Australian Bachelors: Outback Heroes: Top-Notch Doc, Outback Bride / A Wedding in Warragurra / The Outback Doctor's Surprise Bride

CHAPTER EIGHT

ONCE the patient was transferred in Brisbane to the nearest trauma centre, Matt looked up at the flight information board and frowned. ‘I hate to be the one to tell you this but it looks like we’re going to have to cool our heels here for a while.’

Kellie looked up at the screen. ‘Why?’

Brian King, the pilot who had flown the patient down, came over to where they were standing. ‘There are electrical storms all over the region,’ he explained. ‘Most of the regional flights have been grounded overnight.’

‘Overnight?’ Kellie blinked a couple of times. ‘But I’ve got nothing with me. Look at me.’

Both men turned and looked at her.

Kellie felt her face go red when Matt’s dark blue gaze lingered the longest. ‘I’m covered in blood and dust,’ she said, and added mentally, And I’m wearing a pair of ripped high-cut running shorts and a vest top, and I haven’t had a shower and I’ve never felt so unfeminine and unattractive in my life. ‘Anyway, where would we stay?’ she asked.

‘There’s a hotel close to the airport we use at times like this,’ Brian said. ‘They do a cheap rate for medical personnel. I’d offer you a bed at my place but we’re in the middle of renovations.

There’s barely room for the wife and kids.’ He turned to Matt. ‘Will you stay at your … er … fiancée’s parents’?’

‘No,’ Matt said, his expression as blank as a bare wall. ‘They’ve got relatives staying with them this week. I’ll be fine at the hotel with Dr Thorne.’

‘I reckon the flights will be back to normal in the morning,’ Brian said. ‘Are you guys right to get a taxi? I’ve got to go through a couple of checks with the safety crew.’

‘Sure,’ Matt said. Giving Kellie a follow-me nod, he led the way outside to the taxi rank.

Kellie could feel every person’s eyes on her as she stood beside Matt in the queue. An older couple in front had even made a point of stepping away from her, their wrinkled brows frowning in disapproval as they’d taken in her dishevelled appearance.

She felt Matt’s broad shoulder brush against her. ‘Ignore them,’ he said in a low voice.

She looked up at him and asked in an undertone, ‘Do I smell?’

His expression contained a hint of wryness. ‘I’ve smelt worse.’

‘Thanks,’ she said, rolling her eyes. ‘That’s very reassuring.’

A flicker of a smile lit his gaze. ‘Believe me, you’ll feel like a million dollars after a shower and something to eat,’ he said, as he led her to the next available taxi.

It was a short trip to the hotel, where the receptionist at the front desk smiled apologetically at Matt’s request for two rooms. ‘I’m terribly sorry, sir, but we only have one room available.’

Matt frowned. ‘One room?’

‘I’m afraid so,’ she answered. ‘With so many regional flights being cancelled at short notice, we filled up very quickly.’

‘I don’t mind sharing a room,’ Kellie piped up helpfully.

Matt’s frown brought his brows almost together as he looked down at her for a moment.

‘It’s only for one night,’ she said, conscious of the receptionist’s speculative look.

‘It’s a queen-sized suite,’ the receptionist chipped in. ‘But if you would like a roll-out bed brought in I can organise Housekeeping to have one delivered to your room.’

‘Yes,’ Matt said. ‘That would be very much appreciated.’

‘We’re not a couple,’ Kellie explained.

‘Brother and sister?’ The receptionist took a wild guess.

‘No,’ Kellie said with a little laugh. ‘I’ve already got five brothers. The last thing I need is another one.’

The receptionist smiled as she handed Matt a form to sign. ‘It’s room four hundred and twenty-five,’ she said. ‘You’ll need your swipe card. I hope you enjoy your stay.’

When the doors of the first available lift opened Kellie stared in dismay at her reflection in the mirrored wall at the back. ‘Oh, my God!’ she wailed. ‘Why didn’t you tell me I looked like this?’

Matt reached past her to press the button for their floor. ‘You don’t look that bad,’ he said with what he hoped was an indifferent look.

