Reassuring Hamish was helping Kate’s nerves, but she was just as pleased as he was when Charles emerged to tell them the CT scan was clear.
‘Her head’s hurting where the cut is, and where’s her Kate?’ he added, smiling so warmly at Kate she wondered why she’d ever worried about his liking her.
‘I’ll go into her,’ she said, but before she did she turned to Hamish and squeezed him gently on the arm. ‘See!’ she added softly, but she knew he wasn’t comforted. He’d continue castigating himself for some time, although he’d followed ED rules to the letter in his examination and treatment of the little girl.
Kate walked into the X-ray room but Hamish was in front of her, lifting Lily in his arms and carrying her out, following Charles through to the four-bed children’s room.
Lily grew heavy in his arms, falling so deeply asleep she didn’t wake up as he laid her on the bed or protest as Kate changed her into a pair of child-size hospital pyjamas.
Still anxious about the little girl, Hamish wrote an order for half-hourly obs, then did the first himself.
‘We know there’s no bleeding inside her skull, and no damage to her skull. It’s exhaustion,’ Charles told him. ‘You and Kate are showing signs of it as well. Go and get some dinner. I’ll sit with Lily until you get back.’
‘You’ll sit with her?’
The question slipped out before Hamish could prevent it, but Charles seemed more amused than annoyed.
‘I can sit with patients!’ he said with mock humility. ‘I know the way to do it!’
Then he sighed.
‘Actually, it’s personal as well. More in the feuding Wetherby family saga,’ he said regretfully. ‘Her grandmother was a cousin, but my father stopped speaking to that branch of the family before I was born. I knew about Lily’s grandmother, and probably should have made more of an effort to contact her after my father died, but—’
‘Families!’ Kate said, and Hamish wondered if Charles heard the understanding in her voice.
Or knew her link with Lily was more than empathy.
He looked down at the pale face, thinking of how much the child had lost—of how much Kate had lost.
No wonder she didn’t want to trust the love that had sprung up between them lest it be stripped away from her. Easier by far to deny it existed, or to pass it off as attraction …
Easier by far to push it away by going out with Harry!
So why did this understanding not make him feel better—not reduce the primal urge he felt to throttle Harry and carry Kate off, bodily if necessary, to his lair?
Or Scotland …
‘Go!’ Charles said, and Hamish touched Kate on the shoulder then steered her away.
‘He’s lonely, isn’t he?’ she asked, as they walked towards the dining room. ‘I hadn’t thought about it before, but you could hear it in his voice when he talked of the family feud.’
Hamish nodded, understanding—and not saying that he heard it in her voice, too.
Not saying anything at all as he thought about loneliness in all its many manifestations.
His own future loneliness not least among them …
No! That was not to be. Kate felt something for him, so somehow he had to battle through her resistance—somehow.
‘Doctors’ house meeting?’ Kate joked as they walked into the dining room to find Cal, Gina, Emily, Grace and Susie all sitting at a table.
With Harry!
‘Harry’s found the missing bulls,’ Gina told her, when Kate had helped herself to some roast beef and vegetables and joined them.
‘Missing bulls? What missing bulls?’ Hamish, who was pulling a chair out for her, asked. ‘Don’t tell me we’ve got to put more bulls in the cow paddock. Charles’ll have a fit!’
The others laughed but it was Cal, not Harry, who took up the explanation.
‘The Alcotts definitely had four bulls at the rodeo, but when you bravely liberated Oscar, he was the only animal in the trailer. Ergo, three missing bulls.’
‘So?’ Kate said, looking around the table. ‘You all seem particularly happy about Harry finding these three. Why?’
‘Because they’re at Wygera,’ Gina said, as if that totally explained the group’s pleasure.
‘Rob Wingererra, the uncle of one of the girls who died in the car accident some weeks back, travelled the rodeo circuit for years, and later on worked with rodeo stock animals.’ Once again it was Cal telling her what she needed to know to connect the dots. ‘He helped the Alcotts set up their business, but returned to Wygera recently because his mother isn’t well.’
