So while Mary supervised a recovering Malcolm, Amy took Joss into her office, closed the door and demanded he remove his still damp clothes. When he demurred she simply pushed him into a chair and removed his trousers for him. Plus the rest of his wet clothes. She handed him a hospital gown and barely waited for him to be respectable before she hauled off Marie’s makeshift dressing over the gash on his leg.
‘I’m a grown woman,’ she told him. ‘Plus I’ve been a trained nurse for years. There’s nothing I haven’t seen so let’s get on with it. Modesty’s for sissies.’
‘I’m not-’
‘Moving. No, you’re not. If you try, I’ll fetch half a dozen senior persons and we’ll tie you down.’
‘Amy…’
‘Shut up and let me do what has to be done.’
It was a jagged tear, not so deep as to be serious but ragged enough to definitely need stitches. Joss sat on the day-bed in her office while she applied local anaesthetic, cleaned and debrided the edges and then set herself to the task of sewing him up.
It was a weird sensation, Joss decided as he sat and let her suture. It was a sensation of being completely out of control.
It was a feeling to which he was growing more and more accustomed.
‘What do you reckon Malcolm was trying to do?’ he asked, more to keep his mind off what she was doing than anything else. He could feel her pulling his skin together but it wasn’t the feel of her stitches that was the problem. It was the feel of her, period. Her touch against his skin. The way her braid fell forward over her shoulder while she worked. The way those two little concentration lines appeared on the bridge of her nose and her tongue came out- just a peek. She was concentrating.
She was gorgeous!
Yeah, right. The lady might be gorgeous but she had a fiance who was recovering in the next room. Her fiance was a man who’d risked his life to see her.
Dopey git!
And Amy’s words echoed his thoughts.
‘It does seem a little over the top.’
He agreed entirely. ‘Even Romeo wouldn’t have been so daft.’
She thought about that and applied a couple more stitches. ‘Romeo was pretty daft.’
That pleased him. He wasn’t quite sure why, but it did. ‘You mean your own personal Romeo’s act of devotion doesn’t meet with your unqualified approval.’
‘He could have picked up the telephone and called with much less dramatic effect.’
‘Where’s the romance in that?’
‘The rain’s almost stopped and the forecast is for decent weather at last. The ferry may well be up and running by tomorrow. Surely he could have waited.’
‘So you’re going to be…how sympathetic?’
Amy thought about it. ‘I guess I’d better be a bit sympathetic. Though if he thinks I can help with the repayments on a splintered speedboat…’
‘It was his speedboat?’
‘Yeah, but he only uses it on the river. I’ve never known him to take it out to sea. It just doesn’t make sense.’
‘He must be missing you enormously.’
‘And that doesn’t make sense at all.’
‘Why not? Isn’t the man in love?’
She thought about that. She looked like a sparrow, Joss thought, with her head to one side, thinking while concentrating at the same time. She was using tiny stitches-this would be the prettiest scar known to man.
He’d be able to look at it and remember Amy…
And that was truly ridiculous.
‘I guess he must be,’ she said, and he had to think about what he’d asked. Right. Isn’t Malcolm in love?
Of course. He had to be.
But Amy was still considering. ‘It’s so out of character.’
‘He’s not prone to over-the-top declarations of passion?’
‘He’s sensible.’
‘Well, what he did today wasn’t sensible in the least.’ He felt peeved, he thought, and he couldn’t figure out why. She’d tied off the last stitch and had lifted a dressing from the tray. ‘Leave this,’ he told her. ‘I’ll do it.’
‘I-’
‘You go back to Malcolm,’ he said, and if he still sounded peevish he couldn’t help it. ‘He needs you.’
‘Nope.’ She had herself back in hand. ‘I’ll dress this and then I’m putting you to bed.’
‘Pardon?’
‘You’re having a sleep.’
‘I am not.’
‘You’ve risked life and limb, your leg’s sore, you’ve got half a dozen nasty bruises that I can see, and if I peered closer I bet I’d see more.’
‘You would not.’ He hauled his hospital gown closer.
‘And don’t tell me you didn’t nearly pass out in Theatre.’
‘I didn’t.’
‘Marie, Mary and I all reckon you did. That’s three against one. And we hold the ace.’
‘I beg your pardon.’
She swooped and lifted the bundle of still damp clothes from where he’d dropped them. ‘I’ll take these to the laundry, so if you’re going anywhere you go in your hospital gown. And I’d check the mirror for your view from behind before you take that option. You’d be shocked to the core! Meanwhile…’
‘Meanwhile?’ He sounded stunned. He
‘Meanwhile, we’ve put Malcolm in the bedroom at the end of the hall. It’s a double room with a spare bed. You take yourself down there and get between the covers. Marie’s asked Cook to make you an omelette and a cup of tea and then the order is to sleep for the rest of the afternoon.’
He was eyeing her cautiously. She was one bossy woman and he was a man who didn’t like to be bossed. By anybody.
But this was Amy and she was laughing at him, and he was…
Damn, she was right. He was shell-shocked. He’d thought it was just his emotions but it was more than that. He tried to stand but his legs felt distinctly odd.
Maybe he quite liked to be bossed.
Maybe the order was changing.
‘You’ve had enough,’ she said, and she moved to support him. His arm came around her and he held on.
He held on for too damned long-but neither wanted to let go.
This was crazy. She was engaged!
‘I’ll go,’ he said at last.
‘You’d better,’ she whispered, and they both knew what she meant by that.
He’d better-or they weren’t prepared for the consequences.
Lunch-or maybe it was dinner, it was halfway between the two-was great, but by the time he’d finished eating his head was heavy on his shoulders and he was prepared to concede that Amy knew what she was talking about.
Mary was watching over Malcolm, who lay in the bed beside him. Damn, why wasn’t it Amy? It wasn’t and he had to be content with Mary clearing his plate and tucking him in. Like he was a four-year-old.
‘Now, you sleep,’ she said sternly-and, like it or not, he slept.
When he woke it was dark and someone was in the room.
For a moment he was confused, trying to remember where he was. The room was in darkness. A nightlight was shining from under the bedhead, and he could just make out someone framed in the doorway.
