Читать книгу: «Taming Dr Tempest»

CHAPTER ONE

ANNABELLE made the flight by the skin of her teeth. Kitty, who had volunteered to drive her to the airport, had insisted on taking ‘shortcuts', so here she was, clutching an armful of carry-on bags, hurtling down the aisle towards the one vacant seat she could see right near the front of the small regional plane.

Fortunately it was an aisle seat so she could flop straight into it and stuff her belongings underneath before the flight attendant arrived to check her seat belt.

But the late arrival meant the plane was taxiing before she turned to look at her fellow-traveller.

To look, then look again…

‘Dr—’

Typhoon, hurricane, cyclone—what in the name of glory was his real name?

‘Tempest,’ he said coolly, peering at her as if she were a complete stranger—maybe a patient he’d seen briefly in A and E. ‘Nick Tempest.’

‘Tempest, of course,’ she mumbled hurriedly. ‘I knew it was…’

She stopped before she made a bigger fool of herself, but her agitation was growing. What was the man they called Storm doing on this flight?

Was there more than one possible answer?

Hardly!

‘You’re going to Murrawalla?’

She couldn’t stop the question popping out, or hide the disbelief in her voice.

The plane lifted off the ground, the wings tilted, and it flew a wide, lazy arc over the city, but Annabelle barely noticed the houses growing smaller below her because as she looked past her companion towards the window, she discovered he was studying her.

Intently.

‘Hang on, aren’t you the new nursing sister? Been around for about four months? The one they call Belladonna?’

The hesitancy in his voice suggested he was far from certain it was her, but although Annabelle hated the nickname, she had to acknowledge he’d worked out who she was.

‘It’s Annabelle,’ she said, turning so she could look into the blue eyes that had most of the female population of the hospital swooning every time he walked into a ward—blue eyes that had snared more than one man’s share of female attention—or so the stories went. ‘Annabelle Donne.’

‘Ah!’ He nodded to himself. ‘I often wondered where it came from. You didn’t strike me as being a walking, talking, deadly poison. More a target of some kind, I would have thought, from the number of times some sick child threw up all over you, or some drunk puked on your shoes.’

He wasn’t smiling as he spoke so she took it as criticism and was about to point out that someone had to look after the patients with stomach upsets when he spoke again.

‘But you’ve cut off all your hair. That’s why I didn’t recognise you. No long schoolgirl plait trailing down your back, no tight little knot thing at the back of your head.’

Schoolgirl plait indeed, but, annoyed though the comment had made her, Annabelle could think of no suitable retort.

She made do with giving him a dirty look, though that didn’t seem to faze him in the slightest.

He studied her for a moment longer, then said, ‘Not that it doesn’t suit you, but hair that length must have taken ages to grow, so why cut it all off?’

There was a surreal aspect to sitting in a plane high above the earth, having a relatively personal conversation about her hair—the loss of which she deeply regretted—with a man she barely knew.

And assumed she wouldn’t like if she did know him…

Yet she found herself answering him.

‘Have you ever smelt bore water?’

He frowned at her, but shook his head.

‘It smells like rotten-egg gas and, as far as I’ve been able to discover, there’s no shampoo yet made that can mask the smell. I did it as much for you—if you are the doctor heading for Murrawalla—as for myself. Travelling long distances in a car with someone who smells like bad eggs isn’t pleasant.’

Nick Tempest stared at the woman in the seat beside him, a woman he knew yet didn’t know. In the A and E department of the big city hospital where both of them had worked, he’d seen her as a calm, competent nurse, quietly spoken and so self-effacing he’d wondered if anyone knew her well. Because she hadn’t been there long they hadn’t shared many shifts, never working on the same team, so maybe his impressions were all wrong. What he did know was that she never shirked the dirty work some other nurses—and doctors—avoided, and that her gentle but firm manner with patients could nearly always avert trouble.

But that woman—the nurse—was very different to this slight but curvaceous woman in the seat beside him. Was it because she was wearing worn jeans and a slightly faded checked shirt instead of a uniform that for the first time he actually registered her as a woman?

