Unable or unwilling?
Who could say? Certainly not Fern Rycroft.
It was like surgical cases Fern had read of where only one anaesthetic took hold during an operation-the anaesthetic that paralysed the body and yet kept every sense still tingling with awareness. Able to feel every pinprick of pain.
Yet this wasn’t pain. The lightness of the kiss had faded. Something deeper was happening here. Something she didn’t understand and had no control over.
Quinn’s hands had released her fingers and were now around her waist, circling her slender body and pulling her in against his hard, muscled thighs. His lips had stopped their gentle searching. They had moved from gentleness to straight plunder in one savage instant.
And she was responding.
Dear heaven, she could feel herself responding. Fern felt her lips open for him to deepen the kiss, compelled by a force that was stronger than anything she had felt before.
He was so…
So…
So male!
The word drifted through her overwhelmed senses as the only way she could describe him. What was drawing her to him seemed something she had no control over-Eve to Adam…Woman to Man-a primeval, aching need that had nothing to do with sense or responsibility or future security…
No!
From somewhere-somewhere so far back in the recesses of her mind that it was almost lost, Fern found the last vestige of common sense reasserting itself.
She shoved her hands against Quinn Gallagher’s chest and shoved as hard as she could.
She was released and she knew, as his lips left hers and she staggered back from him, that the only thing her traitorous body felt was regret.
‘What…what the heck do you think you’re doing?’ Her breath was coming in panting gasps.
‘Not me…’ he said and, like Fern, Quinn’s voice was shaken to the depths.
He made no move to follow her. Quinn Gallagher stood looking down at Fern in the filtered moonlight and his dark eyes were enigmatic and fathoms deep. ‘We, Fern Rycroft,’ he corrected her gently. ‘I believe we were engaged in a spot of passion. Something you don’t believe in.’
‘No!’ It was a cry from the heart. Fern put her hands to her lips as if she could wipe away his touch. ‘I didn’t…’
‘Didn’t want it?’ Quinn’s mouth quirked. ‘Liar.’
‘I’m not.’
‘Can your Sam make you feel like that?’ Quinn shook his head. He stepped forward and his hand came out to touch her face lightly.
Fern flinched and backed still further.
‘I’m going…I’m going back in to Aunt Maud,’ she whispered.
Quinn nodded. ‘I think that’s wise,’ he told her gently. ‘Run to your aunt. But, Fern…’
‘Y-yes?’
‘Surely an almost married lady should run to her intended? Unless…unless her intended was never that in the first place.’
CHAPTER FOUR
THERE was no danger of Fern going to sleep after that. She lay staring at moonbeams on the ceiling and her mind twisted on a tortuous path she had no way of escaping. The fact that Aunt Maud’s pulse beat strongly and regularly under Fern’s fingers hardly made her feel better at all.
It was a real relief when morning came.
At six the ward door opened and a middle-aged lady appeared, bearing a tray. Fern recognized her at once. Geraldine Hamstead, a near neighbour of Fern’s aunt and uncle and one of the island’s few trained nurses.
‘Cup of tea?’ Geraldine-whispered cheerfully, and bent to check Maud. ‘Oh, she’s still sleeping…’
As if to give the lie to the statement, Maud’s eyes flicked open. Maud stared up at Geraldine and then looked across at Fern in bewilderment.
‘Geraldine…Fern…’ And then the events of the previous day flooded back and Maud’s face crumpled into tears.
‘Oh, Fern, your lovely wedding. Oh, Fern…’
‘Now, you’re not to fret yourself over a silly wedding, Auntie,’ Fern said soundly, slipping from her own bedcovers to give her aunt a swift hug. There were still monitors attached to Maud’s breast and a saline drip was attached to her arm but it was more important to hug the elderly lady at this stage than to worry about leads and tubing. ‘I can get married any old day,’ Fern smiled.
‘But not on the island. I know you won’t get married on the island after this.’ Fern’s aunt gulped back tears. ‘It was Lizzy, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ Fern agreed. ‘We might have known she’d do something silly. Forget her now, though, Aunt. What’s done is done and Geraldine has a good strong cup of tea here that needs drinking. Do you feel like it?’
‘Y-yes, please…’
There were still weak tears sliding down Maud’s face. She struggled to sit up but Geraldine and Fern were there before her, sliding their arms in behind, supporting her and helping her to hold the cup as she sipped.
‘You shouldn’t have to do this, Geraldine…Fern…’ Maud whispered as, tea finished, she sank gratefully back onto her pillows.
‘My pleasure.’ Geraldine smiled fondly down at her neighbour. ‘I should have been here last night but I was so darned crook with those dratted oysters! So was Barbara and we’re the only two trained nurses on the island free to help at the hospital. It was a blessing Doc Gallagher and Jess didn’t go to your wedding lunch, too. Now…’ Geraldine turned her starched smile onto Fern ‘…I’m intending to give your aunt a wash, Fern Rycroft, so be off with you and let us get on with it. Dr Gallagher wants a word.’
A word…
She had to face him some time. Fern would have liked to slink off home and reappear in about a year. She didn’t feel up to facing Quinn Gallagher yet.
Geraldine had turned to fill a bowl with warm water from the basin on the wall. Smiling still, she jerked her head to the door.
‘Doc Gallagher’s a busy man, Fern,’ she warned. ‘I wouldn’t keep the good doctor waiting. He’s in the office down the corridor to your left. And don’t worry,’ she added, seeing Fern’s hesitation and misreading the reason, ‘your aunt’s in good hands.’
Fern threw up her hands in mock surrender and managed a smile. ‘OK, OK. I know when I’m not wanted.’
Quinn was waiting for her. He was sipping black tea from a huge chipped mug and he gestured to a teapot the size of which Fern had never seen in her life. It was vast.
‘Now I know how you keep yourself awake,’ she told him, only just containing the tremor in her voice.
‘Beats amphetamines.’ Quinn rose from his desk and looked quizzically down at Fern. ‘I told you, I’m used to sleep deprivation-but you look dead beat.’
‘I hardly had a restful night,’ Fern said bitterly and then wished she hadn’t.
‘Is that tone of voice inferring that you had a restless night because of me?’ Quinn’s eyebrows rose in polite incredulity.
‘You didn’t help.’
‘Dr Rycroft, I hardly think you’re fitted for married life if a fleeting kiss can be described as disturbing.’
‘“Fleeting”…’ Fern’s breath was dragged in as a gasp of outrage.
‘OK.’ Quinn spread his hands placatingly. ‘It wasn’t fleeting. It was, in fact, most satisfactory. Would you care for a repeat performance?’
‘I would not!’ Fern backed like a frightened rabbit ‘Pity.’ Quinn’s dark eyes gleamed with dangerous humour. He didn’t pursue it, though, but sighed in mock resignation. ‘Never mind. There’s time to spare. How about if I keep dreamboat chained to his bed for weeks while I have my wicked way with you?’
‘If you mean Sam…’
‘But of course I mean Sam.’ Quinn’s eyes widened in innocence. ‘How many dreamboats do you have, Dr Rycroft?’
It was all Fern could do not to slap his smiling face. The man laughed down at her with warmth and admiration in his eyes and she felt her world shift crazily on its axis. She was badly out of control and she knew it.