Dear Doctor
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Meredith Webber
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HarlequinCHAPTER ONE
TOO keyed up to wait for the lift, Kirsten raced up the stairs of the apartment building, Near West, paused momentarily in the fourth-floor foyer to catch her breath, then, still fizzing with excitement, gave a perfunctory tap on Gabi’s door, flung it open and with the ‘Ta da!’ cry of an impending announcement flashed her left hand towards her startled friend.
And her startled friend’s equally startled new—and former—husband.
Husband! Damn it all! In all the excitement she’d forgotten.
Again!
‘Oh, Alex, I’m sorry! I’ve got to get over doing this, haven’t I? Dashing in uninvited like I used to do before you came back. You two could have been up to anything!’
She smiled winsomely at Alex.
‘Forgive me? Just this once? After all, we’re about to become related.’
‘Related?’ Alex echoed, shaking his head. He’d been acquainted with Kirsten, who lived in the flat opposite theirs on the fourth floor, for more than three months now, and thought he’d mastered the art of following her ditzy and often extremely convoluted conversations, but this one had him stumped.
‘You and Grant? You’re engaged?’ Ha! Gabi had rescued him. Kirsten had met Gabi’s brother at his and Gabi’s second wedding—but engaged? When the wedding was only a week ago?
He shook his head, pleased Gabi seemed to be handling the situation for both of them. She was holding Kirsten’s left hand, looking at the magnificent diamond that sparkled on the ring finger.
‘I drove him to the airport this morning so he could fly back to that never-never world your family inhabit, and just before he walked over to his little plane, he gave me this. It was such a surprise. I mean, we haven’t slept together or anything. Well, you know I don’t, Gabi, not with someone I’ve just met. Not for at least a month, that’s my rule.’
Alex struggled to make sense of someone who wouldn’t sleep with a man for a month because she didn’t know him well enough, but would commit to marry someone she’d known a whole week. Because that’s all the time Grant had had in the city.
And from the patently false smile on Gabi’s face, she had some misgivings as well. Though when she voiced them it wasn’t her brother’s welfare she was considering.
‘What about Josh?’ she asked—blunt as only Gabi could be blunt. Was she talking about Josh Phillips, the man Alex was certain had been hanging around Gabi only a few months ago?
Alex watched a little of the sparkle fade from Kirsten’s lovely green eyes, and imagined the glow which lit her skin had also diminished slightly.
‘He doesn’t give a damn about me, Gabi, and never will. He’s all hooked up on this marrying late thing, and he had the hide to use my age as an excuse—why keep me hanging around through all my best child-bearing years? No, Josh will wait until he’s forty then take a young trophy bride to bear beautiful babies. She’ll stay at home to look after them, and cook him wonderful meals and entertain the right people, and never make an exhibition of herself splitting her skirt to the thigh while getting out of his car on the way to a specialists’ dinner.’
‘But I thought you’d been seeing him again recently?’ Gabi said, while Alex struggled with an impulse to ask about the split skirt—and the reaction of the specialists at dinner!
Kirsten sighed.
‘Not that recently!’ she admitted. ‘It was back when Alex first returned from Scotland. Josh came around a few times and my silly heart did its flip-flop thing, but all he wanted to talk about was you and Alex, and how to get the Grahams back together again.’
And though securely remarried to his ex-wife, and confident in their mutual love, Alex still felt a tiny spurt of relief at this explanation of Josh’s car having been parked outside the building. At the time, he’d suffered agonies of jealousy but had never questioned Gabi about it, and had tucked the matter away once they’d been reconciled. But, hey, he was only a man, and jealousy was practically obligatory in the male psyche.
Kirsten had switched the subject back to Grant, how wonderful he was, how kind, considerate, warm, funny, understanding, and most of all, dedicated to commitment.
Alex sensed it was only with difficulty that Gabi wasn’t rolling her eyes, particularly at the last description. Which did seem a trifle over-optimistic. Alex’s knowledge of Grant was from visits to the family property when Grant was always working, and his not infrequent sorties to the city, flying in for wool sales, or to pick out a stud bull at the big agricultural show. At these times there’d usually been an attractive woman attached to his admittedly well-muscled arm.
