Hearts Of Gold

‘I hope you’re not laughing at my dog,’ Alex said, though the corners of his mouth were twitching as if he understood her mirth. ‘And you know the old joke about a little dog killing a big dog. Tell your Henry he’ll choke to death if he tries to swallow Minnie.’

But Annie didn’t have to tell Henry anything. He was sitting at her feet, forty kilograms of Rottweiler muscle and bone, gazing at the little spoodle with love-struck eyes, while she yipped and yapped about his feet, and explored him as if he were a new kind of doggie toy.

‘She’s gorgeous,’ Annie said, kneeling down to pat the excitable little creature. She covered Henry’s ears with her hands and added, ‘I fell in love with these dogs at the pet shop, but really needed something big and fierce.’

Loyalty made her add, ‘Not that Henry’s all that fierce, it’s just his size that frightens people.’

‘I can see he’s not that fierce,’ Alex said gravely, and she looked down to see Henry was now lying down, so the little dog could lick his face and climb across his back.

‘He’s supposed to frighten people, not other dogs,’ Annie said defensively, then realised this conversation was veering dangerously close to places she did not want to go, so she called to Henry and started walking towards the park.

‘There’s a dog-walker who walks Henry and other dogs in this area every weekday,’ she told Alex, pleased they had the dogs to talk about. ‘Mayarma, her name is. If Minnie stays inside while you’re at work, you’d have to leave a key. She collects Henry and his lead from my dad, but other dogs she picks up straight from the yard. Are you interested?’

‘Very,’ Alex told her. ‘If someone could walk Minnie during the week, I wouldn’t feel guilty about not walking her at weekends, and as perfect strangers react to seeing me walking her as you did—with hysterical laughter—I’d as soon skip the park sessions. At least with you beside me, people might assume she’s yours and we’ve just swapped leads.’

Annie listened to the grumble but guessed he was far too self-assured to care what other people thought about his dog. But the conversation did raise a question.

‘If you’re embarrassed walking a wig on legs, why buy a spoodle?’ she asked.

‘Buy a spoodle? Do you seriously think a man my height would buy a dog this size? That I wouldn’t have considered the aesthetics of the situation?’

‘A girlfriend’s dog?’ Annie guessed, although the idea of a girlfriend brought a stab of jealousy in its train.

‘My sister’s idea of an ideal companion for me,’ Alex told her, gloom deepening his voice. ‘My sister has despaired of me ever having a long-term relationship with a woman, so when she was visiting me in Melbourne a month or so ago she bought me the most curly, frilly, impossible sort of dog she could find. To keep me in touch with my feminine side, would you believe?’

Annie was laughing so hard she had to stop walking, although Henry, determined to stay close to his new friend, was dragging on his lead.

‘She is all woman,’ she conceded. ‘That’s if dogs can be classed that way. Look at how she’s vamping Henry.’

They were entering the park, and as dogs were allowed off their leads in this part of it, she bent to unclip Henry’s.

‘Will she come when you call?’

Alex looked at his small responsibility.

‘Who knows?’ he said. ‘She’s been to puppy school, but seemed to think it was a place she went to flirt and play with other dogs. How seriously she took the lessons I don’t know, because sometimes she’ll obey all the commands she knows, but at others she’s totally deaf.’

‘Maybe Henry will teach her some sense,’ Annie suggested, although the way he was behaving made her wonder.

But Alex unclipped Minnie’s lead anyway, and the two dogs, so absurd together, gambolled across the grass, Henry using his huge paws with gentle insistence to guide the smaller dog around the trees and bushes.

‘I usually sit over there,’ Annie said, pointing to a comfortable seat beneath a shady tree. Since meeting Minnie and laughing at Alex’s story of her advent into his life, she’d relaxed. He’d made no move that could be indicative that she was anything other than a colleague, so she could put the kiss down to him wanting to prove something to himself.

Or to both of them.

And from now on, colleagues were all they’d be, so when he said things like ‘walk home together’ and she felt prickles of excitement, or when he put his hand on her back to guide her into a lift and she felt tremors of attraction, she had to pretend it hadn’t happened, and act like the efficient, dedicated, focussed unit manager he wanted her to be.

It’s what you want to be as well, she reminded herself.

