He took one last look at Ali’s red lips and wished he could taste them. Just once. But he couldn’t go back. He could only go forward. He had to do what he had to do. His daughters would need him and, as always, he would put them first. He turned his back on the bar and headed for the lifts with heavy steps.
The lift doors closed, cutting him off from Ali, taking him out of her life.
Quinn took another deep breath as he prepared himself for what lay ahead. There was no time to think about anything else. There was no time for ifs, buts and maybes. There was only reality. His present no longer consisted of raven hair and cherry lips. His present consisted of responsibility and duty.
Ali
ALI PUSHED OPEN the clinic door and unwound her scarf as she felt the warmth of the waiting room begin to defrost her face. She was so over winter. It had been unseasonably cold and long, even by Adelaide Hills standards, and the few days she’d spent in the Brisbane warmth for the medical conference seemed a lifetime ago. Her skin had forgotten the feeling of the Queensland sun over the past six weeks and she couldn’t wait for summer.
She undid the buttons on her new winter coat, a scarlet, woollen swing coat that she’d bought to lift her spirits and help her get through the last weeks of cold weather. Her spirits needed lifting, she needed something to look forward to. She loved her job but lately it had lacked excitement. It had become routine. The last time she’d felt excited about anything had been in Brisbane. The night she’d met Quinn.
She sighed. Her life was a pretty sad state of affairs if a ten-minute conversation was the highlight of the past few months. But there was no denying she’d enjoyed it and no denying she had spent far too much time thinking about him. Wondering why he hadn’t come back. Wondering what had happened to him.
Despite telling herself she no longer believed in fate, she hadn’t been able to shake off the idea that they had been destined to meet. But even she wasn’t delusional enough not to realise she was romanticising things. Quinn had probably had no intention of coming back, he’d probably thought she was dull and ordinary and had been desperate for an escape, whereas she’d thought he was interesting and charismatic.
She’d spent so much time thinking about him that on occasions since getting home her subconscious had tricked her into thinking she’d caught fleeting glimpses of him. But of course it was just her imagination working overtime because when she’d look a second time she would see it was just another solidly built man with cropped blond hair or that the person had disappeared from view completely.
Imagined sightings, unfinished conversations and scant memories were all she had.
She knew she wanted to find love but she was sensible enough to realise it wasn’t going to be Quinn Daniels who would sweep her off her feet. No matter how much she wished it. Daydreams weren’t going to change anything, she thought as she shrugged out of her coat. It was time to move on.
She glanced around the waiting room. There were a couple of patients sitting quietly but no one she recognised. She wasn’t actually due at the clinic for another hour as she’d finished her nursing-home visits earlier than expected so she assumed they weren’t waiting for her.
‘Ali, there you are.’ The receptionist’s chirpy voice greeted her as she emerged from the back of the clinic. It sounded as though Tracey had been waiting for her but Ali couldn’t imagine why as she was well ahead of schedule. ‘Your mum wants to see you as soon as you get in,’ Tracey added.
The medical practice had been started by Ali’s mum when Ali and her brother had still been in nappies. The building that was now the surgery had been their family home but as the practice had expanded their family had moved into a bigger house nearby and the clinic had taken over the building. Ali had spent many hours in the practice, playing in her younger years and helping out with various odd jobs as she’d got older, and she’d always known she wanted to work there one day. Her mum had shown her it was possible to balance a career and a family successfully and that had been Ali’s dream too. Until recently.
Until recently Ali had been quite content working as a GP. She enjoyed knowing her patients and being a part of their lives and the community. But until recently she hadn’t ever expected that she might never have more than this. She was twenty-six years old and at a crossroads in her life. She was restless. Her future lacked direction and excitement and she was at a loss as to how to remedy this.
‘Do you know why?’ Ali asked.
‘She wants to introduce you to the locum. He’s in with her now.’
‘He?’ The locum position was a part-time one, to cover for Ali’s mother who was accompanying her husband to an overseas conference followed by a short holiday. Ali knew her mother was hoping that if things worked out she could then persuade the locum to stay on, allowing her to reduce her working hours further. Ali had assumed, incorrectly apparently, that the job would go to a female doctor as part-time hours were highly sort after by working mums, but perhaps the new doctor was also nearing retirement age, like her own mother. ‘Is he old?’
Tracey grinned and Deb, the practice nurse, laughed. ‘Not by our standards,’ she said, ‘but every minute you stand out here he’ll be another minute older. If I were you I’d be hustling in there.’
Ali gave a quick glance over her shoulder at Tracey and Deb as she headed for her mother’s consulting room. They were giggling like a pair of schoolgirls. She frowned, wondering what on earth had got into the two of them.
She knocked and opened her mother’s door. The physique of the man in front of her was instantly recognisable and he was far from old. Her heart leapt in her chest.
Tall, solid and muscular, he stood lightly balanced on the balls of his feet. His hair was longer, not so closely cropped, and the blond was touched with flecks of grey that she was certain hadn’t been there six weeks ago. He looked a little leaner and a little older but when he turned to face her she saw that his eyes were unchanged. They were the exact same extraordinary, intense, backlit, azure blue.
His name slipped from her tongue. ‘Quinn?’
He stared at her. Did he remember her?
Her heart was in her throat, making it impossible to breathe. She had dreamt of meeting him again but in her dreams there had been no hesitation. In her dreams he hadn’t forgotten her.
‘Ali?’
She exhaled. ‘You’re the new doctor?’
He nodded.
‘You two know each other?’ her mother asked.
Ali had barely noticed that her mother was in the room. She only had eyes for Quinn. She forced herself to turn her head and look at her mother. ‘We met at the conference in Brisbane,’ she explained.
‘Good.’ If her mother noticed Ali’s preoccupation, she gave no sign of it. She was already moving ahead, pressing on with the next issue. She very rarely stopped and today seemed to be no exception. ‘Alisha, I have patients waiting, can I leave you to show Quinn around the surgery and let him get settled into his consulting room? He starts with us tomorrow.’
Her mother didn’t wait for her to agree or to argue. She shook Quinn’s hand and hustled out the door to call her first patient, leaving Ali temporarily frozen to the spot and at a loss for words. Her brain was full of questions. There was no room in it for motor functions. Her body appeared to have shut down as she stood and feasted on the sight of Quinn and struggled with the questions that were racing through her head.
What was he doing here? What about the army? His proper job? What on earth would he want a part-time locum job in a small clinic for? Why had he left her at the bar? Why hadn’t he come back?
Quinn