MELANIE MILBURNE – Australian Bachelors: Outback Heroes: Top-Notch Doc, Outback Bride / A Wedding in Warragurra / The Outback Doctor's Surprise Bride (страница 17)

‘I’m sure they won’t,’ Matt said. ‘They’ve probably got into a pattern of learned helplessness. They’ll soon snap out of it.’

‘Yes, well, that’s the plan,’ she said with another little smile.

Matt could see that Kellie was a warm-hearted person who had a mission in life to spread love and goodwill to others. He also knew from what she had briefly intimated that her love life was lacking something, but it didn’t mean he was the person to step up to the plate to take the next ball, certainly not with the whole of Culwulla Creek on the sidelines, cheering him on.

Anyway, life was so damned capricious.

Doctors knew that more than most. They diagnosed terminal illnesses on a weekly, sometimes even daily basis. He had done it himself. So many faces drifted past him, shocked faces, devastated faces, faces that communicated their frustration in their but-I’ve-not-done-all-I’ve-set-out-to-do expressions of despair.

They were all the same, just like him: cheated of what life had promised but had failed to deliver.

Was it his fault?

No, and the rational part of him knew Madeleine’s death wasn’t really his fault. It was the driver running the red light, it was the rush hour, it was a hundred other things that had been going on in the universe at that particular moment, but yet still he felt somehow responsible. What if she had been thinking about him at that moment and not seen the car on her right? What if she had been thinking about the seemingly endless list of jobs to do before their wedding? Or, like him, having last-minute doubts? It had been a stressful time, especially as Madeleine hadn’t wanted to take any time off school and therefore everything had had to be packed into those last couple of days before the term finished. What if he had done more of those little jobs for her so she hadn’t been so rushed off her feet?

The what-ifs had been what had kept him awake most nights in those early days and tortured far too many of his days as well. Work out here in the bush was his only panacea and so far it had done a reasonable job … well, it had until Kellie had come to town with her big smile and adorable dimples.

‘We’d better get some sleep,’ he said, feigning a yawn. ‘The first flight is at eight. I organised it when I went out earlier. We were lucky as there were only two seats left.’

‘I hope I get the window one,’ she said, turning on her side and propping herself on her elbow.

Matt decided it would be wise to turn out the lamp as soon as he could so he didn’t have to keep staring into those beautiful brown eyes. The soft light in the room made her gaze melting and soft, so soft he could feel himself drowning in it every time she looked at him. He muttered something about using the bathroom and came out a few minutes later dressed in the other bathrobe provided by the hotel. She was still lying facing him, her eyes widening slightly when he got between the covers without taking off the bathrobe.

‘You’re going to cook, wearing that to bed,’ she informed him knowledgably. ‘I had to toss mine off hours ago.’

I wish you hadn’t reminded me of that, Matt thought as he turned off the lamp and flopped down on the pillow. The thought of her satin skin covered only by the thin threads of a cotton sheet was almost too much for his mind to cope with.

There was barely a beat of silence before her voice split the silence.

‘Matt?’

He affected a bored, I’m-almost-asleep tone. ‘Hmm?’

‘Do you think you could leave the lamp on?’ she asked in a beseeching whisper.

Even though his eyes were closed Matt still rolled them behind his eyelids. ‘What on earth for? Do you want to read or something? It’s close to three in the morning.’

‘No but it’s so dark in here …’

He thumped the pillow to reshape it. ‘It’s supposed to be dark,’ he said dryly. ‘It’s the middle of the night.’

‘Yes, but I like to be able to see my way to the bathroom,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to break a leg or something, stumbling in the dark.’

‘Do you need the bathroom?’

‘Not right now, but I might later.’

Matt removed his bathrobe under the cloak of darkness and placed it over the nearest chair before switching on the bedside lamp, turning the dimmer switch as low as it could go. ‘There, it’s on now so close your eyes and go to sleep.’

There was another beat or two of silence.

‘Matt?’

He inwardly groaned. ‘Yes?’

‘Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be totally blind?’ she asked.

He counted to five. ‘Not lately, no.’

