Can he let go of the past...

...and commit to the future—as a dad?

Paramedic Marty Graham doesn’t do commitment—he knows all too well how damaging family life can be. But single mom Dr. Emma Crawford is different, and she’s looking for a dad for her adorable twin boys... Will one night of sizzling passion change everything for Marty and Emma?

MEREDITH WEBBER lives on the sunny Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia, but takes regular trips west into the Outback, fossicking for gold or opal. These breaks in the beautiful and sometimes cruel red earth country provide her with an escape from the writing desk and a chance for her mind to roam free—not to mention getting some much needed exercise. They also supply the kernels of so many stories that it’s hard for her to stop writing!

Also by Meredith Webber

The Sheikh Doctor’s Bride

The One Man to Heal Her

The Man She Could Never Forget

A Sheikh to Capture Her Heart

The Halliday Family miniseries

A Forever Family for the Army Doc

Engaged to the Doctor Sheikh

A Miracle for the Baby Doctor

From Bachelor to Daddy

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.

From Bachelor to Daddy

Meredith Webber

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-07491-9

FROM BACHELOR TO DADDY

© 2018 Meredith Webber

Published in Great Britain 2018

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

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www.millsandboon.co.uk

For the real Xavier and Hamish,

the two latest wee additions to our family.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

EPILOGUE

Extract

CHAPTER ONE

EMMA CRAWFORD LOOKED anxiously out the kitchen window as she added milk to two small bowls of cereal. Above the tree-line she could see smoke growing thicker but the latest news broadcast had assured her that the bushfires raging through the national park on the outskirts of Braxton were still many miles away, and the town itself wasn’t in danger.

Bushfires were the last thing she’d considered when she’d agreed with her father that a return to the town where he’d been born and grown up would be a good thing. Being able to bring up the boys in a country town had seemed like a wonderful idea, but it had been the thought of the spacious old home, recently left to her father by an aged aunt, that had held the most appeal.

Well, that and a kernel of an idea that had been germinating deep inside her...

Forget that for the moment! The move had been practical and that was what was most important.

City living was all very well, but the prices in Sydney had meant the four of them—her father, the two boys and herself—had been crammed into an apartment that had shrunk as the babies turned to toddlers—growing every day.

No, Braxton, with its district hospital willing to offer her a job in its emergency department, the surrounding national park, a beautiful beach an hour’s drive away, and best of all the rambling old house in its magical, neglected gardens just perfect for two adventurous little boys, had been extremely appealing.

And they had bushfires in Sydney, too, she reminded herself, to shake off the feeling of foreboding the smoke had caused.

She deposited the bowls of cereal on the trays of the highchairs and smiled at the angelic faces of her three-year-old twins, Xavier and Hamish. She was off to work and it was her father who’d be cleaning up the mess that two little horrors could achieve with bowls of cereal.

A quick kiss to each of the still clean faces, a reminder to be good for Granddad, a kiss for her father, as ever standing by, and she was gone, her stomach churning slightly at the thought of the day ahead. Although she’d already spent a few days at the hospital, meeting staff and watching how their system operated, this was her first official work day.

‘It’s called plunging right in,’ Sylvie Grant, the triage nurse on duty, told Emma when she arrived. ‘The fire turned back out Endicott way and some of the firefighters were caught. It’s mostly smoke inhalation—their suits keep them well protected these days. This one’s in four.’

Emma took the chart and headed to the fourth curtained cubicle along the far wall, surprised to find the occupant was a woman.

‘Your working hours must be worse than mine, especially at this time of the year,’ she said, when she’d introduced herself.

The woman smiled then shook her head, pointing to her throat.

‘Sore?’ Emma asked as she checked the monitor by the side of the bed. Blood pressure and heart rate good, oxygen saturation normal, though the oxygen tubes in the woman’s nose would be helping there...

‘Let’s look at your throat,’ she said, using a wooden spatula to hold down the tongue so she could visually check what she could see of the pharynx.

‘I can see why it’s painful to speak,’ she told her patient. ‘You’ve had cold water?’

The patient nodded.

‘No difficulty swallowing?’

Another nod.

‘Okay, then I’ll sort out a drink with a mild topical anaesthetic that should dull the pain, but don’t try to talk. The hot air you breathed in obviously reached as far as your larynx so it’s likely your vocal cords are swollen.’

She explained what she needed to the nurse, wrote it up on the chart with instructions for it to be given four-hourly and was talking to the patient via questions and nods when Sylvie came in.

And the day became just another day in an emergency department—a child with an ear infection, a woman with chest pains that turned out, after an ECG and blood tests, to be a torn pectoral muscle, a child from the school who’d fallen off a swing and gashed his forehead—stitches and possible concussion so she’d keep him in for observation—an elderly man with angina...

Until, at about two in the afternoon when, as often happened in an emergency department, the place emptied out and one of the nurses suggested they all take a break.

Well, all but Sylvie, and a nurse who’d come on duty for the swing shift.

Emma said goodbye to the firefighter, whose husband had arrived to take her home, and made her way to the small room they all used for breaks, coming in as Joss, one of the nurses she’d met the previous day and also on swing shift, bounced in through another door.

‘Hot goss!’ Joss announced, grabbing the attention of the three women already in the room, while Emma fixed herself a cup of tea and pulled a packet of sandwiches from the small fridge, pausing to listen to the tale.

‘I had dinner last night at the top pub so had a front-row seat to the drama. You know that librarian from the school Marty’s been seeing?’

All faces turned expectantly towards her, heads nodding.

‘Well, they’re sitting at the bar, obviously having words, and then she stood up, slapped his face, and stormed out.’

‘Another one bites the dust,’ Angie, the department secretary, said. ‘Wonder who’ll be next.’

They all turned to look at Emma, who had settled into one of the not-very-comfortable chairs and was enjoying her sandwich—especially as she wasn’t expected to share it with two small boys.

Joss shook her head.

‘No way! You know he stays away from hospital staff, besides which Emma’s small and dark, and Marty’s preference is for tall blondes.’

‘I’m not a tall blonde and I went out with him for a while.’ This from a complacently pregnant red-haired woman Emma hadn’t seen before.

‘That’s Helen,’ Angie told her. ‘She’s on the swing shift too, but comes in early to eat our sandwiches because she’s always hungry.’

‘Not true,’ Helen said, although she was eating a sandwich. ‘It’s just that Pete can drop me off so I don’t have to drive, and as for Marty, everyone who goes out with him knows the score. He’s quite open about not wanting a permanent relationship and if you look around the town most of the women he’s been out with are still friends with him. In fact, it was Marty who introduced me to Pete.’

Emma, although curious about this Marty—maybe he was a GP who did visits at the hospital—turned to Helen, asking when the baby was due.

