Authors: Meredith Webber,Alison Roberts
She had just succeeded in her task and was sniffing the rich, sweet scent when she heard the strumming of a guitar, but it wasn’t until she reached the bottom of the steps she recognised the tune.
‘K-K-K-Katie swallowed a ha’penny, a penn’orth of fish, a ha’porth of chips the day before—’
‘The day before that,’ Kate joined in, ‘she swallowed the doormat, now she’s trying to swallow the key of the kitchen door!’
She beamed up at Hamish, who was slumped in the old settee on the back veranda, his guitar across his lap.
‘My grandad used to sing that to me. I always thought he’d made it up, but if you know it, too …’
Hamish saw the radiant smile fade from her face and read the cause of its disappearance with ease. Unexpected pain stabbed deep into his gut. Getting to know how this woman thought wasn’t all beer and skittles.
And the fact that she was trying to keep him at arm’s length wasn’t doing one thing to curb his body’s reaction every time he saw her. Rather the opposite, in fact.
‘Come here!’ he ordered, setting aside his guitar and standing up to enforce his order should it be necessary.
But Kate obeyed, coming wearily up the steps towards him, halting in front of him, summoning a shadow of her earlier smile and snapping a cheeky salute with a spray of flowers she’d been holding in her hand.
‘Oh, Kateling!’ he whispered softly, then he put his arm around her shoulders and led her to the settee.
It had been sat on so often by courting couples that it sagged conveniently in the middle, so any attempt to not sit close was met by defeat. This helped him tuck her small body close to his far larger one, the closest to a hug or cuddle Kate would allow.
‘Just because he wasn’t a blood relation, it doesn’t mean he didn’t love you with all of his heart.’
She turned and stared at him.
‘How do you do it?’ she demanded. ‘How do you know what I’m thinking?’
He had to smile.
‘Never play poker, kid!’ If he kept it light he could tighten his arm and give her half a hug. Half a hug was friendship, not
involvement. ‘You’ve got the most expressive face I’ve ever seen.’
Kate sighed then, joy of joys, rested her head on his shoulder and gazed out over the placid waters of the cove.
‘I know that in my head—about Grandad and my parents loving me,’ she admitted sadly. ‘It’s in my heart I’m having trouble.’
Tell me about it!
But Hamish kept his comment to himself. Having Kate this close was bliss, but one false move and she’d skitter away again, hiding behind the barricades of remembered pain.
‘In my heart I’ve got this alone thing happening. I know it’s stupid, but I can’t seem to get around it. Anyway, smell this.’
She thrust her frond of flowers under his nose.
‘Isn’t it beautiful? Do you know what it is? Do you know why Charles doesn’t like me?’
‘Charles doesn’t like you? You’re asking me to identify a flower for you—it’s ginger, by the way. I liked the scent so much myself I asked Jill about it. Then you switch to some cockamamie question about Charles not liking you. Has he said so? Did he roll right up to you and say, “Kate, I don’t like you”? What is going on in that head of yours?’
He tightened his hold—in friendship of course.
‘He frowns at me. Well, not at me when I’m looking at him, but you know how silently he gets around—someone should have found a way to make his wheels squeak by now. Anyway, sometimes I kind of sense his presence and I turn around and there he is, frowning at me.’
‘You’re imagining it,’ Hamish said stoutly, though in his head and heart he was remembering that he spent a lot of his own time frowning at this woman when she wasn’t aware of his presence. His frown was because he was pretty sure he loved her, and couldn’t work out how to get past her determination to avoid love at all cost.
Could Charles also be in love with her?
Hamish could well understand if he was, and the clenching in his gut suggested he didn’t like this idea one bit. Charles was far too old for her.
Not that old …
And Charles could certainly be charming …
‘I’ll talk to Charles,’ he said firmly, and Kate laughed.
‘And ask him to stop frowning at me? Oh, please!’ She turned and kissed him on the cheek. ‘You’re a really good friend, Hamish, and I appreciate the offer, but I’ll live with Charles’s frowns. I only mentioned it because it happened again when we left the room after we’d been talking to him about Jack.’
She was silent for a moment, moving away a little before the settee tipped her back towards him.
