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 receded, leaving her bewildered and unsettled.
As they walked down the corridor she concentrated on work, trying to ignore the maelstrom of emotions churning inside her. ‘Have you heard from the Women’s and Children’s in Adelaide?’
He nodded. ‘Susie’s doing well. She’s out of ICU and will probably be transferred to Warragurra tomorrow.’
‘Thank goodness. Mary and Barry will be so relieved.’
‘Yes, it was a good outcome.’ He paused outside his office. ‘See you tomorrow, then.’
‘Yes, see you tomorrow. ’Night.’ She moved toward the door. Thank goodness she could leave the office now. She didn’t have to face working with Baden until tomorrow morning. And all her attention for the next few hours would be on the Guides, which would completely block any errant thoughts of a tall, curly-haired doctor.
An hour later she’d negotiated the supermarket, bought a giant container of maple syrup, set up three trestle tables and plugged in a couple of electric frypans. She crossed her fingers that the old hall’s fusebox
