Marion Lennox: Dating The Millionaire Doctor

‘Tori…’

‘You’re alone,’ she whispered. ‘And that’s the way you want it. But if I’m alone I’d curl up and die. I need people. I need dogs. I need…life.’

She sighed then and steadied.

‘I’m sorry, Jake,’ she said. ‘Getting angry was dumb. Yelling at you is dumb. You’re doing the best you can.’ She shook her head as if clearing fog. ‘Okay, here’s confession time,’ she said. ‘I’m trying desperately not to fall in love with you. You say you might love me? Well, maybe I know that I could love you. And you know what that means? If I came here, then you’d risk me clinging.’

He didn’t understand. ‘Why would you cling? You have your work.’

‘I’m not talking about my work. I’m talking about needing you, and you needing me. You’re fine with the idea of looking after me. Could you ever admit that you need me ?’

‘I…’ There was deathly silence.

‘No,’ she said, and she was fighting now for the composure she’d lost. ‘Enough. This is dumb talk, and we both know it. We’re two mature professionals-we can handle this. Your work is waiting, and my life is waiting. So please, Jake…’

She took a deep breath. ‘Please, Jake,’ she said again. ‘I’m exhausted and I need to go to bed. Thank you for a wonderful day.’ Her fingers crept once again to her Celtic knot. ‘Thank you for my chain. I’ll keep it for ever. But now…’ Another deep breath.

‘Now I’m going into your bedroom,’ she said softly, steadying. ‘And I’m going to bed. Alone. That’s the way it has to be. We both know that. I guess when I wake up in the morning you’ll be gone to work. So I’ll get on my plane tomorrow and I won’t look back. Yes, you’ll want to see our baby. We can work that out later. But we need to do it in a way where I can be normal and civil, and the fact that I had the best night of my life with you, and I’m thinking entirely inappropriate thoughts, can be forgotten. Please, Jake, that’s what I need. So goodnight.’

And before he could guess what she intended, she took three swift steps towards him. She took his face in her hands and she kissed him, fast and hard, on the mouth. Then, before he had a chance to respond, before he could hold her as he needed to hold her, she pushed herself away.

‘Goodnight, Jake,’ she said, firmly and steadily. ‘And goodbye.’

And she was gone, into his bedroom, closing the door firmly behind her.

And he knew he couldn’t follow.

It was all very well being angry and virtuous and sure. Anger and virtue and certainty lasted all the way until the door was shut, and then she just felt miserable.

Nothing else. Just plain bad.

He’d asked her to marry him and she’d refused.

She’d hardly had a choice, she told herself, fighting to drum up anger again.

What had she hoped for?

And there was the crux. The biggie. Hope. Finally she was acknowledging exactly what she’d hoped for.

She loved him. She’d told herself that one night together was simply a way of moving on, but it was so much more, and that was regardless of her pregnancy. He’d said he thought he loved her but he didn’t know what it meant.

Love.

She thought back to Jake holding her as they’d buried a little koala named Manya. She thought of the way he’d held Glenda’s hand, of the way he’d laughed at Bitsy.

She thought of Jake in the ward, talking through a procedure to the patient he was about to anaesthetise, carefully so there could be no misunderstanding. She knew he’d be wonderful.

She thought of the way Jake’s body felt against hers.

‘Oh, enough, you’re behaving like a moonstruck teenager,’ she scolded herself. ‘You’ve come all this way and he’s been lovely. He’s taken you sightseeing. He’s given you a beautiful piece of jewellery. He’s reacted to our baby with honour. He even tried to figure out how he could love you. What else do you want from the man?’

Nothing.

Jake lay on the too-hard settee and stared up at his blank ceiling. Running the conversation over and over in his head.

Love…

Yes, he’d said it, but Tori had known he hadn’t meant it and she must be right. Love would be something you learned over months or, more probably, years, a gradual build-up of trust and affection. It surely wasn’t what he and Tori had. A one-and-a-half-minute date, followed by one night of passion.

Unbidden, the words of his mother crept back into his subconscious.

‘I fell in love with your father on one meeting. One meeting! How ridiculous was that? He carted me off to some strange country, to a life I had no way of dealing with, and look what happened. Love at first sight? Don’t make me laugh.’

Nothing made sense. The night was too long, the settee was too hard, the concept of love and of home was too difficult to get his head around.

That Tori could say she loved him, that she could possibly throw her heart where her head should be, seemed unreal. And if she felt like that, then why wouldn’t she marry him?

Should he have insisted he love her? Do the romantic-hero thing?

If he did that he’d be no better than his father.

But he no longer believed in his father as the villain. He no longer knew what he believed in. He was getting into territory that was simply too hard.

And the hardest thing…

The hardest thing was that Tori was right through that door. His woman.

She wasn’t his woman. He had no rights.

She felt like his woman.

‘So what are you intending, caveman?’ he muttered into the night. ‘Go and stake your claim? You’ve done enough damage. You have a surgical list longer than your arm waiting for you in the morning. It’s not fair on your patients if you don’t sleep.’

Somehow he managed to switch off, and sleep.

But he couldn’t turn off his dreams.

She woke and she knew he’d gone. The cool-grey apartment practically echoed.

She’d thought-maybe she’d hoped-that she’d wake when he left and she could say goodbye, but it had been almost dawn before she’d drifted into troubled sleep. Her exhausted body had finally demanded what it needed and Jake’s bedside clock was telling her it was eight o’clock.

She threw back the covers and padded out to the living room, cautiously, just to see, but the sleek leather settee was back being a sleek leather settee. The spare bedding was neatly folded, ready to be stored back in the bedroom closet.

There was a note on the bench.

Catheter trouble again. Travel safe. I’ll be in touch.

A farewell note. How romantic. She crumpled it and slid it into the trash.

The kitchenette was squeaky clean, not even a dirty coffee mug to tell her he’d breakfasted before he’d left. She touched the designer kettle. It was cold. Really cold. He hadn’t even had coffee here.

If she lived here she wouldn’t have her morning coffee here either, she decided. This place was awful.

He’d come home tonight to this, she thought, feeling more dismal by the minute as the cool of the apartment-and the lack of Jake-soaked into her. She’d have changed the sheets and put hers in the commercial laundry basket she’d seen near the entrance. Maybe by the time Jake got home the laundry would already have been collected, cleaned and returned.

Nothing would remain of her visit.

There should be something.

Stupid or not, she wanted there to be something.

Her fingers moved instinctively to her throat, to her chain, to something she knew she’d treasure for ever. She loved her chain. She loved that Jake had given it to her. She should have refused-but how strong could a woman be?

Not strong enough.

‘I should leave him something,’ she said, gazing helplessly around at the designer chic. ‘I can’t leave him with grey.’