The Doctor’s Proposal

CHAPTER THREE

‘HE’S gorgeous.’

Sitting on the end of her sister’s bed, Kirsty knew exactly who she was talking about. Who else?

There was an empty plate on her bedside table. Susie had eaten everything. Two slices of toast and a two-egg omelette. Now she was cradling a cup of tea as if she was enjoying it.

‘He is gorgeous,’ Kirsty admitted, and smiled. ‘Mind you, I can see that he’d put on a special effort when you’re around. You’re one glamorous widow.’

‘Kirsty…’

‘I know. I’m sorry.’ Rory’s death was still too new, too raw for her sister to even think that at some time in the future she might feel sexual attraction rekindled.

‘No, but you,’ Susie said thoughtfully. ‘Kirsty, this is an extremely attractive male.’

‘With a wife and daughter. Or daughters.’

‘How do you know?’

‘He said he had to get home to his girls.’

‘Darn.’ Susie finished her tea and snuggled further under the covers. Her toss out of the wheelchair seemed to have done her little harm, Kirsty thought. She looked brighter than she’d been for months. She looked interested. ‘Angus is nice?’

‘Angus seems lovely.’

‘I thought he must be. Rory told me he was special. It was only Kenneth being so awful that stopped him bringing me over to meet him.’

‘Why is Kenneth so awful?’

‘I don’t really know,’ Susie said wearily. ‘Rory seemed to think he’s mentally unstable. He made Rory’s childhood miserable. Kenneth came over to America just before Rory died. He came to the front door one night and he was just…weird. Rory didn’t let him stay. He took him out to dinner but he came home so shaken… I thought then that Rory would never want to return to Australia. The only good thing about Australia as far as I could see was Rory’s Uncle Angus and his Auntie Deirdre. Do you suppose Angus really is an earl? Why do you think Rory didn’t tell me?’

‘I have no idea,’ Kirsty told her. ‘Can I take your blood pressure again before you go to sleep?’

‘If you must. But it’ll be down.’

It was, too, and by the time she’d checked it, Susie’s eyes were already closing.

‘Do you think we might stay here for a while?’ she asked sleepily.

Kirsty thought, Why not? There was the little matter of her medical career back home, but…well, maybe she had a medical career right here.

She certainly had two patients, both of whom needed her.

As long they both shall live, she told herself fiercely. Please.

Kirsty found herself a bed in a bedroom that was just as sumptuous as Susie’s. She set her alarm and checked her patients twice during the night, but both were sound asleep and the next morning she woke to find they’d decided to live a little longer. She made them tea and toast, bullied them into eating it, gave Angus more of the morphine Jake had left her, and then, feeling like someone caught between sleep and waking-not sure what was real and what was a dream-she showered in a bathroom that had not only a chandelier hanging from the ceiling but also had a vast oval portrait of Queen Victoria gazing sternly down on her nakedness.

She was just drying her toes and trying her hardest to ignore Her Majesty’s displeasure when the doorbell rang. It was eight in the morning. Too early for casual visitors. It rang again two seconds later and she thought either Angus would try to go downstairs and open the door or Susie would go.

She had no choice. She wrapped her towel around her and ran.

Jake was at the door. And Boris.

‘I thought you had a key,’ she said, glowering, and he had the temerity to grin.

‘Keys aren’t half so much fun.’

She tried to slam the door but he shoved his foot through and walked in without so much as a by your leave.

‘I could have used my key but I wasn’t sure what sort of déshabillé I might find you in.’

‘Yeah, I was swanning round naked.’

‘Were you?’ he asked with interest, and she flushed crimson.

‘What do you think?’ Then, as Boris nosed her towel, she backed sharply away. ‘Can you keep your mutt back? This towel is precarious, to say the least.’

‘Don’t mind Boris,’ he said, still smiling. ‘You needn’t think his intentions are dishonourable.’

‘What is he?’ she asked, momentarily distracted. He really was the strangest-looking mutt. Part bloodhound, part greyhound, part…ET? Huge droopy ears, a whippet-thin body and sad, protruding eyes that took over most of his weird-looking face.

