Dear Doctor, page 1
“No fiancé?”
“No fiancé,” Kirsten confirmed. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that.”
She gathered all her reserves of strength and looked into the blueness of his eyes. “I said I’d go ahead—have an affair with you—and I’m okay with that. But I think we should establish some ground rules first.”
Good. She’d managed to startle him, by the look of things.
“Ground rules?” The words growled into the air between them.
“Yes,” Kirsten told him, standing straighter as her confidence built. “Parameters—that kind of thing. For a start, I’d like to know how long your affairs usually last. Are we talking a month? Six weeks?”
Startled didn’t begin to describe his expression now. Stunned came close.
“I thought we should put some kind of time limit on it. I’m not up on flings, but you must know how long your affairs usually last.”
“I haven’t actually, consciously, timed my past affairs,” Josh said, attempting, with difficulty, to keep the sarcasm out of his voice.
Dear Reader,
Over the past few years I’ve really enjoyed reading “relationship” books involving the lives of young, single career women juggling priorities to find enough time for love, friendship, shopping and even basic personal maintenance. Generally, the support network of other single friends keeps them sane, so the idea of helping four friends find love really appealed to me.
Gabi, Kirsten, Alana and Daisy all live in the Near West apartment building, and work or have worked at the Royal Westside Hospital. Gabi, a doctor, has loved and lost. Kirsten, an occupational therapist, has been held in the grip of unrequited love. Nurse Alana’s previous venture into romance has left her preferring the company of her pets; though she strongly believes in love, she theorizes that it grows from friendship, not attraction. Daisy is the psychologist, who can tell them why things happen as they do, but can’t quite sort out her own problems.
The four friends share one another’s tears and laughter, and, often with unexpected consequences, try to help one another along the rocky road to love.
I have had such fun getting to know these women as I wrote these four books, and I hope you enjoy their company as much as I have.
Best wishes,
Meredith Webber
Dear Doctor
Meredith Webber
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER ONE
TOO keyed up to wait for the lift, Kirsten raced up the stairs of the apartment building, Near West, paused momentarily in the fourth-floor foyer to catch her breath, then, still fizzing with excitement, gave a perfunctory tap on Gabi’s door, flung it open and with the ‘Ta da!’ cry of an impending announcement flashed her left hand towards her startled friend.
And her startled friend’s equally startled new—and former—husband.
Husband! Damn it all! In all the excitement she’d forgotten.
Again!
‘Oh, Alex, I’m sorry! I’ve got to get over doing this, haven’t I? Dashing in uninvited like I used to do before you came back. You two could have been up to anything!’
She smiled winsomely at Alex.
‘Forgive me? Just this once? After all, we’re about to become related.’
‘Related?’ Alex echoed, shaking his head. He’d been acquainted with Kirsten, who lived in the flat opposite theirs on the fourth floor, for more than three months now, and thought he’d mastered the art of following her ditzy and often extremely convoluted conversations, but this one had him stumped.
‘You and Grant? You’re engaged?’ Ha! Gabi had rescued him. Kirsten had met Gabi’s brother at his and Gabi’s second wedding—but engaged? When the wedding was only a week ago?
He shook his head, pleased Gabi seemed to be handling the situation for both of them. She was holding Kirsten’s left hand, looking at the magnificent diamond that sparkled on the ring finger.
‘I drove him to the airport this morning so he could fly back to that never-never world your family inhabit, and just before he walked over to his little plane, he gave me this. It was such a surprise. I mean, we haven’t slept together or anything. Well, you know I don’t, Gabi, not with someone I’ve just met. Not for at least a month, that’s my rule.’
Alex struggled to make sense of someone who wouldn’t sleep with a man for a month because she didn’t know him well enough, but would commit to marry someone she’d known a whole week. Because that’s all the time Grant had had in the city.
And from the patently false smile on Gabi’s face, she had some misgivings as well. Though when she voiced them it wasn’t her brother’s welfare she was considering.
‘What about Josh?’ she asked—blunt as only Gabi could be blunt. Was she talking about Josh Phillips, the man Alex was certain had been hanging around Gabi only a few months ago?
Alex watched a little of the sparkle fade from Kirsten’s lovely green eyes, and imagined the glow which lit her skin had also diminished slightly.
‘He doesn’t give a damn about me, Gabi, and never will. He’s all hooked up on this marrying late thing, and he had the hide to use my age as an excuse—why keep me hanging around through all my best child-bearing years? No, Josh will wait until he’s forty then take a young trophy bride to bear beautiful babies. She’ll stay at home to look after them, and cook him wonderful meals and entertain the right people, and never make an exhibition of herself splitting her skirt to the thigh while getting out of his car on the way to a specialists’ dinner.’
‘But I thought you’d been seeing him again recently?’ Gabi said, while Alex struggled with an impulse to ask about the split skirt—and the reaction of the specialists at dinner!
Kirsten sighed.
‘Not that recently!’ she admitted. ‘It was back when Alex first returned from Scotland. Josh came around a few times and my silly heart did its flip-flop thing, but all he wanted to talk about was you and Alex, and how to get the Grahams back together again.’
