“So you’re rescuing me?

Like you’ve rescued three kids and a dog already?”

Life has taught Dr. Rachel Tilding the hard way that she can’t afford to let her guard down—ever! Except her new boss, Dr. Tom Lavery, hasn’t read the memo. He’s known for sheltering all manner of waifs and strays, and Rachel feels uncomfortably like Tom’s latest project! She should be pushing back, but somehow Tom and his boys are starting to heal her wounded heart…

MARION LENNOX has written over one hundred romance novels, and is published in over one hundred countries and thirty languages. Her international awards include the prestigious RITA® Award (twice!) and the RT Book Reviews Career Achievement Award for ‘a body of work which makes us laugh and teaches us about love’. Marion adores her family, her kayak, her dog, and lying on the beach with a book someone else has written. Heaven!

Also by Marion Lennox

Saving Maddie’s Baby

A Child to Open Their Hearts

Falling for Her Wounded Hero

Reunited with Her Surgeon Prince

The Billionaire’s Christmas Baby

Finding His Wife, Finding a Son

English Lord on Her Doorstep

The Baby They Longed For

Cinderella and the Billionaire

Second Chance with Her Island Doc

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.

Rescued by the Single Dad Doc

Marion Lennox

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-0-008-90203-2

RESCUED BY THE SINGLE DAD DOC

© 2019 Marion Lennox

Published in Great Britain 2019

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.

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Note to Readers

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With thanks to Mary Michele,

whose kindness made this book so much easier.

This book is for Denise, who, with her wobbly mate

Molly, helps make this place home.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

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

Extract

About the Publisher

CHAPTER ONE

DR RACHEL TILDING enjoyed treating kids. If they couldn’t speak it was often up to Rachel to figure out what was wrong, but in general kids’ needs were uncomplicated. They didn’t intrude on her personal space. If all Rachel’s patients were kids—without parents—she might well be looking at a different career path.

As it was, her aim was to be a radiologist, interpreting results from state-of-the-art equipment and having little to do with patients at all. But the terms of her scholarship specified she had to spend her first two years after internship as a family doctor in Shallow Bay. She’d geared herself to face it.

What she hadn’t prepared herself for was living next to a house full of kids. Their noise was bad enough, plus the yips of excitement from their dog. Then, a mere two hours after she’d moved in, a ball smashed through her window, almost making her drop the carton of glassware she’d been unpacking. The ball landed in a spray of shattered glass in the kitchen sink.

Count to ten, she told herself. These are kids. Don’t yell.

She’d been telling herself that since she’d arrived. These were her new neighbours. It wasn’t their fault that she valued privacy above all else. Someone would call them in for dinner soon. They’d go to bed and she’d have the silence she craved.

But kids as such close neighbours…

Shallow Bay’s nurse-manager had sent her pictures of this little house, a pretty-as-a-picture cottage surrounded by bushland. A five-minute walk took her up to the Shallow Bay Hospital, and five minutes in the other direction took her down to the beach.

What the pictures hadn’t shown, however, was that it was one of three cottages, huddled together in the dip before the bay. Hers was the smallest. The largest was the middle one and that seemed to be filled with boys.

She wasn’t sure how many yet. The noise they were making could have denoted a small army. She’d been trying to figure how she could intervene without turning Shallow Bay’s new doctor into Dragon Lady.

Now she had no choice. A cricket ball was sitting in her kitchen sink, surrounded by a spray of glass.

But before she could react, a shock of curly red hair appeared at the shattered window. Underneath the hair were two huge green eyes, fear-filled. The window was high for a child, so he’d obviously hoisted himself up to see where his ball had landed.

The head disappeared and a hand appeared in its place. And groped into the sink. Through shattered glass.

‘No!’ She’d been standing behind packing boxes on the far side of the table. She launched herself across the kitchen, but the groping hand reached the ball before she did.

There was a yelp of pain and then hand and ball disappeared.

She hauled the back door open, raced down the steps and cut the child off before he could back away. He’d lurched back from the window and was staggering.

‘Don’t move!’ Her order contained all the authority of a doctor who’d spent her two years of internship working in emergency medicine. The child froze, staring down at his hand in horror.

Their little dog, a black and white terrier—a ball of pseudo-aggression—came tearing across the lawn and barked hysterically, as if it was Rachel who was the intruder on her own lawn.

It had…three legs?

‘Tuffy! Tuffy, back. He won’t bite. Please… Kit’s just getting our ball.’ The voice from the far side of the hedge sounded terrified. The oldest child?

They were all redheads. The two on the far side of the hedge looked about ten and six. The child under her window was maybe eight.

They all had huge green eyes. Pale skin with freckles. They all looked rigid with fear.

Maybe her voice had done that to them. Even the little dog was backing away.

Was she so scary?

Rachel had little to do with kids except as patients, but the middle child was now definitely a patient. He was still clutching the ball, but he was holding it out in front of him. A line of crimson was dripping onto the garden bed.

‘Don’t move,’ she said again, because the child was looking in panic across to his brothers—they had to be brothers—and she knew his instinct was to run. ‘I’m not angry.’ Okay, maybe she was, but this wasn’t the time to admit it. There’d be an adult somewhere, responsible for leaving this group unsupervised. They deserved a piece of her mind, not this child. One thing Rachel was very careful about—a lesson learned from the long years of an unjust childhood—was that fairness was everything.

‘You’ve cut your hand on the glass,’ she told the little boy as she reached him. She took his arm and raised it, applying pressure around the wrist. ‘You need to stay still.’

The eyes that looked up at her were huge. He looked terrified. There’d be pain. With this much blood, it had to be deep. The blood wasn’t pumping—the radial artery must surely be intact—but the gash from multiple glass shards tentacled out from wrist to palm. In a child, this amount of bleeding could well lead to collapse.

‘I’m a doctor,’ she told him, gentling her voice. ‘The glass has cut your hand, but we can fix it. Right now, though, it’s looking messy, so we need to stop it bleeding. You’ll feel better if you don’t look at it until we’ve cleaned it up. Look at your brothers, or look at the hole in my window. That’s quite a hole.’

She was manoeuvring his hand upward, edging her body to block his gaze. The ball fell to the ground as she lifted his hand high, curling his palm in slightly so the hand created its own pressure on the pierced palm. There could well be shards of glass in there but now wasn’t the time to remove them. She needed a surgery, equipment, help.

‘Can you run inside and get your mum or dad?’ she called to the two boys on the far side of the hedge. ‘Ask them to bring out a towel. Run!

‘Tell me your name,’ she asked the little boy.

She got a blank look in response. Fear.

‘He’s Christopher,’ the elder of the pair behind the hedge called. ‘But we call him Kit. Are you really a doctor?’

‘I am. Could you fetch your parents please? Now! Kit needs your help.’

‘We don’t have parents. Just a stepfather.’

Just a stepfather.

Why did that make her freeze?

The wave of nausea that swept through her was as vicious as it was dumb. Her past was just that—past—and it had no place here, now. Somehow, she managed to fight back the bile rising in her throat, to haul herself together, to become the responsible person these boys needed.

She needed a plan.

She needed a responsible adult to help her.

Her phone was inside. Where had she put it? Somewhere in the muddle of unpacked goods?

She daren’t let Kit’s arm go to find it herself. He was too big for her to pick up and carry. He was also looking increasingly pale. Had these kids been left on their own?

‘Where’s your stepfather now?’ she asked, and stupidly she heard the echoes of her dumb, visceral response to the word in her voice.

