‘Because Grandpa and Charlie were here?’
‘That, and the fact that I love Bay Beach.’
‘I can’t imagine there’s much of a social life in Bay Beach?’ His statement was a question.
‘No, but that’s easy.’ She grinned. ‘As sole doctor, I don’t have time for a social life.’
‘You do now,’ he told her easily. ‘While I’m here you can have some free time.’
‘Maybe I need to pick up a boyfriend, then,’ she said, trying to keep it light. ‘For a month. It seems a bit hard on the bloke, though. After a month I go back to being general medico and dogsbody and he’d get what was left over. Which wouldn’t be very much at all.’
And then, at the end of her sentence, the lightness faded and she couldn’t quite keep the bitterness out of her voice. Jonas heard it as she knew he must.
‘You resent it?’
‘No.’ She shook her head, and her braid swung with decision. ‘I don’t. At least, I normally don’t. It’s only sometimes…’
‘Like today?’
‘Like today,’ she agreed. ‘I told Claire Fraine to go to Blairglen two weeks before her baby was due. She refused-she said it was stupid as her babies always take ages to come and there’d be plenty of time to get to Blairglen after she went into labour. So what happens? I get to deliver twins in the middle of the night.’ She bit her lip.
‘And I almost lost one,’ she admitted. ‘One of the twins wasn’t picked up by Blairglen’s obstetrician-heaven knows why-so we were expecting a single baby, and Thomas came by surprise after his much bigger sister. At only three pounds it was pure chance and the prompt arrival of the flying neonatal service that stopped him dying on me.’
‘No wonder you’re exhausted.’
‘Yes, and they don’t see,’ she said bitterly, ‘that by taking chances themselves, they put me at risk.’ She shook her head. ‘No. That came out wrong. I’m not suggesting I was at risk.’
‘But you were at risk-at risk of breaking your heart over a needlessly dead baby,’ Jonas told her, understanding absolutely. He rose and looked down at her for a long moment, then held out his hands to hers. It was an imperious gesture-he was a man accustomed to getting his own way-and, rather to her own surprise, Em took them. As he gripped her and tugged her to her feet, the feeling of strength communicated itself to her, and it felt strange and warm.
And…dangerous?
But he didn’t seem to feel it. ‘I’ve come to a decision. What you need, Dr Mainwaring,’ he told her with all due solemnity, ‘is a paddle in the surf. And I’m just the person to give it to you. Take your sandals off.’
‘Yes, sir.’ She was bemused but game.
‘And I’ll take my shoes and socks off.’ He grinned and bent down to do just that. ‘Mind, this is no small concession. It’s not every woman I’d take my shoes and socks off for.’
‘You know, I guessed that?’
He looked up at her and his smile widened.
‘Of course you did,’ he told her. ‘We’re partners, after all. And a woman needs to know a lot about her partner. Even if it is only a partnership for a month.’
CHAPTER THREE
THE paddle was a long one-strolling about half a mile away from the town, walking through the small breakers at the edge of the surf. Magically, Em’s beeper stayed silent. It was as if the town had thrown its worst at her over the past twenty-four hours, and knew its doctor was close to breaking point. She needed this break more desperately than she even guessed herself.
The moon was completely up now. They should go home. Em should go to bed.
‘But Anna never has the children in bed until nine,’ Jonas told her. ‘It’s no use turning up there to talk to her before that. She simply won’t listen. And paddling does the soul just as much good as sleeping.’
So they walked. Rather to Em’s regret, her hand was released, and they walked side by side, as two friends might have.
Two good friends.
It had to be good friends, she thought, because their silences weren’t uneasy. They fell into step and splashed through the shallows in unison, and the sensation was like a balm to Em’s troubled mind. She could feel the tension easing out of her, disappearing into the coolness of the surf and washing out to sea.
This was…special.
Em didn’t speak, but she soaked it all in-the night, the lovely feel of surf between her toes and the moonlight. And somewhere in that walk her feeling of desperation, of absolute weariness and of isolation, all fell away, and she knew that tonight, babies and emergencies permitting, she’d sleep like a child.