But Gabi, bless her soft romantic heart, was saying all the right things, hugging Kirsten and wishing her well. Offering coffee.
‘No! Grant and I have been up all night—just talking and talking. There’s been so little time and he won’t be able to get down until after the shearing and crutching.’
Kirsten sent a puzzled smile at Gabi.
‘I didn’t want to show the full extent of my ignorance in front of Grant, but what exactly is crutching?’
Alex hid a smile as Gabi explained, and Kirsten’s ‘Oh, gross!’ came right on cue.
‘At least you’ll have the challenge of working out what perfume works best at such times,’ Alex teased, remembering the nose-numbing task he’d once had, sniffing his way through Kirsten’s forty-seven different perfumes in an effort to establish for her what worked best for men.
‘Oh, I won’t have to bother about that any more,’ Kirsten said blithely. ‘Grant really doesn’t like perfume and he says it upsets the dogs when they’re working, so I’ll give it up.’
Gabi was now looking seriously worried, and Alex put his arm around her shoulders to give her a hug of silent support.
Then Kirsten added, ‘What kind of work do the dogs actually do? Do they track the sheep, that perfume might upset them?’
Gabi’s shoulders relaxed as the question broke her up completely.
It was minutes before she had her chuckles finally under control, and she mopped at her streaming eyes, kissed Kirsten on the cheek and said, ‘I can see I’ll have to give you some lessons before you actually head west to the property.’
Alex expected Kirsten to object to Gabi’s mirth, but he realised she was thinking even further ahead when she nodded seriously, then added, ‘And come shopping with me so I know what to buy—I know city clothes won’t do at all.’
And on that happy note—he’d learnt that shopping always made Kirsten happy—she departed, heading for bed, no doubt to make up for the many nights of sleep she’d missed while Grant had been in town.
‘Well?’ Alex asked Gabi, when he was sure Kirsten was unlikely to return.
Gabi shook her head.
‘It might work out—who knows? I know Grant’s always been a love-’em-and-leave-’em type but he’s never given anyone an engagement ring before.’
She sighed.
‘Well, not that I know of!’
She was looking so concerned Alex felt obliged to kiss her, and that led to other pleasurable things, though he did remember to lock the front door before heading to the bedroom. Gabi’s open-door policy had led to other embarrassing moments since his return. And on Saturday morning, a number of the building’s mostly medical inhabitants would be off duty. Who knew who might walk in next?
Kirsten managed to sleep through most of the weekend so by Monday morning, when she reported for work, she was refreshed but still high with excitement, particularly as Grant was proving the most exemplary fiancé, phoning each evening to tell her how much he missed her, how much he loved her and how the shearing and crutching was progressing. She could have lived without the crutching details, which made intimate bits of her anatomy squirm in discomfort, but shearing was OK. After all, lightweight wool was now used by the best designers for some stunning creations.
Aware that the rock on her finger would attract attention and comment, she dressed with particular care—which involved trying on fourteen combinations of clothes before settling on the one she’d tried on fourth—and seventh, and tenth. It was a knee-length straight skirt in a caramel-coloured, stretchy material, and it fitted her like a second skin. On top she wore a caramel and white knit top with enough splashes of green in the pattern to highlight her eyes.
‘So, the newly engaged woman sallies forth to work!’ her friend Alana teased when she joined Kirsten in the foyer of the building as both were setting out for work. Health freak Alana had, of course, used the stairs.
She’d also, over the weekend, inspected the ring, so Kirsten sought approval for her outfit and received assurances that it hit just the right note.
‘Engaged but efficient!’ Alana said, and Kirsten tried to see if she was hiding a smile as she said it, but as there didn’t seem to be any merriment in Alana’s eyes, she accepted the words as a compliment.
One she needed for boosting her morale when she arrived in the occupational therapy department, just a little late because so many people had noticed the ring and stopped to congratulate her, and was told Josh Phillips had been asking for her.
‘He’s phoned three times,’ Clare, the Occupational Therapy department secretary, told her. ‘Might be something to do with the new unit they’re setting up down in the kids’ ward.’
‘New unit? I’ve only been away a fortnight, not a year. What new unit?’
Clare’s offhand shrug made Kirsten want to shake her. The secretaries knew more about what went on in the hospital than anyone, with the possible exception of the cleaners.
