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

There was more than anger in his eyes, there was fear, as well, but his tone had tightened Kate’s nerves and she was in no mood to be conciliatory.

‘Well, I’d hardly be chatting to him in your backyard, now would I?’ she demanded. ‘You were “oot,” he told me, and Juanita sent him to play. As it happens, I found him in my front yard, and because there’s only a low brick fence that a crawling infant could get over, and a front gate that doesn’t shut properly, I brought him around the back to suggest if he goes adventuring he should use the backyard.’

She considered setting her hands on her hips and giving him a good glare but the shadows she saw again in his eyes had killed her anger. This man had suffered pain. Was still suffering it? Was his move to Australia part of a healing process?

It’s none of your business, her head warned, but having known pain—strong emotional pain—she couldn’t help but wonder.

‘Adventures! It’s all he thinks about,’ Angus muttered, still angry in the aftermath of anxiety but not seething any more. ‘Some fool gave him a book that has a story about a boy and his dog that go on adventures and he’s been mad for them ever since.’

He looked at the woman he’d been yelling at only minutes earlier and caught a hint of a smile she’d tried to hide.

‘It isn’t funny,’ he snapped, not sure it was the smile or his reaction to it that had riled him.

She looked up at him, really smiling this time.

‘It’s a little bit funny,’ she pointed out. ‘Four years old and he’s trespassing on my property and telling me it’s a terrible mess. I’m sorry I didn’t call out to Juanita to tell her he was with me, but it was a matter of a minute or two to show him the backyard where I knew he’d be safe. Take a look—could you get a better place for an adventure? And wouldn’t you be more worried about him if he wasn’t off having adventures? If he did nothing but sit around in front of the television all day?’

Angus sighed. Of course he’d be worried if Hamish wasn’t always pushing himself to see more, do more, learn more. But did he want to admit it to this woman?

‘I guess so,’ he said, although reluctantly, ‘and I know he misses the dog. Apparently we can visit him in quarantine but I haven’t sorted out a vehicle yet so can’t get to the quarantine station.’

‘Well, that’s easily fixed,’ his neighbour replied. ‘I’m on call at the weekend, so feel free to take my car. I’ve got a sat nav you can use so you won’t get lost.’

Angus stared at her. Every cell in his body told him not to get more involved with this woman, but she wasn’t inviting him to dinner, nor showing any signs she felt the slightest interest in him as a man; she was simply being neighbourly.

So why was he so hesitant to accept her offer?

‘Or not,’ she added with a shrug that showed little concern over his rudeness in not replying. ‘Now, I’ve got to get inside, I’ve some stripping to do.’

Stripping?

It had to be jet lag that had his imagination working overtime, seeing that slight body slowly revealed as she eased off her clothes!

She started towards the back of the house, pausing to remove a key from under a lichen-covered Buddha, then as she straightened she turned back towards where he still stood, puzzled and disturbed, in her backyard.

‘I’ve just remembered,’ she said, ‘there’s a gate down the back between the two properties. Dad let the hedge grow over it when the house you’re in was sold for rentals years ago, but if you hack away at the hedge and free the gate, Juanita will be able to get in here more easily if she needs to find the adventurers.’

‘That’s the first place burglars would look for a spare key,’ he muttered, ignoring her advice about gates and hedges but finally getting his legs to work and moving towards her rather than the side gate.

Now she laughed.

‘No way. They look under the doormat first, then under the flowerpots—look at all of them.’ She waved her hands towards the mass of flowerpots clustered on mossy paving stones around the back door.

Angus did look. Looking at pot plants was infinitely preferable to the mental image lingering unwanted in his head.

Although she couldn’t have meant that kind of stripping…

He turned more of his attention to the pot plants—a lot more.

‘Herbs? I thought you said you couldn’t cook. Why all the herbs?’

‘I can cook, I just can’t bake. When it comes to things like cakes and biscuits—I’m hopeless at those.’

It was one of the most inane conversations Kate had ever been involved in, but somehow she couldn’t move away from the man who was now examining her herbs with an almost professional interest.

Or what seemed like one!

Why hadn’t he left?

Why walk towards her rather than the side gate?

Surely the strangeness she was feeling in his presence wasn’t reciprocated? Not just attraction as in physical awareness but attraction like iron filings to a magnet—a kind of inexorable pull…

‘I’ve got a wall to strip and someone’s calling you,’ she said as a shrill, ‘Daddy’ wafted across the hedge.

‘Yes,’ he said, but still he didn’t move, except to straighten up from his examination of the herbs and look directly at her, the shadows in his eyes not visible in the gathering dusk, so he was just a tall, dark and very handsome man!

‘Yes,’ he said again, then finally he turned away, calling back to Hamish, telling him he was coming, and disappearing around the side of the house.

Weird!

KATE left early for the hospital, telling herself it had nothing to do with not wanting to accidentally run into her neighbour and so having to walk with him. But maybe he’d had the same idea of avoiding her, or he always arrived at work an hour early, for he was the first person she saw as she entered the unit.

‘The baby being transferred has arrived,’ he said, a slight frown furrowing his brow.

‘Bigger problem than you thought?’ she asked, sticking to professionalism mainly because the toast she’d had that morning hadn’t been made from mouldy bread but her stomach was still unsettled.

‘No, the scans show really good coronaries, as far as you can ever tell from scans, but he hasn’t got a name.’

Now Kate found herself frowning also.

‘Hasn’t got a name?’ she repeated. ‘But that’s ridiculous. Of course he must have a name.’

‘Baby Stamford,’ Angus replied, his frown deepening.

‘Oh, dear,’ Kate muttered, hoping the first thing that had entered her head was the wrong one. ‘But sometimes parents wait until their baby’s born to name him or her, thinking they’ll know a name that suits once they’ve seen the baby.’

Now Angus smiled, but it was a poor effort, telling Kate he knew as well as she did that sometimes the shock of having a baby with a problem affected the parents so badly they didn’t want to give the child a name—didn’t want to personalise the infant—in case he or she didn’t survive.

Her heart ached for them, but aching hearts didn’t fix babies.

‘You’re operating this morning?’ she asked Angus.

He nodded.

‘Good! That gives me an excuse to speak to the parents, to explain what my part will be, before, during and after.’

She looked up at him.

‘Shall we go together? A double act?’

Angus studied her for a moment, almost as if he was trying to place her in his life, then he nodded.

‘The mother came by air ambulance with the baby, and the husband is driving down. Somewhere called Port something, I think they come from.’

‘Port Macquarie,’ Kate told him, ‘and as far as I’m concerned, that’s in our favour, the mother being here on her own. We might find out more from her than we would from the two together.’