a quick, steadying breath she stepped forward, hoping she looked more dignified than she felt.

‘I wasn’t expecting a welcoming party.’

A rich, deep voice with the smoothness of velvet cloaked her, making her heart hiccough. She looked up into teasing eyes, the flecks of green and brown almost moving like crystals in a kaleidoscope.

Confusion overrode her body’s unwanted tingling reaction to him, making her dizzy with bewilderment. ‘Aren’t you the pilot bringing in the vaccines? I got a message…’

‘I’m Flynn Harrington. Pilot, deliverer of vaccines and doctor.’ He grinned with the cheekiness of someone who had inside information. ‘You must be Mia.’

Doctor? She wasn’t expecting to meet the island’s visiting doctor for another three days. Her calendar, left to her by her predecessor, had ‘Doctor clinic’ inked in red for Monday.

‘You’re the island doctor?’ She couldn’t hide the shock and disbelief from her voice. He didn’t look like any doctor she’d ever met and she’d met more than her fair share personally and professionally. And no doctor has ever made you tingle like that.

‘Yep, I’m the doctor for Kirra, Mugur and Barra.’ He extended his long arm out behind him, lazily indicating the approximate direction of the other islands. ‘I divide my time between all three.’

A swoosh of righteous indignation surged through her, quickly dousing the unsettling sensations that had shimmered along her veins. She’d just lost half her morning hanging around for him. ‘But you’re three days early and you’re also two hours late!’ The heat and waiting caught up with her. ‘And what do you mean you don’t usually have a welcoming committee? I was here two hours ago, as your message instructed, to collect the vaccines. The least you could have done was to send a message to say you were going to be late.’

His casual stance stiffened for a moment and then his shoulders relaxed. ‘I’m sorry. I forgot that you’d still be city-wired. Usually the truck comes and picks me up the moment they hear the plane coming over. That way no one’s left waiting around.’ He started walking toward the truck.

The city-wired tag pricked her like barbed-wire and she folded her arms against the sensation in her chest as she jogged to keep up with his long-legged stride. ‘Well, it would have been nice if someone had told me.’ She threw her hands out in front of her. ‘You for instance, or Susie. Why didn’t Susie tell me the routine?’

He tilted his head, his brows slightly raised. ‘Did you ask her?’

His quiet and reasonable tone sent a ripple of contrition through her, dampening her indignation. ‘Ah, no. I think I said something like, “We have to be at the airport at eleven.”’

He pulled a battered bushman’s hat out of his backpack before tossing the pack into the tray of the truck. Then he carefully wedged the cooler under a hessian sack. ‘That’s why she didn’t say anything. Kirri people don’t say no to a request. Susie was happy to help you so she came. If a local doesn’t want to do as you ask, well, they just avoid the issue by failing to turn up.’

He glanced down at her, his expression a mixture of understanding and humour. ‘Beware the “I’ll come back and do it” sentence—that actually means no.’

Mia wiped the back of her hand against her perspiration-soaked forehead and sighed. ‘I’ve got so much to learn.’

Flynn smiled and dimples carved through the black stubble, giving him a renegade look. Perhaps her initial impression of a crocodile hunter hadn’t been far off. Somehow she couldn’t imagine him in a white coat, stuck inside the antiseptic corridors of a hospital down south.

‘If you want to learn then we’re happy to teach you.’ His voice rumbled around her like distant thunder.

A slight tremble of unease rippled through her before her indignation surged back. ‘What do you mean, if I want to learn? Of course I want to learn.’

He shrugged. ‘Not everyone does. We get a lot of people up here. They arrive city-wired, city-savvy, ready to save the world as long as it can be saved their way.’ He grinned at Susie, who’d wandered over from the shade of the tree now that it looked like they were ready to return to the clinic. ‘And then they leave us, don’t they, Susie?’

Susie nodded. ‘Yep. Mia third nurse this year.’

Mia’s chest tightened. ‘I plan to be the one that stays.’

‘Yeah, they all say that.’ Flynn opened the driver’s door of the truck, his expression resigned.

‘No, really, I’m staying.’ I have nothing to go back to. Nothing at all. Her mother’s blank and expressionless face wafted across her mind and a sliver of the terror she usually managed to keep concealed deep inside her coiled upward, threatening to choke her.

She needed to move, she needed to do something to keep the panic at bay. The clinic. Walking briskly, she ducked under Flynn’s outstretched arm and sat down hard in the driver’s seat.

A startled expression momentarily creased his forehead before he gently closed the door.

A dash of guilt bubbled up at her abrupt brush past him but it was quickly doused by fear and anger at his blasé attitude toward her. She gripped the steering-wheel hard and breathed in deeply. How dared this man make assumptions about her when he didn’t even know her? She wasn’t ‘everyone’. She was so far removed from being ‘everyone’, so far removed from being the ‘norm’, that it didn’t bear thinking about.