‘At work,’ the eldest boy told her.

‘Is there anyone else here?’

‘Christine’s inside, watching telly.’

‘Then fetch her,’ she ordered. ‘Fast. Tell her Kit’s hurt his hand and he’s bleeding. Tell her I need a towel and a phone. Run.’

‘Can you just put a plaster on it?’ the older boy asked. ‘We don’t want to tell Christine. She’ll tell Tom.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘Marcus. And this is Henry. Please don’t tell. If we misbehave, Tom’ll make us go back to our grandparents.’

‘You haven’t misbehaved. The ball broke my window, not you,’ she told him. She’d tell him anything he liked to get help right now. ‘Marcus, this cut is too big for a plaster. Kit needs Christine. I need Christine. Run.’

He shouldn’t have left the boys with Christine. Normally Tom Lavery used his next-door neighbour, Rose, as childminder. Rose was in her seventies, huge-hearted, reliable. The boys loved her, but this morning she’d fallen and hurt her hip. It was only bruised, thank heaven, but she needed rest.

This weekend was also the annual field-day-cum-funfair at Ferndale, two hours’ drive across the mountains. For the isolated town of Shallow Bay, the Ferndale Show was huge. Practically the entire population took part, with cattle parades and judging, baking competitions, kids’ activities. As Shallow Bay emptied, Christine, Rose’s niece, had become his childminder of last resort.

‘Worrying?’ Roscoe, Shallow Bay’s hospital nurse administrator, was watching Tom from the far side of the nurses’ station. Tom was supposed to be filling in patient histories. Instead he’d turned to the window, looking down towards the cottage.

‘Go home and check,’ Roscoe said. For a big man—make that huge—Roscoe was remarkably perceptive. ‘You’ll be writing Bob up for antacids instead of antibiotics if you’re not careful.’

‘I’m careful.’ He hauled his attention back to his job. ‘Christine can cope.’

‘As long as there’s no ad for hair curlers on telly. You know she’s a dipstick,’ Roscoe said bluntly.

Roscoe’s smile was half hidden by his beard, but it didn’t hide the sympathy. ‘Go home, doc,’ he told him again. ‘I’ll ring you if I need you, and I’ll drop these charts off for you to fill in after the boys go to sleep tonight. I wish you could be taking the boys across to Ferndale, but hey, you have another doctor here on Monday. All problems solved, no?’

No, Tom thought as he snagged the next chart and started writing. It was all very well for Roscoe to say he could do these tonight, but if he fell behind in his paperwork he’d never catch up.

Another hour…

But he glanced at the window one last time. The boys were capable of anything.

For what was maybe the four thousandth time over the last two years he thought, What have I let myself in for?

How long’s for ever?

And then his attention was diverted. There was a car speeding up the track from the bay. A scarlet roadster. A two-seater.

Tom’s cottage was one of only three down that road. Few people used it except for Tom, Rose and Rose’s occasional visitors.

And the new doctor? He’d been told she’d collected the key from Reception a couple of hours back. Poppy, the junior nurse who’d given her the key, had been frustratingly vague when asked for a description. ‘Quite old, really,’ she’d said, which in Poppy’s twenty-two-year-old eyes meant anything over twenty-three. ‘And ordinary. Just, you know, dullsville when it comes to clothes. Didn’t say much, just took the key and said she’d be at work at nine on Monday. She drives a cool car, though.’

If this was it, it certainly was cool, a streamlined beauty, the kind of car Tom used to love to drive—in another life.

So this would be Rachel Tilding, the new doctor, the latest of the Lavery Scholarship recipients, here to pay her dues with two years’ service. He imagined she’d be heading to the shops to buy supplies or a takeaway meal for dinner. He should drop over tonight to say hi.

But tonight he didn’t have his normal backup of Rose, who was always ready to slip over and mind the kids whenever he needed to go out. He could scarcely go over bearing wine and casserole and say, Welcome to Shallow Bay. Plus, he was dead tired. If he had the energy to make a casserole there’d be no way it’d leave his house.

He sighed and started to turn back to the desk—but then he paused. The car had turned off the road and was heading down the hospital driveway.

He could make the driver out now. The woman seemed slight, fair-skinned, with brown curly hair tumbling to her shoulders. Leaning against her was a child.

A child with his arm raised, caught in some sort of sling. An arm which was bright crimson.

Kit!

Running in hospitals was forbidden. From training it was instilled into you. No matter the emergency, walking swiftly gets you there almost as fast, with far less likelihood of causing another emergency.

Stuff training. Dr Tom Lavery ran.

She’d collected this gorgeous little car three weeks ago and she still practically purred every time she looked at it. Two years of internship, living in hospital accommodation and being constantly tired, meant that she’d spent practically nothing of her two years’ wages. The condition of the scholarship which had funded her training meant she was now facing two years of ‘exile’ in the country. This car would be a gift to herself, she’d decided, to celebrate being a fully qualified doctor with her internship behind her. It’d also be something to remind her of the life she’d have when she could finally return to the city.

She’d driven it to Shallow Bay with a beam on her face a mile wide, blocking out the thought that she’d had to hire a man with a van to bring her possessions, as nothing bigger than a designer suitcase would fit in with her.

But now she wasn’t thinking of her car. She had a child in her passenger seat, a little boy so white she thought he was about to pass out. She’d put as much pressure as she dared on his arm, slinging it roughly upward before somehow managing to carry him to her car. Her cream leather was turning scarlet to match the paintwork. Any minute now Kit could throw up. Or, worse, lose consciousness.

Please, no. She loved this car but if she had the choice between vomit or coma…

‘Hold on, Kit,’ she muttered. The decision to get him to the hospital rather than calling for an ambulance had been instantaneous. He still had glass in his hand. The blood he’d lost was frightening and the hospital was so close…

‘I want Tom,’ he quavered.

Tom? His stepfather? That was the name the kids had used. And Christine? The overblown, overpainted woman had emerged from the house, taken one look and fled back inside, saying, ‘I’ll ring Tom.’ So much for practical help. Rachel had hauled off her own windcheater and used that as a pressure bandage and sling.

‘Tell Christine—and Tom—I’ve taken him to the hospital,’ she’d told his terrified brothers, and then she’d left. There was time for nothing else.

‘We’ll find Tom,’ she told Kit now, as he slumped against her. ‘But first we need to stop your hand bleeding. We can do this, Kit. Be brave. Isn’t it lucky I’m a doctor?’

The sight that met him as he emerged from the Emergency entrance was horrific. All he could see was blood. And one small boy.

For a moment he felt as if his legs might give way. Kit’s face, his hair, his T-shirt, were soaked with blood. The T-shirt was a treasured one, covered with meerkat cartoons. Tom couldn’t see a single meerkat now, though. All he could see was blood.

Kit.

‘Mate, you’re doctor first, stepdad second.’ It was Roscoe, placing a huge palm on his shoulder as they both headed for the car. ‘Right now, Kit needs a doctor.’

The words steadied him but only a little. He reached the car and hauled the door open.

Kit was leaning heavily against the driver. Had she hit him? A car accident? What…?

‘Lacerated hand.’ The woman’s voice cut across his nightmare, her voice as incisive, as firm as Roscoe’s. ‘From a broken window. No other injury, but severe blood loss. I suspect there’ll still be glass in there. His name’s Kit and he’s asking for Tom.’