‘He’s one of a kind,’ Jake said, and Boris woofed in agreement, so enticingly she let go of one edge of the towel to scratch his ear. Very quickly she decided that wasn’t a good idea. Both males were watching her towel-apparently with hope.

‘You had him bred to your requirements?’ she asked, and Jake gave a rueful and maybe even a resigned smile as she regained firm hold on her dignity.

‘He’s not my dog.’

‘Sure he’s not.’ The dog was leaning against his leg, adoration oozing from every pore.

‘Well, not for long,’ he explained. ‘Boris belonged to one of my patients. Miss Pritchard was the local schoolteacher, long retired by the time I knew her. She introduced me to Boris. I scratched his ear, just like you just did, and when she died six months ago that gesture had cost me a mention in her will. I told the public trustee there was a clause in the statutes saying doctors can’t inherit from their patients, but the public trustee seemed to think Boris was an exception. No one would fight me for Boris.’

‘You were fond of Miss Pritchard, as well as the dog,’ Kirsty said slowly, working things out for herself, and now it was Jake’s turn to look discomfited.

‘Maybe. How are our patients?’

But the idea of his sort of country practice had her fascinated and she wasn’t finished with questioning yet. Even dressed only in a towel. She might never get this chance again and she intended to use it.

‘Were you born here?’

‘No.’

‘How long have you been practising here?’

‘Four years?’

‘Only four? Why on earth did you come?’

‘I like it,’ he said defensively.

‘Sorry. Only asking.’ She smiled down at Boris, who was sniffing her painted toenails with interest. ‘How did your wife react when you turned up one day with Boris in tow?’ she asked, and that was the end of the laughter. His smile died so fast she might well have imagined it.

‘I need to get on,’ he told her, glancing at his watch. ‘I’ll see Angus now. Would your sister like to see me as well?’

‘I’d like you to see her,’ she said frankly, abandoning Jake’s past in the face of current medical need. ‘To be honest…’ She hesitated.

‘To be honest, what?’

‘When I came to Australia I thought I could look after her. But medically it’s been a disaster. To be a loving sister and yet be a doctor as well…’

‘You can’t do the grumpy bits,’ he said, softening slightly.

This was such a weirdly intimate setting. They were standing in the great hall, two Made-In-Japan suits of armour flanking the stairway behind them, Boris wagging his tail between them as if urging his master to hurry up-and Kirsty was standing in her bare feet with a two-foot width of towelling keeping her only just decent. Of course it was intimate. But Jake was now hardly noticing, Kirsty thought.

She should be grateful. She was grateful. But…

But what?

But nothing, she told herself crossly. Move on.

‘I do the grumpy bits,’ she said, and suddenly her voice was doing weird things, like she was having trouble finding a normal doctor-to-doctor tone. Well, what did she expect when talking to a colleague dressed like this? ‘I tell her not eating will harm the baby. I tell her she has to be more optimistic, for the baby’s sake if not her own.’

‘Doesn’t work, huh?’

‘No,’ she said frankly. ‘And how can I blame her? I remember how lovely Rory was and I want to weep myself. How much worse must it be for Susie?’

‘So no professional detachment.’

‘None at all,’ she said ruefully. ‘Not one little bit. That’s why I’m really pleased to see you.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Um…do you deliver babies?’

There was a lengthy pause. Maybe she should have gone and got dressed and talked about this on the way out, she thought, but there were a lot of decisions to be made here, and she suspected that many would be made in the next half-hour.

Would Angus keep his oxygen tube in place? Would he still be transported to the nursing home? If not, who would stay to take care of him? Maybe it could be her. But if so…that would mean that Susie stayed, too, and if she stayed then the baby would be born here and this man would have to deliver her. And-

‘We’re going too fast,’ Jake said, and she blinked.

‘Pardon?’

‘Has Angus met Susie yet?’

‘No. I thought-’

‘Let’s take this one step at a time, shall we?’ he said, his smile a little wry. ‘First things first. I’ve learned my triage, Dr McMahon, and I’m figuring out priorities. You know what I suggest you do first?’

‘What?’

‘Get yourself decent,’ he told her. ‘You have a very nice cleavage, and it’s still just a cleavage but only just. That towel is way too skimpy. You’re messing with my triage and making my priorities all wrong. So go cover priority number one with a T-shirt or similar while I find our patients. Then we can figure out what may or may not be more important than one scant inch of towelling.’