‘Another three months and I’m already so uncomfortable I wonder why I thought it was a good idea.’

She paused, then added, ‘You’ve got twins, is that right?’

‘Small town,’ Joss explained when Emma looked surprised, but she smiled and agreed she did indeed have twins.

‘Three years old, and wild little hooligans already. I’m just lucky I’ve got my father to help with them.’

‘He minds them while you’re at work?’ Helen sounded slightly incredulous as she asked the question, but Emma just nodded.

‘Even does night duty when I’m on night shifts,’ she said.

She didn’t add that it had been her dad’s idea she have the children—well, a child it had been at that time, having two had been a surprise.

Dad had taken very early retirement when she’d all but fallen to pieces—well, had fallen to pieces—after Simon had died, moving in with her and becoming, once again, a carer to her—a role he’d first taken on when she’d been four and her mother had walked out on the pair of them.

A pang of guilt—one she knew only too well—shafted through her. Dad really should have a life of his own...

Perhaps here...

Soon...

But the conversation was continuing around her and she tuned back into it to find the women discussing unmarried men around town who might suit her.

She shouldn’t have been surprised. The remark earlier about her being a possible candidate for the unknown Marty’s new woman told her they already knew she was a single mother—single being the operative word.

Small town, indeed.

But before she could protest that she didn’t want to go out with anyone, the chat swerved off to the fire. Joss lived out of town on a cattle property and although they were always prepared, she thought this time they’d be safe. She was explaining how they kept the paddocks close to the house free of trees or tall grass when Sylvie came to the door.

‘Emma, you’re needed on the chopper. It’ll put down here to collect you. You have about ten minutes. You know where the landing pad is?’

Emma nodded confidently in answer to Sylvie’s question but inside she felt a little nervous. Although, as an emergency department doctor in a small town, she knew she’d be on call for the search and rescue helicopter, and she’d been shown over it by one of the paramedics, she hadn’t had much time to take it all in.

By which she really meant she’d refused to think about it. She’d done the training originally to help her overcome her fear of heights, and although she knew most rescue crews got an adrenaline rush at the thought of a mission, her rush was more one of trepidation than anticipation. Yes, she could do her job and do it well, but no amount of training or practice would ever stop the butterflies in her stomach as she waited to hang in mid-air, suspended from a winch.

‘—party of older children with special needs from the unit at the high school,’ Sylvie was explaining as they left the room together. ‘They were walking the coastal path, just this end of it. Apparently, the wind turned suddenly and the fire came towards them, so you can imagine the panic. We know one child with asthma is having breathing difficulties. No idea about the others but they’re stuck where they are and will have to be evacuated.’

Beach rescue, no winch!

Her tension eased immediately...

Even inside the hospital Emma could hear the helicopter’s approach and hurried to collect the black bag that held all the drugs she could possibly need. But she checked it anyway, relieved to see a spacer for an asthma inhaler, a mask for more efficient delivery of the drug, and hydrocortisone in case the child was badly affected.

Outside, she waited by the building until the bright red and yellow aircraft touched down lightly. Then, ducking her head against the downdraught from the rotors, she ran towards it.

The side door slid open and an unidentifiable male in flight suit and helmet reached out a hand to haul her aboard. She’d barely had time to register a pair of very blue eyes before she was given a not-so-gentle nudge and told to take the seat up front.

She clambered into the seat wondering where the air crew were, but there was no time to ask as the man was already back behind the controls, handing her a helmet with a curt ‘Put it on so we can talk’, before lifting the aircraft smoothly into the air.

Emma strapped herself in, settled the bag at her feet and pulled on the helmet with its communication device.

‘I’m Marty,’ her pilot said, reaching out a hand for her to shake. ‘And I believe you’re Emma. Stephen told me to look out for you.’

‘Stephen?’ She had turned towards him and shaken his hand—good firm handshake—but wasn’t able to take in much of the man called Marty. Unfortunately, checking him out had diverted her from working out who Stephen might be.

‘Stephen Ransome—he was up a couple of months ago to introduce the family to Fran. He’s my foster brother. You know he got married?’

Steve Ransome was this man’s foster brother? Why? How? Not questions she could ask a stranger so she grasped his last bit of information.

‘No, I didn’t know, but I’m so pleased. He’s a wonderful guy and deserves the best.’

‘He is indeed,’ Marty agreed, and Emma turned to look at him—or at what she could see of him in his flight suit and helmet.

Tanned skin, blue eyes, straight nose, and lips that seemed to be on the verge of smiling all the time.

So, this was Marty, subject of the hot gossip and, apparently, the local lover-boy!

Foster brother of Steve, who ran an IVF clinic in Sydney and had been her specialist when she’d decided to use Simon’s frozen sperm to conceive the boys.

Simon...

Just for an instant she allowed herself to remember, felt the familiar stab of pain, and quickly shut the lid on that precious box of memories.

She was moving on—hadn’t that been another reason for the shift to Braxton?

Marty was saying something, pointing out the path of the fire, visible in patches where the smoke had blown away.

She glanced out the window as he manoeuvred the controls to give them both a better view, then straightened up the chopper, intent on reaching their destination.

Marty, the man who didn’t do commitment and was open about it...

As she mentally crossed him off her list—not that she had a list as yet—she wondered why he’d be so commitment-shy.

His growing up in a foster family might be a clue.

Had he been born in a disruptive, and possibly abusive, family situation?

That last could make sense...

But he was talking again and she had to concentrate on what he was saying, not on who he was or why he wasn’t into commitment, although that last bit of info was absolutely none of her business.

‘There’s a coastal path that runs for miles along most of the coast in this area, and people can do long walks, camping on the way, or short walks,’ he explained. ‘The school mini-bus dropped these kids about five miles up the track—there’s a picnic area that’s accessible by road—and the idea was they’d walk back to Wetherby and be picked up there. It’s a yearly tradition at the school, and the kids love it. Unfortunately, the wind spun around from northeast to northwest and the fire jumped the highway and raced through the scrub towards the path.’

‘Poor kids, they must have been terrified,’ Emma said. ‘Do we know how many there are?’

‘Two teachers, a teacher’s aide, and sixteen children,’ Marty said grimly. ‘Hence no aircrew. We stripped everything not needed from the chopper because we’ll only have two chances to lift them all off the little beach they ran to. Once the tide comes in, that’s it, and not knowing the age or size of the kids makes calculations for lift-off weight difficult.’

Emma nodded. She’d learned all about lift-off weight during the training she’d undertaken in Sydney, necessary training as the rescue helicopter at Braxton relied on emergency department doctors on flights when one might be needed.

