ON THE RIGHT TRACK

Rebecca Lang

Surgeon Dr. Clay Sotheby has everything going for him – or so he thinks. With a good social life, and a probable promotion to Chief of Surgery in the near future, what more could he ask for? But as the time for his promotion draws near Clay feels curiously restless. And, having met Nurse Sophie Dunhill, he starts to question his priorities as he discovers he can’t put her out of his mind…

CHAPTER ONE

'Oh, come on, Dr Sotheby, it's only a bit of fun! All in a good cause, you know. It's only twenty dollars, and you could win a date with any one of these gorgeous women.'

Clay Sotheby grinned slowly, wryly, at the very pretty and enthusiastic young nurse who stood behind one of several trestle tables that flanked the interior of the vast hall where the fund-raising event for the hospital was being held. His eyes scanned the displayed photographs on the table of a dozen or so smiling women, not really taking them in. He had been waylaid as he was more or less killing time.

Raising his voice against the persistent background throb of dance music and laughter that came from the band at the other end of the hall and the gyrating mass of bodies in the centre of the floor, he asked the nurse, 'And have they consented willingly?'

'Of course.' She laughed, tossing her head so that her mass of blonde curls bounced. 'They wouldn't go into this involuntarily, would they? Even though it is for a blind date! Not that blind.' She chuckled again, batting her eyelashes at him as he gazed at close quarters into her baby-blue eyes.

'Tell me about it,' he said, putting his hands on the table to support his weight and leaning his tall body against its edge. He was only here at the fund-raiser because he was on call for the operating rooms in the department of surgery at University Hospital, Gresham. He would cover the evening and the night.

From long experience he knew that there was no point in going home early in the evening when he was on call, only to be called back again—it was much safer to wait until about ten o'clock. Not only were there emergency cases coming into the emergency department of the hospital, there were also the patients he had operated on that day who might develop postoperative complications. Although that didn't happen too often—a haemorrhage, for instance—he liked to be on hand just in case. It wasn't fair to the surgical residents-in-training or the surgical interns not to have the staff man readily available.

Not that he had anything to go home for really—the thought came to him once again—unless he counted the cat, a stray, which had come into his life about three months before. She—it had taken him a while to figure out it was a she—had shot through his front door on one cool, dark, rainy night when he'd been called back to the hospital. There had only been time then for him to note that she was all black, very skinny and half-starved, so that her ears looked too big for her head. He hadn't had the heart to shoo her back out again into the wet night, so he'd poured her a dish of milk and watched for a few moments while she'd lapped as though she hadn't eaten for a long time.

When he'd arrived home again, in the early hours of the morning, he'd found her curled up asleep in the middle of his bed, her slight form making a cosy indentation in the luxury of his down duvet. He'd smiled at her tiredly and had adopted her then and there, as the line of least resistance, naming her Victoria.

Now the young nurse looked at him alluringly, leaning forward so that her purple silk dress with its décolletage offered him a view that left little to the imagination. 'Well,' she said, smiling, 'you buy a ticket which we put into a box for a draw some time next week. There will be fifteen winners, as we have fifteen women who've volunteered to be blind dates.'

Clay raised his eyebrows, noting that the girl blushed. 'Is there a choice?' he said.

'No. No choice.'

'Isn't it a bit...er...risky for the women? I mean, the whole concept of a blind date?' he commented.

'Not really.' The young nurse returned his smile. 'We know your name, address and telephone number. We also know where you work, and so on.' Again she blinked her eyelids rapidly. 'There's plenty of opportunity for us to weed out anyone who's a bit dubious. All slimeballs excluded. I'm only approaching doctors in a particular age group, Dr Sotheby, and those I judge to be of the right type. The word "chauvinist" may gradually be turning into an irrelevant concept, but we all know what it means, don't we? We're certainly not going to abandon it until it's no longer needed.'

'Quite,' he said, grinning, not entirely sure what she meant. 'I'm sure relieved that I'm the right type. And are you really a good judge of character?'

'You'd better believe it. There are no flies on me, Dr Sotheby,' she said with a laugh. 'That's why they picked me for this job. I also work in Emerg. I see all comers there.'

'I'm sure you deal with them more than adequately. Perhaps I would be borderline,' he murmured, giving her a mocking grin.

'Oh, no, Dr Sotheby, you would be perfect. There aren't too many men...real men...who aren't married or otherwise tied up, so to speak,' she enthused.

'How do you know I'm not "tied up"?' he queried, intrigued by her strategy.

'There isn't much that's secret in a hospital, Dr Sotheby,' she said pertly. 'Your private life becomes public knowledge.' She gave a trilling laugh, which to him implied that she knew all that there was to know about his private affairs.

'Are you included here?' This time he looked at the displayed photographs more closely.

'No, Dr Sotheby, I didn't have the guts to volunteer.'

'You surprise me. I was just getting the impression that your delicate exterior belied a tough interior.' When Clay raised his eyes to her face he saw that she had coloured again.

He was used to having that effect on women. It didn't really mean much in the long term, he'd discovered. In his job he met and worked with a lot of women, some very attractive, very bright. Many were not averse to a relationship with a surgeon, not expecting anything to come of it, not expecting any shared future. That was how he wanted it for now, too, and for the foreseeable future.

His eyes strayed down to the creamy shoulders of the young woman in front of him, imagining how she would feel if he could smooth his hands slowly over that bare skin that looked so soft and plump. Although his interest quickened, part of him remained detached; he wanted more from a woman than a lovely body. On the front of her dress was a small, sticky label which bore the name Suzie. But a lot of the time he was bored...so very bored. Only his work really engaged his attention.

'You...you haven't said whether you'll buy a ticket, Dr Sotheby. Twenty dollars is the minimum,' Suzie said breathlessly. 'There's no upper limit. Oh, please, say you'll do it!'

'Call me Clay,' he drawled. 'It sounds so formal when you say "Dr Sotheby".'

'I've always wondered what Clay stands for,' Suzie said.

'Short for Clayton,' he explained ruefully. 'My mother's maiden name. But, please, don't call me anything other than Clay.'

Suzie was suitably captivated by the implied suggestion that there might be other opportunities where she could use his first name. 'You sound like that great guy who was in that really old movie...what was it? Gone With the Wind or something?' Suzie said. 'My granny was always going on about that. Not that I'm implying it's an old-fashioned name. It's really great, actually.'

'Suzie's a great name, too,' he said gallantly, reaching into his pocket for his wallet.

'Thanks.'

'I'm not sure I'm flattered by your reference to your granny.'

'You should be! She was a great connoisseur of men.'

'Relieved to hear it.'

'Then you'll buy a ticket, Dr Soth— I mean Clay? If I don't sell a certain number of tickets I'll get blasted.'

'Sure,' he said, silently vowing that if he 'won' a blind date he would find some excuse to get out of it. 'Will you take a cheque?'

'Yes, anything. Thank you so much. Fill in this form with your personal details, please.'

While Clay filled out the necessary form and wrote a cheque for two hundred dollars, most of his mind on the patients he'd operated on that day, the music came to a halt.

Glancing surreptitiously at his wrist-watch, he speculated on whether he had time to ask Suzie to abandon her post and have a dance with him before he had to make some necessary telephone calls. It was a quarter past nine. In another half-hour he would call his chief resident, Rick Sommers, to make sure there were no post-operative problems with his patients, then, if all was well there, he would call the emergency department to make sure that there were no pending cases for him there before he headed home.

Strictly speaking, Rick Sommers could deal with most things himself and would only call in his chief if they had to operate right away or if there was something he really couldn't cope with. But Clay had got into the habit of staying until 10 p.m. when on call. If he were to go home earlier, he wouldn't be able to relax anyway; he knew that much from long experience.

One of the interns got there before him with Suzie,' asking her to dance just as the music started up again with a slow, smoochy number. There had been a very good turnout for this fund-raiser on a Friday evening. For once, large numbers of the medical staff were there, as well as many nurses, physiotherapists and lab staff.

Clay shrugged as he turned to watch Suzie being drawn into the arms of another man...a considerably younger man. Quite suddenly he felt a little old, maybe too old for this at age thirty-five, as he watched young couples cleaving together, swaying to the soft, sensuous music that seemed oddly nostalgic to him just for a few seconds. Although he liked a good time as much as the next man, it seemed that he had not fully given himself up to something like this since he'd been a medical student, when some of their fun-making had had a kind of frenetic desperation.

Looking at his watch again in the dim light, finding himself uncharacteristically impatient to get home, he bumped into someone and found an elbow jabbed into the region of his diaphragm while he felt the toe of his shoe make contact with someone's ankle.

'Ouch!' an irritable female voice complained.

'Sorry,' he apologized, 'it's a bit like a zoo in here.' He put out his arms to steady the woman he had bumped into from behind, while she turned to face him.

Unlike the enraptured Suzie, this woman was a few years older, he surmised, and definitely not enraptured. 'Scowling' would be a better word to describe her, Clay thought as he scrutinized her face. Otherwise it would have been an attractive face, almost beautiful. She was tall for a woman, slim, rather busty, good legs...he took in that much in the first few seconds... and she wore a dark red dress in a sort of glittery material that clung to her figure, outlining it in a definitely attractive way.

In the soft, intermittent glare of the revolving lights over the dance floor, Clay could see that her hair was a dark auburn colour, drawn back from her face in a sophisticated pleat behind her head—unlike the casual profusion of hair on the exuberant Suzie. This woman had an equally creamy, soft-looking skin, but the light was too dim to see the colour of her eyes exactly.

Another thing...she looked vaguely familiar; there was something about the shape and set of her eyes, which were large, expressive, doe-like.

'So you ought to be sorry,' she said. 'It feels as though you've fractured my ankle.' The voice sounded familiar, too.

He watched her while she stood awkwardly on one leg to rub the ankle of the other leg. She seemed impervious to his habitual charm.

'Sorry,' he said again, contritely. 'Perhaps you would do me the honour of this dance.' He smiled, trying to keep any hint of irony out of his voice.

'I don't think—'

'Please,' he said.

'I think you might tread all over my feet, Dr Sotheby,' she said.

'Do I know you?' he said politely, frowning. 'You do look and sound familiar. You'll have to forgive me. Women look different in evening dress. What's your name?'

'Dunhill,' she said baldly, standing up on both feet so he could see that she did look rather attractive in the shimmery blood-red dress.

'You must have another name,' he said.

'Sophie,' she said, showing no sign of unbending in her attitude, 'Sophie Dunhill.'

'Ah,' he said, 'Dunhill of the operating room?'

'Yes, the same.'

The abruptness on her part made Clay recall, rather vaguely, that they'd had a verbal exchange in the operating room two or three weeks before, which hadn't been particularly pleasant. It had been the result of some mild misdemeanour on her part when she'd been his scrub nurse for an operation which had, from what he remembered, been rather long and tense. He had reacted with bad temper, brought on by his having been up for most of the previous night. Was that it?

'Ah,' he said again. While they'd been talking, the music had come to an end again, then, as though on a special cue, the band started up with a rather maudlin tune, he thought...something about a woman in a red dress. Anyway, it was too good to miss, if he was to mend the remembered breach between himself and Miss Dunhill. After all, he did like to be on good terms with the people he worked with so closely in the rarefied atmosphere of the operating rooms.

'Please,' he murmured, putting his hands on Sophie's bare upper arms, 'this is too appropriate to miss.' With that, he steered her backwards the short distance to the dance floor before taking her gently into his arms, noting as he did so that the young intern and Suzie were locked together as one.

One does not have to be twenty-four or -five to be able to do this, he thought. To her credit, Miss Dunhill—he assumed she was a 'Miss' as she wore no ring on her wedding finger—schooled her features into a mask of impassivity. Even so, her reluctance was almost tangible. Although he held her lightly, with no hint of possessiveness or threat, she was stiff and unyielding in his arms. He racked his brains to think of exactly what had taken place in the operating room to engender such antipathy in this woman.

'For whatever I've done, apart from the kick just now,' he said, trying to cover all angles, 'I apologize most profusely.' In order to be heard above the music he had to put his lips close to her ear, where he had an absurd desire to kiss her neck. Perhaps he was getting frustrated in his old age. Usually he was in complete control of himself, and in control of a lot else besides.

Sophie Dunhill didn't reply.

It would be 'Ms Dunhill', Clay reflected; it was out of date now to call a woman 'miss', or maybe even to think it.

In the crush of the dance floor they were forced to move closer together, although it felt to him as though Ms Dunhill resented such intimacy. For his own part, he reluctantly felt the impression left by the luscious Suzie gradually fading, to be replaced by the more sophisticated and enigmatic reality of the woman in his arms.

'I also apologize,' he added, 'for anything of a boorish nature that I may say to you in the future, although I shall try very hard, of course, not to do anything of the sort—be boorish, that is.'

Quite suddenly he felt her relax, then realized that she was shaking with laughter. 'You're trying too hard altogether, Dr Sotheby,' she said, after a moment. Her voice had a melodic, soothing quality now, which he found attractive.

'Call me Clay,' he offered.

'No,' she said, controlling her amusement, 'I can't think of you on a first-name basis. When someone has been rude to me...unforgivably rude...there's no way I could ever think of them in a casual light.'

'Never?'

'That's right.' She was still smiling, he could see as he drew back a little to look at her, yet he had the uncomfortable feeling that she was smiling at him rather than with him.

'You sound very unforgiving, Ms Dunhill,' he said, drawing her gently against him in the crush as someone inadvertently gave him a vicious shove from behind. 'Or may I call you Sophie?'

'Don't bother, Dr Sotheby,' she said, stiffening slightly as he placed his cheek against the side of her head, which seemed the natural place for it, even though he had to sag slightly at the knees to be on a level with her. Her amusement was obviously reluctant, too.

'Your hair smells lovely,' he said softly, saying the first thing that came into his head.

While she remained silent as they moved slowly in unison to the music, Clay racked his brains again to recall the details of his transgression, following her own, in the operating room. There had been a lot of other cases since then, as well as other nurses working with him. Yes, that was it... He'd become irritable with her, had said something which had sounded sarcastic— although he almost never stooped to sarcasm—when she'd passed him a wrong instrument. She'd been his scrub nurse for a Whipple resection, a rather tricky and long operation on the pancreas, stomach and gut, generally done for cancer of the pancreas.

Ms Dunhill, he recalled, had worked with him on quite a lot of other occasions and had seemed like an excellent scrub nurse, yet on that day she'd somehow been distracted. Although he'd apologized at the time, as had she, a certain amount of damage had been done on the human relationship scale. Once a surgeon gained a reputation for boorishness, no one wanted to work with him, even though they were often forced to do so—there was an 'atmosphere'.

Since then he'd taken pains to restore his good name. After all, this was the twenty-first century and one couldn't easily get away with high-handed behaviour for long. Not that he wanted to, of course; he wasn't some sort of tyrant. That particular patient had been discharged home quite a while ago.

It had been a long operation, he recalled... 'Give me one of those long, angled Lahey clamps,' he'd said to the scrub nurse, Sophie Dunhill, as he and his surgical team had stood over the patient on the operating table, where the exposed abdominal cavity had been held open with large self-retaining retractors so that they'd been able to see deep within it. There had been little sound in the operating room, other than the muted workings of the equipment which had supplied the anaesthetic gases and oxygen to their patient.

When he had glanced at the instrument which the scrub nurse had placed in his hand he'd seen that it had been the wrong one. Very similar, but wrong. There had been a tenseness in the OR—they'd all felt it and reacted to it in different ways.

'Hell,' he'd said then—unforgivably, as he saw now. 'Not that one. I want the Lahey, please. It has a more sharply curved end. Surely you know it?'

'Sorry...yes, of course.' Quickly the nurse had taken the offending clamp from his hand and given him the right one.

Instead of leaving it at that, his irritation and fatigue had goaded him to add, 'We all feel like falling asleep, Nurse, but, please, don't do it until we've finished the operation.' Instant regret, of course. No one had laughed, or even sniggered. It wasn't the done thing to get a laugh at someone else's expense. He hadn't known what had got into him, it had been so out of character.

'Sorry,' she'd whispered again, at which he'd felt like a boor.

At the end of the long operation, when he'd seen his patient wheeled on a stretcher to the post-anaesthesia room, he stayed behind to speak to the nurse. Still wearing her soiled surgical gown, her cap, face mask and plastic goggles, she was clearing her used instruments off the wheeled table where they'd been set out for the operation. It did occur to him that she'd kept her mask on so that he couldn't see her face clearly, and she kept her head lowered as he approached.

'I want to apologize for what I said,' he began, putting a hand on her upper arm so that she was forced to stop what she was doing. 'I'm not usually that irritable. I'll put it down to the fact that I was up for a good part of the night.'

The nurse shrugged, turning to face him so that he could see her large, vulnerable eyes behind the goggles, eyes that were tired and fraught with the stress of the job. They were beautiful eyes, too...

'I'm sorry as well,' she said softly, looking down again. 'Of course I know what a Lahey clamp is. I...I just had a momentary lapse of concentration. It shouldn't have happened, I know, and I don't want to make an excuse... It's just...'

'What?' he prompted when she hesitated.

'Oh...nothing really,' she said quickly. 'It won't happen again, Dr Sotheby, if I can help it.'

'Forget what I said, if you can,' he urged.

She nodded and turned away, back to her work, while he left the operating room feeling far from easy in his mind for having made what seemed like an inadequate apology. He'd been doubly chastened by the look of strain on her face. During his student and intern years he'd seen and worked with enough irascible surgeons—commonly known as assholes—and had witnessed impotently their modus operandi, to fear becoming that way himself.

They were walking and talking examples of the corrupting influence of power, while a few of them were simply spoiled children in adult bodies who would never grow up, given to temper tantrums. Often in those days he'd been on the receiving end.

There was a strong possibility, he mused as he walked to the surgeons' change room in the OR to have a shower, that when the current Chief of Surgery, Jerry Claibourne, stepped down after the maximum ten years in the position, he, Clay, would be nominated for the job. Jerry himself made no secret of the fact that he was the front runner for the position. From that, it was probable that he would actually get the job, although not without opposition from a few people who were in competition with him, some of whom thought him too young for the job.

Now, on the dance floor, with Sophie Dunhill in his arms, all those details of that day came back to him. It had seemed at the time that she'd been about to give him a reason for her distraction during the operation, then had decided not to do so in case it had sounded like an excuse. It had occurred to him that she hadn't been the sort of nurse who'd presented excuses.

With her in his arms, with the scent of her hair in his nostrils, he wondered what that reason had been, and he felt again a sharp regret concerning his outburst. Usually he let things go after a while, which was the only way to survive. They generally didn't nag at him in this way. Maybe he was becoming more self-aware in his old age, and again he wondered at the sense he had of time passing.

There wasn't often time to think about the deeper issues of life, his ultimate mortality. He was so busy that he had to focus on the issues of the day, and those of just a few weeks ahead... with the ultimate goal of being Chief of Surgery at University Hospital, Gresham, Ontario.

'It's a great turnout, isn't it?' he commented, drawing back to look at Sophie's face. 'The hospital sure needs all the dollars it can get.' That was certainly true. With the government budget cuts, the hospital was struggling, like a lot of other government-funded institutions.

'Yes,' she said, smiling, biting her lip so that it wouldn't show too much. Her expressive eyes were looking at him very perceptively from under lowered brows.

'Trying too hard again?' he said.

She nodded. 'Doesn't matter. It's quite sweet really. Makes a change.'

'Trying too hard comes from too much work and not enough play, I guess,' he said. 'You lose that easy facility with women.'

'Do you, Dr Sotheby?' she said.

A little nonplussed, he fell silent, concentrating instead on the physical pleasure of her company. When the dance ended she pulled back immediately. 'Thank you,' she said formally.

'Hey, Dr Sotheby, may I have the next dance?' It was Suzie, coming between him and Sophie. 'You were so generous with your donation, I feel I have to make sure you really enjoy the evening.'

'Nice of you,' he murmured, smiling at the girl who evidently saw no irony in her own words, when he had been enjoying himself quite adequately.

'Goodnight Ms. Dunhill,' he said to his erstwhile partner.

'Goodnight.'

A crescendo of sound from the band drowned out any further exchange, and Suzie began shaking and gyrating in front of him. With a quick look heavenward for the benefit of the retreating Ms Dunhill, who looked bemused, as well as very lovely in her red dress, he joined in. It was one of those dances where you didn't have to touch your partner. For some odd reason he found that he was glad.

Later, when Clay left the dance hall, which was located on the main floor of the nursing and medical staff residence, it was the image of the woman in the sleeveless red dress that stayed with him. He found an internal telephone to make the calls to his senior resident and to the emergency department. All was clear, they reported to him.

It was a beautiful warm night, just right for early June, when he emerged from the building to walk up the quiet side street past the hospital to get to the parking lot where he'd left his car.

As he drove up the empty street and turned the corner slowly, a right turn at the traffic lights onto a main street, he saw a lone woman standing at a street-car stop and recognized her immediately. She wore a light wool coat over the red dress. Surely she shouldn't be going home alone by public transport, even though it wasn't particularly late. He noted that the street was empty of pedestrians.

He slowed down and cruised to a halt in front of her. 'May I give you a ride home, Ms Dunhill?' he offered, leaning over and opening the passenger door, not really sure why he was bothering in the face of her barely disguised antipathy to him. At the back of his mind he had a vague idea that he had to prove something to her.

'It's all right,' she said, bending forward so that she could speak to him through the door. 'I'm going to get the street-car.'

'You might have to wait a long time,' he said, glancing in the rear-view mirror. 'There's nothing coming.'

Hesitant at first, which didn't do anything for his ego, she got in beside him. 'Thank you,' she said, glancing at him quickly then away, unsmiling. 'I live near Linden Park. I hope it isn't out of your way.'

'No, I can go through there,' he said. Linden Park was a poor area of the city which was in the process of being reclaimed, albeit slowly. It was currently a mixture of some gentrification and some pockets of run-down housing, but with a certain overall charm and character.

They drove in silence until Clay commented, 'I haven't seen you in the OR for a while.'

'Well...I work part time,' she explained, 'which perhaps is why you don't always see me. I work Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, sometimes in the chest surgery service and sometimes in the general surgery service.'

'Mmm,' he said, 'those are my operating days.'

'I know...'

He chose to ignore a certain inflection in her voice, which could mean any one of several things. 'Do you work part time because there isn't enough work?' he ventured. 'I know there have been lay-offs, but I thought there was a demand for nurses trained in OR work.'

'I choose to work part time,' she said. 'I have a daughter, six years old. My mother looks after her when I'm working, but she can't take her five days a week. Besides, I wouldn't want to be away from her that long. There's not much point in having children if you're not going to spend time with them.'

'I see,' Clay said, realizing in that moment that he had been—was—inordinately attracted to Sophie Dunhill, considering that he scarcely knew her as a person, as a woman—she had merely been the embodiment of a function, an efficient cog in the machinery of his professional life. The attraction was odd, too, because she wasn't really his type—too quiet or something, he thought. Also odd was that he felt chagrined that she wasn't free. 'I didn't know you were married.'

'I'm not...not any more,' she said quietly. 'I'm a widow.'

Clay glanced at her quickly, at her impassive profile which conveyed to him a tension beneath an outward calm. He felt shocked. 'You're too young to be a widow,' he remarked, saying what he was thinking.

'Something like that can happen at any age,' she said quietly as she looked steadily ahead. 'Anyway, Dr Sotheby, why should you know anything about me? We don't exactly move in the same circles, apart from working together occasionally. Even that isn't very congenial, is it?' She gave a wry laugh.

'I wish you'd forget about that,' he said.

'I've tried. But it's just one among other such incidents for nurses in the operating rooms...and sometimes it's just one too many, the proverbial straw that breaks the camel's back, although I don't mean to go on about it so much. When you need the job as much as I do, you feel pretty helpless to do much about such things. Usually I can stand up for myself quite adequately, but on that day my daughter was sick so my mind wasn't as much on the job as it should have been, so I felt pretty bad about it.'

'I understand,' he said gently. 'I wish I'd known that.'

'Have you children?'

'No. I'm not married. Never been married.' There was a silence that spoke volumes, namely that he couldn't really know what it was like to be sick with anxiety about a child. But he did know—not first hand, definitely, but he had seen and treated enough children with serious and life-threatening diseases and accidents that he understood the anguish of parents. Many sleepless nights had been spent with the few children he treated, fuelled by his empathy and compassion. Most of the time he worked with adults, whom he went back to with relief.

'I guess I shouldn't have come to work on that day,' she said, 'but I'd already taken two work days off.'

'Forget about it, Sophie,' he said.

'It's all in the line of duty, I tell myself,' she said, with a self-deprecating laugh. 'I guess I'm overly sensitive.'

For once, Clay had no idea what to say. In a few moments a rather strained silence was broken by her need to give him directions when they got to the area known as Linden Park.

They drew up in front of a row of small, old, modest houses of red brick, each one a little different from the next, each with a certain charm. It was a quiet residential street, with mature trees and small, verdant front gardens.

'Which one is yours?' Clay asked.

'Number two,' she said. 'Thank you very much, Dr Sotheby, I do appreciate it. I expect I'd still be waiting for the street-car if you hadn't come along.'

'My pleasure,' he said. 'Try not to be too hard on me, Sophie. I promise to be the model of decorum when next we meet in the OR.'

When the lights came on inside the car as she opened the door, he could see that her eyes were a hazel colour, expressive, serious. When she smiled briefly, he could see the strain on her face, the tiredness.

With a flash of insight, he added, 'Did you ask not to work with me? Is that why I haven't seen you for a while?'

'Yes,' she said, her voice very soft. With that, she pulled the door closed again, putting them into comparative darkness, illuminated by streetlamps shining through trees.

Clay leaned his head back against the head-rest and closed his eyes with a sigh. 'This is an odd sort of situation to be in,' he said. The tension between them was such that you could have cut it with the proverbial knife. He wasn't quite sure why the hell he should care so much, why he didn't just get out, open the car door for her, escort her to her front door and wish her goodnight. It would be an old-fashioned gesture, but one just as necessary on modern streets; in this case it would bring an awkward pause to an end.

'Please, don't think I'm some sort of fragile bird or something,' she said very quietly. 'I'm pretty good, usually, at looking after myself. I just wanted a break from your surgical service.'

'What happened to your husband?' he found himself saying, when he'd really intended just to say goodnight.

With her hand on the door again, she hesitated. 'He had lymphoma,' she said. 'He was very ill for about a year.'

After a moment, Clay said, 'That must have been pretty awful to deal with.' On these occasions he resisted reiterating the common expression 'I'm sorry', as though the speaker were personably responsible in some small way for what had happened. It seemed even more inappropriate when you hadn't known the person. As a simple expression of regret it was all right, but it didn't mean much. Yet he felt for her, so much so that he desperately wanted to pick up one of her hands which she held clasped in her lap to enfold it in both of his.

'It was,' Sophie said. 'Especially for him. I don't want to feel sorry for myself. It happened four and a half years ago. I have my daughter...she fills my life. She's the best thing that ever happened to me. When she's sick, I sometimes find myself overreacting, frightened that something might happen to her in the way it happened to Peter, my husband. I try not to let her see my anxiety...'

'I can understand that,' he murmured gently.

'It's such a pleasure now to have an ordinary life. I embrace that ordinariness with open arms...to go to work in the mornings to a job that I like, for the most part, to come home to my daughter, my mother, my dad, who live nearby,' she said with quiet passion. 'All those ordinary things that we usually take for granted seem so extraordinary now, so wonderful.' Where she had been quiet before, Sophie now seemed to want to talk, and Clay relaxed back in his seat, looking at her profile as she stared straight ahead.

'Mmm.' He nodded.

'When something like that happens to you, instead of looking at it from the other side of the fence all the time, you realize how thin the line is between being well and not being well,' she said thoughtfully. 'Having experienced it, it gives you that extra insight that's so necessary in our job. Some people seem to have that anyway—I admire them so much. On the other hand, some other people seem incapable of empathy...'

'Yes,' he said, feeling that word to be inadequate when he wanted to tell her what a great nurse she was, that he enjoyed working with her, that he respected her professional expertise. Somehow the words wouldn't come, and he was normally so glib with women, even though he did say it himself. Maybe it had something to do with the more you cared, the less able you were to express it in words...something like that.

Sophie put her hand on the car door again. 'Well,' she said, 'goodnight, and thank you again, Dr Sotheby.'

'My pleasure,' he said. 'Wait!' As though moved by an instinct that was quite beyond his control, he shifted sideways and kissed Sophie on the cheek. 'Goodnight.'

The thunk of the closing car door punctuated the quiet of the summer night. Clay watched her open the gate of her tiny front garden and start up the path before he switched on the engine and guided the car away from the kerb.

Sophie watched the sleek, dark blue Buick saloon drive slowly away from her down the street. The feel of Clay's kiss was still, tinglingly, on her cheek, a patch of heightened sensitivity. To say that he had surprised her would have been a massive understatement; it had taken all her self-control not to gasp in amazement. Instinctively she had wanted to turn her face towards him so that he could kiss her on the mouth...but really she didn't like him, didn't like him much at all.

He was one of those super-competent men who unwittingly intimidated lesser mortals. Not that she thought of herself as a lesser mortal—it was just that she wanted a normal, well-paced life, not a life that was perpetually in the fast lane, with no time to get off. That was how she saw Clay Sotheby, who went perfectly with the befurred and bejewelled, sophisticated Dawn Renton who was his lover, so she'd heard.