‘So when he was talking to them at the rodeo, about the swimming pool and the kids being bored—’ Gina took up the tale, her excitement almost palpable ‘—the Alcotts suggested they leave some bulls with Rob so he can get the kids interested not only in bull riding but in the care of rodeo stock. Isn’t it marvellous?’
A young couple dead—two young people with names—Brad and Jenny. A little girl orphaned, a truck driver injured. Kate’s mind flashed back to the nightmare horror of the scene, and pushed away her meal. She wasn’t at the marvellous part yet.
Then she felt Hamish’s hand on her knee, squeezing gently, and she knew he hadn’t reached the marvellous goal either.
But his touch brought comfort—comfort she shouldn’t be accepting—but she could no more have shifted that hand than she could have swallowed food.
‘It will be another interest for the kids at Wygera, and a challenging one at that. At least equal to playing chicken in their old bombs of cars,’ he said gently. ‘Gina and Cal have been very involved with the community because of the pool, and can see how having the bulls to care for will help even more. I know it seems a funny kind of industry but apparently there’s good money to be made in breeding and training rodeo stock, and Rob can manage the business for Lily for as long as is necessary—’
‘And other members of the community can get involved.’ Kate could see the reason for the smiles now.
The conversation continued around her but she wasn’t thinking about bulls, but about how nice it was to have Hamish’s hand resting on her knee.
Stupid, really. The last thing she should be feeling pleased about was contact with Hamish. For a start, she’d just told him that what she did was none of his business. And if she set that minor hurdle aside, there was the fact that in less than a week he’d be gone, and the closer she was drawn to him, the more she’d miss him when that day arrived.
‘So, are we on for tomorrow?’
Hamish’s fingers tightening their hold suggested Harry’s question might have been for her, but she’d drifted so far away from the conversation it took her a few seconds to make sense of it.
Hadn’t she already told Harry she wouldn’t be free tomorrow?
The others were now watching her with interest. Could they know about Hamish’s hand on her knee?
And could she say yes to Harry when Hamish had his hand on her knee, and she could feel the tension in it, the tension in the man beside her—the man she’d already hurt with careless words this evening?
‘I’m sitting with Lily tonight so I won’t get much sleep,’ she said, her voice genuinely regretful because Harry was her best chance of finding out more about her father, although Harry wasn’t asking her out to be helpful.
‘We could go in the afternoon,’ Harry pursued, but even though Hamish had now removed his hand, leaving a cold patch on her skin, she shook her head.
‘No, Harry,’ she said, as gently as she could, embarrassed that this conversation was taking place in front of others but needing to get it said. ‘I don’t think it’s a good idea.’
He glanced from her to Hamish, then back to her again, and she wondered why she didn’t feel shivers down her spine when Harry’s cool grey eyes looked at her.
It had to be more than eye colour …
‘OK!’ he said easily, but she sensed he was hurt, an impression confirmed when he stood up and left the table wit
hout even a casual goodbye.
‘He’s a good bloke,’ Grace said stiffly, then she too stood up and departed.
Following Harry, or hiding hurt Kate hadn’t suspected?
‘How’s that for breaking up a party?’ Hamish asked no one in particular, while Gina stacked dirty plates at one corner of the table.
‘Grace has been in love with Harry for ages,’ Emily said quietly. ‘Unfortunately, until Kate arrived, he’s never shown any particular interest in women—or not in any woman working at the hospital.’
‘Poor Grace,’ Gina said. ‘Love can be the pits!’
But though her voice showed sympathy, the smile she shared with Emily showed two people, at least, who’d been there in the pits but had since clambered out—both now glowing, annoyingly for Kate, with the radiance of love.
‘Gina’s right,’ Hamish said gloomily, now only he and Kate were left at the table. ‘Love can be the pits!’
‘It’s not love,’ Kate told him firmly. ‘It can’t possibly be love. We’ve known each other exactly two weeks—people don’t fall in love in two weeks.’
He said nothing for a moment, then caught her eyes and held them.
