‘If anyone else wanted to invade, I’d be putting up the white flag before the first shot was fired,’ he told her. ‘Do you have any idea how big this district is? I’m run off my feet. But you’re not going to help.’

No, she thought bleakly. She wasn’t. But she may as well reassure him that she wasn’t pretending to practise medicine.

‘If anyone arrives with broken legs or snakebite, you can be sure I’ll send them to you,’ she told him. ‘As I hope you’ll send anyone with muscle soreness to me.’

‘You expect me to refer people to you when you call yourself a doctor?’

‘Don’t be elitist.’

‘Don’t indulge in deception.’

‘I’m not!’

‘Look, Ally…’

This was going nowhere. ‘I have work to do,’ she told him. ‘Your paint is drying.’

‘You can’t do this.’

‘Watch me.’ She sighed. ‘You’re just upset because my sign is bigger than yours.’

‘Some of us have ethical standards.’

‘Well, bully for some of us,’ she snapped. ‘Now, if you don’t mind, I have a sign to write and I’ve just decided it needs work. It needs to be bigger.’

He stared at her for a long moment. But there was no more to be said. They both knew it.

Finally he turned and stalked up to his surgery door. He disappeared, slamming the door behind him.

He left blue footprints all the way.

Ally was left staring after him. What to do now?

Nothing, she told herself. There was nothing she could do. Just get on with it.

‘Whoops,’ she said again. She took a deep breath—and then grinned into the morning sun. Whether she had Darcy Rochester’s approval or whether she didn’t, she was home again and nothing and no one was going to interfere with her happiness.

CHAPTER TWO

THROUGHOUT the next few days Darcy worked on as if she wasn’t there. Well, why not? What did a massage therapist have to do with him?

Nothing.

The fact that the entire population was talking about her was none of his business either.

At least he had work to distract him from a woman who was dangerously close to being distracting all by herself.

In truth, he’d seldom been as busy as he was right now. The fine autumn weather broke the afternoon of Charlie Hammer’s funeral, meaning the fishing fleet couldn’t leave port. The town’s fishermen decided en masse that if they were in port anyway they may as well kill time getting their assorted ills seen to, swelling his already too-long patient lists.

Then the little community in the hills above the town—alternative lifestylers who didn’t believe in getting their children immunised—were hit by an epidemic of chickenpox. As he had three kids with complications and parents who agonised and discussed ad nauseam every treatment he advised—and then refused to let him treat them anyway—he was going quietly nuts. But going nuts wasn’t on the agenda. If he stopped calmly discussing treatments with these parents, if he stopped negotiating that at least they keep track of fluid balances—if he lost his cool—then these kids wouldn’t make it to be insurance salesmen or astrophysicists or whatever else kids of dyed-in-the-wool hippies became if they survived childhood.

Then there was the added complication of the entire town trooping by to see Ally’s much talked-of new premises. While they were there, they remembered they may just as well pop next door to the doctor’s surgery and make an appointment to have their sore elbow seen to, or talk about Mum’s Alzheimer’s—and see for themselves just how Dr Rochester was taking this new arrival.

Doris Kerr had obviously spread the fact that Darcy hadn’t reacted with pleasure to Ally’s arrival. His reaction had gone down like a lead balloon. Every single patient commented on the hive of industry next door to his surgery. Many of the long-term town residents—those who remembered Ally from childhood—took pains to tell him how wonderful it was that a little girl they’d clearly held in affection had finally come home.

And their message was clear. ‘Don’t mess with Ally Westruther. Even if her sign is bigger than yours.’

Fine. He wouldn’t mess with Ally Westruther. He didn’t want to think about her. But not thinking about her was impossible, too.

Even among his staff… Betty, his receptionist, got teary-eyed about Ally at least twice a day.

‘Oh, Dr Rochester, I’m so pleased to think that little mite has finally found her way home,’ she told him. ‘And to have another Dr Westruther in town… It seems so right.’

He grimaced but somehow he refrained from saying, ‘She’s not a doctor.’

He thought it, though.

What had she said? Contact my university and ask.

OK, so she probably did have some sort of doctorate, he conceded, and maybe he’d been being petty, suggesting it was in basket weaving. But you couldn’t get doctorates in massage. He knew that. He’d checked. He’d checked five minutes after he’d unsuccessfully tried to clean his shoes.