They were over the fire by now, seeing the red line of flame still advancing inexorably towards the ocean, while behind it lay the black, smouldering bushland.

Two rocky headlands parted to give a glimpse of a small beach and as they dropped lower she saw the group, huddled among the rocks on the southern end, their hands held protectively over their bent heads as the down-thrust from the rotors whipped up the sand.

‘Good kids, did what they were told,’ Marty muttered, more to himself than to Emma.

They touched down, the engine noise ceased, and before she could unstrap herself, Marty was already over the back, opening the doors and leaping down onto the sand.

He turned to grab Emma’s bag then held up a hand to help her down. An impersonal hand, professional, so why didn’t she take it? Jumping lightly to the sand as if she hadn’t noticed it...

‘I’m a trained paramedic so if you need me just yell,’ he was saying as she landed beside him. ‘I’m going to juggle weights in the hope we can get everyone off in two lifts.’

He paused and looked her up and down.

‘You’d be, what—sixty kilos?’

‘Thereabouts,’ she told him over her shoulder, hurrying towards the approaching children. One of the adults—probably a teacher—was helping a young, and very pale, girl across the beach.

‘Let’s sit you down and make you comfortable,’ Emma said to the child, noting at the same time a slight cyanosis of the lips and the movement of the girl’s stomach as she used those muscles to drag air into her congested lungs.

‘I’m Emma, and you’re...?’

‘Gracie,’ the girl managed.

‘She’s had asthma since she was small but this is the first time we’ve seen her like this,’ the woman Emma had taken for a teacher put in.

‘Do you have your puffer with you?’ Emma asked, and was pleased when Gracie produced a puffer from a pocket of her skirt.

‘Good girl. You’ve had some?’

Gracie nodded, while the teacher expanded on the nod.

‘She’s had several puffs but they don’t seem to be helping.’

‘That’s okay,’ Emma said calmly to Gracie. ‘I’ve brought a spacer with me, and you’ll get more of the medicine inside you with the spacer. Have you used one before?’

Another nod as Emma fitted the puffer to the spacer and inserted a dose, then found a mask she could attach to the spacer so the girl could breathe more easily.

‘Just slow down, take a deep breath and hold it, then we’ll do a few more.’ Probably best not to mention twelve at this stage. ‘See how you go.’

The girl obeyed but while it was obvious that the attack had lessened in severity, she was still distressed.

Marty had appeared with the oxygen cylinder and a clip and tiny monitor that would show the oxygen saturation in the blood. He joked as he clipped it on the girl’s finger, and nodded to Emma when the reading was an acceptable ninety-four percent.

The oxygen cylinder wouldn’t be needed yet.

Emma drew the teacher aside and explained what had to be done to fill the spacer and deliver the drug.

‘Are you happy to do that on the way to the hospital?’ she asked, and the teacher nodded.

‘I do it all the time,’ she said. ‘My second youngest is asthmatic. We just didn’t think to carry a spacer with us.’

Which left Emma to fill in the chart with what she’d done, dosage given, and the time. The flight from the hospital had only taken fifteen minutes so the child would be back in the emergency department before there was any need to consider further treatment, and she knew from her briefing that another doctor would have been called in to cover for her.

Marty had done a rough estimate of the weight of his possible passengers and had begun loading them into the helicopter. To the west the smoke grew thicker and the fire burning on the headland to the south told them they were completely cut off.

He looked at the tide, encroaching on the dry sand where he’d landed. He had to move now if he wanted to get back here before the tide was too high.

‘I’m taking the sick child and the teacher with her,’ he said to the new doctor, wondering how she’d cope being left on the beach surrounded by fire on her first day at work.

‘And the teacher’s aide who’s upset,’ he added, concentrating on the job at hand. ‘She’s not likely to be of any use to you, plus another six children. Will you be all right here until I get back? You have a phone? We’re quite close to Wetherby so there’s good coverage.’

‘I have a phone, we’ll be fine, you get going,’ she said, waving him away, and as he left he glanced back, seeing her hustling the children towards the sheltering rocks to avoid the sand spray at take-off.

Sensible woman, he decided. No fuss, no drama, she’ll be good to work with.

He settled the asthmatic girl in the front seat and strapped in those he could, letting the rest sit cross-legged on the floor.

He ran his eyes over them, again mentally tallying their combined weight, adding it to the aircraft weight so he was sure it was below take-off weight. The next trip would be tighter.

They were off, the children sitting as still as they’d been told to, although the urge to get up and run around looking out of windows must have been strong. The teacher he’d brought along would have sorted out those who were strapped in seats, he realised when the excited cries of one child suggested he had at least one hyperactive passenger.

‘Can you manage?’ he asked the teacher, who was in the paramedic’s seat behind the little girl, and had put another dose of salbutamol into the spacer and passed it to his front seat passenger.

‘Just fine,’ the sensible woman assured him. ‘You fly the thing and I’ll look after Gracie. Deep breath now, pet, and try to hold it.’

The school mini-bus was waiting behind the hospital as he landed, and the aide helped the children into it while the teacher took Gracie into Emergency.

‘Most of the parents are at the school,’ the bus driver told him. ‘I’ll take this lot there, then come back.’

Marty nodded, hoping he hadn’t misjudged the tide and that he would be bringing back the other children, the teacher and the unknown Emma Crawford.

As yet unknown? he wondered, then shook his head. Hospital staff were off limits as far as he was concerned.

Besides which, she was short and dark-haired, not tall and blonde like most of his women.

Most of his women! That sounded—what? Izzy would say conceited—as if he thought himself a great Lothario who could have whatever woman he liked, but it really wasn’t like that. He just enjoyed the company of women, enjoyed how they thought, and, to be honest, how they felt in his arms, although many of his relationships had never developed to sexual intimacy.

What colour were her eyes?

Not Izzy’s eyes, obviously, but the short, dark-haired woman’s eyes—the short, dark-haired woman who wasn’t at all his type.

The switch in his thoughts from sexual intimacy to the colour of Emma Crawford’s eyes startled him as he flew back towards the beach.

Meanwhile, the woman who wasn’t at all his type was attempting to calm the children left on the beach. Three were in tears, one was refusing to go in the helicopter, and the others were upset about not being in the first lift. The teacher was doing her best, but they were upsetting each other, vying to see who could be the most hysterical.

‘Come on,’ Emma said, gathering one of the most distressed, a large boy with Down’s syndrome, by the hand, ‘let’s go and jump the little waves as they come up the beach.’

Without waiting for a response, she steered the still-sobbing child towards the water’s edge, and began to jump the waves herself. A few others followed and once they were jumping, the one who still clung to Emma’s hand joined in, eventually freeing her hand and going further into the water to jump bigger waves.

