Free Harry St Clair: Rogue or Doctor? by Fiona McArthur

everywhere were the welcoming smiles of Bali.
    She wished she could concentrate on the colours and activity and sheer beauty around her, but despite herattempt at resistance her eyes were drawn to the man beside her.
    Fascination lay in the way his brown hands moved confidently on the steering wheel, how easy he made it seem to navigate in the busyness and ordered confusion that was the main street, and how since they’d arrived in Ubud his shoulders seemed to have relaxed again into their more comfortable stance.
    Her hand slid up to touch the baby around her neck. The gift had come from nowhere and she wasn’t sure that he was happy now that he’d given it to her. But she couldn’t read his face and maybe it would be better to let the distance grow between them again. She turned back to the window.
    They crawled with the now-creeping traffic down a stone-banked incline then across an ancient bridge and suddenly the shops and traffic were gone and they were surrounded by rice fields again.
    Harry bumped into a narrow lane and up another hill and the rice fields almost brushed the car. She assumed they must be getting closer to the time they’d arrive at his house and little waves of awareness bounced between them in the quiet of the car. Then he turned and smiled at her and it seemed it was connection time again.
    The guy was such a light switch sometimes. On and off with the flick of a finger.
    The suspense of their arrival became more momentous the longer it took to get there. She reminded herself he was a well-known entity here, and she wasn’t really foolish sitting beside him going somewhere she didn’t know how to get back from. The concept that Harrywould force her into anything didn’t enter her mind. She trusted him and she didn’t know why. Just that she did.
    Would anyone else be there? Was it only a peaceful dinner they were both thinking of or had thoughts of intimacy crossed his mind too? Should she keep reminding herself she was a paranoid woman with a poor track record in men?
    She sneaked a look at his profile as he glanced to his right. Hopefully he was unaware of the mixed emotions she was hiding behind her sunglasses because she couldn’t keep her thoughts sorted and orderly herself, let alone share them with him.
    Field workers waved and Harry waved back, and Bonnie gazed around and pretended to be the tourist she was, but her eyes kept returning to Harry’s hands. The very first time she’d seen him she’d felt a connection to those hands—until she’d seen his ring. How ridiculous. You couldn’t fall in lust with someone’s hands.
    They finally arrived, as close as they could get anyway. Harry’s house was on a rise, white-painted stone and many gabled, with a veranda on every side. He couldn’t drive all the way to the door so they walked up a stone path along the edge of a rice field and she could see ducks playing in the water that lay beneath the rice plants.
    When he opened the gate for her she felt her own shoulders drop because, magically, the peace and tranquillity wrapped around them both from the first footstep into the gardens.
    It was as if she’d stepped into a lush green veil of peace. Unexpected and very welcome. Harry rested hishand on the small of her back as she stood there and drank in the serenity, and even his presence became a part of the whole.
    ‘No wonder you love it,’ she said quietly, and shook her head at perfection. Brushed grass, tiled edges around gardens, little waterfalls and fountains, and a myriad of tiny stone altars with incense and frangipani flowers artfully arranged.
    Harry sighed with relief. It had been right to bring her. ‘Come inside.’ He could feel the swell of pleasure that she could see what drew him to stay.
    He saw it through her eyes, re-examining the facets he loved with renewed appreciation.
    Stone steps flanked by granite lions led up to a magnificently tiled veranda that peered over a sheer drop to the valley floor. A long