Jonas had granted this to her, she thought, and for that she was incredibly grateful. She still wasn’t sure how it had happened, but when the headland met the sea in a rocky outcrop and paddling became impossible, she turned to him impulsively.
‘Thank you,’ she said.
‘For what? For taking a beautiful woman for a walk along the beach?’ He smiled down at her. ‘It’s been my absolute pleasure.’
A beautiful woman…
How long since anyone had called her that? Em thought. Grandpa had, and so had Charlie, but they’d called her beautiful since she was three years old. Back at medical school she’d had a couple of boyfriends, but since moving to Bay Beach… There simply hadn’t been time for boyfriends.
No time to be called beautiful?
She grinned wryly at the thought. I should stick that in my diary, she decided, because the thought, silly though it was, was still delicious. Allow time to be described as beautiful.
‘What’s funny?’
Em smiled up at him, and then resolutely turned her face back along the beach to where Jonas had parked his car. He was driving her tonight, and that in itself was novel. ‘Nothing. It’s time for us to go and see Anna.’
He fell into step beside her. His trousers were wet to the knees-he’d rolled them up but they’d been splashed anyway and it was too warm a night to care about a spot of wetness, and the surf felt great. Em’s dress was soaked almost to the thighs but, like Jonas, she didn’t care. She was feeling so light-headed she could almost float.
It was weariness, she told herself. Or reaction to Charlie’s death. Or…something!
‘You won’t tell me the joke?’ he demanded.
‘Nope.’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s none of your business.’
‘Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong,’ he said, and before she knew what he was about his hand caught hers again and swung. ‘Because I just succeeded, and I want to know how to do it again.’
‘Succeeded?’
‘In making you smile.’ He twinkled down at her. ‘When I first saw you, I thought, I bet that woman has the most magical smile-and she has. Now there’s only one thing more I want to know.’
It was impossible not to ask the obvious. ‘Which is what?’
‘What your hair looks like unbraided,’ he threw back at her, and she gasped and lifted her spare hand defensively to the hair in question.
‘You’ll wait a while for that.’
‘Why?’ Jonas sounded curious-nothing more. Still his hand held hers and it felt good. It felt…right.
‘Because, apart from when I wash it, my hair’s unbraided for about five minutes a day,’ she said with asperity. ‘I rebraid it every night before I go to bed, so it’s ready for emergencies.’
‘You mean…’ he said slowly, looking at her out of the corner of his eye with a look she didn’t quite understand. Or didn’t quite trust. ‘You mean, if I was on call for you, so you wouldn’t be at risk of an emergency call, then you’d sleep with your hair unbraided?’
This was a ridiculous question. But he was waiting for an answer. Em kicked up a spray of water before her-for heaven’s sake, she was acting as young and as carefree as a schoolgirl on her first date-and she tilted her chin and told him.
‘I might.’
‘But it’s not definite.’ He sounded so disappointed
that she almost chuckled out loud.
‘I probably would,’ she said, just to placate him. Or just to make him smile.
And she succeeded. ‘That’d make me feel so much better,’ he told her. ‘If I get called out to someone’s ingrown toenail, and I’m whittling away at rotten nail at three in the morning and smelling some farmer’s stinking feet, it’d make me feel a whole heap better knowing that my partner was sleeping at home with her hair splayed out all over the pillow…’
‘And with her dog beside her and her door firmly locked!’ She said it as a reaction, like she was slamming her hand on the lock right now!
‘Really?’ He sounded shocked at the thought of such distrust, and Em could contain herself no longer. Her laughter rang out over the waves. This man was ridiculous. Deliciously ridiculous, but ridiculous all the same.
‘Yes, Dr Lunn, with my door locked,’ she told him. ‘Do you think I’m naïve or something?’
In answer, the hold on her hand tightened even further.
‘You wouldn’t have to lock the door,’ he said virtuously. ‘Because I’d be out chopping up toenails.’ And then his voice flattened. ‘And, no, Dr Mainwaring,’ he told her, and his voice was suddenly deadly serious, ‘I think you’re all sorts of things. But I definitely don’t think you’re naïve.’