And she hadn't particularly wanted her colleague to see the modest house that she lived in, that she loved, so his insistence on driving her had engendered an annoyance that still rankled. It wasn't that she was ashamed, exactly, of its simplicity—it was more that it was her private sanctuary, something that she wanted to keep removed from her work life, except for two or three close friends.

Sophie's heart was beating uncomfortably fast. Her own moment of vulnerability was disturbing, because now she couldn't count on herself to remain detached from him. Already she was very aware of him at work as a very attractive man, someone who wouldn't, most likely, be available to her. Men like him were trouble, not least because they had a way of going full tilt for what they wanted, trampling on anyone in their path.

Although she didn't assume that he had any motives of a personal nature where she was concerned, she sensed that she could be susceptible, eventually, to the powerful magnetism he exuded without even trying. When he'd tried—overdoing it a bit—as he had when they'd been dancing, she'd found her sense of the ridiculous taking over, which possibly had been what he'd intended.

Men like that, with healthy egos, who thought every woman whom they happened to turn their eyes on went weak at the knees under the onslaught, left her irritated. Sometimes she thought of such an over-inflated ego as floating over the guy's head like a huge red balloon, in which she longed to stick a pin so that it would deflate with a rude hiss and gurgle, rather in the way that Mandy, her daughter, would blow up a balloon and then let it go.

Dr Clay Sotheby, she thought as she stood by her front door, savouring the pleasant June night, was much too attractive for his own good. With charm to go with it, he didn't really have to lift a finger, to make any sort of effort it seemed to her, to draw women...perhaps the wrong women sometimes. There were predatory women, as there were predatory men, she mused. She knew her own sex only too well, having worked with all types in the large, multi-disciplinary teams that were prevalent in hospitals.

That could mean that women were so dazzled by Clay Sotheby's exterior that they didn't really get to know the person behind the facade. There was a sense in her that he was a very complex person, and she herself liked to see behind the facade, if possible, before falling for anything exterior. Often that was difficult.

He was tall, with a sensual way of moving, which she was sure was unconscious and uncontrived, so that he drew female eyes wherever he went in the hospital. Darkly handsome, blue-eyed, smoothly sophisticated, he seemed to be one of those men who were universally appealing to women.

Sometimes he played up to it, she'd observed since she'd been working with him. It was done in a subtle, self-mocking way.

He wasn't a conceited man, she considered, but he still had a big ego. Maybe he wouldn't be able to do the job he did, when he had to make decisions quickly in the heat of the moment—the right decisions—if he didn't have a very healthy self-confidence.

The grapevine had it that he was too dedicated to his job, too ambitious, to be interested in marriage right now, but that he had plenty of women in tow. Many medical men of his age had been divorced once, or even twice, and had sired several children. Although she wasn't interested in gossip, it wasn't possible to tune out all the information and rumour that floated around a hospital. In Clay Sotheby's case, rumour said that he was having an affair, long-standing, with Dr Jerry Claibourne's secretary, the glamorous and somewhat snooty Dawn Renton.

When the car disappeared round a corner, Sophie turned to unlock the door. Well, here was one woman who wouldn't be falling at the feet of Clay Sotheby, even if the chance presented itself. Although she was sometimes lonely, she'd had her fill of relationships for now. Yet dancing with him had disturbed her in a way that she didn't care to examine too closely, followed by that unexpected kiss on the cheek. It made her realize how much she missed male affection and attention.

Thoughtfully she acknowledged that having been married to Peter, coping with his illness, had numbed her in a way that usually acted like an emotional anaesthetic when she was with men, so that she couldn't respond. Everything had been for Peter—all they had done had been for his illness, for his comfort. Somewhere along the line she had lost herself. Now she lived for the daughter she adored.

Closing the door quietly behind her so that she wouldn't wake Mandy and her own mother, who was staying the night, she crept upstairs to check on them, which she did from long habit.

As she lay in bed later, she thought of Clay's sarcastic words to her that time in the operating room: 'We all feel like falling asleep, Nurse, but, please, don't do it until we've finished the operation.' Those words had humiliated her, even though she'd fully understood the stress of his job. Probably he'd forgotten her name, as doctors didn't often call nurses 'Nurse' any more. She remembered how, from sheer exhaustion, her eyes had pricked with tears.

Clay went straight for a shower when he got home, then to bed, gently shifting the cat from a central position on the wide bed. 'Move over, Victoria,' he said.

On the answering machine beside his bed he played back his messages.

'I'm so disappointed you're not there, Clay—' Dawn's seductive voice filled the silence of the room '—because I want to see you. Give me a call when you get in.'

'Not tonight, baby,' he said aloud, clicking off the machine, then the light.

An annoying image of a woman in a red dress superimposed itself on the more recent mental image of Dawn Renton, together with the sadness of her story. Sophie's thoughtful face, oddly vulnerable, her expressive eyes and full, beautifully shaped mouth seemed to haunt him as he hovered on the brink of sleep.

He turned on his side, reaching out to touch the soft fur of the purring cat. Firmly he pushed the thoughts of Sophie Dunhill from his mind.

CHAPTER TWO

Clay was at the hospital by 7 a.m. on the following Monday. His operating list was due to start at 8 a.m. sharp, so he wanted to be in the operating room by a quarter to eight. That would give him fifteen minutes to change into a scrub suit, have a few words with his waiting patient—the first on the list, who would be lying on a stretcher in the OR corridor outside his designated operating room—and scrub for the required number of minutes before putting on a sterile gown and gloves.

Clay tried to have his life at the hospital organized almost down to each minute of the ten-hour day that he expected to put in there. That was just a routine day. Being a surgeon, it did not exactly allow for everything to be cut and dried—that was not in the nature of the job—yet he made the effort as though it were so. A surgeon had to be proactive, rather than reactive, ready to go at a moment's notice, ready to meet whatever challenge might present itself, knowledgeable and experienced enough to make the right decision at once. Most of those decisions were made under pressure. There were emergencies and unexpected happenings.

That challenge was what he loved about the job, that was what kept him going. The adrenaline high was like a drug addiction—he never got tired of it, he always wanted more. Even when he knew that he had to pace himself, shouldn't push himself beyond a certain point to take on more and more work, he knew how difficult it was to say no, to admit that he had reached his limit, that it was time to refer to someone else or to another hospital.

He also saw the burn-out, the physical and mental breakdowns in some of his colleagues who treated themselves as though they were super-human, not governed by the same laws of nature and common sense that directed the lives of other breeds of people—least of all those of their patients.

Before his operating list began, on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays he would routinely arrive early and run up to the surgical floor, on level two of the wing, the same level as the operating rooms, to see those patients he would be operating on that day. Although he didn't spend long with each patient, they were reassured by his presence, by his willingness to listen to any last-minute questions or concerns.

Most of the time he made a very deliberate effort to be accessible, available and non-threatening to his patients. After all, the medical facilities and the staff were there for the patients, not the other way round, although to witness the arrogant shenanigans of some of his medical colleagues, it wasn't a universally evident assumption. Such arrogance often left him appalled and angry—which was one of the reasons he wanted to be the next chief of surgery. Jerry Claiboume was a great guy who had done a lot to ensure that the department of surgery was patient-centred, yet there was still work to be done in that direction, a change from lingering paternalism and, he had to admit, sexism.

When he had seen his patients and changed into a green scrub suit in the surgeons' locker room, he made his way through the automatic double glass doors to the operating suite. Even after years of being a surgeon, he always experienced a heightened sense of anticipation—a thrill, he supposed he could call it—of the work ahead of him. He was, he acknowledged, one of those fortunate—rather rare—individuals who loved their work.

'Morning, Rick.' He passed his senior surgical resident going in the opposite direction down the main OR corridor from which the individual operating rooms led off. 'Are we all set?'

'Morning, Dr Sotheby,' Rick said, coming to a brief halt. 'Yep, it's all systems go. Just going to get a quick mouthful of coffee before we start.'

'Sure. See you in there.'

Rick Sommers was a tall, gangly young man, going prematurely bald, which made him look wise beyond his years. In the green surgical scrub suit that flapped around his skinny body he looked undernourished, even though he ate voraciously whenever he got a chance.

Although they were on a first-name basis, Rick was formal in the OR—they found it worked best that way when others were around. They also got along very well together, Clay reflected yet again as he watched the younger man stride off down the corridor. That was mainly because they had compatible personalities, were good at their jobs and shared the same subtle sense of humour which was an invaluable attribute in the often tense atmosphere of the OR. Clay was well aware that he himself could be mildly sarcastic at times, in spite of good intentions to the contrary, while Rick was never that way—not yet. Maybe that was something that came with power.

'Good morning, Dr Sotheby,' a nurse greeted him as he neared his own operating room, number four.

'Morning,' he said, smiling. Before going into his own room, he popped into room three for a quick word with the anaesthetist, Claude Moreau, who would be working there for the day. Claude was involved with a patient of his who was in the intensive care unit.

'Morning, Claude,' he said to Dr Moreau, who was checking his anaesthetic machine and equipment. 'How's Annie Lewowski? I didn't get a chance to see her this morning.'

'Hi, Clay.' The tall, calm French-Canadian turned his startling blue eyes on Clay. Of all the anaesthetists in the hospital, he was one of the best. 'I saw her briefly this morning and there's a definite improvement since yesterday. She's breathing all right on her own.'

Annie Lewowski, in her late sixties, had suffered a stroke, a blood clot in the brain, following major surgery the previous week for a bowel obstruction. 'That's great to hear,' he said. 'I'll see her later.'

Taking a short cut through the clean prep room which connected two rooms, where some instruments were sterilized in the autoclave and the large sterile packs of linen were kept for the day's cases, he heard two nurses talking in room four.

'I was hoping that I wouldn't have to scrub for Clay Sotheby today, now that I've been put back in this service,' one was saying, a remark that brought him to a halt. 'He did sort of embarrass me that time. I'd like my colleagues to get a chance to forget about it.'

The speaker had a pleasant, well-modulated voice, one he recognized instantly as belonging to Sophie Dunhill, RN.

'Oh, don't worry about him, Sophie. He's a pussycat really.' That was the voice of Rhona May, the head nurse of rooms three and four. 'I should know, I've worked with him for a long time.'

Sophie laughed rather shortly. 'That's not how I would describe him, unless you mean a pussycat with extra big teeth and claws—and to me that's a tiger!'

Both women laughed together softly, at his expense, while he hovered. Then the door of the prep room came swinging open suddenly and Sophie came hurrying through, almost crashing into him.

'Oh...' She came to a halt inches from him. Dressed in a pale blue jumpsuit, which was the uniform for the registered nurses in the operating room, plus the blue paper hat which enclosed the hair and the tie-on face mask, she had taken on the usual anonymity that such gait) provided. He much preferred her in the red dress. Yet she looked slim and trim, he noted with appreciation as his eyes went over her swiftly.

'Oh...' she said again, flustered, 'it's you, Dr Sotheby.'

'So, I'm a tiger, am I, Ms Dunhill?' he said, shifting his weight nonchalantly onto one leg so that he could stand with one hand on his hip, blocking her way with an extended elbow. He was gratified to see that her large, expressive eyes had widened, the pupils large. So he had got some sort of reaction from the cool Sophie.

Although she flushed, she recovered quickly. 'Well, definitely not a pussycat,' she said.

'I can be,' Clay said. 'You just have to give me a chance.'

'You've had plenty of chances, Dr Sotheby,' she said. 'And, anyway, eavesdroppers seldom hear good of themselves.' Their eyes met and he thought he could detect a glimmer of humour in hers.

Pressing his advantage, he added, 'I definitely want you to scrub for my first case Ms Dunhill,' he said in a tone which he hoped brooked no refusal, 'for which you should be scrubbing right now if you're going to be ready on time. I know you're familiar with a gut resection, more so than with a Whipple.'

'Yes, of course I am,' she snapped back. 'I'm quite familiar with a Whipple, too. It was just a bad day for me.'

'I see,' he said, narrowing his eyes, trying to divine her mood. He decided to let that past lapse drop for good. 'We'll forget about that. I think you would be interested in this case, a young man who has to have a gut resection because of Crohn's disease. It's always sad at that age.'

'Yes,' Sophie said, her interest captured. 'I was wondering why he would need a resection. At least it's better than having cancer, I think. Will he need a permanent colostomy or ileostomy?'

'I'm hoping not,' he said, 'although I expect I'll give him a temporary one—an ileostomy—until the inflammation has settled down.' An ileostomy or colostomy, the opening of the small bowel or the large bowel, respectively, onto the surface of the abdominal skin, was difficult for a patient to live with at any age. It was even more so for a young person, for someone as yet unmarried. 'His rectum and the colon seem unaffected by the disease at the present time,' Clay added, 'so there's a good chance that we can leave those parts intact, and I can reconnect the cut ends of the gut again in a later operation when all the inflammation has died down...although that can take months.'

'That would be good,' Sophie said. 'Crohn's is an awful thing to have, isn't it? All that chronic inflammation, with no known cause. Imagine the pain of it, and how it must affect your life.'

'Yes. It's been pretty debilitating for him,' Clay agreed. 'I'll see what his gut looks like when we do the laparotomy, although I have a pretty good idea of what I'll find.'

'They get all sorts of adhesions and fistulas, don't they?' she asked.

'Yes,' he said. Loops of the inflamed bowel of a patient with Crohn's disease often adhered to each other, and sometimes fistulas, or small channels, opened up between the loops. Clay could visualize it readily, having seen it many times. 'All those loops can form a solid mass...a real mess. The temporary ileostomy will rest the bowel.'

'I don't envy him,' she said feelingly.

Rhona May poked her head round the prep room door. 'Time to get scrubbed, Sophie,' she said.

'I'll give you a few extra minutes to prepare, Ms Dunhill,' he offered to her retreating back as she silently left the room. 'Good morning, Rhona,' he added cheerfully. 'How are you today?'

'Morning, Dr Sotheby. I'm just fine,' the nurse greeted him warmly.

'I've promised Sophie not to be too much of a tiger,' he told Rhona. Gratified by the nurse's startled expression, he walked into the operating room, then out to the corridor where his patient, a young man of twenty-eight, lay on a stretcher waiting to be wheeled into room four. Alex White MD, who was another of the anaesthetists, was with him.

'Morning, Clay,' Dr White said quietly when Clay came to stand beside him as he was putting a second intravenous line into their patient. 'How goes it?'

'Pretty good,' he said, and found that he meant it. Monday mornings were not always good, particularly after a weekend on call. Chronic fatigue was par for the course. Right now he felt rather buoyant.

'Good morning, Mike,' he greeted his patient, whose illness he had chronicled for months before finally deciding on surgery. Inflammatory bowel disease, of which there were two types—ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease—weren't easy to diagnose initially, he reflected, as the early symptoms could be somewhat vague, similar to a number of other diseases and infections.

Chronic fatigue, some weight loss and abdominal pain had brought Mike Dolby to his general practitioner. That doctor had made the referral to University Hospital, specifically to him. Already Clay was thinking ahead to the details of what he would have to do, what he would most likely find when he had Mike Dolby's abdominal cavity opened. They had already done various procedures in order to make the diagnosis. The pathologist had made the final diagnosis from biopsies of the gut.

'Morning, Dr Sotheby,' Mike Dolby said. 'I feel at a disadvantage like this, flat on my back.' He tried to joke to hide his apprehension. He looked pale and ill, a slight young man who looked younger than his twenty-eight years. The disease had played havoc with his life.

Clay placed a hand on his patient's shoulder. 'I'm pretty sure that this will be a routine procedure,' he said, repeating what he had said before. They had already gone over, several times, all the ramifications of the operation, as well as the implications for the future. In particular he had explained that a ileostomy would almost certainly be a temporary measure. 'Just keep in mind that you're going to feel much better in every way when this is over.'

Mike nodded, trying to relax. Clay had ordered a pre-op sedative for him, in consultation with Alex White, which had already been given. That, no doubt, was taking the edge off his understandable anxiety.

'I'll leave you in the capable hands of Dr White,' he said with a smile, 'then I'll see you inside the room in a few minutes.'

When he went to the scrub sinks, Sophie was still there, soaping her hands and arms. With her face mask and plastic goggles on, he couldn't see the expression on her face as she swiftly noted his entry and then turned away again. There was something about her body language, her physical stance, that made him certain she was less than pleased at having to scrub for his first case.

'I'll give you five minutes' head start, Ms Dunhill,' he said, as he casually tied on a face mask and put on his plastic goggles. 'Do you think that will be enough time for you to get your set-up ready? I don't want to hassle you by snapping at your heels, so to speak.'

'Now, that would come into the canine category, Dr Sotheby,' she said coolly, not looking at him. 'I thought we'd established that you were in the feline category. At least, Rhona has been trying to convince me that you're just a pussycat.'

Clay laughed. 'Rhona should know,' he said.

'Make it seven minutes, Dr Sotheby,' Sophie said, 'although I can do with no minutes if I have to.' She turned up the water pressure full blast by manipulating the long handles of the taps with her elbows. 'And I seldom feel hassled in the OR.'

'I see,' he said, smiling as he helped himself to a sterile scrub brush. 'Then why do I detect an atmosphere, Sophie? May I call you Sophie?'

'You know you can,' she said. 'Everybody else does. And if there's an atmosphere, as you say, it's because of the dissonance between your perception and mine.'

'Ah, yes... the tiger.'

'Precisely.'

Such badinage helped to diffuse tension in the OR, even though he sensed her antipathy which in itself could produce a tension of sorts if they weren't careful. Anyway, he considered, this was better than blind adoration, not uncommon, which could produce its own problems.

Rick Sommers burst into the scrub area breathlessly, dissolving by his presence any atmosphere. 'Sony I'm late, sir,' he said to Clay, who didn't like to be called 'sir' because it made him feel old. 'Got called down to Emergency for a quick consult.'

'Anything for us down there?' It wasn't uncommon for the elective cases in the OR to get bumped to make way for emergencies that came in via the emergency department.

'No, the chest guys are going to deal with it,' Rick panted, putting on a face mask and goggles in short order. 'Hi, Sophie.' He turned on the taps at the sink next to her, preparatory to getting scrubbed.

'Hi, Rick,' she responded warmly. 'How are you these days?'

It was as though she hadn't seen him for a couple of years, Clay thought.

'Tired,' Rick said. 'I was on call for the weekend. All I want to do is sleep. I can't understand how people get addicted to drugs when there's sleep.'

'You're off tonight, though?' she asked commiseratingly, so that Clay wondered anew whether they were sleeping together. They always seemed pretty close in the OR.

'I sure am,' he said feelingly.

'Well, you can go out to eat,' she suggested. 'In this great weather you can go to a street cafe, have a beer and a meal, get away from hospital food.'

'Nope,' Rick said, scrubbing his hands and arms vigorously with hexabetadine, 'I'm just gonna go home, stay in and sort through my unmatched socks. Then I'm going to sleep, sleep, sleep.'

Sophie's soft laugh added to the lightness of the mood which had pervaded the place from the moment Rick had breezed in. Somewhere along the line Clay had lost the knack for that sort of lightness, he realized that as he, too, began to scrub.

Sophie gave her hands and arms a final rinse, before backing into room four with her hands held up so that she wouldn't inadvertently touch anything. Clay was left wondering why he couldn't get to her with the same kind of insouciance Rick displayed. It must be something to do with the fact that Rick was ten years younger than he was.

Why would he want to impress Sophie, anyway? he argued with himself. He didn't, of course. He simply felt guilty at breaking his own rules of conduct. That was it. Otherwise why would he worry about her, when there was Dawn, who clearly wanted to be with him as often as possible, as well as plenty of other nubile women on whom he had but to turn an eye? He knew that much from experience. Maybe it was because she seemed to wear a label that said 'Not available to Clay Sotheby'.

'Well, I hope we can get away with only a temporary ileostomy here,' Rick said. 'I really feel for the guy.'

'Everything points towards that,' Clay said. 'We'll do our best, that's for sure. I appreciate that you're assisting me today, Rick, even though I know you're functioning on adrenaline.'

Rick chuckled ruefully. 'Dr Claibourne wanted some help, but I told him I'd already done a work-up on your patient, so I wanted to follow through with that.'

'Good,' Clay said.

'Talking of Dr Claibourne, sir, are you going to be taking over his position when he steps down? I'm asking because it would be great if we could have two really good guys one after the other. There are rumours.'

'Well,' Clay said carefully, 'I have expressed an interest. That's all I can really say at the moment. And I don't want that spread around, Rick. I'm not about to set myself up to look like a loser if someone beats me to it, or if I decide not to go for it.'

'Yeah, I understand,' Rick said. 'There're all sorts of dirty tricks abounding in these days of tight money. The latest sick joke going the rounds is that the definition of a friend in a hospital these days is someone who stabs you in the chest rather than in the back.'

Smiling commiseratingly, they both entered operating room four. Sophie paused in what she was doing to pass them sterile towels on which to dry their hands and arms, then she opened a sterile gown, holding it by the shoulders so that Clay could put his arms into the sleeves. The second circulating RN in the room, Cathy Stravinsky, tied the gown up at the back. Rhona May was running between two rooms. Sophie held open each rubber glove in turn so that Clay could insert his hands.

'Thank you, Ms Dunhill,' he murmured, noting that she didn't meet his eyes before she turned away to open a sterile gown for Rick. Vowing to maintain his equanimity at all costs today, he turned towards their patient on the operating table.

Mike Dolby was already anaesthetized, the end of a plastic endotracheal tube protruding from his mouth and attached by tubing to the anaesthetic machine that was delivering oxygen and the anaesthetic gases that would keep him unconscious. The two intravenous lines were running fluid into veins in the backs of his hands. Dr Alex White was standing at the head of the table, between the patient and the anaesthetic machine.

'May I start, Alex?' Clay asked.

'Yes, I'm all set,' Dr White said, making some adjustments to the gas gauges on his equipment.

'Are you all set, Ms Dunhill?'

'Yes. Go ahead.'

Cathy Stravinsky folded back the green cotton sheet that covered their patient to expose his abdomen. Clay took a breath and blew it out slowly. He picked up the sponge-holding forceps, with a gauze sponge already in place, which Sophie had prepared for him on a separate prep tray, and with his other hand he picked up the small metal pot of Betadine iodine solution. As he approached his patient he was able, from long experience and training, to clear his mind of everything but the case in hand. With sure, sweeping motions he spread the cleansing solution over the pale skin.

Sophie handed him four small sterile green towels, folded in half, which he positioned on the patient's abdomen, leaving exposed a relatively small rectangular area of skin which had been cleaned with the iodine antiseptic solution. Then she handed him four towel clips with sharp, fine, pincer-like tips which anchored the towels to the skin. This was their operation site.

Next, she passed him a large disposable, waterproof sheet which had a small area cut out of its centre, that covered the entire patient, leaving the slit over the operation site. Over this went a similar large green cotton sheet. Using more towel clips, Clay carefully secured the sheets around the operation site.

He could have done all this preparation with his eyes closed, of course, if he had to, yet Clay never let his concentration waver for one moment. In addition to Rick, he was assisted by two surgical interns who would hold retractors if necessary and might be allowed to cut some catgut or silk ties or sutures. Mainly, they were there to observe and to learn.

The two circulating nurses, Rhona May and Cathy Stravinsky, pushed Sophie's instrument tray-on-wheels over the patient's recumbent body, then pushed a large wheeled table holding more instruments and a double bowl-stand with more equipment and gauze sponges into position at right angles to the patient's legs. These were for Sophie to organize, from which she would pass instruments to the surgeon as he needed them.

Clay waited until Sophie was in position. He felt perfectly calm, his mind focused. The room was quiet, everything orderly, all in place as it should be.

'Ready, Ms Dunhill?' Clay said.

'Yes.'

'OK, Alex?'

'Sure.'

'Knife.' Clay held out his right hand.

With the razor-sharp scalpel blade, held in a steady hand, he made a long incision with a single, careful stroke in the rectangle of exposed skin. The cut went through the skin and a little of the underlying tissue. The long incision, pink against the brown of the iodine, quickly became dotted with little beads of blood. Rick Sommers blotted them carefully with a pristine white gauze sponge.

Sophie took away the scalpel that had been used for the skin and handed Clay a fresh one. He didn't need to ask her, she knew exactly what to do. He would deepen the incision with the knife, then use curved scissors to make the final cut into the abdominal cavity.

Every person in the room had a specific job to do, an area of responsibility. An atmosphere of concentration and calm descended as each individual geared up mentally to see the job through to the best of his or her ability.

Clay cleared his mind of everything other than what he could see and feel in front of him. Although he had a very good idea of what he would find, it wasn't until he could actually see the state of Mike Dolby's gut that he could plan his final strategy.

CHAPTER THREE

The surgical team arrived in the coffee-room of the OR at more or less the same time to have a late coffee-break, all except Alex White who was still with Mike Dolby in the recovery room to make sure he was recovering well from the anaesthetic, before handing over to the very competent nurses there.

'That went as well as we could have expected,' Rick commented as they joined other staff who were taking a much-needed break. 'He's sure going to be happy that the ileostomy won't be permanent. Do you want me to explain to him, sir, that it's just a temporary one?' Rick helped himself to a mug of coffee and a doughnut from the large box that someone had provided. Not the hospital—they didn't supply anything free these days.

'If you would like to,' Clay said. 'Whichever one of us gets to him first after he's capable of comprehending what we say to him.'

Sophie was part of the crowd. She was sitting with a small group of her nursing colleagues, who were all drinking coffee. They tended to gather at one end of the fairly spacious room, away from the doctors. It wasn't easy to relax with people you worked with in what was a relatively formal setting, where certain rules of professional conduct applied. Clay noted her presence without appearing to do so, wondering why he was so aware of her.

Most of them would have a fifteen-minute coffee-break, before having to rush back to keep the momentum of the operating lists going. There were twenty-two operating, rooms on this floor of the hospital, including the neurology service but not the cardiac service which was on another floor.

'Ah, it's great to get a shot of caffeine,' Rick commented, taking a swallow of liquid from his mug, 'and a bit of glucose to keep the blood sugar up.'

'Mmm,' Clay agreed. 'Not too much longer now, Rick, before you can crash out.'

Jerry Claibourne came into the room and immediately came over to Clay, who stood up to greet him.

'Hi, Clay. How are you?' Jerry Claibourne was of medium height and solidly built, one of those muscular men who made Clay think of a bricklayer. A handsome man, charismatic and even-tempered, he seemed unaware of his charm which affected male and female alike. A very fair man in all he did, he'd been tremendously successful as head of department.

'I'm fine, Jerry. How are you?'

'Great. Are you intending to be at the medical advisory committee meeting tomorrow morning, seven-thirty sharp?'

'I plan to be there,' Clay said.

'Good,' Jerry said quietly. 'I want to talk to you about this job. The hospital plans to advertise it in the journals in two weeks' time. We have to do that, even though we hope to get someone who's already here. You know that I favour you, Clay, so I hope you're giving it some serious thought.'

'I am, Jerry.'

'I'll see you tomorrow, then.' The two men split up after the brief exchange. Clay saw that Sophie was leaving the room so, on impulse, he took a last swallow of his coffee and followed her.

'Sophie,' he said, catching up with her as she passed through the double doors back into the OR suite proper, 'I just want to say that you were great with that last case.'

When she stopped to look at him with serious eyes he wondered whether she would think he was patronizing her. After all, she had just been doing her job to the best of her ability. Taking her arm, Clay steered her through the doors. 'I don't want to sound patronizing,' he said. 'I just hope we're friends again.'

For a moment she smiled up at him as they walked briskly side by side down. the main OR corridor. 'Thank you,' she said. 'Were we ever friends, Dr Sotheby?'

'I think so,' he said lightly. 'And if you think not, maybe we could rectify that here and now.' He stopped and held out his hand. 'Friends?'

Sophie took his hand, while a few passers-by stared at them curiously in the bustle of the comings and goings. Clay felt curiously light-hearted when she smiled again. 'All right, Dr Sotheby,' she said, 'if that's what you want. Friends.'

'Isn't it what you want?' he asked raising his eyebrows.

'Well, I don't usually think of staff-men as friends— they have too much leverage,' she said, looking him straight in the eye. 'I prefer the interns and the residents. Now, Rick Sommers is someone I could call a friend. But if you like, Dr Sotheby, we'll go through the motions. Now I have to go to prepare for the next case.'

'Are you scrubbing for my laparoscopic cholecystectomy?' he asked. The next case was the removal of a gall bladder with the aid of a special fibre-optic scope that would show the image of the interior of the abdominal cavity on a monitor.

The advantage of this method was that the patient didn't need to have a large abdominal incision. There were only two tiny incisions of less than an inch long, through which he put his scope and his cannula which gave him access with his instalments to the abdominal cavity.

'No,' she said, letting go of his hand. 'Cathy is going to scrub. I'm circulating.'

'See you in there,' he said. 'I'm going to see Mike Dolby.'

'I hope he's all right,' she said. 'That was a very interesting case.'

'I expect he'll do well,' Clay said, 'even though Crohn's disease can recur in the remaining sections of the gut. We'll do an operation to reconnect the cut ends of his gut when any residual inflammation has died down.'

