The Australian's Desire

Gina waved to him from the back row. He hadn’t recognised her until now. Pink tulle?

‘It’s ridiculous,’ she said, abandoning the photo set-up and sidling out of her spot to join him. ‘Poor Em.’

‘Didn’t she plan this?’ he said, staring at … pink?

‘Mrs Poulos planned this,’ she said. ‘Sophia. Mike’s mum. This is a big Greek wedding, just as she’s always dreamed of. Em loves her too much to say no.’

‘I never thought I’d see you in pink tulle.’

‘Apricot,’ she retorted.

‘Right. Apricot.’

‘Sophia wanted the men in apricot dinner suits with apricot and white frills on their dinner shirts. But Mike put his foot down at that. They’re in black tuxes.’

‘Cal, too?’

‘Cal, too.’

‘And for your wedding?’ he asked in a voice of deep foreboding, and she chuckled.

‘If I asked you to wear apricot ruffles to my wedding, would you? Cousin?’

‘No,’ he said, revolted.

‘Not even if I said please?’

‘There’s no love in the world great enough to encompass apricot frills.’

‘Or red stilettos?’ she teased him, and he stopped smiling.

‘Gina …’

‘I know.’ Her smile widened. ‘It’s none of my business. But you and Georgie aren’t slugging any more, I hope?’

‘We were never slugging.’

‘She’s had such a hard time.’

‘I’m starting to realise that.’

‘Georgie’s my only bridesmaid so you have to be nice to her.’ She grinned. ‘And, I promise, no tulle.’

He smiled back. He was trying to think of Georgie in tulle and failing dismally.

‘She’s OK?’ Gina asked.

‘She’d be better if she knew where Max was. I’ve been ringing through a list of her father’s friends.’

‘She let you do that?’ Gina’s eyes widened.

‘I offered.’

‘Yeah, but Georgie …’ She hesitated.

‘Gina, get back in line,’ someone yelled, and Gina sighed and shrugged and smiled.

‘Duty calls. Come and watch the wedding.’

‘I’m not invited.’

‘This is Croc Creek. Everyone’s invited. Come at least to the church. It should be fun.’

And they all left, just like that. The photographer abandoned his work as hopeless and the car drivers ushered the girls out to the waiting cars. They were almost blown off their feet as they ran from house to cars.

Then they were gone, and the silence was unnerving.

What to do?

He’d already offered to help out at the hospital, thinking all the doctors would be at the wedding. But apparently two young doctors had arrived only three weeks ago—two eager and skilled interns on a working holiday from Germany. Herrick and Ilse were more than capable of taking charge and calling for help when needed.

Maybe he could go for a swim. But the wind made being outside unpleasant. The pool was protected, but even from here he could see the surface was littered with plant matter.

He should … He should …

Stay here. But … Georgie was sleeping off the bruise to her cheek, as well as making up, he suspected, for the sleep she hadn’t had the night before. The thought of staying alone in the same house with the sleeping Georgie was somehow unnerving.

He’d head out onto the veranda to read. But just as he was making that decision, Mr and Mrs Grubb arrived. They swept into the kitchen to deliver a couple of casseroles—‘for the doctors’ supper if they get called away from the wedding, poor dears, and there’s that nice young German couple as well need feeding up’. They were ceremoniously attired in their Sunday best. Dora’s hat was … amazing.

‘Why are you still here?’ Dora demanded, and she seemed almost offended by the sight of him.

‘Georgie’s asleep.’

‘All the more reason for you not to be here,’ she snapped. ‘Is that the only reason you don’t want to come to the wedding?’

‘I’m not invited.’

‘That’s a nonsense. Everyone’s invited and it’s not proper for you to stay here with Dr Georgie. You could be anyone.’

‘As if I’m going to—’

‘You’re American, aren’t you?’ she demanded. ‘I know your reputation. Overpaid, over-sexed and over here. Go put a suit and tie on and we’ll wait for you.’

Some things weren’t worth fighting. Deciding that defending his national dignity wasn’t ever going to work, he decided on the second option. It seemed he was going to a wedding.

And so was Georgie.

It only took him a moment to change into his suit and when he returned to the kitchen Georgie was there. She was dressed, demurely for Georgie, in a tiny suit. In her beloved pillar-box red. And red stilettos. The skimpy skirt and jacket showed every curve of her gorgeous body. She’d applied make-up skilfully over her bruise, and it hardly showed under dark glasses. She was … gorgeous.

