The nightmare of the night was just that-a nightmare. It couldn’t touch her now. She was with Quinn.
She was home.
You don’t have a home, remember, Fern? a tiny voice whispered into the back of her head. That voice had been a shout since the night her parents died. Now the shout was fading almost to oblivion.
‘Your Sam nearly went crazy when we told him what Lizzy was doing-that she was drowning,’ Quinn said gently across her thoughts. His arms didn’t slacken for a moment. She was enfolded in a cocoon of compassion as he spoke.
‘I have to admit I thought the man incapable of passion. When I told him Lizzy would drown without him, though, he was out of his bed in seconds. He insisted point-blank I go with him; his theory was that I was a better trained doctor than you, and his Lizzy-
‘I still had Maud to consider and you were already out with Lizzy so I refused and I thought Sam would kill me. So it wasn’t me threatening to pick up Sam and take him out to sea-it was the other way round!’
‘Sam…’ Fern said faintly.
‘Sam.’
Quinn’s arms tightened even further. Surely this wasn’t a professional approach at comfort by one imparting bad news…
Surely this was something more.
‘Jess came back from her rounds just then-fortunately,’ Quinn told her. ‘She can do cardio-pulmonary resuscitation and can operate the defibrillator if necessary and she offered to stay with Maud before Sam did me physical violence. But it was a close thing.’
‘Sam…Sam and Lizzy have always been friends,’ Fern whispered. ‘Sam and Lizzy and me.’
‘Well, I think you have to face it.’ Quinn swung Fern round in a gentle but firm movement so that her weary, shadowed face was looking up at him. ‘Fern, I think tonight the “me” was taken out of the equation.’
‘You don’t know…’
‘I do know,’ he told her, his eyes never leaving her face. Quinn’s hands were on her shoulders and without their support she would have toppled. ‘I thought your Sam was incapable of passion and I was right. He was. Your Sam is. Lizzy’s Sam, though…’
‘I don’t want to hear this…’
There was a long silence. The theatre clock ticked above their heads and that was the only sound there was.
‘You have to hear it, Fern,’ Quinn said softly at last. ‘I just wish to blazes I could make you stop looking like that…’
‘Like…’
‘Like a woman Sam’s crazy to abandon…Like a woman I could…’
He didn’t finish. He couldn’t. What was growing between them was too strong for words.
Fern didn’t have to wonder this time whether she raised her lips in invitation to be kissed. She knew she did.
It was no act of flirtation or seduction, though. It was two magnetic poles finding their home. The force pulling them together was something that Fern had never felt in her life before.
She only knew it felt right.
At that moment they had no separate will-only their mutual need-only their mutual acceptance of what was right.
They stayed, locked together, for what could have been hours. Fern didn’t know. The clock ticked above them and Quinn’s lips stayed on hers. His hands held her waist to his body and there was no other movement.
There was no need for further movement.
This wasn’t passionate love-making. It was a process of healing-of bringing together two parts of a separate whole.
The aching void that had been in Fern since the night her family was killed was closing, filling, as though the link between herself and Quinn was feeding her something as essential as the plasma they had placed in Sam’s veins. This wasn’t blood, though. It was a nectar so sweet that it made her want to cry.
But she couldn’t cry when she was here.
She couldn’t cry when she was being kissed by someone like Quinn.
He was still wearing his bloodstained surgical gown and the jeans Fern had on were even more gory than his surgical greens. It didn’t matter. The time for dissembling was over.
There was only Quinn…
She opened her lips to him and her aching heart felt as though it opened at the same time, allowing the sweetness of love to flow through…
His hands came up under her blouse, cupping her breasts with fingers that were exquisitely gentle. It was as if he was touching the most precious thing this world had to offer, Fern thought, and knew that her thought was truth.
What was flowering between them was a gift-a gift so precious that none could deny it.
Certainly not Fern.
Her body arched against him and she heard herself give a soft moan of sheer ecstasy.
He broke away then, holding her at arm’s length, her bloodstained blouse falling back into position. His eyes were dark and demanding, claiming his own.
‘This is right,’ he said, and his voice was thick with suppressed passion. ‘Hell, Fern, you can’t marry Sam after this. You know you can’t’
‘I know…’ Her voice trailed to a whisper.
‘You belong with me.’ His hands gripped more tightly, possessive and urgent ‘You feel it too, don’t
you, Fern? Whoever else has claims-on either of us-we’re one, Fern Rycroft. I felt it the moment I set eyes on you-and we’re wasting time by denying it…’
‘S-Sam…’ Fern whispered. ‘I have to speak to Sam…’ Her tired mind was going round and round in circles. She only wanted to be with this man-with Quinn, with her heart-and yet she was still engaged to Sam. She shouldn’t be here, letting Quinn make love to her, when in the next room her fiance was fighting for his life.
‘You have to speak to Sam,’ Quinn agreed, pulling her tight to him again. ‘And I…I have organising of my own to do. But that’s all it is, my lovely Fern. Reorganising our lives so we can be in our rightful place. Together.’
‘I don’t know,’ Fern whispered. Her heart was thumping with fear, doubt and passion all at the one time. ‘Maybe…’
‘There’s no “maybe” about it, Fern Rycroft,’ Quinn growled thickly into her hair. He tilted her chin again so she was looking wonderingly up at him. ‘There’s only us.’
‘Are you still here?’
A woman’s light voice, calling from the doorway around the partition from the sink, was the first thing that intruded from the outside world.
Heaven knew how long the voice had been calling. The kiss was deep enough to blot out all but the loudest of alarms.
Quinn swore unsteadily as the lingering kiss finally ceased and they pulled apart. He didn’t release Fern entirely, though-just pulled her round to stand beside him, his arm still encircling her waist.
It seemed almost a gesture of propriety, of possessiveness, though Fern still felt that she’d topple over without his supporting arm. The combination of weariness, shock, relief and…and the nearness of Quinn…was making her dizzy.
It was Jessie.
The young vet peered anxiously around the partition and smiled with relief when she saw them.
‘Here you are. I was starting to think Quinn must have driven you home, Fern, and I rang your uncle hours ago to tell him we’d give you a bed here.’
‘C-can you?’ The feeling of unreality was deepening, if anything.
‘Of course we can.’ Jessie smiled from Quinn to Fern, seemingly oblivious to the position of Quinn’s arm and the burning colour of Fern’s cheeks. ‘Lizzy’s in the ward with your aunt, though, so you can’t stay there. We’ve packed Lizzy with hot-water bottles and sedated her. Her temp’s back up to normal. She was still restless until you finished in Theatre and one of the nurses came in to tell her Sam would most likely live. Now she’s sleeping like a
