The Doctors' Baby

‘She’s having second thoughts,’ Jonas told Em. ‘About having the tests. She says there’s no one to look after the children if she has to have an operation, so why bother having the tests at all?’

‘She’s badly frightened,’ Em said, and he nodded.

‘I know. That’s why everything has to be settled and easy.’

‘You don’t think you could assure her you’d take care of the kids yourself?’

‘Even if Anna would agree—which she probably wouldn’t—I don’t think I could,’ he admitted honestly, his engaging smile flashing back again. ‘They’re four, six and eight years old respectively, and I’m a bachelor, born and bred. My childminding skills are about nil. It’d be much easier to work for you and pay Lori to do it.’

‘Coward.’

He chuckled out loud. ‘Rather be a chicken than a dead hen.’ Then he paused. Robby had snuggled into Em’s shoulder and was falling asleep before their eyes.

Institutionalised? Maybe not, he thought as he watched. This wasn’t a baby who was turning away from the world. The little one was bonding with the adult who’d become permanent. With Em.

And Em knew it. The bonding was a state Em mistrusted, and it was the real reason the little boy was no longer in hospital. She couldn’t handle her increasing feelings for him, but she had to keep treating him. Apart from being the only doctor in the place, she couldn’t bear not to.

She held him now, and the same familiar longing flooded through her. The longing to hold him for ever had hit unexpectedly when she’d treated him the night his parents had died—the night of the accident—and it had never faded. And, quite simply, she didn’t have a clue what to do about it.

‘Em, you know Lori and you’re great with Anna. I have an idea.’ Jonas was speaking to her, and she had to force her attention away from her baby—no, her patient—and back to Jonas. He glanced at his watch. ‘Have you eaten?’

Eaten? He had to be joking. When did she get dinner before nine at night?

‘No,’ she said shortly, and he nodded.

‘Then can I ask you to eat and then do a house call?’ he said. ‘With me? I’ll prepay you for the house call with fish and chips on the beach.’

‘Fish and chips…’

‘You do eat fish and chips?’ Once more came his resigned tone that told her he thought she was a dope, and she had to chuckle. OK, she was acting like one. Maybe she even deserved to be treated as such.

‘Sure I eat fish and chips,’ she told him. ‘You show me a resident of Bay Beach who doesn’t! If I’m hungry enough—like now—I’ll even eat the newspaper they’re wrapped in. But what’s your house call?’

‘To my sister.’

She’d suspected as much. ‘Why?’

‘To assure her that Lori is perfectly capable of childcare. She doesn’t trust me. It took me three days to have her leave the kids here for two hours this morning. Now I’m working on leaving them here again tomorrow, and then on the possibility of longer-term child care after that. You could help.’

‘Why would she listen to me any more than she’d listen to you?’

‘She doesn’t trust men,’ Jonas said simply, and behind them Lori grinned.

‘Wise lady.’

‘Hey!’ Jonas smiled at them both, and spread his hands in mute appeal. ‘What’s there to mistrust?’

Everything, thought Em, but she didn’t say a word.

‘Do you have any more urgent calls?’ he asked.

‘I have an evening ward round.’

‘That can wait. I’d imagine you wear a beeper.’

‘Of course I wear a beeper.’

‘Then I’ll help you with your ward round and then the evening’s ours,’ he told her grandly. ‘Apart from house calls and emergencies. What more could two people want?’

What, indeed?

They ate their dinner on the beach because, quite simply, it was the most beautiful and most lonely place to be and what Em needed most was solitude to absorb the fact of Charlie’s death.

Strangely, she didn’t mind that her much-needed solitude was shared with Jonas, and it didn’t seem less peaceful because he was with her. He bought them fish and chips and soda water—‘I’d prefer wine but with your workload I’m guessing you’d refuse’—and then settled beside her. Then he let her alone with her thoughts.

Like Em, he seemed content to munch his fish and chips, and stare out to where the moon was just starting to glimmer over the horizon. Somehow, though, he seemed to gaze inward just the same.

So she was left with her thoughts. It was the most beautiful place, Em thought. Charlie had loved this beach.

And Charlie’s death was suddenly very, very real.

‘You loved him very much,’ Jonas said after a while, and Em looked down as his hand moved across to gently cover hers. It wasn’t an attempt at intimacy, though. It was a gesture of comfort—nothing more—and it warmed her more than she could say.

There was nothing between them but the truth. ‘Yes,’ she agreed simply. ‘Since Grandpa died we’ve been even closer. Charlie’s always been my best friend, and after Grandpa died he was all I’ve had.’

‘When did your parents die?’

‘When I was tiny. They died like Robby’s parents. In a car crash.’

‘And that’s why you feel so strongly about Robby?’

The idea startled her. She hadn’t seen it like that but now, looking at it dispassionately, she realised maybe he was right.

‘I guess so.’

‘Except he doesn’t have a Grandpa and a Charlie to love him.’

‘Maybe I was lucky.’

‘So it seems.’ Jonas stirred and poured himself out more soda water. ‘I wish I’d known them.’

And suddenly she wished that he’d known them, too. Her two lovely old men.

‘They were amazing,’ she told him. Her tired grey eyes creased into a smile of memory. ‘They were a machiavellian pair of old devils, they got into every mischief they possibly could, but they brought me up so well.’

‘I can see that.’

It was a compliment, direct and to the point, and its simplicity made Em flush. ‘I didn’t mean…’

‘I know you didn’t,’ he said softly. ‘If you had, I wouldn’t have said it.’

She looked down at him for a long, long moment. He was lying full length on the sand as he sipped his soda water. His hand was still on hers and his big body seemed to go on for ever. He was lazily watching the moon as it slid silently up over the horizon—a thing worth watching—but, by watching it and not her, he made her feel apart from him. As if she still had her solitude yet she wasn’t alone.

It was an impossible feeling to describe. Apart, and yet not. Warmed? Warmer than she’d felt for years.

Just…not so alone.

This man was only here for a month, she told herself, shaken more than she cared to admit by the feelings she was experiencing. She was here for life, and he was here for such a short time. And then she’d be alone again…

‘Why did you come to practise in Bay Beach?’ he asked, and she started. It was as if he’d read her thoughts.

‘There was never a choice.’

‘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.’

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