She groaned as she rubbed at the smear of blood over her right cheek with the bottom of her top. ‘I look like an extra from a horror movie,’ she said. ‘The least you could have done is said something. No wonder people were staring.’

‘Yes, well, they probably weren’t staring at your face,’ Matt said dryly, doing his level best not to stare at the strip of tanned and toned abdomen she had exposed by lifting her top to clean her face.

She let the top fall back down. ‘What do you mean?’

He put an arm out to hold the lift doors open. ‘I think that rip in your shorts is getting bigger,’ he said. ‘I hope for the sake of your dignity there’s a complimentary sewing kit in the room.’

Kellie clutched at her behind and felt the lace of her knickers. ‘Oh, no!’

‘Don’t worry,’ he said, leading the way down the hall. ‘There’s no one about. This is our room right here.’

Our room.

Matt felt himself flinch as he said the words. Those words … How many times had he and Madeleine used them over the years? Our first date, our love, our engagement, our future …

He stared at the swipe key in his hand, wondering if he should have tried another hotel. Why hadn’t he thought of it earlier? It wasn’t as if the whole of Brisbane would have been booked out. There were numerous hotels all over the city and even if some of them were beyond the health department budget, he could have paid for a couple of rooms himself.

‘Hurry up!’ Kellie said at his side. ‘Open the door. I don’t want anyone else to see like me this.’

He drew in a breath and opened the door, but before he could reach for the light switch she had rushed past him and headed straight to the bathroom.

While she was in the shower someone from Housekeeping arrived with a roll-out bed, which, once it was set up, shrank the space to give the room an alarmingly intimate feel.

Matt swung away and looked out of the window, trying not to think of Kellie’s naked body standing under the shower next door. His whole body felt tense, his blood surging to his groin at the thought of spending the night in the same room as her with less than a metre of space to separate them. He was angry at himself, angry that he was allowing sheer animal attraction to override his common sense.

He closed his eyes and tried to think of Madeleine, but her features seemed less defined, blurry almost, as if she was slowly but inexorably moving out of focus. He clenched his fists and tried to recall the scent of her perfume but even that, too, had drifted out of his reach.

‘I’m all done,’ Kellie said as she came out of the bathroom.

Matt slowly turned from the window, his lower belly kicking in reaction at the sight of her in one of the hotel’s fluffy white bathrobes, her wet hair loose about her shoulders, the fresh orange-blossom fragrance of the shampoo and shower gel she had used filling his nostrils.

‘I’ve washed out my things and left them to dry over the shower screen,’ she said. ‘I hope they won’t be in your way while you shower.’

‘Right …’ he said, moving past her. ‘Er … do you want to have a look through the room-service menu? It takes them about forty minutes to deliver it. You can order for me.’

‘What would you like?’ she asked.

Matt wasn’t sure he could even admit that to himself without another pang of shame slicing through him. ‘Anything,’ he said. ‘Surprise me.’

Kellie frowned as the bathroom door closed and locked behind him. After a moment or two she let out a little sigh, reached for the room-service menu and started reading.

Matt told himself he wasn’t even going to look at the tiny pair of black lace knickers hanging over the glass shower screen, but as he blindly reached for the bath gel they fell off and landed at his feet. He waited a beat or two before bending to pick them up, his fingers almost of their own accord squeezing the moisture out of them.

He hung them back up with careful precision and quickly finished his shower, but somehow the thought of Kellie standing where he was standing just minutes before, the water coursing over and caressing her slim form, unsettled him far more than he wanted to admit.

She was sitting with her legs curled underneath her on the roll-out bed, reading a tourist brochure, when he finally came out of the bathroom. She looked up and smiled at him in that totally engaging way of hers and informed him, ‘I’ve ordered you a steak with kipler potatoes and green vegetables. Is that OK?’

His stomach grumbled in anticipation. ‘That’s perfect,’ he said as he rubbed his wet hair with his towel. ‘What are you having?’

‘I couldn’t decide between the barramundi fillets with mango chilli salsa or the chicken with pesto and pine-nut stuffing or the loin of lamb with rosemary and garlic.’

