The rain was pelting down. He grabbed the umbrella and headed for her side of the car but she turned away from him.
‘No,’ she threw over her shoulder. ‘Go away. You don’t want to get involved and neither do I. And you never know when a desperate widow might change her mind, grab you by the hair and drag you into her lair before you can fight back. Get out of here, Max Ashton, and keep safe.’
‘I didn’t mean-’
‘Yes, you did,’ she retorted, and limped away fast through the tangle of garden. ‘Yes, you did,’ she yelled again. ‘Go find some other maiden to rescue. This one’s been rescued enough, so you need to move right on.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
SHE was right. He needed to move on.
He didn’t hear from her for six weeks. He put her right from his mind. Or he tried to.
Work was his salvation but he extended his operating schedule to the point where Anton, his anaesthetist, finally said cull it or find a second anaesthetist to share the load.
‘That break was supposed to do you good,’ he said morosely. ‘Instead you’ve come back ready to work the rest of us into the ground. You know what? We were hoping you and Fiona might have worked something out. You could both do with a love life.’
‘I don’t want a love life,’ he growled.
‘But you need one,’ Anton said bluntly. Anton had a wife, a three-year-old and one-year-old twins, he was permanently sleep deprived and he thought the rest of the world should join him in his glorious domestic muddle. ‘A good woman and half a dozen kids would take the edge off your energy and protect us all.’
‘You do the procreating for both of us,’ Max growled. ‘You’re good at it. I’m not.’
‘Practice, man. Just find the right lady. I’ll admit Fiona’s not perfect-I can’t see the chief radiologist of Sydney South having much time for diapers-but there must be someone to suit you somewhere.’
There was, Max thought grimly. He’d found her. He just didn’t have the courage to take it further-to step into the abyss of commitment.
So he’d stay clear of entanglement and he’d work.
But like it or not, as he worked he realised he was feeling the same roller-coaster of emotions he had felt in the months after he’d lost Alice. There was an abyss in front of him, only he didn’t know where. If he put his foot down he wasn’t sure the ground would still be solid. The feeling left him even more sure that the only way forward was to keep right away from Maggie.
But his thoughts weren’t staying away from Maggie. A dozen times a day he wanted to get in his car and go to her. Only the fact that his workload was horrendous saved him. He was always needed in Theatre, in the wards, in his consulting rooms.
The situation wasn’t sustainable. He’d thought the inexplicable magnetic attraction he’d felt for her would fade but if anything it strengthened. And then, at the end of the sixth week, he had a phone call from John at the farm.
‘How’s Maggie?’ he demanded before he could help himself.
‘We’re all fine,’ John said jovially. ‘It’s working out brilliantly. There’s so much work here, and it’s a great little community. But, hell, Max, the place is the epicentre of a medical desert. I’m run off my legs already, and the moment Margaret put up her plate she had so many teeth coming through her door she was tempted to take it down again.’
‘Yeah, but Maggie…’
‘She’s fine, too. Except…That’s why I’m ringing.’
‘Except what?’ He was right back there again, feeling the terror he’d felt when Alice had shown the first signs of pre-eclampsia. Leaning against the wall for support. Knowing this was illogical and emotional, but there was nothing he could do about it.
‘Margaret’s worrying.’
‘Why?’
‘Because she’s alone,’ he said, and Max’s world righted itself again. Alone. That wasn’t terrifying.
It wasn’t great, though. Alone? Why the hell was she alone?
‘She can’t have the baby here,’ John said. ‘The only doctor’s me, and I’m not prepared to give obstetric support without back-up. All the women from around here need to go to the city to have their babies. Mind, if we had a really good obstetrician…’
‘Get on with it,’ Max growled. Damn, he’d sussed John was good, but he didn’t appreciate him being this good-not only helping Maggie but starting to put pressure on others to help. Namely him.
‘Okay,’ John said, chuckling, and Max thought briefly through jumbled emotion that Zimbabwe’s loss was Maggie’s gain. ‘It’s just Maggie’s organised herself an apartment at Coogee for the next couple of weeks until she has the baby. She chose Coogee because it’s a beach location where she can walk and swim, and it’s close to the hospital she’s booked into. Which also happens to be our hospital. I mean, your hospital.’
Coogee. A suburb of Sydney not ten minutes’ drive from where he was taking this call. Max drew in his breath, suddenly feeling trapped-pulled towards the abyss. ‘She’s coming here?’
‘She’s already there. She left on Sunday. So I thought I’d give you a heads up so you could look out for her.’
The implied responsibility rattled him further. ‘She’s not a friend, John,’ he said, before he could think about it, and there was a moment’s stunned silence from the end of the phone. He could almost see John’s brows snap down in surprise-and disapproval.
Fair enough. Maybe he even disapproved of himself.
Maybe what he’d said had been stupid. And cruel?
But would Maggie think of him as
‘She’s
‘Sorry. I mean…I was just thinking…Why did she book herself in here for the birth? There are many hospitals in Sydney.’
‘I believe she booked herself into Sydney South before she even came to Australia,’ John said, growing more disapproving by the moment. ‘I don’t believe she did it to annoy you. But if you don’t think of yourself as her friend…’
‘I do.’ He raked his fingers through his hair. ‘Sorry, of course, I mean I guess I do. It’s just that I hardly know her.’
‘You came to her grandmother’s funeral. The locals said you held her up all afternoon. Physically.’
‘She needed holding up.’
‘Well, maybe she needs holding up again now,’ John said brusquely. ‘She’s left here and gone to stay in a hotel apartment until the baby’s born. She doesn’t know anyone in Sydney and we’re worried. So worried, in fact, that Margaret says if you won’t promise to keep an eye on her then she’ll leave me here with the kids and go and keep her company herself. So I’m asking you to check on her.’
‘She’ll want solitude,’ he said, clutching at straws.
‘You’re kidding me, right?’ John demanded. ‘She’s not like Angus. She’s a sociable, chirpy, intelligent colleague. The girls and I are already half in love with her. We can’t bear to think of her being alone. But if, as you say, you don’t see yourself as her friend…’
‘All right,’ he said, goaded, and then heard himself, heard his anger, and felt small. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I’ve had one hell of a morning. I’m run off my feet.’
‘Yeah, I’m hearing that, too,’ John said. ‘So why are you running yourself into the ground?’
‘There’s work…’
‘And there’s delegation,’ John said. ‘You ever heard of it? Yeah, I know, it’s none of my business, only Margaret and I worked in that place ourselves and gossip travels fast. We still hear things. So you met Maggie,