He stood in the doorway and stared.

She turned and saw him. And grinned.

‘I overheard,’ she said, and she chuckled. ‘I decided I’d better come to the wedding. Maybe I needed Dora’s chaperonage.’

‘You need to be in bed.’

‘I’m too scared to stay in bed. Over-sexed, eh?’

‘You shouldn’t be scared,’ he said sourly. ‘I’m going to a wedding.’

‘Me, too,’ she said cheerfully, and linked her arm through his. ‘Overpaid too?’

‘That’s from the war,’ Mr Grubb said, disconcerted. ‘It’s what we said about all the Yankee soldiers. They’re not like that now,’ he told his wife. ‘At least this ‘un isn’t.’

‘I can see that. How nice.’ Mrs Grubb had changed tack, beaming at the unexpected expansion in her wedding party. ‘You make a lovely couple. My mum’s best friend, Ethel, ran away with an American sailor. He bought her silk stockings and they lived happily ever after.’ She poked Mr Grubb in the ribs. ‘Silk stockings. That’s the way to a girl’s heart.’

‘We have other things than silk stockings,’ Mr Grubb said with dignity.

‘What things?’ Dora demanded. Then she relented and giggled. ‘Oh, well, I guess you are OK in the cot.’ Then at the sight of Georgie and Alistair’s stunned expressions she choked back her giggles and sighed. ‘Oh, what it is to be young. Look at the pair of you. Ooh, I hear Cupid in the wings.’

‘Dora,’ Georgie said, quelling her with a look. ‘I’m only going for the service.’

‘Me, too,’ Alistair said, and Dora beamed some more.

‘Yes, dear. And then you can walk home together after. If this wind settles, like Sergeant Harry says it’s going to settle—which it’s not going to. It’s going to be a biggie. I said to Grubb just before we got dressed, I said, it’s going to be huge. I can feel it in my waters.’

‘Um … what are your waters talking about?’ Georgie said nervously, while Alistair said nothing at all. He was feeling like he was having an out-of-body experience and it was getting weirder by the minute.

‘Cyclone, dear, that’s what I’m feeling, no matter what Sergeant Harry’s telling us. Veering offshore indeed.’ Dora puffed herself up like an important peahen—or maybe peacock with that hat—gathered her shiny purse and took her husband’s arm. ‘But no matter. We’ve weathered cyclones before and we’ll weather them again. Now, then, Grubb, let’s all of us go to this wedding. Ooh, I do like a good wedding. Mind, one wedding breeds ten more, that’s what I always say, and this one’s no different.’ She cast a not so covert look at Alistair and then at Georgie. ‘I can feel that in my waters as well.’

‘You have truly impressive waters, Mrs Grubb,’ Alistair said, feeling it was time a man had to take control and move on. He took Georgie’s arm just as possessively as Dora held Grubb, and he smiled down at her. ‘Let’s go see if they’re right.’

Which meant that they were together. They were driven to the church together. In deference to Georgie’s wounded face, Grubb insisted on dropping them off right at the church door before he went to find a parking place. Georgie and Alistair were practically blasted into the church together. Of one mind, they turned to the back pews, finding seats in the most obscure corner of the chapel.

‘How come you’re not a bridesmaid?’ Alistair whispered as they settled in their back pew, and Georgie poked him in the ribs.

‘Shh.’

The wedding hadn’t started yet. Céline was singing ‘My Heart Will Go On’ at the top of her lungs, courtesy of Mrs Poulos, who was in control of the volume button. There was time for a brief conversation, even if Georgie didn’t want it.

‘But everyone else is,’ he said. ‘I thought you’d be a shoo-in.’ Then he frowned. ‘Isn’t this the song from Titanic?’

She giggled. ‘Nothing stops our Sophia. No little iceberg could get in the way of this wedding.’

‘So why aren’t you a bridesmaid?’

‘Mike has three sisters and two cousins who, according to Mrs Poulos, would be offended enough to cause a rift in the family for generations to come if they’re not bridesmaids. Em had already asked Susie so that made six, and enough was enough. However, one of Mike’s sisters left coming here too late—the storm’s stopped her—so Gina’s taken her place. This is amounting almost to a plague of bridesmaids. I’m going to be Gina’s bridesmaid and that’s one bridesmaid experience too many in my book.’