He’d caught her right off her guard. She wasn’t ready for seriousness. ‘Jonas…’
‘Emily…’ He matched her tone of uncertainty exactly, and it was all she could do not to laugh again.
‘You’re impossible! Jonas, we need to see Anna.’
‘So we do.’ He sighed. ‘So we do. But we can come back here another night. No?’
‘Maybe.’
‘What sort of answer is that?’ Once more his voice had changed and now he sounded indignant. It was impossible not to laugh.
‘It’s a safe answer,’ she told him, and then because suddenly she didn’t feel safe in the least-she felt very, very exposed-she hauled her hand from his and started to run. ‘I’ll beat you to the car, Jonas Lunn,’ she called.
She ran.
Rather to her surprise, Jonas didn’t follow suit. Instead, he stopped dead, and watched her flying figure in the moonlight, racing up the sandhills toward his waiting car.
And his smile slowly died.
‘I wonder if I’m being really, really stupid here,’ he asked himself-but there was nothing but the moon and the surf to answer him.
Jonas had been right.
Anna was terrified and ready to back out, and it took his and Em’s combined persuasion to keep her on track.
‘We’ve made the appointment.’ Jonas went through it slowly and surely. ‘And we’ve organised everything else that needs to be done. You drop Sam and Matt at school and take Ruby to Lori’s, and then I take you to Blairglen for the tests. If we’re delayed-if you need more tests than a mammogram and biopsy-then Lori will collect the children and give them their dinner.’
‘But they’ll put me straight into hospital. If it’s cancer-’
‘They won’t,’ Em said strongly, and put her hand out to cover Anna’s. The woman was trembling. This fear was the culmination of a month’s imaginings, Em thought. How much better it would have been if she’d just confronted the thing head-on when she’d first found the lump, rather than wait until it had built into this icy terror.
‘Anna, a few days now will make no difference to the outcome at all,’ she told her decisively. ‘No matter what the results of the tests are, there’s time to come home and think about it. Savour the feeling that it’s just a cyst. Or come to terms with the fact that you have an early breast cancer before you need surgery. Either way, no one’s going to rush you into something you’re unhappy with.’
Anna looked desperately from her brother to Em and back again.
‘But Jonas has already spoken to Lori about taking the kids long-term.’
‘That’s just so, if the worst comes to the worst, you know you can face it,’ Em told her, and received a grateful glance from Jonas for her pains. ‘Prepare for the worst and hope for the best. It’s my personal creed and I remember it every time my phone rings.’
There was a pause while Anna thought that through. Then…
‘That must be terrible,’ Anna said slowly, for the first time looking at Em and really seeing her. ‘I hadn’t thought about it before, but now… It’s the not knowing that’s the worst, and in your job all the time there’ll be not knowing. Like that awful tractor accident last week. You had to deal with that, didn’t you?’
‘It was dreadful,’ Em said gently. ‘At the time it was frightening. But once I knew what I was dealing with, the fear faded as I worked through what had to be done. That’s exactly the same as you. Tomorrow you’ll know what you’re dealing with.’
‘I don’t know how you do it,’ Anna whispered, and that was the cue for Jonas to take her other hand.
‘Anna…’
To Em’s surprise she pulled away from her brother. ‘Don’t!’
‘I just wanted to say that I’m here for you. I’ll take you for the test tomorrow, but I’m staying on in Bay Beach.’
His words obviously shocked her. ‘Why?’
‘For you,’ he said promptly, but Anna shook her head at that.
‘No way, Jonas. I don’t need you.’ She bit her lip and stared at the table. ‘I’ve never needed you-just like I never needed Dad and I never needed Kevin. You’re not to stay on my account.’
What was behind this? Anna thought, puzzled. There was more history here than a brother antagonistic toward a sister’s partner.
But Jonas was shaking his head, and smiling at his sister as if he was reassuring her that he really didn’t want to intrude-that things were as she wanted them.