Though from some of the things cleaners had told her, she thought they probably made up a lot of it.
‘So, does he want to see me?’ Kirsten asked, when it was obvious Clare wasn’t going to answer the unit question.
‘I don’t know,’ Clare replied. ‘He just kept phoning, kept asking to speak to you, and I kept saying you weren’t here.’ The phone rang, and she added, ‘This might be him now,’ before lifting the receiver and positively cooing a hello.
‘Oh, it’s you, Marie.’ The cooing stopped. ‘Yes, I went last night. You’ve no idea…’
Kirsten moved away, no wiser about why Josh might want to speak to her, or about the new unit, but definitely not wanting to hear the intimate details of Clare’s social life.
But as she stowed her handbag in her locker, and tried to decide whether to stay in her gorgeous green sandals or change into sensible flats, an image of Josh Phillips flitted through her head. Hopefully, he had nothing to do with her decision to keep the sandals on, because she was, after all, over him. And engaged. Though, now she thought about it, she’d bought them the first time he’d asked her out, and had worn them several times during that whirlwind month when the attraction between them had been so strong, she’d almost broken her rule…
She sighed, then breathed on the diamond on the third finger of her left hand and rubbed the stone against her skirt.
No, keeping the sandals on was a reasonable decision based on the fact she was scheduled to do desk work today, working out the rotation for the students who’d be coming into the hospital for four weeks practical work next week, before university started again in late February. Each student needed a mentor, so that had to be sorted out as well. And once that was done, there were work schedules and a tutorial to prepare…
She crossed to the pigeonholes on the far side of the room, pulled out all the papers from her own, then dumped the lot on the desk all the OTs used from time to time. She was putting hospital circulars into one heap and OT news into another when the phone rang.
Clare was still regaling Marie with the details of her weekend and obviously had no intention of cutting short her conversation to take a work-related call, so it had switched automatically through to the phone on the second desk.
You’re over Josh, Kirsten reminded herself as she reached out to pick up the receiver. You’re engaged to a hunky country man who just adores you and, better still, is ready to settle down, she lectured herself as her fingers hesitated above the moulded plastic receiver.
‘Yes?’
‘Are you always this late for work?’
Not only over him but wondering what she’d ever seen in him, the rude, arrogant beast!
‘Is that relevant to whatever you want to know?’ she snapped, as much disturbed by a silly hangover-type weakness in her knees as by his attitude.
‘I don’t suppose so,’ he replied, super-cool—but, then, he always was. All the Phillips men were cool—they probably had cool bred into them along with the genes that made them all doctors. Past and present members of the Phillips family formed a hierarchy so entrenched within the hospital and the medical world beyond it that they were spoken of with the awe usually reserved for royalty.
‘Well?’ Kirsten demanded, when she realised from the silence it might be her turn to talk, then found she didn’t have anything to say. Apart from ‘I’m wearing the sandals I bought to go out with you’, and that didn’t seem appropriate.
Particularly when he was already breathing fire.
‘I wanted to speak to you about something, but it’s too late now. I’ve an appointment in five minutes, then I’ll be on the run all morning. Perhaps lunchtime? Twelve-thirty looks good for me. Coffee-shop or canteen?’
She must have mumbled something he thought he understood, for after an abrupt ‘Good, twelve-thirty in the coffee-shop, I’ll see you then’, he hung up.
Kirsten turned the receiver towards her and stared at it.
Had she really just had that weird conversation with Josh Phillips?
She looked across at Clare who’d apparently finished her conversation with Marie and was now buffing her nails.
‘What new unit?’ Kirsten asked her, then she frowned as ferociously as she could. ‘And don’t tell me you don’t know.’
Clare did her shrugging thing again, and pouted petulantly.
‘It’s for kids with leukaemia—and maybe one of the anaemias, but mainly leukaemia. They’re setting up for transplants of some kind. I don’t know why it’s such a big deal. Marion was asked to suggest an OT and she suggested you and Dr Phillips said he thought Dorothy would be better, or Candace, or maybe we should advertise.’
Kirsten listened to this explanation with growing disbelief. Marion, head of the OT department, had suggested her, Kirsten Collins, and Josh had turned her down! For the transplant unit for which she had personally raised a lot of money but which they’d all thought had been a long-term dream?
