Sydney Harbour Hospital: Tom's Redemption (19 page)

‘Do everything else?’ His brow shot up in a sardonic tilt as he pulled his hands away and strode across the room.

Desperation made words flood out of her. ‘We’d get help. That’s what housekeepers and nannies are for.’ She thought of her mother and smiled. ‘And grandmothers.’

He gave a harsh laugh that sliced through the air, leaving a chill in its wake. ‘I can’t contribute one of those.’

She refused to let him wallow in self-pity. ‘You’re
not
without family, Tom. Carol would love to help and Jared can be the bachelor uncle who lets the kids stay up all
night watching inappropriate films and eating too much chocolate.’

He shook his head. ‘Stop dreaming, Hayley. It would all fall apart.’

‘No, it won’t.’

‘Yes, it will.’

She wanted to shake him free of this crazy notion. ‘It would only happen because you believe it will.’

‘This is nothing to do with believing and everything to do with knowing.’ His yelled words settled over them like a shroud. ‘I’m a realist, Hayley.’

Her heart hammered hard and fast as she fought for their future. ‘No, this isn’t realism. This is you being a fool, and that’s exactly what you’ll be if you walk away from what
will
be a wonderful and amazing life together.’

He didn’t respond and her shoulders slumped. ‘Tom, this makes no sense.’

‘It makes all the sense in the world.’ His shoulders rolled back in a familiar action of determination. ‘I’m doing you a favour. Ending it now will save us long-term pain. You’d only end up resenting me and resenting the blindness. Hell, I resent it. It will tear us apart and then you’ll leave, like every one else.’

Her heart spasmed for him. How could she argue against a childhood of abandonment?

With the truth
. ‘I don’t care that you’re blind. To me you’re just Tom, the most giving and caring man I’ve ever had the fortune to meet. You’re the man I love and I won’t ever leave you.’

‘You say that now, but everyone does.’ He flinched, the tremor moving across his shoulders and ricocheting down his legs. ‘This is the reason I’ve stayed single and now that I’m blind it’s even more important. You have no idea what it was like for me tonight in that underpass and
I’m never allowing myself to feel that vulnerable again. I’ve never depended on anyone and I’m not about to start.’

She wanted to scream and rage at him, but she knew he’d just tune her out completely. ‘Tom, I have twenty-twenty vision and I depend on you in so many ways, big and small. Without you, I’d still be chronically exhausted, but you forced me to deal with my PTSD and I’m making progress. There’s nothing wrong with needing people. No one is completely independent of others and if they are, well, it’s a sad life and they’re not happy.’

He turned slowly and she saw that the warm glow that had been living in his eyes for a few weeks had now vanished. A knife-sharp pain tore through her heart and she knew right there and then that she’d lost the argument.

Lost him.

‘You don’t want to fight for us, do you?’

‘I’m sorry.’ He walked toward the spare room, ‘I’ll sleep here tonight and Jared can help you move tomorrow. Have a good life, Hayley.’ He closed the door softly behind him.

‘I never took you for a coward, Tom Jordan,’ she yelled as she hurled a couch cushion at the door and then watched it fall with a quiet thud to the floor. Her shaking legs gave way completely and she collapsed onto the couch, her breath coming in ragged runs. For years she’d held herself apart from people, but Tom had slipped under her guard and into her heart, digging in for the long haul and making her dream.

Now he’d killed the dream, but the love stayed on, lamenting what might have been.

She buried her face in her hands and silently wept.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

E
VIE
arrived at Pete’s, glanced around and sighed. She couldn’t see Lexi anywhere. Her sister had texted her twice in the last hour, reminding her to meet her here, and now Evie had not only arrived but arrived on time and Lexi was nowhere to be seen.

She headed toward the bar, but stalled at a table tucked away in a corner. ‘Hayley?’

‘That’s me.’

Even in the mood lighting of the bar, Evie could see the registrar’s drawn expression and sorrow-filled eyes. Hayley wasn’t a regular at Pete’s—in fact, she was a bit of a loner, although The Harbour gossip mill had her linked with Tom Jordan but no one seemed to know too much about it. The fact she was sitting here meant something was up. ‘May I join you?’

Hayley sighed and pushed out an adjacent chair. ‘Sure.’

