She needed to be there for her nephews for a while yet.
‘I wonder if he married?’ Elsa Hargreaves’s voice brought Holly back to the present with a jolt. ‘Surely we would have heard?’
The hairdresser sounded extra focused on happy endings, not surprising after only wedding her Jack a year ago and still floating cupids of happiness.
‘Be interesting to find out,’ Jasmine said slyly, glancing at Holly. ‘Always had a thing for …’
‘Damn. I smudged my nail.’ Holly cut her off and with a quick kick to her friend’s booted ankle she changed the subject. ‘I wonder if his arrival might put a smile on his grandmother’s face.’
The tactic worked. Elsa had black banned Ben’s grandmother for dissing Elsa’s now-husband when he’d first arrived back in town—so she was nobody’s favourite customer.
Elsa nodded. ‘She’d be over the moon. Ben Brierly was a sweetie at school. My mother said he’s just like his grandfather. Not a mean bone in his body. Can’t say the same about his grandmother.’
‘From what I saw today,’ Jasmine drawled, ‘Ben’s bones lean more towards the sinfully suggestive.’ Then abruptly, as if the thought had just occurred to her, she turned back to Holly. ‘Is it true a doctor can’t go out romantically with a patient?’
Catching the lurid direction of her friend’s thoughts, Holly smiled. ‘Yes.’
She recited, ‘Such interactions may ultimately be detrimental to the patient’s wellbeing. At a minimum, a physician must terminate the patient-physician relationship before initiating a dating, romantic, or sexual relationship with a patient.’
Jasmine rolled her eyes at Holly remembering it word for word. ‘Well you’d better not get sick or you’re stuffed.’ Then she went off into gales of laughter that had Holly shaking her head and glancing at her friend’s now empty glass. Jasmine had obviously caught Elsa’s romanticism and she would have preferred to steer the conversation away from Ben.
Jasmine hiccoughed. ‘Do they make you memorise that stuff?’
It hadn’t been the main focus of six years of study, but yes, Holly thought dryly. ‘Along with some other useful medical things.’ Then Holly glanced at the other women, who still had their attention fixed firmly on the nail bar. ‘And no, dear ladies. That’s not why I don’t practise medicine.’
‘Holly,’ Isabella, Wedding Belles’s celebrant, drawled. ‘It’s none of our darn beeswax why you’re taking time out. The twins would be enough.’
‘Thank you, Isabella.’ But of course it all crashed in now the subject had raised its ugly head. Too late not to think about those reasons. Too late to stop the memories rushing in. The cold of remembered horror settled over her again, despite the warmth of the room, as the salon receded and her thoughts turned inward.
The last day at the crazy emergency department in Sydney. She’d had bad days before. All doctors did. And others carried on. But she couldn’t give her best when her heart was still bleeding inside after losing the closest person to her in her whole world in a car accident. And that last day they’d had bad accident after accident until finally, at the end of the shift, the last straw. Utter stillness of the mother’s body on the resuscitation gurney, the curtains in the emergency department twitching with other occupants. The haunted eyes of the husband as he waited for a miracle that never came and the sound of crying children outside.
Nothing they could do. A ‘fatal blood clot to the brain after an eclamptic fit’ the ensuing investigation had concluded. Had she tried everything? Had her patient suffered because she wasn’t 100 per cent on her game? No excuse that she’d just buried her sister and hadn’t slept for a week. No excuse she cared for her heartbroken nephews. But had she tried everything?
Or as an aunt, was she 100 per cent on her game there? How could she be the calm and serene aunt her nephews needed, radiating unfamiliar motherly love, when her work took every last ounce of her strength? She couldn’t. Not at this moment in time. Which was why Holly had taken a deep breath, lifted her head and taken stress leave, gone home to Wirralong and opened the closed doors of her sister’s coffee shop. Chose not to consider medicine again until she could be 100per cent for everyone.
*
Jasmine’s hand came over hers, careful not to smudge her nails. ‘You okay, Chook?’
