“But I haven’t met the rest of them. And I haven’t seen any of them face-to-face.” She looked at the laptop. “Such as it is.”
“Face to laptop. Hey.” He pulled her close. “You look absolutely beautiful. And if by some bizarre fluke my family is not completely smitten with you, well...they’re four thousand miles away. They can’t do much to you from that distance.”
Willow called Maisie to her, and the three of them sat in front of the computer monitor as Theo flicked it on. A moment later, Theo’s family appeared on-screen.
There was a cavalcade of aunts, uncles and cousins. Willow had got on well with Theo’s sister, Becca, but he had three other siblings who were delighted to meet her, as well. Everyone seemed to adore Maisie, who could barely contain her glee as she saw young cousins her own age.
Theo’s father was there, as well, seated next to Theo’s mother, and surrounded by his own siblings. Though he clearly benefited from the support of those around him, his father appeared to be in good spirits. Willow noticed how tender Theo’s mother’s expression was as she sat beside him, and she had a feeling that their years together had been happy.
As far as Willow could tell, there were three, possibly four, generations of family in one room. She’d never seen anything like it. Everyone talked at once, but somehow it seemed to work. Willow could imagine what it might be like to be in the room with these people: everyone talking over each other, full of energy and excitement. Everyone seemed to have a family story to share, but they made certain that Willow was included, too. Theo was able to tell his family that he was now in complete remission, with no detectable amount of cancer in his body, and cheers went up in London and the Caribbean.
It was getting to be evening by the time they ended the call. As Theo switched off the computer, Willow quickly wiped a tear from her eye.
“What’s this?” he said. “You did great. They absolutely loved you, just as I knew they would. And it seemed as though you were having a good time, too.”
“I was. I loved meeting them, all of them. Becca’s even funnier in person. And your mother was so warm and kind. It was wonderful.”
“Then why the tears?”
“I’ve always wanted a family like that. Growing up, it did get lonely at times, with just me and Gran. I’m so glad to see that Maisie gets to have so much family in her life.”
“Willow.” Theo pulled her up from her chair and put his hands around her shoulders. “They’re not just Maisie’s family. They’re going to be your family, too.”
He pulled a small box from the mantelpiece behind them. Willow hadn’t noticed it before, but as she saw it in Theo’s hands, her heart began to race.
Theo knelt down. “Willow Thompson,” he began.
“Yes!” she cried, and threw her arms around him. He stood up and kissed her.
“There’s something you need to know about this ring,” he said.
Willow gently traced her finger over the ring’s intricate setting. “The filigree is so detailed, this must be an antique.”
“Yes. It belonged to my grandmother. At first, I was planning to look for something new. But the more I thought about it, I realized that I wanted to propose with my grandmother’s ring. I talked it over with her, and with all my siblings and cousins who aren’t married yet, and they all agreed with me that you should be the one to have it. Assuming you like it, of course.”
“Oh, Theo. It’s beautiful.”
“This isn’t just about the two of us, my love. I wanted you to have something that would show you, every day, that you’re joining a huge family you’ll be part of forever, no matter what happens to me. I want this ring to be a reminder that our family will be more than just the three of us.”
“Well. I already knew it would be more than just the three of us.”
He stared at her, stunned. “Willow. Have you been keeping a secret from me?”
She smiled. “I suppose it’s time you knew. I’m pregnant.”
Unmitigated joy broke over his face. He pressed his forehead against hers, and pulled her close to him. “Who would have thought that I’d get a second chance at having everything I wanted,” he said.
“I’m so glad you’re happy.”
“Are you joking? I’m thrilled. How could you imagine I’d feel any other way?”
“Well, you know. Unexpected surprises aren’t always easy to deal with.”
He buried his nose in her hair. “Thank goodness for unexpected surprises,” he murmured. “This time, I’m going to be there for everything, no matter what might come our way.”
* * *
If you missed the previous story in the The Island Clinic quartet, then check out
How to Win the Surgeon’s Heart
by Tina Beckett
And there are two more tropical
stories to come
Available August 2021!
Also, if you enjoyed this story, check out these other great reads from Julie Danvers
Falling Again in El Salvador
From Hawaii to Forever
All available now!
Keep reading for an excerpt from Stolen Nights with the Single Dad by Alison Roberts.
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Stolen Nights with the Single Dad
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CHAPTER ONE
‘ALL SET FOR TOMORROW, Mitch?’
‘Almost.’ Dr Andrew Mitchell looked up from where he was filing a laboratory report into a set of patient notes. ‘How ’bout you, Euan? I’m sorry it’s such short notice to cover my list as well as yours. I wasn’t really expecting them to still have a place available on this course when I rang yesterday.’
