Australian Affairs: Claimed: Dr Chandler's Sleeping Beauty / Countering His Claim / Australia's Maverick Millionaire. Margaret Way
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He flashed a brief on-off smile. ‘You’re welcome.’
And without another word he ambled off to where he had left his towel further along the beach, turning every female head as he went.
Kitty slowly released a breath and only just resisted the urge to fan her face with one of her hands. ‘Way too much sun, my girl,’ she said under her breath and, trudging through the sand, headed home.
* * *
As soon as Jake walked into the A&E unit the next morning Gwen and a nurse and a resident who were in the office went silent, just as if someone had flicked a volume switch to mute.
‘What’s going on?’ he asked.
‘I have to check some bloods,’ the resident said, and dashed out.
‘Er…me too,’ the nurse said, and quickly followed the resident.
Jake eyeballed Gwen. ‘What gives?’ he asked.
‘You were seen canoodling with Dr Cargill,’ Gwen said as she folded her arms across her ample chest. ‘Apparently it’s all over the hospital.’
Jake frowned. ‘Canoodling?’
‘Yes,’ Gwen said in mild reproach. ‘I thought you liked to keep your private life separate from your professional one—or are you making a special exception this time?’
‘Canoodling?’ he said again. ‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’
‘You know exactly what it means,’ Gwen said. ‘What are you thinking, Jake? You know how awkward it gets when staff members have flings with each other. It’s bad enough when they work in separate departments, but on the same unit? Everyone feels the fall-out when it’s bye-bye time.’
‘I am not involved with Dr Cargill,’ he said. Yet, he tacked on silently. ‘Who the hell put that rumour out there?’
‘You work together,’ Gwen said. ‘Word has it you live in the same town house block, and now we hear you’re playing together.’
He looked at her blankly. ‘Playing together?’
Gwen gave him a look. ‘On the beach,’ she said. ‘In full view of everyone.’
Jake barked out a laugh. ‘I was teaching her to swim…or sort of.’
Gwen rolled her eyes. ‘Well, whatever you were doing with her has been witnessed and reported. I thought you should know.’
‘Thanks a bunch,’ Jake said, grinning. ‘Does Dr Cargill know we are now an item?’
‘Not yet,’ Gwen said with grim foreboding. ‘But I hope I’m not around when she finds out.’
KITTY was examining a patient with a mild blunt force trauma to his forehead in Cubicle Four when she overheard two junior nurses talking as they changed the linen in cubicle three.
‘Talk about a fast worker,’ one of them said. ‘She’s only been here a day or two and she’s already got her hooks into him.’
‘Yeah, well, she certainly got his attention by turning up in that hooker costume the other night,’ the other one said. ‘Do you reckon it was staged?’
‘Must’ve been,’ the other one said. ‘What a slut.’
Kitty’s heart slammed into her breastbone. She broke out in a sweat, her cheeks firing up and her skin prickling all over in outrage.
‘Is everything all right?’ the patient lying on the bed asked worriedly. ‘I’m not going to die, am I?’
Kitty forced a cool professional smile to her stiff features. ‘No, Mr Jenkins,’ she said. ‘You have a small haematoma that will take a day or two to subside. The skin isn’t broken, so there’s a slim to none chance of infection. You’re not showing any signs of a concussion, but you need to take things easy over the next day or so. Don’t drive, operate heavy machinery or consume alcohol for the next twenty-four hours.’
‘Thanks, Doctor,’ the man said. ‘The wife will kill me if I cark it now. We’ve got a cruise booked for next month. We’ve been saving up for it for five years.’
‘You’ll be fine by then,’ Kitty said, patting his arm before she left the cubicle.
During her lunch break Kitty went in search of Jake Chandler, but he wasn’t on the floor or in either of the doctors’ rooms. He was in his office. She felt every eye following her as she made her way through the unit. She had been the subject of hospital gossip before. Her break-up with Charles had done the rounds. It had been excruciating to know everyone was talking about her private life in such lurid detail. She had felt so exposed; so raw and vulnerable. She knew it would only have got worse after Charles’s wedding so she had decided to take herself out of the picture. But it seemed that even on the other side of the world people with pathetically small lives thought it sport to speculate on the lives of others. She didn’t have the option of running away this time. She would have to face it and deal with it.
She took a calming breath and rapped firmly on the door.
‘Come in, Dr Cargill.’
Kitty’s hand stilled where it rested on the doorknob. So he had been expecting her, had he? What was he playing at? Was this his idea of a joke? Did he have nothing better to do than make a laughing-stock out of her?
She pulled her shoulders back and kept her chin up, and turned the knob and entered the office, closing the door with a resounding click behind her. ‘I hate to interrupt you when you’re busy, but—’
‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘I’ve ordered the invitations, and I know a really cool florist who’ll do the flowers for mate’s rates, not retail.’
Kitty blinked. ‘Pardon?’
‘The wedding,’ he said indolently, swivelling his office chair from side to side.
‘Wedding?’ She frowned until her forehead ached. ‘What wedding?’
His blue eyes shone with amusement. ‘Ours,’ he said. ‘Apparently we’re engaged and expecting triplets.’
She felt her jaw drop. ‘Are you out of your mind?’
He smiled a breath-stealing smile. ‘Gossip,’ he said. ‘You only have to look at someone around here and people start planning the guest list for the wedding.’
Kitty opened and closed her mouth, totally lost for words.
‘Apparently we were caught canoodling,’ he said.
‘Canoodling?’
He gave her a been-there-asked-that look. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I looked it up in the dictionary. It means to kiss and cuddle amorously.’
‘But we didn’t do any such thing!’ she blurted.
He lifted one of his broad shoulders up and down in a casual shrug. ‘Doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘It looked like it. That’s enough to set the tongues wagging around here. No one believes me when I tell them I was actually saving your life.’
‘You weren’t saving my life,’ she said, sending him an affronted glare. ‘I wasn’t drowning.’
‘And I wasn’t kissing and cuddling you amorously, but there you go,’ he said. ‘What’s done is done.’
Kitty clenched her fists by her sides. ‘Then it will have to be undone,’ she insisted. ‘I don’t want people speculating on my private life.’
‘Relax,’ he said. ‘They’ll find someone else to talk