Disbelief and anger warred, and though she knew anger would win, she didn’t want to unleash it yet. No! Just keep it simmering nicely along until twelve-thirty—or would she make that twelve thirty-five?
In the end she decided punctuality would suit her best, but even so, when she entered the coffee-shop at exactly twelve-thirty, he was already there. She paused just inside the door, pleased to get the initial ‘seeing Josh’ reactions out of the way. Studied him, wondering why one man—handsome enough but not startlingly so—could produce physical symptoms in her body when she worked with men as good-looking, well-built and far more charismatic every day.
It was all to do with sex appeal, and neither her studies nor any amount of ‘answer yes or no’ in the pop psychology quizzes she loved doing had ever satisfactorily explained exactly what that was.
But forget sex appeal, she was here for business—and, if necessary, blood!
Josh Phillips’s blood!
Thus girded for battle, Kirsten strode past the scatter of people queued at the counter as they waited to order, and approached her prey. She waited until she was right beside the table, then she leaned forward and said, ‘Now, before I bother to sit down, am I in or out of the new unit?’
Good! At least he had the grace to look startled, though he’d have had to be brain dead not to guess she’d hear about it some time this morning.
‘What do you mean, in or out?’ he said, recovering well, the rat! He even had the cheek to smile, before adding in his best conciliatory tone, ‘Look, why don’t you sit down? I’ve arranged for Mavis to take our order from the table as soon as we’re both seated. Saves a bit of time that way.’
The statement added fuel to Kirsten’s burning sense of injustice. A lesser person would have grown cobwebs waiting for table service in this coffee-shop—but not Josh!
Though it might be worth relenting enough to sit for the sheer pleasure of being waited on by cranky Mavis.
Kirsten slid into the seat, then realised it was a mistake. The tables were so small her knees were practically brushing his, and now she was on a level with him there was the added disadvantage of having to look into his eyes. Eyes so blue, so direct, so…tactile somehow they should have been registered as lethal weapons.
‘Well?’ she demanded, then realised she’d tried that demand earlier in the day and had got nowhere.
Neither was she going to get anywhere with it now, or not immediately, because Mavis had, true to Josh’s word, suddenly materialised by their sides and was smiling dotingly at the paediatrician.
‘She’s known me since I was a kid,’ Josh said, when she’d taken their order and departed. ‘I’d occasionally come in to the hospital with my father on weekends. We took turns, the three of us boys. I think it was the only bonding thing he ever did with his sons—drive to the hospital with one of us every week. Anyway, he’d drop me off in the coffee-shop. Mavis would make me pink lemonade and a banana split and keep an eye on me while he did his rounds.’
‘A little treat for the crown prince?’ Kirsten said, and saw surprise flicker in Josh’s eyes.
‘I don’t think we ever saw ourselves as anything special,’ he protested. ‘Or see ourselves as special now.’
Kirsten laughed.
‘No? When every day you walk past Phillips Ward, Phillips Lecture Room, the Phillips Family Withdrawing Suite?’
Josh looked uncomfortable, which, as far as Kirsten was concerned, was just fine. Why should she be the only one suffering?
And what had happened to her anger? Surely simply sitting opposite him hadn’t been enough to douse it?
No, a lot had been dispelled by one telling sentence he’d let slip, and though she’d made light of his confession, teasing him about the family, the remark about the only bonding thing his father had ever done had jabbed through her defences. For a moment there, she’d felt almost sorry for him.
Rebuilding time. This was not a man one faced with weakened defences!
She thought about the unit and felt her anger flare again.
Good!
‘So, what about this unit? Is it what you wanted to discuss? Are you offering me a job in it or not?’
Again he looked uncomfortable—as well he might if what Clare had said was true!
‘Kirsten…’ he began, his voice tailing off in a most un-Josh-like manner. This was a man with the confidence to reduce sloppy junior staff to tears in two minutes flat and, not five minutes later, win them back to smiling sycophancy. ‘It’s not that I don’t think you’d—’
Mavis returned, and as Kirsten lifted her hand to take the plate the waitress held out to her, Josh saw the flash of light from the rock-size stone in a ring on the third finger of her left hand.