Dressed in record time, but still flushing bright crimson, Kirsty remerged from her gorgeous bedroom. There were voices coming from the room next to hers. Susie’s room.

To her astonishment they were all in there. Susie was sitting up in bed, looking interested. Angus was seated in the armchair beside the bed. He was obviously still having breathing difficulties, but his colour was better than the night before. His nasal tube was taped in place and there was a small wheeled oxygen cylinder beside him. Like a tame pup.

The not-so-tame pup-Boris-was draped over the bed, looking adoringly up at Susie, and Susie was scratching his ears. Jake was beside the window.

They were all staring out the window to the garden beyond.

‘He’s not thriving,’ Angus was saying in a voice that said the end of the world was nigh. ‘I may as well go to that nursing home. If Spike dies…’

‘Do we have another patient?’ Kirsty asked, mystified, and they all turned to look at her.

‘That’s better,’ Jake said, his eyes twinkling a little as he examined her demurely clad figure-but then he shook his head. ‘Or maybe I just mean safer.’

She ignored him. Almost. ‘Who’s Spike?’

‘Angus’s pumpkin,’ Susie said, and Kirsty blinked.

‘Pardon?’

‘He’s a Queensland Blue,’ Susie told her, as if that should explain all. ‘Look at that veggie patch out there. Have you ever seen such a veggie patch?’

Kirsty crossed cautiously to the window and peered out, worrying that she had three demented patients on her hands. And a demented dog.

But it was indeed a veggie garden-and a veggie patch to take the breath away. It stretched over maybe a quarter of an acre, row upon row of vegetables and fruit trees of every imaginable variety with what looked like a conservatory on the side.

‘Wow,’ she said faintly.

‘Wow’s right.’ Susie was pushing back her bedcovers-and pushing back Boris. ‘I have to get out there.’

‘You really think you can help?’ Angus asked, and Susie gave him the sort of look Kirsty reserved for relatives of a patient who might well die. Huge sympathy and not wanting to encourage false hope.

‘I’ll do my best. We’ll run soil tests. Maybe it’s too damp. I’d imagine this rainfall’s unseasonal for early in autumn. Is it?’

‘Yes,’ Angus said, with doubt. ‘It’s normally much drier.’

‘Then maybe we can lift the whole vine-just enough to get it off the surface dirt and maybe get a bit of sunlight underneath. It can be done by thinning out the leaves. That should help the plant a lot. We need to be so careful. Dampness can cause rot this late in the growing season.’

‘Rot,’ Angus said in the voice of a parent hearing the word leukaemia, and Susie winced.

‘I’m sorry. I don’t want to scare you. But we need to get out there and see.’

‘But you’re pregnant, lass,’ Angus said, looking at her with real concern. His old eyes misted with emotion. ‘Pregnant with Rory’s child.’

‘And Rory wouldn’t thank me if I just lay here while his Uncle Angus’s pumpkin rotted,’ she retorted. ‘Kirsty, you have to help.’

‘And you,’ Angus said, turning and poking Jake in the midriff. ‘You helped me come down to meet my new niece without so much as a jacket and Wellingtons. They’re packed away in the back of my wardrobe. Get them for me, there’s a good chap.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Jake said-and grinned.

Ten minutes later Jake and Kirsty were standing at the back door, onlookers to the main medical question of the day. Which was why Spike wasn’t at his best.

The patient in question was a vast grey-green pumpkin. Susie was balancing on her crutches, trying not to wobble as she examined him from every angle, and Angus had pushed his oxygen cylinder onto its side so he could use it as a seat.

‘Um…do we or do we not have a miracle happening here?’ Jake asked, and Kirsty glared at him, as if by saying it he could jinx it.

‘Don’t even think it. Just hold your breath, hold your tongue and cross everything you possess.’

‘Susie’s weight-bearing is better than I thought.’

‘I told you yesterday. She’s weight-bearing but unsteady and she won’t practise. The ground here’s so soft and squishy, though, she’s being forced to use her legs.’

‘Praise be,’ he said softly. ‘And…you said Susie’s a landscape gardener?’

