by Kate Hardy
Funny how that made him feel so much better to discover that she hadn’t been snippy with him; she just didn’t like brownies. ‘Noted. And I’ll make blondies, next time,’ he said.
‘Thank you. And yes, please to pudding.’
‘As long as it’s not chocolate,’ he confirmed.
‘Absolutely. Is there anything you’re allergic to or don’t eat?’
‘Allergies? Spoken like a true medic.’ He couldn’t help smiling back at her. ‘No allergies, and I eat anything.’
‘Good. I’ll see you tonight then. About seven?’
‘I’ll be there.’
She gave him her address. ‘It’s on the edge of town, but there’s plenty of parking in my road.’
‘You’re not that far from me. A walk will do me good,’ he said. ‘See you at seven.’
* * *
Sean had always said she was too impulsive.
Maybe he had a point, Toni thought as she finished buying Shona’s groceries. But she was going to have to work with Ben Mitchell. It made sense to make sure their working relationship was a good one, for their patients’ sake. But she was feeling ever so slightly guilty about being judgemental towards him yesterday. OK, so he’d annoyed her with his attitude towards Archie; but she could almost hear her grandmother saying softly, ‘Walk a mile in someone else’s shoes before you judge them.’
She hadn’t done that at all.
So the very least she could do was to cook dinner for the man and help him settle into the community.
She bought ingredients for dinner, dropped off Shona’s groceries and put them away for her, and took Archie out for a run before making a start on dinner.
At precisely seven o’clock, her doorbell rang.
Ben stood there with an armful of gifts. ‘I bought a lemon tart and raspberries for pudding. I hope that’s OK.’
‘Perfect, thank you—I’m baking salmon with pesto, so the lemon will pick up the basil,’ she said with a smile.
‘I forgot to ask if you prefer red or white wine, so I’ve played it safe.’ He handed her a bottle of wine.
‘Lovely. New Zealand Sauvignon blanc is my favourite,’ she said.
‘And—well, I was brought up to take flowers if someone invites you to dinner,’ he said.
‘Thank you. They’re beautiful,’ she said, accepting the sunflowers. ‘Come through to the kitchen and I’ll pop them in water and sort out a drink.’
‘Thanks.’
‘I should warn you that Archie’s in the kitchen. But if you’d prefer me to put him in the garden while you’re here, I will.’
* * *
Toni was clearly trying to make an effort to accommodate him, Ben thought. So maybe he needed to do the same. ‘It’s fine. Though I didn’t grow up around dogs and I don’t have a clue how to behave around them, so you’ll have to give me some pointers.’
He knew he’d done the right thing by the way she smiled at him—the real full wattage instead of the polite and more subdued version, and it lit up her eyes, too; it made his heart miss a beat.
‘Thank you. Come and say hello.’ She ushered him into the kitchen, where Archie sat in his basket, wagging his tail and clearly desperate to bounce over and greet their visitor, but at a signal from Toni he stayed exactly where he was.
‘He’s very well trained,’ Ben commented.
‘He is,’ she agreed. ‘And he’ll stay there until I tell him he can come and say hello to you. If you feel uncomfortable, just let me know. Springers are usually pretty bouncy and exuberant—and Archie is definitely springy when he gets the chance—but they’re also very kind, biddable dogs who just love to be with people.’ She looked at him. ‘If you hold your hand out to him, he’ll sniff you, and then you can stroke the top of his head. As a therapy dog, he’s used to elderly people with thin skin, and being around very young children who might be nervous or unpredictable. So he’s very, very gentle.’
‘You work with children as well?’ Ben asked, surprised.
‘I go into the school on Wednesday mornings,’ she said. ‘We’re there to help the reluctant readers, the ones who are too nervous to read out loud in front of the class. They come and read to Archie.’ She grinned. ‘The head teacher thought it was a completely bonkers idea at first, when I suggested it.’
Yup. He thought it was bonkers, too. But the passion in her eyes as she talked about her work drew him.