Euan McKendry added a shrug to his smile as he stepped further into this consulting room in Allensbury’s medical centre. ‘It’s not a problem. You’re covering for me through the Christmas holidays—like you always do.’ His smile widened. ‘This is the first chance I’ve had to repay that cover.’ He was beside Mitch’s desk now. Close enough to pick up the glossy pamphlet that had been anchored by a plastic model of a human heart.
‘Don’t lose that. I need it to find where I’m going tomorrow morning or I might get horribly lost.’
‘At least it’s on the south side of London. You must know the area around Croydon pretty well, given thatit’s not too far from where you used to work.’
‘I haven’t had that much to do with the ambulance service there, though, and that’s where the course is being held.’
Mitch closed the patient notes and put them to one side, going back to his computer screen to make sure the digital copy had also been filed. A bit like this picturesque village in Surrey, Allensbury Surgery and Dispensary’s filing system was a mix of modern with the trusted, traditional way of doing things. And he was fine with that. It was one of the things that had drawn him back to his childhood home, after all.
‘FRAME.’ Euan was reading the pamphlet. ‘Catchy name.’
‘First Responder at Medical Emergencies.’
‘I’ve heard about it. I thought it was a course to train people like nurses in remote areas so that they had the skills to bridge the gap until air rescue or ambulance services could get there.’
‘It is.’ Mitch nodded. ‘There’s a five-day course for that. But they also run a two-day initiation course specifically for GPs so that we can keep up to date with skills we might not get to use that often. Like, you know, intubation or cricothyroidotomy.’
‘Should be the rest of us here doing that. It’s only a few years since you were running one of London’s busiest emergency departments, Mitch. If anyone’
s up to date with critical interventions, it’s you. You could be running these sessions yourself.’ He was clearly peering at the bullet points covering the course material. ‘Acute pulmonary oedema, anaphylaxis, management of arrhythmias. A difficult airway...’
A difficult airway.
A succinct description often used by doctors or paramedics to label anatomy or circumstances that made it challenging and sadly sometimes impossible, to ensure that someone could continue breathing if they needed a critical intervention like intubation and ventilation. A situation that was up there with the most dramatic kind of life or death crises any medic had to face.
‘Hmm...’ The sound was a noncommittal grunt as Mitch clicked out of various windows to close down his computer.
He knew where his colleague was tempted to take this conversation and he needed to shut it down fast. Because, even now, more than a year since it had happened, those three words could make his breath catch in his throat and he’d have to brace himself for the flashback that could replay itself in his mind in the space of a heartbeat. A montage of emotions more than actual images, the trigger almost always a faint echo of that trickle of despair down his spine when he’d known he was fighting a battle that he wasn’t going to win.
That his skills hadn’t been enough to save a young mother’s life...
They were three words that would also make an eye-catching title for something other than a critical care workshop—a case history report in an emergency medicine journal, perhaps. The kind of article that someone like Andrew Mitchell might well have picked up and read, years ago, as he grabbed a sandwich or a cup of coffee during a break in a relentlessly busy shift as head of an emergency department in a huge, London hospital.
He could write it himself now. He probably should, in fact, as a warning for doctors who might think that working in a big city emergency department could prepare them for coping with anything, even if they’d chosen to take a completely different direction in life to live and work in a small village less than an hour’s drive from the outskirts of London.He would write it one of these days. Just...not yet.
Everybody had told him that nobody could have won that particular battle. The post-mortem had confirmed it but that reassurance hadn’t stopped the flashbacks. Or those ‘what ifs...’? that always bubbled to the surface whenever the incident was mentioned. At least he was quick enough to deflect them this time and he even stood up to signal the new direction he was taking.
‘You’ve got a good point, though,’ he told Euan briskly. ‘If it’s as useful as I think it might be, we’ll arrange for everybody else to do the course.’ This thriving small town medical centre had four doctors on staff and could easily employ another one soon. Their senior practice nurse, Meg, would probably love the challenge of attending a full course herself.
‘What makes you so confident it’ll be that useful?’ Euan raised an eyebrow. ‘What can a paramedic teach someone who was an emergency medicine consultant?’
‘The woman running this course is an APP—a critical care, advanced paramedic practitioner. You know, the ones that crew those single-responder vehicles or motorbikes and get to the scene before anyone else?’
Euan nodded. ‘Yeah... I guess they get more experience with serious situations than any of us see in sleepy little Allensbury.’
‘Not only that...the whole initiative is the brainchild of the instructor who’s running this particular course and when I rang to book in, I was told that I was super lucky because Jenna Armstrong is the best. She’s the senior instructor for FRAME nationwide. She trains the trainers.’
‘Sounds formidable.’ Euan was grinning. ‘What’s the bet she’s in her fifties, single and built like a battleship?’
Mitch laughed. ‘I couldn’t care less as long as she’s good at her job.’ He reached to take the pamphlet out of Euan’s hands. ‘I’ve got to get going. I promised Ollie we’d have hamburgers and chips for dinner tonight at the Riverside pub and then we both need an early night. I’ll have to be on the road by seven a.m. at the latest for the next couple of mornings.’