So the doctorate she was using to promote her massage business must be in something esoteric—like the mating habits of North Baluchistan dung beetles or the literary comparison of Byron and Tennyson or…or something, and she couldn’t make a living so she’d turned to massage and was using her doctorate to attract patients.

That was a guess, he conceded. Nearly everything was a guess when it came to Ally. As much as the locals were pleased to see her, no one knew what she’d been doing in the last twenty years or so.

‘Her mother brought her home to her grandpa when she was tiny,’ Betty told him, unasked, as she was sorting patient records he needed for the afternoon. ‘There was a really unhappy marriage and her father went to jail. I can’t remember all the details but I know old Doc Westruther wouldn’t speak of him. Her mother didn’t stay very long—she disappeared and no one knew where she went—but when she went she left the little girl behind. Then suddenly the old doc died and her father turned up to claim her. There were so many people who would have taken her in but her father just said, “She’s my kid and she comes with me.” There was nothing we could do about it. No one knew where her mother was. I remember her father dragging her into a beat-up old jalopy and Sue, her best friend, wailing at the top of her lungs. I saw them leave town. Her little face was pressed against the car’s back window and…well, the memory never left me. I wondered and wondered. Her father seemed brutal.’

Brutal. Darcy was trying to concentrate on reading Mrs Skye’s patient notes. Elsie Skye’s gout had been playing up and she was coming to see him for the third time. If the treatment he had her on wasn’t working then he needed to think about reasons. What blood tests were appropriate? This level of gout might even indicate malignancy. He needed to check.

But Ally’s face still intruded. He thought about the way she’d reacted to his initial blaze of anger. She’d flinched. A brutal father? His move to reassure her had maybe been appropriate. ‘That’s dreadful,’ he conceded.

‘So don’t you think you might have acted a bit harshly yourself?’ Betty probed. ‘Doris said you were mean.’

That was a little unfair. ‘I was not mean. She spilled paint over my shoes. They’re permanently blue.’

‘Like you can’t afford to buy new shoes.’

‘Most receptionists,’ he told her, in a voice laced with warning, ‘would be sympathetic to their boss when someone threw blue paint at his expensive shoes.’

She grinned. Betty was sixty years old; she’d been receptionist to the three doctors who’d taken care of Tambrine Creek in living memory; and she knew every single patient’s history backward. She was invaluable and she knew it. So she could give as much cheek as she liked.

‘I’m more likely to be sympathetic to Ally,’ she retorted. ‘She needs it. Her grandpa was a harsh man and we worried that her father was worse. I don’t think she’s had it easy.’

‘She shouldn’t call herself a doctor.’

‘Will you get off your high horse? You know as well as I do that if she puts up a sign saying simply, “Ally Westruther, Massage”, every second fisherman’s lad will take it the wrong way and she’ll be fighting them off with sticks.’

He hadn’t thought of that.

‘And she’s got nothing.’ Betty was pushing inexorably on. ‘The boys have been helping her set up. She didn’t want anyone to help, but this bad weather has everyone bored and they’re more than keen to help. So they’ve insisted. Her room downstairs looks nice now. They’ve painted it and she has a lovely massage table and a big heater and everything you’d want. But Russ Ewing blew a fuse when he was sandblasting her front steps and he had to go upstairs to change it. She hasn’t invited anyone up there and now we know why. She’s sleeping on a mattress on the floor. She’s got nothing.’

Mrs Skye’s medical record was getting less and less attention. Darcy was trying hard to concentrate but it wasn’t working. ‘Maybe her furniture’s coming later.’

‘Maybe it’s not. Maybe she’s broke.’

‘She’s an adult. If she’s been working…’

‘Oh, leave it alone.’ Betty shook her head, as if in wonder that he could be so obtuse. ‘She’s a lovely girl, our Ally, and we’re going to support her every way can. And we think you should, too. Why don’t you recommend that Elsie Skye could use a little rub instead of worrying herself sick about her gout?’

‘She doesn’t need a massage.’

‘Elsie can afford it, she’s bored and she’s in pain. Have you wondered why her gout flares up so much more when her daughter’s in America? I bet our Ally could make her feel lovely.’

‘You don’t massage gout,’ he said stubbornly, and she raised her eyebrows as if he was being thick.

