Silence.
More silence.
‘It’s hard, this country practice,’ Rachel said at last. She was combing pieces of debris from her hair with her fingers. She’d taken her hard hat off before she’d got back in the car, which had been a mistake. The air was thick with falling ash, and most of it seemed to have ended up in her hair. ‘You get attached.’
‘Something you don’t do?’
‘It’s not all that easy getting attached when you work in emergency medicine,’ she agreed. ‘I keep track of some patients but not many.’
‘So when you finish up a shift, the day’s over.’
‘Pretty much.’
‘It’d be a great life,’ Hugo said softly, and Rachel didn’t miss the note of bitterness in his voice.
‘What, so you’d really like to swap?’
‘I’d just like to turn off sometimes,’ he told her. ‘This town… I came here for a few years to look after my ailing grandfather and I’ve never been able to leave.’
‘Because you can’t get anyone else to replace you?’
‘Partly.’
‘And partly what else?’ She’d twisted sideways to watch him. They were nearly back in town now-their time for intimacy was almost over and she regretted it. She liked this big, gentle man with the laughing eyes. She liked him a lot. It seemed such a shame that he was meant for…the likes of Christine?
She’d seen the way Christine had looked at Hugo. Hugo may have married one sister but by the look in Christine’s eyes and by the accounts of local gossip he was destined to marry the other.
But Hugo wasn’t talking about Christine. Or he was, but only in that she was part of the tapestry of Toby’s life. ‘Partly because my life is here,’ he told her. ‘Toby’s life. The people here love him. He has Myra and Christine and… so many people. He has the freedom of the place-there’s not a soul in Cowral Bay who doesn’t know who he is and watches out for him.’
‘And in return you watch out for them,’ she said softly. He was concentrating on turning into the hospital car park but it wasn’t the concentration that was causing the set look around his mouth. He cared. He’d certified the deaths of two of Cowral’s own in the past twenty-four hours and it had bitten deep.
Rachel saw deaths most days. She worked in a big city emergency department.
Two deaths wouldn’t affect her like this.
Maybe they should. Maybe she should be more involved.
She was involved enough. How could she be any more involved than she was right now?
She should be home…
‘It must be amazing,’ Hugo said, ‘to leave work at night and be free to go to the movies, go out to a restaurant-do anything you want.’
He had to be kidding. If he knew how much she hated eating out… And when had she last gone to a movie? Going to movies on her own sucked. ‘I have responsibilities,’ she said stiffly, and he nodded.
‘Of course you do. Penelope. Michael.’
‘Michael’s not-’
‘You’re right. Michael’s none of my business.’ He cut her off as he switched off the engine. ‘But I’m interested. What do you do with the rest of your life? How do city doctors without kids operate? It’s a world away from what I know.’
‘You did it once.’
‘It’s so long ago I’ve forgotten. I wouldn’t mind remembering.’
Remembering what? He was talking about the giddy social life Michael enjoyed, Rachel knew, and that was so far away from her own experience that it was ridiculous. She closed her eyes. What was the point in explaining? There wasn’t one. This man had enough on his shoulders without burdening him with her personal tragedy.
‘You wouldn’t be interested,’ she said flatly. ‘And you have work to do. Is there anything else I can do to help?’
He looked at her and once again she had the feeling he saw more than she wanted him to. But he couldn’t know. How could he possibly know about Craig?
He didn’t. Of course he didn’t. He was shaking his head, moving on.
‘You’ve done enough.’
‘You’re doing clinic?’
‘For a couple of hours.’
‘So Toby and I will see you at dinner.’
‘That’s right. So you can take your overalls off, Dr Harper, and turn into a guest again. Exercise your dog or something.’
‘Right.’
‘I’ll see you later.’
End of conversation. But he was still watching her. His eyes still held hers.
He should turn away, she thought. He should get out of the car.
He didn’t. They were somehow…locked?
It was a strange sensation. Stupid. Senseless. He had things to do. She was a married woman and they had no link.
They did have a link. They were just looking at each other. Seeing…
Seeing past the facade. Seeing what was really behind it.
She stared into his face and she could see the battering this man had suffered over the years. The loneliness. The wanting.
How could she see that? She didn’t know. But see it she did, and if she could read so much in his face, how much more could he read in hers?
This was ridiculous. She had things to do. Dogs to walk. Hours to fill before she saw him again.
Ridiculous!
Somehow Rachel managed to break the moment-break the link. She climbed from the car and slammed the door with more force than was needed. The slam was a statement.
‘I’m going to take a shower,’ she told him, and if her voice wasn’t quite steady there wasn’t a darned thing she could do about it. ‘I’ll see you later.’
She walked away, leaving Hugo staring after her.
CHAPTER SIX
HE DIDN’T have a clue what was going on.
Hugo worked his way through half a dozen patients and maybe it was just as well there was nothing serious, because his attention was definitely elsewhere. Or maybe it’d be better if there was something serious, he decided. Maybe his thoughts needed to be hauled right back to work. Not on some slip of a doctor whose eyes made him smile. Whose smile made him chuckle…
Whose smile made him twist inside.
How long had it been since someone had made him feel like this? Some woman?
Never, he thought as he carefully wound wet bandage around Tom Harris’s arm. Tom had fallen and broken his forearm while clearing undergrowth around his house when the fires had started four days ago. Hugo had put the initial plaster on loosely because of inflammation but the arm had settled now and it could be fixed more securely into its casing.
Tom, though, was a man of few words. He didn’t want to chat, so Hugo’s attention stayed right where it was. On Rachel.
Why was it on Rachel?
She was married, he told himself. Happily married for all he knew. Sure, the man she’d been with at the dog show had seemed a creep, but the nicest of women found partners in the strangest of places. She hadn’t said a