Or was it the way her newly cropped hair clung to her head like a dark cap, accentuating the size of her brown eyes, the straight line of her nose and the curve of beautifully defined lips?

No, hair had nothing to do with lips.

Realising his thoughts had strayed into dangerous territory, he made his way carefully back to where this introspection had begun.

‘You cut your hair off so it wouldn’t smell?’

The lips he’d been trying to not look at curled into a teasing smile which, as a man who’d consigned all women to the ‘only when needed’ bin, he shouldn’t have noticed at all, let alone registered as sexy.

Belladonna sexy?

More dangerous ground?

Definitely not! Lack of sleep, that was all it was. He’d been up half the night at the hospital, finishing reports and case-notes, and, naturally enough, though he’d not been on duty, answering calls for help when emergencies came in.

‘Mostly for the smell but also the dust,’ his companion was saying. ‘Dust?’

This conversation was rapidly getting out of hand. He knew she was speaking English, so it couldn’t be that parts of it were lost in translation, but—

‘Bulldust,’ she added, as if this explained everything.

In Nick’s head it just added another level of confusion, and he was sorry he’d started the conversation, although politeness alone meant he’d had to say something to her.

‘Is that an expletive? A slightly more proper form of bull—?’ he heard himself ask.

This time she didn’t smile, she laughed.

How long since he’d laughed?

Laughed out loud in that carefree way?

Relaxed to the extent that a laugh could be carefree?

‘You’ve never been out in the bush before, have you?’

He heard this question, too, but was too distracted by the laughter—the laughing face of the woman beside him and his inner questions—to respond immediately. Besides, the captain of the flight was introducing himself and telling them when they were expected to arrive in Murrawingi, adding that the weather there was fine and warm, and he didn’t expect any turbulence on the flight.

‘Murrawingi?’ Nick found himself repeating. ‘I thought the place we were going to was called Murrawalla. That’s assuming, of course, you’re the nurse half of the hospital team.’

‘No airport at Murrawalla,’ the nurse half explained. ‘As far as I know, the pair we’re replacing will take this plane back to Brisbane, leaving us the hospital vehicle to drive to Murrawalla.’

‘Well, that’s fairly stupid!’ he muttered, annoyed he didn’t know all these things—or perhaps annoyed that she did!

Or was he more unsettled than annoyed? Unsettled?

Because he didn’t know? Control had become important to him—he did know that!

Control had kept him on track when his world had imploded, Nellie ripping out his heart as casually as she’d—

Control!

But the pain he still felt in his chest when he thought of the baby was beyond control. No wonder he didn’t laugh out loud these days.

‘It’s fairly stupid, having to drive to Murrawalla?’ the woman queried.

‘No,’ he grumbled, clamping down on the pain, dismissing his unsettling thoughts and catching up with the conversation—reminding himself that he was looking to the future, not the past—and that he was heading west to learn. ‘Calling places by nearly the same names.’

His companion smiled again.

‘It happens all the time when aboriginal names are used. Further south, there’s Muckadilla and Wallumbilla right next door to each other and both are fairly similar names so it’s hard to remember if someone comes from one or the other.’

‘Were you the geography whiz at school?’ he asked, not because he wanted to know but for some perverse reason he wanted her to keep talking.

So he didn’t have to think about the past?

Probably, but, for whatever reason, it was weird when he considered he tuned out a lot of the conversations going on around him without any problem.

Idle chatter irritated him—although had it always?

More questions buzzing in his head! No wonder he felt unsettled…

‘Just well travelled,’ Bel—no, he had to start thinking of her as Annabelle—said.

The attendant came through to ask if anyone wanted a newspaper or magazine, but although Nick said no, Annabelle took the morning paper.

‘You don’t want to talk?’ he asked, contrarily put out that she was going to ignore him. ‘I thought this might be a good time to get better acquainted.’

She turned towards him and raised dark, expressive eyebrows.