‘Now they’ll probably all compete to go the deepest and we’ll be saving them from drowning,’ Emma said wryly to the teacher, who had joined her at the edge of the water.

‘At least they’ve stopped the hysteria nonsense,’ the teacher said. ‘They work each other up and really...’ She hesitated before admitting, ‘I was shaken by it all myself, so couldn’t calm them down all that well.’

‘No worries,’ Emma told her. ‘They’re all happy now.’

Which was precisely when one of them started to scream and soon the whole lot were screaming.

And pointing.

Emma turned to see a man race down the beach and dive into the water, her fleeting impression one of blackness.

‘He was on fire,’ one of the children said, as they left the water and clustered around their teacher, too diverted by the man to be bothered with screams any more.

Emma waded in to where the man was squatting in the water, letting waves wash over his head, her head buzzing with questions. How cold was the water? How severe his burns? Think shock, she told herself. And covering them...

‘Can you talk to me?’ she asked, and he looked blankly at her.

Shock already?

‘I’m a doctor, I’d like to look at your burns. I’ve got pain relief in my bag on the beach.’

She touched his arm and beckoned towards the beach but he shook his head and ducked under the water again.

Time to take stock.

He was young, possibly in his twenties, and very fair. His hair was cut short, singed on one side and blackened on the other. The skin on his face on the singed side was also reddened, but not worse, Emma decided, than a bad sunburn.

If the rest of his body was only lightly burned then maybe waiting in the water for the helicopter was the best thing for him. She tried to see what she could of his clothes—now mostly burnt tatters of cloth. At least in the water they’d have lost any heat they’d held and not be worsening his injuries.

But shock remained an issue...

‘Can I do anything?’ the teacher called from the beach.

‘If you’ve got towels you could spread a couple on the beach—just shake any sand off them first.’

Not that shaking would remove all the sand, but if she could get him out, lay him down and cover him loosely with more towels, she could take a better look at him and position him to help with possible shock.

The low rumble of the helicopter returning made them all look upward, and Emma was pleased to see the children running back to the rocks.

Pleased to think she could avoid the difficulty of examining him here on the beach, she was also relieved to have help getting the man out of the water.

‘Rescue helicopter,’ she told him, hoping the words might mean something. ‘It will fly you to hospital.’

This time she got a nod, but as she reached out to take his arm and help him to stand upright, he pulled back again.

She didn’t argue—he was probably better staying where he was rather than risk getting sand on his burnt skin.

Marty saw the two heads bobbing in the water below him and wondered what was happening. At least the kids were all over in the rocks.

He hovered for a minute before touching down, checking the seemingly minute area of sand that was still above the incoming tide. It would have to be a really quick in and out.

As soon as he jumped down, the children hurtled towards him, all talking at once. Jumping waves, man on fire, doctor might drown...

He thought the last unlikely but had pieced together the information by the time the teacher arrived to explain.

‘He won’t come out,’ the teacher told him. ‘And every time Emma tries to take his arm, he dives away from her. He might be a foreign backpacker and not understand she’s trying to help him.’

Marty nodded.

Most of the backpackers roaming Australia had some knowledge of English, but the shock of being caught in the fire could have been enough for this poor bloke to lose it. He pulled a couple of space blankets out of the helicopter and gave them to the teacher to hold.

He turned to the kids.

‘Now, all of you sit down on the sand, and the one sitting the stillest gets to fly up front with me, okay?’

The children dropped as if they’d been shot and although Marty doubted they’d stay still long, it should be long enough to get Emma and the man out of the water.

And work out what he was going to do next.

Maybe the man was very small...

Emma had apparently finally persuaded her patient to move towards the shore so Marty had only to go into knee-deep water to reach the six-foot-plus young man.

‘I haven’t been able to get a good look at his burns but I’d say some of them are serious,’ Emma told him, her face pale with worry about this new patient.

She took one of the space blankets from the teacher, who had unfolded the silver material, and wrapped it around the man’s shoulders, looking across him so Marty saw the worry in her serious grey eyes.

Grey, huh?

‘I’ll give him some morphine for the pain, and start a drip.’ She turned to the teacher. ‘Could you manage the fluid bag on the trip back to the hospital? It’s just a matter of holding it above his body and making sure the tube doesn’t kink.’

‘And just why are you asking that?’ Marty demanded as they both helped the man into the chopper and settled him on the stretcher.

She turned and touched his arm, just above the wrist—a simple touch—getting his attention before saying very quietly, ‘Because there’s no way you can take him and me, given how tight your take-off load was already. I’ll just wait until the tide goes down and someone can come for me. I’ll be all right, although you’ll have to phone my dad and let him know what’s happening.’

Marty stared at the small hand, still resting on his arm, then studied the face of this woman whose touch had startled him. She met his gaze unflinchingly.

‘Well?’ she said, removing her hand and concentrating again on their patient.

He shook his head, unable to believe that she’d figured all this out and delivered it to him as naturally as she might tell someone she was ducking out to the shops.

‘That’s right, isn’t it?’ she continued, as she calmly inserted a cannula into the man’s undamaged hand and attached a line for the fluid. ‘The children are upset already, so the teacher has to go back with them. I’m the obvious choice to give up a place.’

‘And you’re happy to stay alone on the beach?’

Grey eyes could flash fire, he discovered.

‘I didn’t say I was happy about it, but as I can’t fly the helicopter I can’t see any other solution. You’ll have some chocolate bars in the helicopter—I’ve never been on one that didn’t—so you can leave me a couple, and some water. I’ll be fine as long as you phone my dad.’

Much as he wanted to argue, there was little point. He couldn’t take off with both of them on board—not safely...

He went with practical.

‘There’s a cellphone signal here, you can phone your father yourself.’

It seemed a heartless thing to say to a small woman he was about to leave on a deserted beach with bushfires raging all around her, but his mind wasn’t working too well.

Something to do with grey eyes flashing fire?

Impossible...

She half smiled as she drew up a calibrated dose of morphine and added it to the drip.

‘I could if my phone hadn’t been in my pocket when I went into the water.’

‘Well, of all the—’

He stopped. Of course, she wouldn’t have considered her phone when there was a man in the water who needed her help.

Realising she was so far ahead of him he should stop talking and just do something, he wetted some cloth with sterile water and laid it over the man’s legs where the stretcher straps would go, so the burns wouldn’t be aggravated.

Or too aggravated.

He tilted the stretcher to raise the patient’s legs, then checked on the children—all of whom were still sitting remarkably motionless on the sand near the door.

‘Okay, you stay,’ he said to Emma, ‘but I’ll be back for you just as soon as I can. Are you winch trained?’

