Marion Lennox: The Doctors’ Baby

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

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

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

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

‘Coward.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Fish and chips…’

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

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

‘To my sister.’

She’d suspected as much. ‘Why?’

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

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

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

‘Wise lady.’

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

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

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

‘I have an evening ward round.’

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

‘Of course I wear a beeper.’

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

What, indeed?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘When did your parents die?’

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

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

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

‘I guess so.’

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

‘Maybe I was lucky.’

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

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

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

‘I can see that.’

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

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

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

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

Just…not so alone.

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

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

‘There was never a choice.’

‘Because Grandpa and Charlie were here?’

‘That, and the fact that I love Bay Beach.’

‘I can’t imagine there’s much of a social life in Bay Beach?’ His statement was a question.

‘No, but that’s easy.’ She grinned. ‘As sole doctor, I don’t have time for a social life.’

‘You do now,’ he told her easily. ‘While I’m here you can have some free time.’

‘Maybe I need to pick up a boyfriend, then,’ she said, trying to keep it light. ‘For a month. It seems a bit hard on the bloke, though. After a month I go back to being general medico and dogsbody and he’d get what was left over. Which wouldn’t be very much at all.’

And then, at the end of her sentence, the lightness faded and she couldn’t quite keep the bitterness out of her voice. Jonas heard it as she knew he must.

‘You resent it?’