‘But we’ve seen the shyest and most hesitant little ones really grow in confidence since they’ve been reading to Archie. They all improved their reading ages by several months in the first six weeks alone.’ She smiled. ‘As a reward for good behaviour, two of the children get to sort out his water bowl and mat. They love doing that, so it’s a really strong motivator.’
‘Reading to dogs.’ He shook his head in amazement. ‘I had no idea that was even a thing.’
‘There are quite a few schemes with therapy dogs,’ she said. ‘Archie loves it, and so do the kids. If he falls asleep, I tell them it’s not because he’s bored—it’s like when someone reads them a bedtime story and they go all relaxed and sleepy.’
Ben was beginning to see what made Toni Butler tick. His patients and his colleagues had all sung her praises; now he could see why.
‘OK.’ He took a deep breath. ‘I’ll stroke him.’
‘Stay, Archie,’ she said softly.
The dog stayed where he was and let Ben stroke the top of his head. Exactly what Toni had promised: Archie was a sweet, kind, biddable dog with soft, soft fur and big, soulful amber eyes.
‘Studies show,’ she said, ‘that blood pressure goes down when someone pets a dog. And in times of stress dog-owners experience less cardiovascular reactivity.’ She looked rueful. ‘Though I’m guessing if you’re not a dog person...’
‘It’s probably still the same,’ he said.
‘Dinner is in five minutes. Would you like a glass of wine?’
‘That’d be lovely,’ he said.
Her kitchen was very neat and tidy; and there were photographs held to the door of her fridge with magnets, of herself and Archie with various groups of people, all smiling. It was clear that she led a full and happy life.
Dinner was scrumptious: salmon baked with pesto, new potatoes, asparagus, baby carrots and roasted courgettes. Karen hadn’t been keen on cooking; and Ben hadn’t bothered much since his marriage had broken up because cooking for one was so lonely. He’d almost forgotten what it was like to share a meal with someone, except when his parents and his sister had invited him over and then tried to matchmake because they wanted him to be happy again.
But this was his new beginning. He and Toni could be friends as well as colleagues. He damped down the burgeoning thought that maybe she could be more.
‘This is really lovely,’ he said.
‘And—apart from the salmon, obviously, and the pine nuts in the pesto—everything is homegrown. I love June because the garden’s just brilliant.’
‘You’re a gardener?’ He hadn’t expected that.
‘Not as good as my grandmother was. But that’s why I moved here rather than to one of the fisherman’s cottages near the harbour—it means I have a garden for Archie, and I’ve got space for a small vegetable patch. I got my brother-in-law to haul some railway sleepers for me to make raised beds.’
‘So have you been here for very long?’
‘At this cottage, for two years. But I grew up in Great Crowmell,’ she said. ‘My parents died in a car crash when I was twelve and my sister Stacey was fourteen, and Gran swept us up and brought us to live with her. Before that, we used to stay with her every summer. We’d spend whole days on the beach and thought we were in paradise. We lived in London, and that tiny bit of sand you get on the banks of the Thames every so often just wasn’t enough for us. We loved it here, where the sand went on for miles.�
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‘You grew up in London?’ He looked at her in surprise.
‘In Highgate, when my parents were still alive. Then, when I trained as a nurse, I lived in Victoria and worked in the emergency department of the London Victoria hospital.’
‘So you went back to the bright lights?’
‘Something like that.’
‘So what made you come back?’ He knew the question was intrusive as soon as it was out of his mouth, because she flinched. ‘Sorry. You don’t have to answer that.’ And then maybe she wouldn’t ask him why he’d moved, either.
‘No, it’s fine. I came back because Gran became ill.’ She looked at him. ‘She had dementia. Stacey went to college here and stayed after she finished—she’s a dressmaker—but it wasn’t fair to leave all the looking-after to her, so I came back to support them both. I found a job at the practice, and I moved in with Gran so she didn’t have to go into residential care for a few more months.’ She shrugged. ‘Gran didn’t hesitate when we needed her, and we didn’t hesitate when she needed us. I just wish she’d been here to meet Scarlett—my niece. She’s fourteen months old.’
