question but at least one he could answer.
‘Her mother was here. She flew down with the Royal Flying Doctor Service when they brought the baby to us. But she had to go home to the rest of the family—she’s hoping to get down again next week but even with really cheap accommodation available at the hospital, she still has to pay air fares and, I imagine, pay someone to mind the other children at home.’
‘Poor thing, it must be so hard to not be able to be with her baby,’ Grace murmured, but in such a way Theo had to look at her. Did she really feel for Scarlett’s mother or was she mouthing a platitude while thinking something else entirely?
He didn’t know this woman so he had no idea and, really, did it matter? Yet again he sensed a puzzle…
They’d moved away from Scarlett’s crib, out of the PICU to the lift foyer where they met up with other members of the team waiting to go down.
‘Grace and I are barely settled in and, speaking for myself, I need to shop before I can eat,’ Jean-Luc said, joining his and Grace’s names in a way that suggested a relationship, although as far as Theo knew they’d only met since their separate arrivals in Australia. ‘Is there a good restaurant close by?’
‘Scoozi!’
Jean-Luc had spoken to Aaron who was standing beside him, but the reply was chorused by most of the team.
‘It’s the other side of the park,’ Jasmine Summers, one of the PICU nurses added as they all stepped into the lift. ‘Some of us are going there now, so do come along. You’re coming, aren’t you, Theo?’
He had intended going home to do some work on a wood-fired oven he was building in his tiny courtyard, but he had to eat.
And Grace Sutherland, for all her blunt questions, intrigued him…
‘Oh, do come, Theo.’ Now she added her entreaty, and though he had the strangest—and strongest—feeling he was being manipulated, he agreed.
Out of curiosity, he told himself, and in part that was the truth, because there was something about Grace Sutherland that didn’t quite ring true—some mystery inside the beautiful packaging.
That she was physically attractive to him was a secondary matter, or so he assured himself. He didn’t get involved with work colleagues so the physical attraction would never be explored, but the intrigue? It wouldn’t hurt to investigate that, surely…
The group walked in a straggle of twos and threes down the road that ran alongside the park towards the restaurant. Grace walked in the lead with Phil, Theo behind them with Maggie and Aaron, and though he was listening to the conversation about titration rates of drugs during open-heart surgery in very small infants, he wasn’t taking in as much of it as he usually did.
She walked with a peculiar grace—what a stupid thing to be thinking about a woman called Grace!—but the way she strode along, her pace matching Phil’s, suggested an athleticism that wasn’t often seen in specialists of either gender, most of whom were too busy to get to the gym with any regularity or to work out in other ways.
The staff at Scoozi, seeing the mob from the hospital arrive, pushed together a number of tables, but was it chance that Grace sat next to Theo, who had taken the chair at one end?
‘You didn’t answer my question,’ she said, answering his own query—the seating arrangement had not been chance.
‘Question?’ he parried, although he knew full well what she’d asked. But now, rather than consider the woman’s grace, he was considering her lack of it. And her lack of good manners! It was none of her business why he’d switched from surgery to perfusion.
‘Why aren’t you married?’
He’d forgotten that one! He stared at her, aware his disbelief was probably written on his face. It must have been for she looked embarrassed, but only for a moment, recovering her composure beautifully and smiling an apology.
‘I know that’s personal, but I’m only here for six months and if I want to get to know everyone in the team, then I have to ask questions.’
That kind of made sense—or did it?
‘Do you really want to get to know everyone in the team? After all, as you say, you’re only here six months, after which you’ll go back to South Africa, send emails for a few months, Christmas cards for a few years, then forget the lot of us.’
‘Probably not Christmas cards, I’m not good with them.’ She looked embarrassed, as if he’d been spot on in the reading of her character. Not that she was going to let him get away with it. She shifted slightly in her chair then continued, ‘But professionally it’s good to keep in touch with people, especially those with more experience, because you never know when something comes up you haven’t personally experienced before, and you can always ask.’
She hadn’t answered his question, but her comments made him wonder even more about this woman. In his life, women were the ones who kept the strands of friendship sewn together, his mother and aunts keeping in touch with the family’s friends, while his ex-wife had been forever on the net, talking to one friend or another, and had turned the sending out of Christmas cards into a kind of ‘who gets the most’ contest. But, then, Lena was like that…
‘You’re thinking about some woman now,’ the exasperating South African said, her clipped accent seeming to turn the remark into a rebuke.
‘You can’t know that!’ Theo growled. ‘And if there’s one thing I hate, it’s someone—usually a woman—telling me what I’m thinking.’
‘Well, you were scowling,’ Grace replied, totally unabashed. ‘The kind of scowl that suggests bad thoughts, and as you’re hardly likely to be thinking bad thoughts about your bypass machine, or the menu that’s in your hands, I guessed it must have had something to do with my question.’
He scowled some more and began to read the menu, although he knew it by heart and always ordered the Creole pizza and out of sheer politeness should have passed it to Grace, had she not annoyed him so much.
‘I’ll have the Creole pizza,’ she announced, Jasmine, on her other side, having handed her a menu. ‘Chicken, banana, sweet chilli sauce and sour cream—Italian purists must be turning over in their graves but it sounds delicious.’
Now what was he going to order? If he ordered the Creole she’d think he was copying her and probably read something into it—like he might be interested in her.
Which he was in the way a scientist was interested in a new specimen that appeared under his microscope, but no more than that, for all the unexpected tugs of attraction he was feeling.
Heaven forbid!
He ordered a steak and a glass of the pinot grigio the restaurateur, Anna, imported from Italy. Someone further down the table had ordered a plate of garlic bread and another of brushetta before anyone was seated, and these arrived as the orders were taken, the plates of bread being passed around.
‘No, thank you,’ Grace said to both.
‘Dieting?’ Jasmine asked, and Theo watched, wondering just how Grace would respond.
‘No,