‘Kit.’ His voice sounded as if it came from a long way away. Kit was struggling to look at him, struggling to focus. ‘T-Tom…’ he managed—and then his eyes rolled back and he lost consciousness.

Kit!

It was Roscoe who took over. For those first appalling seconds—and it must only have been seconds—Tom froze, but Roscoe’s voice boomed across the entrance, calling back into the Emergency ward behind. ‘Trolley,’ he boomed. ‘IV. Blood loss, people. Move.’

And then as Barry, their elderly hospital orderly, came scuttling out with the trolley, and Jenny, their second most senior nurse, appeared with the crash cart, Tom recovered enough to scoop Kit out of the car.

Somehow Tom’s years of training kicked in. Triage. Look past the obvious. Get the facts and get them fast.

The woman had been wedged between Kit and the driver’s door. She looked almost as gory as the child. Thirtyish. Jeans. Long shirt, bloodstained. A smear of blood on her face.

‘Are you hurt yourself?’ he managed.

‘No,’ she snapped, hauling herself out of the car. ‘Just the child.’

Jenny had the crash cart beside him. With this amount of blood loss, cardiac arrest was a terrifying possibility.

‘I’m a doctor,’ the woman said. ‘Rachel Tilding. Who’s senior here?’

She was asking because he wasn’t acting like a doctor. Roscoe, Barry, Jenny all looked in control. Not him.

He made a huge effort and hauled himself back into his professional self. Terror was still there but it was on the backburner, waiting to surface when there was time.

‘IV,’ he managed, laying Kit on the trolley. The little boy’s hand had been roughly put in a sling to hold it high.

A doctor…

What had she done to Kit?

‘It’s only his hand.’ She was out of the car now, moving swiftly around to the trolley. ‘He smashed my window with a cricket ball, then reached in to try and get it.’

Only his hand…but this amount of blood?

‘Straight to Theatre?’ Roscoe demanded.

‘Yes,’ she snapped back at Roscoe. ‘I’ll help if there’s no one else. I don’t know about parents. I didn’t have time to find out. Just this Tom…’

‘I’m Tom,’ he said heavily. ‘I’m his stepfather. He’s my responsibility.’

‘Stepfather…’ She glanced at him in stupefaction. ‘What sort of a…?’ And then she collected herself. ‘No matter. Kit needs a doctor, now.’

‘I’m a doctor. Tom Lavery.’

‘What the…you’re working as a doctor and employing that…that…’

She obviously couldn’t find a word to describe Christine. Neither could he. Maybe there wasn’t one, but he and Christine were obviously grouped together. Dr Tilding’s look said Tom’s position in the hierarchy of life on earth was somewhere below pond scum.

‘Never mind,’ she snapped. ‘You can give me all the excuses in the world after we’ve seen to Kit’s hand. Let’s get him to Theatre. Now.’

CHAPTER TWO

AND THEN THINGS reassembled themselves. Sort of. This was a small country hospital but it was geared for emergencies, and many emergencies involved rapid blood loss.

Kit had lost so much that cardiac arrest was still a real possibility. Treatment of his hand—apart from stemming the bleeding—had to wait until that threat was past.

And in Rachel he had a godsend. She was an angry godsend, judgemental and furious, but she was a doctor.

Maybe he could have coped alone—maybe—but he was acting on autopilot. A part of his brain seemed to have frozen. The sight of one little boy, unconscious, a child he’d learned to love, had knocked him sideways.

It was an insidious thing, this love. It had crept up and caught him unawares, and loving came with strings. He couldn’t care for these kids—and love them—without his heart being wrenched, over and over again.

It was lurching now, sickeningly, and after that one incredulous look, that one outburst of anger, Rachel had subtly taken control.

As he went to put in the IV line his hand shook, and she took the equipment from him. ‘Get the monitors working,’ she told him. ‘I’ll take over here.’

The cardiac monitors… He needed to set them up. He did, with speed. A shaking hand could manage pads and monitors.

‘Pain relief and anaesthetic,’ she said. ‘Do you have an anaesthetist?’

‘There’s only me,’ he told her.

‘Two of us, then,’ she said curtly. ‘Or one and a half if you’re emotionally involved. But I’m trusting you have a good nursing staff.’

‘The best,’ Roscoe growled, and she nodded acknowledgement. This was no time for false modesty and she obviously accepted it.

And then Kit’s eyes flickered open again, fighting to focus. Falling on Rachel first. Terror came flooding back, and Rachel saw.

‘Hey, we found your Tom,’ she told him. ‘And here he is.’ Her anger and her judgement had obviously been set aside with the need for reassurance. She edged aside so the little boy could see him. ‘Kit, we’re going to fix your hand. The bleeding’s made you feel funny, and I know it hurts, but we’re giving you something that’ll make you feel better really fast. Tom’s just going to test your fingers. Will you do what he tells you?’

And she stepped back, turning to the instrument tray, setting the scene so Kit could only see Tom.

She was impelling him to steady. She was pushing him to do what he had to do.

He had to focus and somehow he did.

Appallingly, he was still seeing terror as well as pain in the little boy’s eyes. Legacy of his ghastly grandparents?

‘Hey, Kit, you’re here now, with me,’ he said as they rolled the trolley into Theatre. He touched the little boy’s face, willing the fear to disappear. ‘You’ve cut your hand but we’ll fix it. I know it hurts, but we’ll stop it hurting really soon.’

‘I broke… You’re not mad…?’

‘Dr Rachel tells me you broke her window,’ he managed. ‘I broke four windows when I was your age. I used to tell my mum and dad the cat did it. They didn’t believe me but they weren’t mad and neither am I. Accidents happen. Kit, can you tell me what you feel when I touch your fingers? Can you press back when I press? Here? Here?’

He was now in professional mode—sort of—but the lurch in his stomach wasn’t going away.

And the information he gained from Kit as they settled him into Theatre wasn’t helping.

He was checking for damage to the tendons that ran through the palm and attached to the finger bones. Secondly, for nerve damage, which could result in permanent loss of function or sensation. Tom was applying gentle pressure to the tips of Kit’s fingers, asking him to push back.

The responses weren’t good.

And Rachel got it. She was focusing on the IV, on getting pain relief on board, but she was listening to Kit’s quavering answers. Knowing what they meant.

‘Okay, Dr Lavery, tell me the set-up,’ she said as Tom’s testing finished. ‘Do you have anyone here who can cope with paediatric plastics? Or someone who can get here fast?’

‘No,’ he said shortly. Stemming the bleeding seemed straightforward. It looked as if the radial artery had been nicked—it must have been to cause this amount of bleeding. They could fix that. But what his examination had told them was that Kit needed a plastic surgeon or a vascular surgeon or both if he wasn’t to lose part or all of the use of that hand.

That meant evacuation. It was eight hours by road to Melbourne, ten to Sydney or Canberra. Shallow Bay wasn’t the most remote place in Australia but its position, nestled on the far south-east coast, surrounded by hundreds of miles of mountainous forests, meant that reaching skilled help could be a logistical nightmare.

‘Where?’ Rachel said, and he had to give her credit for incisiveness.

‘Sydney.’

‘You have air transfer?’

‘It’ll take medevac an hour to reach us in the chopper, but yes.’

‘Can someone organise that?’ she said to Roscoe. ‘Now?’ And then she turned back to the child she was treating and her voice gentled. ‘Kit, we’re going to get your hand bandaged now, and stop things hurting, but there’s a bit of damage deep inside that might make your fingers not as strong as they should be. We need to take you to a big hospital to get your hand mended.’