Evie noticed Hayley was drinking mineral water and she called over to the bar. ‘Hey, Pete, I’m off the clock so can you please bring me one of your Harbour Specials?’

Pete gave her a wave. ‘Anything for you, Dr Lockheart.’

Evie returned the wave and sat down. ‘Are you okay? You look absolutely wiped.’

Hayley fiddled with a coaster. ‘It’s been a long day on all fronts.’

‘Of course. Sorry, I should have realised.’ Earlier in the day, a twenty-three-year-old had wrapped his car around a pole, injuring himself and his three passengers. All available staff had been called in and she knew that Finn and Hayley had been in Theatre most of the day, dealing with the emergency as well as trying to clear their delayed surgical list. ‘Has Finn Kennedy been giving you hell?’

‘I wish.’ Hayley leaned back and laughed, but the sound was neither happy nor ironic. ‘Actually, I got a rare compliment from Mr Kennedy today.’

‘A compliment?’ Evie couldn’t hide her astonishment and yet at the same time she was unaccountably happy that Finn had been able to voice praise. She knew he found expressing any sort of positive emotion incredibly difficult.

‘There you go, Evie, a Harbour Special, as requested.’ Pete put the glass of beer down with a grin and returned to the bar.

Hayley stirred her mineral water with her straw and gave a half-smile. ‘You know our chief of surgery, Evie. He’s taciturn and a man of few words, but after we’d patched a frayed femoral artery courtesy of an impacted steering column, he said, “When you qualify we’d consider an application from you.”’

That’s so Finn
. ‘You know it means he wants you working here as a consultant and part of his team.’ She raised her glass. ‘Congratulations, Hayley.’

‘Thanks.’ She picked up her glass and clinked it against Evie’s, but the action lacked enthusiasm.

‘You don’t sound very thrilled.’ Evie realised she didn’t know much at all about Hayley except that she was always obliging when the ER requested a surgical consult and she hadn’t shied away from the tough decisions or the hard asks. ‘You’re not long back from the UK, are you? Were
you planning on going back or working somewhere else in Oz?’

Hayley shook her head and compressed her lips. ‘No. My heart was set on settling down in Sydney, here, in fact, but—’ Hayley’s phone honked like a ferry horn and she glanced down at the liquid display and sighed. ‘Sorry, Evie, I’m on call and that’s Mia McKenzie from ER. Sounds like it’s a good night for you to be off duty and out of there. Enjoy yourself.’ She rose and hurried out the door.

Evie realised that once again Hayley had been friendly and yet had managed not to give out much information about herself at all. While they’d been talking, Pete’s had filled up but there was still no sign of Lexi and with the first few sips of the beer warming her veins, Evie had no desire to sit on her own. She stood up, looking for someone from The Harbour, but none of the chattering groups in the deep and comfy booths were people she knew. Picking up her drink, she headed to the bar to chat with Pete, who was always entertaining, but stopped short a few steps away, instantly recognising the taut set of broad shoulders and long legs that were wound around a barstool.

Finn
.

She swallowed hard.

Sure, they saw each other at work but there was always a patient and a team of staff between them. The last occasion they’d been alone together had been when time had stood still. He’d leaned into her and she’d pressed herself against his warm, broad back, wanting nothing more than to stay there for ever. Her surge of feelings for him then had been so unexpected that they’d both terrified her and filled her with a hope she’d never dared to dream of. Then
he’d lurched away from her, to this very bar, and straight into the arms of another woman.

She didn’t want to relive
that
particular memory of him flirting with the OR nurse when he’d known that she was still in the bar with a full view of what he was doing. Deliberately hurting her.

She swayed slightly. Seeing him at work was one thing—she didn’t have a choice there, but she did have a choice now. She didn’t have to see him socially.

‘Something wrong with your drink, Evie?’ Pete enquired as he flung a bar towel over his shoulder.

Finn immediately turned around, his vivid blue gaze torching her. She hated that she stood stock-still like a rabbit caught in headlights. Hated that she hadn’t moved half a second earlier before Pete had seen her. Before Finn had seen her.

Put on your mask
.

She tilted her chin and strode toward the bar, standing next to the seated Finn. ‘All alone tonight?’

‘Not any longer.’ He raised his glass of malt whisky to her and his eyes simmered with a swirl of caged emotions, none of which held form long enough to be named.