And though securely remarried to his ex-wife, and confident in their mutual love, Alex still felt a tiny spurt of relief at this explanation of Josh’s car having been parked outside the building. At the time, he’d suffered agonies of jealousy but had never questioned Gabi about it, and had tucked the matter away once they’d been reconciled. But, hey, he was only a man, and jealousy was practically obligatory in the male psyche.
Kirsten had switched the subject back to Grant, how wonderful he was, how kind, considerate, warm, funny, understanding, and most of all, dedicated to commitment.
Alex sensed it was only with difficulty that Gabi wasn’t rolling her eyes, particularly at the last description. Which did seem a trifle over-optimistic. Alex’s knowledge of Grant was from visits to the family property when Grant was always working, and his not infrequent sorties to the city, flying in for wool sales, or to pick out a stud bull at the big agricultural show. At these times there’d usually been an attractive woman attached to his admittedly well-muscled arm.
But Gabi, bless her soft romantic heart, was saying all the right things, hugging Kirsten and wishing her well. Offering coffee.
‘No! Grant and I have been up all night—just talking and talking. There’s been so little time and he won’t be able to get down until after the shearing and crutching.’
Kirsten sent a puzzled smile at Gabi.
‘I didn’t want to show the full extent of my ignorance in front of Grant, but what exactly is crutching?’
Alex hid a smile as Gabi explained, and Kirsten’s ‘Oh, gross!’ came right on cue.
‘At least you’ll have the challenge of working out what perfume works best at such times,’ Alex teased, remembering the nose-numbing task he’d once had, sniffing his way through Kirsten’s forty-seven different perfumes in an effort to establish for her what worked best for men.
‘Oh, I won’t have to bother about that any more,’ Kirsten said blithely. ‘Grant really doesn’t like perfume and he says it upsets the dogs when they’re working, so I’ll give it up.’
Gabi was now looking seriously worried, and Alex put his arm around her shoulders to give her a hug of silent support.
Then Kirsten added, ‘What kind of work do the dogs actually do? Do they track the sheep, that perfume might upset them?’
Gabi’s shoulders relaxed as the question broke her up completely.
It was minutes before she had her chuckles finally under control, and she mopped at her streaming eyes, kissed Kirsten on the cheek and said, ‘I can see I’ll have to give you some lessons before you actually head west to the property.’
Alex expected Kirsten to object to Gabi’s mirth, but he realised she was thinking even further ahead when she nodded seriously, then added, ‘And come shopping with me so I know what to buy—I know city clothes won’t do at all.’
And on that happy note—he’d learnt that shopping always made Kirsten happy—she departed, heading for bed, no doubt to make up for the many nights of sleep she’d missed while Grant had been in town.
‘Well?’ Alex asked Gabi, when he was sure Kirsten was unlikely to return.
Gabi shook her head.
‘It might work out—who knows? I know Grant’s always been a love-’em-and-leave-’
She sighed.
‘Well, not that I know of!’
She was looking so concerned Alex felt obliged to kiss her, and that led to other pleasurable things, though he did remember to lock the front door before heading to the bedroom. Gabi’s open-door policy had led to other embarrassing moments since his return. And on Saturday morning, a number of the building’s mostly medical inhabitants would be off duty. Who knew who might walk in next?
Kirsten managed to sleep through most of the weekend so by Monday morning, when she reported for work, she was refreshed but still high with excitement, particularly as Grant was proving the most exemplary fiancé, phoning each evening to tell her how much he missed her, how much he loved her and how the shearing and crutching was progressing. She could have lived without the crutching details, which made intimate bits of her anatomy squirm in discomfort, but shearing was OK. After all, lightweight wool was now used by the best designers for some stunning creations.
Aware that the rock on her finger would attract attention and comment, she dressed with particular care—which involved trying on fourteen combinations of clothes before settling on the one she’d tried on fourth—and seventh, and tenth. It was a knee-length straight skirt in a caramel-coloured, stretchy material, and it fitted her like a second skin. On top she wore a caramel and white knit top with enough splashes of green in the pattern to highlight her eyes.
‘So, the newly engaged woman sallies forth to work!’ her friend Alana teased when she joined Kirsten in the foyer of the building as both were setting out for work. Health freak Alana had, of course, used the stairs.
She’d also, over the weekend, inspected the ring, so Kirsten sought approval for her outfit and received assurances that it hit just the right note.
‘Engaged but efficient!’ Alana said, and Kirsten tried to see if she was hiding a smile as she said it, but as there didn’t seem to be any merriment in Alana’s eyes, she accepted the words as a compliment.
One she needed for boosting her morale when she arrived in the occupational therapy department, just a little late because so many people had noticed the ring and stopped to congratulate her, and was told Josh Phillips had been asking for her.
‘He’s phoned three times,’ Clare, the Occupational Therapy department secretary, told her. ‘Might be something to do with the new unit they’re setting up down in the kids’ ward.’
