Meredith Webber - Christmas at Jimmie's Children's Unit - Bachelor of the Baby Ward / Fairytale on the Children's Ward

His excitement had him hopping up and down, splashing her with water.

‘There are better teachers than me, for board surfing,’ she told him, sitting up and looking around for Angus. Perhaps she should have asked if he could swim! Then his body, sleek as a seal’s, slipped onto the beach beside her.

Angus sat up and shook the water from his hair.

‘I didn’t catch it way out where you did,’ he said to the woman he’d been watching since she was deposited on the sand, a slim white mermaid in a green bathing suit. ‘I just surfed the broken bit. It’s been a long time since I caught a wave—student days at St Ives in England, an annual summer pilgrimage.’

He’d flopped onto the tail end of the wave to stop thinking about her, but now, this close, not thinking of her was impossible. The beautiful skin, so fine and pale he could see the blue veins in her temples, and in the slender lines of her neck, then the fiery red hair, darker now, wet and bedraggled, framing her face like a pre-Raphaelite painting.

‘Kate is going to teach me how to ride on the waves,’ Hamish announced, and now colour swept into her cheeks.

‘I wasn’t sure if you knew how. He asked me, but of course, you’re a surfer, you can teach him.’

‘Maybe we could both teach him.’

Angus heard the words come out and wished there was some way he could unsay them. How could he include someone else in his family before he’d made sure it was a family? It had obviously embarrassed her, as well, for the colour in her cheeks had darkened, and she stood and headed back into the water.

‘I’ll just catch another wave.’ The words floated back over her shoulder before she dived beneath the breakers.

‘Can I do that? Can I?’ Hamish demanded, so Angus put thoughts of pale-skinned mermaids right out of his mind and concentrated on teaching his son to dive beneath the waves.

‘Time for a shower and something to eat?’

Angus and Hamish, the diving lessons over, were sitting on the beach, making sandcastles, when the mermaid surfed right to their feet, lifting her head to ask the question.

‘We can shower up on the esplanade,’ she added, pointing towards the road, then, as if that was all the information he would need to realise the swim was over, she stood and walked back to where they’d left their towels and clothes. Angus hoisted Hamish onto his back and followed, thanking Kate as she picked up their clothes and handed them to him.

‘There are changing rooms if you don’t want to put your clothes on over your swimmers,’ she said, ‘but I find it’s cooler to stay wet underneath, and as we can eat our fish and chips in the park, it doesn’t really matter.’

Very matter-of-fact, yet that was what this outing was, a neighbourly gesture.

So why did he feel disappointed?

Feel as if something had changed between them?

For the worse!

She held their clothes while he showered with Hamish, then dried the little boy with her towel while Angus dried himself.

Being busy with Hamish meant Kate didn’t have to look at Angus’s sleek, wet body. She’d always considered herself immune to hormonal surges of attraction but the man next door was definitely setting her hormones in a twitch. What to do about it was the problem.

Keeping her distance from him would be one answer, but that was impossible when she not only worked with the man on a daily basis but also lived next door to him.

So she’d have to fake it—pretend to a platonic neigh-bourliness she was far from feeling.

‘The Frisky Fish is the best for fish and chips, or it was last time I bought any.’ She finished dressing Hamish and straightened up as Angus, his body now suitably covered, came to join them.

‘That one just across the road?’

Such a simple question but his accent really was to die for! She was thinking accents when she should have been answering but now it was too late, for he was speaking again.

‘I’ll buy our dinner,’ he announced. ‘I know what Hamish eats, what about you—a serve of fish and chips?’

The dark eyes were fixed on her face and Kate found it hard to pretend when just this casual regard made her feel warm inside.

‘I’m more a calamari person—not into fish at all—and could I have a battered sav, as well?’

‘Battered sav?’ Again man and boy made a chorus of the question, though Hamish added, ‘Oh, I want one of those, as well.’

‘Just ask for it, you’ll see,’ Kate told Angus, smiling at his bewildered frown. ‘Hamish and I will bag us a table.’

She took the excited little boy by the hand and they walked through the park until they found a vacant table.

‘I’m going to kindy tomorrow—Dad’s taking me,’ Hamish told her, and though he sounded excited there was a hint of anxiety in his blue eyes.

‘That will be such fun for you,’ Kate said. ‘Meeting lots of new friends, finding people to play with at the weekends. Maybe we can bring some of your friends to the beach one day.’

‘When I can ride the waves so I can show them,’ Hamish told her, and Kate wondered at what age children developed a competitive streak.

She asked about his friends back in America and laughed at the adventures he and McTavish had shared, so she was surprised to see nearly an hour had passed and Angus hadn’t returned. The Frisky Fish was popular and you usually had a wait while your meal was cooked, but this long?

‘Here’s Dad! He’s remembered drinks even though we didn’t tell him.’

Kate turned to see Angus approaching, holding white-wrapped parcels of food in one hand, a soft drink and a long green bottle in the other. He reached the table and put down the white parcels, gave Hamish his drink, then deposited the bottle on the table.

‘I haven’t a clue about Australian wines. I drank a fair bit of it in the U.S., but none of the names were familiar so I asked the chap behind the counter what went with battered savs.’

He was pulling two wineglasses from his pocket as he spoke, then he looked apologetically at Kate.

‘I do hope you drink wine. I didn’t think—should I have got you a soda, as well?’

‘I’d love a glass of wine,’ Kate assured him. ‘Especially a glass of this wine. The bloke at the wine shop saw you coming, and sold you something really special—really expensive, I would think!’

Angus smiled at her, destroying most of her resolution to pretend she felt no attraction.

‘Phooey to the price, as long as you enjoy it. We can both have a glass now and you can take the rest home to enjoy another time—it’s a screw-top.’

He poured the wine, then busied himself unwrapping Hamish’s dinner, showing him the battered sav.

‘It’s a kind of sausage called a saveloy that’s fried in batter,’ he explained to Hamish, who was squeezing tomato sauce onto it with the ease of an expert in takeaway food.

‘And don’t think you’ll get one too often,’ Angus added. ‘Full of nitrates, then the batter and the frying in oil—just about every dietary and digestive no-no.’

‘You’re just jealous you didn’t get one,’ Kate told him, biting into hers with relish, then she laughed as Angus delved into his white package and came up with one.

‘Well, I had to try it, didn’t I?’ he said defensively, but as he bit into it, he pulled a face and set it back down, deciding to eat his fish—grilled not fried, Kate noticed—instead.

‘They’re not to everyone’s taste,’ she said, ‘but my father was the food police like you and I never got to taste one as a child, so I became obsessed later on in life.’

‘Obsessed by battered savs?’ Angus teased.

‘Better than being obsessed by some other things I could think of,’ Kate retorted.