She gulped her drink as she felt herself being pulled in by them. ‘Oh, I’m not staying.’

‘No?’

She slammed the empty glass down on the long counter. ‘No. I make it a rule not to spend any time with people who are immersed in self-destruction.’

His right brow lifted. ‘That rules out all the interesting people. Does it feel good, living a vanilla life, Evie?’

Anger drove caution to the wind and lifted the mask on her heart. ‘Does it feel good rejecting everyone around you who cares, Finn?’

His fingers tightened around his glass and he tossed back his drink. ‘Do-gooders don’t interest me.’

His words slashed her, breaking open her barely sealed emotions, and a rush of hurt spouted like a geyser. ‘In that case you can hope that Suzy Carpenter will be along soon to keep you company.’

His blue eyes narrowed. ‘I suppose I can.’ He tapped the edge of his glass. ‘Pete, give us another one.’

Nausea gripped Evie at his brutal dismissal. She grabbed her bag off the bar and strode toward the door, no longer caring if Lexi was going to arrive or not. She had to leave. Had to get out before she threw up and added to her utter humiliation. Pulling open the heavy wooden door, she stepped out into the night and gulped in a lungful of cool evening air.

Why had she been so foolish? Why? What was it about Finn that made her act so out of character? She was always in control and yet, with a few poorly chosen words, she’d just exposed her jumbled feelings for him. Feelings that she’d wanted to keep hidden because telling a man who was so emotionally shut down that she cared was like putting a match to an incendiary bomb. The ensuing explosion only hurt her.

Not Finn.

No, Finn hadn’t been affected at all. He’d read her face, he’d heard her words, and he’d instantly rejected them and her. There had been no ambiguity. He had no feelings for her and he’d made that abundantly clear.

Tom was running late and the day had been quickly going downhill from the moment he’d overslept. The irony that he’d been wide awake at four a.m. wasn’t lost on him.

‘Jared? Where the hell are my keys?’

‘You always leave your keys in the dish by the door.’

‘And if they were there, would I be asking you?’

Jared’s heavy footfalls headed toward the door. ‘I dunno. You’ve been grumpy and losing things ever since Hayley’s house got finished. It’s kinda funny because when she was living here you complained that her mess made it hard for you but now everything’s all neat again you’re losing more stuff than ever.’

Jared’s words cut too close to the bone to be comfortable. It was true, his concentration had been all over the place since he’d asked Hayley to leave, but no way in hell was he admitting to it. ‘I’ll have you know that she lost more things than I ever did.’

Jared snorted. ‘Yeah, right. Hey, Tom, did you drink a lot last night?’

Was a bottle of merlot and a whisky chaser a lot? ‘Why?’

‘Because …’ Jared laughed ‘… I’ve found your keys in the fruit basket.’

Damn it, how had he done that?

The same way you put your wallet in the fridge. You were thinking about Hayley
.

Tom banished the unwanted thought and snapped his hand out for the needed items. ‘Thanks. Let’s go. Now. The last thing I need is smart-arse late jokes from one hundred and twenty med students.’ He slung his computer satchel over his chest, flicked out his cane and headed toward the lifts.

‘Excuse me.’

An accented and unknown voice hailed Tom as he prepared to leave the lecture hall. He sighed. The day had been a long one. The whole damn week had been excruciatingly long without Hayley in it, but finally it was Friday and he’d survived the first week without her. He’d
survive the next and the one after that and the one after that, stretching well into the future.

He hated that he’d hurt her but, no matter what she believed, he knew he’d made the right decision. With each passing week she’d come to realise that he’d actually freed her.

So, if it was the right decision, why does it feel like hell?

‘Mr Jordan?’

The foreign accent reminded him he was supposed to reply. ‘Yes?’

‘I’m Akim Deng, medical student, and I follow your lectures with most great interest.’

Tom put out his hand on hearing the formal sentence structure so often used by people where English was a second or subsequent language. ‘Where are you from, Akim?’

‘Blacktown.’

Tom smiled. The western suburbs continued to be a melting pot of nationalities, just like it had been when he’d been a kid. ‘I used to live near there, but I meant where did you live before Blacktown?’

‘Oh, I am from the Sudan, but before Australia I lived in Kenya for some years.’