‘Okay, I’ll see you on Thursday.’
‘Yes. I’ll see you then,’ Phoebe responded as she walked past him into a wall of warm, dry air.
She wasn’t sure if it was warmer outside than in, but it felt less humid—although she quickly realised neither was particularly pleasant. It was still early, but the pavement held the heat from the day before and she could tell it would be blisteringly hot in a few hours.
‘I hope you find a way to stay cool.’
Without much emotion in his voice, but clearly being polite, he said, ‘I think I’ll take my son to the pool later on today. Maybe you should hit the beach or a pool—there’s quite a few around. There are some indoor ones too. Oscar’s looking forward to finding some other children to play with.’ Before he turned to walk inside he added, ‘I hope you find a way to stay cool too.’
Phoebe stopped in her tracks. ‘I thought you and your wife had twins?’ she called back to him from the bottom step, with a curious frown dressing her brow.
‘No, my sister Tilly has twin girls, but they’re only two and a half years old. Oscar’s five,’ he told her, with a little more animation. ‘Tilly’s like a mother to Oscar while we’re in town, and it’s been good for him since it’s just the two of us the rest of the time. I’m sure as they grow up the cousins will all be great friends, but right now Oscar really doesn’t find them much fun at all.’
He looked back at Phoebe with an expression she couldn’t quite make out as he paused in the doorway, as if he was thinking something through before he spoke.
Phoebe turned to leave.
‘It’s ridiculously hot out there,’ he remarked, catching her attention. ‘If you have time perhaps we could pop round to the corner café and grab a cool drink. I wouldn’t want you fainting on the way home. I can answer any questions you have about the practice.’
Phoebe could see he was a very serious man—nothing like Giles, with his smooth flirtatious manner. But there was something about Heath that made her curious. She reminded herself that she would never be interested in him in any way romantically, but with his demeanour she didn’t flag him as a threat to her reborn virginal status. And she did want to know about the running of the practice so she decided to accept his invitation. He was her boss after all.
‘I have time.’
Phoebe had decided on the quick walk to the café that she did not want to discuss her personal life and that she would not enquire about his. She knew enough. He was Ken Rollins’s son. He was filling in for a month, and he was the single father of a five-year-old boy. That was more than enough. Whether he was divorced or had never been married was none of her business and immaterial.
She wasn’t going to be spending enough time with Heath for his personal life to matter. Four weeks would pass quickly and then he and his son would be gone. She wasn’t sure if she would ever even meet the boy. It wasn’t as if a medical practice dealing with feet would be the most interesting place for a child to visit, she mused, so their paths might never cross.
‘Thank you,’ she said as she stepped inside the wonderfully cool and thankfully not too densely populated coffee shop.
‘They make a nice iced coffee,’ Heath told her as they made their way to a corner table and he placed his laptop containing patient notes beside him. ‘It’s barista coffee, and they add ice-cold milk and whipped cream. They do it well.’
‘Sounds perfect—but perhaps hold the cream.’
‘Looking after your heart?’ he enquired as he pulled out the chair for her.
In more ways than one, she thought.
It was a surprise to Phoebe how easy she found it to talk with Heath. While he was still reserved, and borderline frosty, he was attentive and engaged in their discussion. He asked about her work at the hospital in Washington and their conversation was far from stilted, due to their mutual love of their specialty. With Giles, she had not spoken much about her work as he hadn’t seemed to understand it and nor had he wanted to. It had been plain that he wasn’t interested and he’d never pretended to care. It had been all about his career aspirations and how they could achieve them together.
‘I’ve seen your résumé—it’s impressive, but definitely geared towards sports podiatry. My father’s practice is predominately general patient load along with the occasional sportsman or woman—not the focus I assume you’re accustomed to. How do you think you will adjust to that?’
‘Sports podiatry is a passion of mine. I’ve been working in a fantastic unit within a large teaching hospital, where we offer a full spectrum of services for the athlete—including physical therapy and surgery, with an emphasis on biomechanics. My focus outside of essential surgical intervention was primarily on orthotic treatment directed to correct structural deficiency and muscular imbalance. But in general my goal is to return any patient, regardless of their profession, to their maximum level of function and allow them to re-engage in an active life.’
Heath agreed with all she was saying, but added, ‘I understand—I just hope you don’t begin to feel that this practice is not what you signed up for.’
‘No, I love what I do—and feet are feet, no matter what the owners of them do.’
Heath found her answer amusing, but he didn’t smile. He rarely did, and those moments were saved for his son. And there was still that unanswered question …
‘So tell me, Phoebe, if you love the hospital back in your hometown, you enjoy your work and your colleagues, why did you want to leave?’
Phoebe nervously took a sip of the icy drink. It was rich and flavoursome, just as good as he had promised … and she was stalling. ‘I needed a break from Washington,’ she finally responded.
‘A Caribbean cruise or skiing in Aspen would have been easier than relocating to the other side of the world. And if you were looking for alternative employers I’m sure there must be loads of options for someone of your calibre in the US. It’s a big country.’
‘I wanted more than a quick vacation or a new employer. It was time for a sea change.’
‘Like I said, there are a lot of places that would fit that bill on your own continent—and I’m sure with a lot less red tape than it must have taken for you to work Down Under.’
‘I suppose,’ she said nonchalantly, trying to deflect his interest in her reasons for being there, which did not seem to be abating easily with anything she said.
It wasn’t the Spanish Inquisition, but it felt close. Phoebe did not want to go into the details of her failed engagement to Giles. Nor her desperate need to escape from him and her mother to a place neither would find her. And there was no way he would ever hear from her the tale of the bridesmaids from hell bedding the groom. It was all too humiliating. And still too raw.
Heath was her temporary boss and he would be leaving once his father’s knee had healed. The less he knew the better. In fact the less everyone in the city knew about her the better.
‘Your father’s interest in harnessing the power of biomechanics and advanced medical technology to challenge convention and his ensuing breakthrough results were huge draw cards for me to come and work with him. And I wanted to know more about his collaborative approach to co-morbidities. Your father wrote a great paper on the subject of the co-operative approach to treating systemic problems.’
Heath sensed there was more, but he took her cue to leave the subject alone. He appreciated she had a right to her privacy on certain matters. Just as he did to his own. And there was no