‘New unit? I’ve only been away a fortnight, not a year. What new unit?’
Clare’s offhand shrug made Kirsten want to shake her. The secretaries knew more about what went on in the hospital than anyone, with the possible exception of the cleaners.
Though from some of the things cleaners had told her, she thought they probably made up a lot of it.
‘So, does he want to see me?’ Kirsten asked, when it was obvious Clare wasn’t going to answer the unit question.
‘I don’t know,’ Clare replied. ‘He just kept phoning, kept asking to speak to you, and I kept saying you weren’t here.’ The phone rang, and she added, ‘This might be him now,’ before lifting the receiver and positively cooing a hello.
‘Oh, it’s you, Marie.’ The cooing stopped. ‘Yes, I went last night. You’ve no idea…’
Kirsten moved away, no wiser about why Josh might want to speak to her, or about the new unit, but definitely not wanting to hear the intimate details of Clare’s social life.
But as she stowed her handbag in her locker, and tried to decide whether to stay in her gorgeous green sandals or change into sensible flats, an image of Josh Phillips flitted through her head. Hopefully, he had nothing to do with her decision to keep the sandals on, because she was, after all, over him. And engaged. Though, now she thought about it, she’d bought them the first time he’d asked her out, and had worn them several times during that whirlwind month when the attraction between them had been so strong, she’d almost broken her rule…
She sighed, then breathed on the diamond on the third finger of her left hand and rubbed the stone against her skirt.
No, keeping the sandals on was a reasonable decision based on the fact she was scheduled to do desk work today, working out the rotation for the students who’d be coming into the hospital for four weeks practical work next week, before university started again in late February. Each student needed a mentor, so that had to be sorted out as well. And once that was done, there were work schedules and a tutorial to prepare…
She crossed to the pigeonholes on the far side of the room, pulled out all the papers from her own, then dumped the lot on the desk all the OTs used from time to time. She was putting hospital circulars into one heap and OT news into another when the phone rang.
Clare was still regaling Marie with the details of her weekend and obviously had no intention of cutting short her conversation to take a work-related call, so it had switched automatically through to the phone on the second desk.
You’re over Josh, Kirsten reminded herself as she reached out to pick up the receiver. You’re engaged to a hunky country man who just adores you and, better still, is ready to settle down, she lectured herself as her fingers hesitated above the moulded plastic receiver.
‘Yes?’
‘Are you always this late for work?’
Not only over him but wondering what she’d ever seen in him, the rude, arrogant beast!
‘Is that relevant to whatever you want to know?’ she snapped, as much disturbed by a silly hangover-type weakness in her knees as by his attitude.
‘I don’t suppose so,’ he replied, super-cool—but, then, he always was. All the Phillips men were cool—they probably had cool bred into them along with the genes that made them all doctors. Past and present members of the Phillips family formed a hierarchy so entrenched within the hospital and the medical world beyond it that they were spoken of with the awe usually reserved for royalty.
‘Well?’ Kirsten demanded, when she realised from the silence it might be her turn to talk, then found she didn’t have anything to say. Apart from ‘I’m wearing the sandals I bought to go out with you’, and that didn’t seem appropriate.
Particularly when he was already breathing fire.
‘I wanted to speak to you about something, but it’s too late now. I’ve an appointment in five minutes, then I’ll be on the run all morning. Perhaps lunchtime? Twelve-thirty looks good for me. Coffee-shop or canteen?’
She must have mumbled something he thought he understood, for after an abrupt ‘Good, twelve-thirty in the coffee-shop, I’ll see you then’, he hung up.
Kirsten turned the receiver towards her and stared at it.
Had she really just had that weird conversation with Josh Phillips?
She looked across at Clare who’d apparently finished her conversation with Marie and was now buffing her nails.
‘What new unit?’ Kirsten asked her, then she frowned as ferociously as she could. ‘And don’t tell me you don’t know.’
Clare did her shrugging thing again, and pouted petulantly.
‘It’s for kids with leukaemia—and maybe one of the anaemias, but mainly leukaemia. They’re setting up for transplants of some kind. I don’t know why it’s such a big deal. Marion was asked to suggest an OT and she suggested you and Dr Phillips said he thought Dorothy would be better, or Candace, or maybe we should advertise.’
Kirsten listened to this explanation with growing disbelief. Marion, head of the OT department, had suggested her, Kirsten Collins, and Josh had turned her down! For the transplant unit for which she had personally raised a lot of money but which they’d all thought had been a long-term dream?
Disbelief and anger warred, and though she knew anger would win, she didn’t want to unleash it yet. No! Just keep it simmering nicely along until twelve-thirty—or would she make that twelve thirty-five?
In the end she decided punctuality would suit her best, but even so, when she entered the coffee-shop at exactly twelve-thirty, he was already there. She paused just inside the door, pleased to get the initial ‘seeing Josh’ reactions out of the way. Studied him, wondering why one man—handsome enough but not startlingly so—could produce physical symptoms in her body when she worked with men as good-looking, well-built and far more charismatic every day.
