Bother Lizzy.
She glanced down at her watch.
Seven p.m.
The wedding reception should be drawing to a close right now and she and Sam should be boarding a plane to head back to the city. Back to their life away from this island.
She wasn’t going through this again, she thought grimly. Not even for her aunt and uncle. She and Sam would have a quiet registry office wedding back in Sydney.
Quinn Gallagher had purchased the biggest house on the island. The place had been built by a movie star as a romantic escape from the eyes of the media. The movie star’s escape from the limelight had been all too effective, however, and his bankruptcy had left the vast house on the headland at the north of the island uninhabited and useless.
‘The house is a white elephant,’ the locals had jeered, boggling at the corridors of guest rooms, ballroom, swimming pool and acres of manicured gardens.
White elephant or not, it was the perfect place for a clinic, Fern thought, as she steered her white limousine in through the gates five minutes after collecting Frank. Quinn Gallagher must have money behind him to be able to afford this place.
‘Barega Medical Clinic’, the sign on the gate said, lit from underneath by concealed fluorescent lighting, and for an instant Fern felt a fleeting jab of envy. It would be wonderful to be a doctor here…
Not here…Don’t be stupid, Fern…
The lights were blazing from the verandah and as the car pulled to a halt Quinn strode from the main entrance to meet them. His dinner suit had been discarded in favour of casual trousers with a clinical white coat thrown on over an open-necked shirt.
The change had done nothing to remove the
Oblivious of Fern’s reaction, Quinn strode swiftly over and pulled open the back door.
‘Did you find the woman?’ he flung at Fern as he bent over Frank.
‘Lizzy? Y-yes.’ What was it about the man that had Fern flustered every time she laid eyes on him?
‘And?’
‘The oysters must have been left in the sun too long,’ Fern said a trifle unsteadily, aware that if she told the truth Lizzy could be up on a criminal charge.
‘I see.’ Quinn flashed her a fast, assessing glance and Fern knew that he really did see. ‘Then I can assume we should have no major problems.’
‘I expect not.’
Quinn nodded but his attention was already shifting fully back to Frank.
‘How are you, mate?’ he said gently, noting Frank’s tight, pinched face. Quinn reached out to feel Frank’s pulse. ‘I reckon we’ll get a stretcher to bring you in to bed, eh?’
‘I can walk,’ Frank mumbled, but Quinn shook his head.
‘Why walk when you can ride?’ Quinn grinned at the ribbons on the car. ‘Though we might forgo a bit of the bridal splendour from here on.’ He motioned to the verandah and Fern saw a waiting trolley at the head of the stairs.
How would they get that up to the entrance…?
Then, to her amazement, Fern saw a wide, sloping ramp had been installed beside the granite steps. Chrome handrails bordered both steps and ramp.
No expense had been spared here.
Fern’s impressions of expensive renovation deepened the further she went into the clinic. Fern had been in this house once for a lavish party thrown on the movie star’s arrival to the island. Then the house had screamed glitz and glamour. Now it spoke of welcoming comfort, backed by clinical cleanliness and state-of-the-act technology.
How could Barega support such a place?
As she and Quinn wheeled Frank’s trolley along the main corridor Fern inwardly boggled. This place was worth a fortune and the medical renovations were worth almost as much again.
The room that Quinn steered Frank’s trolley into was set up as a two-bed ward, though it was large enough to take six beds if the need arose. It was vast, with huge French windows looking out over the verandah beyond.
It was a great place to be ill in, Fern thought, knowing that once the sun rose in the morning the patients could see the garden and the distant ocean beyond those windows. This was a far cry from the wards at Fern’s teaching hospital in Sydney.
The other bed was already taken.
‘Fern!’
Fern’s eyes flew to the bed’s occupant with shock.
Sam…
‘Sam, are you OK?’ she asked swiftly, concerned. There must be something worse than a gastric upset happening to Sam if Quinn had admitted him.
‘Fern, where the hell have you been?’ her fiancé croaked from his mound of pillows. ‘I’ve been ringing your uncle’s house…everywhere…Finally I had to get Mum and Dad to drive me here!’
Fern gazed down at her intended husband. His normally florid countenance had recovered some of its colour and his bright purple pyjamas increased the impression that he wasn’t dangerously ill. Then Fern’s gaze moved to Quinn.
Why on earth had Sam been admitted?
‘Mr Hubert has vomited three times,’ Quinn Gallagher said solemnly, guessing her question. His expressive lips twitched only slightly as he spoke. Laughter, it seemed, was being firmly suppressed. ‘Mr Hubert feels there’s a very real danger he’ll become dehydrated and, after being so ill, the only safe place for him is in hospital.’
‘But you’re no sicker than anyone else who ate the oysters, Sam,’ Fern stammered, and then wished she hadn’t as Sam’s face tightened in anger.
‘How on earth would you know that, Fern?’ he snapped. ‘You didn’t even check. You just went dashing off and you left me…You left me…’ The big man’s voice rose on an incredulous note of disbelief. It seemed that such treachery could hardly be believed.
Fern winced. She knew that Sam was one who called a cold the flu and the flu pneumonia but as he was normally an exceedingly robust individual she hadn’t been called on for too much sympathy in the past.
Maybe, seeing that he was unused to illness, Sam was justified in being frightened.
She crossed swiftly to his bed and bent to kiss him on the brow. ‘I’m sorry, love,’ she said gently. ‘But Maud was ill.’
‘She was hardly as ill as me!’
‘Maud had a heart attack, Sam.’ Fern was fighting hard to stay calm.
‘A heart attack!’
‘Yes.’
That silenced Sam for only a second. Then he raised himself on his elbow.
‘Your aunt’s old, though, Fern,’ he said savagely. ‘And your uncle was with her. Surely your place is with your husband.’
Count to ten. Count to ten, Fern…
Behind her, Fern was aware of Quinn Gallagher watching with malicious enjoyment.
‘You’re not my husband yet, Sam,’ Fern finally managed. She took a deep breath. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, Dr Gallagher and I need to attend to Mr Reid.’
‘But I’m going to be sick again,’ Sam hissed.
Fern sucked in her breath, fury mounting. How could she possibly have given in to this man’s pressure to marry her? Of all the insensitive oafs…
She looked down at the bedside table and picked up the shiny aluminium kidney dish.
‘Fine,’ she snarled. ‘Have a basin, Sam. Just do what you have to do and leave us alone.’
He wasn’t sick again.
Sam lay back on his pillows and watched with sullen resentment as Fern and Quinn worked on Frank.
‘I’d like your assistance, if you don’t mind,’ Quinn told her. ‘Both my nurses are suffering from the effects of your oysters.’
She would have helped without being made to feel guilty, Fern thought grimly, as she assisted Quinn to move Frank from trolley to bed. While Quinn set up a drip to replace the fluids the old man had lost, Fern gave him a gentle bed bath and helped him change into hospital pyjamas.
It took time to make the frail old man comfortable and by the look on Sam’s face it seemed that he was almost jealous. Fern felt herself growing angrier and angrier, especially as Quinn Gallagher made it clear that he was enjoying the whole situation.