‘Tom can fix it.’ Kit’s voice quavered.

‘He can,’ she said, injecting her voice with confidence. ‘I know that. And so can I, because Tom and I are both doctors. If Tom agrees, I’ll do the first part now. But have you ever seen Tom sew something that’s ripped? Like a pair of jeans?’

‘He did once,’ Kit managed, trying gamely to sound normal. ‘Big stitches. It came apart again.’

‘Hey, how did I guess?’ she said, smiling down at him. ‘So Tom’s not very good at sewing and neither am I. Kit, there are things in your hand called tendons which make your fingers work. You’ve hurt them, so what you need is a doctor who’s really good at tiny stitches. Don’t worry, we’ll give you something that stops you feeling what we need to do. We’ll make sure nothing hurts, I promise. You’ll end up with a neat scar you’ll be able to show your friends, but a good needleworking doctor will make sure your fingers end up stronger than ever. So what that means is that we need to take you to Sydney.’

‘I don’t want to go.’

‘I understand that,’ Rachel said. ‘I’ve just arrived at Shallow Bay and it looks a great place. But have you ever been in a helicopter?’

‘I… No.’

‘Then what an adventure. Your friends will be so jealous. Tom, will you be going with Kit, or is there someone he needs more?’

And she looked straight at him.

So did Kit.

Is there someone he needs more?

Her eyes were challenging. Angry? He didn’t get the anger, but he couldn’t afford to focus on it now.

Kit needs his mother, he thought, and it was the belief he’d had reinforced about a thousand times in the last two years. But Claire was dead.

Kit’s father was who knew where? Steve had been Claire’s folly. The responsibility was never going to be Steve’s.

Kit’s grandparents? Claire’s parents? They’d glory in this drama. They’d use it against him and his fight for custody would start all over again.

So he had to go with Kit, but to leave Shallow Bay… To leave two more needy children…

‘There’s no one but me,’ he said, and it nearly killed him to say it.

‘We’ll manage.’ It was Roscoe, gruff, stern, decisive. ‘You need to go, Doc. And hey, we have another doc here now.’

‘But Marcus. Henry. I can’t.’

‘They can stay at home,’ Roscoe told him. ‘We’ll find someone to stay with them.’

‘Not that childminder.’ When Rachel spoke to Kit she was gentleness itself but when she faced Tom he saw judgement that he’d left the kids with such a woman. ‘She’s unfit.’

‘She’s awful,’ Kit quavered. ‘I don’t like her.’

‘It’s okay,’ Tom said, feeling helpless. He took Kit’s good hand and squeezed. ‘I’ll fix this.’ But how?

‘Their normal minder is Rose,’ Roscoe told Rachel. ‘She hurt her hip yesterday but she’s great. The kids love her. She’ll stay with them.’

‘She can’t,’ Tom said, option after option being discarded with increasing desperation. ‘Not by herself. Not with her hip, and I can’t trust Christine to help her. And with the field day at Ferndale—how many people are free this weekend?’ He sounded desperate—he knew he did—but he was torn in so many directions. Kit needed him, but so did Marcus and Henry. As a parent, he was failing on all counts.

‘We’ll find someone,’ Roscoe said, but he was starting to sound unsure. He turned to Rachel, explaining Tom’s dilemma for him. ‘The annual show at Ferndale is a huge deal and almost all the locals go. There’s an added problem, too. These kids have had a bit of a tough time in the past and they need to stay in their own beds. Farming them out’s not an option. I’d offer but my wife’s almost nine months pregnant. What if she goes into labour?’

‘You can’t do it,’ she said bluntly. She was still looking at Tom as if he was something she’d found at the back of the fridge, something that had been mouldering for months. ‘So who can these boys depend on?’

‘Me,’ Tom said bleakly.

‘Which is why we have one child with a sliced hand and two children with no carer.’

‘We’ll find someone,’ Roscoe said again, but Tom felt ill. Rachel’s disdain was obvious and he deserved it. Who could he ask, given this amount of notice?

But the expression on Rachel’s face had changed. She looked…as if she was about to step into a chasm? It was a momentary look and then her expression became one of resolution. As if a decision had been made, but the decision was scary.

‘Okay, then,’ she said briskly, as if what was about to be said needed to be said before she changed her mind. ‘Decision. If there’s no other option, I’ll accept responsibility. The boys don’t know me, but I’m dependable. I can’t imagine you’ll need to stay in Sydney for more than a couple of days.’

‘I can’t… They won’t…’

‘I’m not offering to do this on my own,’ she said, still brisk. ‘Nor should you agree if I did. There’s no way you should trust me. But if Rose of the hurt hip is otherwise okay… Would she agree to stay with the boys to give them the security they need? If she’s willing, then I’ll stay too. I can do housework, anything physical, and I can care for Rose as well as the boys. I don’t mind sleeping on the floor if I need to. I’ve had experience of living with kids. I can cope with anything they throw at me.’

‘I can’t ask that of you,’ Tom said, but she skewered him with a look that said he needed to get his act together.

‘So what are your options?’

There weren’t any.

‘Rachel, with Tom away, we’ll be needing you as a doctor,’ Roscoe said, sounding stunned. ‘I know you’re not supposed to start until Monday but there’s no one else. You know our last doc left us in the lurch. She had one of those scholarships you’re on, but bang, she got herself pregnant and her fiancée paid her way out. So there’s only Tom. And now there’s only you.’

Then his face cleared. ‘But maybe it would work. Rose isn’t disabled, just sore. She lives in the third cottage down on your bay and she’s slept at Tom’s before. There’s a spare bedroom, and I imagine you could use Tom’s bed. There’s an intercom from Tom’s living room to the nurses’ station here, so someone can always listen in if you need to be at the hospital. That works if Tom has to fix a drip or something at three in the morning. Tom works around his family. I guess you can, too.’

‘I guess I can,’ Rachel said.

‘I can’t ask…’ Tom managed, but he was cut off.

‘You have no choice.’ Once again he heard anger, but she was moving on. ‘Okay, Kit, let’s get your hand fixed up ready for your helicopter ride. Dr Lavery, I’ll need your help to stabilise things, but then you need to go home and pack.’

‘You’ve only just arrived,’ Tom said. He was feeling as if the ground beneath him was no longer solid. Who was in charge here? Not him. ‘You can’t…’

‘Dr Lavery, I have no idea yet of what you can and can’t do,’ she said with asperity. ‘But me… Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do without seeing me in operation. Do you or do you not need a childminder to stay with Rose?’

‘I… Yes.’

‘And is Rose dependable?’

‘Of course.’

‘So if I turned out to be a terrible person…would she kick me out?’

‘She would,’ Roscoe said from behind them. He was starting to smile—problem solved? ‘If she was worried I dare say she’d boss me and Lizzy to move, with or without our new baby. She’s one strong lady.’

‘And so am I,’ Rachel retorted. ‘So, Dr Lavery, if you don’t want me to stay with your boys then say so, but don’t tell me I’m not capable.’

‘I guess… I’m starting to think you’re very capable,’ Tom told her and tried to smile.

‘Thank you,’ Rachel told him, but there was no hint of a smile in return. He was still hearing anger. ‘Now, Kit, let’s get this hand fixed and show your stepdad I’m capable there as well.’

What had she promised?

Argh!

If there was one thing Rachel Tilding had learned in her twenty-eight years it was not to get involved.

