A Wedding for the Single Dad

by Meredith Webber

  She smiled, and all the small snapshots of Lauren he’d taken in his head over the last few days were highlighted by that smile.

  And he was—

  What?

  Smitten?

  Good grief!

  That was far too strong a word.

  Maybe it was just fascination—she was so unlike any woman he’d ever known.

  And beautiful.

  Maybe it was just lust, although he didn’t think lust would have him waiting, almost breathless, for a smile.

  Or wanting to hear her voice, no matter the topic, speaking quietly just to him.

  And surely it had to be more than lust, when the teasing glint in her eyes could leave him mute.

  He knew for sure whatever this was, it had never happened to him before, not with girlfriends, or Maddie’s mother—anyone, in fact. Yet here he was, walking one step behind her, wanting to reach out and clasp her hips. Or walk alongside her so he could sling an arm casually around her waist, then, as their pace slowed, turn her to him and kiss her in the night-scented bush.

  Dear Reader,

  Some books seem to come together neatly and easily while others get lost along the way. This book was one of the latter mainly because my mind kept wandering off on tangents, which meant the love story I was supposed to be writing suffered.

  What a lot of readers probably don’t realize is that without editors very few books would get to a publishable stage. As writers we whine and moan about editors and revisions, but it is thanks to our editors—and in this case, thanks to my editor—that we finally pull our books into the kind of story our readers will enjoy.

  Over the course of my career as a writer, I have been blessed with many excellent editors who have managed to hammer my stories into the best possible shape, making them stories I can be proud of. So a big thank-you to all of them, and in particular my current editor, who refused to let me abandon this book!

  Meredith

  A Wedding for the Single Dad

  Meredith Webber

  Meredith Webber lives on the sunny Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia, but takes regular trips west into the outback, fossicking for gold or opal. These breaks in the beautiful and sometimes cruel red-earth country provide her with an escape from the writing desk and a chance for her mind to roam free—not to mention getting some much-needed exercise. They also supply the kernels of so many stories that it’s hard for her to stop writing!

  Books by Meredith Webber

  Harlequin Medical Romance

  Bondi Bay Heroes

  Healed by Her Army Doc

  The Halliday Family

  A Forever Family for the Army Doc

  Engaged to the Doctor Sheikh

  A Miracle for the Baby Doctor

  From Bachelor to Daddy

  New Year Wedding for the Crown Prince

  A Wife for the Surgeon Sheikh

  The Doctors’ Christmas Reunion

  Conveniently Wed in Paradise

  One Night to Forever Family

  Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com for more titles.

  Praise for Meredith Webber

  “Really, the way this story started drew me into the story immediately.... The chemistry between this couple was strong and kept getting...stronger.”

  —Harlequin Junkie on A Wife for the Surgeon Sheikh

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  EXCERPT FROM REUNITED WITH HER DAREDEVIL DOC BY SUSAN CARLISLE

  CHAPTER ONE

  ‘WHO THE HELL are you?’

  ‘Says the man lying in a creek bed and lucky to be alive! Shoulder bad? Possibly dislocated, from the look of things,’ Lauren said, hoping she sounded cooler and more in command than she felt. There’d been something about the very English male voice that had made the demand sound more abrupt than it might otherwise have.

  Something about it, too, that had skittered down her spine.

  She’d come expecting injury, but not an enormous man—at least six foot two or three—with night-dark tousled hair and a chippy attitude.

  She smiled at him to cover her own uncertainty—she just didn’t do skittery spines.

  ‘I’m your friendly neighbourhood rescuer, Lauren Henderson, although what you were doing flitting around up there in Henry’s home-made flying machine I can’t imagine.’

  She’d drawn closer to the man by now, and he didn’t look any smaller. From his snapped retort—‘It’s an ultralight!’—it was clear he also wasn’t any happier.

  ‘Which doesn’t answer the question, but I guess I’d better have a look at you. There’s a team trudging up the path somewhere behind me, but even on a stretcher you’ll be more comfortable if I get your shoulder back into place before they carry you down.’

  A grumbling noise suggested that he might argue about being carried down the gully, but really he had no choice.

  She approached him fairly tentatively, and not only partly because of the rocky terrain—the dangers of wounded wild beasts were featuring in the forefront of her imagination...

  There was no sign of blood, which didn’t rule out the possibility that he wasn’t lying in a puddle of it, and his eyes—an unusual dark blue—were alert.

  Too alert?

  ‘Apart from your shoulder, are you in pain?’ she asked, easing her backpack off her shoulders and setting it to one side as she knelt beside him.

  ‘I fell out of the sky! Of course, I’m in pain. Ouch!’

  Lauren had been feeling around his head as he muttered at her, and touching the slight lump on the back of his skull had caused the ‘ouch’.

  ‘Can you move your legs and your good arm?’ she asked, and although he groaned as he did it the three limbs moved fairly normally.