‘We’re going to be living together for the next two months, not to mention driving huge distances together and camping out together—don’t you think we’ll have enough time then to get acquainted?’

Annabelle wasn’t sure why she was being so scratchy. Was it the shock of finding out that Nick Tempest was going to be her companion for the duration of the appointment?

Or the slightly uncomfortable feeling she’d always experienced in his presence?

Not that she knew him well—more by reputation than in person. But the reputation—playboy, womaniser, ambitious workaholic—made him the last person in the world she’d want to get to know, not to mention the least likely person in the entire hospital—if not the planet—to be on this plane, heading for a two-month stint in the far Outback settlement of Murrawalla.

The thought brought its own question.

‘Why are you here anyway? When I had my briefing, Paul Watson was coming out for this term.’

Her companion—did she call him Storm or Nick? Dr Tempest?—smiled, but it wasn’t a happy smile.

‘Paul’s girlfriend’s pregnant and they’ve moved the wedding forward.’

‘And you were the next bunny on the list?’ Annabelle offered, certain there was no way this particular man would have volunteered.

But his next smile suggested she was wrong. It was positively smug.

‘I volunteered.’

Annabelle just stared at him.

‘Well, didn’t you?’ he demanded.

She nodded then added, ‘But I had a reason—I wanted the extra bonus money.’

He sat further back in his seat, as if studying her from a distance might make things clearer.

‘Well, well—monetary gain not dedication and self-sacrifice? I wouldn’t have suspected that of you, Belladonna.’

‘As you don’t know me at all, you’ve no right to be making assumptions,’ Annabelle snapped, really scratchy now as the man’s arrogance shone through the sarcasm. ‘And my name is Annabelle.’

He smiled as if glad he’d riled her, adding, with smarmy insincerity, ‘Of course, that just slipped out. Annabelle! Actually, it’s quite a pretty name. Old-fashioned—’

‘Reminds you of a cow,’ Annabelle finished for him, sure he was going to add the tease she’d had to endure at high school.

But he surprised her by laughing, a low rumble of a chuckle that lit his eyes and made his rather harsh features soften.

‘Don’t be silly, we all know Christabelle’s the cow. Annabelle’s different—classy.’

Which left her with nothing to say, although maybe that didn’t matter as Nick/Storm had turned away and was looking out the window at the whiteness of the clouds through which they were now flying.

Leaving her free to turn her attention to the paper, except…

‘Why did you volunteer?’

She shouldn’t have asked, she’d known that, but, well, he’d asked her…

This time his smile, as he turned, looked as if it had been drawn on his face and there was a suggestion of wariness in his eyes.

‘Why would my reason be any different from yours?’

‘Because you drive a Porsche and I drive a beat-up fifth-hand VW?’

It was too flippant an answer and as soon as the words were out she wished them back. As if it mattered what he drove! And hadn’t she heard some story about the car?

A gift?

Surely not. Maybe a lottery win.

‘I wouldn’t have thought you were the kind of person who judged people by their possessions.’

The blue eyes were cold, and the drawn-on smile was gone.

‘As you don’t know me at all, you can hardly judge, but you’re right,’ she muttered. ‘It’s none of my business what you drive or why you’re here.’

Hoping her cheeks hadn’t coloured in embarrassment, she turned her attention to the paper.

The twinge of regret was so unexpected Nick didn’t, at first, register it for what it was. He glanced at his companion, wondering if her concentration on the morning paper was pretence—a way out of an awkward situation.

Which he had caused with his cutting remark. It didn’t matter.

Better all round if they remained colleagues, not exactly distant but, well, professional.

Except that he’d admired the way she’d hit back at him, even if she’d coloured as she’d spoken and her voice had quavered slightly.

‘Actually, I did have a valid reason,’ he said, and she turned from the paper, her brown eyes widening so Nick was reminded of a small animal trapped in the headlights of a car at night.

‘I’m officially on leave—accumulated holidays—but I’m taking over as head of the ER when I get back and it seemed to me that, in the new position, I shouldn’t be choosing people for this outreach scheme when I didn’t know the first thing about it.’