Alex could feel the woman’s presence on the bench beside him—feel it like a magnet drawing him towards her. But he didn’t move.

He thought instead about the conversation they’d had earlier—about one snippet of it. About her needing a dog that was big and fierce.

Because she was a woman living alone?

But she wasn’t—her father lived with her.

He remembered the bruised shadows under her eyes, the vulnerability he’d sensed in her five years ago. He thought about her change of name, and anger coiled like a waking serpent in his gut.

No, he was letting his imagination run away with him. There could be any number of reasons for a woman to change her name. Marriage was the obvious one. Attractive woman—she could easily have been separated and married and separated again in five years.

He glanced towards her, doubting that scenario. It didn’t fit with the sensible woman he was coming to know—a sensible woman now smiling at the antics of the dogs, then laughing as Henry toppled Minnie with his paw, then rolled around on the grass so the little dog could climb all over him.

Once again Alex heard the joy and light-heartedness in the sound and saw a glimpse of the warm and vibrant woman inside her efficient, work-focussed fac¸ade. But she’d laughed earlier, when he’d told her about Minnie coming into his life, then she’d shut that woman away and become a colleague again, as if that was all she wanted to be to him.

Yet last night, when he’d kissed her, there’d been more. He was sure of that. As sure of it as he was that she was his ghost.

As sure of it as he was that he wanted to know more of Annie Talbot.

As sure of it as he was that he wanted to kiss her again.

‘Are you doing anything tonight? Hot date?’

His thoughts must have prompted his subconscious to ask the question because it was out before he’d had time to think it through. Or consider how Annie might react to it.

She turned towards him, and studied his face for a moment, a slight frown replacing the smile in her lovely eyes.

‘Why do you ask?’

He shrugged—tried to make less of the question than there was.

‘I thought as we’re shopping, I might get the ingredients for a curry. I do a mean curry but it’s hardly worth making it for one person and, knowing Phil, he won’t be home on a Saturday night.’

‘You’re asking me to have dinner with you tonight?’

She spoke the words carefully, as if she needed to make sure there was no misunderstanding.

He answered just as carefully.

‘Yes.’

A long silence, until Alex realised he was holding his breath. He let it out as silently as he could—a sigh might have made him sound impatient.

‘I don’t date,’ she said at last, which wasn’t an answer but was ambiguous enough to give him hope.

‘It needn’t be a date,’ he told her. ‘Just a couple of colleagues sharing a meal.’

She studied his face again, as if trying to read his thoughts behind the words, and her frown deepened.

Then she sighed.

‘I don’t know, Alex,’ she said softly. ‘I don’t think it’s such a good idea.’

He sensed her backing off—felt her retreat—and moved to stop it.

‘Sharing a curry? What harm can come of that?’

Another pause, so long this time he had to breathe.

Then she said, almost to herself, ‘Who knows?’ and shrugged her shoulders.

There was something so pathetic in the words—so vulnerable in the gesture—it took all the restraint Alex could muster not to pull her into his arms and promise to protect her from whatever it was she feared. Because fear was certainly there. It was in her eyes, and in the quietly spoken words.

In the big fierce dog.

And still she hadn’t answered.

She looked away and whistled to her dog, and as he came gambolling back towards her, Minnie herded in front of him, she straightened her back, squared her shoulders and turned to smile at Alex.

‘Oh, what the hell!’ she said. ‘Yes, I’d like to share a curry with you, Dr Attwood!’

Henry brought Minnie safely to their feet, received a pat and a ‘good dog’ from his mistress, then as she clipped on his lead and stood up, she said to Alex, ‘They were once herding dogs, you know, Rottweilers. They followed the Roman armies across Europe, herding the animals they kept for meat. Apparently some instinct still remains in Henry.’

Alex heard the words. He was even interested in the content. What he couldn’t follow was the switch in the woman who was now walking on ahead of him, back towards their respective houses. Had she reverted to this ‘unit manager’ persona so he wouldn’t be under any misapprehension that their dinner together tonight was in any way a date?

He didn’t know, but he did know that the more he got to know Annie Talbot, the less he really knew of her!