Eight years ago she’d applied for the Roger Lavery Scholarship because it was the only one which offered to pay her entire way through medical school. Her education was sketchy, to say the least. She’d officially left school at fifteen. Since then she’d worked where she could, odds and sods for years, before ending up on night shift in a metal fabrication factory. She’d couch-surfed with anyone who’d put up with her, all the time saving, doing whatever she could to get the marks and the money to enter medical school. The day she’d heard she’d won the scholarship she’d been so tired she’d wept over the assembly line all night.

But then, thanks to the scholarship, things had eased. She’d been able to find somewhere permanent to live. She’d had security and a future, which was more than she’d ever dreamed of. The only cost to her was a contract at the end of her internship to work for two years in this end-of-the-earth place.

‘Two years?’ She thought of one of the other students on her med course, of his appalled reaction when she’d told him her plans. ‘Shallow Bay? A tin-pot hospital with no specialists, in the middle of the National Park, cut off by bushfires in summer, floods in winter? I’m guessing you’ll be married with babies by the end of the two years because there’ll be nothing else to do.’

‘I’m not into families.’ She’d snapped it before she could stop herself, almost a fear response.

‘You will be if you go there,’ her fellow student had said. ‘My uncle’s a county doctor, on call twenty-four-seven. His wife and kids hardly see him, but he says they’re the only thing that keeps him sane.’

A family? Keeping her sane? As if.

And now she’d offered to be part of one.

But it was only for a couple of days. She could do this. After what she’d been through, she knew she could pretty much do anything she needed.

But this was what someone else needed. Tom.

A stepfather. A man who’d left his kids with someone totally irresponsible.

So why had she made the offer? It wasn’t her fault the kid had hurt his hand. She didn’t get involved—she never had. And yet here she was, two minutes after arriving at Shallow Bay, putting her hand up to move in with a house full of kids. It was so unlike her it left her stunned.

Was it the thought of kids being left with a stepfather? After all this time, the word still made her feel sick to the stomach.

She was overreacting, she knew she was. Cinderella’s stepmother… Her own stepfather… They’d given the roles such a bad name.

One was a fairy story, she told herself, but her own…

Get over it.

Luckily she had medicine to distract her. It was a relief to move back into treating doctor mode. She was using local anaesthetic. Kit was awake and terrified, so she needed Tom to be Kit’s support person.

Roscoe had set up a screen so Kit couldn’t see her work. Tom could see over the screen but she had to block both Tom and Kit out. It was only Kit’s hand that mattered.

The anaesthetic block was cutting off sensation and Tom was keeping the little boy still. Conscious all the time of doing no more damage, she started removing slivers of glass. Left in situ, they could move during the flight and cause more damage.

There was enough damage already. He must have dragged his hand backward as he’d felt it cut. The glass had sliced from palm down to wrist and then across as he’d jerked back out of the shattered window.

She was focusing fiercely. Broken glass was appallingly difficult to clear from wounds, as its transparency made it notoriously hard to see. Roscoe was in the background, handing her what she needed, but Tom was right there. One of his hands was under Kit’s head, cradling like a pillow. The other was on Kit’s elbow, stopping it moving.

Despite her concentration on the wound, she couldn’t quite block out his presence. He was holding the little boy still but hugging him at the same time.

‘This is going to be an amazing scar,’ he was telling Kit. ‘You’ll need to make up a great story to go with it. Maybe we could get Dr Tilding to make marks that look like crocodile teeth to go with it. Then we could tell everyone that instead of staying with your grandparents last year you went croc hunting. Maybe one attacked Henry and you fought it off with your bare hands. I think it was a whopper, twenty feet long with teeth the size of my hedge-cutters. But you fought and fought and finally it held up its hands—paws?—what do crocodiles have? Anyway, your crocodile surrendered. And you told him it’d be okay as long as he said sorry and let you have a ride on his back.’

And to Rachel’s astonishment the little boy managed a weak chuckle. ‘That’s silly,’ he quavered. ‘Kids don’t ride crocodiles.’

‘I bet superheroes do,’ Tom said. ‘This scar looks like a superhero scar. Does it look like a superhero scar to you, Dr Tilding?’

She’d just fielded a sliver of glass. She held it still for a moment in her forceps, making sure her grip was secure before she tried to shift it, then transferred it to the kidney dish.

‘It’ll definitely be a superhero scar,’ she agreed. ‘You might need to buy a new T-shirt, Kit. One with Batman on the front?’

‘Batman?’ Kit said, with a brief return of spirit. With scorn to match. ‘Batman’s old.’ And then his face crumpled as he recalled another grief. ‘My meerkat T-shirt… It’s all bloody.’

‘We’ll try and fix it,’ Tom told him, but even Rachel could hear the doubt. And Roscoe grimaced behind him. To get monitors on the little boy’s chest they’d simply sliced the T-shirt away, not only to get fast access but also to check there were no other lacerations underneath. The T-shirt was now a mangled mess.

But she could fix this. Rachel’s splinter skill was internet shopping. Or, to be truthful, internet window-shopping—years of dreaming of what other kids could buy.

There’d been a great library in her neighbourhood and the librarian had been kind. She hadn’t seemed to notice just how much time Rachel spent there—or that when her books got too much for her she’d just sort of sidled to one of the computers. Patrons were supposed to pay for fifteen-minute slots, but when the library was quiet…well, Maureen was a librarian with a kind heart and she didn’t seem to notice. Sometimes Rachel had been asleep in a cubicle. Sometimes she’d been at the computer, dreaming of stuff she could never buy.

But she could buy stuff now, and memories of a weird search came back to her at just the right moment.

‘Hey, I have a solution,’ she told Kit. She was almost done. There’d still be tiny slivers in the wound but it would be up to the plastic surgeon in Sydney to retrieve them. The shards that could have done more damage were gone, and if she foraged more she risked making that damage worse.

‘A solution?’ Tom said.

‘A meerkat superhero.’

‘There’s no such thing.’

‘Of course there is. Kit, you tell him.’

‘I haven’t seen…’ Kit said doubtfully.

‘You haven’t? You’re obviously looking in the wrong places.’

Meerkats had been a bit of a thing for her during her teens; they had fascinated her, taken her out of her bleak world for a while. She still had a sneaky affection for them, and even now her internet browser seemed to find them almost by itself.

‘You must know there are online comics,’ she said. ‘I bet there are even online movies and I definitely know there are meerkat superhero T-shirts. I could order you one this very night, if you want. It’ll need to come from overseas so you might need to wait for a few weeks, but something like that would be worth waiting for, don’t you think?’

‘A meerkat superhero…?’

‘Marvel the Meerkat?’ she mused. ‘I’m thinking that’s who I saw. Maybe I have the name wrong. We’ll have to wait and see.’

‘But I broke your window,’ Kit quavered, sounding astounded.

‘So you did. So you’ll have to pay.’ She was closing, with steristrips because stitching a hand that needed further surgery was pointless. She glanced at Tom and saw the look of strain on his face. More than strain. She’d seen this reaction before, during her internship in an emergency department in Sydney. It was the reaction of parents whose foundations had been shaken after injury to their kids.

The look set back her prejudices a little. He cared?

So what was with the neglect? If he was a stepdad, where was Mum?

It wasn’t her business. Focus on Kit. She’d just told him he’d have to pay.

‘Can you fish?’ she asked the little boy, guessing what the answer would be. She’d already noticed fishing rods stacked outside the next-door garage.

‘Tom showed us how,’ Kit said, confused.