It wasn’t the entire truth but it was a greater part of it. The other part—the idea that had been mooted—well, he’d have to wait and see, especially as Annabelle was speaking again.

‘You could have visited for a few days, or a week,’ she pointed out.

‘And learned what? I’d have seen the place and maybe done a clinic or two but would that really educate me about the job I’m asking people to do?’

‘No!’

But she frowned as she said it, studying him with questioning eyes.

His explanation had been so surprising Annabelle had no idea how to react. It was okay as far as it went—it did make sense for him to experience the placement—but trying to picture this man in a bush setting—for two months—impossible!

And there’d also been a pause in his explanation, as if he was holding back a little of it, though what it could be, and why he couldn’t say it, she had no idea.

Fortunately, the attendant appeared, pushing a heavy trolley, offering breakfast trays to the passengers.

‘They call this breakfast?’ Nick—she was going to call him Nick—queried minutes later, eyeing with distaste the rather squashed croissant, pat of butter and tiny container of jam on his tray.

‘There’s juice as well,’ Annabelle pointed out, reaching over to lift his sealed container of juice out of the coffee cup. ‘And fruit.’ She pointed to the square plastic container nestled in another corner of the tray.

‘In fact,’ she added, ‘you can have my fruit and my juice. The croissant and coffee is enough for me.’

Nick barely considered her offer, suddenly struck by the truth of what she’d said earlier about the togetherness they’d share over the next two months. It was as if it had already started, with Annabelle offering him bits of her breakfast as naturally as a lover—or wife—might offer leftovers. Not that the act of offering bothered him—he’d eat her fruit—but the false intimacy of the offer made him feel extremely uncomfortable. Have mine—as though they were friends…

He ate his fruit and hers, drank both juices and had just asked for coffee rather than tea when the intimacy thing happened again. Not right away, but almost naturally…

‘Two months still seems like overkill,’ she said. ‘If it’s not the money, are you hiding out for some reason?’ She must have realised how rude the question was for she lifted one dainty, slim-fingered hand and clapped it over her mouth. ‘Don’t answer that!’ she added quickly. ‘In fact, forget I asked. I’m not usually rude or inquisitive, it just seems strange…’

‘Strange?’ Nick echoed, wondering just what her impression of him was. His of her was fairly vague, good nurse who was always caught up in the worst situations in the A and E. ‘Why strange?’

She turned towards him, a flake of croissant pastry clinging to her lower lip. Without conscious thought Nick reached out and wiped it away, then saw a blush rise beneath her skin as she scrubbed a paper napkin across her mouth in case any other scraps were lingering there.

It wasn’t really intimacy, Nick told himself while Annabelle stumbled on in a kind of muddled explanatory kind of apology.

‘Well, the impression of Nick St—Tempest…The impression the gossips pass on fast enough is of someone who has it made. Private schooling, smart car, great clothes, once married to one of the country’s top models, always with a beautiful woman on your arm at hospital functions, easily mixing with the rich and famous, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. I suppose that’s why I was shocked to see you on the plane.’

Nick flinched at her summing up of him—did he really appear so shallow to his colleagues? Did no one suspect it was all a front—that the beautiful women were nothing more than armour? That since Nellie there was no way he’d ever open himself up to such hurt again? That work was his sole focus? His life?

Why would they?

He hid the flinch behind a half-smile and pushed her a little further.

‘Never for a moment thinking it might have been pure altruism on my part? Doing my bit for the country?’ he asked, and Annabelle laughed.

‘Not for a nanosecond!’ she agreed, smiling so broadly he was momentarily thrown off track. Though that hitch in his chest couldn’t have had anything to do with this woman’s smile!

‘And,’ she continued, ‘you’ve already admitted it was a work-related decision, but doing it for two months still seems a bit excessive.’

He shrugged off the comment, unwilling to admit he was already regretting the impulse that had put him on this plane, especially since Annabelle had used the words hiding out. Now he considered this aspect of it, although he believed he was a man who could handle any situation, he had to admit there was an element of that in the decision, and a feeling of not exactly shame but something like it washed through him.