Sophie nodded, aware of the treatment for the disease. While Clay went to the recovery room, she hurried off down the corridor to room four.

Mike was very groggy, barely able to open his eyes as he lay on the stretcher in the recovery room, one of a number of recovering patients. He would remain there for at least three quarters of an hour, until his condition was stable, before being transferred to the general surgical floor. Monitors were recording his vital signs of pulse rate, blood pressure and temperature. He was breathing in oxygen via plastic tubes.

'The operation went well, Mike,' Clay said, bending down close so that the patient could hear him. When Mike managed to open his eyes and focus on Clay's face, an expression of recognition dawned. 'Everything's OK. I took out a piece of the gut, and the ileostomy is only a temporary thing. You'll be feeling good in a few days.'

Mike indicated that he understood by giving a slight nod. An expression of relief superimposed itself on his tired face as his eyelids slowly shut again.

'I'll talk to you later when you're more awake,' Clay added, giving his patient's shoulder a squeeze before walking away.

Now he had to detach his thoughts from this patient to focus on the next one on the operating list, the one with gall-bladder disease. The previous case had gone as well as he could have hoped for. Although the gut had been in a mess, with a number of adhesions, he'd been able to resect a portion of it fairly easily and make the temporary opening through the abdominal wall.

There was every indication that this would be a good day. As he strode back briskly to room four he felt gratified, too, that he'd exchanged those few words with Jerry Claibourne. They'd indicated that everything regarding his own future was right on track.

It was three o'clock in the afternoon when Clay was able to leave the OR and make his way to the hospital cafeteria for a quick nutritious snack, before going on to his private office in the Medical Arts Building next to the hospital, where patients would be waiting to see him. Surgeons seldom stopped for a proper lunch when they worked in the operating rooms. A lot of food left one sleepy and less able to summon up the high level of concentration that was required. Consequently, when they got out of the place they were often suffering from hypoglycaemia, low blood sugar.

In the corridor outside the cafeteria he was waylaid by Suzie, the emergency nurse he'd met at the fund-raising dance.

'Oh, Dr Sotheby,' she exclaimed, 'just the person I want to see!' She was as ebullient as before. 'You'll never guess!' In her uniform of pale blue scrub suit with a matching long-sleeved jacket over the top, she looked delectable, ripe for the plucking, Clay thought as he looked her over, even though he suspected that she had already been plucked.

'Try me,' he said, conscious that he had only half an hour before he was due to see his first patient in his office.

'You've won a blind date!' Suzie gushed, as though she were conferring a knighthood on him. 'Isn't that just great? You can go out for a great dinner with a great girl and forget all about this place.'

'Oh hell,' he said. 'Too many greats there.'

The nurse's face was blank with amazement. 'What do you mean?' she said. They stood against the corridor wall while people hurried past them in both directions. Overhead the loudspeaker paged doctors.

'I really don't want to do that,' Clay said. 'I'd like to back off and let someone else "win" in my place. It isn't really my thing.'

'You can't do that, Dr Sotheby—' Suzie was incredulous '—since you've all been carefully vetted and paired. It will be quite all right, you know, because you meet at a certain table in a restaurant—the owner's in on the scheme. It's all prepaid. You just go in there and your date will be sitting at the table. You have a super meal. It's at Guido's, that's Italian.'

'I really don't think...' he said, leaning wearily against the wall, thinking that he wanted to pick his own women, not have one picked for him. 'Look, I didn't want to do this from the beginning. I didn't think I'd win. I just wanted to donate money.'

'If this meal doesn't work out, it's no skin off your nose,' Suzie said. 'You just have a nice meal, say how nice it was to meet her, put her in a taxi and, bingo, that's it. If you don't want to see her again, you don't have to. But you might...' She left the possibility hanging.

Clay shrugged in resignation. As a last resort he could always phone the restaurant on the night and say that he'd been called to the operating room. That would be mean, but at least the woman, or girl, would have a good meal on the house.

'We'll be in touch...from the fund-raising committee with the finer details,' Suzie assured him as she turned to leave. She moved her eyebrows up and down suggestively and gave him a last arch look, before marching off down the corridor.

Clay sighed as he pushed his way through the double doors of the cafeteria and strode towards the banks of serving counters. The last thing he needed, or wanted, was a blind date, even though he did say it himself. An objective opinion might have said differently. Now he had twenty minutes in which to eat something and get himself over to the Medical Arts Building, he saw irritably as he looked at his watch. In a moment his mind became busy with all that he had to do.

Tomorrow he had the medical advisory committee meeting at seven-thirty, which met once a month to talk about matters related to patient care and other urgent hospital matters, and on Thursday morning he had the surgical teaching rounds in the lecture theatre at the hospital, also early in the morning. They tried to have rounds every third week, although his surgical team wasn't always the one presenting a case or two.

This time, Rick Sommers and two of the interns were going to present the case of Mike Dolby. At the operation today the hospital photographer had taken some very good pictures of Mr Dolby's gut, the mass of adhesions. Those would make very good and dramatic slides for the rounds. The term 'rounds' referred to the literal ward rounds of patients which doctors used to make in the old days, going from bed to bed with an entourage of junior doctors and the nurses in charge of the wards.

Clay pondered that mental image briefly. These days they stayed put in one place and looked at slides and received a talk about an interesting case—far less time-consuming, although it meant that things were less and less hands on.

Automatically he helped himself to a tray and selected some items of food which he could eat quickly. The brief meeting with Suzie had unsettled him. The very concept of a blind date irritated him slightly, a feeling he recognized as coming from his own understanding that his life was centred almost totally on work and on the progress of his career. To get ahead in his profession there was no other alternative. Those who relaxed too much, who were not absolutely up to date and on the ball, slipped behind. It was just as well that he loved his work and, without being conceited, knew that he was good at it.

'Hi, Clay. How goes it?' A colleague accosted him and joined him at a table.

Thrusting aside a slight feeling of dissonance which his own thoughts had engendered, Clay turned with relief to the prospect of talking about familiar subjects. 'Great,' he said, 'just great.'

For once he found himself very glad not to be on call when he let himself into the house at about seven o'clock that evening, glad also to find the little cat waiting for him. He'd had a cat flap built into the back door that opened onto the large back garden so that the cat could come and go in the months of good weather.

'Hey, Victoria,' he said, kneeling down to stroke the cat. 'Pleased to see me, eh?' Purring rewarded this simple effort of affection. 'Come on, food.' He led the way into the kitchen, where there was a tantalizing smell of something good being kept warm for him in the oven. Alice, his housekeeper, who came daily to clean and tidy the place, also cooked supper for him each week night and prepared meals for him to keep in the refrigerator for the weekend.

As he put out cat food for Victoria, the telephone rang. The call-display unit showed him that the number belonged to Dawn Renton. Reluctance vied with a kind of odd relief that it was her. Right now he felt that he could use the company of a woman, yet at the same time he had a desire to be alone with the simple company of an affectionate, grateful cat. He let the phone ring four times before he answered, trying to decide. 'Hi,' he said. Dawn knew that he would know who was calling. 'How are you?'

'Better for hearing your voice, Clay,' Dawn said huskily, in that very careful diction she had, always wanting to make a desired impression. Dawn was a sleek, blonde woman, plumply feminine, big-breasted, who dressed in designer clothes that suited her position as the personal assistant to the chief of surgery.

'I was hoping I could see you,' she added, careful to keep any hint of demand out of her voice, as she liked a man to think that really he was taking the initiative, whereas she manipulated situations and people with admirable expertise to get what she wanted. Except in the case of Jerry Claibourne, of course... She had made a play for him and hadn't succeeded, knowing full well that he adored his wife and his four children, that he was 'very married', as the saying went.

With good grace, Jerry had kept her on in her job, partly because she was a good personal assistant and partly because he knew that she wouldn't have the slightest effect on him personally. He had been that confident in his own feelings, and Clay admired him for it tremendously. Because she had made a play for Jerry, Clay felt for Dawn, beneath his superficial sexual attraction to her, a cold, unbending core of reserve which he hadn't been able to shake. Was he being hypocritical? He didn't think so, because they both knew exactly where they stood with each other. Or, at least, he thought he did.

In Dawn, too, there was a hard core. He knew that she wouldn't settle for anything less than she had set her heart on. At the moment she wanted something from him. Hers was a studied femininity that didn't seem to reach all her responses. Clay didn't delude himself that what they had together would lead to anything really comfortable for now, they suited each other.

'Sure,' he said, trying not to make the hesitation obvious. 'Would you like to come here? You could eat with me. There's something good in the oven that I haven't investigated yet... Hang on a second.' He opened the oven door and looked at the casserole there. 'Looks like chicken. Mmm, coq au vin. I've got wine in the fridge.'

'I'd love to,' she said. 'I'll be there in about twenty minutes.'

While waiting for her he went for a shower, even though he'd had one at the hospital. They would make love, he felt sure. Funnily enough, he considered as he stood under the water jet, he'd never had Dawn in his bed. Usually they ended up on the sofa in the sitting room, or they met at her place. There was a reluctance in him to offer her the intimacy of his bed, a place where he retreated for ultimate privacy. Odd, that. Maybe it was a measure of his reluctance to get really involved with her, or with any woman.

Generally he didn't mind a woman taking the initiative—it was frequently a turn-on—but if there was obvious calculation or manipulation about it he felt in himself an instant steely withdrawal. Sometimes Dawn was borderline. She'd been quite upfront about what she wanted from life in general, from a lover, from a husband. With him her ambition was tempered by the fact that she genuinely found him attractive, a strong turn-on...so she said. But beyond that he didn't have any illusions—the man she wanted was Jerry. That much was obvious by the way she lit up when she was in the same room with Jerry, the way her eyes followed him.

She came alive with him, too, Clay considered without vanity as he dried himself...but he'd made it clear that he wasn't available for anything permanent. Right now his career was all he could cope with, and that wasn't about to change if he were to take over Jerry's job. At least he was honest with her, and she seemed to accept that. He didn't want her to feel that she was being used in some way. Sometimes he felt it was the other way round—her appetite for him seemed insatiable.

Absently he splashed himself liberally with a delicate, musky cologne which he knew Dawn liked, then plugged in his electric shaver. He hoped that she knew the score as well as he usually assumed she did. Still, he wanted to be careful...

When the doorbell rang he'd already dressed again in casual, loose pants and shirt, and had laid two places at the dining-room table, complete with wineglasses.

'My God!' he said as he flung open the front door and looked at Dawn standing on the covered porch, framed exotically between the two white Romanesque columns that flanked it. 'Isn't that a bit hot for June?' His eyes went over her incredulously.

Dawn wore a full-length black mink coat that came down to just above her ankles. Her straight blonde hair, jaw-length, was sleeked to one side elegantly and she wore pearl and diamond drop earrings. Impeccably made up, her lips crimson to match her fingernails, she looked cool and sophisticated, in spite of the fur. She carried a small black snakeskin handbag. Stepping over the doorstep carefully in her high-heeled shoes, she turned to flash him a smile.

Dazzled, he closed the door while she placed her bag on a chair.

'Not particularly hot,' she said, 'when you have nothing on underneath.' Again she smiled, teasing him.

Clay raised his eyebrows at her. 'You're full of surprises, Dawn,' he said, aware that his own voice had thickened.

She laughed softly. 'I hope you're not too hungry, Clay, because I don't want to eat just yet.' With a coquettish look, she captured his hand and led him into the sitting room, where the drapes were partially closed against the late sun and music played softly.

Standing in the centre of the plush oriental rug, she slowly opened the mink coat to reveal that, true to her word, she was totally naked underneath. Clay sucked in his breath sharply as he looked at her, feeling the familiar desire take hold. There was no doubt that she was a beautiful woman, softly feminine. 'I can wait to eat,' he said, smiling. 'It's sacrilege to think of food when a man has a woman like you.'

He let go of her hand and put his hands on her waist, smoothing them down over her hips as she slowly slipped out of the coat and let it subside in a sensual heap on the floor at their feet. Dawn took his hands and moved them up to cover her breasts. Clay closed his eyes and let the feel of her overwhelm him.

'Did you try this on Jerry...with the coat?' he asked, the words coming out before he could hold them back. 'If so, I'm surprised he could resist.' They had never actually discussed her passion for her boss.

That was exactly what he'd been thinking, yet he regretted what seemed now, a moment later, to be an uncouth utterance, especially when he felt her stiffen under his hands.

'No, I didn't,' she said, a coldness in her tone. 'Maybe I should have.'

Clay pulled her against him so that she was aware that he wanted her, enveloping her softness tightly in his arms. 'Forget I said that, my beautiful,' he murmured. 'Forget everything. Mmm...' He breathed in her scent, nuzzling her hair. 'I want you...desperately...and I'm very glad you came.' He kissed her, feeling her relax her weight against him. Taking her hands, he eased her down onto the floor so that their heads rested on the soft fur of the coat.

CHAPTER FOUR

Once again Clay was at the hospital at seven o'clock in the morning, striding through the entrance of the surgical wing, making for the elevators that would take him up to the floor where he could see Mike Dolby and the other patients he had operated on the day before. He was rushing, trying to see them before he had to be at the meeting.

Mike, who shared a two-bedded room, looked considerably different today. As Clay came up to the bed he could see instantly that his patient was feeling considerably better for having had a mass of inflamed bowel removed. His colour was good, that look of strain, which denoted constant chronic pain, had gone, as had some of the look of illness and fatigue.

'Well,' Clay said, smiling, 'I scarcely have to ask you if you feel better.'

'I feel really good, Dr Sotheby,' Mike said. 'I can tell already that when this bit of pain from the operation wears off I won't be having the sort of pain I had before.'

'Any problems with the ileostomy?'

'Not so far. And it's great here—the nurses are really spoiling me.' Mike smiled from his semi-sitting position in the bed. 'I wish I'd done this a while ago.'

'Well, you hang in there, Mike. I want to have a quick word with the night nurses before they go off duty, then I'll come to see you later today.'

By the time he had seen his other post-op patients he was a few minutes late for the meeting of the medical advisory committee. Meetings bored him somewhat, he acknowledged as he entered the boardroom where the meeting was being held, yet he would have to go to plenty of them if he were Chief of Surgery. He didn't want to lose touch with patients, or to lose that fine edge of skill that he needed to be a good, competent, practical surgeon. Sometimes those considerations bothered him to a point where he questioned his suitability for the job. Perhaps after all he wasn't ready for all this sort of stuff, the endless wrangling over finances, procedure, protocol, problems...

'Hi, Clay,' Jerry addressed him before he sat down at the big table in the boardroom. 'I want to know if you've got your curriculum vitae in order for your application for the job.'

'Yes, I have,' Clay assured him.

'Good, because things are moving. You'll need the names of eight to ten referees for the search committee to contact.'

'That many?'

'Yes. It's because a few of them are never available—they're away at meetings, on holiday, sick or whatever, so it's better to have more than you really need,' Jerry said as they stood casually away from the few others who had arrived. 'They are contacted by telephone or teleconferencing.'

'I see. Are you going to be on the search committee, Jerry?'

'No, I'm not. So you're welcome to use me as one of your referees, if you want to.'

'Thank you, I appreciate it,' Clay said, feeling a surging excitement that his goal might be within his grasp. He pushed aside his earlier reservations as pessimistic niggles. Positive thinking was what mattered here—it often made the difference between success and failure. Although he would be competing with other guys who were equally good at their jobs, he had perhaps an advantage in having worked with Jerry Claibourne as a senior surgical resident.

When the meeting was over he had an outpatient clinic, then had to go again to his private office to deal with the never-ending paperwork. At the office he shared a secretary and a registered nurse, part time, with his colleague and friend, Dr Jason Ritt, who was a peripheral vascular surgeon, one who dealt with diseases and operations of the arteries and veins of the human body, all except those of the heart itself. The heart was the province of the cardiac surgeon.

While in the hospital, and out of it, Clay was always available for emergency surgery. Tomorrow he had a full operating list. Some of the patients on that list would be coming into hospital today, where they would be seen by the surgical residents, but he would also go to see them before he went home that evening.

In his private office that afternoon he got a phone call from the hospital fund-raising office. 'I'm calling about the details of your prize, Dr Sotheby,' a woman explained, after she'd identified herself. 'First of all, I'd like to thank you for your donation to the hospital fund, and for being such a good sport in participating.'

'Er...' he said, his mind still on the notes he had been writing. 'Prize?'

'The date you won,' the woman said, 'the blind date.'

'Oh...right,' he said vaguely, knowing that he was sounding less than enthusiastic.

'Yes. Could you give us a day and time that would be suitable, Dr Sotheby? Then we set it up for you at Guido's restaurant in Gresham. It's a great place. You simply turn up there at the agreed time, ask for the hospital table, which is table ten, and your date will be there at the table. She is asked to come five minutes ahead of you.'

'Ah,' he said, chewing on the end of his pen, trying hard to retain his previous line of thought regarding the patient on whom he was writing up notes.

'It's all very civilized,' the woman went on cheerily. 'We've arranged these things before. If, by some remote chance, you don't like each other much, you just have a very good meal together, prepaid by the hospital, then you simply say goodbye.'

'I see,' he said woodenly. 'You make it sound as though that possibility would be very remote.'

'Oh, it would be,' she said, obviously trying hard to ignore his lack of enthusiasm. 'If you could give me a day, Dr Sotheby, I'll set the wheels in motion. Many people find a Friday night best.'

'How about the Friday after next?' he said. 'I'm not on call. About half past seven?' Damnation! he thought irritably. Between now and then he would think of some way of getting out of it, if he possibly could, without seeming too boorish. At the same time, he wanted to keep a profile at the hospital of being a good, all-round sort of guy.

'Precisely half past seven,' the woman said. 'Right! We'll set it all up for you Dr Sotheby, then I'll call you when it's all in place. We'll also call the day before to remind you.'

'Er...thank you,' he said. What he didn't need was a blind date, he thought once again as he replaced the receiver—not when he had Dawn, among others. For a few seconds he allowed his mind to dwell on images of her on the floor, with her sleek blonde head resting below him on the black mink. Not that Dawn was entirely satisfactory. He wanted more personality, intellect or something... He strongly suspected that her interest in him was largely calculated.

But what did it matter really? he asked himself irritably. It wasn't as though he wanted to marry any of them. Dawn wanted him physically. She liked to be seen with him in social settings, and that was great— a large part of the attraction. Maybe when he was in his early forties, part way through his stint as Chief of Surgery, he would think about marrying and having children. Plenty of time for that.

He stretched his long legs out under the desk, leant back in his chair and put his hands behind his head, closing his eyes for a few moments. God, he was tired! Time for a vacation. He'd tentatively planned a couple of weeks at the end of August away at his country cottage at Random Lake. As he saw in his mind's eye the blue-grey shimmery water of the lake he also found himself imagining a woman there, the sort of woman he might one day marry.. .if he ever did...with two or three little children around her, clutching at her dress.

Hell! He sat forward abruptly. The image had been vague, shimmery like the water of the lake, wrapped in an early morning summer mist.. .yet it was as though that image had conjured itself up from something very real, almost like something remembered. Yet he had never had it before. Clay shook his head, as though clearing away mental cobwebs, then turned his attention to the task at hand. Maybe he was getting mushy in his creeping old age.

* * *

When Wednesday dawned, an operating day, it was almost with a sense of relief that Clay was once again to do what he loved to do, what he was skilled at. As he parked his car at seven o'clock in the multi-storey parking lot opposite the hospital and strode out in the morning sun, it felt good to be alive. As usual, he would go to see the patients he was to operate on that day.

A few nurses and office women in the main lobby of the surgical building stared at him as he strode by in his stone-coloured cotton pants and white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, open at the neck. 'Morning, Dr Sotheby,' they chorused.

'Hi...morning.' He grinned and waved to all and sundry, making for the elevators, giving a special wink and wave to Dr Eva Clarkson, a young colleague and urologist, who had appeared from one of the corridors leading off the lobby.

'Long time no see,' he called to Eva. At one time, he and Eva had had a 'thing' going for them, then they'd both become exceptionally busy with their careers and their passionate meetings—usually in the hospital, and on hospital time—had gradually petered out from necessity, although when they saw each other they promised to get together. It hadn't happened recently.

Eva was pretty, beautiful even, with dark curly hair and pale eyes and skin, somehow exotic. They were two of a kind—they took what they wanted from each other, no strings attached, no expectations. At the moment she was concentrating on her career as a urologist, breaking into what had been largely a man's world.

'Clay! Great to see you,' Eva called, hurrying up to him as he waited for an elevator. 'Let's get together some time. How is it that we go for weeks without seeing each other?'

'We're workaholics. Great to see you,' Clay responded, giving her shoulders a quick squeeze. At this time of the morning they were just a few minutes ahead of the main rush of nursing staff coming in to do a day shift. 'We should rectify that situation as soon as possible, Eva. How about if we make it today? May I call you in your office at about three?' Eva had been an intern when he'd been a senior resident.

'Sure.' Eva smiled up at him, pleasantly surprised, and he looked down at her, appreciating her full, very feminine lips. 'I'll be there. And I'll be looking forward to it.'

There were other people in the elevator when it came, so they didn't speak further. Clay was very physically aware of her standing next to him, yet he gave no indication of it. Even in the anonymous garb of a green, shapeless scrub suit and a white lab coat on top, she looked alluring. Clay wondered why she wasn't married, then caught himself up short. Why wasn't he married, come to that? And he was five years older than Eva. Maybe he was sexist—making one rule foe a beautiful woman and another for himself. Well, they did have to think about the relentless ticking of the biological clock. But, on the other hand, men tended to die earlier, to get heart disease earlier, to get prostate problems, become impotent...

Hastily he shifted his thoughts away from that to appreciate Eva's rear as she left the elevator and walked away. Sighing, he forced his mind back to the contemplation of his first case on the operating list, a removal of a breast lump in a man. It wasn't commonly known, he thought, that men could get cancer of the breast tissue.

*

'We know he has cancer of the left breast,' Clay explained later to Sophie, his scrub nurse for the first case in the operating room, 'because I've done a fine-needle aspiration test—cytology. I did that in my office and sent it to the lab here.'

'That isn't very common, though, is it?' Sophie asked, handing him a sterile towel on which to dry his hands prior to gowning and gloving. Their patient, A1 Harris, sixty-three years old, was already anaesthetized on the operating table. Today their anaesthetist was Dr Claude Moreau. Rick Sommers was already there.

'No, not common,' Clay agreed, 'but not rare either. It's something that we always have to be aware of when a man notices a lump in his breast tissue. A man has ducts in his breast, just like a woman, but he doesn't have the globules that produce milk in the way that a woman does. He can get cancer of the ducts and it can spread to the lymph glands under the arm and to other parts of the body—something which it doesn't seem to have done so far in this case.'

'Will you take a biopsy of the underarm glands?' she asked.

'Yes, we will, just to be on the safe side,' he said. 'And I'll take out the entire mass in the breast and some of the surrounding tissue as well. He presented with a lump and some fixation of the breast tissue to the skin, so I was suspicious as soon as I saw it.'

When he was gowned and gloved, they proceeded to prep the patient's skin.

The remainder of the day went quickly and smoothly, busy yet without complications. At three o'clock Clay was in the surgeons' locker room having a shower, after making a quick call to Eva to arrange to meet her for a cup of tea in the hospital cafeteria. As he shampooed his hair vigorously, he thought back to the past when he and Eva had had an affair. They had met in one of the on-call rooms near the emergency department, situated in a quiet side corridor.

The room they had chosen in those days had been one that no one had wanted to use for sleeping in as it was around the corner from some elevators, so either he or Eva had managed to get the two keys to the room from the nursing station in Emergency, and they had met there on occasion for fifteen minutes of passionate love-making. They'd taken the second key so that no one else had been able to come in.

They'd had a routine whereby she'd left the room first, taking the two keys back to the desk, while he'd waited for three minutes and then left. No one had ever seen them together, as far as he knew. Now, some years later, he looked back on that interlude with nostalgia. He put on a clean scrub suit and lab coat, then made his way to the cafeteria.

Eva was already there, sitting alone at a table with a mug of tea in front of her, and she waved as he came through the main double doors. Ahead of him at the serving counters he saw a small group of OR nurses getting themselves mugs of tea and muffins. Clay couldn't help his eyes resting on Sophie, who was one of them. Her hair was loose, a shiny auburn, tumbling in charming disarray to just below her jawline.

'Hi, Sophie,' he said, coming to stand beside her at the counter as she helped herself to tea from a large urn, surprised to see her, 'and what brings you to the cafeteria at this time of the day? I thought you'd be on your way home by now.'

She turned her large, hazel eyes on him, and for once he was able to really look at her full on, able to study her features—the heart-shaped face, the delicate bone structure and full, soft-looking mouth. He found his eyes dwelling on her lips, devoid of make-up. Her face had that look of tiredness that they all had, after putting in a full day's work, starting early.

'Some of us have been asked to work extra hours, and I'm one of them,' she said, adding milk and sugar to her tea. 'Haven't you heard? We got a call from Emergency to say that we'll probably be getting several patients with gunshot wounds. Apparently there was some sort of gang shoot-out a little while ago down near the waterfront, so the police told us. Something to do with drugs.'

Clay poured himself tea quickly. 'Really?' he said. 'No, I hadn't heard.' Automatically he felt in his pocket for his pager to make sure he hadn't left it in the OR. 'I hope we don't have to operate on gangsters. That's not something I fancy doing.'

'Neither do I,' she said, starting to move away. 'They've gone to Gresham General, so we heard. There were a few innocent bystanders, apparently, so I think we'll be getting those. Excuse me...haven't got much time. See you up there, I expect, Dr Sotheby.'

'Yes.'

Quickly he made his way over to Eva, bending down to kiss her before sliding into a seat beside her. 'Well, how's life treating you?'

'Can't complain,' she said, smiling, 'although life does tend to be all work and no play. Not a great deal of sleep either.'

Clay laughed wryly. 'Tell me about it! I've just heard that we've got some gunshot wounds coming in, so I expect my pager to go off any second.'

'Oh.' Eva smiled. 'And here I was about to ask you if I should get the keys to the on-call room.'

They laughed together. 'I was sure thinking about it,' he admitted truthfully. Hurriedly they drank tea.

'Ah, this is good.' Eva sighed. 'So, how are you, Clay? I've heard a rumour or two that you might be applying for Jerry's job. If you are, I wish you luck.'

'I am thinking about it,' he said. 'Like you, there's not much play.'

'There'll be even less if you get Jerry's job,' Eva said. 'You ought to be married, Clay. Why aren't you?'

'I'm addicted to work, Eva—you know that. Who would have me?'

'Just about every eligible female in this hospital, and you know it, I'm sure.' Eva smiled knowingly at him. 'You need a woman, Clay. You're lonely, I think.'

'How can you tell in the space of two minutes?' he said, looking at her sideways and smiling fondly. 'And what about you?'

'Oh, I'll get married and have children, because I want to. I've still got a few years on you, Clay.'

'I know it,' he said. Just then his pager went off, its tinny, bleating summons grating on them both.

'Don't you just feel like smashing that damn thing?' Eva said. 'Well, it's been nice seeing you, Clay...for all of three minutes.'

'I'll see you again soon,' he said, kissing her again on the mouth quickly. 'Next month in the on-call room?' He stood up to leave, winking at her lasciviously, knowing she would understand his joke.

'Sure. I wish.' Eva smiled up at him ruefully. 'Bye, Clay.' .

As he strode over to the exit he saw Sophie, also hurrying to leave. Momentarily their eyes met. Hers were neutral, yet he knew instinctively that she'd seen the quick kiss he'd given Eva. For some reason he was oddly chagrined. So what? he told himself. He knew he was annoyed because Eva was wrong on one count—Sophie Dunhill, one of the eligible females in the hospital, didn't seem accessible to him. She still seemed to be wearing that 'keep off sign, subtle but nonetheless there. Again he queried why the hell he should care...except that she was a very attractive woman.

After leaving the table, he'd checked the number displayed on his pager—as he'd anticipated, it had been that of the emergency department. Initially he would go there to help assess the patients, then he would go straight up to the operating rooms. There would be internal injuries and haemorrhaging. Right now the ambulances would be arriving.

'Put that first X-ray up again, would you, Cathy?' he said later, as he bent over the patient on the table in the operating room. 'Then put up the lateral view, please.'

Once again, Sophie was his scrub nurse, while Cathy Stravinsky was the circulating nurse. All the operating lists of scheduled cases were finished and now a few rooms were occupied in the operating suite with emergencies, three of them given over to the gunshot victims.

Cathy put up another X-ray film in the lighted display box affixed to the wall. Several X-rays showed different views of a bullet lodged in the patient's abdomen near the liver, having grazed the liver itself, causing haemorrhage. While the bleeding had been stopped and the lacerated liver sutured closed, Clay had still not located the bullet. The patient, a middle-aged woman, was having a blood transfusion, as well as some fresh-frozen plasma. The abdominal cavity had been awash with blood when he'd first opened it. Most of that had been suctioned out, then he'd spent some time searching to make sure that there had been no other bleeding site.

Clay walked over to the X-ray for a closer look, and Rick came with him. 'Looks like it's just a fraction below the diaphragm,' Rick commented, 'more dorsal than anterior.'

'Hmm...yeah,' Clay said, looking closely at the anterior and lateral films.

