versions of it before and thought it a nice smile, but this one set his whole face alight, shining in his dark eyes and wrinkling his cheeks with the width of his grin.
‘Not quite,’ he admitted. ‘The partners back at my clinic in Sydney have given a lot in that they cover for me two or three times a year when I’m over here, and various patients I’ve had have talked to me about what they’d like in a clinic.’
She nodded, knowing exactly what she’d have liked in the places she’d seen so much of, but Steve was still talking.
‘Then there are the people here. They are laid-back, casual and very family-oriented so something like an inability to have a child can cause them tremendous pain. I knew I had to set things up to make it as relaxed as possible for them. After all, they are the prime concern.’
‘And you fund it all yourself?’
The question was out before she realised how rude it was.
Not that it appeared to bother him—he just ignored it.
‘And here’s the laboratory, such as it is,’ Steve announced,
He’d left it until last, hoping she’d want to stay on and have a look around, check out where things were kept and see from the case notes, both written and on the computer, how things were done. Then he could go back to their quarters and, no, he refused to consider the cliché of a cold shower, but he could get away from her for a while and regroup.
Work out why this unlikely attraction was happening.
Attraction should be something that grew as you got to know someone—grew out of liking and respect...
Forget attraction, getting rid of the fish smell and doing something about the stubble on his chin were far more important issues right now.
Oh, and catching up with Alex to find out whether their new equipment had arrived...
But still he looked at Fran, bent over the boxes of coloured tags she’d pulled from one of the cupboards. She poked around in the contents for a while, then glanced up at him and smiled.
So much for his thoughts on attraction...
‘You’ll probably laugh at me,’ she was saying, ‘but I brought a whole heap of these things with me in my luggage, thinking maybe you wouldn’t have the ones I’ve always used, but someone whose mind runs along the same lines as mine does has set up a basic identification system.’
‘That someone was me.’
She looked surprised, and, probably because he was already off balance with the attraction business, he spoke more sharply than he need have.
‘Lab staff aren’t the only ones afraid of making a mistake, of giving a woman someone else’s embryo. It’s always in the back of my mind, even in the clinic back home where everything is computerised to the nth degree and ID is made with bar codes.’
Now she was taken aback, frowning at him.
‘Of course you must worry, it’s everyone’s biggest concern, but usually it’s left to the lab staff to make sure mistakes don’t happen.’ She grinned at him, defusing his mild annoyance but aggravating the attraction. ‘It’s certainly the lab staff who get blamed when things go wrong.’
She lifted a red wristband, a red marking pen, a roll of red plastic tape and a card of small red spots.
‘How many patients are you expecting? I know you said earlier, but I can’t recall the number,’ she said. ‘I’ll make up packs of what we need for each of them—that way I won’t be fishing in boxes later and will be less likely to make a mistake.’
She was here to work and she was making that abundantly clear, which was good as he could forget all the weirdness he’d been experiencing and get on with his job.
‘Five, or maybe six,’ he told her. ‘I’ve just heard that there’s one couple we’re not sure about. Apparently it took longer than expected to shut down her ovaries and then to begin the stimulation so she may not be ovulating yet.’
‘But surely she would be before we leave?’ Francesca asked, the slight frown he was beginning to recognise as one of concern puckering her forehead.
‘Yes, and although I do have other volunteers come out here to work, we like to have the same team on hand for the whole cycle of taking the eggs through to implantation, then confirmation of pregnancy.’
‘Or confirmation that it didn’t work that time,’ Fran said, remembering her three thwarted attempts.
‘That too,’ Steve said, his voice sombre. ‘It’s the main reason I like the team to stay until we know, one way or another. At least then we can talk to the couple about what they would like to do next. Whether they want to try again later—explain the options, talk it all through with them.’
He’d really thought about it, Fran thought, studying the man who seemed to understand just how devastating a failed IVF treatment could be. But couldn’t they still work with the sixth couple? Hadn’t Andy said...?
‘But rather than have them miss out, couldn’t we stay a little longer?’ she asked. ‘I’m sure Andy said that it could be longer—six weeks he might have mentioned. Wouldn’t that give us time?’
Fran realised she was probably pushing too hard—especially as a newcomer. But it seemed inconceivable to her that a woman would get this far into treatment then be told they couldn’t go ahead until Steve could return or someone else could come over.
Steve shook his head, but it wasn’t the headshake that bothered her, it was the look on his face—discouragement?
‘And if six weeks isn’t long enough?’ he said quietly.
‘Then we’d just have to stay on,’ Fran declared. ‘I know you must feel guilty about leaving your own practice longer than necessary, but a few days? Surely we can’t just ignore this couple as if they’re nothing more than names on a list.’
She waited for a reply, but all Steve did was look at her, studying her as if she was a stranger.
Had she let emotion seep into her words? She knew, better than anyone, that she had to separate her emotion from her work—that she had to be one hundred per cent focussed on whatever job she was doing—no room for emotion at all. But hadn’t her argument been rational?
‘Let’s wait and see,’ he finally replied, but he was still watching her warily.
Assessing her in some way...
Wondering if he’d made a serious mistake in asking for her...
He turned and walked away, leaving her with all the red markers in her hands, no doubt remembering she’d said she wanted to sort the separate colours into packs. Well, she did intend to do that. Keeping track of everything in the laboratory was of prime importance, and as far as she was concerned, the laboratory’s responsibility stretched across every sample taken. So she settled on a stool, marking syringes, specimen jars, test tubes, specimen dishes—everything—with coloured stickers or tape or even paint for things that wouldn’t hold the coloured tape.
But