‘You don’t suppose he thinks—He couldn’t think I’ve got something going with Jack, could he? I mean, apart from me being far too old for Jack, he’s really only interested in Megan …’
She sounded confused enough to need comfort so Hamish drew her close again, and they sat like that for a while, watching the moon come up over the horizon, spreading a silver path across the water of the cove.
‘Moonlight and water—made for romance, isn’t it?’
The murmured words slid seditiously into Kate’s ear and her heartbeats upped their intensity, bringing heat to the innermost parts of her body.
Kissing Hamish was back!
‘We can’t have a romance, Hamish,’ she said, betraying the words by wriggling closer to him, because being close to Hamish was extremely comforting. ‘Leaving aside my hangups about relationships—which are huge—you’re going home in a couple of weeks. It would be stupid to start something we can’t finish.’
He kissed the top of her head then his lips moved down and pressed against the corner of her right eye. His tongue slid out to lick a tiny patch of skin—surely eye-skin shouldn’t be erogenous.
‘My leaving isn’t an issue. We could finish it in Scotland. Or not finish it at all.’
Even hushed, his deep voice sent shivers down her spine. It
had
to be the accent. Daniel’s voice had never made contact with her spine at all—with any of her bones, come to think of it.
‘Come home with me. Be
my
family. Make a family that is ours.’
His lips had reached the corner of her mouth. He couldn’t have any idea how tempting that suggestion had been—how much she longed to regain some concept of ‘home’ and ‘family’.
Damn, she should have been concentrating on the progress of his lips, not thinking about nebulous concepts of home and family. He’d taken advantage of her distraction and was kissing her!
Perhaps she hadn’t got an F for the cliff kiss …
‘Are you with me on this?’
He raised his head far enough to free his lips and ask the question, but the aftershocks of the kiss were such that she couldn’t answer. Bones—it was all to do with bones. His voice had affected her spine; now the kiss had made the rest of her bones turn to jelly.
Not possible.
‘Apparently!’ Hamish said, presumably to himself as she certainly wasn’t carrying on a conversation with him. She was trying to get her bones to solidify again, and worrying about the warm feeling in the pit of her stomach that Hamish’s kisses was generating.
He resumed kissing her.
She should be protesting, or at least not kissing him back, but there was something so deliciously delirious about being kissed by Hamish that shoulds and shouldn’ts didn’t count.
‘Oh, dear,’ she managed when they drew apart to breathe some time later. ‘This really shouldn’t be happening, Hamish.’
‘No?’
He tipped her chin up and smiled into her eyes.
‘But how else can I convince you this is special? Yes, it’s sudden,
and
surprising,
and
barely believable, but that doesn’t mean it’s not real, Kate. So I’ll keep kissing you because I know words won’t build the trust you need to overcome your doubts—and admit it, woman, you’re kissing me right back!’
His gruff words shook her jellied bones.
‘Yes, I know, and it’s very nice—lovely kisses—very special, but, Hamish …’
Kate couldn’t find the words she needed to tell him about the hurt inside her—about the scars so new they had no protective scabs—about the hurt against which she had so few defences.
To open herself up to pain like that again, it was unthinkable …
‘No buts,’ he said gently, and he kissed her again, so thoroughly she wondered if they’d leave scorch marks on the settee.
‘No, I won’t go to the fire on the beach with you tonight,’ Kate said firmly, pushing past a lounging Hamish to get into the ED office. With Harry apparently satisfied he’d got all he could out of Jack, Kate had been shifted back to the ED for the weekend.
She’d been happy about the arrangement as there was usually less time for chat and gossip in ED—until Hamish had wandered in.
Searing embarrassment still swamped her when she remembered her behaviour on the settee the previous night. They’d eventually been startled apart by a round of applause from the kitchen, Cal announcing with unabashed delight that they’d broken the settee kissing record, set only recently by himself and Gina.
Kate had skulked off to her room, not knowing the others well enough to laugh it off, though Hamish had stayed, apparently
unaffected by the fact any number of their housemates had seen them kissing.
Now here he was again, wanting her to accompany him to the fire party at the beach, making public a relationship that didn’t exist.
‘You’ll enjoy it,’ Hamish persisted.