'Looks easy when you see it like this,' Rick added.

Going back to the operating table, Clay decided what he would do next. 'Sophie,' he said, 'give me one of those large Deever retractors and a large sponge. Rick, would you very gently retract the liver underneath with the sponge, then put the Deever under it. I want to get a good look under the liver because that's where the bullet is.'

'Right,' Rick said, taking a large, square, gauze sponge from Sophie, then the large curved metal retractor which was part of the set-up for major abdominal operations. The abdominal cavity was already being held open with a large self-retaining retractor which enabled them to have a good view of the internal organs.

'Easy does it, Rick,' Clay said. 'We don't want to start the liver bleeding again.'

Very carefully Rick eased his hand and the gauze pad under the liver to lift it up slightly, then he slipped the retractor over the gauze and removed his hand, pulling lightly on the handle of the retractor so that they could get a better view under the liver.

'Do you want the table raised a bit, Clay?' Claude Moreau asked.

'Yes, please, Claude. And could you tilt it head down a bit?'

'Sure.' Dr Moreau pressed the foot pedal under the operating table that raised it electronically. 'Say when,' he said.

'Stop right there,' Clay said.

'I'm tilting the head down now,' Claude said. 'Say when.'

'That's great,' Clay said. 'Sophie, could you, please, angle the light so that it's shining right under here where I've got my hand, right under the liver?'

'Yes.' Sophie put her gloved hand on the sterile metal handle that was in the centre of one of the overhead arc lamps, one of two positioned just above their heads. Pulling it to one side, then angling it back, she was able to direct the powerful light under the liver.

'Good,' Clay said, bending his head down sideways to get a better view. 'Suction under there, would you, Rick?'

With the metal suction nozzle, attached to suction tubing, Rick very carefully suctioned out blood and the residue of irrigation fluid that obscured their view.

'Give me long, curved artery forceps, Sophie,' Clay said, 'and give Dr Sommers a sponge on a stick.'

Without speaking, Sophie handed him the forceps, and a small gauze sponge mounted on long sponge-holding forceps to Rick, who then proceeded to use it to mop up the remaining obscuring fluid in the area under their scrutiny. Very gently Clay began to explore the area where, according to the X-ray, the bullet was located. With the tip of the long forceps he probed the tissues.

'There's a bit of ooze right there, just to the left of the tip of the forceps,' Rick commented.

'Yeah, I see it.'

'Maybe that's where the bullet went in,' Rick said.

'Right on!' Clay said. 'Keep sponging just there... Be gentle—we don't want to push the thing in any further, otherwise it will be coming: out the back through her skin. I'm going to probe about a bit.'

Very gently he pushed the fine tip of the closed artery forceps through the soft tissue where he could see a slight ooze of blood. Once he'd penetrated a few millimetres he opened the tips of the forceps to enlarge the area slightly, then he probed further, feeling the tips of the forceps touch something hard.

'It's there, I'm pretty sure,' he said. 'Now, how to get it out is the question. Sophie, give me the long-handled knife with a fifteen blade. I'm going to made a cut so that I can see the damn thing, then I'll try to get a grip on it.'

Just over five minutes later he had the bullet out, removing it carefully, gripped in the jaws of the artery forceps.

'Bingo!' Rick said. 'Wow! That was a bummer all right.'

Clay dropped the bullet into a small dish that Sophie held for him, and he discarded both it and the forceps that held it. 'I'd like to irrigate this little bullet wound with some saline in a 20 cc syringe and an irrigation catheter, please,' he said to Sophie. 'Then I want to sew it up with some of the fine catgut... Give me 2/0 chromic on a fine needle.'

'Right,' she said.

At last it was over. Clay let Rick sew the patient's abdomen closed after they'd counted all the sponges and instruments to make sure they'd left nothing inside the abdominal cavity. While Clay took the patient's chart to write up the details of his surgical procedure, Rick tackled his task.

When they were just about finished the door to their operating room opened and one of the other surgeons came in, tying a surgical mask around his face as he entered. Clay saw that it was Jason Ritt.

'Clay, I have a great favour to ask you,' Jason said, without preamble. 'And you, too, Claude.'

'What is it, Jason?' Clay said, putting the cap on the pen he'd been using. He had an idea what might be coming, as Jason seemed to live a large part of his professional life on the edge of possible disaster, doing his utmost to avert that disaster.

'I have a case coming in with what sounds like a dissecting aortic aneurysm. He's coming in by helicopter—should be here any minute,' Jason said as he advanced into the room. 'I was hoping that you could give me a hand, Clay. All the other guys are tied up. It's like a zoo in here right now, with these gunshot wounds, plus several transplants going on. I sure hope he doesn't blow before we can get at him.'

'Sure, I'll help you,' Clay said. 'I need a few minutes to wrap up here.' It had been a while since he'd helped Jason with a dissecting abdominal aortic aneurysm, a weakening and ballooning of a small section of a major artery which had begun to split open and leak, constituting a dire surgical emergency. If the aorta—the largest artery in the body—ruptured, the patient could bleed to death in about three minutes or less. The fact that it was already dissecting wasn't a good sign. As Jason had said, it could blow any minute.

He wanted to see his own patient into the recovery room, wait until she'd regained consciousness sufficiently to have a few words with her and make sure there was no post-op bleeding. Since it wasn't an operating day for him tomorrow, maybe he could cancel or postpone some of his office appointments scheduled for the morning in order to get some much-needed sleep.

'Thanks, I appreciate that,' Jason said.

The nurse in charge on the evening shift came into the room and spoke to Sophie and Cathy. 'Could you both possibly stay longer?' she asked. 'The standby teams have already come in...there's no one else.'

Sophie nodded. 'All right,' she said. 'I'll just have to make a phone call.'

'I'll stay,' Cathy Stravinsky said.

'Thank you. We're going to do it in room five, which is empty. I'm getting it set up now. Can you scrub, Sophie? Have you done this before?'

'Yes, I'm familiar with it,' Sophie said.

The head nurse hurried out of the room. Not long after, when their patient with the gunshot wound had been transferred to the recovery room, the surgical team transferred to operating room five.

It was ten o'clock when Clay finally got out of operating room five. Thankfully he went over to a scrub sink and, taking off his cap, face mask and goggles, splashed cold water over his face, head and neck. 'Ah, that's better,' he said. He was dead tired.

The others came out to do the same, except Jason, Clay noted, who must have gone to the recovery room to make sure his patient was stabilized. It had been touch and go oft several occasions, but the man had survived. They had used many units of blood.

'Can I give you a ride home, Cathy?' Claude Moreau addressed Cathy Stravinsky as she rinsed her hands at the sink and dabbed her face with cold water. 'I should be ready to go in about twenty minutes.'

'Yes...please,' Cathy said, her face lighting up. 'I don't fancy getting the street-car.' She was an attractive young woman in a slightly unusual way, with her very dark eyes, almost black, and her thin, delicate features, framed by rich, dark, wavy hair.

When they left, Clay was left alone with Sophie. 'Well, Sophie,' he found himself saying, not to be outdone by Claude, 'could I give you a ride home—now that I know where you live?' He surprised himself.

'Well...' Her hesitation was obvious.

'It's no trouble.' Clay took a handful of paper towels and dried his wet hair as she hovered uncertainly at the scrub sinks. He thought how pretty she was, with her damp hair clinging to her cheeks, and how tired she looked with dark shadows under her eyes.

'That's very kind of you,' she said at last. 'Thank you.'

Clay wondered why she had to be so formal with him. 'You were great with the aneurysm case,' he said. 'Did you feel up to it?'

A look of surprise came to her face, and he knew he'd made a faux pas again. 'I didn't mean...' he began, knowing that his remark had implied that she couldn't cope. 'What I meant was that you must have felt very tired, having put in a full day and then working all evening as well.'

'Yes, I'm exhausted,' she admitted, 'but no more so than you, I imagine, Dr Sotheby.' Her expression had tightened.

Self-consciously she smoothed her untidy hair behind her ears as he looked at her in silence. Their eyes met and held. For a few moments he felt mesmerized by her, uncharacteristically finding himself tongue-tied. He wanted to reach out and touch her, to cup his hand round her pale cheek, to caress her mouth with his thumb...to draw her to him, to kiss her.

There was something in the depths of her expressive eyes that made him feel she knew what he was thinking as the silence between them deepened. She was about three feet away from him. He had only to take a step and...

'Where...where shall I meet you?' she asked, taking a step back.

'Oh...' he said, trying to think. 'How about right outside the door of the OR suite?' At this time of the evening there would be few staff coming in and out of the OR suite, no one to wonder why he was meeting one of the nurses, out of uniform, and leaving with her. Not that it mattered particularly—it was just that observers would love to make something of that, and spread it around.

'All right,' she said, 'Ten minutes?'

Clay nodded. 'That's fine,' he said. When she'd gone he stood leaning against the sink, feeling slightly stunned. It had taken all his will-power not to reach for her and draw her to him. It must be the tiredness getting to him. He'd wanted to give comfort to her...and to take it for himself.

There was something about her that made him feel tender, whereas with Dawn and Eva he knew they wanted something very specific from him, so with them he was aware of getting something back that he also wanted. These were somehow transactional relationships, however enjoyable they were. They were limited, so each individual knew where they stood. That kind of calculation was all right in certain circumstances.

As he walked to the surgeons' locker room his thoughts dwelt on Sophie, sensing that somehow she would be different... Maybe it had something to do with the fact that she'd been widowed at a young age. Maybe, he considered, she was still mourning her husband, although she'd said that he'd died four and a half years before. How long did it take to get over that? he mused. Perhaps one never did, not really. Maybe he was intrigued by her because she showed no signs of falling at his feet...and because he didn't understand her.

Pompous ass! he told himself as he took a very quick shower, which served to jolt him into greater wakefulness. Maybe he needed a woman like her who didn't dwell on him and his world, who understood it but had other interests.

Then he remembered that tomorrow morning early there were the surgical teaching rounds. His team wasn't presenting any cases, so maybe he could give it a miss for once. He would see how he felt when his alarm went off at six next morning.

Sophie was waiting for him at the suite entrance when he strode down the corridor the short distance from the surgeons' locker room, carrying his medical bag. Dressed in light linen pants with a matching jacket over a simple silk top, she looked totally different, especially with her hair loose. She looked casually sophisticated without even trying.

'I didn't expect to be here for fifteen hours today,' she said ruefully when he came up to her. 'It's been like a marathon, so I really appreciate the ride home.' She looked lovely when she smiled, he thought...without the accoutrements of the OR to hide her face like a woman in purdah.

They didn't bother to wait for an elevator, but started down the two flights of stairs to the main floor.

'Who looks after your daughter when you have to stay unexpectedly like this?' he asked. 'I guess you're not regularly on call?'

'My mother lives a few houses down from me, so I phone her and she comes to take care of her,' Sophie said matter-of-factly. 'I know I'm very lucky that she's willing to do it. Actually, I'm on second call once in a while for evenings, and sometimes I do a weekend. Don't get called much.'

Clay, who really knew little about the problems of child-care, nodded.

'Ah...fresh air. How wonderful.' Sophie held her face upwards and took several deep breaths of the cool night air which was moist from a sudden earlier downpour of rain.

'I'm not sure how fresh it is,' Clay said, smiling.

'It feels fresh,' she said.

In his car he didn't have to ask her for directions, so they sat in silence for quite a while, a relatively companionable silence, although Clay felt he ought to be talking to her. He was also still mulling over the possibility of giving the surgical rounds a miss the next morning.

'Dr Sotheby,' she said, turning to him, 'that man with cancer of the breast tissue—will he be all right, do you think? I've been thinking about him all day because he seemed so bewildered by what was happening to him. I felt so sorry for him.'

'I expect he'll be all right,' Clay said. 'There was no spread to the lymph nodes under his arm, so it appears to have been localized. I'll check on him fairly frequently. We can give female hormones to men, which act as a preventative to the spread of the cancer, but they do have side effects such as retention of fluid which can lead to heart problems over a period of time. I expect I'll just watch him.'

'Mmm.'

When they were halfway to her home, making good progress on streets thinly populated by traffic, Sophie leaned forward when they were on a bridge that crossed another road. 'Would you stop at the end of this bridge for a few minutes, please?' She pointed to a small park and mature trees at the side of the street just ahead of them. 'You could just pull in there. I'd like to get some fresh air before I go home...I'd like to feel the rain on my face.' Indeed, a light rain spotted the windshield of the car.

'Sure,' Clay said, slowing down and pulling over to park in an area off the road.

'Just for a few minutes,' she said. 'I know you want to get home. I want to clear my mind of work before I get into the house. I still feel so wound up...'

'Yes,' he agreed as they walked the few yards over to the bridge. 'Those aneurysm cases are just like walking a tightrope over a canyon—the same sort of feeling, I should imagine. I was just glad it was Jason's case, not mine. It's rather different when you're the assistant.'

They leaned over the bridge, side by side, looking down at the deserted road below. A blustery, cool wind had got up, blowing away the heat of early summer, blowing light rain into their faces.

'Yes,' she agreed, 'I guess you can relax a little more. I always admire Dr Moreau. He's always so calm, so good at his job.'

'Yes,' he said. 'He's a great anaesthetist. I think Cathy's got a crush on him, don't you?'

Sophie looked at him in surprise. 'Yes, she has. It's more than a crush because she's a mature woman, not a kid. How do you know? I thought you didn't notice things like that.'

'Why do you say that?' He turned to her.

'Well, I...I thought you probably wouldn't be aware—'

'You mean you think I'm an insensitive clod?'

'No.' She laughed. 'I just thought you would be so focused on what you were doing that you would scarcely see the nurses, except in their roles in relation to you at a particular moment...' She was floundering a bit for words.

'In other words, an insensitive clod,' he said.

Again she laughed. 'No, really, I...'

They were facing each other, the wind whipping her hair forward over her face. 'You look like Botticelli's Venus,' he said, reaching forward to pull a strand of auburn hair away from her mouth, 'with those tawny eyes and hair that looks alive.'

'So, Dr Sotheby,' she said softly as his fingers brushed her skin, 'you are human after all. I had doubts.'

Clay put his hands on her upper arms and bent down to kiss her, moved by instinct, the action quite unplanned, He closed his eyes as his mouth met her cool lips and her windblown hair caressed his face.

She responded to his kiss, gently, warmly, after a moment of hesitation, but she didn't put her arms around his neck or press herself closely against him, as some women he knew would have done. She just stood and let their mouths cling together.

For his part, he maintained a light grip on her, the contact giving him a sharp flare of desire mixed with a sense of something like wonder that he should be here on a bridge at night, kissing the somewhat aloof Ms Dunhill who, he suspected, didn't really like him very much. At the moment he didn't really care as he began to lose himself in the sensations aroused by her gentle yet sensual response to his kiss.

For a long time they stood there, buffeted by the wind. After some minutes, he slid his arms round her shoulders, as though protecting her, knowing that he didn't want this contact to end.

She at last pulled away from him, straining against his arms so that he was forced to let go. They stood looking at each other in the soft light of the streetlamps.

'Why did you do that?' she whispered.

'I wanted to.'

Sophie turned her head into the wind so that her clinging hair blew away from her face. 'We'd better go,' she said.

In the car he turned to her. 'I didn't plan that,' he said.

'I know.'

'Do you mind?'

She hesitated. 'No.'

Clay let out a sigh. Sometimes you wanted something to happen, then out of nowhere, it seemed, it happened and took you galloping ahead so that you didn't know how to maintain control of it. He picked up one of her hands which lay inert in her lap and carried it to his lips.

'I want to make love to you,' he said. They'd shared such a horrendous day that to lie in a comfortable bed with this woman in his arms seemed like a fitting end to it, to chase the demons away, to share warmth and passion... Somehow he knew that was how it would be. He didn't know where they would go...perhaps to his place.

'So do a lot of people,' she said, her expression veiled in the semi-darkness of the car.

'Really?' he said, taken aback by her reply, kissing the tips of her fingers.

'Well...quite a few, anyway. It's an occupational hazard in the operating rooms.' She was speaking softly, matter-of-factly, so that he couldn't tell if she was laughing at him. 'And aren't you being very premature? To say that we don't know each other is an understatement. Or maybe you prefer women you don't know very well, then you don't have to get emotionally involved. Hmm?'

'I hadn't really thought of it in that light,' he admitted. 'I feel that I know you pretty well.'

'No, you don't.'

'So that means no, then?' he said, after a few minutes of loaded silence.

'Well, it doesn't mean yes,' she said, 'so that leaves only no, doesn't it?'

'It could be perhaps, or maybe,' he said, still retaining her hand.

'To you. I don't subscribe to maybe,' she said.

'Am I so odious? I know that's an unfair question, and not really the point.'

'No, you're not odious,' she said softly, removing her hand from his grasp. 'Sometimes obnoxious at work.' There was a touch of laughter in her voice. 'And, no, it isn't really the point.'

'You're laughing at me, Sophie Dunhill...teasing,' he said, putting his hand behind her head so that he could draw her to him as he bent forward.

'Not teasing. I don't like that. I just feel a strong sense of the ridiculous—'

He cut her short by kissing her. Again, she didn't put her arms around him, only put her hand against his cheek after a moment, keeping it there, so he put his hand up to cover it. Again the kiss went on for a long time so that he lost himself in the feel of her. Usually with Dawn and his other women he was always aware of himself there with them. Now he felt a loss of self, as though he were floating away to a realm of pure pleasure where he could forget work and everything else but her, the two of them in the cosy, enclosed world of the car's interior. He couldn't have said why it was so.

When they broke apart, there were moments of silence while they strove for composure. 'You no doubt want to get home,' he said at last.

'How can you be here with me like this,' Sophie said, 'when you have Dr Claibourne's secretary? I understand that she's your lover.'

Clay turned to her sharply. 'How do you know that?'

'It's common knowledge,' she said.

He digested that. 'Oh, is it?' he said.

'Mmm.'

'I don't claim to be monogamous,' he said. 'Dawn knows that...we have an understanding. That's what she wants.' There was a tenseness between them now, the burden of much left unsaid.

'And you expect me to sleep with you?' she said.

'I would like to—but I don't expect you to,' he said truthfully. 'You must have...reservations...because of the past. I mean your husband...'

There was a silence that became fraught with the added tension of acute sexual attraction. 'We'd better go,' she said.

'I'm sorry I mentioned it. It wasn't fair,' he said.

'It's all right...really,' she said.

'As I remember saying to you once before, can we at least be friends?' he said.

'We're colleagues,' she said. 'Let's leave it at that. I enjoyed working with you today.'

When he stopped in front of her home, Sophie leaned over quickly and kissed him on the cheek, much as he'd done to her the last time. 'Thank you very much for the ride, Dr Sotheby,' she said, her hand on the doorhandle. 'You're a very attractive man and, yes, I would like to make love to you...but I'm not going to because I think you would take me entirely for granted, and that would probably upset me. I suspect that getting women has been too easy for you. Also, I don't like to be with a man when he already has someone else.'

'Why can't I have the same effect on you as Rick does?' he asked, both gratified and chagrined at the same time. 'That easy chat that you have with him.'

She considered. 'It's because the stakes would be higher with you,' she said. 'Rick is sweet and jokey, as well as upfront. I know where I am with him.'

'I thought I was pretty upfront, Sophie,' he said.

'You are with your own needs, Dr Sotheby,' she said, opening the door. 'It's not the same thing. Goodnight.'

This time she didn't wait on the doorstep. In a moment she was lost to his view. Clay sat in the car and pounded his fist on the steering-wheel. 'Damn, damn, damn!' he said.

CHAPTER FIVE

There was a lot of pressure these days on surgeons from the administration to discharge patients early from hospital to save money, to get as rapid a turnover as possible. These were the thoughts that occupied Clay as he arrived, early as usual, at the hospital.

He parked his car in the multi-storey parking lot opposite the hospital and took an elevator to street level, his mind occupied with the day ahead. In what had remained of the night, he'd slept rather restlessly. Over the years he'd trained himself to sleep whenever he had the chance, but this time he'd woken periodically with images of Sophie in his mind.

Having been awake at the usual time that his alarm went off, he'd decided to get up anyway and go in to the surgical rounds, in spite of being more than ordinarily tired.

There would be coffee at the rounds, which would wake him up. Then he would go to see Mike Dolby and his other patients. There was no way, in spite of rabid cost-cutting, that he was going to discharge him from hospital until he could be sure that there was no residual or recurring inflammation of the bowel, or any infection starting up. He also wanted to make sure that his patient could cope with his ileostomy at home, even though a community-based nurse would be going in to see him at home.

On the topic of Sophie, in the cold light of early morning he could see that he had, indeed, been some what premature with her, and he wondered what the hell had got into him. He excused himself by dwelling on the fact that they'd known each other, and had worked together, for well over a year.

Yet she was quite right that they hardly knew each other from a purely personal point of view. All that time he'd certainly been aware of her, he mused. He'd certainly noticed her when she'd first arrived in the surgical service to work. It was only since the dance that he'd become more acutely aware of her, so that it had begun to intrude on his thoughts. Somehow in the past she'd always seemed to slide away from him whenever he'd tried to step outside their professional relationship in his conversations with her.

There were other people already gathered in the lecture theatre when he got there. As he headed for the coffee-urn, he was suddenly very glad that he'd come. Since he wasn't presenting any cases himself, it would be a social occasion of sorts for him.

'Hi, Clay!' Several people greeted him.

As they were about to start, Jason Ritt came in, looking pale and tired.

'Hey, Jason,' Clay greeted him, and motioned him over to the chair next to his. 'How's the aneurysm guy?'

Jason slid into the seat beside him. 'He survived the night, and he seems to be doing OK,' he said. 'I want to keep him in the intensive care unit as long as possible. They kept him in the recovery room overnight, which I was glad about.'

'Did you get any sleep? It doesn't look like it.' Clay chuckled, eyeing his colleague who had obviously shaved rather hastily.

'Oh, I got a bit of shut-eye in one of the on-call rooms.'

As the rounds got under way, Clay found his mind wandering, as were his eyes. He was looking over the small crowd to see any likely candidates who could perhaps take his place on this blind date thing that was coming up. Really, he should have told the woman from the fund-raising office there was no way he could possibly do it, but somehow he'd let that opportunity slip by. Now his only hope of getting out of it was to find someone to take his place, otherwise a hapless female could be sitting alone in a restaurant.

Looking around him at his medical colleagues and the few nurses in the room, he could see that most of the men were either married or living with a woman, as far as he knew. The ones who weren't connected in that way were either what he would call of the neuter gender, or too old, or were those he wouldn't wish on any woman under any circumstances—guys who had been divorced more than once, or those the luscious Suzie would call slimeballs, or worse.

Clay rubbed his chin and sighed, his glance coming back to Jason at his side. No, Jason was very married, although right now Clay couldn't understand what his wife saw in him, apart from the fact that he was sort of a normal guy and a very good surgeon.

It was in his office in the Medical Arts Building that afternoon that he got another call from the woman.

'Ah, Dr Sotheby,' she enthused, 'it's all set up, your blind date. Isn't it exciting? So it's Friday of next week, seven-thirty, at Guido's. Don't be late, please, because you know how embarrassing it is for a woman to be waiting for a man who's late showing up.'

He decided to take the bull by the horns. 'Look,' he said, 'I really would rather not do this. Is there some way—?'

'No,' the faceless woman said firmly, a shocked note in her voice. 'You can't possibly back off now—it's all arranged. It's understandable that you'll be nervous. It's quite normal, you know. Just don't worry about it. Go out and enjoy yourself.'

'Is that an order?' he said tartly.

She gave a trilling laugh. 'You could take it that way,' she said, 'although I don't suppose the hospital would terminate your employment if you disobeyed.' She laughed. It was obvious that she didn't take his objection seriously.

'Well, goodbye,' he said, and hung up.

The following week went by in a blur of hectic activity, with both routine work as usual and emergencies for which he was called in twice over the weekend. Dawn called several times on the weekend, and he found himself reluctant to see her, not wanting to examine the reason too closely. Pleading work was always an acceptable reason, as well as an excuse, for a doctor. After all, who could quibble about someone who was going out to save lives?

Nonetheless, he felt guilty as he got into an elevator on the Thursday afternoon to go to his office, having had a quick lunch with Dawn in the cafeteria. Since the beginning of their relationship, which he supposed could be called an affair, even though it was on and off, she had been very accommodating with him. Apart from her obvious delight in their romantic and physical encounters, he couldn't honestly see what she got out of the relationship.

'Hello, Clay! How are you?' The only other occupant of the elevator, a woman, addressed him as he was preoccupied with his thoughts.

Looking at her closely, he saw that it was Laura Claibourne, Jerry's wife. They had met a few times at cocktail parties at the Claibournes' house and at formal staff dinners. Laura was a beautiful, mature woman who devoted herself to their four children, making no apologies for wanting to do that, and couldn't have coped with Jerry, a large family and a career of her own, although she was also an MD.

'Laura!' Clay said with delight. 'It's so good to see you. I didn't recognize you.'

'I've dyed my hair,' -she said, laughing. 'I hear from Jerry that you're going to apply for his position.'

'I'm thinking of it,' he said.

'Rather you than Jerry,' she said. 'I can't wait for him to give it up so that we can have some semblance of a normal life again. It's really more suited to an unmarried man like you. Maybe I shouldn't be saying that to you, Clay, but I'm sure you know what you'll be getting into.'

'I have a pretty good idea,' he admitted.

'Well, I wish you luck, Clay,' Laura said. 'This is where I get out—I'm just visiting a friend. No doubt we'll see each other at Jerry's farewell party, if not sooner.'

Her departure left Clay in a very thoughtful mood, the heartfelt expression 'rather you than Jerry' echoing in his ears. There was no doubt that the job would leave little free time.

In his office he got another call from the woman in the fund-raising office to remind him of his date the following evening.

'You make me feel as though I'm being reminded of a dental appointment,' he said ruefully. 'You're about as persistent as my dentist's receptionist.'

'Oh, Dr Sotheby,' he was admonished, 'how could you possibly put this in the same category as a dental appointment? This is going to be fun! Now, don't you go trying to find a substitute for yourself because a substitute will not have been vetted by us and that's against the rules. It might not be safe for the woman involved.'

'OK,' he said, 'you've got me trapped. I'm prepared to have fun.'

Friday dawned blustery and wet, not typical for June. When Clay left the hospital in the late afternoon, the weather had got worse, if anything, matching his sombre mood. During the day's operating list, two of his patients had had their diagnoses of cancer confirmed, serious cases. He hadn't told them in the immediate post-op period what their diagnoses were—he preferred to go to the hospital on the Saturday, when they'd had a chance to recover from the major operations he'd performed and could actually take in what he had to say, and when a family member could also be present. He wasn't looking forward to it.

Maybe what he needed right now, after all, he told himself ruefully, was a blind date, something else to think about. Funnily enough, he might actually enjoy it.

He was a few minutes late when he managed to find a convenient parking spot, in the pouring rain, just after seven-thirty outside Guido's bistro. Inside, the ambience of the place hit him with a pleasant jolt. It had an intimate, cosy atmosphere, alive with conversation, redolent with odours of good food well cooked, an understated sort of place. Soft music added to the pleasing background noise.

'Ah, you must be Dr Sotheby!' Instantly he was greeted by a man in an immaculate white chef's apron over formal clothes, handsome in a way that only an Italian man could be. Guido himself?

'Yes,' he said, feeling something of the oddity of his position.

'Let me take your umbrella, sir.'

Clay caught sight of himself in a full-length smoky mirror attached to the wall, looking much more nonchalant than he felt, his formal grey pants tempered somewhat by his striped shirt, the loose tie, and the jacket he'd slung casually over one shoulder. His hair could use a trim. It was curling a bit below his ears in an unintentionally rakish way.

'Well, Doctor, we guarantee that you'll enjoy your evening,' Guido said, flashing very white teeth. 'Your young lady is here. We have arranged this before with the hospital several times. It has always worked out well.'

Clay forbore to ask Guido what he'd meant exactly by that last statement as he followed the proprietor towards the back of the restaurant to a cosy, private area that overlooked a small patio at the back of the property. Through a window Clay could see that the patio was now lashed by rain.

'Here we are, sir,' Guido said. 'Table ten.'

Clay felt his jaw dropping, and felt as though his feet were rooted to the spot beside the table, as Guido stepped aside to reveal the woman seated there, menu in hand.

'My God!' she said. 'You!'

Guido pulled out a chair for Clay. 'A typical response, sir,' he said, smiling. 'Enjoy your meal.'

Like an automaton, Clay sank down into the chair, having some difficulty in getting his long legs under the small table. Sitting opposite him, with what he could only describe as an expression of muted horror on her face, was Sophie Dunhill.

In stunned surprise, he managed to register in those first few seconds that she looked exceptionally beautiful, with her hair loose, fluffed becomingly around her delicately made-up face. Her eyes looked large and mysterious, the lashes thick and long, while her lips were moist and enticingly red. She wore a dress in a sophisticated bluey-purple colour with long sleeves, accentuating the richness of her glowing hair.

'Dunhill,' Clay said, forgetting the niceties demanded by the situation, 'what the hell are you doing here?'

'I may well ask you that, Dr Sotheby,' she said in a strangled voice. 'I would have said this sort of thing wasn't your bag.'