  ‘Well, let’s get your shoulder sorted,’ she said, ‘before the others get here.’

  ‘What do you mean—get it sorted?’

  The man was in pain, so she bit back a smart retort.

  ‘Pop it back into place. You’ll still need to be carried out and have it X-rayed when you get to civilisation, because there will be damage to the cartilage and tendons.’

  She’d removed ‘the magic green whistle’, as football players called the handy device, while she was speaking, and now passed it to him. ‘Take about six breaths,’ she said.

  Dark blue eyes narrowed suspiciously. ‘What’s in it?’ he asked.

  ‘Methoxyfluorane,’ she said calmly, getting herself into position beside his left shoulder, prepared to lift his arm whether it hurt him or not. But the man was in a lot of pain—she had to grant him a little leeway...

  Also, he was very intriguing and very attractive. And quite possibly—probably—her new neighbour. Henry’s nephew or great-nephew, she seemed to remember...

  She watched him breathe in the pain-relief drug and hid a smile as it obviously started to work, relaxing the tension in his body.

  ‘Now, I’m just going to bend your arm at the elbow and move it like this, and with a bit of pressure I should be able to slip it back into place.’

  ‘Are you a qualified paramedic? Should you be doing this?’

  Okay, so methoxyfluorane hadn’t imp
roved his mood. But he had crashed down from the sky, and he was probably feeling extremely foolish for having attempted to fly the ultralight, as well as being in a great deal of pain.

  So she smiled sweetly at him.

  ‘No and yes,’ she said, and before he could voice further objections she lifted his folded arm and moved it upward and outward until she felt the joint slip back into its socket.

  ‘Better?’ she said, although she knew it would still be painful—just not agonisingly so.

  He muttered something she was charitably willing to accept as assent, and she began to examine the rest of him. Bloody graze on his left hand—he’d probably put it out to break his fall—and his left ankle looked a little swollen.

  ‘Sore?’ she asked, moving it slightly.

  More muttered complaints followed as she unlaced his light canvas shoes.

  ‘I’m going to take off your shoe and sock so I can bandage it,’ she told him. ‘If we leave them on and your ankle swells, your shoe will have to be cut off—which would be a pity with such good-quality footwear.’

  More mutterings. This time she gathered something about what a woman would know about men’s footwear. She ignored the words and went ahead, removing his shoe, and then his sock, revealing a long, pale foot, with blue veins visible beneath milky skin.

  The bare foot made him seem vulnerable, and for all his tetchy remarks she suddenly felt sorry for him.

  Which, she decided, was distinctly better than the physical reaction she’d had earlier...

  She’d just finished binding the ankle when voices told her the SES team had arrived.

  ‘He okay?’ the lead man asked.

  Lauren nodded. ‘I’ve just reset a dislocated left shoulder—it’ll need to be X-rayed—and checked him over for other injuries. His left arm will need to be put into a special sling for a while, and his left ankle...’

  But the team were no longer listening.

  ‘Geez,’ one of them said, peering up at the tangle of fine wood and plastic in the midst of the dead black trees that bordered the gully. ‘Is that old Henry’s flying machine up there? Boy, he’ll be cranky up in heaven!’

  ‘Or down in hell,’ another suggested, and all four laughed before slowly returning their attention to their patient.

  ‘You did that?’ they more or less chorused, all shaking their heads in disbelief.

  ‘Okay,’ Lauren said, calling them to order as they started to suggest the punishments old Henry would have meted out to someone crashing his most favourite toy. ‘You’ve actually got a patient here, and if you want to get him down the track in daylight I’d suggest you get him strapped onto whatever you’re carrying and start moving.’

  ‘I don’t need to be carried.’

  Not muttered, but definitely not happy.

  ‘You might have other injuries, and possibly concussion,’ she told him, adding firmly, ‘So you will be carried.’

  Recalled to their job, the team set to work, and as they slid the pieces of stretcher under the injured man Lauren could practically read their minds.

  Although in case she’d been in any doubt Joe, their leader, muttered, ‘Cor, he’s a big bugger!’

  ‘I’ll take the head end and you can go two each side,’ she said. ‘The ambulance will be down on the road. You can radio for their two guys to start up the track to help.’

  They worked well, the team, getting the bits of board under the patient and snapped together, strapping him firmly onto it.

  ‘Just use the magic whistle if you need to,’ Lauren reminded the man, as they all got into position to lift him.

  He gave her a look of such disbelief she had to smile.

  ‘They have done it before,’ she said, and he shut his eyes, as if better to pretend this wasn’t happening.

  * * *

  He’d been rescued by—he couldn’t think off-hand of a bunch of comedians to compare this lot to—vaudeville slapstick clowns, perhaps?

  Campbell Grahame shook his head—big mistake, as it brought the sore lump on it into contact with the board to which he’d been strapped. He clutched the device his rescuer had called ‘the magic whistle’ to his chest, wondering if he should take a few more puffs as the lurching downhill journey was anything but comfortable.