The hospital ball was coming up and he was tired of finding someone to take to official functions—tired of explaining to the beautiful women that he wanted nothing more than a companion for the evening. But he knew from experience that not attending prompted more talk and speculation than him taking a different woman every time.

Added to which, Nellie was due in Brisbane for the annual fashion week later in the month and her face would be plastered on billboards and smiling out of newspapers and television screens, and try as he may to control it—control again—his stomach still clenched at the sight of that dazzling smile.

At the cold-blooded treachery it hid.

At the thought of what she’d done.

Control!

Fortunately the attendant was now pouring the coffee, so conversation could be forgotten.

He drank his coffee, looking out the window as he sipped, watching the broad ribbon of land unwind beneath him. Thinking of the past—not only of Nellie but of other losses—knowing it was time to put it all behind him and move forward. The challenge of the new job was just what he needed. He’d be too busy getting on top of that for the past to keep intruding. Control!

But even as his mind wandered, his eyes still registered the scenery.

Every now and then the red turned green and he guessed at crops he didn’t know the names of because he had no real idea what grew where, out here in what all Aussies, he included, called ‘the bush'.

‘See the huge dams?’ Annabelle was leaning towards him, peering past him out the window, unaware her soft breast was pressing against his chest. ‘They’re for the cotton crops. They take more water out of our river systems than any other crop and it’s causing problems for people further down the rivers and also slowly poisoning the whole river system.’

‘You a greenie as well as a geography whiz?’ he asked, finding, as she pressed a little closer, that her short, shiny hair diverted him from thoughts of soft breasts, smelling of lemons, not rotten eggs.

‘Nope, but I think it’s stupid to grow crops that need water in places that don’t have all that much.’

‘Like it’s stupid for a man who doesn’t need the bonus money to take this placement?’

She sat back and frowned at him.

‘I didn’t say that, and I sure as heck wouldn’t criticise you coming out here for whatever reason you came. In fact, I’m really impressed to think you’d do it—to see it for yourself before sending people out. I was just surprised, that’s all.’

But when she gave a little huff of laughter, Nick doubted she’d told the truth.

Until she explained…

‘I was surprised to see you sitting there. In my mind you’ve always been the epitome of city-man. I mean, look at you. You’re wearing suit trousers and a white shirt and a tie, for heaven’s sake. And I bet there’s a suit jacket stashed up there in the luggage compartment. You haven’t got a clue.’

Nick felt a strange emotion wriggle around inside him and tried to identify it. He could hardly be feeling peeved—only women got peeved—yet if it wasn’t peevishness squirming in his abdomen, it was mighty close…

‘Do you insult everyone you meet or is this treatment reserved for the poor people who have to work closely with you?’

She laughed again.

‘I’m sorry, it wasn’t meant as an insult, just an observation.’

The laughter made him more peevish than before.

‘Well, perhaps you’d like to keep any future observations to yourself,’ he grumped, then he turned back to the window, determined not to speak to her for the rest of the journey.

Until he began to consider what she’d said to make him peevish. It had been about his clothes. His decision to come had been so last minute that he hadn’t for a moment considered clothes, simply throwing most of his wardrobe into his suitcase—a wardrobe chosen mostly by Nellie, back when they’d been married.

Now words he’d learned from her—words like ‘linen blend’ and ‘worsted', words like ‘flat-pleated waist’ and ‘silk-knit polo'—came floating back to him.

He turned back to Belladonna, her true name forgotten in his horror.

‘I’ve brought the wrong clothes. I didn’t give it a damn thought, and I haven’t a clue what a country doctor might wear, but you’re right—it won’t be a suit and white shirt.

What do I do?’

To his relief she didn’t laugh at him or say I told you so, but instead regarded him quite seriously.

‘You’ll have a pair of jeans in your case and a couple of polo shirts—you can make do with those.’