Kirsten was engaged?
Panic rushed through him, though it should have been relief.
He tried the thought again, only this time with a different spin.
Kirsten was engaged, full stop, finito, that’s it.
Much better!
And engaged people usually got married sooner rather than later, which gave him an out as far as employing her on the unit was concerned.
So why did he feel as if he’d suddenly developed a perforated ulcer?
He glanced across the table, wondering why she wasn’t questioning the silence, saw the heavy fall of red-brown hair, the creamy, lightly freckled skin.
‘Don’t mess with redheads—they’re flighty, capricious, and usually bad-tempered’ had been practically the only father-son advice his father had ever given him. Actually, his father had probably said ‘don’t get involved with’ rather than ‘mess with’, but the implication had been there. His father hadn’t followed up the statement with any illustrations of this warning, but just in case, for the month when Josh had been engaged in a preliminary skirmish with this particular redhead, he’d kept telling himself her hair was more brown than red, really.
Really!
It just looked red today. And the green eyes made you think red hair.
He couldn’t see the cool green eyes because she was totally absorbed in investigating the contents of her bowl of salad, picking through it with her fork as if counting the individual pieces. He had a silly urge to smile, because it was so Kirsten! No matter what the situation, food should be considered seriously.
Though possibly not as seriously as clothes.
He hauled his mind back to the subject they were supposedly discussing.
‘As far as the unit is concerned, I wanted people on the team willing to commit to it on an ongoing basis. I know you were there in the beginning, and did a lot of the initial fund-raising work, but you moved on from the paediatric ward, so I assumed you wouldn’t be interested in the unit. Now, by the look of things, you’re heading for a new stage of your life. Are congratulations in order?’
There, that had worked well. He was sufficiently satisfied with this lucid summing-up to take a bite of his steak sandwich, only to choke on it when she said, ‘I’d have thought you’d be more likely to offer commiserations to the man involved. After all, a man who turns pale and sweaty at the thought of commitment must have some fellow-feeling for the ring-giver.’
‘I don’t think any of this is relevant,’ Josh said, and heard the stiffness of anger echoing back to him from his own words.
‘Of course it isn’t,’ she snapped right back at him. ‘What’s relevant is choosing the best people for the job. I assume that’s why you asked Marion for her recommendation. So why turn it down? Turn me down when she recommended me.’
‘I was concerned about your commitment.’ Damn, there was that word again. ‘After all, you moved on from Paediatrics rather suddenly, and I didn’t want that happening again. You took leave, if I remember.’
Which, at the time, had angered him because, instead of being relieved that he hadn’t had to see her somewhere on the ward every day, he’d found himself missing her vibrant presence—looking for her when he’d known she was no longer there.
And repeating over and over to himself his father’s advice!
‘And now you’re engaged—’
The emerald eyes narrowed.
‘Let’s keep my private life out of this,’ she said. ‘Though I distinctly remember telling you that I intended working at least part time after marriage. I think it went on to the long list of reasons why I wasn’t a suitable partner for a Phillips. Oh, I know you didn’t mention suitability—you stuck with the ‘not ready for commitment’ excuse—but it was there all the time, wasn’t it, Josh? There in the back of your mind. There when you’d take me out to dinner but took Roberta Smythe to the hospital ball in case I didn’t fit in with the rest of the Phillips clan.’
‘I explained that to you, Kirsten. It was a long-standing arrangement.’
But he was shocked by her perception. He hadn’t consciously thought about how she might fit into his formidable family—and if he had, his concern would have been for her. For her comfort in their presence.
But his decision to be honest with her—to tell her, before it even properly began, that it would only be an affair and have no future—had probably had something to do with the fact that she certainly didn’t fit the image of the woman he had always thought he might, eventually, marry. A woman who would be content to be a consort rather than a wife—who would understand he had responsibilities to his work, and the hospital, and not expect or demand too much of his time and attention.
No, he couldn’t see vibrant, colourful, beautiful Kirsten in that role. She might not demand attention—almost certainly wouldn’t, for she was supremely self-sufficient—but that wouldn’t stop him being driven to distraction wondering what she was up to every moment he wasn’t with her.
