‘Fair enough, if that is what you want,’ he said mildly, ‘but, Julianne, I am only trying to help at what must be a very stressful time for you. How long is it since you last saw Nadine?’
‘Two years,’ she said in the same dismissive tone. ‘We saw each other briefly one day when we were both out shopping, but as we had nothing to say to each other it didn’t last long. If we hadn’t found her at the hospice yesterday, the separation would have continued as the two of us have nothing in common.’ Except you, maybe, she thought as an iron band of misery clamped around her heart.
‘All right, if that is what you want,’ he said with the smile gone and his glance questioning her change of attitude. ‘In that case I will go alone.’
She almost groaned out loud. It would have been easier to accept Aaron’s offer instead of allowing a rift to arise between them, but she knew her sister of old. ‘Nadine has to have’ she used to call her and if Aaron hadn’t been that on their wedding day it didn’t say that he wouldn’t be it now if her husband carried out his threat.
Driving through the dark night again to the hospice, Julianne was in a sombre mood that turned to contrition when she saw how pleased Nadine was to see her, but when she asked eagerly, ‘Is Aaron with you?’ and pulled a face when told that he wasn’t, Julianne’s gloom returned.
‘How long do you intend staying here?’ Julianne asked as they chatted awkwardly about Nadine’s stay in the hospice. ‘Won’t Howie be concerned if he comes from wherever he has gone and finds you not there?’
‘I wish,’ Nadine said flatly. ‘I think there has been too much damage done to our marriage. When I came in here the other day, life seemed like a black pit that I couldn’t climb out of, and then you and Aaron appeared and there was light in the darkness, especially when he told me he had forgiven me for what I did to him.’
‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘It takes a very special man to forgive the sort of humiliation that you heaped on him. You were cheating all the time that the wedding plans were going ahead. I wouldn’t want to see you ever again if I was him.’
‘All right, I get the message,’ Nadine agreed uncomfortably, and in retaliation shot back, ‘You had a crush on him all that time ago, didn’t you? It would seem that it might still there.’
‘And how are you feeling today, Nadine?’ a voice said suddenly from the doorway, and Julianne’s heart missed a beat. Please don’t let him have heard that, she pleaded silently. So, he had come after all as he’d said he would, even though she’d refused a lift. It looked like she wasn’t wrong about the revival of his feelings for her sister.
Perversely she decided to leave Aaron alone with Nadine while she went to the restaurant to make up for missing her evening meal and when she’d finished went to speak to the sister in charge to get a general idea of Nadine’s condition.
‘There is basically nothing wrong with your sister now except exhaustion,’ she was told, ‘brought on by the mental stress of the miscarriage and the surgery that was needed afterwards, and of course her husband not being around to support her through it all. She could go home any time but isn’t planning to do so because she doesn’t want to be alone. If you could accommodate her, it might be a solution to her problems but obviously that is a matter for the two of you to decide.’
At the end of the discussion Julianne went back to the small private ward at a slow pace and tried to visualise Nadine slumming it in the small apartment that was so dear to her heart and so near The Falls Cottage where Aaron could be found.
Aaron glanced at her questioningly when she reappeared and commented, ‘I was about to come in search of you, Julianne. Are you all right?’
‘Yes, I’m fine. I’ve been having a chat with the sister,’ she told him breezily, her expression showing no sign of the sacrifice she was contemplating and was about to bring into the conversation immediately as there was no way she could sleep on the suggestion without having tested Nadine’s and Aaron’s reactions to it.
He was observing her doubtfully as she told them, but not so Nadine. She could almost hear the wheels turning in her mind as she considered the suggestion, and Julianne said, ‘The apartment is of average size but there is only one bed, so you can have it. I would use a blow-up mattress that I have for when any of my friends stay the night.’
She knew she was crazy to make it so easy for Nadine to infiltrate what had been her happy existence before all this. Bringing her into Aaron’s radius and letting her sister use her precious apartment to convalesce would be like handing them on a plate the opportunity to rekindle the romance that Nadine had destroyed that day in the church.
‘I have a better idea,’ he said immediately, when she’d finished speaking. ‘Why don’t you go to stay with Nadine? I’m sure she will have much more room in her house than you have in the apartment, as long as it isn’t too far for you to get to the surgery.’ He turned to her sister. ‘Where is it, Nadine? And would you be able to face going back there if Julianne went with you?’
‘It’s a large manor house in its own grounds called Fellside, and is situated between here and Swallowbrook,’ she said listlessly, ‘and, yes, I could cope with going back there if I had company.’ To Julianne she said, ‘It wouldn’t be more than a couple of miles away from the surgery for you.’
‘I suppose I could stay with you until your husband comes back,’ Julianne said with the feeling that she was being uprooted and demoralised with a speed that was leaving her breathless. Why hadn’t Aaron wanted Nadine to be as near him as she could possibly get without actually moving in? Maybe he thought that visiting her at Fellside would be more discreet than in the village.