‘Yes, I will, because I’m going anyway,’ Kate told him. ‘With Susie. She was talking about it yesterday while she was massaging Jack’s leg. And as it’s in celebration of getting Megan and Jack back together, Megan’s coming with us. Girls’ night out.’
‘Oh!’ For a moment Hamish looked so downcast Kate wanted to change her mind, but when he smiled just seconds later she was glad she’d stood firm. Hamish’s smiles were nearly as addictive as Hamish’s kisses and neither were the kind of addiction a woman who was determined to make her own way in life could afford.
‘Susie and Megan, huh? Well, that’s OK.’
He wandered off, leaving Kate to get on with her work, which, today, because the ED secretary hadn’t appeared, was recording patients as they came in and prioritising them to see the doctor on duty, who happened to be Charles—making it the first time Kate had worked directly with him.
She glanced cautiously around, but he was still out the back where ambulance patients were admitted or in treatment room five where a small boy who’d been vomiting all night had been shifted up ahead of a young woman with stomachache and a drunk who’d fallen out of his mate’s car and taken a lot of skin off one leg.
‘OK, I’ll take over here while you make yourself useful out there.’ Jane, a cheerful secretary who usually worked on the front desk, came bustling into the small office. ‘Charles phoned to say Wendy hadn’t arrived, and asked if I could come. Don’t worry, I started work in this cubbyhole, so I know what to do.’
Then she nodded to the drunk who was singing a song neither Kate nor, by the looks on their faces, anyone else in the room could recognise.
‘Who’s your friend?’
Kate smiled.
‘I’ll do him first,’ she said, and went out, taking the man with the gravel rash through to a treatment room. With any luck, all his leg needed was to be cleaned up and dressed, then he could go on his way.
Easier said than done. She managed to get him into the treatment room, but he’d no sooner lain down on the examination table than he gave a helpless yelp then threw up all over her.
A hastily summoned aide came in to clean up while Kate grabbed some clean scrubs and headed for the bathroom. But no matter how much water she splashed over herself, she knew she’d smell all day.
Damn the man!
Back in the treatment room, he was sitting up and at least had the decency to look embarrassed.
‘Room went round and round when I lay down,’ he explained, which was when she realised she’d misread his embarrassment as he began to sing again, this time about a room going round and round.
Kate shifted him so his leg was propped on an absorbent pad on the table and she could get at the bits of gravel in the wound. She flushed it first, but the grit remained embedded and she knew it was going to be a piece-by-piece job.
Using small tweezers and wearing a magnifying loupe, she painstakingly removed every grain, while her patient alternately serenaded her and asked her to marry him. She had nearly finished when Charles appeared in the doorway.
‘Need me?’ he said, and this time she was sure the frown accompanying the words was because of the way the two of
them smelt. ‘Phew! Talk about ripe!’ he added, confirming her thoughts but making her smile nonetheless.
‘You might like to take a look, but he’s up to date with his tetanus shots, there are no deep wounds that need stitching and there’s no infection, so I thought I’d swab it all over with Betadine and let him go. Leave it without a dressing to dry it out?’
‘Yes,’ Charles said, then he frowned again, though he should have got used to the smell by now.
He wheeled away and, because the line-up for treatment hadn’t become noticeably longer, Kate finished tending her drunk then ducked over to the house to have a proper shower and change into clean clothes. She didn’t want people coming into the ED and going home feeling worse than when they’d arrived.
Susie knocked on her door at eight that evening.
‘You ready?’ she asked, when Kate called to her to come in.
‘As I’ll ever be,’ Kate told her. The quiet morning had turned into a hectic afternoon and she’d only come off duty fifteen minutes ago. But she’d had a quick shower and dressed in jeans and a light cotton knit sweater, thinking the breeze on the beach might be cool in spite of the fire.
‘Then let’s go,’ Susie said, leading the way out of the house.
‘Where’s Megan? Weren’t you going to pick her up?’
‘I was, but Hamish said he had to go downtown so he said he’d get her.’
Girls’ and Hamish’s night out?
Had he offered deliberately? Would that explain his smile?
Kate shook her head. She was here to find her father, not to get caught up in thinking about Hamish. Not about his kisses, or his Colleague Hamish days—just to find her father.