‘That’s right.’

‘So Angus has a niece by marriage, pregnant with Rory’s child, who shares his passion for gardening. A niece who needs accommodation for a few weeks.’

‘You’re going too fast,’ she told him, and he raised his brows.

‘Am I? Tell me you’re not looking out at your sister and thinking this might work.’

‘It’s too soon to tell.’

‘Yesterday you had a sister who was non-responsive and I had a patient who wanted to die. I don’t see him refusing oxygen now.’

‘He needs the tank for a garden seat,’ she said, but grinned. ‘OK, Dr Cameron, I concede you’ve done very well so far.’

‘Most Australian doctors know enough to prescribe pumpkins for advanced pulmonary failure and severe depression,’ he said, smiling in return. ‘Hasn’t that reached the States as standard practice yet?’

She choked on a bubble of laughter, and then looked out at Susie balancing precariously over the pumpkin but not even thinking about how wobbly her legs were, and thought, This is great. This could just work.

‘Hey, Angus, I’d arranged to take you to the nursing home this morning,’ Jake called, and the two pumpkin inspectors turned with identical expressions of confusion.

‘Nursing home?’ Angus said-and then he remembered and his face fell. ‘Oh, aye. That’s right.’ He turned to Susie as if explaining. ‘I agreed to go.’

‘Why are you going to a nursing home?’ Susie asked in astonishment, and he shook his head, defeat written all over him.

‘It’s time, lass. I can’t keep on here. The doc is calling on me twice a day as it is, and he can’t keep doing that indefinitely.’

‘Angus has advanced pulmonary fibrosis,’ Jake said gravely. ‘He can’t manage here alone any more.’

There was a moment’s silence. ‘Pulmonary fibrosis…does that mean you’re dying?’ Susie demanded, her already pale face blanching still further.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Angus said uneasily. ‘We all go some time.’

‘Not quite so soon as you’re preparing to shuffle off,’ Jake said bluntly. ‘I’ve told you. With physiotherapy and with oxygen and pain relief you could still have years. Especially if you agree to bypass surgery.’

‘I’ll not be wanting years. What would I do with years?’

‘You could grow bigger pumpkins,’ Susie said wildly. ‘Angus, I’ve only just met you. And you sound like my Rory. You’re his uncle. If you die then I’ve got nobody.’

Gee, thanks very much, Kirsty thought, but she had enough sense to stay silent. And if she hadn’t had enough sense, Jake’s hand was suddenly on her arm, his pressure a warning. I know, she thought, annoyed, but then she glanced at his face and saw the tension and thought, This guy really cares.

Did he care about her sister? Maybe not, but he certainly cared for the old man. He was a country doctor in the old-fashioned sense, she thought, a man who knew every aspect of his patients’ lives and who treated them holistically. Sure, he could set up an oxygen supply. He’d also plaster a broken leg or administer an antibiotic for an infection. But he looked at the whole picture, and he was looking at it now. Angus didn’t need medicine as much as he needed family, and Jake was fighting with everything he had to give him one.

‘Would you like us to stay?’ Susie was asking Angus, and Kirsty held her breath. For Susie to make such a decision seemed amazing. Her twin had made no decisions since Rory had died. Even the decision of what to put on in the morning was beyond her. A crippling side-effect of depression was indecision, and Susie had it in spades, yet here she was making an instantaneous decision all by herself.

Which might have to be revoked.

‘We could only do that if Dr Cameron could deliver your baby,’ she said tentatively, and Dr Cameron grimaced.

‘I usually send my expectant mothers to Sydney two weeks before the birth.’

‘Why?’ Susie asked.

‘A lone medical practitioner doesn’t make for an ideal birthing situation,’ he told her. ‘If you needed a Caesarean, I’d need an anaesthetist.’

Susie’s face cleared. ‘That’s easy. Kirsty can give an anaesthetic. Not that I’ll need it, mind. I intend to deliver this baby normally. Is that the only problem?’ She turned again to Angus. ‘Is it OK if we stay? We’re stuck, you see. I came out to Australia to find you, but I was too close to my due date and now no airline will take me home. So if you need someone to stay here and I need somewhere to stay…we could really work on this pumpkin.’