‘It’s only her feet that have gout. Not all of her. And as if Ally wouldn’t know not to massage something that would hurt. She’s a doctor!’

‘She’s not a doctor of medicine.’

‘How do you know?’

Darcy set Elsie’s history down on the desk with a slap. He was already running late for afternoon surgery and now he was going to be later—because he was gossiping about someone he had no interest in. ‘Because if she was a doctor of medicine we’d have that wall knocked out between the buildings in two minutes flat,’ he snapped. ‘And she’d be in here, with a queue of patients stretched almost out the door waiting to see her. As I have. Now, can we get on with it?’

‘Yes, Doctor. Certainly, Doctor,’ Betty said with a mock-serious curtsy. ‘Only will you just think about it?’

‘Will I be allowed not to?’

Her first paying customer.

Treating Gloria Kerr was pure pleasure. She’d walked in and peered around Ally’s newly painted rooms and gasped with delight.

‘Ooh, love, you have it really nice. Doris said it looked a picture and then she said why didn’t I get myself down here? I’ve been gardening for a week—the oxalis has taken over the lawn and I hate using that weedkiller stuff. I reckon it gets into the ground water. But my back…it’s killing me. If you could just give it a nice rub?’

Ally hadn’t planned on opening until tomorrow. Her grand opening—i.e. unlocking the front door and hoping someone came—was timed for nine a.m. She didn’t have the room exactly as she wanted it. But Gloria looked at her with eyes that were big with hope; and Ally had exactly sixty-five cents left in her purse and she really fancied dinner.

So she chatted to Gloria as she warmed the towels, and then asked Gloria to choose her preferred oils. She chose sandalwood for relaxation. Then she spent an hour giving the lady the best rub she knew how to administer.

She was carefully gentle. Gloria was in her late sixties. She had knots of osteoarthritis, where massage could inflame a joint and cause more problems. She had deep varicose veins that had to be avoided. But Ally’s hands moved skilfully, patiently, carefully kneading knotted muscles and easing an aching neck and tired, workworn hands.

‘Your fingers are wonderful,’ Gloria whispered as finally Ally lay warm towels back over Gloria’s body, rested her hands on her back for a moment as a final, lingering contact and then stood back from the table. ‘Magic. Oh, my dear, my hands are so warm and soft. You make me feel amazing.’

Part of it was the contact, Ally thought. Gloria Kerr was Doris’s sister. Gloria’s husband had died just before Ally had left town. Her only son, Bill, was a rough-diamond fisherman who maybe gave his mum a peck on the cheek for Mother’s Day and for her birthday. If she was lucky. That was the only human touch she was likely to get.

Massage wasn’t a substitute for loving human contact, Ally thought, but it certainly helped. She’d warmed and mobilised Gloria’s aching joints. She’d given her time out from her loneliness and she’d listened as Gloria had filled her in on the last seventeen years of town life.

Gloria was happy. She’d sleep much easier tonight because of her massage, and Ally accepted her fee knowing she’d given good service.

It was a start, she thought with satisfaction as she stood on the doorstep and watched Gloria walk off happily down the street. She’d helped.

And best of all she’d been paid. She could eat!

‘You know that Gloria has arthritis?’

She whirled to find Darcy Rochester watching her from the front step of his rooms. He looked as if he was about to go out on a house call. Every inch the doctor, he was carrying a smart black doctor’s bag and he was headed in the direction of his capacious Mercedes Benz parked out on the street.

A brand-new Mercedes, she thought bitterly. As opposed to her ancient rust-bucket of a panel van which looked almost ludicrous beside it.

‘Do you have to keep scaring me?’ Ally demanded, and he raised an eyebrow as if such a notion was ludicrous.

‘What, you don’t have a spare bucket of paint to throw at me this time?’

‘I wish,’ she muttered darkly. ‘And, yes, I do know Gloria has arthritis.’

‘So maybe massage isn’t appropriate.’

‘Go teach your grandmother to suck eggs.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘You know your business and I know mine,’ she said through gritted teeth. She was almost deliriously happy to be here again—in this town, setting up her own business—but this man was threatening to burst her fragile bubble of contentment. ‘I know what I’m about,’ she said, trying to moderate her voice a little. ‘I understand that massaging inflammatory joints can cause damage, and I was extremely careful not to do anything of the kind. I helped.’