Now Ben understood why Toni’s life had undergone such a sea change, why she’d switched from working in a big London hospital to this small general practice in the country. ‘You never wanted to go back to London after your grandmother died?’
She shook her head. ‘I love the pace of emergency medicine and knowing that you can make such a huge difference to people’s lives, and I always thought I’d go back to it after Gran died. But then I discovered that actually I like working in the practice more than I do at a hospital. It’s cradle to grave medicine. You know your patients, you can watch the little ones grow up and blossom, and because you know their family history you’ve got a lot more chance of working out what your patient feels too awkward to tell you in a consultation. Plus my family is here—and I really missed Stacey when I was in London.’
There was a slight shadow in her eyes; or maybe he’d misread it, because it was gone again within an instant. He had a feeling that there was another reason why she hadn’t gone back to London after her grandmother’s death, but he wasn’t going to pry. It was none of his business. Plus asking her would leave himself open to questions, and he didn’t want to talk about Karen and Patrick.
‘That’s why I chose to be a GP rather work in a hospital,’ Ben said. ‘I like working in a community.’
‘Where were you before here?’ she asked.
‘London. Chalk Farm. We lived not far from Primrose Hill, so I was lucky enough to be able to do my morning run in the park there—the view of the city is amazing.’
‘It sounds as if you miss it.’
‘I do.’ But he didn’t miss the misery that had dragged through the last few months of his marriage, or the two years of loneliness since. He’d put it down to pregnancy hormones and he’d tried his best to be supportive and understanding. And then, just before the twenty-week scan, Karen had dropped the final bombshell; and he’d realised that the reason they hadn’t been getting on was nothing to do with hormones and everything to do with guilt...
‘There are good places to run, here. And if it’s low tide you really can’t beat running by the edge of the sea. If you’re lucky, you might even see some seals,’ she said. ‘Why did you move here from London?’
The question he’d dreaded: though it was the obvious one and he should’ve found an anodyne answer for it by now. Except there wasn’t one.
Because my wife fell in love with my best friend and broke my heart along with our marriage. Not that he wanted to discuss that. It had taken him nearly two years to get past it, and he didn’t want to dwell on it now.
‘Do you have family in the area?’ she asked.
‘No. Sometimes you just need a change,’ he said. ‘This seemed like a nice place to live.’
And the best way to distract Toni from asking anything else, he thought, would be to switch the conversation back to her dog. ‘So what made you decide to train Archie as a therapy dog?’
‘When Gran went into the nursing home, one of the other residents used to be visited by her dog, and seeing the dog always made Gran’s day brighter. After she went into the home, I got Archie to keep me company. The manager at the care home suggested training him as a therapy dog and bringing him to The Beeches. I looked into it, and I think we both enjoy it.’
‘That’s good.’ He kept the conversation neutral until pudding.
‘Oh, now this is sublime. Thank you so much.’ She ate the lemon tart with relish. ‘Lemony puddings are the best—and it’s the perfect pairing with raspberries.’
‘Agreed.’ He couldn’t help smiling. ‘So you’re a foodie?’
‘Guilty as charged,’ she said, smiling back. ‘I’m really interested in nutrition, and because I’m in charge of the diabetic patients I was thinking about trying to do something to teach them to tweak their favourite dishes to make them diabetic-friendly. And I’d quite like to do the same for our cardiac patients. So maybe I could run a cookery class or maybe develop a section on the practice website to help with meal plans and recipes.’
‘That sounds good. The diet and exercise routines that work best are the ones you enjoy, because you stick to them,’ he said.
‘I’ve already gathered that you’re a foodie, too; do I take it from the brownies that you’re a cook as well?’ she asked.
‘I’m reasonable,’ he said. Karen had left all the cooking to him, and he’d enjoyed it, finding it relaxing. Though he hadn’t bothered much since she’d left him for Patrick. Cooking for one felt too lonely, and the brownies were the first cakes he’d made in months.