Holly blinked and took a slow breath. ‘Yep. Reckon these nails are dry enough? Think I might go check on the twins.’
Jasmine sighed. ‘As long as you check with your eyes and don’t touch anything with your nails, you’ll be fine.’ Jasmine couldn’t help giving advice. ‘Mrs F doesn’t mind sitting with the boys once a fortnight. You know she loves it. Why rush away?’
‘You know why,’ she said softly, and watched her friend sober. Pretty impressive really, considering the amount of alcohol she’d downed.
Jasmine nodded, shrugging her tattooed shoulder. ‘Right then.’ She lifted her pretty bridal fingernails in a wave. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’
Chapter Three
Ben
Ben leant on the rail and listened to the sounds of the quiet street below him. Quiet except for a chorus of female voices and some laughter as a door opened somewhere along the street.
Then the door shut and the sound receded and his gaze was drawn to a woman leaving the hairdresser several shops down.
A beam from the street lamp fell across her face and illuminated her high cheekbones, straight nose, and a larger than average mouth, as she came towards him. Her hair shone with golden lights and bobbed long around her face. But it was the graceful glide of her walk and the way she held her head that made his gaze sharpen, become incredulous. As if he’d conjured her. His gaze grew horrified. It wasn’t?
Of course it wasn’t, but damn, it looked like her.
Instinct had him spin and jog back inside to grab his keys and pull the door shut behind him. He’d swear that looked like Holly Peterson. And suddenly he was seventeen again and anguished.
No. No. No. Not his favourite feeling and one he hadn’t felt for many long years. But he remembered it.
His heart thumped in time to his feet leaping down the stairs and he had no idea what he’d say when he caught up to her, but if it was her, he needed to know. Now.
He hit the sidewalk. ‘Hello there!’ His voice broke the stillness of the night like an arrow heading straight towards her and she stopped.
Chapter Four
Holly
Holly heard the call, recognised with surging embarrassment who it was, but thanks to the street shadow he was crossing couldn’t reconcile the figure striding with purpose towards her as Ben. She didn’t have the headspace for this. She’d lost her only sister less than four months ago, had taken on the role of single mother to two balls of mischief, with little experience, and last week she’d had to go into Melbourne for the hospital cause-analysis interviews into her patient’s death that had brought it all back. Her emotions were all over the place.
Now this man. Tall and powerful with crackling tension rising like a cloud around him as he approached at ground-eating speed. Her skin prickled with an odd pheromone awareness that confused and confounded her until she saw the dark-fringed eyes with ridiculous lashes. They were the same. But the too-large nose and angled cheekbones fitted now. His face had filled out. Hardened. Matured with a vengeance into something too impressive to fit the boy she’d known years ago, a boy she’d squashed like an annoying mosquito when he’d tried to distract her from her purpose.
That boy had disappeared, and in his place stood a man she doubted anyone could squash. A larger-than-life man. A freaking gorgeous man who glared at her. Good grief.
‘Ben?’ Her voice came out soft. Unimpressively uncertain and she cleared her throat and tried again. This day went from bad to worse. ‘Ben Brierly?’
Piercing dark eyes raked her, he frowned, then raked her again. ‘It is you.’
Um, yes? ‘Nice to see you.’
He stepped back to look at her, then laughe
d. A strange, harsh sound in the night air. Shook his head. ‘Nice.’ Laughed again. With an edge beneath the rich baritone, added, ‘Nice to see you, too.’
Somehow, she didn’t believe him. But he was a little too mesmerising to let her keep track of the ten thoughts that now swirled in her brain. He was so … beautiful. A sudden shaft of warmth opened in her chest, like a seismic plate adjusting, and that chink of heat spread through her too-cold centre. She chewed her bottom lip. She felt … weird? Speak. Say something. ‘I heard you were opening the practice.’
Seemed a reasonable thing to say, but it was as if he couldn’t hear her. Maybe he needed hand movements or something? Or his world had tilted too. She doubted that. He was too big to tilt. She searched for anything else to add to fill the silence between them. ‘You’ll do well, here.’