He shook his head. The one pair of jeans he’d taken into his marriage had been consigned to a charity shop by Nellie, who’d claimed he had the wrong-shaped butt for jeans.

And silk-knit polo shirts probably weren’t what Annabelle had in mind for everyday wear in Murrawalla.

His companion frowned for a moment then shrugged.

‘No matter. We can get you togged up in town—in Murrawingi—before we head west. There’s a caravan park, which will have a laundry, so we can scruff everything up a bit before washing it and—’

‘Scruff everything up a bit?’ he echoed, feeling as if he was on a flight to Mars rather than the weekly flight to Murrawingi.

‘You don’t want that “new boy at school” look, do you?’ his new wardrobe consultant demanded, and he shook his head, remembering only too clearly the insecurity stiff new clothes had produced when he’d first started at his private school, a scholarship kid from a different social stratum who’d known no one. Lonely but proud, he’d hidden his unhappiness from his classmates with a defiant aloofness, until he’d proved himself on the rugby field, gaining popularity through sport, his intelligence overlooked as an aberration of some kind.

Look forward, he reminded himself, turning his mind back to Annabelle.

‘But I don’t want to be spending money on new clothes either—especially clothes I’ll probably never wear again.’

It was Annabelle’s turn to shake her head.

‘I know you mix in high society, but even there, good-quality country clothing is acceptable. Two pairs of moleskins, a couple of chambray or small-checked shirts, a pair of jeans and an Akubra. Actually, how big’s your head?’

She checked his head. It was a nice head with a good bump at the back of it—not like some heads that went straight down at the back. And the silky black hair was well cut to reveal the shape.

You’re talking hats, not heads, she reminded herself, wondering why she was so easily distracted by this man.

‘My Akubra’s a good size because I always had to tuck my hair into it, so it will probably fit you and, being a woman, I can wear a new Akubra without looking like a new chum.’

‘I’m still back at the first mention of Akubra,’ Nick admitted, looking more puzzled than ever. ‘What the hell is an Akubra?’

Annabelle stared at him in disbelief.

‘What planet do you inhabit?’ she demanded. ‘Surely there’s no one in Australia, and possibly the world, who hasn’t heard of Akubra hats?’

‘Well, I haven’t!’

He spoke stiffly and Annabelle realised he was embarrassed. A wave of sympathy for him washed over her and she reached out and patted his arm.

‘I’m sorry. I won’t tease you any more. You’ve obviously led a sheltered life.’

Sheltered? Nick wondered. As if! Although from the outside, looking in, he supposed people would assume that, especially people who didn’t know how hard he’d had to work to reach his goals, or the sacrifices his parents had made to allow him to follow his dream.

He closed his mind on the past and turned his attention back to his companion. At least her chatter took his mind off things…

She had the paper open and was half smiling at whatever article she was reading. He wondered what she wanted the bonus money for—to spend on clothes, a man, an overseas holiday?

He had no idea, although he ruled out the man. His impression of her was that she was far too sensible—although without the hair she didn’t look at all sensible. She looked pert and cute and kind of pretty in an unusual way, her high cheekbones too dominant for real prettiness but giving her an elfin look. Some middle European blood would be responsible for the cheekbones, he suspected, although her name, Annabelle Donne, couldn’t be more plainly English.

‘Why do you need the money?’

He hadn’t intended asking her, but the fact that she was sitting there, calmly reading the paper, not the slightest bit interested in him now the wardrobe question had been sorted, had forced it out—more peevishness.

She closed the paper and folded it on her knee before turning to acknowledge she’d heard his question. Then she looked at him, dark eyes scanning his face, perhaps trying to read whether his question was out of genuine interest or simply a conversational gambit.

Whatever conclusion she reached, she did at least answer.

‘I want it to pay my sister’s HECS fees—you know, the higher education contribution for university studies. She’s finishing her pre-med degree this year then going into medicine and I don’t want her coming out burdened down by fees for the first few years of her career. I know people do it, and manage, but I can’t help feeling those horror years as an intern and resident will be easier for her if she’s not worrying all the time about money.’