‘Maybe we can work together on the project?’ she suggested.
The previous day, Ben had disliked Toni and he hadn’t been able to work out why everyone else seem to adore her. Now, he could see exactly why they did. Her warmth, her bright ideas, the way she tried to include everyone.
If he was honest with himself, he was attracted to her as well as liking her. But he had no intention of acting on that attraction. He wasn’t setting himself up for things to go wrong again.
But colleagues and friends—he could do that. With pleasure.
‘I’d like that,’ he said. ‘Do we have regular clinics for our diabetic and cardiac patients?’
‘Diabetics, yes—that’s me on Thursday mornings,’ she said.
‘It might be worth asking them for suggestions of dishes they’d like us to help them tweak. And maybe we could look at regular clinics for our cardiac patients and do the same with them.’
‘Great idea.’ She smiled at him. ‘I’ll work up a proposal, we can fine-tune it together, and then we can talk Ranjit into it.’
‘Deal.’
Shaking her hand was a mistake. Awareness of her prickled all the way through him. He was going to have to be very careful to keep things professional.
Part of him knew he ought to make an excuse when she offered him coffee. But he was really enjoying her company and it was too hard to resist.
He liked her living room, too. The large window looked out over the salt marshes, and there were watercolours of what he guessed were local scenes on the walls—a stripy lighthouse, bluebell woods, and a sunset over the sea. She had a small TV in one corner, a large bookcase with an eclectic mix of novels and medical textbooks, and a speaker dock for her phone. And there were lots of framed photographs on the mantelpiece: with another woman who looked so much like her that she had to be Toni’s sister, with a couple he assumed were her parents, and with an elderly woman he guessed was her grandmother.
Archie trotted into the room behind them; when Toni sat down, the dog sat with his chin on her knee, looking imploringly up at her.
‘All right, then.’ She lifted her hands and the dog hopped up lightly, settling himself on her lap. She gave Ben a rueful s
mile. ‘He’s too big to be a lapdog, really, but he’s sat on my lap like this ever since he was tiny.’
Just to prove the point, the dog closed his eyes and started snoring softly.
Ben was shocked by how at home he felt here, how relaxed. His own—rented—accommodation was really just a place to eat and sleep and store his things, and his house in London hadn’t been the most relaxing place for the last year he’d lived there. But here... Here, he felt a kind of peace that had escaped him for a long time. And how unexpected that it was in Toni’s company—and that of her dog. He wasn’t sure whether it reassured him more or scared him. Maybe both.
‘I ought to make a move,’ he said. ‘Can I wash up, first?’
‘No, you’re fine.’
‘Then thank you for dinner.’
‘Thank you for pudding,’ she said, gently ushering the dog off her lap and standing up.
‘See you tomorrow morning.’
‘Afternoon,’ she reminded him. ‘Wednesday mornings during term time is Archie’s session at infant school.’
‘Enjoy your reading,’ he said.
‘We will.’
He looked at the dog and took a deep breath. ‘Bye, Archie.’
The spaniel, as if realising that Ben couldn’t quite cope with making a fuss of him, gave a soft and very gentle ‘woof’.
And all the way home Ben couldn’t stop thinking about Toni Butler’s smile.
He was really going to have to get a grip.
CHAPTER THREE
TONI ALWAYS ENJOYED her reading morning at the school and the enthusiasm of the children; but on Wednesday she couldn’t get Ben Mitchell out of her head. She still had no idea why he’d moved from London to their little village on the coast; she had a feeling that it had something to do with the fact that he was single, but she wasn’t going to pry.
Because then she would have to admit to the mistake she’d made in dating Sean—a man who only cared about himself and appearances. Sean might be a brilliant surgeon, but he didn’t have a scrap of empathy and he was utterly selfish when it came to his personal life. How on earth had she missed that for so long, let herself be blinded to it by his charm?