Everyone nodded and those brave enough even mumbled, ‘Yes, Jen.’
‘Right, then, thanks for your attention.’ Jen tapped a pile of brightly coloured files. ‘Please collect a folder on the way out.’
Baden winked at Kate. ‘We’d better check our emails.’
‘I think that line was directed solely at you. I’ve still got brownie points up my sleeve.’ She couldn’t resist teasing him. ‘After all, it wasn’t me who drove out to Opal Ridge for a clinic on the wrong day.’
A sheepish grin crossed his face. ‘Lucky for me old Hughie chose that day to have a hypo so it wasn’t a complete waste of time. Now he’s completely up to speed with his new glucometer.’ He faked a serious expression, the corners of his eyes crinkling with humour. ‘Patient education is a very important part of our work, Sister Lawson.’
Laughter rolled through her at his self-deprecating humour, bringing a joy that had faded from her life. ‘Is that right, Doctor? I had no idea.’
His laughter joined hers and quickly raced to his eyes, which sparkled like sunshine on water. His work-issue blue shirt intensified the vivid blue of his eyes and enhanced his tanned face. Not to mention the way his chest filled the shirt, making the fabric sit flat against what she imagined was solid muscle.
Her stomach flipped as heat rolled thorough her. Stop it now. She crossed her legs, trying to halt the tingling sensations that built up inside her.
It was too depressing to be twenty-nine and reacting like a sixteen-year-old. She was too old for a hormone crush. Too world-weary to have stars in her eyes and too bruised to ever think romance was for her. But her body wasn’t listening.
It didn’t seem to matter that she’d spoken sternly to herself, that she’d instructed her body not to react and that she’d willed herself to be impervious to eyes that sparkled with every shade of blue. It took one smile and her body quivered in anticipation.
She stood up and joined the queue behind Linton and Emily to collect the folder as instructed.
‘So, Doc, you thought you’d do a spot of opal fossicking the other day.’ Emily immediately teased Baden about his mistake.
‘Yeah, and I found one this big.’ He held his hands a shoulder width apart. ‘But it got away when Hughie hypo’d.’
Kate let the laughter and camaraderie wash over her, savouring it. Wednesday afternoon meant staff meeting. All the teams were back in the office after morning clinics to attend. They took it in turns being the standby emergency team, but it wasn’t very often that there was a Wednesday afternoon emergency. It was almost as if the locals knew not to get sick after 1:00 p.m. If they did get a callout it was usually from tourists who’d got themselves into a spot of bother.
With the exception of the staff meeting, Wednesday was pretty much a Baden-free day. Kate ran an early well-women’s clinic in the morning before returning to base for the afternoon.
It had been a relief to work on her own this morning, giving her over-developed radar of Baden a rest. It wasn’t that she didn’t enjoy working with him. She did. She’d loved her first two days with him. He was on the ball medically, good-humoured most of the time, and he related really well to the patients. But this overwhelming attraction that whizzed through her whenever she was near him was wearing her out.
It was crazy stuff. He was her colleague. She should be noticing how thorough he was with the patients, learning from him as he passed on clinical skills, taking advantage of the way he treated her as an equal, seeking her opinion in tricky cases. And on one level she was doing all those things.
But on another level she was very aware of the way he twirled his pen when he was thinking. How strands of silver hair caressed his temples in stark contrast to the rest of his raven curls, and how his deep, rich laugh was as smooth and velvety as a cellared shiraz.
And she kept wondering how he’d come to be a single father. Where was Sasha’s mother?
Was he divorced? Perhaps they’d never married. All the different permutations and combinations ran through her head. Baden hadn’t volunteered any more information and the opportunity to ask more direct questions hadn’t arisen. She supposed she could ask Emily but it seemed a bit tacky, almost like prying. She’d been on the other end of that. Her life had been pried into, opened up and peeled back like a sardine can. She didn’t intend to inflict that invasion of privacy on anyone.
‘Are you coming for coffee, Kate?’ Linton paused by the door. The ‘cappuccino club’ met straight after the staff meeting each week. ‘We’ve got Florentines.’ His expression of delight made him look like a kid who had just discovered Mum had filled the cookie jar.
She glanced at her watch. Four o’clock—the meeting had run late. Wednesday evening was Guides. She’d been a Guide leader for a couple of years and tonight was her second night back after her break.
She didn’t want to be late, especially as one of the Guides had asked if she could bring a friend. That was great as the pack could do with more members. The Kennedy clan had pressured some families to withdraw their daughters and some had capitulated. Others had stayed, although they refused to help out, but she was sticking with it. There were three supportive parents and now she was back she planned to rebuild. Guides would be so much fun that the girls of Warragurra would be begging their parents to attend and to get involved. ‘Sorry, I’ll have to pass this week. Save me a Florentine.’
Linton nodded and disappeared down the hall with Emily.
She picked up her folder and handed one to Baden. ‘Aren’t you going for coffee either?’
Baden shook his head. ‘I promised Sasha no after-school care on Wednesdays.’
She smiled. ‘Negotiated a midweek deal, did you, to sweeten the rest of the week?’
Surprise rippled across his face. ‘Something like that. I guess I have to accept she’s growing up and perhaps growing out of after-school care, but she’s not grown up enough to be on her own.’
Kate nodded slowly, understanding his dilemma. ‘It’s a tricky age. School holidays must be really tough for you.’ What about Sasha’s mother? She bit off the specific question that gnawed at her. ‘Can extended family help you?’
‘My parents visit in the holidays.’ The words came out curtly, as if they were meant to discourage a response.
He did that occasionally—lurched from extremely friendly to completely closed down whenever the conversation turned to personal things. A few times she’d been on the point of asking if Sasha might like to join Guides, but he always swung the conversation back to work and kept it firmly centred on the job.
Except when he told you he wasn’t married.
She thought back to Monday when they’d been in Adelaide. He’d closed down then when he’d told her that, just like he’d closed down now. For whatever reason, he didn’t want to talk about Sasha’s mother. Perhaps his relationship with her had been as disastrous as hers had with Shane. If it had been, she could totally understand why he avoided the topic. But that didn’t help her rampant curiosity. She hated the fact she wanted to know about this woman and the more he deflected the topic, the more she wanted to know.
He walked to the door, pushing it open for her. She ducked under his arm, her shoulder brushing against him. Tingling pleasure pulsated through her, the sensations intensifying as they dived deeper and unfurled like ribbons in the breeze. Her body’s reaction to an inadvertent touch was way out of proportion and she tried to shrug the sensations away. Finally, the tingling