'Ditto,' he said. 'I don't remember seeing your photograph among those displayed in this rather ridiculous game, if one can call it that.'

'It wasn't,' she said shortly, doing little to hide the dismay on her face. 'I'm standing in for a friend of mine who suddenly got sick. She has infectious mononucleosis.' They were glaring at each other across the narrow expanse of the table.

'Well, thank God for small mercies,' Clay said. 'That's something I can do without.'

Sophie swallowed convulsively. 'You don't have to be rude,' she said. 'I don't want to be here with you any more than you, very apparently, want to be here with me.'

Very obviously she was thinking, as he was, that the last time they'd been alone together he'd told her that he wanted to make love to her. That knowledge was calculated to produce a certain minimum of awkwardness, at least initially, even in the most sophisticated of professional men and women...and Clay thought of himself as at least average in that category, without being conceited. While complimentary, perhaps—depending on who it was coming from—such a remark invariably heightened the emotional stakes.

During a few seconds of painful silence, Clay thought he saw the faint shimmer of tears in Sophie's eyes, and his surprise at seeing her—which had been exacerbated by his underlying annoyance at having to go through with this charade—gave way to a surprising wash of tenderness of which he hadn't known he was capable with a woman.

Impulsively he reached across the table and captured one of her nervous hands in his, looking as he did so into her vulnerable face where two spots of hectic colour on her cheeks betrayed still further her lack of ease with him. Yes, her enormous eyes were strangely dark and glittery, he could see as he leaned closer.

'Sophie,' he said, keeping his voice down, 'I was merely taken aback by the sight of you, that's all. I didn't mean to sound rude. And your greeting was less than complimentary.'

'You never seem to mean it, but you are that way,' she said, also keeping her voice low, but none the less vitriolic.

She pulled at her hand, but he clung on. Guido appeared again at their table so she was forced to relax her hand in his firm grip, where it remained like a small, fluttering bird in a trap.

'You would like a drink, sir, before you order?'

'I'll have a whiskey and soda, please,' Clay said, 'and the lovely lady will have the same. I could certainly use a drink.' When he raised his eyebrows at Sophie, as though daring her to contradict him, she nodded, not trusting her voice. When Guido was out of earshot, he raised her hand to his lips and kissed it. 'We may as well make the most of this. I get the impression that service isn't speedy here.'

'I don't like being referred to as "the lovely lady". It's patronizing and horribly old-fashioned,' Sophie said. Not wanting to openly wrench her hand from his grasp, she suffered him to keep it. 'And I would guess that my need of a drink is considerably greater than yours.'

Clay found himself grinning. 'Ah, Sophie, Sophie...I'm sorry,' he muttered, nuzzling the tips of her fingers, gazing at her steadily under lowered brows. 'Perhaps you would prefer "lady love"? Also old-fashioned, but it perhaps has a nicer ring to it. Yes?'

She seemed to be unbending a little, he thought.

'That isn't exactly true. Just don't be too smarmy,' she said. 'I couldn't bear it.'

'Am I ever smarmy?' he said huskily.

'Well...no. Certainly not at work,' she had to admit. 'But I suspect that you could be, in a situation like this.'

'You do have a way with your compliments, Sophie,' he murmured.

'In any verbal exchange outside work I think I could give as good as I get,' she said.

'You look very lovely, Sophie. I know that's old-fashioned, too, maybe, to say it, but it's true.'

'Thank you.' Her eyes went over him as though she wanted to return the compliment, but decided not to.

As he looked at her he sensed that she was still thinking of the night he'd driven her home. It was certainly in the forefront of his mind. Maybe she was thinking that tonight he would ask her again, put the pressure on. But that wasn't his modus operandi, and he would have to find some way of telling her. He didn't know what had possessed him to jump the gun like that. It must have had something to do with the case they'd just both worked on in the operating room, the sense of the fragility of life, a sense of wanting to grasp life with both hands while one had the chance...

When the drinks came, they both sipped in a determined fashion. In truth, Clay wasn't displeased to have been confronted by this woman. His feelings for her were ambiguous, to say the least, yet he didn't try to delude himself that he didn't find her very attractive and somewhat disturbing, intriguing even.

'May I have my hand?' Sophie said at last.

Giving the hand a final kiss, he released it. 'It's been a hard day,' he said with a sigh, a statement which he knew from experience excused him much.

'It's been hard for me, too,' she shot back, her eyes fiery, reminding him that they'd spent the day working together. For the most part it had gone well. 'I don't really want to spend my free time with someone I've been working with all day, any more than you do. However, as you say, we may as well make the most of it.'

Clay cleared his throat and took a generous gulp of whiskey, feeling the liquid very gradually bringing relaxation. He seldom drank hard liquor. 'I didn't say I didn't want to be with you,' he said. 'We won't talk about work. The idea is to forget about it,' What the hell was he going to talk to her about? After all, his whole life revolved around work, and she knew it. Maybe he could tell her about his art collection of modern Canadian painters.

'You implied,' she said, 'that you would rather not be with me.'

'You're wrong there, Dunhill,' he said.

'For God's sake, don't call me Dunhill,' she said. 'It's like the army!'

'All right, Sophie. That's agreed, if you'll call me Clay.'

'All right,' she said grudgingly, 'Clay.'

There was a tension between them that came from the opposing needs of maintaining a quasi-professional distance and relaxing enough to have what was commonly known as a good time.

'Great,' he said, relieved when a waiter came to take their orders for food. Clay ordered the first acceptable thing that caught his eye on the menu.

'Did you drive here?' he asked Sophie later.

'No, I came by taxi,' she said.

'I'll take you home,' he said.

'Are you already anticipating saying goodbye to me?' At last she smiled a little, if rather tightly.

'No...' he said.

The food proved to be superb. Eating it, and drinking the excellent wine that went with it, proved a relaxing experience. As did the soft music in the background. 'It's odd that we should be doing this, isn't it, because we want to donate some money to the hospital fund,' Sophie said. 'Perhaps we should use it as a good opportunity to get to know each other so that we can work together with more understanding...while we're both under the influence of alcohol.'

Clay laughed. 'Mmm...' he said. 'You took the words right out of my mouth. But I hope we can like each other without the aid of alcohol.' From that moment on, he made a determined effort. They talked about politics, art, theatre, travel, literature, until the coffee was served.

'I see you really enjoy yourself,' Guido said enthusiastically, as he stood by their table. 'May I suggest a glass of Grand Marnier with your coffee?'

'Please.' Sophie said.

Clay nodded. 'Thank you,' he said.

'Do you think he was being sarcastic?' Sophie said, when Guido had moved away.

'No, he was deadly serious.' He captured her hand again and kissed it. 'Anyway, I am enjoying myself. Are you?'

'Yes. This is a wonderful restaurant.'

When the meal was over, Sophie looked at Clay and said, 'We're both slightly drunk, aren't we?'

'I fear so,' he agreed, on his second cup of coffee.

'I expect it was mutually intentional.'

'Sad but true, and sad that we should be so uptight with each other. We'll have to go for a long, brisk walk in the rain before I get behind the wheel of my car.'

'I like walking in the rain,' she said, pouring them both a third cup of coffee.

Fifteen minutes later they found themselves outside on the sidewalk, where a light rain was falling. Clay put up his large black umbrella, almost as large as a golfing umbrella, and they squeezed together under it.

'This has been great fun after all,' he admitted. 'Thank you, Sophie.'

'Thank you,' she said sombrely.

'Which, way for the walk?' he asked, aware that he needed to give the alcohol a chance to wear off and the caffeine to take over.

'This way.' As they set off up a quiet, tree-lined street where there were no pedestrians, Clay put his arm around Sophie's waist and drew her to him so that they could share the shelter of the umbrella comfortably. Streetlamps shed a soft glow.

Arriving at a small park, they sat down on a dry bench under a tree. 'Do you frequently go on blind dates?' he asked.

'No...not since my teens,' she said dreamily.

'I like you, Sophie Dunhill,' he said. 'I now know that. I wasn't entirely sure before.'

'I'm sort of glad you like me. It makes things easier at work,' she said. 'But I wouldn't go into a decline if you didn't.'

He found himself laughing, feeling at ease with her now, relaxed in a way that he hadn't felt relaxed for some time. 'That remark is a perfect example of paying a dubious compliment, then taking it back immediately.'

'Well, that's really what you do,' she said, 'so I can do it, too.'

'Ouch! You really do think badly of me, don't you? I'll have to see what I can do to dispel that misapprehension. I, um, I assume that you don't have a regular man in your life, otherwise you wouldn't be here with me,' he said, his arm still draped casually around her.

'Better not to assume,' she said, looking at him shrewdly. 'I could assume the same about you, but then you have Dawn Renton.'

'Ouch again!' he said. 'Dawn and I aren't serious. I'm a convenience for her, that's all, and I guess she is for me sometimes.' He hoped he sounded brutally honest, because that was what he intended to be. That was his reading of the situation between himself and Dawn.

'Oh?' she said. 'The tom-toms say that if you become Chief, you and Dawn will marry. The gossip has it that she's very, very socially ambitious.'

Clay was genuinely taken aback, shocked even. 'You shouldn't listen to tom-toms, Sophie,' he admonished her. 'And my social circuit isn't great.'

'The beat is loud,' she said, amusement in her voice.

Clay digested that bit of information in silence for a while, then decided to dismiss it. Other questions were more pressing.

'Do you have someone?' he persisted.

'No.'

'I suppose you must still miss your husband,' he added carefully, his hand ruffling her soft hair at the back of her head. Her answer pleased him, strangely.

'I certainly wouldn't want to get serious about anyone right now,' she said. 'Once was enough.'

'When you've loved someone, I guess it would take a long time to want to get involved with someone else.' Clay wasn't quite sure why he was talking in this way, peculiarly introspective for him—sort of introspection by proxy. 'Not that I can speak from personal experience. I don't think I've been in love with anyone. It's always just been a strong physical attraction.'

'Always indulged?' she asked, with apparent innocence.

'You could say that...in a discriminating way,' Clay said, noting that she was smiling. 'Now, you, having loved—'

'That's where you're wrong,' Sophie said. 'I didn't love Peter...not in the way you mean...not in the right way, as a wife should love a husband. So, you see, things aren't always what they seem.'

'Why not?' She had his attention fully.

'Before we married,' she said softly, gazing into the near distance as the rain spattered gently on the umbrella that he still held over them, even though they were somewhat sheltered by the tree, 'we lived together for a year, and at the end of that time I decided that I didn't want to marry him, that I wanted to move out, whereas he wanted to marry me.'

'Go on,' he encouraged.

'Well, to cut a long story short, when I finally got up the courage to decide that I had to tell him, he announced first that he'd been diagnosed with cancer,' she said. 'He hadn't been feeling well for some time, very tired, so he'd been to see someone about it. We were both absolutely shattered. I was so glad that I hadn't actually told him.'

Clay stroked her hair and her cheek. She hardly seemed to notice.

'Of course,' she went on, 'I couldn't possibly tell him then that I didn't want to stay with him.'

'No...'

'I won't bore you with all the details. I felt guilty because I didn't love him in the right way when he was suffering so much. I lived in fear that he would find out that I didn't love him...' She bent her head so that, looking at her delicate profile, Clay wanted to draw her into his arms and comfort her. 'I tried so hard not to let it show.'

Clay eased her head against his shoulder and kissed the top of her head.

'We decided to marry, then for me to become pregnant before he had to have the chemotherapy. He died two years later. End of story.' There was a touch of bitterness in her voice, a regret. 'Of course, I did love Peter in a certain way—of course I did. He was a sweet boy. But that was exactly what he was—a boy.'

'A very sad story, and a great dilemma for you,' Clay said, moved more deeply than he would have admitted. 'You did right to stay with him. I think it was right for both of you. If you hadn't stayed, I guess you would have felt pretty awful later on.'

'Yes, I know I would have,' she admitted pensively. 'He depended on me so much, and wanted me with him.'

Clay cradled her head against his shoulder, as though he could belatedly ease the burdens of her past.

'Now, in order to work through some of the sadness and guilt,' she went on, 'and to give something back for all the kindness ordinary people showed to me and Peter—some of them volunteers—I volunteer two or three times a month at a distress centre at Gresham General Hospital. In some small way I can give back something of what I was given. Help came from unexpected sources. And it helps me now, too, that I can do it.'

'You man the telephones?' Clay asked. Very gradually he was getting to know Sophie, feeling more and more respect for her underlying sweetness and dignity, her integrity. Yet he was aware of the usual barriers in himself, knowing that he often short-circuited relationships by getting into the physical thing early...too early. Getting to know a woman really well took time, which generally came between him and his work...? Yes. It's usually in the evenings until quite late, and sometimes on the weekends, when people get depressed because they think that everybody else is out having a good time or in a cosy home with a family,' she said. 'You know, it's so different from operating-room work that I actually enjoy it, in spite of the stress of a different sort.'

'I can imagine that,' he said.

'They really need someone like me...like us, the other volunteers,' she mused.

'And now?' Clay ventured, after a few minutes of silence. 'What does the future hold for you?'

Sophie shrugged. 'I'm contented the way I am. We both enjoyed our daughter so much, Peter and I, and now she's all mine.'

'Will you ever marry again, do you think?' He was making polite conversation, helping her to talk about the past. It would be a cathartic experience, he told himself. Besides, he had a genuine curiosity about her.

'I don't know,' she said honestly. 'Not for a long time, anyway. Once was enough, as I said. It was such a strain...such a strain. When it was all over I felt utterly drained, as though I would never recover. Our daughter kept me going. I felt I couldn't bear it if he thought I didn't want to be with him. Now I'll never know.'

'I don't suppose he knew,' Clay said. 'You're a very warm person. I'm sure he felt that.'

'It would be very difficult to find a mature man who would want me and accept another man's child,' she said pensively, as though thinking aloud. 'A man I could really love and be attracted to in the right way for a marriage. Really mature men are few and far between, so I've found. I mean, the sort of men who can really stick things out. I do go out with men, you know...I'm not living like a nun, I accept invitations. But really I'm relieved to be free... So many sources of guilt, you see, Dr Sotheby.'

'We always feel guilt in circumstances like that, because we think we didn't do enough.' he said. 'I see it all the time in the families I deal with. We have to accept it, and get over it. Most of the time it isn't justified.'

'Intellectually, I know that, but emotionally I still have the feeling. You must think I'm a real psychological mess,' she said quietly.

'No, quite the opposite. Perhaps one day you'll find that you can put it behind you.'

'Yes, I expect so. I don't usually talk so much about myself,' she admitted, a touch of apology in her voice.

'So I've noticed over the past year,' Clay said.

'I don't want you to think I'm one of those narcissistic women who can't talk about anything or anyone but themselves.'

'I don't. So you care what I think, Sophie?'

'Well...yes. I find it easy to talk to you.' She turned to look at him, her face very close to his. 'Funny, isn't it? I always imagined that talking to you about anything personal would be very difficult, even though you're great with patients, so kind. I don't know why I thought that. Maybe because you intimidate me a bit.'

'Hell!' he said. 'The ogre again! Why do you say that?'

'Well, you spend most of your time working, from what I can see,' she said hesitantly. 'You have a reputation for being a workaholic, and men like that tend to be short on empathy and understanding when it comes to-personal relationships. I...I'm talking in a general way. Obviously, I don't know you very well. So, you see, I'm pleasantly surprised.'

'I'm gratified.'

'Sorry if that sounded patronizing.'

Clay controlled his response very carefully, fighting the urge to crush her in his arms. Not yet, he told himself. 'Call me Clay,' he said. 'Otherwise I feel as though you think of me as some sort of plastic automaton.'

With her laughter, their pensive mood lifted. 'All right...Clay.' She smiled. 'I should be grateful to that Grand Marnier—it's made me talk uninhibitedly. However, I think we've given ourselves enough time to sober up, don't you?'

'Sophie...' With his one free hand he turned her face towards him and kissed her. Under the shelter of the umbrella they had privacy from the few passers-by, people who were walking their dogs in the park.

She pulled back to look at him, her eyes searching his face. 'If I hadn't had so much to drink,' she said, 'I wouldn't be here talking to you like this. I'd be home and probably sleeping by now.'

'Do you regret talking to me?'

'No...not really.'

'Sophie.' Again he said her name softly, as he sensed that some of her antipathy to him had eased. He wanted to drop the umbrella and take her into his arms, crush her against him and kiss her passionately, to make her really notice him, to click back into the here-and-now. Instead, he leaned forward and placed his mouth gently on hers. This time she slid her hand round to the back of his neck, holding him to her. A wave of delight encompassed him at her touch.

After that they sat for a long time in silence, her head against his shoulder, a hand in his.

'It must be pretty late,' she said at last. 'We'd better go. I do feel more or less sober now. But do you? You have to drive.'

'Sober enough to perform surgery,' he said. 'And to drive.'

'Are you planning to spend the remainder of the night with Dawn Renton?' she asked unexpectedly. 'Since it's the weekend.'

'Jesus...no!' he said. 'Why do you ask that?'

'Just want to get a few things clear in my head,' she said, standing up abruptly.

'What do you think I am—some sort of stud, Ms Dunhill?'

'You have that reputation,' she said equitably.

'The tom-toms again?'

'Yes.'

'I can't deal with two women in one night,' he joked, 'even just eating. Anyway, thank you, Sophie, for a good evening.'

'Thank you, Clay. It's been fun, just as it was supposed to be, as well as illuminating. Come on,' she said.

Because it was still raining, he had to put his arm around her again so that they could share the umbrella. As they walked, he wanted to ask her if he could see her again outside work, but to his consternation he felt himself uncharacteristically tongue-tied. There was always next week at the scrub sinks, he told himself...if he still felt the same then.

'Do you have family in Gresham?' she asked.

'I have a few aunts and uncles, a few cousins, too,' he said, describing the relatives he seldom saw. 'We don't see much of each other...there doesn't seem to be time.'

'Sometimes we have to make time,' Sophie commented as they walked slowly back towards the car.

'I know,' he said ruefully. 'That's something I'm not very good at. My parents live in Bermuda. My father was a surgeon who decided to retire early, although he still goes to work once in a while in some needy countries, for free, through an organization.'

'So you can't see them very often?' she queried.

'Oh, I see them quite frequently. I go down there several times a year,' he said, her questions bringing into focus his awareness that he didn't see his family as much as he would like to, that he missed them. 'I have a brother who lives in Vancouver—he's a lawyer—and a sister, also a doctor, who lives in Australia. She married an Aussie.'

'I can't imagine not having family close by,' she said. 'I don't think I could have managed without mine.'

'It's nice to have them,' he agreed. 'I miss them. We get along well.'

Once in the car, he planned the best route to her house. Tonight there would be no request for her to spend the night with him. Such a request, which usually had affirmative results, had come automatically to him. Oddly, with Sophie, he found himself examining how he habitually behaved, questioning himself.

Now he felt appalled that he had been so insensitive. Of course he hadn't known then the details of her marriage. He was even more uncertain because she'd said that she hadn't loved her husband, riot in the 'right' way, which he took to mean that their relationship had lacked passion, a mature love. He longed to supply some of that missing passion in her life, which his intuition told him he could have with her. Yet was he really mature enough himself to offer her all that she'd lacked in her previous relationship? Maybe he couldn't presume.

Many women he wanted gave themselves readily to him. Now he asked himself whether those women were 'right' for him, something he didn't often dwell on.

Something of his habitual confidence had deserted him now. He thought of sharing the bed with Sophie, that he'd never shared with anyone other than the stray cat. It was a fantasy that perhaps had some significance—he wasn't sure. He wouldn't blame Sophie if she didn't want to have any personal dealings with him again, he told himself. But, perversely, he found himself hoping fervently that she would...

'Goodnight, Clay,' she said when they parted. 'It's been really great after all—the more so for being unexpected. Thank you for the ride.'

'It's been my pleasure,' he said, and found that he meant those trite words in a way he'd never meant them before. The fact that he didn't want the evening to end was, he considered, something he shouldn't voice. A sense of dissonance hampered his usual easy facility with words.

'You know,' she said, poised for flight, 'when Peter was ill I used to try to think of what my life had been like before. It was difficult to recall it then, a carefree sort of existence. Later, I realized how wonderful it was just to have an ordinary sort of life—you know, an ordinarily boring sort of life, the kind of life that people often complain about and take entirely for granted. Well, I hope I'll never take it for granted in that way. So tonight was...very nice.'

Then she was gone from him, running up her garden path, a flurry of bluey-purple, topped with auburn hair that glowed very briefly in the light of the streetlamp before she was lost to him.

Oddly lonely, he drove slowly away.

CHAPTER SIX

On the following Monday Clay saw Mike Dolby in his office late in the afternoon, after his day spent operating. The man had been discharged from hospital some time before, and now came in as an outpatient, accompanied by his girlfriend.

It had been a hectic day in the operating room, a full list of difficult cases, so that Clay had arrived in his office half an hour late, inadequately fed and frazzled. Although Sophie had worked with him, there had been little opportunity for them to exchange many words of a personal nature, so now he felt disgruntled because he'd felt the need to say more to her rather shy greeting than, 'Good morning, Sophie. How are you?'

Two people were seldom able to be alone there, and now that his operating day was over he felt a certain sense of frustration that he hadn't been able to tell her again how much he'd enjoyed their blind date, which had been all the more amazing in the light of the resistance he'd put up about going. A need to affirm it had nagged at him over the weekend when he'd found himself thinking about her, and when he'd also discovered that her telephone number wasn't in the directory.

'My apologies for being late,' he said to Mike Dolby as he ushered his patient into the office and they both sat down. 'It's been one of those days. Now, tell me how you've been. You certainly look much better. Are you managing the diet?'

'Yes. I feel much better, the way I haven't felt for a long time,' Mike said, smiling. His usually pasty face had some colour to it. 'Apart from getting tired easily, which I guess comes from having had a big operation, I'm really great, and the diet is going well.'

'Good. I want to examine you, look at the ileostomy, and then we can discuss when I'll get you in again to reconnect the gut to the rectum. We have to make sure that there isn't any inflammation left. There's no hurry. It could be weeks or months. I'm really pleased you're looking and feeling so well.'

When Mike had gone, Clay saw Al Harris, the man who'd had the breast tumour removed.

'Come in,' he said to Mr Harris, who entered with his wife. 'How have you been?'

'Pretty good,' A1 Harris said when the three of them were seated. 'It seems to be healing up all right. You told me in the hospital, Dr Sotheby, that I had cancer and that it hadn't spread. I've been worrying about that word "spread"...'

'Well,' Clay said, 'the cancer cells can spread to other parts of the body, often through the lymphatic system—that's the system of lymph glands that you have throughout your body, which are responsible, among other things, for spreading lymph fluid and draining toxins from cells. There are clusters of them in various places, such as under the arms, and it is here that cancer cells would spread to from the breast in the first instance.'

'Yes.'

'In your case, I took biopsies of several of the lymph glands there, and they were quite clear of any tumour cells,' Clay said.

'Is that going to be the case in the future?' Mrs Harris interjected.

'The chances are high that it will remain so, but...' he addressed himself again to Mr Harris '...as I explained in the hospital, you will have to watch for any changes yourself. That's very important, because you know your own body better than anyone else. And I also want to see you for checks every few months. The longer you go without any changes showing up, the greater the chance that there never will be a recurrence.'

It was later than usual when Clay got through his list of old and new outpatients. Then he put a call through to Rick Sommers to make sure that his post-operative patients were doing well.

'There are a couple of things I'd like to consult with you about,' Rick said, 'if I could meet you in the acute care unit before you leave for the day.'

'Sure,' Clay said. 'I can be there in about twenty minutes.'

'I also admitted a patient from Emergency, just about half an hour ago,' Rick said. 'I'd like you to see him as well. He's got epigastric pain, right upper quadrant abdominal pain and slight jaundice. When I examined him I felt a liver mass. He has a bit of a cough, too.'

'What do you think?' Clay asked.

'Well, the first thing that came to mind, of course, was cancer of the head of the pancreas, with secondaries in the liver,' Rick said, 'but it doesn't seem quite right for that...he's not ill enough. With a liver mass like that, he would have lost a lot of weight by now and be pretty unwell. He doesn't think he's lost any weight, and the chief complaint is the pain.'

'Hmm. How old is he? And is he an alcoholic?'

'He's fifty-two and, no, he doesn't drink much,' Rick said. 'I haven't ordered any tests yet. I wanted you to see him first.'

'What's his job?'

'He's an aid worker with an international organization, so he's travelled a lot.'

'Hmm,' Clay said again. 'Find out exactly which countries he's been to, Rick. That could have some significance. Then order a straight chest X-ray and an ultrasound of the liver. Get those done right away, then book a CT scan to be done on an emergency basis.'

'Right. He's on the regular surgical floor right now.'

'I'll be with you shortly,' Clay said.

From a drawer in his desk he took out a folder containing the latest version of his curriculum vitae, which he planned to deliver in person to the administrative assistant who was responsible to the search committee looking for the new chief of surgery. With it, he had a list of ten colleagues who'd agreed to be referees.

As he was about to leave his office, the telephone rang. 'Dr Sotheby here,' he answered.

'Hi, Clay!' It was Dawn. Clay had a momentary sense of surprise at the sound of her voice, a slight feeling of dissonance, as though he were beginning to forget that he and Dawn had an ongoing physical relationship, however sporadic it had become of late.

'Dawn...how are you?' he said, trying not to let her intuit that she was the last person he'd been thinking of. It occurred to him then that if she didn't continue taking the initiative, the affair might just fizzle out from lack of attention on his part. It wasn't that he didn't find her attractive...he did. Her particular brand of voluptuous femininity was always enjoyable, yet that seemed to be largely the limit of the attraction. She would be a great wife for someone, a good hostess, a good organizer—but not for him.

'I'm fine,' she said brightly, 'but missing you. I was hoping you could come over here tonight, to my place, for supper...and perhaps stay.'

'I'm tempted,' he said truthfully, his stomach grumbling from hunger, 'but I've still got things to do here, patients to see, so I'll have to get something to eat here. I'm just leaving the office now.'

'Come after, then,' she said huskily.

Clay hesitated. 'I'll come later,' he agreed, 'but I can't stay the night. I have a feeling I might get called.'

'Sure,' she agreed.

'What we may have here,' Clay said later to Rick, when he'd seen his post-op cases and was looking at the chest X-rays of the newly admitted man with the liver mass, 'is a parasite infection.'

'That's what the radiologist said,' Rick commented, referring to the MD who specialized in radiological diagnoses, 'because these rounded shadows in the lungs look like cysts made by parasites.'

They were in the X-ray department, looking at the newly developed films, while the patient himself, John Tanner, was undergoing an ultrasound examination of the liver. 'So he's worked in South America,' Clay said. 'Chile and Argentina.'

'Yeah,' Rick said. 'I had a quick look in a textbook before you came to confirm what parasites could cause liver masses, and I came up with the parasite that's passed to humans from the faeces of dogs in cattle country. From cattle, to dogs, to humans—that's the cycle for the Echinococcus parasite.'

'So the liver mass could be a hydatid cyst, formed by the growing parasites, which can take from five to twenty years to form such a huge mass and cause symptoms,' Clay said.

'Yeah.'

'We'll get the CT scan done this evening. Can you call me at home when it's done? If the diagnosis is confirmed, we should start him on a drug, albendazole, which can kill the parasites, but it takes time,' Clay said. 'The real danger for these patients is that a cyst could rupture and produce anaphylactic shock—all that foreign matter released into the tissues and blood stream.'

'Yeah, that's what I thought,' Rick said.

'So we have to be prepared ahead of time to deal with that. We'll have to alert the medical and nursing staff and have the necessary drugs on hand. If that should happen, I want to be called, of course.'

'Right,' Rick said. 'The last time I saw that, it was in a kid who was allergic to peanuts—he ate a minuscule amount of peanut butter by mistake. Fortunately, he wasn't far from the hospital when it happened, but we nearly lost him. I guess we need to have the cortisone and epinephrine on hand, and the antihistamines, as well as the resuscitation equipment.'

'Yes.'

Anaphylactic shock was a cataclysmic allergic reaction, which could be fatal. There was a certain protocol that had to be followed for that acute medical emergency, so all levels of staff would have to be ready.

'Otherwise, it should be surgically removed?' Rick asked. 'The hydatid cyst?'

'Yes, but again there's the risk of shock when you cut into it—all that foreign matter getting into the bloodstream—so really I would like to have him take the drug for at least a few days first,' Clay said, 'before we operate. If there's a bed, I'd like him transferred to the acute care unit. They have more nurses there, better attuned to a crisis situation. Make sure they know precisely what to do if the thing ruptures.'

'Right,' Rick said. 'I'll get on to that right away.'

Clay felt exhausted by the time he got away from there to go to the cafeteria for a hasty meal. In a way he regretted not taking Dawn up on her offer to give him supper, but his gut feeling had told him not to get any closer to Dawn in a domestic sense than he was already. Somehow she'd insinuated herself into his life...and he acknowledged that he'd taken advantage of her sexual availability.

As he sat at a table and spooned soup into his mouth, instantly feeling more alert, he thought of Sophie's remark about the hospital gossip that he and Dawn would marry if he got the chiefs job. Now where had that idea come from? He felt a reluctance to bring it up with Dawn herself. Maybe it was time for him to pull back from Dawn. Maybe the gossips knew something he didn't. Up to now, he'd felt that she'd been using him as a stud, much more so than the other way around.