‘I am, but I don’t think that’ll be possible tonight. Even if you’re still on duty, the chopper will be needed to get the young man to a burns unit,’ she told him. ‘I’ll be fine. It’s warm and there’s enough soft sand on the top of the dune that will stay dry so I can sleep on that until someone can get back here. Or if the fire dies down, I can walk out.’

Could he read the nonchalant lie on her face? Emma wondered as she satisfied herself that their patient would make it safely to Braxton Hospital, where he’d be stabilised enough for a flight to the nearest burns unit.

But it wasn’t really a lie. The twins would be fine with her father, they were used to her coming and going, but—

Damn her phone!

Damn not thinking of it!

‘Here’s a spare phone and an emergency kit. Chocolate bars and even more substantial stuff, water, space blanket, torch.’

She spun towards Marty and read the worry in his face as he handed her the phone and backpack. He was hating doing this, leaving her on her own on the beach, but he was a professional and knew it was the only answer.

‘I’ll be back for you,’ he said, touching her lightly on the shoulder, and this time she didn’t argue, backing away towards the rocks to avoid the rotor-generated sandstorm.

CHAPTER TWO

AS THE LITTLE aircraft lifted into the air, she watched it until the noise abated, aware all the time of the part of her body his hand had touched.

It had to be caused by comfort for some kind of atavistic fear, she decided. A reaction to being left so completely alone in a place she didn’t know at all.

* * *

Ring Dad.

Speaking to her father calmed her down. As ever he was his wonderful, patient self, assuring her the boys were already eating their dinner, having had a busy day helping him in the garden.

Emma laughed.

‘I can just imagine their idea of helping!’

‘No,’ her father said, quite seriously. ‘Once I’d explained which were weeds to be pulled out and which were plants to be left behind, they only removed about half a dozen chrysanthemums that needed thinning anyway, and one rather tatty-looking rosemary that looked as if it was happy to give up the struggle to live.’

There was a pause before her father added, ‘But more importantly, what about you? You’re out near the coast path? I saw on TV that the fire had swung that way.’

‘I’m on a beach, and quite safe. I’ve even had a swim.’

She told him about the man in the water and made light of being left behind, doing her best to give the impression she wasn’t alone.

‘I’m just not sure what time the chopper will be able to get back,’ she told him, ‘so I may not be home before morning.’

For all Marty’s ‘I’ll be back’ she just couldn’t see it happening. The dune at the top of the beach might still be dry, but it would be impossible to land anything bigger than a drone on it.

She spoke to both the boys, who were full of their gardening exploits, then said goodbye.

An emergency telephone would be kept fully charged, but it was not for idle chatter. Who knew when she might need it again?

* * *

Marty delivered his passengers to the hospital, following the stretcher with the burns victim into Emergency. He’d radioed ahead to make sure there was a senior doctor on duty, and was relieved to see Matt, another of the chopper pilots also there on standby.

‘I’ll do the major hospital run,’ he told Marty. ‘You’ve had enough fun for one day.’

As he’d spent hours this morning helping out with water bombing the fire, Marty knew his official flying hours were just about up. But his day was far from finished. He left the hospital, getting a cab back to the rescue service base where his pride and joy was kept—his own, smaller, private helicopter.

A quick but thorough check and he was in the air again, this time heading for the seaside town of Wetherby. The man he and all his foster siblings called Pop had levelled a safe landing area for him behind the old nunnery that had housed his foster family, and within ten minutes he was home.

Home. Funny word, that—four small letters but, oh, the massive meaning of it, the security it held, the memories...

Hallie was first out through the back garden to meet him, Pop emerging more slowly from his big shed. Both of them were older now, well into their seventies, but still fit and healthy, always ready with help or advice, or even just a cup of tea. They had been the first people in the world to offer him love—unconditional and all-encompassing love—and were still the most important people in his life.

He lifted Hallie in the air and swung her around, explaining as he swung that he couldn’t stay. He’d left a woman on Izzy’s porpoise beach and had to get her off while the tide was still high enough to take the jet ski in.

‘What jet ski?’ Hallie demanded. ‘You boys took all your fast, noisy toys when you left here.’

He grinned at her.

‘The jet skis at the surf club are bigger, stronger, and faster than any we ever had, poor orphans that we were!’ he said, unable to resist teasing her. ‘I’ve phoned a mate to have one fuelled up for me.’

‘You’re going around there on a jet ski in the middle of the night.’

He had to laugh.

‘Hallie, it’s barely seven o’clock. We’ll be back before you know it. I’ll take her straight to Izzy and Mac’s as she’ll need a shower and some dry clothes. Something of Nikki’s will probably fit her. There’s not much of her.’

‘Then bring her here for dinner when she’s dry,’ Hallie insisted, but he shook his head.

‘She has her own family to get back to,’ he said, ‘but we have to come back here to get the chopper so I’ll introduce you then.’

He turned to Pop.

‘Okay if I take your ute down to the club?’

‘Just don’t run into anything,’ Pop growled, and they all laughed as the ute was ancient and, having survived numerous teenagers learning to drive in it, was a mass of dents and scratches.

Down at the club, while his mate checked the fuel on the jet-ski, he called the emergency phone, and knew from Emma’s voice when she answered that he’d startled her.

‘It’s okay, it’s only me, Marty. I’m coming to get you and want you to stand in the middle of the beach and point the torch that’s in the emergency kit straight out to sea so I don’t run aground on the rocks.’

Silence on the other end told him she didn’t know what to make of these instructions, but the jet ski motor was on and he had to get going, this time while the tide was high, not low.

‘See you soon, don’t forget the light,’ he said, and disconnected.

Fortunately, the sea was calm, as it often was when a westerly had been blowing across the land. But his heart raced as he thought of the woman he’d left on the beach—standing there in the darkness, the world behind her ringed with fire. Surely she’d be...

Frightened?

The thought made him smile. He might not know Emma Crawford very well—not at all, in fact—but he doubted fear would be upmost in her mind.

Apprehension, yes, but fear?

He revved the engine, anxious to get to her—frightened or not, it must be an unnerving experience for her, especially on her first day at work!

* * *

Emma stared at the phone in her hand.

Had it really rung?

Was Marty serious about coming in by water to get her off the beach—what little of it was left?

Presumably...

She lifted the emergency backpack he’d left with her, took out the torch, and slipped the pack onto her shoulders. She then paced the beach and decided where the centre of it was, waded in knee deep then turned on the torch as instructed, pointing its beam out to sea.

She was just beginning to feel a little foolish when she heard the loud roar of an engine, definitely somewhere in the darkness of the ocean, then light appeared, at first shining across the width of the bay, the motor throttling back but still very loud in the otherwise silent night.

Now the light turned towards her and, as if drawn along the path of torchlight, a large jet ski rumbled her way, the noise cutting as it approached so it drifted right up to where she stood.