He tried not to stare at the soft plumpness of her mouth. ‘So … what did you decide?’ he asked.

She tilted her head at him. ‘What do you think I chose?’

‘The fish,’ he said, feeling an involuntary smile pull at the corners of his mouth. ‘Definitely the fish.’

Her eyes went wide with surprise. ‘How on earth did you guess that?’

He gave his head another quick rub with the towel. ‘You’re a beach chick,’ he said. ‘You’ve probably grown up with fish bones between your teeth.’

She grinned at him. ‘I did, too,’ she said. ‘My brothers and I were taught to fish when we were still in nappies. I think I still hold the record for the most flathead caught in one outing.’

Matt marvelled yet again at how different their family backgrounds were. His father had taken him fishing once but it had been a disaster from start to finish. If the rain hadn’t been bad enough, the seasickness Matt had felt on the way home across the bay had made it a day to remember for all the wrong reasons. He could still recall his father’s scowling expression, as if Matt had been personally responsible for both the lack of fish and the inclement weather.

‘You sound like you had a very happy childhood,’ he said as he tossed his towel over the back of a chair.

‘I did,’ she said with another little smile. ‘I hope when I get married and have kids, I’ll be able to give them the sort of childhood I had.’

A stretching silence made the room seem ever smaller.

‘I’m sorry….’ Kellie said, biting her lip. ‘I guess that was a bit insensitive of me.’

He gave her an unreadable look. ‘No, not at all.’

Another beat or two of silence passed.

‘Tell me about her,’ Kellie said softly.

‘Tell you about who?’

‘Madeleine. Your fiancée. What was she like?’

Matt felt his chest start to tighten but after a moment’s hesitation he found himself telling her more than he had told anyone. ‘She was beautiful, a bit on the shy side but when she got to know you she would come out of her shell a bit more. She was an only child like me so we had a lot in common right from the start. We both found it hard to make friends easily. It took us time to learn to trust people.’

He took in a breath and continued, ‘She loved music, not that techno modern stuff but mostly classical. She played the piano and the flute like a pro but she couldn’t cook for peanuts.’ He gave a ghost of a smile that barely touched his mouth and went on, ‘I think it was because her mother and father did everything for her. Being their only child, it was understandable she was treated like a princess.’

‘Her parents must miss her dreadfully,’ Kellie said into the small silence.

His eyes met hers. ‘Yes …’ He released a long, rough-around-the-edges sigh. ‘She was their life, their entire focus for living. They’re like empty shells now.’

Kellie moistened her dry lips. ‘It’s nice that you keep in contact with them,’ she said. ‘Not many men in your situation would think to do that.’

He gave a rueful twist of his mouth but it wasn’t anywhere near a smile. ‘I’m not sure if it helps or hinders them, to tell you the truth,’ he confessed. ‘If I don’t call them regularly I feel guilty, but when I do call it sort of stirs it all up again for them, you know?’

She nodded. ‘I do know …’

He ran a hand through his still damp hair and sighed again. ‘It’s been six years and yet it sometimes feels as if it was yesterday.’

‘What happened?’ Kellie asked.

He sat on the end of the queen-sized bed, his legs so close that Kellie knew if she uncurled hers from beneath her they would touch his, knee to knee.

She watched the pain of remembering moving like a shadow over his face. It thinned his mouth, it tightened his jaw and it left his dark blue gaze achingly empty as it connected with hers.

‘We had an argument the night before,’ he said, a frown bringing his brows almost together over his eyes. ‘I don’t even remember what it was about now, something silly to do with the wedding seating arrangements, I think. She left in a huff and I was my usual pigheaded self, brooding over it for hours without doing anything to sort things out.’

Kellie sat in silence, somehow sensing he was letting his guard down in a way he had never done before. It made her feel an intimate connection with him, unlike anything she had felt with anyone else in the past.

His mouth contorted again as he continued, ‘She was spending the week with her parents so I didn’t bother ringing her the next morning. I planned to go round that evening with flowers and an apology but, of course, I was too late. A car ran a red light and ploughed straight into her on her way to school that morning. She died a few minutes later at the scene.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ Kellie said in a voice whisper soft.