‘But you are Em’s friend,’ he said, watching the clutch of men around Mike at the altar. There were almost more wedding party participants than guests.

‘I come from the other side of the tracks from Em,’ she said, and he blinked.

‘You mean there’s a reason you weren’t asked?’

‘No, I …’ She shook her head. ‘I shouldn’t have said that. Em doesn’t care.’

‘That you’re from the wrong side of the tracks.’

‘Yes.’

‘You mean you’re illegitimate?’

‘I mean my family’s dole bludgers and petty crims.’

‘But you’re not?’

‘Maybe not,’ she whispered dully. ‘But you can’t escape your family.’

He thought about his mother. And then he thought he’d rather not think about his mother. ‘That’s a hell of a chip on the shoulder you’re carrying,’ he ventured cautiously.

She glowered. ‘Deal with it. I know when people are patronising me.’

‘I’m not patronising you.’

‘Right.’

‘You know, I’m not exactly blue blooded either,’ he said, eyeing her with caution. ‘I’m not so far from the other side of your tracks that you’d notice.’

‘Says the eminent neurosurgeon.’

‘To the eminent obstetrician.’

She tried to glower. He smiled. She tried a bit harder to glower. He glowered for her.

She giggled.

It was a really cute giggle.

The bride was about to make her entrance. Mrs Poulos did her worst with the control button. Whitney at her finest. ‘I will always love yoo-oo-oo …’

The church was festooned with apricot and white ribbons, flowers and bows as far as the eye could see. It was …

‘Very tasteful,’ Georgie said, still giggling, and they rose to their feet as the priest motioned them all to stand. ‘Someone should tell Sophia this is a farewell song. Why are you from the wrong side of the tracks?’

‘Um … my parents didn’t have much money.’

‘Is that all? That’s not the wrong side of the tracks. That’s shabby genteel.’

‘My dad went to jail. Embezzlement. He stole to feed a gambling habit.’

That made her pause. Her smile died. ‘Your real dad?’ she asked cautiously, and he nodded.

‘Golly. You almost qualify.’

‘Thank you,’ he said dryly. ‘So where’s your real dad?’

‘He lit out when I was four.’

‘Mine lit out when I was fifteen. With a waitress from a burger joint, and a year’s profit from AccountProtect First Savings.’

‘Wow,’ she said, and almost as a reflex she touched her face.

‘He never hit me,’ Alistair said. ‘Did yours?’

‘I … My stepdad did, yes.’

‘So does that put you further on the wrong side of the tracks than me?’

She stared up into his eyes. Her gaze held. Suddenly her lovely lips curved at the corners and she chuckled again.

It was a good sound. A really good sound, he thought. And he felt pleased with himself. For just a minute she was putting aside her terrors for Max and her pain from her injured face, and she was enjoying herself.

And who could not enjoy this over-the-top wedding? Mike was standing at the end of the aisle, looking stunned. Nervous as hell, despite the array of assorted males supporting him.

This was ridiculous, Alistair thought. What a production.

And then the great front doors swept open. ‘I Will Always Love You’ had segued into a full orchestral rendition of the Bridal March and the guests turned as one to see the bride make her entrance.

Emily. The bride.

This was crazy. She was a powder puff of brilliant white sweeping into the church, with Charles Wetherby in his wheelchair beside her. Charles looked proud fit to burst.

Emily was seeing no one. She looked straight ahead until she saw Mike and faltered in mid-step.

Alistair turned to look at the bridegroom. And he saw the look that flashed between the pair of them …

The whole ridiculous bridal production faded to nothing. This was what it was all about, he thought, stunned. One man and one woman, committing to each other, with all the love in their hearts.

It was no wonder Em hadn’t put her foot down over the apricot tulle. The apricot tulle was nothing.

This man and this woman loved each other.

He had been right to break it off with Eloise, Alistair thought suddenly with a flash of absolute certainty. Eloise would never have looked at him like that. And the way he’d felt about Eloise …

No. This was loving. Out-of-control loving, letting go, a leap of faith—and who cared about apricot tulle? It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that they belonged together.

He didn’t belong here, he thought suddenly. He felt like an impostor, an outsider privy to emotions he hardly understood.

Embarrassed—or maybe not embarrassed but caught in some emotion he couldn’t begin to fathom—he turned away. He didn’t want to intercept that look again.

He turned to Georgie.