My word he would, she thought. ‘The families will be elated. Finally, a doctor.’ Seeing as how she’d let them down.
Suddenly she noticed that, when she spoke, he didn’t look at her eyes. He watched her mouth? Then back to her eyes. As if trying to read her. As if he couldn’t believe she was there. She felt like waving at him. It’s me, the bitch. She had been that to him, but she didn’t say it.
He ignored her comments about his new practice. ‘Are you visiting?’ Still he studied her. Her face. Her expressions. Her mouth. Definitely her mouth. Maybe she had lipstick on her teeth. Too dark to see that, surely?
‘No. I live here. Work here.’ She gestured vaguely to the coffee shop behind her.
He shook his head. ‘There’s no other medical officer in town.’
She studied her suddenly fascinating nail polish. She’d smudged it. Her voice dropped. ‘I’m not working as a doctor.’
He stilled. Not just stopped moving, but actually froze every muscle in his not inconsiderable body. Finally, he spoke. ‘Why?’
Please. Too many emotions tonight already. ‘You do not want to know.’
‘Yes, I do.’ His voice suddenly gentle. Supportive. Too kind, like he’d always been. The angry stranger was gone. As if he’d never been. Now he was looking into her eyes. Trying to see her pain. Like the time she’d brushed him off when her mum had been ill.
The urge to burst into tears slammed into her like one of the pedestrian crossing signs had swung down from the pole and smacked her between the eyes. The tears she hadn’t shed when she should have. The stiff upper lip trembled. She didn’t see the emotion coming. The urge to cry pulled her mouth tight and closed her throat, making her want to turn her feet and belt up the stairs to home. She’d held on too long. Didn’t have the reserves from before her life had veered out of her control.
Desperately swallowing she whispered, ‘I have to go.’ She cleared her throat. Or tried to. ‘The babysitter. We’ll catch up.’ She was gabbling. ‘Good to see you.’ Not really the time to say she was sorry she’d been mean, and stupid, so many years ago. But she felt worse about it now. Incredulous, even.
She had to get out of here before she disgraced herself. ‘Gotta go. Bye.’ Threw him one last look.
Then she spun and almost sprinted away. How ironic her sister had lived above the same street as his new consulting rooms.
His face was imprinted in her mind. He’d looked pretty damned surprised.
Well he was a shocker himself and his sympathy had cut straight through the shield she’d thought she had in place. That and the fact he’d changed. Grown into the promise that had always been there. Changed into the most mesmerising man she’d seen in years. Not a distraction she needed when her one goal was to concentrate on two heartbroken children.
Good grief. The man was too ruggedly handsome, too big, and he’d chased her down to see if it was her. Why would he do that when she’d been so mean to him?
Her heels clacked rapidly through the doorway between two buildings to the rear path into her tiny patch of greenery that framed her stairs; her heels clattered as she climbed the steps to the flat above the street; and her feet went silent as she opened the door and stepped onto the carpet to wave at Mrs F reading on the lounge. Escape.
Three minutes later the babysitter had left, and Holly peered into the darkened room where two small boys lay in one of the single beds. Pat had crawled into Tom’s bed. They were snuggled together and she felt her heart contract. The swell of love she held for these grieving orphans was enormous. She was determined to cushion the hole their mother’s loss had left as they built a new life with her. In Wirralong for the moment, where at least they had some friends. This was the most important thing she could do, which was another reason she’d come back instead of trying to settle them in Sydney. She leaned back against the doorframe and tried to sigh out the tension of the evening.
It had been an emotional night, because celebrating someone else’s upcoming wedding made her think of her sister, Susan. Holly had thought herself doing so well lately. She felt another prickle of unshed tears at the back of her throat and swallowed back a wave of sorrow. Susan was not just a sister, but her dearest friend, and she’d never see her again.
She looked again at Pat and Tom. Two in one bed. Whatever gave her nephews heart-felt comfort was fine by her.