Marty was off in an instant.

‘On you hop,’ he said cheerfully, while she was still considering what seemed like a miracle night rescue.

‘Quickly—we need the tide high now,’ he added, holding the craft steady in the small waves while she clambered on board.

‘Now shove back to make room for me, then hang on tight,’ he said, and before she could say thank you, or marvel at the fact that he had come for her, he had the craft moving again and they were off, the roaring motor preventing even the most basic of conversations.

But she did hang on tight, very tightly indeed, for they were travelling at what seemed a ridiculous pace, bouncing over waves as they sped back to wherever he’d come from.

Wetherby?

The beach town she and the twins had visited last week?

Was that the closest place?

And was she thinking these thoughts to keep from considering the strange reaction she was experiencing with her arms around a man’s body, her breasts pressed against his back—the solidity of it, the different feel...

The maleness...

Not that she’d been clasping a woman’s back recently, but there was something decidedly odd going on within her body.

Decidedly odd and totally unnecessary, but just as she considered not holding on quite as tightly, they leapt another wave and her arms tightened around him even more.

Maybe as well as needing a father for the boys, she needed a man.

Although friends and relations had been suggesting such a thing for some years now, she’d never given it a thought, probably because she’d never experienced a physical...

What?

She didn’t want to call it need, but it was certainly a male-female kind of thing she was feeling right now.

Though this particular man—a commitment-shy lover boy—was definitely not for her.

There was no way she could tarnish the memory of the intense and beautiful love she and Simon had shared with a quick affair to satisfy a...

‘Need’ did seem to be the word...

Consumed by her thoughts, she was unaware of the silence that had fallen, but the jolt as the jet ski glided up a ramp onto the deck outside the surf lifesaving clubhouse told her the journey was over.

She let go of the body that had started such bizarre thoughts in her head, and dismounted as quickly as she could, although the wet clothes she was wearing made that difficult, sticking to the plastic seat and tangling around her legs.

‘Thank you,’ she said, as Marty put out his hand to steady her. ‘And for rescuing me as well. I’d have been okay staying there till morning, but Dad would have worried.’

‘Only Dad?’ Marty queried, and it must have been the tiredness that was creeping over her that stopped her thinking the question at all odd.

‘Well, the boys as well, but they’ve grown up with my erratic hours of work, and my coming and going, and they don’t seem to mind. Dad’s been there for them far more than I have.’

She’d smiled at him as she’d explained, this small, wet, matter-of-fact woman, and Marty didn’t know if it had been the smile or the love she somehow invested in the word ‘Dad’ that caused an uneasy lurch in his usually reliable stomach.

‘This way,’ he said, and although he would normally have slung an arm around a woman’s shoulders to lead her to the car, tonight he couldn’t do it, so he stomped ahead, slightly perturbed, although he didn’t do perturbed any more than he did stomach lurches. For most of his life he’d kept his demons at bay by being the joker, the light-hearted mate, just a ‘good bloke’ in the Australian vernacular...

He grabbed a couple of towels Hallie had thrown into the ute, and handed one to Emma, using the other to dab himself dry before tying it around his waist. Woman-like, she wound hers around above her breasts, though not before he’d noticed the way her wet clothing clung to a very curvy figure.

You like tall, slim, blonde women, don’t date hospital staff, and don’t do commitment, he reminded himself. And a woman with ‘boys’ would be looking for commitment. Would need commitment...

‘We’re both wet through and will be chilled to the bone by the time we get home so I’m taking you to Izzy and Mac’s,’ he told his passenger. ‘Izzy’s one of my foster sisters, and Mac, her husband, is the local doctor here in Wetherby. They actually met at the little cove where we rescued the kids, only they were rescuing a porpoise. Their daughter Nikki is about your size, and should be able to provide some dry clothes.’

Sensible talk—that was the way to handle the strangeness he was experiencing, which, as he now considered it, was probably caused by his having to leave her alone on the beach in the first place. It had brought out all his protective instincts, nothing more...

Izzy, obviously primed by Hallie, had Emma through the door and into the bathroom while he was barely out of the ute.

Mac met him on the wide veranda of the centuries-old doctor’s house.

‘You can use the back bathroom, I’ve put some dry duds in there,’ he said, waving Marty along the veranda, following to ask about the rescues, about the injuries to the burns victim, the hospital network having already filled Mac in on what had transpired during the afternoon.

‘At least the temperature and the wind have dropped,’ he said, ‘and the forecast for tomorrow is rain, so it should dampen what’s left of the fires on the coastal fringe, although those in the national park will be harder to stop.’

‘Great news,’ Marty replied, pleased to have talk of bushfires diverting his brain from its seeming obsession with Emma. He could do bushfire talk! ‘The firefighters will get a break, and with decent rain these might be the last of the fires for the season.’

‘Let’s hope so,’ Mac said. ‘I’ll leave you to have a shower, then Izzy’s made some sandwiches. If you want to get straight back to Braxton you can eat them on the way.’

Marty turned in the doorway of the bathroom that had been tacked onto the veranda at the back of the house.

‘Thanks, Mac, I appreciate it.’

Mac smiled at him.

‘That’s what family’s for,’ Mac reminded him.

Marty took the words into the shower with him and as the water splashed down over his body he thought of the main one—family. How lucky had he been to have landed with foster parents whose determination had been not merely to provide a home for abandoned or damaged children but to provide them with a family—to meld them into a family in the truest sense of the word—a group where they belonged?

But as he dressed in dry, borrowed clothes, his mind returned to Emma and her family—boys, Dad, her—but no wedding ring and no mention of a husband.

Not that it was any of his business, and neither was he interested in finding out more. He tried not to think about the fact that, given the gossip mill that was the hospital, he’d soon know everything there was to know about Emma Crawford, and probably far more than she wanted people to know.

He was smiling to himself as he pushed open the door into the kitchen and greeted Izzy with a kiss.

‘No Nikki?’ he asked, looking around the room, taking in Emma’s appearance in long shorts and a slightly too tight T-shirt, damp dark hair framing her face like a pixie’s in a story book.

‘Studying with her friend,’ Izzy explained. ‘Now, Emma’s having a cup of tea. Do you want one or do you need to get back to Braxton? I’ve made sandwiches to go if you can’t stay.’

‘We’ll go but take the sandwiches, not that I expect we’ll be able to eat them all because you know Hallie, she’ll have a basket of goodies already packed into the helicopter. But thanks.’

He dropped another kiss on her cheek, then bent and kissed her baby bump.

‘That’s from your Uncle Marty, Bump. I hope you’re behaving yourself in there.’

Mac and Izzy laughed, but although Emma smiled, he sensed a sadness in her.