Jake’s hand was still on her arm, Kirsty realised. And he was looking at her. Angus and Susie had turned back to Spike the Pumpkin, and there was time to think things through before they took this plan any further.

How could she think when Jake’s hand was on her arm?

She shook it off and he drew back, as if he hadn’t meant to get so familiar.

Good. Or was it good?

‘What’s going on here?’ Jake asked cautiously, glancing at her arm and then turning deliberately to look at Susie and Angus. ‘This is happening so fast.’

‘Susie’s desperate for this.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘There was nothing,’ Kirsty told him. He needed to see, she thought. She needed to make him understand the mess her sister was in. ‘Rory was always really ambivalent about his background. He said he’d never got on with his parents and we knew his brother hated him. He arrived in America wanting to make a clean break and he did that by not talking about his background. The only person he ever mentioned was his Uncle Angus and that was only in passing-he’d never talk at length about him, and when Susie suggested maybe they come out here he was horrified. It was as if he’d decided that Susie was his family from now on, and that was that. Only then he died, and there was nothing. Just a blank nothing. Because there was no one else to grieve over him, it was almost as if Rory hadn’t existed. And now Susie’s found Rory’s Uncle Angus, and he’s lovely and he needs her and I’ll bet right now she’ll be thinking that Rory would want her to stay, and you can’t imagine how much of a blessing that must be.’ She broke off, tears threatening to spill. She wiped them away with an angry backhand swipe. ‘Anyway, you’ve done very well.’

‘For an Australian doctor,’ he said with a hint of teasing, and she flushed and swiped again.

‘I’m not crying,’ she said. ‘I don’t cry. It’s just…’

‘Hayfever,’ he said promptly. ‘Caused by pumpkins. Can I prescribe an antihistamine?’

‘I’m fine,’ she said, and gazed at Susie some more. Susie had abandoned the crutches and was seated on the rock wall abutting the vegetable garden. She was talking animatedly about manure. Angus was listening and nodding and asking questions.

There were a few things to be considered. Medical things. It was up to her to consider them.

‘Can we deliver Susie’s baby here?’

‘It’s not perfect,’ he told her. ‘Normally I’d say no. But if we’re weighting up the pros and cons, I’d say the pros definitely outweigh the added cons. Wouldn’t you say so, Dr McMahon?’

‘Maybe.’

‘What sort of a doctor are you?’

‘An American one,’ she snapped, and he grinned.

‘Yeah, and a cute one. But don’t you guys all have specialties?’

‘I guess.’ She looked at him speculatively. ‘You’re a family doctor.’

‘A generalist,’ he agreed. ‘But with surgical training.’

‘Do you have an anaesthetist?’

‘Not now. Old Joe Gordon was an anaesthetist-a fine one-but he died on me six months ago.’

‘Which explains the overwork.’

‘Which explains the overwork. So how about you?’

‘I work in a hospice. A big one.’

‘You’re a palliative-care physician.’

‘Um…no.’

‘No?’

‘My basic training’s in anaesthesia,’ she confessed. ‘I specialise in pain management, hence the hospice work. You want a spinal block, I’m your man.’

His face stilled. His eyes turned blank. She could see cogs start to whirr.

‘Let’s not get any ideas,’ she said hastily. ‘I’m here to look after my sister.’

‘How interested are you in pumpkins?’

She glanced across at the bent heads and managed a smile.

‘Not very,’ she confessed. ‘They lack a little in the patient backchat department.’

‘Then maybe you’d help me out?’

‘How can I do that?’ She was still watching her sister. Susie was sitting on the wall with Angus. The sun was on her face and she and Angus were examining each pumpkin leaf in turn. ‘I need to be here with Susie. And with Angus. You said yourself that Angus couldn’t be left alone. Ditto Susie. So that leaves me…’

‘Stuck in a castle,’ he said, still smiling, and she wished suddenly that he wouldn’t.

‘I guess that’s terrific,’ she said, with what she hoped was cheerfulness. It didn’t quite come out that way. She looked dubiously across at her sister and realised that Susie and Angus were soul mates. They’d spend what remained of Susie’s pregnancy happily saving pumpkins.

Maybe she could…um…read some books.