‘She’s on medication. If you’ve interfered—’

What was it with this man?

‘I did not,’ she said, again through gritted teeth, ‘interfere with Gloria’s medication in any way, shape or form. I did not imply that she’d be better off taking wart of hog, collected at midnight from the local cemetery in ritualistic sacrifice, than she is taking your boring old anti-inflammatories. I did take a medical history—I’d be stupid not to—but she’s your patient, and aside from rubbing her down with a little sandalwood oil…’

‘Sandalwood’s expensive.’

‘So’s a Mercedes,’ she snapped. ‘I charge to cover my expenses. The sandalwood costs me maybe a dollar. I factor it into my accounts. How much do you charge to cover the cost of running your Mercedes?’

Yikes. That was way out of line. She couldn’t believe she’d just said it. She wasn’t normally this rude—this abrupt. What was it about this man that got under her skin?

But he stood on the doorstep of the place where her grandpa used to practise medicine, and his eyes condemned her.

‘Um…we seem to be getting off on the wrong foot,’ he said, and she blinked.

‘We do indeed.’

‘I’m sure you’re a fine massage therapist.’

‘And I’m sure you’re a fine doctor.’ Her tone was wary.

‘If you’d just like to talk to me about my patients before you treat them.’

‘And your patients would be…who? The whole town?’

‘I guess.’

‘You’d like me to ask permission to touch anyone who comes near me?’

‘There’s no need to be dramatic.’

‘There’s every need to be dramatic.’ She was practically snarling. ‘I’m a massage therapist. Not a witchdoctor. The first rule of a good massage therapist is exactly the same rule as for a good doctor. Do no harm. So, if you’ll excuse me, would you just get into your fancy car and take yourself off to wherever you’re going? Because I have things to do.’

She certainly did. She had a steak to buy. A really big steak. Gloria’s money was practically cooking itself in her pocket.

But Darcy was staring at her as if she’d just arrived from outer space.

‘What?’ she said crossly.

‘I just thought…’

‘What?’

‘Look, maybe we should get to know each other a little better.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘It’s a small town. I gather you’re intending to stay.’

‘You’re the Johnny-come-lately,’ she agreed. ‘I’m the local. Maybe you’ll move on.’

‘It’s unlikely.’

‘Why not?’

‘I like it here.’

‘A big fish in a small pond,’ she said cordially, and watched the frown snap down.

‘Look…’

Maybe she ought to change the subject. She had no idea why they just had to look at each other and they started snapping. Conciliation was her middle name, she thought ruefully, and she had no idea why this man had the capacity to knock her right out of her normal pacifist nature.

But she sort of enjoyed it, though, she decided. Astonishingly. Somehow tossing paint at him at their first meeting had set her free to bounce insults around.

Or maybe it had been that when he’d flared in anger and she’d retreated in fear, he’d made it absolutely clear there’d be no consequences.

Argument for argument’s sake was a novel concept, but she was discovering she could enjoy it. But she did need to move on.

‘Did you get your shoes clean?’ she queried.

‘No,’ he said shortly. ‘I didn’t.’

Honestly, he was irresistible. He stood on the top step all dressed up like a very important doctor, and he was so looking like a bubble that had to be burst.

‘You couldn’t have tried hard enough,’ she told him, and watched the grey eyes widen in astonishment. He wasn’t used to be being teased.

‘I got the pavement clean,’ she continued, watching the amazing wash of expressions on his face. ‘I scrubbed and scrubbed and there’s not a trace of blue paint left. So I can be quite useful. There are also times when I don’t do harm.’

‘I didn’t imply…’

‘Yes, you did.’

He glowered. And then he glanced at his watch and he glowered some more, while she watched with interest. She had no idea why she was goading this man, but she couldn’t stop to save herself.

‘We need to talk,’ he said at last.

‘Why?’

‘We just do.’ His frown faded and suddenly he was looking at her with an expression that was almost a plea. ‘There are problems. Things you should know about.’

‘About every patient in town?’

‘Of course not,’ he conceded. ‘But some. If you’ve got time…’

‘I need my dinner.’

He glanced at his watch again. ‘It’s only five o’clock.’

Yeah, but she hadn’t had lunch. And she had enough for a steak.

