The Surgeon's Love-Child. Lilian Darcy

possibly have been called a late lunch.

      Barbecued steak, a microwaved jacket potato and salad, dished up at a quarter to five? Not lunch. Delicious and satisfying, though. Steve Colton cooked steak very well.

      He was going to ask me something, but I’ve forgotten what it was, Candace thought hazily.

      She was too busy thinking about signals. Yes, those signals! The ones men sent to women, and the ones women, in their different way, sent back to men.

      It’s been so long…So long since I had to decide if I was imagining it or not. If I wanted it or not. If a man really meant it or not. I was so sure about all those questions the other day, but now…

      Some men had flirted with her, had given off signals, during her marriage to Todd. They had been signals she had casually interpreted as meaning, If you weren’t attached, I’d be interested. The key attitude on her part, of course, was ‘casually’. She had never needed to test out her perceptions, to work out whether she was right or wrong.

      Because of Todd, because of her marriage, it just hadn’t mattered. She’d never had the remotest intention of responding to the possible, or probable, signals in any way. She’d never been tempted into an affair.

      This time, it was different. A part of her craved the heady therapy of a successful fling. Another part of her was cynical, sceptical and just plain terrified. If I’m wrong…If I’m right, and it doesn’t work…

      If I’m sure I’m right, and I throw myself at him, and he laughs, or he’s kind, or he tells me very carefully, Oh, but I’m married. Didn’t you know? My wife is away visiting her parents for a week in Woggabiggabolliga—which seemed to be the name of at least half of the towns people mentioned around here, as far as she could work out.

      Candace had to suppress a gulp of hysterical laughter at this point. Am I going crazy? Who knew that betrayal and divorce could do this to a person?

      ‘You’re different in surgery, aren’t you?’ Steve said suddenly, sitting up cross-legged on his towel and resting his elbows on his knees.

      Candace immediately sat up, too. She didn’t bother to argue his perception. ‘Enough to be worthy of comment, apparently.’

      ‘I didn’t—’

      ‘No, go ahead. It’s OK.’

      ‘I guess I thought you’d be more touchy-feely.’

      ‘And instead I’m…?’

      ‘You really give the impression that you know what you’re doing and you know what you want.’

      ‘Of course I do! I was doing this when you were still dissecting frogs, Steve!’

      His abrupt launch into probing questions rattled her, especially the way it followed on from her own jittery train of thought.

      ‘Don’t,’ he said.

      ‘Don’t what?’

      ‘Don’t pull rank.’

      ‘Why not?’ she retorted. ‘I must be at least five years older than you.’

      ‘Six, I think.’

      ‘You’ve been checking?’

      ‘Terry said you were thirty-nine.’

      ‘Well, Terry is wrong! I’m only thirty-eight, and my birthday’s not until July!’

      They looked at each other and both laughed at the absurdity of her objection.

      ‘Hey, can we start this again?’ he said.

      ‘Start what again?’

      ‘Now you’re being deliberately obtuse. This conversation. I hadn’t intended it to get confrontational. I wanted to say that in surgery you were…’ He hesitated.

      ‘A royal pain about the music?’

      ‘Yes, and it was great. I really liked the way you handled it. I liked you in surgery, Candace. I liked your focus and your confidence in the fact that it was your right to dictate the mood. But you were quiet about it. Polite.’

      ‘I’m well brought up.’

      ‘So well brought up that normally you’re probably like most women and apologise when someone else steps on your toes, right?’

      She laughed again, recognising the arrow-like accuracy of his observation. ‘In my private life, yes. In surgery, Dr Colton, you’d better damn well apologise to me!’

      He grinned and his blue eyes sparkled like the sun on the sea. ‘Yep. I liked that. It was good,’ he said, then repeated even more lazily, ‘It was good.’

      Seconds later, he was on his feet and reaching down to pull her up as well. ‘Want to?’ he said.

      ‘A swim? Yes, I do.’

      The surf was bigger today. ‘Dumpers,’ Steve told her. ‘Be careful. They can flip you over pretty hard.’

      He kept a careful eye on her and on the waves as they swam, and told her a couple of times, ‘Not this one.’

      After a while, she could feel the difference in the waves for herself. They didn’t curl and pause and fold smoothly over today, but broke abruptly, like hands crashing on piano keys. If you caught them at the wrong moment, they sent you tumbling so that you emerged disorientated, with wrenched muscles.

      ‘Where are the flags today?’ she asked Steve.

      ‘They don’t patrol Taylor’s Beach during the week, outside school holidays,’ he said. ‘We can stop, if you like.’

      ‘No, I’m enjoying it.’ And she felt very safe beside him, sensed that he really knew what he was doing in the water.

      ‘Jump!’ he interrupted, and they managed to keep their heads above water as a wave boiled around them. ‘They’re breaking all over the place. We’d have to go out a long way to avoid them.’

      ‘No, thanks!’

      They stuck it out for a little longer, then Candace got dumped again and came up with sand all through her hair and down her classic black one-piece swimsuit. Salt stung in her nose.