Scandal In Sydney

CHAPTER FOUR

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 of all the insults thrown in her direction since her father had died. She was her mother’s daughter, therefore she was a Scarlet Woman by default. It had even ended her relationship with Charlie the Accountant, the man she’d dated for three years but who’d jibbed when expectations had turned to marriage.

‘Sorry, Lily, but I can’t handle your reputation.’

‘You mean my mother’s reputation? My mother’s behaviour makes me a whore, too?’ Her voice had risen … maybe more than she’d intended.

‘No but people look at you. I’m not sure I can handle that for the rest of our lives; people expecting you to turn out like your mother.’

She’d thrown something at him. Something large and unwieldy that had just happened to be full of water and half-dead Christmas lilies. It had been a satisfactory moment in a very unsatisfactory interview, one that had left her feeling sullied. Mostly because she’d thought she’d loved Charlie and he’d loved her, and how could she have loved someone who thought her mother’s reputation was more important than their relationship?

But her mother’s reputation was important. It made a difference. Like her reputation was important now, if she was to continue working at the Harbour.

She was only at the Harbour for four weeks. She could handle this.

‘I need a favour,’ Luke said and sat on her bed.

His bed. She inched back on the pillows.

She’d held this man, why?

She knew why she’d held him. It had been the culmination of an appalling time, an appalling emotion. She’d felt a matching need in him and their mutual need had exploded.

There was no longer mutual need. They were strangers. There wasn’t even attraction.

Um … yes, there was. He was rumpled after a long day at work. He’d hauled off his tie and his top shirt button was undone, revealing a hint of lean muscle underneath. His dark eyes were shadowed with weariness, and his five o’clock shadow was toe-curlingly sexy.

If he leaned forward and touched her …

She’d be out of here so fast he wouldn’t see her go. What she was feeling scared her witless.

She was not going to become her mother.

What had he said? I need a favour.

‘I don’t owe you,’ she said, cautiously. ‘Or not very much. I mean … it was lovely that you helped me this morning, and you gave me a gorgeous bed to sleep in for the day, but—’

‘I’d like you to sleep in it for a month.’

That was enough to take her breath away. A girl could be properly flummoxed with a statement like that.

‘No,’ she said.

‘No?’

‘It’s a very nice bed,’ she managed. ‘But despite all evidence to the contrary, I keep myself nice.’

‘I’m not propositioning you. I have a sofa bed in the living room. This apartment has two bathrooms. This bed can be yours for a month.’

‘I have a bed of my own.’

‘You’re not going back to that doss house.’

‘It might be a doss house,’ she said with as much dignity as she could muster, ‘but it’s a prepaid doss house. It’s okay. My bedroom’s almost clean.’

‘There are bedbugs.’

‘Nonsense. I would have been bitten by now.’

For answer he tugged her arm forward, slid her sleeve to her elbow and exposed a cluster of red welts. They both looked down at them. Irrefutable evidence. ‘I saw these this morning,’ he said. ‘I rest my case.’

She stared down at the welts, perplexed. Bedbugs. She had been itchy, she thought. She’d just been too preoccupied to notice.

‘Yikes,’ she muttered. ‘And double yikes. I’ll buy insect spray.’

‘You don’t get rid of bedbugs with inspect spray. You get rid of them by moving out.’

‘Not an option.’

‘You have an option. Here.’

‘I’m not in the market for a relationship,’ she snapped.

‘I told you, I have a very comfortable sofa bed. I’m not in the market for a relationship either.’

‘I didn’t even mean to kiss you.’

‘Neither did I.’

They were glaring at each other. He was still holding her arm. A frisson of something … electricity? … was passing between.

She couldn’t figure it out.

Why had she kissed him?

She wanted, quite fiercely, totally inexplicably, to do it again.

Get a grip, she told herself frantically. Even if her body was operating at ten per cent capacity, she had to think.

She was so tired. She wanted to go back to sleep.

But a woman with no money, a woman who was dependent on her next pay cheque, a woman like her, couldn’t sleep.

She glanced at the bedside clock. Seven-thirty. She was due back at the hospital at eight. She went to toss back the covers and then thought better of it. Her nightgown wasn’t all that long. She didn’t intend to make this situation more personal than it already was.

‘I need to get to work,’ she said, with as much dignity as she could muster. She glanced at her suitcase in the corner. ‘Thank you for bringing my stuff. Would you mind giving me some privacy while I get dressed?’

‘You’re not getting dressed.’

‘Says who?’

‘Me. And there’s no need. You’re not required at work again until Monday.’

‘Monday!’ She gasped. ‘Are you out of your mind? I’ve signed on for four weeks. If I don’t go to work tonight, I’ve broken my contract. No pay. Do you know what that means?’

‘The hospital’s paying,’ he said. ‘Their barrier nursing clearly isn’t working; they took out the controls too soon. The least they can do is pay you while you’re sick. I’ve already organised it. Standard leave for this bug is four days—barrier nursing requires it. They don’t want you back there before Monday but you’ll be paid regardless.’

Whoa.

No work until Monday.

Four days with pay.

She could sink …

She couldn’t sink. She was in this man’s bed.

‘You’re looking paler every minute,’ he said conversationally. ‘You don’t want to be sick again. Put your head down and sleep.’

‘No!’ It was practically a wail.

Why did he want her here? She was starting to feel like a white slave trader was standing at the end of her bed. His bed.

‘I’m not holding you here against your will,’ he said.

‘Yes, you are.’ She was having trouble making herself speak. ‘If you won’t let me get dressed …’

‘Your baggage has been cavorting with bedbugs,’ he said, prosaically. ‘I’ll take it down to the basement and fumigate it while you sleep.’

‘But why?’ It was a wail this time—she was reaching the point where the world was starting to blur.