‘You could always stay in town for a night or two. Your dad’s there for Ollie, isn’t he? Like he is when you’re on call at night?’
‘Of course.’ But it was Mitch’s turn to shrug as he slipped the pamphlet into his laptop bag. ‘But I don’t want to change his routine any more than I have to. Having his grandpa look after him for a few hours here and there is a lot different to having his dad vanish for two days. He’s just started school and that’s enough change for a four-year-old to cope with for the next few weeks at least.’
Euan blew out a breath. ‘They complicate life, don’t they? Kids?’
‘It’s worth it.’ Mitch could feel a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. He could feel a squeeze around his heart at the same time that was sending a warmth into every cell in his body. ‘You’ll find out one of these days.’
‘Not me.’ Euan was shaking his head as he followed Mitch out of the room. ‘No, thank you.’
* * *
How could someone be that sure about something as huge as turning your back on ever having a family of your own?
Mitch had to swallow a rather large lump in his throat as he looked down at the spiky black hair of the small boy who’d fallen asleep, cuddled up to him, as he listened to the story he’d been reading. It felt as though his heart could actually burst with the amount of love he had for this child and that made his movements even more gentle as he slipped his arm free from beneath Ollie, tucked the duvet securely around his son and stooped to press a kiss onto that soft hair, gently enough not to wake him, inhaling that familiar and delicious smell of baby shampoo that never seemed to fade completely between washes.
Avoiding the creaky board in front of the chest of drawers was so automatic he didn’t even notice he was doing it but then everything about this small room tucked into a corner of the upper level of this rambling, old house was as familiar as the back of his own hand. Mitch had been sleeping in this room when he’d been Ollie’s age. He’d never lived anywhere else, in fact, until he’d headed off to university and then medical school.
He paused by the windows to draw the curtains enough to close the gap in the middle and keep out any draughts and caught a glimpse of the garden below. His father was outside, patiently waiting for Jet, their sixteen-year-old black Labrador, to finish a slow perimeter patrol of the property and people he needed to protect.
Mitch knew as well as Jet exactly what was out there, beyond the garden gate. A narrow street filled with solid, red brick houses like this one, with its tall chimneys and the hidden garden out the back. Some of them were whitewashed and half-timbered like the old dwelling that had been converted into the medical centre and some still had thatched roofs. Allensbury was one of the Surrey villages that always made the list of ‘must see’ attractions not too far from London with its pretty streets, welcoming pubs, stone churches, a village square with a weekend market and the quiet river with its tree-lined banks. The surrounding forest was a little wilder but just as familiar to Mitch as this house and his childhood bedroom had been.
That familiarity that felt like safety—like home—had been the reason he’d turned his life upside down and come back here.
No...that wasn’t true, was it? His world had already been well and truly turned upside down before he’d had to admit defeat and give up on the lifestyle and career that had been a dream come true. If he had known what was coming—the brutal rollercoaster of just a few, short days in which his son had been born but he’d lost his wife—would he have chosen to go down that path? Or would he have been just as emphatic as Euan in vowing that it wasn’t for him?
Maybe he would have been. Who, in their right mind, would ever put their hand up to experience that kind of pain? That lump was back in his throat as he took one more glance at Ollie’s face, bathed in the soft glow from his
dinosaur nightlight, dark lashes fluttering on pale cheeks as his dreams captured him.
It was just as well Mitch had never been given that choice, then, because he would never have known just how much it was possible to love a small human. How, from that first moment of holding his tiny son in his arms, he’d discovered a new form of love that could actually change how you viewed the entire world, including the new appreciation for the love of his own parent. Sadly, he’d lost his mum years before but his dad, Michael—along with his childhood home and even Jet the dog–had been the anchor he’d badly needed in a world that had suddenly gone so very, very wrong.
His small family had been his absolute priority in those darkest of days. The only thing that had really mattered.
It still was.
* * *
She’d noticed him the instant she’d walked into the classroom.
It wasn’t simply that he was an extremely good-looking man. Jenna Armstrong had been immune to surface attraction like that for too many years to count now. No...there was something else about him. Something she couldn’t quite define. Maybe it was the way he was sitting, with those long limbs relaxed enough to suggest it would be difficult to find an environment that would intimidate him but with an aura of energy that contradicted any laid-back impression. This was a man who looked as if he could take command of any situation in the space of a finger-click.
‘Welcome, everybody,’ she said, putting the box of handouts she’d just finished printing onto a desk in the corner of the room. ‘I’m Jenna and we’ve got a busy couple of days ahead of us as I take you through our FRAME initiation course for doctors.’
She moved to close a window as the sound of a siren being activated just beneath them startled everybody enough to turn their heads. Everybody except the man at the back, she noticed.
Caribbean Paradise, Miracle Family Page 17