‘Tell you what,’ he said. ‘I haven’t had lunch…’

Snap!

‘I’m about to grab a sandwich from the general store. Have you ever had chickenpox?’

What sort of question was that? ‘No.’

‘Damn.’

‘I’m inoculated, though.’

‘You’re inoculated?’ Once again there was a trace of confusion. ‘Aren’t you too old to have been inoculated?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Chickenpox inoculation for kids didn’t come through until fifteen years back.’

‘I had it later, as an adult.’ All non-protected doctors did. But what business was it of his?

‘Oh.’ He was looking at her as if she were some sort of puzzle—a puzzle that had a hundred pieces and he was far too busy to put them together. ‘Well, good.’

‘Why?’

‘I was going to say that I’ll buy you a sandwich to keep the wolf from the door, and then take you out to the hills above the town.’

‘Are you propositioning me?’

There was a sharp intake of breath on that one. ‘Are you listening?’ he demanded, and she stifled a giggle. Propositioning her? Maybe not. Did this man know that she was even a woman?

‘I’m listening.’ She put on her demure tone and received a suspicious glance for her pains.

‘I have three really sick kids up in the alternative lifestyle settlement above town,’ he told her. ‘It’s a commune of sorts. They’ve been hit with chickenpox and I can’t bring the really sick ones down to hospital as I’d like. They won’t let me.’ Then, as she still looked confused, he explained a bit more. ‘I have another half-dozen house calls to do before I call it a day, so I don’t have time to talk to you about the problems you might be facing, but I do need to talk to you. It’s a fifteen-minute drive. Come with me and talk on the way?’

She stared at him. She stared at the big Mercedes.

She looked down at herself.

She’d been painting when Gloria had arrived. She’d put clean jeans and a T-shirt on to do the massage but they weren’t exactly the sort of gear this man would expect in any woman he dated.

And their date was with chickenpox?

Plus a sandwich. A free sandwich. And a ride in a very nice car.

‘OK, then,’ she said, trying hard to sound demure and compliant and not truly excited about a free sandwich. ‘I can do that.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘I have time between clients.’

‘When’s your next client due?’

‘That’s for me to know and you to find out,’ she told him. ‘Can I have my sandwich toasted?’

Which was how, fifteen minutes later, they were heading north out of town, with Ally wrapping herself around a double round of toasted ham, cheese and tomato sandwiches with double the usual cheese and very thick bread.

Darcy had ordered himself a single round of salad sandwiches—how boring was that? He finished them off while he drove, then concentrated on driving with the occasional sideways glance at her.

She’d added a chocolate thick-shake as a side order. It tasted unbelievably wonderful.

‘Do you have worms?’ he asked, and she almost choked. But didn’t. That would be a waste of sandwich and there was no way she was wasting a crumb.

‘Why would I have worms?’ she demanded with her mouth full, and then added a polite, ‘Doctor?’

‘I’ve never met anyone so skinny who eats like you do.’

‘Then you haven’t lived,’ she told him, and turned her attention to her thick-shake again. Some things required full attention.

‘So you live on your nerves?’

She sighed. She slurped the rest of her thick-shake and thought about licking the rim. She sighed again, this time in real regret, and let it go. A girl had some standards.

‘I don’t live on my nerves.’

‘So you’re bulimic?’

‘Right. A bulimic call-girl.’

‘Hey…’

‘Do we have to get so personal?’ she asked him.

‘I just want to know.’

‘Well, I don’t particularly want to tell. No, I am not bulimic, Dr Rochester. I’m disgustingly healthy. So set your professional concerns aside and tell me why you’re bringing me on this drive to see chickenpoxes. I assume you don’t think they want a massage?’

‘No, I—’

‘Good. Rubbing poxes would make them itch.’

‘You know—’

‘Just tell me what you want me to hear.’

He hesitated. She waited. This car was really lovely, she thought. It must have cost him a bomb. If she set up her own medical plate in the main street of somewhere like Tambrine Creek, then maybe…

Yeah, right.

‘Tell me,’ she said again, and this time there was an edge of anger in her voice that she didn’t try and disguise.

‘There are some vulnerable people in this town.’

‘Really?’

‘Really,’ he said angrily. ‘Will you just listen? You haven’t been near this place for nearly twenty years.’

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