‘Maybe you could help me,’ Jake said again, and she turned from watching Susie and made herself concentrate.

‘How could I do that?’

‘I’m desperate.’

‘You don’t look desperate.’

He smiled. ‘I have a way of hiding my desperation with insouciance.’

‘Insouciance, hey? Like ketchup but thicker.’

His smile deepened. She loved it when he smiled like that. It made his eyes light up in a way that had her fascinated.

Remember Robert, she told herself fiercely. Remember her parents, Rory, a life committed to medicine.

Plus remember that this man was married. With kids. His girls…

‘So exactly how desperate are you?’ she tried cautiously, and his smile faded a little, as if he was weighing what he ought to tell her.

‘Pretty desperate.’

‘I can look after Angus.’

‘He needs a nurse here,’ Jake said slowly. ‘But I was thinking…’

‘Wow. Can I watch?’

The smile appeared again. A truly excellent smile. Well worth working for.

‘Enough impertinence. I have an idea.’

‘Another!’

‘Shut up, you.’ He was grinning. There’d been lines of strain around his eyes since the first time she’d met him, and suddenly they were lightening. It made her feel good. Great even. She found she was grinning back, and she had to force herself to get back to the issue at hand.

‘Tell me your idea.’

‘My girls…’ he said cautiously, and she stopped feeling like smiling. Which was dopey. How could she be jealous of the family of someone she’d known for less than twenty-four hours?

‘Tell me about your girls,’ she managed.

‘I have a housekeeper.’

‘That’s nice,’ she said cautiously, and once again got that flash of laughter.

‘It is nice,’ he told her. ‘But it gets nicer. Margie Boyce is a trained nurse. She’s in her sixties but she’s very competent. She could come out here during the day and stay with Angus and Susie.’

There were things here she wasn’t quite understanding. ‘You can manage without her?’

‘No, but-’

‘What about your girls?’

‘That’s just it,’ he said patiently. ‘They could come, too.’

‘Your girls could come here?’

‘That’s right.’

‘What about your wife?’

He sighed. ‘I don’t have a wife.’

There was a moment’s silence. ‘No wife.’

‘No.’

‘But girls.’

‘You really are nosy.’

‘I am,’ she agreed, and beamed.

Her smile seemed to take him aback. He dug his hands in his pockets and stared at her like he wasn’t quite sure what to make of her.

She continued to smile, waiting.

Hospice work was a hard training ground, Kirsty thought reflectively. She’d spent the last few years working with terminally ill patients, and one thing she’d learned fast was not to mess around trying to find the right way to frame a question. The people she worked with had little energy and less time. She worked to get things as right for them as she could in the little time she had available, and she didn’t do it by pussyfooting around hard questions.

So maybe it made her nosy. What did she have to lose?

‘I’m divorced,’ Jake said grudgingly.

She gave a grunt of what might be sympathy and went back to looking out at the garden. That was another trick she’d learned. Give people space.

‘So the girls are your daughters?’ she asked at last.

‘That’s right.’

‘How old?’

‘Four.’

‘Both?’

‘They’re twins.’

‘Twins are great,’ she said, and smiled.

He gave her a sideways look. Hmm. She stopped smiling, looking away, and he dug his hands deeper into his pockets. She thought that was the end of information but instead he started speaking again, carefully, as if explaining something distasteful.

‘Laurel and I met at med school,’ he said flatly, as if he wasn’t sure whether he should be saying it, but now he’d started he wanted to get it over with fast. ‘I became a surgeon, she was a radiologist, and I’m not even sure why we married now. I’m guessing we were too busy with our careers to look at anyone else. We were both hugely ambitious-fast movers in the career stakes-and our eventual marriage seemed more an excuse for a party than anything else. A party where we asked the right people. But suddenly Laurel was pregnant.’

‘Not planned?’ she queried gently, and he winced.

‘Of course not planned. As far as Laurel was concerned, it was a disaster. She only agreed to continue the pregnancy on the understanding that we’d use childcare from day one.’ He hesitated. ‘And maybe I agreed with her. I was an only child with no concept of babies. But then…then Alice and Penelope were born.’

‘And became people,’ she said gently.