He brought his gaze back to hers, the bleakness of it making her ache for him. ‘I often lie awake at night and wonder what she was thinking in those final moments as her life ebbed away,’ he said. ‘I wonder if she was thinking about me, our wedding and all the plans we’d made.’

Kellie brushed at her eyes. ‘It must have been an absolute nightmare for you. I don’t know how you coped.’

He gave her a crooked smile but it was grim, not humorous. ‘It felt like a nightmare at the time,’ he said. ‘I kept thinking surely someone’s going to tap me on the shoulder and say “April Fool” or something, but each day was the same as the one before. The grief was like a thick fog, I couldn’t see through it and no one could get to me through its black heavy shroud. I even thought about … you know … ending it all.’

‘What stopped you?’

His gaze meshed with hers. ‘See these?’ he asked, holding out his hands palms upwards.

Kellie nodded.

He looked down at his outstretched hands. ‘These hands have been trained to save lives. I gave up years of my life to train to be a doctor. I had to work harder than most as I didn’t have the support of my parents, who were too busy feuding with each other to take much notice of me. I thought it would be selfish of me to end it all when I could put my life to much better use.’

‘So you came out to the bush.’

His eyes came back to hers. ‘Yes. Out here I can make a difference. My life counts for something, even though it is not the life I had originally planned for myself.’

Kellie leaned forward and took his hands in hers and gently squeezed. ‘You are an absolutely amazing doctor, Matt,’ she said. ‘You saved Brayden Harrison’s life today.’

‘He’s not out of the woods yet,’ he reminded her, but Kellie couldn’t help noticing he didn’t pull out of her tender hold.

‘Perhaps not,’ she said. ‘But he’s in with a chance, a chance he wouldn’t have had if you hadn’t been there to do what needed to be done.’

His fingers curled around hers, his slightly rough touch against her smooth one sending her pulse skyrocketing. She ran her tongue over her lips again, mesmerised by the dark intensity of his gaze as it held hers.

The doorbell of the suite sounded, announcing the arrival of their meals, and broke the moment. Matt dropped her hands as if they were hot coals and strode over to the answer the door.

The trolley was wheeled in and Matt gave the young attendant a tip on his way out before coming back to where Kellie was still curled up on the makeshift bed.

‘We should eat this before it gets cold,’ he said, without meeting her gaze.

Kellie knew he was regretting his earlier outburst of guilt and grief. She had experienced it so many times with her brothers, the way they let their guard down and then pulled away from her as if they were worried she would exploit their brief vulnerability. ‘Matt?’ she said softly.

He took the lid off one of the plates. ‘This is your fish,’ he said, and handed it to her with a closed-off expression.

‘Don’t shut me out,’ she said, ignoring the outstretched plate. ‘Come on, Matt, you just let me into your deepest pain and now you’re shoving me away.’

He blew out a breath and slapped the plate back down on the trolley. ‘Don’t eat it, then, see if I give a damn.’

She got to her feet and tugged at his arm. ‘Matt, look at me,’ she said. ‘Stop feeling sorry for yourself. You can’t bring her back no matter how much you want to. It wasn’t your fault she died. You weren’t to blame.’

He brushed off her arm, his eyes blazing as they hit hers. ‘What would you know?’ he barked at her savagely. ‘What the hell would you know about how I feel?’

‘I know more than you realise,’ she said with quiet dignity. ‘I know that you feel somehow responsible for Madeleine’s death. I also know you are punishing yourself as if in some way that will make things right, but it won’t, Matt. You won’t make things right by doing wrong things.’

‘What wrong things am I doing?’ he asked, still glaring at her heatedly.

She came over to where he was standing, so close he had no where to go but back up against the wall. ‘You didn’t die in that accident with her, Matt,’ she said. ‘You’re still alive and entitled to live a fulfilling life. You have the right to enjoy what life has to offer, you don’t have to be a hermit out there in the bush. You can have a new love, maybe even a happy future, with marriage and babies.’