She’d caught the look as well. Her face had changed. Her hands had risen to her cheeks as though to drive away a surfeit of colour.

Her eyes were filled with tears.

‘Georg,’ he whispered, but she shook her head fiercely, denying him the chance to say a word.

He wasn’t going to say a word. He couldn’t think of a word to say.

But tears were slipping down her cheeks. He felt in his pocket, produced a handkerchief and handed it over. Then, as she wiped her face, he took her free hand in his and held it.

What sort of man still used handkerchiefs?

It was a bit of an errant thought but it helped.

Why was she crying at a wedding? This was dumb. It was the stupid analgesics, she thought. It had nothing to do with the way Mike was looking at Emily.

She didn’t do weddings. She didn’t even do relationships. The only relationships she’d ever experienced had led her to disaster.

It was her own fault. She didn’t know who she was herself. She was dumb. She’d go out with a lovely gentle fellow doctor. He’d treat her as if she were Dresden china and she’d feel … empty.

Did she want to be slapped around, as her mother had been?

Of course she didn’t. But there were times when she’d be drawn into a relationship with someone … well, someone her stepfather might have thought a mate. Someone who treated her as she’d learned to expect. She hated that, and it never lasted but, still, at least she knew where she stood.

So she’d never fall in love with a good man?

That thought slammed home, alarming her. She’d been sitting a mite too close to Alistair and now she edged away. He turned and looked at her and he smiled.

He had a killer smile.

He was still holding her hand.

Alistair was one of the Dresden china ones, she told herself, feeling suddenly breathless. She knew from past experience that such men couldn’t make her happy. She’d make them unhappy.

So stop smiling now!

Look at the bride and groom. That was why she was here. Not to think about Alistair-Good-Looking Carmichael.

And not to cry.

Pull your hand away, stupid, she told herself, but she didn’t.

The bride and groom were making their vows, softly but with all the sincerity in the world. Mike was smiling at his bride, making Georgie feel …

Squirmy.

‘Soppy,’ she whispered, sounding as dumb as she’d felt for her tears, and Alistair grinned.

‘Yeah, real Romeo-and-Juliet stuff. Bring on the violins.’

‘They’re happy though,’ Georgie whispered, giving them their due.

‘But we know this love bit’s dangerous.’

She frowned, thrown off balance. ‘Do we?’

‘Of course. You need to decide with your head.’ The priest was talking about the sanctity of marriage, but way back here they could whisper without fear of being overheard. The sound of the wind whistling around the old church was almost overwhelming, so bride and groom and priest needed the microphone to be heard.

‘Decide what with your head?’ Georgie asked.

‘Your life partner, of course,’ he told her, warming to his theme. ‘You and I are doctors. Scientists, if you like. We know the heart’s nothing but a bit of blood-filled muscle. If it fails you might even replace it with a transplant.’ He motioned to the bride and groom. ‘So where do you think these two would be if their hearts were transplanted? Unless there’s a fair bit of cool, calculated thought in the equation, then the marriage is doomed.’

‘Hush.’ But there was no need to hush. No one could hear.

But she needed to hush him. What was he saying—that she should choose one of the gentle ones? The guys her head told her were suitable, but her heart abandoned as they pushed the wrong buttons.

‘So what do you—?’

‘Hush,’ she said again, becoming so flustered she wasn’t sure what she was thinking. Concentrate on the wedding, she told herself. This was an overblown Greek wedding. The church was full of apricot and white tizz. The bride and groom were surrounded by a sea of apricot and white attendants.

It was over-the-top ridiculous.

It was lovely.

He was still holding her hand.

The head and not the heart?

Yeah, well, that was where she’d been in trouble in the past. The Croc Creek doctors’ house was always full to bursting with medics from around the world. Doctors used this place as a base where they could put their skills to use in a way that was invaluable to the remote peoples of Northern Australia. Doctors came here to help. Or sometimes they came just to escape.

Like her?

Yeah, but she wasn’t thinking about herself, she decided hastily. She was talking about potential lovers. So there were plenty available.

No one else seemed to feel a lack, she thought dourly, looking ahead at Mike and Emily. Maybe it was only her who’d never seemed to fit.

They were kneeling for the blessing. There was no need to say hush. Georgie blinked back more stupid tears.

It was only because she was weak, she told herself fiercely. It was because she was worried about Max. It was because her face hurt.