He knew it. He took her hands in his before she could resist, his strong fingers holding hers. The strength of him was infinitely … masculine. Infinitely seductive and infinitely comforting.

How long since someone had held her to comfort her?

He wasn’t holding her to comfort her, she reminded herself, trying frantically to defuzz her thoughts. He was holding her to have his wicked way … although how he could want to have any sort of way with a woman who’d just stopped throwing up …

‘We can help each other,’ he said, quite gently, and she blinked and tried to think of something other than the feel of his hands holding hers. His gorgeous eyes; his gaze meeting hers, pure and strong. The strength of his jaw, the strong bone structure of his face, the shadow of a smile that was gentleness itself.

He’d make a gorgeous doctor, she thought. He was a gorgeous doctor.

‘You’re already helping me,’ she muttered. ‘Your housekeeper gave me an egg and toast soldiers.’

‘Good for Gladys. I hope they helped.’

‘I kept ‘em down.’

‘All the more reason why you should help me back. Stay here for a month.’

Her eyes weren’t working properly. They kept blinking.

She was seeing him in soft focus. He was a beautiful man, she thought, and he was proposing that she stay with him for a month. Like a sheik and a desert princess.

Princesses didn’t wear shabby nightgowns and smell of … She didn’t want to think of what she smelled of, despite her shower. A night on duty, followed by gastro …

‘I think you’re weird,’ she said. ‘Go find a princess, instead of—’

‘I’m not in the market for a princess,’ he said, the gentleness fading a little. ‘That’s why I want you.’

‘Pardon?’

He sighed, looked down at their linked hands and carefully disengaged. The gentle look became grim.

‘I don’t do relationships,’ he said.

‘I see that,’ she said cautiously, casting a quick look round the sparse bedroom. This was such a male domain.

‘But everyone in the hospital wants me to.’

This was important, she decided. She had to get to the other side of the fuzz. Figure out where reality and nonsense merged. ‘You don’t think that’s just a wee bit egotistical?’ she demanded, and his smile returned. It was a truly gorgeous smile.

His smile could make a girl’s knees turn to putty—if a girl’s knees weren’t already putty.

‘Sydney Harbour Hospital is gossip central,’ he said. ‘Too much intense emotion, too many people working long hours, thrown together over and over … Everyone at the Harbour knows everyone else’s business.’

‘You’re kidding,’ she said faintly. ‘I’d thought it’d be a huge, anonymous hospital.

‘The Harbour?’ He gave a hollow laugh. ‘Anonymous is not us. Big or not, we’re made up of individual teams. Everyone knows everyone else’s business, sometimes I think right down to the jocks we wear. Actually, that may well be the literal truth; Mrs Henderson does my washing. This apartment block is home to at least half a dozen Harbour medics who also use Mrs Henderson, so I guess that’s public knowledge as well. But since my wife died four years ago …’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘It’s history,’ he said harshly. ‘But that’s the problem. The hospital, the grapevine, the whole gossip network has decided it’s time for me to move on. Even my boss keeps pushing women at me.’

‘Gee,’ she said cautiously, her interest caught through the fuzz. ‘So you’re being besieged with women. That must be tough.’

‘I’ve been married,’ he said, maybe more harshly than he intended because he paused and softened his tone. ‘What I mean is that I have no intention of going there again. I’d like everybody to lay off. You’re in Sydney for a month?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then where are you going?’

‘Brisbane?’ It was the first place that came into her mind. It sounded a lot more fun than Lighthouse Cove.

‘A month would give me head space,’ he said. ‘I’ve told them we’ve been in a relationship for a while.’

‘You did that?’ The fuzz was thickening.

‘It protects your reputation.’

‘Thank you.’ She didn’t feel like saying thank you. She felt … like she didn’t know what to say.

He was being businesslike, a surgeon outlining an action plan. ‘Apart from protecting your reputation, if we let everyone know what happened yesterday was the result of a long-term relationship, it helps me. I’m having four weeks with you and then you can go to Brisbane, you can do anything you like, but from my point of view you can be my absentee girlfriend for as long as I can carry it off. I’ll tell them you need to care for an ailing mother or something similar. I can tell them we met on holiday a couple of years ago. That you come to the farm whenever you can. That I’m a very loyal lover. I’m thinking I might get two years out of this.’

‘Two years …’

‘Two years without matchmaking. Two years where I’m left alone.’ He ran his fingers through his already rumpled hair and sighed. ‘Believe me, in this hothouse, that’s worth diamonds. And in return you get board for a month. You have to admit anything’s better than that dump you were staying in. So … deal?’

The fuzz was everywhere, but his gaze was on her. Firm. Businesslike. Like what he was suggesting was reason itself. ‘Platonic,’ he said. ‘No sex. Promise.’

‘Of course there’d be no sex, but …’ But her head was spinning. This was crazy. She’d be a pretend lover?

He was proposing an affair of convenience. No sex.

He really did have the most beautiful … pillows.

Oh, she was tired.

‘You,’ Luke said, with a certain amount of contrition, ‘are wrecked. You need to sleep. I have another bathroom off the living room. We’re independent. You sleep your bug away and then settle in for a month of businesslike contact. Would you like anything before you go to sleep?’

What was happening?

Sense was telling her to get out of this man’s bed now; get out of his life.

If she did, she’d have to leave the pillows.

And … He’d just asked her if she’d like anything. What she wanted more than anything else in the world …

‘Another cup of tea?’ she murmured, figuring it couldn’t hurt to ask.

He grinned. ‘Your wish is my command.’

And five minutes later she was tucked up in his bed with a fresh cup of tea, plumped pillows, a spare blanket, the night settling in over the apartment. Five minutes later she was Luke Williams’s Lover of Convenience.

CHAPTER FIVE