She just wished there’d been someone she could cuddle up to when she needed a hug, then had to forcibly push the towering figure of Ben Brierly from her mind. Instead, she looked longingly at the other single bed beside the boys. Even hearing a snuffle beside her might help her tonight. But she turned away and left the room, door ajar so she could hear the boys if they needed her.
Not that she wasn’t still learning how to meet their needs.
Apparently mothering took just as much study as gaining a medical degree. Bless Susan for giving her sons the ability to pretty well look after themselves, despite their young age of six.
Since arriving in Wirralong, Elsa’s mum, a local school teacher and the mother of twins herself, had been a doll, with several invites to demystify the phenomenon of raising twin boys even though her two were much older than Pat and Tom.
But the responsibility of being the aunt/adopted parent hung heavy. Especially when they came home from school laden with after-play hunger and homework to the heartbreaking daily realisation that their mum wouldn’t be there. She hated that look when they remembered.
Which was why she’d reopened the little café below the flat. Running the café made use of the day, instead of killing time for the boys to finish school each afternoon. She’d also needed to make some money because, despite her sister’s insurance, and the size of her own savings, she had more commitments now and the coffee shop had begun to provide good takings. Especially on Saturdays when the crowds were in.
Jasmine had told her the local Country Women’s Association president, Mrs Fairclough, had wanted to buy the coffee shop and would work before school in the mornings and on weekends, and her lamington cakes were to die for.
When the older woman had also offered to mind the boys at other times, they’d worked out a respectable wage, and emergency minding had been catered for as well. She suspected Mrs F was saving up to ask for a partnership, but that was for the future.
So Wirralong had been good to them, though she missed her work. She had help with the boys when needed, a friend in Jasmine, and the supportive company of the Smart Ladies’ Supper Club. But most of all she had two boys who loved her, even though they wanted their mum.
Thanks to the coffee shop she had time out from the intensity of work in the hospital while she came to terms with her loss.
A job with no responsibility. No fault. No guilt. It also meant little use of her brain, which wasn’t so good. But for the moment she’d serve her customers coffee, dish out cake, and wash their dishes. Until the boys, and she, found their feet again.
She pushed open the door to the little Juliet balcony off her bedroom, which overlooked the dim, wide expanse of empty Main Street, and couldn’t help a swift peek towards the new doctor’s surgery.
A light was on in the premises ab
ove it but her own lay dark, so she leant on the rail. An image from today flashed in her mind, of her serving Ben’s grandmother in the coffee shop. Hearing the woman’s pride that her grandson was back, realising that Mrs Brierly didn’t recognise her as the girl she’d warned off all those years ago, or had forgotten. Her pathetic realisation that no one was proud of her, like Ben’s grandmother was of him, and yet she’d achieved as much. Though her life was on hold for the moment.
This was followed by the insight that her own insecurities, as much as Ben’s grandmother, had been a major factor in how thoughtlessly cruel to Ben she’d been, for not any good reason.
Caring, compassionate Ben. Still the same. Now, after seeing that consideration again, she wanted to cry with the futility of that lost friendship. If only she hadn’t taken her secret feelings of inferiority and let them push him away.
And tonight? What had the emotion been when she’d first realised the man towering over her in the street had been gangly Ben Brierly, morphed into Ben the hunk? Astonishment? Shock?
A tall figure stepped out onto the balcony down the road and there was no doubt he looked her way. Then of course he raised one hand to wave. She stared back and resisted the urge to lift her own, because that way lay dragons. Skin prickling and pheromone awareness pointed towards something she hadn’t felt for years … desire!
Chapter Five
Ben
In the glow of the street lamps Ben could see the dim figure tucked against the rail. He didn’t need light to picture her distress, however, it had burned into his brain. Changed his whole focus from poor him to poor Holly. Though he doubted she’d welcome pity. He also didn’t miss the way Holly drew back when he waved, so her focus hadn’t changed.
Damn it. How could she still have that ridiculous hold over him after all this time? He thought he’d managed a good balance between becoming emotionally ensnared by any woman and enjoying the fair sex’s company. How the mighty have fallen.
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