Alistair’s hold on her hand strengthened. She gave a feeble tug but he didn’t release it.

She didn’t pull again. She sniffed and kept listening.

Then there was a break as someone played a Greek love song, with the volume on full to drown out the sound of the rising wind. Georgie didn’t understand all that much Greek but the way all the old ladies in the church sighed and smiled, she guessed it had to be something soppy.

And then came the moment they’d all been waiting for.

‘I now pronounce you man and wife.’

They rose as the priest gave his final blessing. The groom lifted Emily’s veil and kissed her, oh, so tenderly.

It was just lovely. She was feeling … weird.

‘Very romantic,’ Alistair whispered dryly.

‘Be quiet,’ Georgie said for a final time, and to her fury she felt tears start to well again.

‘I’m sorry,’ Alistair said, and he sounded startled.

‘There’s no need to be sorry,’ Georgie whispered.

‘No,’ he said, and squeezed the hand he shouldn’t be holding. The hand she shouldn’t be letting him hold. ‘There’s not.’ He looked down at her in concern as she swiped angrily at her eyes with his handkerchief. ‘We’ll find him, Georg.’

But she hadn’t been thinking about Max. Her eyes flew upward to Alistair’s. And something … connected?

Their gazes held. He was comforting her, she told herself furiously, but she didn’t quite believe it. For this wasn’t a look of comfort and the confusion she felt was mirrored in his eyes.

She tugged her hand away with a faint gasp and turned her attention resolutely back to the bride and groom. They were being hugged by their respective families in the front pews.

A slate came loose from the roof above their heads. It crashed down—the sound tracking its progress on the steep gabled roof above their heads. She winced. Alistair tried to take her hand again but she wasn’t having any of it.

She gripped her hands very firmly together and kept her attention solely on the bridal party. The Trumpet Voluntary rang out—played by Charles. His splinter skill. The trumpet’s call was pure and true, almost primaeval against the backdrop of the storm, and once more Georgie found herself blinking back tears as the bridal party swept by them on their way out of the church.

But then, as the doors swung open and the wind blasted in, the bridal party stopped in its tracks.

Another slate crashed down.

The surge to leave the church abruptly ended.

‘We might rethink the exit,’ the priest announced in a voice he had to raise. Having left the technology of microphones to lead the couple out of church, he now had to raise his voice above the sound of the wind.

‘This has to be a cyclone,’ Alistair said, and Georgie blinked and bought herself back to earth. Earth calling Georgie … What the hell was she about, crying at weddings? She was losing her mind.

She didn’t cry. She never cried. Crying was for wimps.

Alistair’s dumb handkerchief was a soggy mess.

‘We’re still copping the edges,’ she managed, hauling herself together with a massive effort. ‘Despite what Dora’s waters are saying, it’s still only category three. Strong but not disastrous.’ She winced as a particularly violent gust blasted past the church, loosening another couple of slates. ‘Harry says the biggest problem is flooding inland. It’s the end of the rainy season and the country’s waterlogged as it is. We’ll have landslips.’

‘As long as that’s all we have.’

‘Scared?’

‘Yeah,’ he said, and he grinned. ‘This wind is really terrifying for a man with a toupee.’

She choked. It was lucky the combination of wind and trumpet was overpowering because her splutter of laughter would ordinarily have been heard throughout the church.

He grinned.

Her laughter faded. He looked … a man in charge of his world. He was wearing his lovely Italian-made suit. His silver-streaked hair was thick and glossy and wavy, just the way she liked it. His tanned face was almost Grecian, strongly boned, intelligent …

A toupee …

She couldn’t resist. She put her free hand into his hair and tugged.

‘Yikes.’ This time they were overheard. The people in the last pew—great-aunts en masse by the look of them—turned in astonishment. One started to glare but Georgie was giggling as Alistair clutched his head, and the old lady’s glare turned to an indulgent smile.

‘It’s lovely to see the children enjoying themselves,’ she said in the piercing tones of the very old and the very deaf. ‘Look at the pair of them, canoodling in the back pew like a pair of teenagers. These will be next by the look of them. Sophie said this doctors’ house makes them breed like rabbits.’

Georgie’s mouth dropped open. ‘Canoodling,’ she muttered, revolted.

But Alistair was chuckling. ‘Come on, rabbit,’ he said, and nudged her to the end of he pew. ‘Let’s get out the side door before everyone figures that’s the only exit out of the wind.’