‘I’m not staying because of you-Stoopid,’ he told her.
‘I wish you’d stop calling me that silly name.’ Unconsciously Anna’s hand clenched so that the whites of her knuckles showed through her skin. She was too thin, Em thought. Too young and too tired and too battered by life.
‘OK.’ Jonas’s smile died. He stood and, surprisingly, he moved to stand behind Emily. His hands dropped down to grip her shoulders but he still spoke to his sister. ‘I won’t call you Stoopid any more.’
‘Fine. And you don’t have to stay.’
‘I do have to stay,’ he said gently. ‘Because Em needs me.’
‘Em?’
‘I couldn’t believe what Em was facing this morning,’ he told his sister, with his big hands still resting lightly on Emily’s shoulders. ‘You saw yourself what a strain she was under, and it knocked me sideways. I know I’m due to leave for overseas, but I’ve decided to put it off. I’m staying put.’
‘With…with Dr Mainwaring.’
‘With Emily,’ he corrected her. ‘With one of the most hard-working, beautiful, desirable lady doctors I’ve ever had the pleasure to meet. Em and I have it all worked out.’
‘I don’t believe this.’
Neither did Em. Heavens, the way he talked-the way he was holding her-the man sounded as if he was in love with her!
And he did exactly nothing to change that impression.
‘Em and I have spent the last two hours on the beach,’ he told Anna. ‘We’ve been working things out. It may be sudden, but it doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened.’ The grip on Em’s shoulders tightened-either in affection or as a warning. Even afterwards, Em couldn’t quite figure out which.
‘I’m not leaving Emily,’ he told his sister. ‘We’re partners.’
‘I-’
‘So I’m here for you as well,’ he told her, his voice brooking no argument. ‘But mostly I’m here for Em. And I’m here for as long as she wants me. Whether you want me or not.’
‘Jonas-’
‘Leave it, Anna,’ he told her roughly. ‘For now let’s just get these damned tests done. But I’m staying in the town-with Emily-for as long as it takes. And maybe even longer.’
‘You’re nut
s!’ Back in the car, Em looked at the man beside her as if she were regarding a lunatic. ‘You’ve implied it was love at first sight between us.’
‘I did it beautifully,’ he said smugly, and she could have slapped him.
‘You did it intentionally?’
‘Sure.’
She sat back and gazed straight ahead. Doctor encountering lunatic and wondering where the nearest strait-jacket was. How was she supposed to react to this?
‘Um…do you have a reason?’ she asked finally, and her voice came out sort of as a surprised squeak. It didn’t sound in the least like a doctor soothing a lunatic. He heard it and he grinned.
‘There’s no need to take this personally.’
‘Oh, sure.’ Still the squeak. Em coughed and got her voice back under control-almost. ‘Sure. You imply to your sister that you’re in love with me and I’m not supposed to take it personally.’
‘Do you have any more work to do tonight?’
‘Stop changing the subject.’
‘No, but do you?’ Jonas was gently insistent. ‘Because if you have any more calls, I can take you there before I drop you back at the hospital.’
‘So you can fit in a spot of love-making on the side,’ she said nastily, and the twerp actually laughed.
‘Hey, there’s an idea.’
‘A very bad idea.’ She glowered.
‘You don’t approve of love-making?’
‘With men I like and trust,’ she retorted, and he winced at that.
‘Ouch.’
‘So there you go. Take me home.’
‘You do know I have my reasons,’ he said slowly, and she was forced to nod.
‘I guess I do. You can’t be totally unhinged or they’d never had given you your medical degree.’
‘There is that.’ His smile faded and he looked at the road ahead. ‘Em, you know Anna won’t let me close. I’ve battled every inch of the way to get her this far, and it’s only because she’s terrified that she let me come with her this morning. She was ready to clutch anyone. Once Anna has her head sorted again, I’ll be thrust back on the sidelines. She doesn’t want me.’
‘I’d assume she has her reasons.’
The Doctors’ Baby Page 4