‘A physician…’ Quinn’s eyes widened. ‘For heaven’s sake…’ He shook his head as if in disbelief. ‘You realise- once you’re fully trained-what we could offer here…?’
‘“We”?’
‘“We”,’ Quinn said, his voice firming as the ramifications hit home. ‘Fern, I’m a surgeon and I’m trained for accident and emergencies. You have enough anaesthetic training to support me-and you’re a physician, for heaven’s sake…’
‘Not yet.’
‘No. But if we found a locum to take over here…Dr Rycroft, all we lack is an obstetrician. With the hospital already operating and if the job was advertised only for twelve months we’d find a locum to take over from us. There are medicos who’d see twelve months here as a welcome break, as long as they weren’t pressured to stay at the end of it.
‘If we were to spend twelve months in Sydney-you finishing your physician training while I deliver every baby I can get my hands on and getting myself some paediatric training in the process-think of the service we could offer.’
‘And Jessie would come back to Sydney with us while we did it, I suppose?’ Fern said slowly, watching his face.
Quinn shook his head. ‘She’d stay here.’
‘Without her husband?’
The word hit Quinn almost as a physical slap. He took a step back and stared down at Fern.
His burst of enthusiasm faded and fatigue crept back.
‘Jessie wouldn’t mind,’ he said flatly.
‘Well, I’d mind for Jess.’ Somehow Fern made her voice brisk and businesslike but it wasn’t how she was feeling. ‘Do you want help writing up a drug list for Bill?’ she asked harshly. ‘If so, let’s do it and then ask someone to take me home. I really have other things to do than stand in hospital corridors and discuss plans by you to abandon someone who clearly loves you.’
The drug regime was tricky.
Fern had treated little TB in the past. It took time to sort through the texts and pharmaceutical lists and find just what she wanted.
Quinn deferred to her.
‘If I have a road crash to deal with then I’ll expect you to take orders from me, Dr Rycroft,’ he said brusquely, pointedly formal after Fern’s snapping rebuff. ‘This is internal medicine, though-and I know when to stand aside.’
With his medicine he knew when to stand aside, Fern thought grimly. With little else.
She reacted by ignoring him, preparing her list in grim silence.
Finally she finished and rose from the desk. He was still watching her-as a hungry cat watches a mouse-and Fern didn’t like it one bit.
‘I’ll drive you home,’ he said firmly.
‘And if Bill has a relapse?’
‘I’ll check him on the way but if his breathing’s settled he’s hardly going to wake and choke in the time it takes to get you home. The nurse will stay with him and I have the phone on my belt. I can get back fast.’
‘What about…What about the night sister taking me home-and leaving you here?’
‘What about the night sister?’ Quinn’s brows arched and for a moment Fern saw a trace of the old humour. ‘Sister Haynes doesn’t drive anything more powerful than a bicycle-and Jessie’s asleep. So it’s my offer or nothing.’
‘I’ll walk.’
‘You want to come peacefully or forcibly?’ Quinn asked politely, and through the exhaustion the laughter was back with a vengeance.
‘Is that a threat?’
‘How can you doubt me, Dr Rycroft?’ Quinn demanded, wounded that she had so little faith. ‘Of course it is.’
It was a charmed night.
If the island didn’t get rain soon the farmers would be in serious trouble, Fern knew, but it was hard to think about that on a night as perfect as tonight.
If Quinn wasn’t married it would be magic indeed.
Quinn was married, though. Fern sat as far away from him as possible, hunched over against the door as if she was afraid.
She was.
She was afraid of her own feelings. She’d never felt like this about a man before and to feel this way about someone who was living with his wife…
Quinn stayed silent, his face set and grim. From time to time he glanced across at the girl by his side but he said nothing until he pulled to a halt outside her uncle’s house and Fern put her hand on the doorhandle.
The doorhandle wouldn’t budge. The central locking had been activated.
‘Do you mind?’ Fern said icily. ‘Let me out.’
‘Not until you’ve talked things through with me for a little.’ Quinn glanced at his watch. ‘Fern, hear me out. I can’t be away from the hospital for long. You know that. I’m not about to make love to you-though God knows I want to. If I did you could scream loud enough from here to make your uncle hear. I just want to talk.’
Fern took a deep breath. Her fingers clenched into her palms.
‘So talk.’
‘That’s what I like about you, Dr Rycroft,’ Quinn said evenly, the laughter surfacing. ‘You’re always so amenable to suggestion.’
‘Just get on with it.’
He didn’t.
Instead, Quinn put his hands on the steering wheel and stared out into the night.
The laughter faded.
It was as if Quinn Gallagher was fighting some unpleasant internal battle and Fern just had to wait for the outcome.
She watched him and her anger slowly disappeared as she did. Fern’s fingers unclenched. She didn’t know what was going on-but she couldn’t maintain rage against this man. No matter how important it was that she did…
‘Fern, I want you to reconsider staying on the island,’ Quinn said at last. ‘It makes sense to everyone that you stay. Most of all, it makes sense to me.’
‘Not to me it doesn’t.’
‘Would it make a difference if I told you I’d fallen in love with you?’
Quinn didn’t turn to her. His eyes were still staring out through the windscreen at the black of the night road. ‘I fell for a bride in white satin,’ he went on softly, and it was as if he was talking to the night-not to Fern. ‘The most frightened bride I’ve ever seen, and the most beautiful. I was hit by bridal fever, you might say. It hit hard and since then I’ve been trying to find a cure. There isn’t one.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ Fern whispered. ‘You don’t fall in love like that.’
‘Oh, yes, you do,’ Quinn said grimly. ‘I didn’t ask for it to happen. I went to your wedding out of social obligation to your aunt and uncle-nothing else-and then I saw you…’
He turned to her then but still he didn’t touch her. Quinn Gallagher was holding himself back with an iron will.
‘Are you saying you don’t feel this, too?’ Quinn asked gently, and the gentleness in Quinn’s voice was close to Fern’s undoing. ‘Because I don’t believe you. You looked at me in that church and whatever hit, it hit both of us-with