Anxious about Amy’s condition, they called at the hospital before hitting the mall. The little girl was stable—which was as much as Alex felt he could expect at this stage. After talking to her parents for a while, he climbed back into Annie’s car, a big, comfortable SUV, and they drove the short distance to the shops. As he had been in Melbourne, Alex was surprised by how familiar the mall seemed, although Annie called it a shopping centre.

He was also surprised at how many things he considered staples went into Annie’s shopping trolley. The same brand of pancake mix he used at home, pretzels, sourdough bread and even tart green pickles.

Well, since last night he’d known she was the woman on the terrace, so she’d been in the US then. If she was Rowena Drake—or had been in the past—then she’d lived over there for some years. He knew enough of Dennis Drake’s history to know that—even knew he’d been married when he’d first arrive to work in St Louis.

But a number of her purchases were unusual. OK, the amount of dog food was explained by Henry’s size, but so many cans of soda and packets of crisps?

‘My dad’s a writer—he says munching helps him think,’ she said, as they pushed their trolleys towards the checkout.

‘A writer? What does he write?’

She smiled at him.

‘Mysteries. Detective stories. They’ve only just started being published in North America so even if you read mysteries, you probably haven’t heard of him.’

‘I do read them—all the time. They’re my relaxation. What name does he write under?’

A beat of excitement in his heart. Would he learn Annie’s maiden name if her father wrote under it?

Would that help him get to know more about her?

Probably not.

He realised he’d missed her answer, and blamed it on untangling his trolley from the woman in the queue beside him.

‘Sorry—what name? His own?’

‘Yes. Rod Talbot,’ Annie said, and Alex felt relief.

So she’d left Drake for whatever reason and had reverted to her own name. And her real first name could well be Rowena, with Annie a family nickname, and she’d reverted to that as well.

And he’d had her with serial marriages!

Then the name she’d said sparked recognition in his brain.

‘But I’ve read his books! Or some of them. They’re set right here in Sydney, aren’t they? A friend, knowing I was coming here, lent me a couple, then while I was in Melbourne I tracked down a few more.’

He was genuinely excited, having enjoyed the fast, racy read Rod Talbot provided. And to think he was Annie’s father!

She was unpacking her trolley onto the checkout counter at this stage and he wondered if he should ask her father to dinner as well. There was obviously no Mrs Talbot in the picture, and if this was just a neighbourly, colleague type dinner, then asking her father would be the right thing to do.

But in some uncharted territory of his heart, he was aware that this wasn’t just a neighbourly dinner—or a colleague-with-colleague one. He wasn’t sure what it was, maybe a first small step towards something, but, whatever, he wasn’t going to invite a third party to partake of his curry. Not tonight.

Annie, refusing his offer of help to unload her groceries from the car, dropped Alex and his shopping off at his front gate, then drove around the block and down the lane behind the row of houses, into the garage behind her house.

She turned off the engine, opened the door but didn’t get out. Instead, she slumped across the steering wheel in relief. Shopping with Alex had been far too intimate an experience for her to ever want to repeat it.

‘Intimate?’ she muttered to herself, as the thought registered in her brain. ‘Shopping?’

But she couldn’t find another word for the confusion of symptoms she’d displayed as they’d pushed their respective trolleys up and down the aisles. No premature menopause this time, for which, she supposed, she should be grateful.

But empathy, togetherness, bonding stuff had happened, and when they’d both reached for Aunt Jemima’s pancake mix at the same time, and they’d turned towards each other and laughed, a heap of other emotions had fluttered in her heart. Emotions she didn’t want to think about.

‘It was pancake mix, for Pete’s sake,’ she said to Henry, who’d come out to the garage to see why she was so slow at bringing in his food supplies. ‘You can’t get all squishy and romantic over pancake mix. Especially when the other pancake-mix purchaser would have been considering his stomach, not his heart.’

Henry gave her his ‘don’t take it out on me’ look and sat, willing, if necessary, to wait by the open car door for ever.

‘I’m coming,’ Annie told him, reaching over the back of the seat to pick up her first load of supplies. ‘At least now he knows where the shops are, so there’ll be no excuse for the two of us to ever shop together again.’

She hauled the bags out and started towards the house, arms getting longer by the second as innumerable cans of dog food weighed them down.