His lip curled in a sneer. ‘Is that why you came out here?’ he asked, ‘to find a husband and sperm donor?’

Kellie flinched away from his crude bitterness. ‘I came out here because I needed a change of scene. My family has become too dependent on me and my love life totally sucks, so all round it seemed like a good solution.’

He moved past her to lift the lid off the other plate. ‘I’m not interested in auditioning for the role of fill-in partner while you sort out your relationship and family issues. When I feel ready to look for another relationship I will do so in my own good time and not a minute before.’

‘Only because you’re afraid of being hurt again,’ she said. ‘It’s understandable. My father is the same but it doesn’t mean either of you don’t deserve to live life to its fullest potential. You are, what, thirty-three or -four? You have more than half your life ahead of you. What are you doing, locking yourself away from all that life has to offer?’

He picked up the napkin-wrapped cutlery and sat on the bed with his plate balanced on his lap. ‘I’m happy with my life the way it is. I work, I eat and I sleep.’

Kellie gave her eyes a roll of exasperation. ‘Yes, but you do it all alone.’

‘Only the sleeping part,’ he said, sticking his fork into a floret of broccoli and popping it into his mouth.

Her eyes widened. ‘You’ve been celibate for six years?’

Matt frowned at her. ‘What’s wrong with that?’ he asked. ‘Lots of people choose to be celibate.’

‘I know but don’t you think it’s time you lived a little?’

‘I told you, Kellie, I like my life the way it is for the moment,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry if Trish and the Montgomerys gave you the impression I was a likely candidate for a six-month fling but I prefer to choose my own partners, not have them thrust on me.’

Kellie glared at him. ‘You think I would agree to a matchmaking scheme like that?’ she asked. ‘Get real, Matt. I like to choose my own partners too, not that I’ve been particularly good at it or anything, but don’t for a moment think I would consider you as a potential lover, far from it.’

He pushed his half-eaten meal to one side and got to his feet. ‘I’m going out for some fresh air,’ he said, tossing his napkin down on the bed. ‘Don’t wait up.’

Kellie blew out a frustrated sigh and pushed her half-eaten meal away. OK, so maybe that had been a bit harsh, she thought. The truth was she had more than once considered Matt as a potential lover, but after Harley’s brazen two-timing Kellie was damned if she was going to play second fiddle to another woman again: dead or alive.

CHAPTER NINE

WHEN Matt came back to the suite at close to two a.m. Kellie was sound asleep, her small body curled up like a child’s, one of her hands underneath her cheek, the other hanging down over the side of the bed.

He stood looking at her in the lamplight, feeling guilty for drinking in the sight of her while she was totally unaware of his presence. It seemed voyeuristic, exploitative even, but he couldn’t seem to pull his gaze away.

She had obviously dispensed with the bathrobe for it was now hanging off the edge of the bed near her feet. Somehow the thought of her naked beneath that thin cotton sheet stirred his senses more than he would have thought possible. She had such a neat body, lean and athletic but unmistakably feminine.

He went rigid when she suddenly rolled over with a little murmur, the sheet slipping to reveal the creamy curve of one small but perfect breast. He knew he shouldn’t be staring—he was a doctor, for pity’s sake! He’d seen more breasts than he could count, and yet the sight of that creamy globe with its dusky brown nipple took his breath away.

Her soft mouth opened slightly on a sigh and she nestled back down into the pillow, but just when Matt thought it was safe to draw in a breath she suddenly opened her eyes. She sat bolt upright, her mad scramble for the sheet to cover herself affording him an even better view of her body than she had probably intended.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ she railed at him. ‘You scared me half to death!’

‘Sorry,’ he mumbled gruffly. ‘I didn’t mean to wake you. I was just …’

‘You were just what?’ She glared at him. ‘Having a little peek while you thought no one was looking?’

He raked a hand that wasn’t quite steady through his hair. ‘It wasn’t like that at all,’ he lied, a tide of colour heating the back of his neck. ‘I was trying to get to my bed without disturbing you in the process.’