*

He let himself into Dawn's apartment, in an exclusive area not far from the hospital, with his own key which she'd given him months before. Soft music and the odour of scented candles greeted him as he entered. The curtains had been drawn and the whole place was in semi-darkness.

'I'm here,' he called out. 'Sorry to be so late. Can't stay long, I'm expecting a call.' He assumed that they would have a drink together, chat a bit, maybe make plans to got to the theatre some time, then he would go.

'I'm in the bedroom,' Dawn called.

Where else? Clay found himself thinking wryly, while calling himself a hypocrite at the same time.

She was reclining in the bed, with only a sheet over her, exposing her bare shoulders and outlining her breasts. 'I thought you'd never come,' she said, holding out her hand to him.

Without going over to her, he began to undress, flinging his clothes on a chair.

'Hurry,' she whispered.

When he was undressed he went into the shower off her bedroom, letting the welcome jets of warm water wash away his fatigue. With Dawn's shampoo he massaged his scalp.

He emerged, still damp, a towel around his waist. Beside the bed he let the towel drop to the floor. Dawn flung back the sheet and held out a hand to him. 'Oh, Clay,' she whispered.

As he eased himself down onto her she put her arms around his neck and hungrily wrapped her thighs around his hips. At that moment he had a fleeting, haunting vision of a woman in a bluey-purple dress running away from him down a garden path, with a flash of auburn hair glinting in the light of a streetlamp.

The next day the diagnosis was confirmed on John Tanner. He definitely had echinococcosis, an infection in humans caused by the larval stage of the parasite echinococcus granulosus.

'Better that than cancer of the head of the pancreas,' Clay said succinctly to Rick and the surgical intern when they met for a consultation on Mr Tanner in the acute care unit. They looked at the report from the CT scan.

'I've been in touch with the pharmacy to see if they have the albendazole in stock,' Rick said, 'and they have. I told them we're going to need a lot of it.'

'Good,' Clay said. 'We'll start him on that right away, then maybe I'll operate towards the end of next week, depending on his condition. Obviously, the fact that he has jaundice means that there's some obstruction of the bile ducts...we can't leave that too long. On the other hand, I want to give the drug a chance to work. During the operation to remove the mass of cyst, we can kill off the larvae with hypertonic saline—that has its side effects as well, unfortunately.'

'Can I be there, sir, when you do the operation?' the intern asked eagerly. 'This may be my only chance to see a hydatid cyst.'

'Sure,' Clay said. 'Dr Sommers here will keep you informed of progress. Maybe you would like to present this case at the surgical rounds. You could do it in two stages—pre-op and post-op.'

'Yes...yes, I would,' the intern agreed enthusiastically.

The remainder of the day went quickly. Wednesday dawned bright and clear, another operating day.

'Morning, lovely Sophie,' Rick said cheerfully as they all met once again in the scrub room outside room four in the operating suite. Clay felt that he practically lived in that place—he certainly spent long hours there. It was nice, he realized as he tied on the usual face mask, to see Sophie again. His interest quickened as his eyes lighted on her trim figure as she washed her hands for his first case.

'Morning, Dr Sommers.' She smiled. 'Morning, Dr Sotheby.' Her hair was shoved up into one of those unbecoming paper caps, her face obscured by the mask and goggles as usual, yet he sensed a softening in her body language.

'Good morning,' he said. 'I see I've got you for another gut resection.'

'Yes. I've got to the point where I could do it in my sleep, I think,' she said lightly. 'But one mustn't be complacent, I guess.'

Rick went out to have a few words with the patient who was on the operating table, waiting to have the anaesthetic. Seeing him go, Clay wondered whether Rick had an intimation that he, Clay, was becoming more than ordinarily aware of Sophie and was giving him a rare few minutes alone with her. No time like the present, Clay thought.

'I've been wanting to tell you again how much I enjoyed our date,' he said. 'I would have called you, but your number is rather hard to get. The OR staff won't give it out, of course.'

'No—otherwise any Tom, Dick or Harry could get hold of it.' She laughed.

'Do you mind if I have it?' he said baldly, knowing that she had to go in a moment to prepare for his case.

'Well...no, I don't mind,' she said, with no particular inflection in her voice, so that he couldn't tell what she was thinking. 'I'll give it to you later on.'

'Will you come out to dinner with me again some time, Sophie?' he found himself saying, without having planned it. Again he felt a slight sense of dissonance, as though someone else were speaking for him. At that moment, Rick returned hurriedly to begin scrubbing.

'Um...' Sophie looked at Clay. 'Yes, all right,' she said. 'I...guess I'll speak to you later.' With that, she turned off the taps with her elbows and backed through the swing door into the operating room.

If Rick picked up any vibes, he was too tactful to indicate the fact as he busily tore open a packet containing a sterile scrub brush and then let water pour over his hands and arms. 'Any news about the chief's job, sir?' he said. 'I guess the search committee is gearing up to do their thing.'

'They have all the paperwork they need,' Clay said. 'Now it's up to the fates.'

During a coffee-break, after the first case, Sophie handed him a piece of folded paper as they were both about to enter the coffee-room for the short break. 'This is my number,' she said, giving it to him quickly. 'Please, don't let anybody else have it.'

'I won't. May I call you this evening?'

Sophie nodded, then went ahead of him into the coffee-room. Clay saw that her face was slightly flushed.

When they were in the same room these days he felt his eyes straying more and more in her direction, and he chided himself for it. He had a perfectly good relationship with Dawn. He definitely didn't want to get involved with another woman, who would undoubtedly complicate his life, he chastised himself somewhat irritably, at a time when he was preparing more and more to concentrate on his career.

All he really wanted, he told himself as he poured himself coffee, was a good sexual relationship with a mature woman—one who would want the same things that he wanted, who wouldn't demand anything else.

As he drank his coffee, standing up, he saw that one of the other young surgeons was talking to Sophie and that she was laughing. A sudden, irrational stab of jealousy took him by surprise, so that he had to turn away from them. The remark she'd made, that men wanting to make love to her was an occupational hazard, came back to him. For once, he knew that he didn't have a clear field.

Quickly he swallowed the last mouthful of coffee and left the room, dragging his concentration back firmly to his next case on the operating list.

'Hi, Clay!' Jerry Claibourne accosted him, coming out of the OR suite just as he was going back in. 'I hear that you've sent in your curriculum vitae, and that I'm one of your referees.'

'That's right,' Clay said. 'And how do you feel about giving up, Jerry?'

'I'm about ready,' Jerry said ruefully, 'and Laura's even more ready. I guess we'll go on a good, long holiday—maybe a cruise. Maybe I shouldn't be telling you that.'

'I don't think I've got any illusions, Jerry,' Clay said with a grin.

'They hope to get this appointment settled well before Christmas,' Jerry said.

It was after seven o'clock when he got home that evening. There was a message from Dawn on his answering machine, inviting him to her place again. He waited for twenty minutes, a time of indecision, then called Sophie's number.

'Hi...it's Clay Sotheby,' he said when she answered.

'Hello,' she said. Silence.

'Um...' He cleared his throat. 'I was wondering if you'd like to come out to dinner with me soon. Maybe this Friday. We could even go to Guido's again.'

Her hesitation seemed so long to him that he, surprisingly, found himself sweating.

'Do you mind if we make it just for a drink?' she said. 'I don't think I'm ready for another long dinner date yet.'

'You mean with me?'

'Well...yes. But I do want to see you. Please, don't think that I don't want to,' she insisted quietly. 'I'm planning to take my daughter out on Friday, but I'll be free later on in the evening.'

'Great,' he said rapidly, going over in his mind all the sophisticated bars he knew. 'How about the Plaza Bar at eight-thirty? I could pick you up.'

'Could we just go to a pub?' she said. 'There's one near my place called the Pied Merlin. And you don't have to pick me up—I'd prefer to meet you there.'

'Sure,' he said, admiring the way she'd neatly exposed to him his tendency to organize other people, to keep control.

'That way,' she said, 'if you don't show up I won't be hanging around, waiting for you, and I'll just buy myself a drink. I know that pub quite well.'

'What makes you think I won't show up?' he said.

'You surgeons are notoriously unreliable when it comes to time,' she said. 'And I do speak from long experience. Work always comes first.'

'I'll be there. Eight-thirty, the Pied Merlin. What's a merlin, by the way?'

There was a smile in her voice. 'It's a bird, rather like a falcon.'

'Ah...a bird of prey.'

'Very apt, perhaps,' she said, laughing, 'given your reputation.'

'Sophie,' he said, admonishing her, 'the question is, which one of us is the prey? And does there have to be a prey?'

'I'm not going to answer that,' she said. 'I'll give you more details of how to get to the pub when we see each other in the OR on Friday.'

'Sure. I'm looking forward to it,' he said. 'Goodnight, Sophie.'

'Goodnight...Clay.'

Well, Sophie wasn't taking any chances with him. He grinned to himself as he hung up, then dialled Dawn's number. Her machine answered, so he left a message that he was exhausted, that he couldn't come over as he was planning to sleep.

Much as he'd enjoyed those brief physical interludes with Dawn, their relationship was one-dimensional and, never having been close, they were growing apart. Now he was bored, finding himself going through the motions because she appeared to want and need him. His principal feeling was one of relief at the growing distance. Physical release was no longer enough. And with a start, he realized that he was in danger of falling in love.

CHAPTER SEVEN

It took Clay half an hour of waiting at the Pied Merlin to realize that Sophie wasn't going to show up. For one thing, he knew her to be punctual. For another, he had that gut feeling that one got after about fifteen to twenty minutes of waiting for someone.

His main feeling was one of concern that something might have happened to her to make her late. Although she could have just stood him up, he somehow didn't think so. The pub was crowded, with a high noise level. He stood at one end of the long curved bar, from where he could watch the main entrance, sipping a beer to make it last.

When he'd almost finished his beer, having decided to call Sophie, he saw one of the harried barmen answer a telephone behind the bar, and had a gut feeling that it would be for him.

'Is there a Dr Sotheby here?' the man yelled. 'Dr Sotheby?'

'Hi!' Clay yelled back. When the man brought over the phone and handed him the receiver he knew it would be her. 'Hello!'

'Clay?' It was her.

With an absurd sense of relief, he found himself smiling. 'The noise level is unbelievable in here,' he said, almost shouting. 'What happened to you?' Then it registered that she had spontaneously used his first name.

'I'm afraid I can't come, Clay,' she said. 'My daughter isn't well, so I've decided that I can't go out. We were out together earlier and I think she had too much ice cream. I'm. sorry... Can we make it some other time? And sorry I took so long to call.'

'What's wrong with your daughter?' he yelled. 'Can I be of any help?'

'She's vomiting a bit, and has a stomach-ache. I think she'll be all right. I'm glad it's the weekend coming up,' Sophie shouted back.

'Well, you call me at home if there's anything I can do,' he offered, his disappointment more intense than he'd expected it would be. 'Otherwise I'll see you at work on Monday and we'll fix another time.'

'All right,' she agreed.

'And, Sophie...I'm sorry, too.'

He downed the remainder of his beer and left the pub. Well, he could use an early night.

When he got home there were two messages from Dawn, among others. Those messages from her troubled him, as did his own disengagement from her and the knowledge that they were the objects of speculation and gossip among a certain section of the hospital staff—those who had time for such things.

His attraction to Sophie didn't exactly add to his peace of mind either, especially when he realized that if they hadn't met socially at the fund-raising dance he would probably still be lusting after her from afar at work, not having the time or any real opportunity to do anything about it. Having held her in his arms, he somehow couldn't get her out of his mind. The fact irritated him.

The shrill clamour of the telephone buzzer woke Clay from a deep sleep, and automatically his hand reached out to it as he propped himself on one elbow and focused his eyes on the lighted dial of his digital clock. It was twenty minutes past two in the morning.

'Hello. Dr Sotheby here,' he said, instantly alert.

'Hello, Clay. Sorry to call you when 1 know you're not on call. This is Rick.' He added that last bit unnecessarily.

'What is it, Rick?' Clay said, subsiding back wearily against the pillows. 'Has that hydatid cyst decided to blow?'

'No, thank God,' Rick answered wryly. 'No, it's Sophie Dunhill's daughter. She's here in Emergency with her mother. As far as I can tell, she has acute appendicitis.'

Clay sat up quickly.

'The long and the short of it is that Sophie would like you to operate on the girl. I asked her if she would rather take her daughter to Children's Hospital, but she said no. And when I told her you weren't the one on call this weekend, she practically begged me to call you to see if you would come in. She knows you operate on children sometimes.'

'I see,' Clay said, his mind racing. 'Which anaesthetist is on call?'

'It's Claude. I've already contacted him, and I've alerted the nurses in the OR.'

'Good. Claude's had a lot of experience with children.' Clay switched on a light and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. 'Is the appendix close to rupturing?'

'I think it is,' Rick said. 'She has a fever, her abdominal muscles are tense, there's a lot of pain...with the typical pattern for acute appendicitis, and she has that typical flushed look. She's pretty upset, poor kid.'

'OK, Rick,' he said, 'I'll come right away. Get her to the OR stat. I'll examine her there before she has the anaesthetic. Claude will put down a stomach tube when she's under the anaesthetic—I guess maybe she still has food in her stomach.'

'Right,' Rick said.

'And, Rick, tell Sophie to wait in the OR coffee-room. I'll talk to her there later.'

'OK. The child's name is Mandy, short for Amanda, and she's six years old.'

In moments Clay had donned a loose sweatshirt and a pair of jeans which he always kept ready, then a pair of casual slip-on shoes, not bothering with socks. From a table in the front hall he picked up his medical bag and his car keys. From long practice, he knew how to be out of the house in a few seconds.

The motion-detector lights came on outside as he went to his car parked in the driveway, facing the street. A few more seconds and he was away.

When he arrived at the hospital he went straight to the surgeons' locker room and changed into a scrub suit, going through the motions while his mind was elsewhere, then put on his white clogs, the hat that covered his hair, his goggles and a face mask. There was no time to speak to Sophie first.

Once inside the operating suite, striding swiftly down the central corridor, he found that there were several other emergency operations in progress. Otherwise, the usually bustling place was more civilized and quiet than it was during the day.

'Hi,' he said to the assembled staff as he entered room four. The child was already on the operating table.

'Hi, Clay,' Claude Moreau spoke to him first. 'I decided to give her the anaesthetic because she was in a lot of pain and I wanted to get that stomach tube down fast. We got one of the other staff-men here to verify the diagnosis with Rick. He thinks it's about to rupture.'

'Right,' Clay said. 'I'll get scrubbed.'

Rick and a scrub nurse were already scrubbed and ready for him, with the sterile set-up ready and waiting.

'You do the prep, Rick,' Clay said, 'and put on the drapes. I'll do the usual appendix incision, rather than a laparotomy incision.'

Rick and the nurse both nodded. Clay had just enough time to register that the child who lay on the table was small, thin and fair.

By the time he was gowned and gloved, the operating site was ready for him. All the instruments were small-scale, suitable for a young child. Clay positioned himself on the right side of the operating table, with the nurse and Rick on the opposite side.

'Knife, please,' he said.

When he very gently eased the appendix through the small, angled appendix incision in the right lower quadrant of the abdomen, they could all see that it was very swollen and inflamed, while the tip of it had a yellowish tinge, indicating that there was serious infection which could soon have caused the appendix to rupture. Once ruptured, the contents of the gut would have leaked out into the peritoneal cavity, causing peritonitis, a serious condition which in the bad old days before antibiotics had been a frequent cause of death.

All those things went swiftly through Clay's mind as he held the appendix carefully with tissue forceps.

'Wow,' Rick said, 'here's one diagnosis that's correct. Not a moment too soon, I would say. Well, that's better than having a lily-white at nearly three o'clock in the morning, then having to rethink the whole thing.' Hp referred to an appendix that wasn't inflamed, in cases where the diagnosis had been wrong and the appendix looked small and almost white in comparison with what they were looking at now.

'Clamps and catgut ties, please,' Clay said, preparing to clamp the appendix, separate it from the tissues and piece of small bowel to which it was attached and tie off all clamped pieces before cutting them and lifting the appendix out. Then he would put it into a jar to go to the pathology lab, where they would confirm the diagnosis.

'Easy does it,' he said aloud. The last thing he wanted was for the appendix to rupture while he was getting it out.

'Rather you than me,' Rick murmured, as he carefully cut the ends of the catgut ties after Clay had tied several firm knots where he was separating tissue.

Clay turned to the circulating nurse. 'I'd like a little phenol to cauterize the appendix stump when I've cut it off,' he said, 'and a fine cotton-tipped swab. Before I do that, I'd like to take a culture swab for the lab— bacteriology.'

'Right,' the nurse said. 'I've got that all in hand.'

'I'll need a rubber drain, please, to leave in the incision when I'm closing up,' he added.

'Do you want her on IV antibiotics?' Claude asked.

'Yes.'

Later, when he headed for the coffee-room, he felt sober and tired. Yet he could only guess at what Sophie must be feeling, he acknowledged. The agony of having a sick child, waiting around while they had an operation, only came to him second hand. As he pushed open the door he wondered whether he would ever know first hand what it really meant.

Sophie stood up and faced him when he entered. The first things he noticed were that she was deathly pale and that she had very obviously been crying. Without thinking, he went over to her with a few quick strides and held his arms open to her. With no hesitation, she went into them, putting her own arms tightly around his waist, as though she were drowning. Before he gripped her he had a glimpse of her face, contorted with fear and grief. Then she was sobbing quietly against his chest.

'It's all right,' he said. 'We got it out in time. It was on the verge of rupturing. She's OK... All's well... She's in the recovery room now, hot in any pain.'

'Oh, my God...' she said brokenly.

'It's all right, honey,' he said automatically. 'You don't have to worry.' He found himself holding her very tightly, kissing the top of her head, murmuring soft words while she cried for several minutes.

'Sorry.' She pulled away from him. 'I…'

Clay pulled a handful of paper tissues from a box on a nearby table and handed them to her. While she wiped her face, he turned to the tea-making equipment in the room and filled an electric kettle, his back to her so that she would have a chance to compose herself. He wanted to sit down, pull her onto his lap and comfort her.

'Thank you, Clay,' she said, her voice little more than a whisper. 'I'm very grateful. I wanted you to do it because you're the best surgeon I know, and because I trust you.'

'Sit down,' he said. 'I'm going to make tea for us. We could both use some.'

Her face was ravaged, streaked with tears. Endearingly, she had pulled her hair back from her face and secured ,it with an elastic band. There was no make-up on. her face and, like him, she had put on a sweatshirt and jeans.

Hunched on a seat, she began to talk. 'Sitting here, thinking,' she said, 'I've realized that since my husband's death I've given everything to my daughter... I live for her...so that when something like this happens I'm terrified. After what happened to Peter, I think that if something happened to her, I couldn't bear it, that I'd go mad...' Tears ran down her cheeks again. 'I try not to make her my whole life, but I can't seem to help it...'

'Perhaps you're like me, Sophie,' he said, looking at her, 'I give everything to my work—you give everything to your child.'

'Yes.'

They drank tea sitting side by side.

'Could I see her? I want her to know I'm there when she wakes up properly.'

'In a few minutes,' he said calmly. 'Try to relax a bit and just drink the tea. She really is all right. Will you stay here for the rest of the night?'

She nodded. 'Maybe I could find somewhere quiet just to put my head down for a while after I've seen her.'

'There are the on-call rooms in Emergency,' Clay said. 'They are seldom all used at the same time. It's quiet there. I could take you down there and get the key.'

'Yes, maybe,' she agreed. 'I know I won't sleep. I just want to lie down, then I'll have breakfast in the cafeteria and spend several hours with Mandy afterwards.'

'When you're ready, I'll take you down there before I go home,' he offered.

'Thank you.'

Hospitals were strange places in the silence of early morning, before the day shift staff arrived in large numbers. Every sound seemed magnified—the workings of the elevator as it took them downwards, the creaking of doors, the loudness of footsteps in empty corridors.

At ground-floor level, Clay and Sophie walked towards the emergency department office in silence, both exhausted and sobered, preoccupied by their own thoughts. There was no one in the office, so Clay helped himself to one of the on-call room keys in a concealed cupboard and signed his name in the book to indicate its whereabouts. Then he led her to the quiet back corridor where the rooms were situated, turned the key in the lock and switched on the light once they were inside.

The central ceiling light showed them the cell-like room, containing a high hospital bed, a wooden chair and a bedside table with the ubiquitous beige-coloured telephone on it. There was a tiny bathroom en suite.

'What a bleak place,' Sophie said, standing on the threshold, looking around. 'I don't think I could sleep here.'

'Yes, it certainly is utilitarian,' Clay said, fixing his eyes on the bile green of the thin counterpane that covered the bed. 'Its sole purpose is so that you can crash out here for as long as you get between phone calls.'

'I don't think I can stay here, Clay,' Sophie said. 'Thanks anyway. I...I would just be anxious by myself.'

'I'll stay with you,' he said, suddenly making up his mind. 'I could use a bit of sleep right now. Just slip your shoes off and he down.'

Obediently she slipped out of her shoes while he pulled back the counterpane to reveal two pillows, which he rearranged so that they would have one each side by side. As she positioned herself on the bed, he switched off the overhead light. They weren't in total darkness as a feeble light came in through a small window. After slipping out of his shoes, Clay lay down beside her.

'Try to sleep,' he said to her as his head hit the pillow beside her. 'I've got my beeper with me, so I'll get called if I'm needed.'

They'd looked in on the child in the post-anaesthesia room before they'd left the operating suite. Mandy had woken up long enough to recognize her mother and to be reassured that she was all right.

'This is a bit like being in a strait-jacket,' Sophie said wryly as they lay stiffly side by side on the narrow bed. 'Not that I've ever been in one. It is nice to get one's head down and feet up. Thank you for staying with me, Clay. I've really messed up your night, haven't I?'

'Not to worry,' he said, chuckling. 'I didn't have anything planned. And I don't mind getting up for a nice, straightforward appendectomy when I have the weekend off after.'

Sophie's hand brushed against his and he grasped it firmly in his own, wondering at his own gratified response when she returned the pressure.

'I'm afraid I won't be able to sleep,' she said.

'We'll talk, then, if you want to. Tell me something,' he said. 'If your husband hadn't died, if he'd recovered, would you have divorced him? I'm asking because I'm curious.'

'Oh, no,' she said. 'I would just have made the best of it. You see, I believe that once you have a child your obligation is to give that child a secure life. You are no longer really your own person.'

'As simple as that?' he murmured.

'As simple as that,' she said quietly. 'But not really simple, of course. I like to think that it takes maturity to do it. It's easy to have a wedding—a big party—but it takes maturity to make a marriage.'

'Yes, I agree,' he said.

'Is that an admission of immaturity?' she said. 'A reason why you haven't married?'

Clay laughed, enjoying the feel of her hand in his. 'Maybe,' he said. 'I like to tell myself that it's because I haven't found a woman who has loved me for what I am, in all my facets. I know it's not easy, being married to a doctor, particularly to a surgeon.'

'Perhaps you haven't given anyone a real chance,' she suggested.

'Hmm...maybe,' he said.

'Why is it that many men change partners so easily? That married men can shuck off one wife and several children and take up with another woman as though the others didn't matter at all—or as if they didn't really exist any more?' she asked tentatively. 'I'm curious. And now that I've got you captive here, maybe you can present some insights. Not that women don't have their foibles and weaknesses... I don't want to imply that.'

'I've considered that quite a lot because it's common here,' Clay said. 'That's one of the reasons I'm not married—I want to be sure. I think the name of the game with those men—especially the older ones who take up with much younger women—is that it's all they know how to be. To be a young man, to go through the same motions they went through at an earlier stage in their lives.'

'You mean they've learned the script so well that they can't take on any other role?' she said.

'Yes. You know...they understand how to meet a woman, flirt with her, get her interested, have an affair, get her to agree to marriage. It's all about a state of becoming, not a state of being—or, at least, not for very long. They don't know how to be. That takes consideration and effort. Does that make sense?'

'Yes. Go on.'

'A state of being, of sticking with it, takes maturity. And it also takes maturity to go on to the next stage in life, to become a middle-aged person, then an old person, in one's sense of self. We get there, whether we want to or not, whether our mind keeps pace with our body or not. It means confronting one's mortality, preceded by a shifting from centre stage. Yet, paradoxically, there's a centre core of our being, a sense of identity, that—if we manage to develop it—will keep us going in a state of equilibrium, will tell us who we are, no matter what age we are.'

'Yes, something that's quite divorced from our job, our relationships with other people, our social image. It's the real self...hopefully a positive thing,' she said thoughtfully.

'Yes.'

'In short, those men can't grow up,' Sophie said.

'Precisely. That's all they know how to do. They constantly want to go back to square one in terms of relationships. Or maybe once in a while to square two. It's the reassurance of familiar territory.'

'Pathetic, really,' she said.

'Hmm...'

They both stared at the darkened ceiling, their sides touching warmly. Clay found waves of tiredness washing over him and a kind of peace, tinged with acute physical awareness of their close proximity. Carefully he eased himself onto his left side, facing Sophie, and bunched up the pillow under his head.

'Turn on your side,' he said. 'You'll probably find it more comfortable. Try to doze, even if you can't sleep.' He kissed her lightly on the forehead, then on the cheek.

Making a small, muted sound, Sophie moved her head slightly to one side as his mouth brushed her cheek so that their lips met. In a moment he had gathered her into his arms and was kissing her warmly, deeply, and she clung to him with a kind of desperation.

There was no pretence now about their attraction— it was very definitely out in the open. Without words, they both demonstrated that they felt something for each other, even though they couldn't be sure what it meant other than an acute, overwhelming mutual need.

For a long time they kissed and held each other in the narrow bed, in the mean, utilitarian room that served to highlight the existential aloneness of the individual against the odds of uncontrollable circumstances. This was something that they both felt in their work; it was omnipresent. With Sophie having her daughter in the hospital, he could do something to ease her aloneness.

'Feeling better now, Sophie Dunhill?' he murmured as he lifted his mouth from hers. Much as he wanted to make love to her, this wasn't the right time or the right place. There was too much anxiety in the air, too much desperation.

'Yes.' She nestled against him. 'Much better.'

'Turn on your left side,' he said. 'We'll try to sleep.'

He lay with his knees drawn up so that she, with her back to him, fitted neatly into the curve of his body and he could put an arm protectively around her. 'Shut your eyes,' he said, kissing her neck. 'We'll get up at about eight and go for breakfast in the cafeteria. That way, the rush will have passed through.'

'Mmm...'

'And forgive me if I snore,' he said as an afterthought, 'I've been told that I do sometimes when I'm really exhausted.'

'There must be a lot of women around here who know whether you do,' she said, allowing herself to relax against him.

'Shut up, Dunhill,' he said.

Looking back on this episode a month later, Clay found it amazing that they hadn't made love, as since then the need had grown, the attraction escalated, to such a degree that he felt he had to give in to it very soon or go mad. Perhaps a weekend away, perhaps at his cottage, with Sophie, would ease the immediate hungry need—if she would ever consent to it.

When they worked together he found himself watching her obsessively, finding ways and means of being with her, being near her. A few times they'd met for drinks at the Pied Merlin, although they hadn't found the time to go out to dinner again. While her daughter had been recovering from the operation, Sophie had been distracted. Clay vowed to himself that he would wait until she was ready, that he wouldn't repeat the near fiasco of asking her to go to bed with him. Until she gave a stronger sign—apart from her need for comfort—that she wanted him, he would hold off making a move, whatever it cost him.

Another scene haunted him—the scene on the morning of the second day after the operation when he'd gone to the ward to see Mandy, a pale little girl with fair hair and a sweet smile like her mother's. He'd taken pains to explain to her something about the operation so that she understood, then about the recovery period.

Apropos of nothing in particular, the girl had looked at him and said, 'I haven't got a daddy.'

'You did have one,' he had said, struggling for words. 'Everyone has one.'

During the days Mandy had spent in the hospital he'd felt that they'd got to know and like each other well. Then she'd come twice to his office after she'd been sent home. Sophie had visibly relaxed once her little girl had been home, having also taken time off from work.

Gradually Clay began to see even less of Dawn, making excuses to the angry and perplexed woman, obsessed as he was with Sophie Dunhill. The time that he'd previously spent with Dawn he put into work, going in to the hospital even earlier than usual, going home later. The times when he met Sophie for a drink began to seem to him like oases in a desert. It amazed him that in a comparatively short while he should have become single-mindedly obsessed with the need to bed a particular woman. It was ridiculous, he told himself repeatedly. Maybe he was losing his edge in everything he was doing.

On the Friday of the week he'd operated on Mandy, he'd also operated on John Tanner, the man with the hydatid cyst of the liver. The operation, for which Sophie had scrubbed, had been tricky and fraught with uncertainties. Yet the patient had come through it well and had since been discharged home, where he would continue with the drugs and would come frequently for consultations.

Now, on a Thursday morning in early August, the surgical intern was presenting the case of John Tanner for the surgical rounds, which would be the last rounds until the summer was over as the turnout would be less over the peak holiday period. They had some good photographs, photographic slides and microscopic slides of the case. As the staff milled around prior to the presentation, Clay sought out Sophie who was with the group of registered nurses seated near the back of the room.