‘There you are then,’ she said decisively. ‘I can’t catch fish but I love eating them. When your hand’s better I demand three fish for payment. What’s your favourite fish to catch?’

‘Whiting,’ Kit said and then looked doubtfully at Tom. ‘Tom would have to help me.’

‘I don’t mind who helps,’ she said. ‘But I’m charging three fresh fish for my damaged window. Not all at once because I can only eat one at a time and I like them fresh. Then I’ll charge two more for the new meerkat T-shirt I’ll order tonight. Is that a deal?’

‘D-deal,’ Kit said and even managed a watery smile.

‘That’s that, then,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to unpack a few more boxes before I’m needed again.’

And she smiled at Kit, at Roscoe, but not at Tom, and then she headed out of the door.

He caught her just as she reached her car.

Her car… He saw her stop in dismay as she saw the mess, as she realised just what damage had been done. He saw her face go blank, almost as if she’d been slapped.

Back in his office he had a file on this woman. The file was in his possession not because she was a future colleague; he had it because Rachel Tilding was the recipient of the scholarship his grandfather had endowed, and as Roger Lavery’s grandson he was one of the trustees of that endowment. Every two years a scholarship was awarded to a student who wouldn’t otherwise be able to attend medical school but had shown determination and rigour to get where they were.

Rachel had won the scholarship eight years ago, when Tom’s father still headed the trustees, but his parents were now living overseas and the file was in Tom’s possession. When it was time for Rachel to take up her appointment, Tom had hauled it out and read it.

It didn’t make pretty reading. Poverty, foster homes, eventual homelessness but, throughout it all, a grinding determination to be a doctor. She hadn’t had the highest marks of the applicants but her sheer grit had made the award a no-brainer.

Now she was looking at her car as if this was a catastrophe. He watched her face crumple, her hand go to her eyes.

‘Rachel?’

She gasped and swivelled, swiping her face fiercely with the back of her hand. Her long-sleeved shirt was still blood-stained where Kit had leaned on her shoulder in the car. Her soft brown curls were tangled back behind her ears, there was a smudge of blood on her cheek and her brown eyes looked too big in her too-pale face. She looked younger than the twenty-eight years she was, he thought. Defenceless? It was a strange adjective to describe her but that was how he saw her.

‘You shouldn’t be here,’ she said, struggling to find control. ‘Go back to Kit.’

‘We’re not really at the end of the earth,’ he said gently, because something told him what was before her was more important than a messy car. ‘We might not have plastic surgeons but we do have a car dealership. Roy’s talent—aside from selling people cars they haven’t realised they need—is detailing. He can take a farm bomb that’s been lived in by farmers, pigs, dogs, whatever, and turn it into a gleaming bargain of the century. And this…’

He looked at the gorgeous scarlet lacquer, the sheer beauty of the little roadster. ‘This would be his absolute pleasure to clean. The only thing you need to fear is him putting it into his showroom window when he’s done.’

‘Really?’ She sniffed and eyed him with distrust. ‘But it’s blood. Don’t people have rules about contamination?’

‘He might charge more,’ Tom agreed. ‘But this was an accident, Rachel, caused by my stepson. My insurance will more than cover it.’ He wasn’t actually sure that it would, but there was no way he was saying that now. The responsibility was his. He’d pay a king’s ransom to get her a clean car if necessary. ‘Meanwhile, I’m heading to Sydney, thanks to you, so you can use my car.’ He motioned to the car park, to a large serviceable SUV. ‘You might even think about buying such a car for here. It’s much more sensible.’

She had herself under control again now. He saw her regroup, and then gaze at his battered SUV with dislike.

‘I might need to be a country doctor for two years,’ she said. ‘But there is nothing on earth that’d persuade me to swap my Petal for that…that…’

‘Don’t say it,’ he said urgently, and smiled. ‘That’s Moby Dick, christened by the boys, and Moby’s sensitive.’

‘Moby doesn’t look like he has a sensitive nerve in his body.’

‘Looks are deceptive.’ He hesitated. ‘But…you will drive it? Just until I get back? Rachel, I can’t tell you…’

‘I don’t want you to tell me,’ she said, the anger he’d sensed from the start resurfacing. ‘We all do what we have to do, Dr Lavery, and if that involves me driving Moby Dick…’

‘And taking responsibility for two small boys. And starting work three days early. It’s a huge ask.’

‘It’s not an ask. It’s just what is,’ she said. ‘Whatever what is needs to be faced, and there’s no use arguing. And for you… What is includes doing what you need to do for your stepsons. You’ve failed in that department already today so it’s time to do better.’

Her anger was right there, in his face. Her brown eyes were flashing. Challenging.

‘You’re judging me?’ he demanded.

‘Of course I am. You really think Christine is a reliable childminder?’

‘I had no choice.’

‘Isn’t keeping kids safe the most important choice of all?’ She closed her eyes for a moment and seemed to collect herself. ‘That’s your business, however. I don’t know your circumstances. It’s not serious enough to report to the authorities…’

‘The authorities,’ he said, gobsmacked. ‘You’d go there?’

‘If I think children are seriously neglected, of course,’ she snapped. ‘Stepfather or not.’

‘Is this your background speaking?’

That silenced her. She stared at him blankly for a moment before responding. ‘What…what do you know of my background?’

‘I’m the grandson of Roger Lavery. I’m a trustee for his scholarship fund. I read your application.’

‘Then forget it,’ she snapped, the picture of outrage. ‘As my colleague, it smacks of prying, and it has no bearing on what’s happening now. Dr Lavery, I have to organise myself if I’m to stay with your boys and so do you. The evac chopper should be here soon. You have packing to do, plus explaining to Henry and Marcus what’s happening. They’re confused and upset and they’re still with the appalling Christine. So that’s your what is. They need to be reassured, Christine needs to be sacked and you need to get packed. Go do it, Dr Lavery. Ring Rose if you can, and tell her I’ll be there with my toothbrush in an hour.’

‘Rachel, I can’t tell you…’

‘Then don’t tell me,’ she said angrily. ‘And don’t you dare pry into my private business again. Just get things done.’

An hour later he was sitting in the rear of the evac chopper, wondering what on earth had happened.

How had it come to this?

Kit was asleep, courtesy of the strong painkillers he’d been given. The two paramedics on board were more than capable of taking care of Kit medically. Tom’s role was that of parent.

Parent.

The word still hung heavy.

He remembered the night Claire had asked him. ‘Please, Tom, will you marry me? I can’t think what else to do.’

What followed had been one marriage, three adoptions and Claire’s death, and his life had changed for ever. He sat in the helicopter looking down at one injured child, thinking he’d just dumped two others on a woman he hardly knew. This was a nightmare. And if Claire’s parents found out…

He raked his fingers through his hair, struggling to get his head around the logistics of this mess, and the paramedic next to him glanced at him in sympathy.

‘You’ve had a shock too, mate. We can set you up on the other stretcher if you like, give you a chance to close your eyes and regroup.’

It needed only this, to be treated as a patient.

But that was what he felt like at the moment, as if he’d been punched in the guts. He was so out of his depth.

Who was the woman in charge of his children? A fiery newcomer who’d judged him and found him wanting. A woman he’d met only hours before.

He had Roscoe in the background, he reminded himself, and he had Rose. They’d keep an eye on her.

But her anger stayed with him.

He looked down at Kit’s white face, at his limp little body. These kids had been through so much. And his lack of care had caused more pain… She’d been right to look at him with fury.