‘Which reminds me, Henry. That dog of Alex’s eats about one hundredth of what you do. Shopping would have been a lot easier if I’d got a spoodle.’

Henry was unperturbed by her rant, even helping out by nudging the back door open for her.

But Henry was no help at all as she dressed for a curry dinner with a colleague. Her black jeans were fine, but what top? The T-shirt with a pattern and a few sequins to make it sparkle wasn’t dressy but might be considered so for a casual dinner, yet a plain T looked too plain, and her white shirt looked like work, while the green one—a favourite—had developed a nasty habit of popping the top button, revealing too much cleavage for a curry with the boss.

‘If he hadn’t been with me, I could have ducked into that new shop at the mall,’ she grumbled at Henry, who was watching her fling tops on and off with a tolerant expression on his face.

In the end she settled on the white shirt, but tied a lacy, emerald green scarf around her neck.

‘Life’s all about compromise,’ she told the dog. ‘And, no, you weren’t invited. Which is just as well because if Minnie saw you drooling near a dinner table she’d go right off you.’

Her father was out, so she said goodbye to Henry and walked up the road, with each step regretting her decision a little more.

It wasn’t that she didn’t want to see Alex, or try his curry, just that the thought of an evening alone with him—any time alone with him—filled her with a cocktail of contradictory emotions.

So she was enormously relieved when it was Phil, not Alex, who opened the door to her.

‘I never disturb the chef when he’s creating,’ he told her, welcoming her with a huge smile and an only slightly less huge hug. ‘Come on in. See our place. Is it very different to yours?’

Annie looked around. It was furnished very differently—a man’s abode—but the house plan was the same and a sense of familiarity made her feel instantly at home.

Phil was explaining how his date had stood him up, and was ushering Annie in, arm around her waist, when Minnie came hurtling from the kitchen to greet the new arrival.

Annie scooped up the little dog, using the movement to move away a little from Phil. She held the black bundle of delight close to her chest and pressed kisses on its soft, curly head, then glanced up to see Alex watching from the kitchen door.

Watching and frowning.

‘What? I’m not allowed to kiss her? But she’s adorable!’

The frown disappeared, replaced by a smile.

‘Kiss away,’ he said easily, but Annie had to wonder what he’d been thinking to prompt the frown. ‘Phil’s told you he’s joining us?’

Annie nodded, still cuddling the dog.

‘I did offer to go out rather than play gooseberry,’ Phil said. ‘But Alex assured me it was only a neighbourly, colleague type dinner and I didn’t feel so bad.’

Annie had been thinking of saying much the same thing to him—hadn’t she spent the short walk convincing herself that was all it was?—yet she felt put out that Alex had been so quick to label it that way.

That’s all it is, she reminded herself as she set Minnie back on the floor, but as she straightened she saw Alex give a little shrug, and wondered if he’d felt the same disappointment.

‘You might offer our guest a drink,’ Alex said, then he disappeared back into the kitchen.

‘Is he the kind of chef who hates having an audience as he works, or could we join him in the kitchen?’ Annie said, holding the light beer Phil had poured her. ‘It seems kind of antisocial to be drinking out here while he’s slaving in the kitchen.’

‘I wouldn’t venture in there,’ Phil said. ‘You’ve heard him swear when things go wrong in Theatre. Well, he’s twice as bad in the kitchen.’

But if you weren’t here, surely I’d have been invited to join him, Annie thought, but she didn’t say it, wondering if Alex had regretted his decision to ask her to dinner and persuaded Phil to stay.

Then Alex announced the meal was ready, and Phil escorted Annie into the big kitchen where the table was set with an array of condiments and sambals, and the tantalising scent of curry spices filled the air.

‘After living with him in Melbourne, I know the deal with the little dishes. These are all cooling ones,’ Phil said, pointing to cucumber in yoghurt, and sliced fruits, ‘while the chutneys will make it hotter. Don’t touch this one, potent chilli, unless you like eating fire.’

Annie glanced at Alex, wondering if he minded Phil taking over the host’s role, and saw the real host smile, sharing her amusement at Phil’s behaviour.

‘I don’t mind a bit of fire,’ Annie said as Alex sat down and put a little of the chilli on the side of his plate.