'How's Mandy?' he asked unnecessarily, knowing her to be well. He knew that his own face was pale and haggard from overwork, that he very badly needed the two weeks of holiday that he would be taking later in the month.

'She's more or less back to normal,' Sophie said, smiling at him. 'We're going on holiday to visit family in Vancouver, leaving on Monday for two weeks.'

'Then I won't see you for a long time,' Clay said, forcing a lightness to his voice, 'because I'll be away for the last two weeks of the month.'

'Oh,' she said. 'I'll miss you in the operating room.'

The mutual recollections of the way they had lain together on the bed, had kissed, in the on-call room was now in their eyes as they looked at each other, together with the awareness of the impasse between them. He refused to take the initiative, forcing himself to hold off, even though it felt unnatural to him, and she was taking her time about it so that he feared she didn't want him. The strain was telling on him.

'Only there?' he said softly, mindful of people around them.

'No,' she said, looking into his eyes and holding his gaze. 'Not only there.' She wore a pale blue scrub suit under a white lab coat, and her bright hair was loose, soft and shining. He wanted to touch it...

'Maybe you'll have dinner with me when I get back. Shall we say the first weekend in September...the Saturday?'

'Yes.'

'Sir...sir,' the surgical intern broke into their verbal exchange, 'could I ask you a few more questions about this hydatid cyst case?'

'Sure,' Clay said tolerantly, tiredly. Normally he enjoyed the rounds, enjoyed teaching. Today the demands of the uninitiated grated on his patience. Maybe he was a candidate for burn-out, he chided himself. 'September, then, Sophie,' he murmured to her as he turned away.

'Yes. Have a good holiday, Clay,' she murmured. 'You certainly deserve it.'

As she moved away from him he found himself thinking that he would miss her a great deal over the next month. Quite suddenly he saw the month ahead of him as being rather bleak, even the two weeks he would stay at his country cottage at the lake, boating, seeing friends, relaxing. His feelings were puzzling to him. In the past he'd felt entirely in control of any situation when he'd been attracted to a woman. Now he felt control insidiously slipping away from him, and he didn't understand it. In fact, he didn't know how he -was going to get through the time without her.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Clay sat on the boat deck at his cottage, comfortably ensconced in a deckchair with his feet up on another, trying to read. Around the wooden deck the blue-grey water of the lake lapped gently, slapping against the pilings. He was alone now, having had several friends for lunch, people he'd known for years who also had cottages along the same shore of the lake. In other years, since knowing Dawn, he'd invited her up there for a few days during August. This year he hadn't asked her. Now he felt strangely detached from her and from his usual circle of friends and colleagues.

Once again he felt his attention to the printed word slipping so that he gave up the attempt to read and gazed out over the lake which looked mellow and calm in the late afternoon sun. He looked forward to an evening alone—a time of reading, listening to music, thinking.

Over the past week and a half he had been doing a lot of thinking, particularly about the pending decision of the search committee with regard to the new chief of surgery. So often over the past year or so he realized that he had come to think of himself as too old for certain activities, things that he'd enjoyed before... parties, dancing, meeting new women, generally having a good time when actual time permitted.

Now, alone at the cottage, he found a different view coming to mind. Instead of being too old for certain things, maybe he was really too young for what he had set himself to do. If he were offered, and then accepted, the chiefs job, he would be forty years old when his first five-year term of office was up. Then, if he accepted a second term, which was common, he would be forty-five. There would be little time for much other than work.

Clay sighed, closing his eyes against the low orange ball of the sun on the horizon. Those five or ten years of his life, the latter part of his youth, when he might be marrying and perhaps having children, would be given over to the furthering of his career. Up to that point, he realized now, he hadn't thought much about a possible wife or children. Now, oddly enough, they loomed large in his mind, those shadowy figures, however hard he tried to batten them down, to let the image of himself as Chief override them.

He tried to picture himself at age forty-five—a respected surgeon and teacher, his opinions requested, the university conferring awards on him for this and that. By then, perhaps, he would be grey-haired, tired, beginning to be an old fogey.

Restlessly he got up, taking his book with him, to go back inside. He poured himself a drink and wandered out to the back verandah to gaze once again at the water which was greying in the evening light. Maybe he should have gone to Europe this year—Italy, France—to get right away from the familiar. The job of Chief, he considered, was one that was perhaps best taken at age forty-five, not finished at that age. That probably made more sense.

The other strong candidate for the job, Jeff Willoughby, was a wimpy sort of guy in personal relationships, the sort of man, Clay considered, who seemed to have been born middle-aged. Maybe he would be a better candidate for the job because in the operating room he was decisive and certain, while outside it he was diffident and mouse-like, the sort of man who wouldn't know what to do with a woman if he'd found himself in bed with one.

Clay sighed again and downed a mouthful of his drink. Who was he to judge Jeff Willoughby? After all, it was only educated guesswork based on close observation. He could be wrong. And he, Clay, had a reputation for sleeping around, which wasn't strictly true, since he never had more than one woman at a time, and that one current woman, Dawn, had not given him the pleasure just recently, although from no lack of trying on her part. He and Dawn were history, he knew that.

From there his thoughts strayed to Sophie Dunhill, as they had frequently during this holiday. He was missing her. What he had with her wasn't really a relationship. They'd worked together for quite a long time, had recently been out for one good meal, then several times for drinks. It was only in recent weeks, too, that he'd gradually become more and more acutely aware of her. It was odd how you saw someone every day, took them for granted, then something happened that brought them into sharp focus, as it were, so that you wondered how you could ever have spent so much time in the past more or less ignoring them, treating them like a cog in the machine. What a waste it had been.

Her image haunted him now, as did the scenes of the night her child had been ill. Holding her close to him in that narrow bed, in the mean room that he'd seen, as though for the first time, through her eyes, he'd felt an intimacy he'd never felt before ...and he'd felt wanted in a way he hadn't experienced before. Perhaps, he saw now, he hadn't allowed himself to experience it, that something which had been sweet, delicate, lovely... something apart from the sexual attraction that he felt for her, yet in a way a part of it.

Because of her anxiety, that attraction had been held in abeyance. Now he longed for her, for a completion that might never happen.

He decided to get an early night, to sleep on some of the indecision that had haunted him over the past week or two, perhaps longer. Sometimes he wondered if he was finally cracking up, as he'd seen certain of his colleagues do over the years.

In the morning he had come to a decision...

Back in Gresham on a weekend at the end of August, Clay found that the summer heat had dissipated, leaving the city pleasantly temperate.

As he dumped his bags in the hallway of his house, he saw that he had twenty messages waiting for him on his answering machine and decided to ignore them for now. A least half of them would be from Dawn, he surmised. The time had come for them to end formally what had already ended from his point of view. The inconsequential nature of what he'd had with Dawn seemed now to be pointless, although he couldn't have said exactly why.

As he was cooking himself supper a little later, the initiative was taken out of his hands by a ring at his doorbell and the appearance of Dawn on his doorstep.

'At last,' she said, her eyes flashing angrily at him from her beautifully made-up face. As usual, every hair on her immaculate blonde head was in place, her gold and pearl earrings completing the usual picture of superbly controlled sophistication. 'I thought you'd gone to bloody Timbuktu.'

Since Dawn seldom used foul language, Clay knew that she was—perhaps justifiably—extremely angry at his lack of availability. At the cottage he'd often ignored the telephone when it had rung. She was wearing the full-length mink again. 'Ah,' Clay said mildly, 'the old fur coat trick again?'

'Don't be bloody facetious,' Dawn said, as soon as she was inside the door, having pushed past him. Before he had an inkling of what she would do next, she'd drawn back her arm and delivered a stinging slap to his cheek, so unexpected that he staggered back.

'Why did you do that?' He ground out the words after a moment. 'Have I done something to you?' Indeed, he had done nothing just lately...maybe that was the problem. He'd had other problems to cope with.

'You know you bloody have!' Dawn snarled through clenched teeth, her face pinched and ugly in anger. 'You've withdrawn from the chief of surgery job. You might have told me you were going to do that.'

Seeing something of the light, Clay began to recover more quickly than he might otherwise have done. 'Calm down, Dawn,' he said, trying to defuse what looked to be a pending major blow-up.

'I want an explanation,' she shouted.

Nevertheless, perplexity vied with the sudden sharp glimmers of insight in Clay's mind as he stood looking at Dawn. Such insights were assisted to their conclusion by the pain in his cheek where she'd slapped him. A few things began slotting into place like the pieces of a jig-saw puzzle.

'How do you know?' he said. 'I've only told Jerry, and I told him to keep it confidential until I can write to the head of the search committee.'

'Have you forgotten that I take Jerry's memos, that I type his letters? I'm his bloody personal assistant, for God's sake.' Dawn shrugged out of her coat and flung it on a chair. Clay was relieved to see that she was fully clothed underneath; he didn't want the fury of rejection added to her present fury. 'Jerry keeps nothing secret from me...nothing.'

'Is that so? You're using the word "bloody'' a little too often, Dawn,' he said. 'It's losing its efficacy. And I don't see what my withdrawal has to do with you. It was my very private decision.'

'You really don't know, do you?' she said contemptuously, a jeering note in her voice, as she stood before him, swinging her black snakeskin bag restlessly, as though she would like to hit him with it.

Clay shook his head. 'No,' he said. But even as he said the word, he suspected that he'd guessed correctly. The thought sickened him and he felt his own anger building up. A cold, cynical realization came to him— Dawn had a vested interest in his future, in his being Chief of Surgery. She had ambitions towards a vicarious participation in it. Sophie had suggested that the gossip had said as much. That could only mean one thing.

Perhaps other people had seen it coming quite clearly, including—God forbid—Sophie herself. He himself was perhaps the last to see it. Now here it was, staring him in the face—Dawn's naked ambition rather than her naked body, but he didn't doubt that the two were linked in a very serious way.

Clay swallowed, trying to control his sense of betrayal. It was clear that she didn't love him, but on the other hand he didn't love her. 'Perhaps we should sit down and talk,' he said tightly, indicating by a sweep of his arm that they should go to the sitting room, instead of standing in the hall.

'No,' she said. 'Don't think you're going to deflect attention from what's happening. I want to have it out here and now.'

'And what is happening, Dawn?' he ground out, his voice dangerously controlled and quiet. 'Spell it out for me, please, in words of one syllable.' He looked unflinchingly into her narrowed, angry eyes. As he looked, he wondered how he could have found her personally attractive, sexually desirable.

When Dawn opened her mouth, then closed it again, he could see her thinking that she would be damning herself if she came out baldly with what she obviously wanted to say. 'Don't you think you could have discussed this with me first?' she said at length, her voice quavering. 'After all, we've been seeing each other for about two years.'

'Very casually,' he reminded her, 'and that's about the length of time I've had an idea that I might be Chief—because Jerry put the idea into my head. Was there a memo about that, too, Dawn? Was that when you decided to take an interest in me? A very personal interest?'

The expression on her face told him that he was pretty close to the truth. 'So you fancied yourself allied to the chief of surgery,' he stated. 'You couldn't have Jerry, so you would get me. Carry on, Dawn. You take over the story.'

'And why not?' she said defiantly. 'Two years! Two whole years of my life. Doesn't that count for anything?'

'Not when it's calculated.' He was cold with anger, his face stiff with the effort of control. He wanted to rave at her to get out, to leave him alone—to hope that he would never see her again.

'I've given you everything,' she stated. 'I deserve to be the wife of the chief.'

'Have you?' he said quietly. 'Everything you've given me, Dawn, I've given you back in full measure, and more.' That much was true. 'You can't say I've taken advantage of you. The score was clear from the beginning—a mature, equal relationship, give and take, with no future plan. Wasn't that it?'

Clay recalled how she'd seduced him at a Christmas party when he'd been hazy with too much alcohol. At the time he'd known it had been calculated when she'd led him to a bedroom and he'd discovered that she'd been wearing nothing under her beautiful lace and bead sheath dress. He hadn't cared then, had been a very willing participant, usurping her initiative, taking her at face value. That had been the beginning of their so-called relationship.

She turned from him abruptly and marched into the sitting room. Clay strode after her, wondering whether she was going to undress for him, a last-ditch effort.

'So now you want marriage, is that it?' Clay asked, feeling very sober, very cynical. 'And you fancied being married to the chief?'

'Yes, as a matter of fact, that is it,' she almost spat out.

'But now I'm not going to be Chief, you wouldn't want it, not with me? Right? And I'm second choice to Jerry?' he said.

Dawn's frustrated silence, the expression on her face, confirmed the answer. It made him feel slightly sick.

'You could still take back your decision to withdraw,' she said stubbornly, the expression on her face almost one of hatred. 'Only Jerry knows of it so far, and he's disappointed, to put it mildly.'

'And have you make trouble for me by insisting on marriage?' Clay said incredulously.

'I consider it my due,' she said.

Clay looked at her consideringly, hardly able to believe what he was hearing. How could he have not seen this coming? 'I don't suppose you'd settle for being my personal assistant?' He added the last comment with bitter humour. 'I'm sure you're a great secretary.'

'You bastard,' she said.

'I was wondering when you would come out with that,' he said. 'This is almost comic. What you've given me, Dawn, was evidently calculated. That's the classic bitch routine, I think.'

'Shut up!'

'I can't say that I haven't enjoyed being with you,' he went on relentlessly, 'I have—very much—but I think we both understood that marriage wasn't an issue. I assumed that you just wanted a good time, an escort, and sex. In fact, you said as much. I assumed that if I gave you those things, plus holidays, jewellery, presents, theatre, good restaurants, and so on, with no strings attached—in other words, give and take—you would be contented.'

'You assumed wrong,' she said coldly. 'I deserve that position. I've worked for Jerry for five years. I could be a great asset to you.'

'You want the position,' he confirmed cynically. 'You don't want me.'

In reply, Dawn stared back at him with defiant bravado, appearing to see no irony in her position.

'You fooled me,' he said. 'I don't want to marry you, or anyone else right now. And since I'm not going to be Chief, I would be no good to you.'

Dawn merely looked at him contemptuously, her fists clenched at her sides. Clay sighed and ran a hand through his hair. So this was the way it was going to end, on this sour, cynical note. He'd often wondered. Evidently the time was ripe and right.

'Tell me, why give it up when it was practically in the bag?' she said at last.

Clay began to pace restlessly. 'To be honest,' he said, 'I don't fully understand it myself. I lead a hectic life, and I just didn't see how I could stretch myself even further... Maybe that was it. One day I just woke up to the realization that maybe the job isn't for me right now.'

'You're an idiot,' she said, the unflattering words ringing the death knell for anything that might have been salvaged between them for future tolerance.

'Maybe,' he said stiffly, standing in front of her. 'I can scarcely find the time to sleep, let alone take on more work. I'm not ready for that. Maybe it was totally unrealistic of me to entertain the idea when, what I really want to be is a practising surgeon, seeing patients, not sitting behind a desk, dealing with administrative problems.'

'I suppose you want that OR nurse,' she said jeeringly, 'the one with the child. I'm well aware that you've been seeing her.'

'None of this has anything to do with her. I haven't gone to bed with her, if that's what you mean,' he said, making a supreme effort to contain his annoyance while feeling himself gearing up for the grand finale.

'I suppose she's the type who holds out until you propose marriage,' she jeered again. 'There are still some of those about.'

'I wouldn't know,' he said coldly, his growing distaste for her goading him on to make a quick end to this scene. 'It's finished, Dawn. I don't want to see you again except in a very formal, professional capacity— and then not unless I have to. What I can do for you is introduce you to Jeff Willoughby, the next most likely candidate. Now, there's a man who would very definitely benefit from the party seduction scene and the fur coat routine. The sooner you get onto it the better, before there's a line-up of would-be wives.'

'You cynical bastard,' she hissed.

'Yes, I guess I'm that all right,' he said. 'Goodbye, Dawn.'

She left him then, walking swiftly away, and a moment later the front door slammed viciously. Clay went out into the hall to make sure that she'd actually gone. Only then did he let out the breath he'd been holding. He felt drained, chastened, relieved.

Feeling the urge to do something physical, he heaved his several heavy bags into the bedroom and began unpacking from his holiday, throwing dirty laundry into a large hamper. He didn't stop until the job was finished, only taking a few minutes' break to go to the sitting room and pour himself a drink, well watered down. When all signs of his trip had been cleared away, he took the laundry hamper into the small laundry room off the kitchen and began filling the washing machine. His housekeeper usually did his laundry, but the activity was a soporific for him, badly needed.

He had been naive with Dawn, he could see that now. He, who sometimes prided himself on understanding women, hadn't understood her. Or maybe it was just that he'd chosen not to see the signs.

In the bathroom he began to shave away two days of stubble. From the mirror his face stared back at him, giving no hint of the shock and distaste he'd just experienced, apart from a certain rigidity of expression. His skin was tanned, his hair longish, curling round from behind his ears, and he'd lost that tired, haunted look that came from chronic overwork. Then he had a shower and changed into clean, casual clothes—light linen trousers and a tobacco-coloured checked shirt.

Impulsively he picked up the telephone and dialled Sophie's number. Perhaps she was free and could meet him for a drink at the Pied Merlin. The need to see her now was overwhelming, not having seen her for four weeks. Although he would no doubt see her in the operating room on Monday, he didn't think he could wait through the remainder of this day and then Sunday.

Also, he wanted her opinion on what had taken place between himself and Dawn. Maybe it wasn't entirely wise to talk about one woman to another, but he badly needed her insights. And if he were to become more involved with Sophie, as he found himself hoping now that he would, she would have to know what had happened to Dawn. For the first time in his adult life he felt confused about his relationships with women, which added to the seriousness of his decision to withdraw his application for the chiefs position.

'Hello.' Her soft voice answered after six rings, just when he was thinking that she wasn't home and feeling a sharp disappointment.

'Hello, Sophie,' he said, his pleasure evident in his voice. 'It's Clay. I just got back to town and felt like calling you.'

'Oh, Clay!' She sounded delighted. 'It's nice to hear you. I've missed you. It's been a long time. Sorry to take so long to answer the phone. I was out in the garden, actually reading and relaxing a bit.'

'That's what I like to hear,' he said, smiling. 'Especially that you've missed me. I've missed you, too, Sophie.'

'Are you at home?'

'Yes. I was wondering if you'd like to come out for a drink, if you're not child-minding?'

'Mandy's at my parents' place for the weekend,' she said, 'to give me a break. My social life has been nil since I got back from holiday so, yes, I would like to go for a drink, very much.'

'I must confess to an ulterior motive,' he said.

'Oh? Sounds ominous.'

'I want your input on something... I need someone to talk to,' he said, deciding to be as upfront as possible with her.

'Well,' she said, 'I'm used to that. I like to think I'm a good listener. You remember, I expect, that I work as a volunteer at a distress centre?'

'It had momentarily slipped my mind,' he said. 'I hope this won't seem too much like work.'

'I like what I do, Clay,' she said. 'Shall we make it the Pied Merlin? It may be quiet there today because a lot of people are still away on holiday. I can be there in about twenty minutes.'

'Great,' he said. 'See you there. What would you like to drink? If I get there first I'll get us both a drink.'

'Just beer, please. Lager.'

Clay did get there first and the place was almost empty. Just as well. It meant they could talk.

As he was carrying the drinks to a table for two near a wall, away from the bar, Sophie came in, and he stared at her appreciatively. 'Hi.' He smiled. 'It's nice to see you out of uniform. I don't think I asked you how you were.'

She looked fresh and lovely, dressed in a simple linen skirt in a pale blue colour, topped with a short-sleeved linen blouse in lime green, with her hair loose. A light summer tan completed the picture of health.

'I'm well, thank you.' She smiled.

'How was your holiday?' he asked when they were seated. What he really wanted to do was take her in his arms and bury his face in her exuberant hair.

'It was wonderful,' she said. 'We really needed to get away. And you?'

Clay nodded. 'The same,' he said.

For a while they made small talk, about holidays and work. Then she leaned forward and put her hand on his. 'What is it you really want to talk about, Clay? Something has happened, hasn't it? I guess it goes against the grain with you to ask someone to listen to you,' she said perceptively, 'but that's really the best thing.'

'You're right on both counts,' he said, smiling wryly. 'It's the macho thing. I hesitate to lumber you with what is really very private... I know you're discreet, that you won't repeat what I tell you, but it's a question of whether it's fair to you.'

'A lot of people don't have anyone to talk to,' Sophie said. 'Here I am. I can keep a professional distance, I hope, without being impersonal. Just listening to someone is a great help to them.'

Clay told her everything, almost word for word what Dawn and he had said to each other during that last verbal exchange, then about how they'd met. For the most part, Sophie just looked at him and listened.

'That's it,' he said at last, 'the whole sorry story— at least, from my point of view. She would, no doubt, have a different slant. Have I been a real bastard, as she said?' He took a welcome swallow of beer.

Sophie twisted her tall beer glass round and round on the table, taking her time about answering. 'It seems to me,' she said thoughtfully, 'that you were pretty honest with her from the beginning, and assumed that she would be the same. But she wanted marriage, to someone who was likely to have a prestigious position in the hospital, which is her world. That was her hidden agenda, Clay.

'You've been a little naive, I think. You thought that honesty about your intentions was enough, and she thought she could work on you to change your mind— that's how I read it, Clay. You were operating at cross-purposes.'

'Yes...' he murmured.

'Before you get in deeply with someone, Clay, it's better to find out, if you can, what their agenda is. Not always easy.'

'Mmm...'

'I...don't want to preach.'

'No... Go on.'

'You know, I used to think of you as a conceited man, but I've changed my mind over the past few months,' she said, looking at him with lowered head. 'I can see that you would take a woman at face value, perhaps because you're so focused on work. I find that so many men are focused on themselves, on their work, then one day they sort of wake up and find that their personal relationships are on the rocks or non-existent.'

'Go on,' he said again. 'I'm listening.'

'You're great at what you do. You helped me so much when Mandy was ill. You have empathy and compassion...but maybe you have a few blind spots, Clay, in personal relationships. We all have them. We see what we want to see.'

'Yes.'

'There are some women,' she said, 'who are willing to sell themselves to the highest bidder in a very calculated way, because their chief assets are youth, beauty, a willingness to mould themselves to what they think a particular man wants—that is, the man who will give them the sort of life they want. Usually they don't love him...because to love is to be vulnerable...and these women are hard and calculating. They are also very aware that their assets are ephemeral.'

'Mmm.'

'The last thing they want is to be vulnerable. In return they offer glamour, beauty. They're good hostesses, good organizers in the cause of their personal coupledom on a grand scale. They're quite a common breed, Clay. And if the going gets tough—if the man loses his money for some reason, or develops a chronic illness—they leave the scene at once.'

'I guess it's not politically correct to say so.'

'No, it isn't,' Sophie said quietly. 'I'm sure you really know all this. You just want someone else to say it for you.'

'I suspect you're right,' Clay admitted. 'It's not easy on one's ego to admit calculation on someone else's part.'

'What she had going, Clay, was a game, the old transactional thing, and she evidently thought that you were playing the same game—that once you were the chief you would snap her up, all ready and waiting, to be your mate.'

'Like the trophy wife?'

'Yes, sort of. But that usually applies to an older man and a much younger woman, doesn't it? In your case, she saw herself that way...and you would have been a trophy for her, too.'

Clay leaned back in his chair, stretching his arms behind his head tiredly. 'How come you know all this, Sophie?' he said.

'When I see behaviour in other women that I would never indulge in myself, I recognize it usually for what it is, I think. There's been a lot of man-bashing over the past few decades, but there's also predatory behaviour in women, which isn't talked about much by other women,' she said. 'I guess it's as old as time. They are in the minority, I think, compared with men. Having said that, most women are the ordinary vulnerable types, like me.'

'Maybe that's why I like you so much. And you make me sound as innocent as a babe in arms almost,' he said, and they both laughed.

'No, you're not innocent. Because of what you wanted from her, you weren't as perceptive as you might have been about other things. She fitted into your life too well for a certain period.'

'You're right on, Sophie,' he said, after a hesitation. 'Perhaps I used her, and salved my conscience by buying her jewellery, and so on.' He picked up her hand and kissed it. 'You're a marvel. Thank you.'

'She wanted jewellery, I expect. That was part of the unspoken pact, as far as she was concerned,' Sophie said.

Clay stood up. 'Would you like another beer? And I see that they make great French fries here. Maybe we need to lighten up a bit.'

'Well, I'd love another beer, please,' she said, smiling up at him. 'And instead of the diamond necklace I really had in mind, I'll settle for the chips.'

Clay grinned. 'You must think me a hopeless case where women are concerned,' he said. 'But I feel much better, unashamedly uplifted.'

'Not frightened to be vulnerable. I like that,' she said.

He came back with the beer. 'They have salad and sautéed shrimps as well,' he said. 'I'm starving.'

'So am I,' Sophie said.

Sipping a second beer and waiting for the food to be served, they continued to talk. Clay felt his frustration and angst gradually lifting. It was so good to be with her.

'So you're definitely not going to be Chief of Surgery?' Sophie said.

'Not this time around,' he said. 'Maybe, if I'm lucky and still working in Gresham, it will be something I'll apply for ten years from now.'

'And what will you be doing otherwise, ten years from now?'

'God knows,' he said honestly. 'Right now, the future has become a sort of blank to me, after mulling over the job scene for so long. It's mainly a relief.'

The food came and they both began to eat hot chips with their fingers from a generous basket piled high with them. 'Mmm,' she said, 'these are delicious. This is a great payment for my counselling, Clay. Thank you.'

'It's inadequate for what you've done for me, Sophie,' he said quietly. 'Thank you.'

'I really hope it's helped you in some way,' she said soberly. 'I know how important it is to have someone to listen when you're in trouble.'

They stayed in the pub for a long time, eating at a leisurely pace and talking about many things.

'This place feels like a second home,' Sophie said. 'I really like coming here. Now that I've been here several times with you, it feels even more so. It used to be a private house—Victorian, I guess.'

'Let's make a pact, Sophie, that if we need each other in a hurry, and can't make contact, we'll meet here. I like the idea of coming in here and finding you.'

'So do I. That sounds romantic, and very nice. We'll do it,' she agreed.

Clay leaned across the table and kissed her on the cheek. 'Thank you for listening, and being so...what? Vulnerable?'

'I'm glad that you trusted me,' she said quietly.

It was nearly midnight when he took her home. 'Is our dinner date still on for next Saturday? This time it won't be blind,' he said as they sat in the parked car.

'Yes, I'd love to come, Clay.'

'Could we make it a regular thing?' he said. 'I'm totally unencumbered now...free. Battered, but free.' He grinned ruefully. 'A lot of things are beginning to fall into place.'

'I'd like that, Clay...to get to know you better,' she said softly.

'What do you want from a man?'

'I want a man of integrity, someone I can trust implicitly... a man I can love,' she said. 'And I want the right chemistry. I didn't have that before, you see.'

'You've known me long enough to know whether the chemistry's there, Sophie,' he said. 'Hmm?' He wasn't sure why he was saying these things, only that he felt compelled to say them.

Taking a deep breath, she turned to him. 'It's definitely there,' she said.

They came together then, each making a move towards the other, in an embrace that was a release of all the holding back. 'Oh, Clay,' she whispered.

As his mouth possessed hers, Clay felt a pure joy as he lost himself in her. She put her arms around him, returning his kiss. For a long time they sat close, entwined, enjoying the physical pleasure of each other. Immediately the difference between her and Dawn was evident to Clay. There was a gentleness in the woman in his arms, a soft giving, as well as an evident delight at having him with her. For his own part, he felt a rare gentleness, a protectiveness. In the past he'd considered that he'd never really loved a woman—he'd liked them, had lusted after them, had indulged that lust. Now confusion reigned.

He realized that there had been that hard edge of calculation in Dawn, even when she'd seemed at her most abandoned with him. It was a revelation.

At last they pulled apart, looking at each other, smiling like two teenagers who had just found each other. Much as Clay wanted to ask Sophie if he could spend the remainder of the night with her, he held back. Too soon, he told himself. Anyway, what was his agenda with her? Maybe she would be wise to find out, as she had counselled him to do. The trouble was, he didn't know himself.

'Goodnight, sweetheart,' he said. 'I'll see you in the OR on Monday.'

As she was half out of the car, she turned back to him. 'Clay, there's something you have to understand... I'm definitely vulnerable,' she said. 'Seriously.'

'I didn't doubt that,' he said, smiling.

When she had gone in, the door closed behind her, he sat thinking for a few minutes. It had been a long, eventful day. Sophie was clearly telling him that she was very different from Dawn, that if he wanted a relationship with her he .had to know what she was all about and act accordingly.

He let out a deep breath, feeling himself relax for the first time in a long time. He felt that his world was taking on a certain normalcy again. It seemed to him that Sophie, in her unassuming, understated way, had accepted something that he'd implicitly offered of himself, and had issued a challenge to him. It was something that he was definitely going to take up...

Smiling, he drove away.

Later as he lay in bed, the telephone rang. When he picked it up the person on the other end of the line hung up after a moment of silence. Feeling an odd certainty, he got up and went into the sitting room to check his call-display unit attached to the other telephone there. As he suspected, it was Sophie's number that was displayed when he pressed the button.