And did he care that he was reorganising her life, whether she wanted it or not, that in a matter of hours she had moved from unwanted member of a trio to chaperone and carer in a place where she would be isolated far away from her apartment, her friends and the kindly George?
Aaron was just too bossy for words! Yet she had to hand it to him, his suggestion would make caring for Nadine much easier in her own home and they would have to take it from there, day by day, night by night. But what if her husband came back? She could be for ever on the sidelines if he didn’t.
They left Nadine looking more cheerful than before and went to find their cars for the return journey to Swallowbrook, but before they set off Aaron said, ‘I hope you didn’t mind my suggesting that you stayed at Nadine’s place instead of her at yours. I know how you love your apartment but it just wouldn’t be big enough for the two of you for any length of time.’
‘Maybe you’re right,’ she said stiffly, ‘but the next time you decide to reorganise my life, maybe you will give me some warning.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said apologetically. ‘It was just that I felt she would be better in her own surroundings and that it would be less stressful for you that way.’
She got into her car, swinging her legs over the side and settling herself in the driver’s seat, and as the engine chugged into life she looked up at him standing beside her and said without replying to his last comment, ‘Goodnight, Aaron.’ And before she broke down and started weeping at the thought of being banished so quickly from all the things she loved best, she was off. The tail lights of her car glowed in the darkness.
Of course she was willing to look after Nadine until she was fully recovered, but would have preferred to have more time to adjust to the unexpected development in her life without Aaron throwing her in at the deep end before she’d faced up to what it meant.
She was a nurse, for heaven’s sake, pledged and trained to care for the sick and suffering, and at the present time that described Nadine, so it went without saying that she would be there for her. But she was nervous at the thought of moving into someone else’s house when its owner wasn’t there, and wary of being the everlasting onlooker again if Aaron was going to be on the scene all the time.
<
br /> On a lonely stretch of road with not a sign of civilisation anywhere, the car bumped to a jerky halt and refused to budge any further.
This is the last straw, she thought, the last, joyless moment of a miserable evening. Why couldn’t it have happened near a garage or when Aaron was with her? No, that would have been too easy. She was alone in pitch darkness without a clue about what was wrong with the car that always served her so well.
She prayed that Aaron would be somewhere behind her on his journey home. Yet supposing he’d taken another route, or gone for a coffee or something similar before setting off?
The bare branches of trees showed up gauntly against the light of a fitful moon that had appeared from behind cloud as she searched for her breakdown details in the glove compartment, and an owl hooted somewhere nearby.
When she found the card with the telephone numbers that she needed she couldn’t see it as the electrics of the car were not working and the moon had disappeared again. Laying her head against the steering wheel in utter weariness, she gave in and let the tears flow that she’d been holding back all night.
* * *
Aaron had been intending to follow Julianne home as closely as he could get to make sure that she arrived safely, but when he went to get his car, which was in a different parking area from where hers had been, he found that someone had blocked him in and it took precious minutes to find the other driver and get them to move their vehicle.
Then he was off, driving along the same route that Julianne would have taken, expecting that she would be too far ahead by now to catch up, until he saw the outline of the car in complete darkness in the light from his headlamps and pulled up immediately with his heart pounding anxiously.
She was inside, slumped over the wheel, and when he said her name softly she raised her head slowly, burst into tears for a second time and croaked, ‘I thought you would never come.’
‘I was delayed by the thoughtlessness of others,’ he told her in the same gentle tone, ‘and the first thing I intend to do is transfer you to my car where there is light and heat, and then I’ll have a look at yours.’
When she was standing beside him at the roadside, tearstained and woebegone, she said weakly, with her voice thickening, ‘That was so scary, Aaron. I had my breakdown details in the car to call them out to me, but couldn’t tell what they were because it was so dark.’
‘Come here,’ he said, holding out his arms, and she went into them, knowing there was no other place on earth where she would rather be. As she nestled against his chest with the dark gloss of her hair resting beneath his chin, Aaron brushed his lips against it and held her closer in the magic of the moment.
But he had promised her light and heat and they were not to be found here in the chilly night air, he thought, and releasing her reluctantly he pointed to his car. ‘I’ve got a flask of coffee in there that I brought with me in case I felt thirsty as, like you, I didn’t have time to eat or drink before I left the surgery, so you can have a warm drink while I look at your car, and by the way mine has got heated seats so what could be better?’
‘I was driving along as normal when it just cut out and stopped,’ she said, with the thought that the warmth of his arms was preferable any day to a heated car seat and a flask of coffee. But those kind of moments with Aaron belonged only to times of stress and were brief to say the least, as tonight had shown in spite of her having agreed to move in with Nadine and commute each day from Fellside to the surgery in Swallowbrook.
It was an arrangement that had made her feel that he was willing to manipulate her own movements for the good of her sister, that she was just there to be used and confused.
Yet she could forget all of that in the joy of him having found her and being there to offer comfort in her distress. She was sipping the coffee seated on the warm car seat that he’d promised when he came over to say, ‘I’ve phoned your breakdown people and they are on their way, but they did say that it might take them an hour or so to get here.
