Scandal In Sydney. Alison Roberts
through the windows Sydney Harbour.
She could see the Manly ferry chugging across the harbour. She could see the opera house.
A sunbeam was on her nose.
The cramps had stopped. She wriggled, very carefully. The nausea had gone as well.
She’d died and gone to heaven.
She was in Luke Williams’s bed.
It didn’t matter whose bed she was in, she decided. Anyone with a bed like this was a friend for life.
Was she more like her mother than she’d thought?
Even that concept wasn’t enough to spoil what she was feeling right now. Like life might be possible again.
A tap on the door. ‘Come in.’ She hauled her sheets to her chin, expecting … Luke? Instead a chubby little lady in a floral pinafore peered round the door, looking anxious.
‘Are you awake, dear? I didn’t want to disturb you, only I popped my nose round the door an hour ago and saw you hadn’t drunk anything. I think Dr Williams would like you to drink. Would you like a cup of tea?’
Lily thought about it. She had many things to think about, but right now tea was pretty much the limit of her brain power.
‘I’d love one.’
‘With lots of sugar.’ The lady beamed. ‘I’m Gladys Henderson and I do for Dr Williams. I do for other doctors in this apartment block as well but he’s my favourite. But he’s in my bad books for not telling me you were coming. They tell me you’ve had quite the romance and then you just start doing night duty and no one knew. And now to get this nasty bug … But we’re all so pleased for Dr Williams. He’s ever so nice and we’ve been thinking he goes up to that farm of his all the time with only his old uncle, and he stares at nothing and just thinks and thinks about that poor young wife of his. But she’s four years dead, and we’re so pleased … well, not pleased she’s dead, of course, but pleased as Punch that he’s got a young lady. And that’s enough from me; you don’t want me standing here gabbling for ever. I’ll make you a nice cup of tea and plump your pillows and then you settle down and sleep until the doctor comes home. Ooh, I do love a good romance.’
LUKE’S list went overtime. There were always complications, he thought. The problem with being a plastic surgeon with a decent reputation was that he was sent other people’s mistakes. Repairs of repairs … He hated it.
His real work, his passion, was repairs that made a huge difference to people’s lives. Birth defects, accidents, improving the aesthetic results after disfiguring cancer surgery.
He’d refused at first to do cosmetic surgery but there was a need. The lines blurred between vanity and distress and he couldn’t say no.
Regardless, he left the hospital as he always did on a Wednesdays, feeling that his time could be better utilised. Feeling that there should be something more.
Like going home to Hannah and their little boy?
No. Time had left him ceasing to miss Hannah. In truth, their marriage had been … problematic. He didn’t miss her as if he was missing part of himself. He missed what could have been without even knowing what that was.
He was going home now to another woman.
She might not still be there. She might have had her sleep and gone back to that appalling boarding house.
He’d fetch her back.
Um … no. It was none of his business where she was living.
But now half the hospital believed she was his long-term lover. And it was his business. He’d compromised her reputation. Maybe some kind of primitive instinct was kicking in, making him feel …
Dumb? Too chivalrous for words? He hadn’t even had sex with her.
But the whole hospital thought he had, and he wasn’t doing logic right now. He swung into the underground car park as Mrs Henderson was loading her buckets into the back of her cleaning van.
‘Oh, Dr Williams, I’m so pleased you’re home,’ she said. ‘I’ve been popping in to check on your young lady all afternoon and I didn’t like to leave until you got home so I thought I’d do Dr Teo’s spring cleaning. His place has been wanting a good going over for ever. But she’s looking a little better. I gave her a nice boiled egg and she managed to eat most of it. She wanted to get dressed an hour ago but I said you wouldn’t hear of it and if she tried I’d ring you. So she’s gone back to sleep like a good girl. And she’s lovely.’ She beamed. ‘Just lovely. I knew you’d find someone someday but I had no idea that you’d already found her … Lovely, lovely, lovely.’
He opened the door looking like a little boy expecting a bogeyman. If she wasn’t so discombobulated, she would have laughed.
The last time she’d seen this man he’d been totally in control and she very much hadn’t been. She still wasn’t, but he looked like a man thrown overboard without a lifeline.
She shoved herself up on her pillows … on his pillows, she reminded herself … and tried to look dignified.
Gladys had helped her shower and change into her nightgown. It was quite a respectable nightgown. It wasn’t respectable enough for greeting the man the whole hospital thought she’d slept with. Who’d held her paper bag.
‘Thank you for the bed,’ she said with as much dignity as she could muster. ‘I’ll get up now. I would have left sooner but Gladys was threatening strait-jackets.’
‘And you didn’t feel well enough?’
‘There was that. It’s a powerful little bug.’
‘It hit most people harder than you.’
‘Gee, that makes me feel better.’
‘Sorry.’ He wasn’t sure where to take it from here, she thought. Neither was she.
‘I will get up now,’ she said.
‘There’s no need.’
Really? The thought of wriggling further down on these gorgeous pillows was almost irresistible—but this wasn’t her bed. It was Luke Williams’s bed.
‘Gladys seems to think I’m your long-lost lover,’ she managed. ‘The sooner I’m out of here the better.’
‘The whole hospital thinks you’re my long-lost lover. It’s not such a bad idea.’
She thought about that. Or she tried to think about it. Her brain was ever so fuzzily … well, fuzzy.
What he’d said was a very fuzzy statement.
‘From whose point of view?’ she said at last.
He ventured further into the room, looking suddenly businesslike. Professional. Doctor approaching patient with an action plan. ‘From both of our points of view if you intend fulfilling your contract,’ he said briskly. ‘We were caught in a position that was less than dignified. If we were long-term lovers, the hospital grapevine would think it was funny and get over it. For a man and woman who met each other only hours before, it’s like a great big neon light’s appeared over your head saying “Condemn”.’
There was much in that to think about. Condemn. It was a heavy word. Condemnation was how she was thinking of herself, in the fragments of time the gastro had given her to contemplate the matter.
But her self-image wasn’t this man’s problem. She’d held him. She’d wanted him as much as he’d wanted her. It was up to her to handle the consequences. ‘I can handle a bit of condemnation,’ she said, wondering if she could.
She thought