The Honourable Army Doc by Emily Forbes

draped across his hips.
    Ali sighed as she fought the urge to wake him up and have her way with him all over again. She wasn’t inexperienced but she had never had sex that good before and she was eager to try it again.
    But she would have to wait.
    She climbed out of his bed. She was careful not to disturb him as she knew he was exhausted and needed his sleep, although to look at him she suspected that a bomb could go off without waking him.
    Quietly she gathered her clothes and got dressed. She found a piece of paper and scribbled a note. Even though she assumed he’d figure out why she couldn’t stay, she didn’t want him to wake up and find her gone with no explanation.
    She kept it simple.
Thank you, sleep tight
. That was all she wrote before she folded it and left it propped on the bedside table.
    She opened the door and ducked into the family room, hoping that Helen had stuck with her plan to stay at the hospital as she certainly didn’t want to bump into her as she sneaked out of Quinn’s room at this late hour. The coast was clear, the house was sleeping, so she took a moment to tidy away any evidence. She put the bottle of wine back on the kitchen bench and rinsedand dried their glasses before putting them into the cupboard and letting herself out.
    Her muscles ached as she walked to her car but it felt good to have used them.
    Maybe their paths had crossed for a reason. Maybe her life was about to turn around. Maybe they could be good for each other.
    In an ideal world she would find a man who loved her despite her faults. Despite all the things she couldn’t give him.
    Maybe Quinn could help heal her.
    Maybe Quinn could be the right man.
    She felt as though she had been waiting for him all her life. She knew she could fall in love with him. She thought perhaps she already had.
    Maybe he could be the right man. He already had children, maybe he wouldn’t need more. But she wouldn’t know until they had that conversation. She wouldn’t know how he felt until she told him the truth. And she couldn’t bring herself to tell him that she couldn’t have children. Not yet.
    The external scars had only just faded and, after tonight, she knew that physically she had recovered, but emotionally it was a different story. She wasn’t ready for that discussion. Not yet.
    Maybe he was the right man for her but Ali knew this wasn’t the right time.
    Quinn had existed on the bare minimum of sleep over the past week. It had been like his intern days. He put his hours in at the clinic, then picked the girls up fromschool and took them to see their mother, then home for dinner, a bath and a bedtime story as he tried to maintain some sense of routine for them all. Helen was spending most of her day at the hospital with Julieanne. That was her choice and Quinn didn’t begrudge her that, but he was aware enough of his own limitations to realise he wouldn’t manage without the help of Ali and the girls at the clinic who had become willing babysitters, not to mention the help he was also getting from the school mothers.
    Ali’s parents had returned from their trip and Malika was due to be back in the clinic at the beginning of next week. She had offered to come back early to leave him free to spend his days at the hospital but Julieanne was sleeping twenty-one hours a day and the girls were at school. If he didn’t go into the clinic he would have nothing to do for the majority of the day. He thanked her but declined her offer. He preferred to be busy.
    But being busy didn’t leave much, or any, time for Ali. He was too tired to do anything other than collapse into his bed at the end of the day. He would have loved to have her there with him, he knew he would sleep better if she was beside him, but it wasn’t possible. Not with the girls there too. He knew they still thought of their parents as married. Quinn and Ali had been very careful not to let the girls see any show of affection between them and they certainly