‘It does seem as if it might be something serious that’s wrong with the car but they should be able to enlighten us with regard to that. I’m used to tinkering about with my own cars but this is something out of my league. If I had to make a guess I would think it’s to do with the fanbelt.’
Her distress was returning. ‘I can’t be without it if I’m going to be driving there and back each day from this place where Nadine lives.’
‘I will chauffeur you around if need be,’ he said reassuringly, ‘and in the meantime I suggest that we make ourselves as comfortable as possible until help arrives.’ And with a thoughtfulness that almost brought the tears back, ‘I’m aware that you have been on your feet all day at the practice and spent the evening visiting your sister. You must be exhausted, so why don’t we settle ourselves on the back seat and I’ll cover you with the tartan rug that I keep on it for emergencies?’
As they did as he’d suggested Julianne was telling herself that she was asking for trouble. They were too near, too close for sensible behaviour. She wanted him so badly and when he reached out for her suddenly, as if she had in some way communicated her longing to him, he responded with kisses that made her heart beat faster and her body become an offering born of her love for him.
Yet unbelievably he was letting her go, telling her hoarsely, ‘I can’t believe I did that. I’m sorry, Julianne. Petting in the back seat of a car is not what I’d intended.’
The heat of her arousal was turning to chill as she said in a low voice, ‘I see. And what exactly was it that you had intended? Using me to get to her?’
Any further hurt from their brief passion in the back of the car when his moment of desire had changed to regret was prevented by the earlier than expected arrival of the breakdown crew and they at least had nothing to say that could make her feel any more dejected.
Their verdict was that the straps that held the fan belt in position had snapped. She was told that it wasn’t a big job that was needed, but it would have to be done at a garage and they would tow the car to the nearest one for what should not be an expensive repair.
They waited until the car and breakdown vehicle had disappeared and then began the rest of their homeward journey, with Aaron commenting how fortunate it was that the fault that had brought her to a standstill hadn’t been any worse.
She didn’t reply, just nodded, and he knew that he’d rejected something that was new and precious because of that other rejection long ago, and why make Julianne suffer for that? Why be so reluctant to admit to himself that he loved her? Everything about her was entrancing. The last thing he would ever want was that he should be the one who dimmed her light. Nathan and the rest of them at the practice wouldn’t want their ‘bright morning star’ to become just a glimmer because of him.
He knew that Julianne thought he had been fussing over Nadine since they’d met up again, as if he was some sort of pathetic no-hoper who was willing to risk being cast aside again. As if!
She couldn’t be more wrong. His concern was for her. Of course he was sorry that Nadine’s life was in such chaos. She’d lost the child she had been expecting and not by her own doing. Nature had had a hand in it, and her husband, wherever he might be, had no knowledge of what had been happening.
Julianne, innocent of all of that, had walked into the mess that her sister had made of her life, and she’d got it wrong if she thought that he would put Nadine first in his concerns.
When they arrived at the bakery it was gone midnight and not another word had been said by either of them until she broke the silence when he pulled up outside by saying tonelessly, ‘Thank you for being there for me out in the dark, Aaron.’
Before he could reply she was out of the car, her key was in the lock, the door was swinging inwards, and she was gone into the haven that she was going to have to leave for she didn’t know how long.
/> * * *
The next morning George waylaid Julianne as she was leaving for the practice and asked, ‘What was going on last night? You went out in your car and came back in Dr Somerton’s in the early hours?’
‘Mine broke down and had to be towed away,’ she told him jadedly, and managed a wintry smile when he commented that the doctor seemed like a good person to have around in an emergency, and that it was surprising that someone like him wasn’t settled with a nice wife and a couple of young ’uns.
All of that did nothing to lighten a grey November morning that started with the news that Aaron and Hugo had diverted to Swallowbrook Community Centre to look over a group of young people from a school in another county who had been lost on the fells overnight with their teacher and were now being checked for hypothermia and stress while warm blankets and hot drinks were being provided by local people.
‘I told them that you would join them as soon as you appeared,’ Nathan told her. ‘So far they haven’t found any youngster needing hospital treatment as they were all sensibly clothed and there was no frost last night, but some of the girls are a bit weepy as it can be scary up there in the dark, so they’ll be happy to have the company of a nurse alongside the doctors, and in the meantime Ruby and I will hold the fort here until the lot of them have been given the all clear.’
She had to walk along the lakeside to get to the community centre just a short distance away and as always was captivated by the beauty of its calm waters nestling at the foot of the fells.
There were residences on the far side where people lived in smart detached houses with their own landing stages and mooring posts, and in the middle on a small island was the house that belonged to Libby and Nathan, which could be seen from all angles.
They’d had their wedding reception there and the two of them and their children now spent most of their weekends on the island.
Swallowbrook's Wedding of the Year (The Doctors of Swallowbrook Farm) Page 10