‘I have,’ he said, so firmly she knew it was true. ‘I know you don’t want to hear it, Kate. I know you have so many other issues that you don’t need to hear it. But I have to say it.’
He glanced around, then tried to make a joke of something that was obviously killing him.
‘We’re back at wrong time and wrong place, aren’t we—me declaring my love in the hospital dining room?’
And it was this feeble attempt at a joke that hurt Kate most. It pierced her heart and left it oozing pain.
She searched for words to make things better, but couldn’t find any. She could only shake her head, slowly and sadly, not knowing now if the utter sadness inside her was for herself or Hamish.
Perhaps for both of them.
She sighed and went for practicality.
‘I can’t eat. I’m going back to sit with Lily,’ she said, pushing back her chair and standing up. ‘Isn’t Mike organising a fire at the beach? Shouldn’t you be helping or at least on your way there?’
Hamish offered a smile so pathetic she wished he’d growled or yelled at her.
‘That’s tomorrow night,’ he said, then the slightest of gleams returned to his dark eyes. ‘You’re off duty and, as it happens, so am I. It won’t be a date, of course, but we’ll be sure to see each other there.’
Kate felt the shiver grey eyes hadn’t caused. The beach, a fire, night sky, wave music lapping at the shore …
She’d run away from all that last time—but hadn’t run far enough.
Hamish was persistent. She’d pushed him away but the gleam and his words suggested he hadn’t quite given up.
This time would Hamish leave her at the door?
Maybe she should have gone out on the river with Harry after all.
In the end, they both missed the fire.
It had started innocently enough, with Lily asking Kate where they were keeping Oscar’s food.
Hamish, Kate and Lily, still in hospital pyjamas, were sitting on the cow paddock fence watching Oscar who, to Kate’s eyes, seemed perfectly content eating grass.
Hamish had arrived not long after dawn and, once assured Lily’s obs were perfect and that both she and Kate had slept most of the night, had whisked Kate off to breakfast in the dining room. They’d returned to the children’s room to find Lily up and about, demanding to be taken to visit her friend.
So here they were.
‘Food?’ Kate repeated vaguely, her mind involved with whether she felt the effects of Hamish’s presence more keenly in the morning or the afternoon. ‘Isn’t grass food?’
‘No, silly, he needs his pellets.’
Kate had heard of pellets, but she rather thought it had been in connection with guns of some kind. Air rifles? Shotguns?
‘Pellets?’ Hamish repeated, saving Kate the embarrassment of mentioning firearms.
‘Pellet food. It’s at home,’ Lily continued. ‘We’ll have to go and get some.’
The three of them had already had a number of conversations about Lily’s missing parents but Kate wondered if the little girl really understood they were dead. Was this interest in Oscar’s food an excuse to go to her place? Was she thinking her parents might be there?
And if so, would going there and not finding them make it harder or easier for her to accept their loss?
She glanced at Hamish over the child’s head and read the same worries in his face and in the small shrug he gave.
‘We’d better talk to Charles,’ Kate said, surprising herself at how easily she’d fallen into the way of all the hospital staff who saw Charles as the solver of all puzzles large and small. Although if Charles was a relative …
‘OK,’ Lily said happily, climbing down from the fence and heading towards the hospital.
‘How do you know where his office is?’ Hamish asked, as Lily led them unerringly towards it.
‘I talked to Charles and Jill this morning when you two were at breakfast,’ Lily told her. ‘He asked about my dad’s family, if I had aunts and uncles, and I told him I didn’t have any, but he’s a kind of cousin and he says I can stay with him until something is sorted out.’
Lily paused in her forward progress and turned to Hamish.
‘Charles knows a lot about bulls,’ she confided. ‘As well as a lot of other stuff. And Charles says there are plenty of people around the hospital who can take care of me when he’s working. Do you know Mrs Grubb?’
Hamish smiled at the little girl.
‘I do know Mrs Grubb,’ he assured her, while Kate guessed the woman in question had already found her way to Lily’s heart through chocolate-chip cookies.
But Charles?
Kate smiled to herself.
What could be more perfect—if Charles was lonely—than to have a lively little girl like Lily come into his life?