Or maybe it was just plain exhaustion. For a first day at work, it had been a beauty!

‘Come on,’ he said to her. ‘Let’s get you home.’

Had he spoken too abruptly—too roughly—that she looked startled and stumbled slightly as she stood up, and her hand shook as she put her cup on the table?

‘Are you okay?’ he asked, when they’d said their goodbyes and were back in the ute.

‘Fine,’ she said quietly, ‘though I’ll be happy to get home. It’s been a long first day.’

* * *

But was she entirely happy to be going home?

Of course she was.

Then why the little niggle somewhere deep inside her that suggested she’d have liked to stay a little longer with Marty’s family, sitting in the kitchen, talking about nothing in particular?

She thrust the thought away, aware that it was something to do with being in a new town, and not having had time to make friends, her life revolving around the boys and now work.

‘Tired?’ Marty asked as they pulled up in the shed behind a huge old building.

‘I think I must be,’ Emma replied, deciding that would explain all the strange things going on in her head.

‘Well, I’ll have you home in no time,’ he told her as he led the way to where two elderly people waited by a little helicopter. ‘Do you have a car at the hospital?’

His hand was behind her back, guiding her through the dark yard, barely touching her, yet the—probably imagined—warmth from his hand was as distracting as the niggle had been earlier.

‘Car? Hospital?’ he asked again as she didn’t reply.

She shook her head, hoping to clear it.

‘No, I walk to work.’

‘Then I can run you home. The good thing about Braxton is that nowhere’s far from anywhere else.’

The small helicopter looked like a toy after the rescue aircraft.

‘This is yours?’ she asked, glad of distraction.

‘My pride and joy,’ he told her, ‘and the two people standing beside it are my—well, mother and father, Hallie and Pop.’

He introduced Emma, explaining she was new to Braxton.

‘I’ve put a bit of food in a basket behind the seats,’ Hallie told them.

‘And Izzy packed us sandwiches,’ Marty said. ‘We might have to stop on the way home for a picnic.’

Everyone laughed, but the picnic idea had taken hold in Emma’s head. It was such a short flight back to Braxton, and eating on the way would be awkward.

‘If you’re driving me home and not in a hurry to get back to your place, we could picnic on my veranda,’ she found herself saying as they flew over the mountain range between the two towns. ‘The boys will be in bed, and Dad will happily join you for a beer if you fancy one, or a glass of wine if you’d prefer. I think after the day I’ve had I’ll be having one.’

The words rattled out of her mouth, and the pleasure she felt when he agreed was all to do with making friends—well, a friend.

And having worked with him and seen him with his family, she knew he’d be a good friend to have.

Or so she told herself.

But he would be a good friend to have, an inner voice insisted. Hadn’t he introduced one of the nurses to her husband?

Surely she wasn’t thinking he might do the same for her? This from the more sensible of her inner voices...

And she didn’t really want a husband, did she?

The thought reminded her once more of loss and pain—first her mother, then Simon. No, she couldn’t go through that again, the pain of loss was just too much to bear. But it would be nice to have a father for the boys.

The voices stopped arguing as the helicopter touched down back in Braxton, and Marty transferred wet clothes and the picnic goodies to his four-wheel drive.

Although now a slight uneasiness had crept into Emma’s head to replace the argument.

Oh, for heaven’s sake! Sensible inner voice to the rescue. You’re only going to share a meal with a colleague, what the hell is wrong with that?

‘Wow, you live in this place?’ Marty said as they drove up the street towards the big house. ‘I’ve often wondered about it because for years it seemed abandoned, then suddenly it came to life again.’

They pulled up outside the old federation house, with its fresh white paint, wide verandas and dark green roof, and Emma saw it through Marty’s eyes—the front steps climbing up to the veranda, the wide hall with its gleaming polished floorboards leading off it, living and dining rooms off to one side, bedrooms and bathrooms off the other. And at the end of it the kitchen, already the heart of the home.

‘It was Dad’s aunt’s place and she was ill for a long time before she died. Dad grew up in Braxton—a little further up the hill. The four of us, me, Dad and the boys, had been crammed into a tiny flat in Sydney so when this became available we couldn’t move fast enough. I think we’d have come even if I hadn’t been able to get the job. Moved here, and just believed something would eventually come up.’

‘I doubt any country hospital would turn away a doctor—particularly an ED specialist.’

Having heard them arrive, her father had turned on the light over the front steps and was waiting at the top of them.

‘Dad, this is Marty...’ Emma stopped and turned to her companion. ‘Do you know, I’ve no idea of your second name. But my father’s name is Ned, Ned Hamilton.’

Somehow they sorted out the confusion, Marty supplying an unexceptional surname of Graham, and explaining about the food.

After which, as always seemed to happen these days, Dad took charge, bringing out plates, and napkins, cold beer and a bottle of chilled white wine, a couple of wine glasses dangling precariously between the fingers of one hand.

Emma took her wet clothes through to the laundry and glanced in at the sleeping boys before joining the party. Her father was telling Marty that he was kept fairly busy by the boys during the day but was slowly reconnecting with old school friends.

‘The boys will be in kindergarten from the beginning of next term so he’ll get more free time,’ Emma put in, but her father and Marty had discovered an acquaintance in common. One of Marty’s older foster sisters—one of the first children fostered by Hallie and Pop just over forty years ago—had been at school with Ned.

‘Carrie has twins too,’ Marty said to Ned—and just when had he found out her boys were twins? She tried very hard not to refer to them as ‘the twins’ as though they were one entity.

She tuned back into the conversation and found that this unknown woman’s twin daughters were in their final year at high school and very experienced babysitters.

‘In fact,’ Marty said, as Emma poured herself a glass of wine and selected a sandwich, ‘I could check whether they’re already booked for Saturday week. It’s the annual barn dance for the animal shelter just outside town. A barn dance is a bit old hat for teenagers these days so they won’t be going to it, but for you, Ned, it would be a chance to catch up with other old school friends, and I’m sure you’d enjoy it, too, Emma. I’d be happy to take you both. I always go.’

Which certainly wasn’t a date, Emma realised, while her father was agreeing enthusiastically to this plan, and reminiscing about the good times he’d had at the annual event.

‘It’s been going that long?’ Emma asked, and Marty laughed.

‘Your father’s not exactly ancient,’ he reminded her. He glanced at Ned. ‘You’d be, what, mid-fifties?’

‘Spot on,’ her father replied. ‘I took early—well, very early—retirement when Emma needed a bit of help, though for a few years I did a lot of supply teaching, filling in for absent teachers.’

Marty was delving into Hallie’s basket as her father explained, and now produced a paper plate piled with home-made biscuits and another with slices of chocolate cake.