He looked surprised, as if he hadn’t expected such understanding. ‘I fell for them,’ he conceded. ‘My girls. But the reality of life with twins appalled Laurel. She hated everything about our new life, and she hated what the twins were doing to me. She issued an ultimatum-that we get a live-in nanny or she’d leave. That I return to the life we had pre-kids. So I was forced to choose. Laurel or the twins. But, of course, she knew my response even before she ever issued the ultimatum. The girls are just…too important to abandon to someone else’s full-time care. So that was the end of our marriage. Laurel took off overseas with a neurosurgeon when the twins were six months old and she hasn’t been back. So much for marriage.’

Ouch. That almost deserved being up there with other life lessons, Kirsty thought. All the reasons why it was dumb to get involved.

‘So what did you do?’ she probed gently.

‘I moved to the country,’ he said, almost defiantly. ‘My career in Sydney was high-powered. I knew I’d see little of the twins if I stayed there and I had some romantic notion that life as a country doctor would leave me heaps of time with the kids. Pull a few hayseeds from ears, admire the cows, play with my babies…’

‘It hasn’t worked out quite like that, huh?’

‘Well, no. But the problem is that I love it. The people are great. Alice and Penelope are loved by the whole community. They might not have as much of me as I’d hoped, but they have huge compensations.’

‘And you? Do you have compensations?’

‘Now we’re getting too personal,’ he said, stiffening as if she’d suddenly propositioned him. ‘I don’t do personal. The only reason I’m telling you this is because of Margie Boyce. As I said, Margie’s a housekeeper-cum-nurse. She also acts as my babysitter. She’s married to Ben, who was a gardener here before his arthritis got bad. Ben and Angus are old friends. What I’ve suggested to Angus in the past is that he has Margie and Ben stay with him, but of course he won’t agree. He knows Margie looks after my girls so I’d need to find someone else, and the thought of Margie fussing over him when he wants to die is unbearable. But now…’ Jake looked thoughtfully over to the two heads discussing pumpkins. ‘If we tell Angus that a condition of Susie staying here is that Margie comes out to care for her during the day…bringing the girls with him… He may well agree.’

She thought that through. It sounded OK. ‘That’d leave me doing nothing,’ she said slowly.

‘That’d leave you working with me,’ he said bluntly, and gave her a sheepish smile. ‘I’ve nobly worked it all out to stop you being bored.’

She tried to look indignant-and failed. She needed to be honest, she decided. She’d been kicking her heels in Sydney for the last month, waiting to see whether Susie went into premature labour, and by the end of that time she’d been climbing walls. Dolphin Bay was a tiny coastal village, and exploration would here be limited. She’d be bored to snores here, too.

‘I don’t think I can work here,’ she said cautiously. ‘Don’t I need registration and medical insurance and stuff?’

‘This is classified as a remote community. Really remote. That means the government is grateful for whoever it can get.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘It’s still late afternoon yesterday in the States. If you give me a list of your qualifications and a contact number for the hospital you’ve been working in, I can get you accreditation to work right now. As in right now!’

‘You really want me,’ she said, awed, and he grinned.

‘I really want you.’ Then he hesitated. ‘As a doctor.’

‘Of course,’ she said demurely. ‘What else would you mean? But…to bring everyone here… What will Angus say to that?’

‘I’ll give it to Angus as a fait accompli,’ Jake told her. ‘You intend to work with me. He wants Susie to stay here, but Susie can’t stay unless Margie stays here with her. Margie can’t stay here unless the twins come, too, and Ben as well.

‘This place has been like a tomb,’ Jake went on, his smile disappearing as he tried to make her see how seriously he’d really thought this through. ‘Since Deirdre died, Angus has locked himself away and waited to die as well. But he has so much to live for, if only he can see it. If I can throw open the doors, bring in his old friend, Ben, Margie to care for him, the twins to fill the castle with giggles and play-dough-and Susie and a new little baby to give him family again… Don’t you think that might equal any anti-depressant, Dr McMahon? For Susie as well as Angus? What do you think?’

He was anxious, she thought incredulously. He was watching her and there was much more than a trace of anxiety behind the smile. He was waiting for her approval.

He didn’t have to wait, she thought, throwing any remaining caution to the wind.

She was going into country practice.

He had her approval in spades.