‘Happy families?’ Hamish murmured, reading Kate’s thoughts again as Lily hurried ahead of them. ‘Would it work?’
‘It might,’ Kate responded cautiously, hoping it would but knowing how ephemeral happiness could be.
Reaching the office, Lily wandered in as if she already belonged in the hospital family and greeted Charles like an equal. She then explained the food problem, far more succinctly than Kate could have.
‘Ah!’ Charles said, nodding and smiling at his new young friend. ‘Did you explain to Kate and Hamish what the pellets are?’
‘I told them they were Oscar’s food,’ Lily replied, and it was Charles who provided more information.
‘Rodeo stock need special care. The owners work out exactly what they need and write out … a recipe, I suppose you’d call it, with the balance of protein, vitamins and minerals each particular animal requires, then stock-feed companies make it up into pellets. Oscar would be fed these in the morning and some hay when he’s brought into his own pen in the afternoon. It’s one of the reasons rodeo stock is easier to handle, because the animals are fed twice daily and are used to their handlers being around.’
Kate looked at him and shook her head, while Hamish appeared equally bemused.
‘If Lily had a pet shark, would you know what to feed him as well?’ Kate asked, remembering Daniel talking about some trendy friend who kept a shark in his living room.
Charles smiled at her.
‘Fish, I would think,’ he said, then turned his attention to Hamish.
‘I’d go myself but there’s a Health Department bigwig flying in this morning. Would you mind driving Lily out there? You can take the station wagon and pick up a couple of bags of the pellets. Eventually we’ll get it all shifted to Wygera.’
‘Can Kate come?’ Lily asked, grasping Kate’s hand.
Charles’s eyes met Kate’s above the blonde head, and Kate knew he was thinking what she’d thought earlier—that maybe Lily needed to see for herself that the
re was no one there.
And maybe when she saw that, she’d need someone to hold her while she cried …
‘Is it far?’ Kate asked, all innocence.
‘Oh, no,’ Charles said. ‘Two hundred—not much more.’
‘Miles?’ Kate said weakly.
And Hamish laughed.
‘City girl!’ he teased. ‘Up here, it’s what’s known as a nice Sunday drive. Isn’t that right, Charles?’
It was a nice Sunday drive, but the togetherness of it disturbed Kate. Too many emotions mixed and intermingled—the pleasure of being in a car with Hamish, the genuine joy she felt in Lily’s presence, the heart-breaking strength of Hamish as he carried a very subdued little girl through her deserted home then knelt with her, helping her choose toys and clothes for Kate to pack. Singing silly songs as they drove home, until Lily fell asleep in the back seat.
It was family yet not family.
It was something glimpsed then snatched away.
It was very, very confusing for a bruised and aching heart.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THREE WEEKS AGO, Hamish had been looking forward to this dinner with Charles. It was to be Charles’s private farewell to him, on the Tuesday night before Hamish’s departure on the Friday.
But now …
‘For a man returning home to the job of his dreams, you don’t seem particularly happy,’ Charles remarked, and Hamish, who was sure he’d been hiding his misery, shrugged his shoulders at the man who had become a friend.
‘Kate?’
This time Hamish nodded, not wanting to talk about the woman with whom he’d so foolishly fallen in love.
‘Well, it can’t be that she doesn’t love you,’ Charles said, startling Hamish into speech.
‘I beg your pardon?’
Charles smiled at him.
‘I said it can’t be that she doesn’t love you. One only has to stand near her when you’re around to feel the warmth of love radiating out of her body. Does she not want to go to Scotland? Has she reasons for wanting to stay in Australia? Perhaps she’s afraid of starting a new life so far away from her family.’
‘She doesn’t have a family!’ Hamish muttered crossly. ‘That’s the whole bloomin’ trouble. Or I think it is. I think you’re right about her at least liking me enough to give it a go, but she’s been through so much …’
The Australian's Proposal (Mills & Boon By Request): The Doctor's Marriage Wish / The Playboy Doctor's Proposal / The Nurse He's Been Waiting For Page 16