Again Alex smiled at her, and a warmth that had nothing to do with curry, or the chilli sambal, or even premature menopause, spread through her.

Forgetting to feel apprehensive about whatever was happening between herself and Alex, she relaxed, settling down to enjoy the food and the conversation, pleased to be sharing talk and laughter with these two men.

The phone rang as they were finishing their second helpings, and Alex, who was closest to the kitchen extension, reached out to answer it.

He was on his feet within seconds, assuring someone he’d be right there.

‘It’s Amy. Her temperature’s going up and her blood count down—could be a haemorrhage somewhere.’

‘I’ll go,’ Phil offered, but Alex shook his head.

‘No, it’s my job to see it through. Let Annie finish dinner and you see her home. You can come up then if I’m not back.’

Phil’s behaviour was exemplary, and when he put his arm around her as they walked back to her place, she accepted it, knowing he was a toucher, and telling herself they’d be working together for a year and she’d better get used to it. But having Phil walk her home wasn’t the same as having Alex do the short trip, and she felt a surge of regret that he’d been called away.

A totally uncalled-for surge of regret, given how adamant she’d been about their dinner together not being a date.

Phil saw her safely to her door, said goodnight, took a couple of steps towards the gate, then turned.

‘I’m sorry it was Alex called away, not me,’ he said. ‘He doesn’t do much relaxing and I think an evening with you would have been just what the doctor ordered for him.’

He grinned at her, then added, ‘Just what this doctor would have ordered, anyway.’

He hesitated, as if expecting her to say something, and when she didn’t, he spoke again.

‘Are you interested? In Alex?’

Another pause during which he maybe realised he’d overstepped some invisible boundary.

‘Not that it’s any of my business,’ he added quickly. ‘But I kind of like the chap and I’d like to see him happy. Not that he’s not happy. Lives for his work. But that’s hardly a balanced life.’

Annie beat down the excitement this conversation had generated, and said quietly but firmly, ‘I don’t think we should be discussing Alex behind his back.’

Phil seemed surprised, but he took it well, shrugging his shoulders and repeating his goodnight. Then he walked off up the road, not turning in at his gate but going on to the hospital.

Where little Amy was fighting for her life!

Annie wanted to call Phil—tell him she’d go with him—but there was nothing she could do up there, and Amy was in the best possible hands.

But knowing that didn’t help her sleep, and at five she gave up, got out of bed, showered and dressed and walked up to the hospital.

The first person she saw in the ward was Alex. An exhausted, unshaven-looking Alex, who greeted her with a tired smile.

‘You know, you’re admin staff now and don’t have to be here all the time,’ he teased, and she was pleased to hear the words, certain he wouldn’t be making light-hearted comments if Amy hadn’t survived the night.

‘She’s all right?’ Annie asked, needing the verbal confirmation.

‘She’s one tough little lady,’ Alex said. ‘It’s an infection, not a haemorrhage—thank heaven.’

Then he rubbed his hands across his face.

‘Fancy thanking heaven for an infection in so frail a child, but I doubt she’d have survived another operation. We’ve done a culture and now have gram specific antibiotics running into her, and she’s slowly improving. I’m worried about fluid retention. The kidneys are susceptible to damage when a patient’s on bypass, and I hate to think we’ve added kidney problems to her other burdens.’

‘Catheter OK?’ Annie asked, remembering a child she’d nursed who’d had every test imaginable for bladder and kidney problems, and in the end the trouble had been with his catheter.

‘I like your thinking,’ Alex told her. ‘They’re such tiny tubes for infants, they could easily block or kink. I’ll check that now.’

Annie stayed and talked to Amy’s father, who came out of the room while Alex watched the intensivist on duty remove the old bladder catheter and insert a new one.

‘He’s been here all night,’ Mr Carter told her, nodding towards the glass-enclosed room where they could see Alex bending over the bed. ‘I doubt my wife would have gone away to have a rest if he hadn’t persuaded her and promised he’d stay himself until she got back. You don’t get many specialists like that.’

‘No, you don’t,’ Annie agreed, feeling ashamed she’d regretted him being called away, though it had hardly been a date with Phil there. Then she wondered just when Mrs Carter would get back. Alex, too, needed to sleep.