‘Lie down,’ the paramedic said again, gently, and he thought maybe he needed to.

He looked sick because that was how he felt.

What had she done, offering to mind two boys for days?

She didn’t get involved. Ever. What crazy impulse had led her to say she’d help out?

Medicine was what Rachel used to settle her and it was medicine she focused on now. She sat in Tom’s office and read through histories of the patients in the hospital. Five were elderly, recuperating from falls or waiting for home care arrangements. Three were here for rehab, transferred back from city hospitals, preparing to go home. One was a thirty-seven-weeks-pregnant mum with five kids at home. Tom had written in heavy letters—‘Bed rest until her sister arrives from Canada!’

The final history was that of a farmer with an infected leg after being kicked by a cow. According to the history, he was responding to antibiotics. There seemed nothing she couldn’t handle.

She did a round and introduced herself. Without exception, the patients were full of questions but she backed away fast. That was something else she’d been warned of with country medicine. ‘Everyone will know everything about you in two minutes.’

Tom Lavery already knew more about her than she was comfortable with. At least she could back away from patients before they got personal.

Roscoe found her as she saw the last one. ‘Everything’s arranged,’ he told her. ‘Christine’s feeling bad about what’s happened. Big of her, but she’s decided to be helpful. She’s moving her Aunt Rose in now. Rose will give everyone the hugs they need. The boys love her. If you can…your job is just to be there at the edges. Make sure Rose doesn’t start washing or scrubbing. She has osteoarthritis and her hip’s probably more painful than she’s letting on, but she loves the boys.’

‘That’s great,’ Rachel said, feeling relieved. ‘I can do whatever else needs to be done but the hugging is her department.’

She didn’t do hugging. Almost unconsciously, her fingers drifted to one of the bands of scar tissue she could still feel around her upper arms. After twenty-eight years she didn’t know how to hug. She didn’t know how to love, and she had no intention of trying.

So now what?

‘Roy Matheson’s outside, checking the damage to your car,’ Roscoe told her. ‘Tom must have phoned him. All he needs is your keys and he reckons he’ll have her good as new in no time. Here are Doc’s keys for Moby Dick. We’ll call you back if we need you. Meanwhile, you go and do what you have to do.’ He hesitated. ‘You know how grateful we all are that you’re doing this? It’s really generous.’

‘I hardly had a choice.’ She couldn’t help it; her voice sounded waspish.

‘You could have refused. We’d have found a way. This is a tight community. If you hadn’t offered we’d have muddled through somehow. No one’s left in the lurch here. We care.’

And why did that make her feel weird?

Her childhood. The loneliness.

No one’s left in the lurch here.

Enough. She gave herself a mental shake and took the proffered car keys. She needed to find… Moby Dick? She also needed to figure out the boundaries of the next few days.

For boundaries had to be set, she told herself. Boundaries were what she lived within.

She could do this.

But at the back of her mind a question was niggling. She’d wanted to ask Roscoe but her boundaries had stopped her.

These were Tom’s stepsons—what on earth was a man doing with three kids who weren’t his own?

Hadn’t he heard of boundaries?

CHAPTER THREE

THREE DAYS LATER the medevac chopper deposited Tom and a recuperating Kit back home, on the landing pad three hundred metres from Shallow Bay Hospital.

They’d arrived earlier than Tom had expected. Air transfer was available only in emergencies. Transfer home to Shallow Bay wasn’t classified as an emergency. That meant Tom had been trying to decide whether to hire a car or wait for road ambulance transfer. However, on Monday morning a scuba diver had come up too fast after a dive south of Shallow Bay. Worse, he’d gone diving alone. He was in extremis when his friends found him and he’d died before they’d found somewhere with enough mobile coverage to ring emergency services.

The coroner needed the body and the coroner was in Sydney. Thus the chopper was on its way, but there was no rush. The crew who’d taken Tom and Kit to Sydney had kept tabs on where Kit’s treatment was up to. Kit’s hand was stable, with no more need for specialist intervention. They’d been offered a ride back.

Thus they rode back in style, arriving at Shallow Bay mid-morning. Tom emerged from the chopper and lifted Kit down after him. A still shaky Kit stood by his side until Roscoe drove up to meet them.

‘Hey!’ he boomed in greeting, and Tom was aware of a wash of relief at the sight of his friend’s broad smile, at the hug Roscoe was giving Kit. ‘It’s great to see you, mate,’ he told Kit and then he straightened and grinned at Tom. ‘And you too.’ Tom’s hand was enveloped; the hold was tantamount to a hug, and Tom felt better for it. ‘It’s great to have you back.’

‘The place hasn’t fallen apart without us?’ Tom took Kit’s good hand and held on because the little boy was still shaky. His arm was a swathe of white under his sling but it wasn’t only the shock and the injury that was making him shaky, Tom thought. These kids had had their foundations shaken by their mother’s death.

‘All good,’ Roscoe was saying. ‘You’ve hardly been missed. Our Dr Rachel is a beauty.’

‘Really?’

‘Efficiency R Us,’ Roscoe said. ‘You have no idea how a ward round should be conducted until you see Our Rachel at work. She can get a full history in less than three minutes. The patients don’t know what’s hit them.’

‘You’re saying she cuts corners?’

‘I didn’t imply that at all,’ Roscoe said, swinging Kit up into his arms, giving Tom the illusion—at least for a moment—that responsibility was shared. ‘No corner dares to be cut on Dr Rachel’s watch. Now, mate,’ he said to Kit, ‘where are you up to?’

‘We’ll be keeping Kit in hospital for the next few days,’ Tom told him. ‘Until his stitches are out.’ The job the plastic surgeons had done on Kit’s hand was stunning but broken stitches could see him being sent back to Sydney. There was no way he was letting Kit near his rough-and-tumble brothers until they were out.

He’d need to spend time with him, running through the exercises the hand therapist had set. At least with Rachel here he’d have the time. To have an efficient colleague was a blessing.

But what Roscoe was saying had sown doubts. He thought of the frail, elderly patients in his hospital, their need for human contact, for reassurance, and he thought, Three minutes for a history?

‘Where’s Rachel now?’ he asked.

‘On a house call,’ Roscoe said. ‘Herbert Daly. District nurse asked if she’ll check his legs. He has three ulcers now, but the old coot won’t take care of them, nor will he come in. But Rachel’s on to it. Expect to see him in Ward One by lunchtime.’

‘She’s bossy?’

‘Just organised,’ Roscoe said. ‘You’ll see for yourself soon enough. Now, Kit, I’m betting your dad would like to take your gear home and catch up with Rose. Your brothers are both at school. How lucky are you to get this time off? Let’s get you settled into the kids’ ward. We have the best video games, plus Xavier Trentham’s in there with a broken leg. He fell out of a tree on Saturday. He’s in your class, isn’t he? Dr Rachel’s fixed his leg but she’s keeping him in hospital until the swelling goes down and she can put a proper cast on. Meanwhile, he’s aching for company. Come in and help him fight it out with Battle-Axe Warriors or whatever you kids play when we leave you alone with those game consoles. Tom will be back to see you within an hour, right, Tom?’

‘Why do I feel like I’m being organised?’ Tom said faintly and Roscoe chuckled.

‘It’s rubbing off,’ he said. ‘The Rachel effect. She’s here for two years—I can’t begin to imagine how we’ll be by the end of it.’

‘Assembly line medicine?’

‘She’s not that bad,’ Roscoe said. ‘She’s good.’

But underneath Tom thought he heard doubt.