‘Heavens!’ Emma said. ‘There’s enough food here to feed an army.’

‘Or two always hungry little boys who’ll love these leftovers.’ Her father smiled as he spoke.

‘Though, really, Marty should take it,’ Emma suggested.

‘And deny the boys Hallie’s chocolate cake? I think not!’

Laughing blue eyes met hers across the table and for a moment the air caught in her throat, just stuck there, as if she’d forgotten how to breathe.

Of course she could breathe!

In, out, in, out—simple as that.

But it seemed to take forever to get it sorted...

Not that her absence from the conversation was noticed as her father was now exclaiming about Hallie and Pop still being in Wetherby.

‘I met them, you know, quite a few times when I was a member of the surf club, and seeing a bit of Carrie.’

‘Small towns,’ Marty said, smiling again, but this time, thank goodness, at her father. ‘Carrie was one of the first children they took in, she was about twelve at the time so she was their first teenager. My lot—me, Izzy and Stephen, both of whom Emma’s met—and a couple of others were the last. I think all of us being teenagers together finally convinced them they’d done enough.’

‘What didn’t kill them made them stronger,’ her father remarked with a smile.

‘Dad was a high-school teacher so he knows all about teenagers,’ Emma explained, mostly to prove to herself she could speak as well as breathe...

The evening ended with complicated arrangements being made for her father and the boys to meet up with Carrie and her twins, the potential babysitters, and her father walked out to the car with Marty while Emma cleared the table and put everything away.

‘Well, that was fun,’ her father said, wandering back into the kitchen a little later.

The words sent a sharp pang of guilt spearing through Emma.

‘I’m sorry, Dad, I’ve been so selfish, letting you give up your life to help me out, first when Simon died and I lost the baby, and then with the boys. I hadn’t realised quite how selfish I’ve been until tonight.’

Her father put his arms around her.

‘You needed me back then, so where else would I have been? And wasn’t it me who talked you into having the boys, and didn’t I promise to look after them for you?’

He kissed her on the top of her head, adding, ‘And I’ve enjoyed every minute of it, but tonight, meeting Marty, and sitting out there just talking about nothing in particular, has shown me how restricted our lives have become. That was natural when the boys were small and very demanding, and the flat was really no place to be entertaining, but we both need to get out a bit more now, and the barn dance is a splendid idea.’

He was voicing the feeling she’d had back at Izzy and Mac’s place—voicing the fact that their lives had become too constrained, too centred around work and childcare.

She moved a little away from him and kissed his cheek.

‘You’re right,’ she agreed. ‘It’s time for both of us to get out and about. Who knows what’s waiting for us out there in the wild country town of Braxton?’

Her father chuckled and they parted for the night, Emma going quietly into the boys’ room and watching her sons sleep for a few minutes before dropping a kiss on each of their heads and taking herself off to bed.

Where, exhausted as she was, sleep was a long time coming.

Mainly because every time she closed her eyes she saw an image of a pair of laughing blue eyes.

She’d no sooner banished this image—with difficulty—when the barn dance hove into her mind. Though with Dad going too, the gossip mill could hardly slot her into the ranks of one of ‘Marty’s women’.

Could it?

CHAPTER THREE

IT WAS SOMEWHERE during this mental argument that she fell asleep, to be woken by two very excited boys telling her God had brought them a puppy.

‘We’ve been praying and praying,’ Xavier was saying, while Hamish, usually the leader, echoed the words.

‘Praying and praying?’ Emma muttered weakly, then remembered the playgroup her father and the boys had attended at a local church in Sydney.

But praying for a puppy?

It was the first she’d heard of it!

The boys were now bouncing on her bed so any thought of going back to sleep was forgotten, while their combined pleas to come and see it dragged her reluctantly out of bed.

The ‘puppy’, sitting quietly in the kitchen listening to a lecture from her father on a dog’s place being in the yard, was the size of a small pony. It leapt up in delight when it saw the boys and lolloped towards them.

And her, where it slobbered enthusiastically all over her pyjamas.

However, that gave her more time to check it out. For all it had, at some time, been well cared for, it was painfully thin and none too clean.

‘Sit,’ she said, and was surprised when he obeyed immediately. He’d definitely been cared for by someone who’d taken the time to train him.

But a dog?

A strange dog?

‘I think we should leave him outside until he’s had a bath,’ she said, which brought wails from both boys.

‘Well, go and play with him on the veranda,’ she compromised, following them as far as the door so she could keep an eye on all three of them, mainly the dog.

‘We can’t keep him,’ she said to her father over her shoulder. ‘He’ll just be something else for you to look after. Besides, he’s sure to belong to someone. We can take a photo, put up posters, maybe ring the local radio.’

Her father nodded.

‘I’ll do all that, and I’ll take him to the vet, get him checked out. He might be micro-chipped. But if no one claims him, well, the boys do love him already and he’d be great for them. I’ve been watching him closely and he’s certainly not dangerous. The yard’s all fenced and he’s big enough to handle two rough little boys.’

Emma shook her head, then realised the dog had taken up far too much time already and if she didn’t hurry she’d be late for work.

But a dog?

Were they settling in to country life so quickly?

The ED was quiet when she arrived, not quite late but close, and the chat about the triage desk was of the forthcoming barn dance—apparently one of the big events in the Braxton social calendar.

Maybe the animal shelter would take the dog.

She was about to ask when the radio came on—an ambulance ten minutes out. Sylvie lifted the receiver to her ear so the whole room didn’t have to hear, relaying information to Emma as it came through.

‘Atrial fibrillation, blood pressure not too bad but pulse of one hundred and forty.’

Emma’s mind clicked into gear. Amiodarone drip. The cardiologist she’d always worked with recommended an initial IV treatment of one hundred and fifty mg over ten minutes, followed by sixty mg an hour over six hours and thirty mg an hour over eighteen hours.

But...

‘Is there a local cardiologist?’ she asked Sylvie, although she was reasonably sure the town would be too small to support one.

‘No, but we have a fly-in-fly-out cardio man. He does two days a week in his office in Retford, then flies around about six country towns each fortnight. We usually phone him with any problems, and, without checking to be sure, I think he’s due here tomorrow.’

Emma nodded. Presumably she could phone him, as she’d have done in the city, although down there the specialist she’d phoned had usually been in the same hospital or in rooms close by. It was strange the shift from a huge city hospital to a small country one, but the work remained the same.

‘Could you get him on the phone for me?’ she asked Sylvie as she walked away to meet the ambulance and its passenger.

‘It happens every so often,’ the patient told her cheerfully, obviously unfazed by the sudden onset of fibrillation. He was a man in his late thirties or early forties, she guessed, and sensible enough to know when he needed medical help.

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