In fact, he’d started to see what his father had meant…
‘I don’t know why we’re discussing this anyway,’ Josh said, his own discomfort making him speak more sharply than he’d intended. ‘What’s past is past. As far as the unit is concerned, I wanted an OT who could take a wider role. We’ve got to consider the implications of the long-term hospitalisation of patients, and the effect of this on them and their families. Bone-marrow and stem-cell transplants are usually the “last chance” for these kids, and although there are social workers available to the parents, I don’t have the funds to have a counsellor full time on the unit.’
‘But the OT is there and usually available to speak to parents so you thought you might be able to find an OT with some counselling training or experience?’ Kirsten guessed, then her eyes narrowed and he knew he wasn’t going to like what came next. ‘Like Dorothy, who did a psych degree before her OT—or perhaps me, who did psychology for my masters, and included studies on the effects of long-term hospitalisation in children?’
‘You’ve got a masters? In psychology?’
He couldn’t have sounded more surprised if she’d told him she had three legs and a tail. Then surprise turned to suspicion. Kirsten saw it flare in the blue eyes before he shot the question at her.
‘Why?’
‘Why do a master’s? Because I like studying. No, that’s not true. Like most people, I hate studying, but I like learning things, knowing things. I dithered along, doing various subjects part time for years after I finished my OT, then I decided to get serious, applied to do the further degree. When I was accepted, I streamlined my studies and finally took some leave last year to complete it. Why psychology?’
She grinned at him.
‘It seemed as good a way as any to find out how men tick.’
She turned her attention back to her salad, knowing full well she’d confused him—and delighted by this small victory. What she didn’t tell him was that taking time off to complete her master’s had got her away from the hospital and the risk of running into him, while studying had filled in the empty hours. It had been her panacea for heartbreak.
‘And did you?’
She glanced up, a black olive arrested halfway to her lips while she thought back to work out what he was asking.
‘Find out how men ticked?’ she guessed.
He wasn’t smiling and, as far as she could tell, there was no humour in the words, or lurking around his luscious lips, or sparkling in those killer eyes.
‘Some men,’ she said carefully, then she lifted the olive and bit down on its saltiness, wondering just how bluntly she could get the conversation off this strange byway and back to discussion of the unit.
‘Yet you still work as an occupational therapist?’ Relief! He’d done it for her. ‘Surely with a second degree, working in some kind of counselling or psychotherapy role would be more—’
‘Remunerative?’
Josh seemed taken aback by her interjection, and she stole the moment to add, ‘Money isn’t everything, is it? Working with children has always been my favourite thing. But any hospital work, particularly work in a cancer ward where I do so much distraction therapy, involves contact with a lot of grief, a lot of stress, a lot of despair. I wanted—no, make that needed—to learn how to handle it myself, and hopefully be able to offer help to others. As well as that, I’d done Psych I and II in my OT training, then did a third unit as an optional in my final year, so following it up was a natural progression.’
‘But you haven’t been working with children. You’ve been working with stroke victims,’ he reminded her, seizing on the weakness in her argument which she’d tried to cover with talk of the degree.
Was he hoping she’d admit she’d avoided Paediatrics on her return because of him?
If so, he’d be disappointed. No way was she going there.
‘Stroke victims have a lot of psychological adjusting to do as well,’ she reminded him. ‘But we’ve got a long way off this unit, haven’t we? And if I’m not being offered a position on it, why did you want to see me?’
He’d gone beyond taken aback this time. Downright shocked, that’s how he looked. She’d snapped the questions at him, mainly to avoid any further discussion of why she wasn’t working with children right now.
‘I wanted to tell you personally,’ he began, and Kirsten, as her anger reached simmering point again, finished for him.
‘Tell me personally why you didn’t choose me for it? Explain why, when I helped with the initial fund-raising and had discussed it with you so often, you didn’t think I’d be suitable? OK, come on, tell me. Say it outright. Say, “I don’t want you, Kirsten.”’
He stopped pretending to eat, put down his sandwich, wiped his fingers, then reached across the table to, oh, so lightly brush a touch across her left hand.
‘Ah, but I do, you see,’ he murmured, his husky voice sending vibes right through Kirsten’s body. ‘That’s part of the problem. I’m still attracted to you, Kirsten. That’s never changed.’