Pleasure and longing assailed him as he sat down heavily on the sofa beside the telephone. His first instinct was to dress quickly and go to her house. It would be easy, as she would be alone for the night.

Instead, he forced himself to remain seated, to wait for five minutes before picking up the receiver and punching in Sophie's number, his heart thumping deeply with anticipation. No woman had been in his bed here at his home. Now he wanted this woman to be there...wanted her desperately.

The line was busy. In frustrated disbelief he listened to the repeated burr of the engaged signal. Slowly he disconnected. One thing was very clear: she had let him know that she wanted him. Or so it seemed to him. Perhaps this was the initiative he'd been waiting for from her.

He closed his eyes and sank back against the cushions, restless with frustration. With certainty he knew that he wanted her, no doubt about that.

Later, in bed, he dialled Sophie's number again. The line was still busy. Having made the initial move, she was probably now frightened to take the next step and had taken the phone off the hook. After all, she was a mother, she had been through a lot of angst. The stakes were high for her.

He smiled into the darkness. He could wait. Some things were worth waiting for...

CHAPTER NINE

'Clay, can you spare a few minutes?' Jerry Claibourne accosted Clay as he was about to leave the surgeons' locker room, having just changed into a green scrub suit, ready for his day of operating in the OR. Jerry himself had already changed.

'Sure, Jerry,' Clay agreed, standing in the doorway, 'I guess you must be pretty puzzled.' They moved out to the corridor. 'It's simple, really. I thought about the job over the holiday and decided that it's not really for me at this time. Applying for it maybe ten years from now would be more sensible. It took the reality of the application to make me see that. Sorry if I've taken up your time and energy backing me, Jerry.' He elaborated a little on what he'd already said, hastily, by telephone from his cottage while on holiday.

'That's all right,' Jerry said with surprising equanimity, lounging against the wall. 'Better that you should do it now than after the job was yours, as I don't doubt it would have been.'

'If I take it now, I pretty well rule out other things— like marriage and a family,' Clay said.

Jerry's interest was piqued. 'Have you got anyone in mind?' He raised his grizzled grey eyebrows which framed his permanently tired blue eyes effectively to give him a very distinguished 'professor' look. 'Er...not Dawn?'

'No, not Dawn.' Clay gave a rueful grin, finding himself suddenly light-hearted, able to almost joke about his erstwhile dilemma with Jerry's personal assistant.

'If you don't mind my saying so,' Jerry said, 'I'm relieved. Dawn's a great personal assistant, but from any other point of view she would eat you alive. Definitely not your sort of woman, Clay.'

'So I've realized,' Clay said dryly. 'Perhaps Jeff would appreciate her talents.'

'Mmm,' Jerry agreed. 'Maybe I'll effect an introduction.'

'You do that, Jerry.' Clay grinned. 'I'd be eternally grateful. Jeff might be, too. He can't seem to make it on his own.'

Jerry chuckled. 'I'll see what I can do. Well, I appreciate your honesty, Clay, even though I'm disappointed. See you later.'

Clay sought out Sophie, to find her designated as the circulating nurse for his first case. 'Morning, Sophie,' he said.

'Morning.' She smiled, her face flushed a slightly brighter shade of pink than it usually was at that time of the day. They were alone in the room.

'Did you call me late on Saturday night, and then hang up?' he asked wickedly, giving her a chance to deny it and perhaps save face if she wanted to. Her colour deepened.

'Yes,' she said. 'I wanted to speak to you...and I wanted to, um...'

'Spend the night with me?' he finished the sentence for her softly.

'Well, yes. Then I lost my nerve.' She wasn't looking at him, busy inserting the sharp end of a plastic intravenous set into a bag of transfusion fluid, Ringer's lactate, ready for the doctor who would give the anaesthetic.

'That's like the proverbial red flag to the bull,' he said.

'I thought it might be,' she said, 'although I understand that bulls are colour-blind.'

He laughed. 'Not this bull,' he said.

The atmosphere between them was electric. Clay wanted to touch her, to slide his hand round the nape of her slender neck, which made her look so vulnerable as she bent to her task, to kiss her. He made no move. This wasn't the time or place. A swift surge of desire passed through him as he watched her fingers become clumsy as she hung up the bag of fluid on an IV pole, betraying her acute physical awareness of him.

'Why did you lose your nerve?' he murmured, very aware that at any moment someone else would come into the room.

The eyes she turned on him were dark with awareness. 'As I said on Saturday,' she replied carefully, 'I'm vulnerable.'

He nodded in understanding. 'There will be other times,' he said softly. 'I'm looking forward to it.'

There was a murmur of voices and the sound of running water from the adjoining scrub room, so Clay smiled at Sophie and then went to join them to prepare for his first case. He wasn't sure what was happening to him that he was so tinglingly aware of Sophie all the time, that she was always in his thoughts these days. Maybe, at last, he was falling in love...

As it turned out, that was the only private exchange he was able to have with her for the better part of the day, as it became 'one of those days', when emergencies took precedence over the booked elective surgical cases he had on his list. When it was time for the changeover of the nursing shift, from the day shift to the evening shift at half past three in the afternoon, he found himself still operating on his second to last case, knowing that it would be six o'clock before he was finally finished. Already he'd called his secretary to cancel all his office appointments.

Some of the nurses, Sophie included, had been asked to stay behind to help the evening staff to cope with all the work. Those nurses, having put in a full day from half past seven that morning, took on the extra work resignedly and, for the most part, uncomplainingly. Clay noted Sophie's presence among them.

'Can I give you a ride home?' he said at last, when they were in the scrub room after the end of the list.

'Please,' she said, smiling as she washed her hands. 'It's been a long day.'

Clay took off his surgical cap, face mask and plastic protective goggles, before running a hand through his hair. Then he splashed cold water over his head and neck. 'Ah, that's better,' he said appreciatively. 'I have to go to my office to pick up some charts that my secretary left out for me. Shall I meet you there?' He gave her details of how to get to his office in the adjoining Medical Arts Building. He would have a quick shower, change into his outdoor clothes and go straight there.

Later, in the office, where all the other staff had gone home, he waited for her, feeling an unfamiliar tension as he went through the papers and charts that had been left out for him. The tension came from a certain knowledge that he'd reached a crisis point with Sophie, when the awareness between them crowded out everything else when they were together. Instinct told him that it was the same for her.

Now he could think of little in relation to her other than the vision of holding her in his arms, of making love to her. There were complications, of course. She had been married before, she had a child...

Somehow, after the viciousness of Dawn's ambition, everything to do with Sophie seemed so normal, normal and benign, that he wanted to embrace it—and her—with all the fervour of his being.

When he perused the list of outpatients he had to see the next day, he saw that Mike Dolby was on the list. It was several months now since the initial operation for Crohn's disease, so if all was well tomorrow he would talk about putting Mike on a list to be operated on again, an operation to get rid of the ileostomy and reconnect the ends of the bowel. He liked to wait at least six months before doing the second operation as the inflammation could recur.

As he was contemplating this, a knock came on the door. 'Come in,' he called, getting up from his desk as Sophie came in. 'Hi!'

She was wearing a rain jacket, wet with rain, over her outdoor clothes, and her face was flushed, her hair whipped by the wind. Slowly his eyes went over her as he came round the side of his desk to greet her. 'I'm just about finished here,' he said. 'You remember Mike Dolby, the man with the Crohn's? You were the scrub nurse some weeks ago?'

Frowning in concentration, Sophie dumped her bag and umbrella on the floor. 'Yes, I do,' she said. 'Is he all right?'

'Yes. I'm thinking of doing a reconnection job in a few weeks' time.'

'That's great,' she said breathlessly. 'I hope I'll be the scrub nurse.'

'Perhaps I can arrange it,' he said, forcing a lightness to his tone as he stood near her, fighting the urge to pull her into his arms. When she smiled, he was unable to resist. Like a doomed man going willingly to his fate, he took a step to cover the distance between them.

'Sophie...' He said her name softly, urgently, so that she couldn't fail to understand his meaning. By silent mutual consent they went into each other's arms and their lips met in a shared need which had been held in check throughout the long, tiring, stressful day. She sighed as she gave herself to him.

Clay closed his eyes as he kissed her, covering her warm, soft mouth with his. As her arms crept up around his neck and he felt her softness against him, his hands encountered the bare skin between her cotton sweater and the band of her skirt. With a murmur of pleasure he smoothed his hands up over her back, feeling as though he were melting inside with desire, drawing her against the length of his body.

'You smell deliciously of soap, of the non-hospital variety,' he said, his voice shaking slightly, as he released her mouth to nuzzle against her damp hair, 'and I want to make love to you.' Careful, careful! he chastised himself to be cautious, as his physical arousal threatened to obliterate everything from his mind other than the overwhelming need to have her in his bed. Uncharacteristically, he was hesitant about what to do next.

Sophie drew back to look at him, holding both his hands. 'I'm here because I want to be,' she said, tuning in to his mood. 'Very much.'

'Will you come home with me now?' he said, meeting her intelligent, perceptive eyes which seemed to him to be soft with expectation, an expectation that gave him the courage he needed. 'Just for an hour or two? Can you manage that?'

The answer was there for him to see in her eyes. 'Yes,' she said, 'yes, please.'

It was raining heavily as they drove to his house. What was about to take place moved them both to silence. Clay strove to concentrate on manipulating his car as his need for her seemed to burn within him.

'There has never been another woman in this room with me,' he said truthfully as they stood in his bedroom and he began slowly to undress her, his hands shaking, taking his time to appreciate her beauty.

She had the curving figure and the full breasts of a woman who had borne a child. Unashamedly she stood before him so that he could look at her, then smiled as he fell on his knees in front of her to put his arms around her hips and kiss her bare abdomen.

'You're so lovely,' he murmured appreciatively, all his former cynicism gone.

Slowly her hands smoothed his unbuttoned shirt away from his shoulders and he shrugged out of it. Then he felt her hands in his hair as he kissed her. He felt at ease with her, not minding that she could see that he was trembling, that his breathing was uneven, that the desire and vulnerability in him blazed in his face. Being with her seemed so natural and right, as though he'd been waiting for this all his adult life.

With his own desire, there was the longing in him to please her. She'd said that with her husband the chemistry hadn't been right. Was it right with him? More than anything he wanted her to know that it could be.

'Clay...' Sophie knelt down on the floor so that her face was on a level with his, so that he could see the wild longing in her flushed face. 'I want you to know that I'm only here for one reason.'

'What?' he said softly, smiling at her, delighting in everything about her.

'I love you...I love you so much,' she said. 'I tried not to...' She stood up, pulling him with her.

'Oh, God...Sophie,' he said, as her hands undid the belt around his waist and then helped him to take off the remainder of his clothing. 'I want you. I'm not sure I know what love is.'

'It doesn't matter. I just wanted you to know,' she said. 'And I haven't been with a man like this for over four years.'

'That doesn't matter either,' he said.

They stood, clinging together, not wanting to lose contact for a moment, and he put his hands up to touch her tumbled hair which was like an aureole of dark auburn above her smooth, bare shoulders. He felt strangely shy, at a loss for words.

Nothing was real but the feel of her touching him and the warmth of her in his arms. He lifted her up then, effortlessly, as though she weighed next to nothing, and placed her on his wide bed, her head on a pillow. The room was in semi-darkness and rain pattered against the windows, all details of the scene heightened to him as though they all contributed to his personal pleasure that he would share with this woman. In some ways he felt as though he were doing this for the first time.

On the bed beside her he kissed her neck, her breasts, smoothing his hands over her. With delight he was acutely aware that her breathing stilled after she drew in a breath sharply and held it with surprise and pleasure for a long moment, before letting it out tremblingly. What male ego could fail to be gratified by her response? It contributed to the pure pleasure and urgency of his arousal. Forcing himself to hold back, his hands gently explored every part of her.

Sophie murmured her pleasure involuntarily, her cheek pressed against his, her hands tangled in his hair, her body moving to respond to his caressing fingers. As she did so, he felt as though he were melting with desire and that odd, unfamiliar gentleness that made him so acutely aware of every nuance of her behaviour and her response to him. Delighted, he eased her against him, his hand behind her hips, aware that he was smiling again that inane smile of the besotted.

'Colour-blind or not,' he said softly, 'you make me feel like the bull who has seen the flag.'

They both laughed like two children who'd discovered a jar of candies and had decided to raid it. Clay moved his hand down over her thigh, over her skin that felt like velvet.

'I love you...Clay,' she murmured the words distractedly. 'I love you.'

Taking his time, delicately, gently, he pleasured her, losing himself in her, unselfconscious, uninhibited. 'Sweetheart...' he whispered, 'nothing has ever felt so good, so right.'

She snuggled against him, her arms tightly round him, giving herself without restraint...

It was exquisite torture to him to hold back from his own urgent need, to prolong her enjoyment until she could reach fulfillment. Only then would he take his ultimate release from her. With his eyes closed, he lost himself in her joy, finding himself acutely sensitive to her needs.

Instinctively he understood that this first time could very possibly make or break the fledgling feelings that bonded them, the future of what he wanted so desperately, to be together with her again like this and-—yes, he had to admit—to allow for the possibility of something more. It was something he had never given himself time to think about before. Over the years of hard grind a lot of things had been lost.

Later she sobbed quietly in his arms, compliant and relaxed like a rag doll as he stroked her hair. And he, satiated, lay oblivious to all else but her, his mind blank of thought, aware only of pure sensation—of the drumming of his heart, his heightened breathing, the throbbing of his body as it recovered from that rare moment when a man and a woman escaped, briefly, from their essential aloneness and became mystically as one being.

They were slick with sweat, pleasantly warm. 'Darling... darling girl,' he murmured as she became quiet. 'Don't go to sleep. Soon we'll start again. It will be much longer next time... We'll start together and finish together.' Already he was planning it, smiling uncontrollably into her soft mass of damp hair. In reply she pressed her heated face against the side of his neck in acquiescence.

When that time came, he lowered his weight down onto her, looking into her face which was soft with satiated desire. He couldn't seem to stop smiling.

'We're both grinning again like a couple of idiots,' she said. 'I want to cry and laugh at the same time. You must think I'm mad.'

'No. We are a couple of idiots,' he said exultantly, 'for waiting so long.'

'Yes...'

When he began to make love to her again, just as he'd planned, she closed her eyes, still smiling.

'This is going to take a long time,' he said again, whispering the words against her ear, kissing it.

'Promise?'

'Sure.'

'Mmm...' she said dreamily, giving her assent.

After that, Clay couldn't get enough of Sophie. They met as often as they could after work, going either to his place or to hers when she was going to be alone there. Over that time he met Sophie's mother and daughter a few times, enough that he felt he was getting to know them. Sophie didn't make a point of bringing them together. On weekends she spent a fair amount of time with her daughter.

Sometimes they went out for a meal or a drink, but mostly they lay together. Always they talked, as though they wanted to share every idea and thought about every subject under the sun. Gradually they were getting to know each other as people, distinct from their professional relationship. Clay liked what he discovered.

The remainder of the year seemed to go by quickly. It was early December, the temperature dropping rapidly, a few snow flurries punctuating each day. Clay found himself extremely busy in the run-up to the Christmas holiday, as was normal for that time of the year, as the surgeons tried to get elective cases operated on so that they could recover in time for the holiday. In due course, Jeff Willoughby was appointed to the position of Chief of Surgery, a move about which Clay found he felt no particular emotion.

What he did mind about was that quite suddenly he found his time with Sophie curtailed from necessity. He saw her at work, of course, but then she was also extremely busy, asked to work extra days and hours when she could manage them. There could be no stolen kisses at the scrub sinks or in the coffee-room, and he missed the intimate contact with her when he went for more than two days without seeing her, more than he'd missed anything or anyone in his life. He missed her company, being able to discuss things with her or simply being with her. They had agreed to spend part of the Christmas holiday together with her family.

'Hey, stranger!' he said to her one morning prior to the operating list, catching her alone in the scrub room for a few moments of private conversation.

'Hello,' she said, her voice soft, smiling a greeting, as she prepared to scrub for his next case. 'I've missed you. I hope you're looking forward to the holiday as much as I am. Can you call me tonight to make up for lost time?'

'Try to stop me,' he said, giving her a quick peck on the back of her neck as she bent over the sink. 'I've had an invitation from Jerry and his wife to a dinner party for Jeff Willoughby—a celebration—next week. He's asked me to bring my woman. Will you come?'

'Am I your woman, Clay?' Did he imagine it, or was there a certain wistfulness in her voice as she turned to look up at him? At the tone he felt a poignant stab of emotion that he was at a loss to explain to himself.

'The one and only,' he said.

'I'd like to come, Clay,' she added quietly. 'It should be interesting...from several aspects.'

'Yeah, very interesting,' he agreed thoughtfully, although he wasn't sure of all the things that would be interesting from her point of view. 'I'm on call this weekend, sweetheart. Can you come over to my place?'

'I'll try,' she said.

At that moment Rick burst into the room with his usual flourish. 'Morning, sir,' he said to Clay. 'Hi, doll,' he said to Sophie.

'Hi, pussy cat,' she said to him.

'Hey!' Clay intervened. 'What's with this "pussy cat" routine?'

'It's nurses' and junior doctors' appreciation week,' Rick said airily.

'First I've heard of it,' Clay said, preparing to scrub.

'That's because you live in a bit of an ivory tower, sir,' Rick said. 'Down nearer the ground all sorts of things are happening.'

'Is that right?'

Sophie was laughing. 'I think I'll go on calling you pussy cat, Rick,' she said as she went out.

'You do that,' Rick said. 'Nice young woman,' he added to Clay after she had gone.

'Very,' Clay agreed, picking up nuances in the younger man's tone. 'Are you trying to tell me something, Rick?'

'Could be, sir.'

'Don't get any ideas there, Rick.'

Rick looked at him sideways. 'I wouldn't dream of it, sir. If she's spoken for, that is.'

'She is,' Clay found himself saying. 'And stop calling me "sir" so much—it makes me feel old.'

'Right on,' Rick said.

Later in the day, as he was going down to the cafeteria for a very belated lunch, Clay encountered Jeff Willoughby in the corridor near the operating rooms. With him was Dawn Renton. Schooling his features into a mask of neutrality, happy to see her with Jeff, Clay came to a halt. 'Hi, Jeff,' he greeted his colleague. 'Congratulations on the new job.' They shook hands.

'Thanks, Clay,' Jeff said, smiling his usual rather wan smile, although Clay detected that he looked a little more animated than usual and hoped that Dawn was the cause.

Jeff Willoughby was a slight, shortish man, going prematurely bald, with the kind of face that one forgot when not actually confronted with it. A very good surgeon, a good communicator with patients, he was the sort of man who made little impact in private life.

'Let me introduce you to my fiancée,' Jeff was saying, as Clay mused about the other man's private life. 'Dawn Renton. Perhaps you know each other?'

That was the understatement of the year, Clay thought as he tried to prevent his jaw from dropping. Sometimes dreams did come true. Dawn was unlikely to create any vibes for him now.

As he transferred his gaze to Dawn, inclining his head in acknowledgement, he noted that she was staring at him in a rather fixed way, not batting an eyelid, a smile on her lips which, he didn't doubt, was forced. He detected a mild air of triumph in her demeanour.

'Well,' he said, avoiding any hint of how well he knew Dawn, 'congratulations are in order again. When is the wedding to be?'

'As soon as it can be arranged,' Dawn said, linking her arm through Jeff's in a possessive gesture, leaning against him. Clay noted a sudden flush on the other man's cheeks, and a certain darkening of the pupils, and he found himself wondering again whether the man had ever been to bed with a woman...before Dawn. No doubt he had received a very quick, dramatic and evidently overwhelming awakening.

Clay took a step back. 'I hope you'll both be very happy,' he said, and meant it.

As it turned out, he was called into the hospital on Friday evening for half of the night, then for a good part of Saturday. Exhausted, he slept late on the Sunday, only checking the messages on his answering machine as he prepared a late brunch for himself. Any urgent messages would come via his pager.

There was a message from Sophie to say that she had called him several times without success and that she would be away on Saturday. On impulse, Clay decided to go over to Sophie's house, without calling first, when he'd eaten. The longing to see her put everything else from his mind.

It was a cold, clear day, the sort of day that threatened serious winter, where one's breath left clouds of vapour in the frigid air. The drive to Sophie's place took about fifteen minutes. When he knocked on the door there was no reply and the house had a slightly forlorn, unoccupied air about it that left him a little puzzled and oddly disturbed as he walked around to the back of the house and peered in through the kitchen window, then knocked on the back door. All the doors were locked. Feeling momentarily at a loss, he decided to call Sophie's mother on his cellphone.

'Oh, hello, Clay, it's nice to hear from you. How are you?' When Sophie's mother's welcoming voice answered, he felt himself relax, realizing then that what he'd been feeling in the last few minutes had been fear, and an odd realization that he didn't know exactly where Sophie was...and it mattered. It mattered like hell.

There was a feeling of urgency, that he'd left some things rather late. Too late? He shifted uneasily from foot to foot in the freezing garden at the back of the house, the instrument in his hand the lifeline to the most important connection in his life.

'Sophie went to Ottawa for the weekend,' her mother was saying. 'There's a reunion there of her high school year...it's on for the whole weekend. She's been staying with a friend...she hasn't seen him for years.'

'Him?'

'Yes. It was really funny how it happened, Clay. She met him in a bookshop in Gresham. He's in computers, a real whizz, apparently, and he persuaded her to go to the reunion and stay with his family. Of course, she knew about the reunion but hadn't intended to go. I suppose if you hadn't been working, Clay, she wouldn't have gone.'

'When is she getting back?' he said, his throat tight.

'Late this afternoon, by train.'

'Could I meet her at the station? I'd like to.'

'Oh, she'd love that, Clay, in this cold. Come over here for a cup of tea. You've got plenty of time before the train gets in.'

'I'd like that,' he said, relief flooding over him. Perhaps he'd started to take Sophie for granted. In reality, she was perfectly free to see other men. Perhaps an old school mate didn't qualify as another man, but he was disturbed in a way he hadn't thought possible.

'I don't think I like him much, he's a real nerd,' Mandy announced when they were in the cosy kitchen of Lavinia Clement, Sophie's mother. The little girl pronounced the words solemnly between sips of hot chocolate as they all sat at the kitchen table, while the grown-ups drank tea.

Lavinia, a petite, grey-haired version of Sophie, shot Clay a subtle, significant look. They had been talking about the 'old school friend', whose name was Sebastian Prender. 'Little children can be very perceptive, can't they?' She smiled at Clay. 'And unwittingly rude. I'll have a few words about that later. Mandy was with Sophie when they met Sebastian in the bookshop.'

'I see,' Clay said, smiling back, feeling more relaxed in this cosy atmosphere, with the warm tea lying comfortably in his stomach.

Not to be deterred, the child continued her verbal meanderings. 'I like you, Clay,' she said, 'not that Sebastian guy. He talks too much, all about himself, and he didn't even look at me. He kept staring at Mummy.'

'That's "Dr Sotheby" to you, Mandy,' her grandmother said, while Clay grinned.

'He doesn't mind if I call him Clay,' the girl said.

Clay shrugged. 'We like each other,' he said.

Later at the railway station in downtown Gresham, Clay strode quickly through the vast entrance hall and down another wide corridor towards the platform for the arrival of the Ottawa train, expectant and oddly nervous, with only moments to spare. Already, arriving passengers were streaming through the entrance gate, most of them shrugging into heavy jackets in preparation for the cold they would encounter outside.

At first she didn't see him as he stood to one side to wait for her. Wearing a long black coat, black boots and a red scarf wound several times round her neck, she seemed to Clay to look like a waif he had come to rescue, and his heart leapt with a feeling that he knew was love.

Yes, he loved this woman. He had feared that he would lose her. Now he knew, in those few moments, what he had been waiting for most of his adult life. At last, in this mundane place which seemed to take on a magical air, he'd found out what it was to want to give himself...permanently, to be with someone, to never let her go.

Sophie walked with her head bent, looking at the ground. When she came close to him he could see that her face looked pale and tired, the expression serious, and he wanted to kiss her, to kiss away that tiredness, to ease some of the responsibilities that she had in her young life. He wanted to tell her that he loved her.

'Sophie!'

The look of surprise and joy on her pale face was something he'd been waiting for. His heart seemed to melt as he found himself grinning that inane grin that seemed to be impossible to suppress when he was with her. Swiftly he walked up to her, seeing only her in the milling crowd.

'Clay! Oh, it's so good to see you. And just when I was thinking how lovely it would be if someone could meet me. It's so cold. How did you know I was coming?'

'Your mother told me,' he said, as he drew her to one side, away from the crowd. Taking her overnight bag out of her unresisting fingers, he enveloped her in a hard embrace, feeling her arms go round him. 'Thank God I didn't miss you.'

'I'm so glad you came,' she said, her voice muffled by his coat as he hugged her against his chest.

'Did you have a good time in Ottawa?' he forced himself to ask, when he really wanted to ask about Sebastian Prender and what he meant to her, if anything.

'It was lovely to see all my old classmates—we couldn't stop talking. But it was spoiled for me because I kept thinking about you...about how much I was missing you.'

Clay decided not to mention the nerd. 'Good,' he said, crushing her so tightly against him that she could scarcely breathe. 'I love you...I love you to distraction. And don't go away from me again without telling me first, otherwise I shall go stark, staring crazy.'

She was laughing then, putting her hands up to hold his face, to pull him down to her so that she could kiss him. 'I won't,' she said. They kissed, oblivious to the passers-by. 'I wasn't sure exactly how you felt about me. I could only hope.'

'I'm a bit thick, a bit slow, when it comes to some things,' he said.

With his arm around her, and carrying her bag, they walked out of the station into the cold winter evening. Something had happened, something momentous, and he didn't want the evening to come to an end. 'Shall we go out to eat?' he said. 'I'm starved, and I expect you are, too.'

'Yes, please,' she said, her voice light with happiness. 'Clay, let's go to Guido's—that place we went to on the blind date.'

'Sure,' he said. She put her arm around his waist and they strode out rapidly to keep warm to where he had parked his car. 'I sure didn't want to go on that date.'

'Neither did I,' she said. 'With you.'

They both started to laugh at the same time, unable to stop for long moments, the tears of relief running down their faces. 'What idiots we were. All those boorish things we said to each other!' she said. 'Why didn't we just relax and accept the inevitable?'

'I don't know.' Clay kissed her, cupping her face in his hands. 'You're freezing,' he said. 'Come on. This time it's not blind, Sophie. My eyes are wide open.' Suddenly he was very serious, more serious than he'd ever been in his life.

When Guido had seated them at a table, had stopped fussing over them and had brought them each a small complimentary glass of brandy as an antidote to the cold, they found themselves alone. As they smiled at each other across the narrow expanse of the table, Clay took both Sophie's hands in his and raised them to his lips. The time had come for courage, an end to procrastination and taking her for granted. Battening down an uncharacteristic nervousness, he raised his eyes to hers.

'I'm addicted to work,' he began hesitantly, 'which I will try to change somewhat. I can be rude at times and impatient... I'll try to change that, too...if you think you can live with that? On my good side, I like kids... I want kids, I can cook, do laundry...'

She nodded, wordless.

'Contrary to popular sentiment at the hospital, I don't think I'm God's gift to women,' he went on. 'In fact, I'm really a rather humble sort of guy, deep down. I'm grateful for the opportunities that fate has given me...'

By now Sophie was grinning.

'What I'm trying to say is... Will you marry me? Please.' He finished with a rush, his heart beating with fear that she might say no, so he gripped her hands tightly, waiting for her reply. Slowly she moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue, looking at him consideringly.

'I'm not very good at going down on my knees to beg,' he gabbled on, 'but I will if necessary. And I'm afraid I haven't got a super antique ring in my pocket that I can flourish under your nose and say it belonged to my great-great-grandmother and I've just been waiting to give it to the woman of my dreams...'

Sophie detached one of her hands from his grasp and placed it over his mouth. 'Shush,' she said, smiling, her eyes strangely light. 'Tell me again that you love me.'

'I love you,' he said fervently, leaning close to her. 'It's like a fever, for which the only cure is to make you my wife.'

Guido came back at that moment. 'You like the wine now, sir?' he asked with a bow.

'Um...er...I...' Clay said.

'We'll have it later with the meal, please,' Sophie said. 'Could we have a half bottle of champagne for now? The Veuve Cliquot would be lovely, if you have it.'

Guido bowed low and reverently. 'Si, senorita,' he said.

They grinned at each other across the table. 'Does that mean what I think it means?' he said softly.

'I rather fancy being married to a tiger,' she said, 'but not any old tiger. Yes, Clay Sotheby, I will marry you. Yes, please.'

'If you'll forgive the cliché, my darling, I'm the happiest man alive,' he said. 'There's one thing I have to be sure of.' He leaned even closer to her. 'Is the chemistry right?'

'Explosive,' she said huskily.

'Later, perhaps we...'

'Yes...'

Guido was back at their table with the champagne, where he expertly twisted off the wire and eased off the cork, which made a satisfying pop. 'The best for the best,' he said, pouring the pale yellow liquid. 'Not blind now, eh! I wish you great happiness, senor and senorita.'

'Thank you,' they said in unison, as they raised their glasses to the evening ahead and to the tantalizing future that lay before them.