‘Go see Rose and she’ll tell you the same,’ Roscoe said and lifted Kit into the car.

‘I’ll walk,’ Tom said, grabbing his gear. ‘It’s only five minutes. It’ll give me space to get my head organised.’

‘See, what did I tell you?’ Roscoe said and chuckled again. ‘Organisation. The Rachel effect already.’

The lovely, dependable Rose was settled on the living room window seat overlooking the bay when he arrived. He paused at the door, taking in the scene before she realised he’d returned.

This place had been his grandparents’ home, where he’d come for holidays as a kid. He’d loved it. He’d had freedom to wander. He’d learned to surf here. The locals had always made him welcome, had always treated him as a local.

But then his career had taken off and life had become frenetic, fun, city-centric. With his grandparents dead, his parents overseas, there’d been little reason to come back to Shallow Bay. It was only when he’d been landed with three grieving kids that he’d thought the only place they could be happy was here.

There’d been no other way. Decision made, he’d moved them here and tried to be content with the messy, kid-filled space his life had become.

But it wasn’t messy now. Rose was sitting with her feet up, placidly knitting. That part felt normal. The rest of it, though, wasn’t normal in the least. His usually messy house looked as if some sort of whirling dervish had swept through, but instead of creating chaos it had transformed it into… Home Beautiful?

Occasionally, during his bachelor existence, after the cleaner had been in, his city apartment had looked this tidy, but this was different. Not only was his house tidy, it seemed to have been transformed.

The furniture was arranged differently, invitingly, not wherever the kids had hauled it to get it out of the way when they were playing. Rugs were neat, vacuumed, not a wrinkle in sight. The pictures on the walls, seascapes painted by his grandmother, pictures he hadn’t even realised were out of line, were now in straight lines. A couple that had descended to be propped on the floor had been rehung.

There was more. The jumble of seashells—generations of family beachcombing left in dusty piles wherever—was now arranged on a side table, with a couple of pieces of driftwood supporting them. Instead of a jumble, the shells now looked like an eye-catching art installation. The kids’ books and puzzles were tidy but, more than that, they’d been arranged in enticing stacks. There was a jar of native bottlebrush on the sideboard, crimson, gorgeous.

Tuffy, the kids’ fox terrier, bought in desperation from a rescue shelter in those first appalling weeks after Claire’s death, had been asleep on the mat. He’d sensed Tom’s arrival now and was rising to greet him. Last week Tom had been dumb enough to give him a bone and the resulting mess had still been horrible when he’d had to leave. Now he looked brushed, washed, almost presentable.

‘Rachel’s an amazing lady.’ Rose had now realised he was there and was smiling a welcome. ‘Welcome home. She hasn’t let me do anything.’

‘So don’t do anything now,’ he said. ‘I’ll make you a cup of tea.’

‘I’d like to go home if I can,’ she said, rising and packing away her knitting. ‘I’ll come back before the boys get home from school. Rachel and I have it organised. Tell me, how’s Kit?’

He told her and her face cleared. ‘Well, that’s wonderful. We can go back to our old arrangement then, me being on call as needed. But Rachel tells me she’s here too, if I need her. She’s very bossy about my hip. I haven’t felt so fussed over for years.’

‘She sounds…bossy.’ Tom had stooped to pat Tuffy but he was still looking around the room, still trying to figure all the differences.

‘She likes to be busy,’ Rose said, and he heard the same doubt he’d heard in Roscoe’s voice. ‘She’s kind, but she can’t sit still. Last night there was a lovely movie on the telly but she was polishing every shell while she watched it.’

‘That’s…great.’

‘And cooking. She has three casseroles and two pies in the freezer for you. I told her I usually cook for you and she said, “Not with your hip.”’

‘I’ll thank her.’

‘You do that,’ she said and then she paused. ‘Oh, here’s your car now. She must be dropping by to check on me before she goes back to the hospital. She makes me feel like I’m a patient myself.’ She paused. ‘Not that I’m not grateful, but I’ll slip out the back way and leave you two together.’ And she gathered her knitting and disappeared.

Tom Lavery was on the rug in front of the fire. He was scratching behind the ears of the misbegotten little mutt the kids called Tuffy. Tuffy was practically turning inside out with pleasure.

And for some reason the sight of this man stopped Rachel in her tracks.

She had things to do. She’d dropped by to make sure Rose was okay, and then she was due at clinic. Tom’s call to Roscoe had said he’d be back some time today. She hadn’t expected him this early.

He was tall, six two or maybe more. His dark brown hair was a bit unruly, tousled, sun-bleached at the ends. He was wearing casual chinos and a short-sleeved khaki shirt. His deep green eyes were crinkled at the edges—from the sun? As he looked up at her she thought he looked weary.

He’d have been at Kit’s bedside for most of the last few days, she thought, remembering legions of parents watching over their kids in the paediatric wards of her training days. Some hospitals provided beds for parents, but medical imperatives and the needs of scared, ill or hurting children meant sleep was hardly ever an option.

There’d be a reason this guy looked haggard.

And maybe tiredness was a constant state for him. Roscoe had filled her in on his background over the weekend, not because she’d asked—he’d just told her.

‘Tom was a surgeon in Sydney until the boys’ mother died,’ he’d told her. ‘Their dad disappeared. Tom’s all they’ve got.’

The boys were his stepsons. He’d married their mother and then she’d died, Roscoe had told her.

But how could he care so much for kids who weren’t his? It was beyond her but looking at him now she had no doubt that he did care, and he was exhausted because of it.

Roscoe’s story had made her feel more than a little guilty that she’d let her prejudice show when she’d first met him. He might be a stepdad, but stepfathers shouldn’t all be tarred by the same brush. It was just the word. Stepfather… After all these years it still made her feel ill.

‘Welcome home,’ she said now, trying for a smile. His obvious weariness seemed to be making something twist inside her. Normal sympathy for a tired and worried parent? For some reason it felt more than that, and the sensation made her unsettled.

‘How’s Kit?’ she asked, pushing aside her niggle of unease, heading back to talk medicine. Work was always safest.

‘Roscoe’s putting him into a bed in the kids’ ward,’ he told her. ‘The surgery’s gone well. Flexor tendons were damaged as well as nerves but the surgeon’s done a great job and he has every hope that there’ll be no long-term damage. If he was an only child I’d bring him home, but he and his brothers play rough. He has a protective plaster so maybe I’m being ultra-cautious, but given how far we are from help I’d prefer him to stay where he is until the stitches are out. He knows I’ll be in and out. Henry and Marcus can visit. It’s good to have him home.’

Then he gazed around the room again, slowly, as if taking it in. ‘It’s good to be home too,’ he said. ‘Thank you for your care.’

She followed his gaze, noting with satisfaction that nothing had been disturbed after her clean. ‘You’re welcome. I’m not bad at dusting and polishing.’

‘It’s not actually the dusting and polishing I’m thanking you for,’ he told her with a slightly crooked smile. ‘That’s great, but with three kids I’ve pretty much learned not to value them. It’s for starting at the hospital three days early, but mostly it’s for caring for Marcus and Henry—and for Rose too. I can’t tell you how grateful I am.’

‘It’s just what needed to be done.’ She shifted uncomfortably. He was thanking her for care rather than cooking and cleaning? She didn’t care, at least not in the emotional sense. She did what she had to do to keep her world functioning as it should, to keep her patients safe, to keep herself safe. She accepted responsibility when she had to, but that was as far as it went.

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