She turned the key in the ignition and gunned the engine, clawing back some control. It was time get back to work.

She turned her head and met his clear and intense gaze. A shiver shot through her, making her both cold and hot at the same time. A shiver that created shimmers deep inside her. No, no, no. Remember Steven.

Don’t remember Steven. She’d been working really hard on forgetting Steven and she didn’t want to revisit that pain either.

She involuntarily swallowed before clearing her throat. ‘I need to run this immunisation clinic so if you’re ready, we’ll leave now.’

Flynn wordlessly pushed back from the door where his arms had been resting. ‘Let’s head back, Susie.’ He walked slowly around the twin-cab truck, opening the back door for the health worker, and clambered in next to Mia, tilting his hat forward as if he was going to take a nap.

Everything about him, every action and word powerfully stated that this man was in command of his world—completely and utterly. It was in stark contrast to Mia, who had the feeling she was only just hanging on by her fingernails. Coming to Kirra was supposed to give her some control, and at the very least control over her job. She didn’t think that was too much to ask, given what she faced in the future.

Mia thrust the truck into gear, forcing away the thoughts that threatened to undo her. She refused to let ‘Dr Cool and Laid-Back’ make her feel incompetent.

You’re doing a good enough job of that yourself.

With a jerk, she swung the truck into a wide U-turn and pulled onto the main road, a plume of dust rising behind her. One hundred metres later she slowed and peered out the windscreen, checking for incoming planes as the runway crossed the road.

‘You’re right, no planes.’ The words sounded muffled from under the hat.

Exasperation whipped her. ‘Really, and you can see clearly out from under that hat, can you?’

Susie giggled behind her.

He tilted the hat back and his eyes twinkled at her. ‘Well, there are few holes in this old workhorse, but I can also hear. Combination of the senses, Mia.’

Susie’s earlier words, ‘Listen with all of you’ played across her mind. She’d been happy to hear them from Susie. But not from Flynn. Everything about this doctor had her on edge.

Thank goodness she only had to put up with him until tomorrow and then he’d fly out of her life for another week.

As she turned the truck onto the coast road and headed toward the clinic, she had to slow the vehicle to a crawl. There were people in cars, trucks, on bikes and on foot, blocking the road in a mass of colour—their bright clothing vivid against their dark skin. ‘I wonder what’s happening?’

‘Barge is in.’ Susie spoke matter-of-factly as she hopped out of the truck.

‘Friday’s barge day.’ Flynn wound down his window and high-fived some of the kids walking along the road.

Mia could see a big blue ship almost sitting on the shoreline, a large gangplank coming from the centre of its twin hull and resting on the red beach. She stared straight ahead at the party atmosphere in front of her as an ute, loaded with boxes, drove off the barge.

‘And that means…’ Flynn’s mouth twitched at the corners but his eyes expressed commiseration.

Realisation thudded through her. ‘It means no one is going to bring their baby, toddler or pre-schooler to the clinic this afternoon to be immunised.’ She gently banged her forehead against the steering-wheel, defeat tugging at her every pore.

‘See, you’re catching on already.’ His words were gentle with no trace of jubilation at her frustration.

With her head still against the wheel, she turned slightly as he stretched his long arms above his head, his shirt straining against muscular biceps. She bit her lip against the surge of unwanted heat that coiled through her. ‘You didn’t mention barge day when we left the airport.’ Her voice wavered.

He shrugged, his face impassive. ‘You were pretty strung out at that point. I thought it best to go with your flow.’

She breathed in hard, realising she’d made a fool of herself in front of her new colleague. What did they say about first impressions not being able to be undone? She welcomed the uncomfortable edge of the steering-wheel against her forehead, overriding the pain of humiliation. ‘What a waste of a day.’

‘Nothing is ever a waste, Mia.’ His soft words washed over her, not soothing but not gloating either. ‘I tell you what, I’ll fill you in as much as I can during the next week. At least you’ll know that the footy and barge afternoons are times you do paperwork because no one will be at clinic.’

She abruptly sat up and stared at him, her heart hammering so hard against her ribs she was sure he could see it. Surely she’d misunderstood. Surely her humiliation wasn’t going to be extended over one hundred and sixty eight hours. ‘The next week?’ Her voice squeaked out the words. ‘I thought you were only here for tomorrow’s clinic?’

He tilted his head to the side, his eyes crinkling in a smile. ‘That had been the plan but things change. Kirra has the largest population so I’m here more often than not. I’ve been away for five days so now I need to play catch-up and I’m here for seven days straight.’

Somehow she managed to force the muscles of her face into a smile, while her gut seemed to fold inward. ‘I guess it’s my lucky week, then.’ But luck had never played a role in her life and she didn’t believe it was going to start any time soon.