He heard the rustle of the bedclothes as she shifted her position. ‘I do, a lot,’ she said. ‘I had a young female patient who was blind from retinoblastoma. She had lost both eyes by the time she was two years old. She told me what it was like, how she has to read people not by their faces or body language but by using other senses. She has to memorise every place she visits. No one can move a single piece of furniture at her house otherwise she’ll bump into it. I think about it a lot—you know how you would have to adjust in so many little ways.’

‘Do we have to talk about this now?’ he asked, smothering a weary yawn, not a feigned one this time.

‘No, it’s just ever since I met her I feel like I have to have light around me,’ she said. ‘It reminds me of what so many people, me included, take for granted.’

‘You do realise you are contributing unnecessarily to global warming?’ he asked.

Kellie turned to look at him. He had dispensed with the bathrobe and was now lying on his back with his eyes closed, his arms propped behind his head, his biceps bulging, and his stomach flat and naked to his waist where the thin cotton sheet was resting. His chest was as tanned as the rest of his body, not entirely hairless but not overly so. The trail of black curly hair burrowed below the sheet to where it loosely covered his groin.

Kellie knew she shouldn’t be staring but it had been a very long time since she had seen a man in such fabulous physical condition. Her pulse fluttered like a trapped moth beneath her skin.

She was less than a metre away from him. She could reach out with one of her hands and slide it down his ridged abdomen; her fingers could splay over his maleness, stirring it to fervent life with the merest brush of her fingertips.

‘It’d be tough, though, don’t you think?’ she asked, forcing her mind away from the temptation of his body. ‘Being blind, I mean.’

Matt opened his eyes and turned to look at her and then wished he hadn’t. The shadow of her cleavage was right in his line of vision and the delicious curves of her breasts were outlined by the sheet tucked against her. Even if he closed his eyes again he knew it would be impossible to erase that vision from his mind.

Possibly for ever.

‘Aren’t you exhausted?’ he said. ‘You’ve had a tough day, by anyone’s standards.’

She wriggled under the bedclothes again and let out a tiny sigh. ‘I guess I am a bit tired …’

Thank God, Matt thought as he watched her eyelids start to droop. He watched as she drifted off, her mouth relaxing into a soft plump curve, her slim form covered by the sheet making him wish he could run his hand over her, exploring every dip and curve of her body.

He clenched his hands into fists, scrunching his eyes shut, but the gentle sound of her breathing kept him awake for most of the night.

Bright morning sunlight pierced Kellie’s eyelids and she sat bolt upright and rubbed at her eyes. ‘Hey,’ she said, glancing at her watch. ‘Aren’t we supposed to have left by now?’

Matt dragged his head off the pillow and looked at the bedside clock through slitted eyes. He muttered a stiff curse and threw off the bedclothes without thinking.

He suddenly saw Kellie’s eyes go wide and then the delicate rise of colour rush up over her face. He reached for the bathrobe he’d discarded the night before and, tying it with more haste than security, lunged for the phone.

Kellie overheard every word of the exchange, realising as the heated conversation went on they would have to hurry or they would miss the only flight to Culwulla Creek that day, which would mean a long road trip in a hire car from Brisbane.

Using the sheet as a cover, she scuttled into the bathroom and tried not to think about what she had seen in that brief lapse when he had leapt from the bed, although she knew it was going to be very hard to erase it from her mind.

Matt was built like a bodybuilder, not the over-the-top anabolic steroids type but the type that sent female pulses soaring. Pumped muscles, leanness where leanness looked best, like on the flat planes of a stomach that looked as if it had been carved from a slab of marble.

When she came out dressed in her rinsed-out shorts and top and running shoes he was dressed and ready to go. ‘We have to hurry,’ he said, scooping up his doctor’s bag. ‘They’re holding the flight for us but only because we’re medical personnel.’

The attendant smiled at Matt as he led the way up the gangway. ‘Well done, Dr McNaught,’ she said, ‘and with three minutes to spare.’

Matt gave her a brief smile in return and, nodding in apology to the already seated and belted passengers, indicated for Kellie to precede him. ‘You can have the window seat,’ he said with a deadpan expression. ‘And the armrest too, if you want it.’