  His rescuer!

  Maybe he’d think about her instead of the pain.

  She’d seemed to appear from nowhere, startling him as he’d tried to work out just how seriously he was injured. And told himself how stupid he’d been! He’d been angry with himself, as well, for flying so far in an old machine he didn’t know at all. Apart from anything else, it had been totally irresponsible.

  He turned his attention back to his rescuer.

  Totally unsympathetic, she’d been, whoever she was. But perhaps brisk efficiency was what was needed in rescue situations.

  Still, a rescuer with long, tanned legs, clad in short red shorts and a singlet that clung to a curvy upper body like a second skin...? The men at least were in uniform—with the words State Emergency Service embroidered on their shirts.

  The peaked black cap she was wearing, pulled down tightly on her forehead, meant he hadn’t been able to see the hair tucked under it, but dark eyes and eyebrows suggested it would be brown or black.

  He raised his eyes to take another look at her face, hoping she was concentrating on where she was putting her feet rather than on him.

  But it was a surreptitious glance, just to check that her face was as lovely as he remembered it.

  It was.

  It was well put together, with a straight nose and wide, shapely lips, a small, determined chin—yes, she was something of a beauty...although he did wonder if other people would think so.

  Perhaps it was just a face like any other, and he’d imbued it with beauty because she’d rescued him?

  Whatever. The fact remained he’d been damnably rude to her.

  He sighed, and the beauty—he was pretty sure she was a beauty—said, ‘Don’t be afraid to use the whistle. This isn’t exactly the smoothest ride you’ll ever have, and there could be other things wrong with you.’

  But he knew there weren’t. The team had carried out the basic tests—blood pressure, heart-rate, breathing—and although he felt pain as they trekked down the rough track, he knew it wasn’t anything serious.

  So he could think about the woman again—tall, as well as good looking...

  ‘What’s your name?’

  His question came out without much forethought, and she frowned down at him, as if she wasn’t certain of the answer.

  Had she already told him?

  He couldn’t remember...

  ‘Lauren Henderson,’ she said eventually, before adding, ‘And yours?’

  Cam frowned. He had introduced himself earlier—but had that been just to the team?

  Surely she’d heard?

  ‘Campbell Grahame—I’m usually called Cam.’

  One of the two men who held the stretcher at Cam’s shoulder level turned briefly towards them, but a slight slip on a rock had him turning back, concentrating on where he was going, almost immediately.

  ‘How do you do, Cam?’ Lauren said, in the slightly husky voice that somehow suited her. ‘I won’t shake hands because I’d probably drop you.’ Silent for a moment, she then said, ‘And what were you up to—flying over the forest in old Henry’s ancient machine?’

  All four of the heads he could see in front of him turned at this question, and he wondered if perhaps they should leave conversation until they were well away from the rough track by the creek bed.

  But she had asked...

  ‘I thought it might be useful to spot any injured wildlife returning to their burnt-out homes.’

  ‘You’ve never heard of drones?’ It was a question edged with sarcasm, but perhaps—

 
; ‘Is that why I crashed? You had a drone up and it hit me?’

  She gave a huff of laughter and shook her head. ‘You crashed because you were flying so low your left wing-tip hit a tree, and you were lucky I did have a drone up—because otherwise it would have taken a full-scale search, and almost certainly plenty of man hours, to find you. The forest might be burnt out, but there’s thick regeneration in the undergrowth, and with the deep gullies even a helicopter search would have been difficult, if not impossible.’

  ‘Well, that’s telling me,’ he muttered to himself, feeling put out that he wasn’t being treated more kindly, considering he was injured. Not that he’d earned any kindness, the way he’d been earlier—though his bad temper was more to do with his own foolishness than these innocent rescuers.

  They continued down the path in silence, and as the journey went on he realised just how far this group had walked to rescue him—idiot that he was to have even got into the damn microlight.

  ‘Do you do this often?’ he asked.

  ‘Rescue blokes from crashed flying machines?’ one of the men responded. ‘Not so much. But I reckon a couple of dozen times a summer we get call-outs to search for someone who hasn’t come back when they should...a fisherman stranded on rocks in the lake as the tide rises, lost bush-walkers, kids—we keep busy.’

  Intrigued now, Cam wanted to know more. ‘Only in summer?’

  Another of the men shook his head. ‘Nah! Winter’s actually worse—cooler for people who want to walk some of the trails though the bush, who then get off the trail and end up lost.’

  ‘Not that there’ll be much bush to walk in this year,’ another said, gloom shrouding his words.

  And then the talk turned to the bushfires that had so recently ravaged the area. Most of South Eastern Australia had suffered to some degree, and Cam, who’d arrived in the country six days ago, in the aftermath of the fires, had discovered that as well as inheriting a veterinary practice from a great-uncle he’d only met once, many years earlier, he’d inherited a small hospital for injured wildlife—complete with, and run by, mostly volunteer helpers.