A Wedding for the Single Dad

by Meredith Webber

  He looked blankly at her. ‘Damn and blast!’ he said. ‘I didn’t give it a thought—didn’t even think about recording things at all...just the actual testing. But of course it has to be recorded.’

  ‘No worries. We’ve got all the numbers, and if those two stay together we’ll find her later.’

  ‘It might be possible,’ Cam answered through gritted teeth, as the next so-called pet bit his shoulder.

  Somehow they got through all the animals, finding only three not pregnant. They also discovered that Celia had adjusted the gates so the animals left the chute and went into a fresh, grassy paddock with a feeding trough along one side. All the animals had headed towards it, which made it easier for them to find the pair that had refused to be separated.

  Their ear tags, when checked, were forty-one and forty-two, suggesting they might be twins.

  Finally, the paperwork was complete.

  ‘And now all we have to do is find someone to keep an eye on them,’ Cam said.

  But Lauren was already heading for the house.

  ‘Celia has a married daughter who lives in the area,’ she said as he caught up with her. ‘We’ll find a phone number somewhere. And we’ll have to lock up the house. We don’t get much theft around here, but there are always opportunistic people who might hear she’s been hospitalised and come for a look around.’

  She was right, he realised, and relief that she’d agreed to come with him flooded through him. As things had turned out, he certainly couldn’t have managed without her. But her presence, he thought as he followed her towards the house, was unsettling him rather than bringing the usual joy.

  It was Jake’s fault, of course—though he wasn’t to know that a casual remark about wanting to see his wife and kids would ruin Cam’s day.

  Ruin his day?

  What on earth was he thinking?

  ‘Self-pity never gets you anywhere,’ he could hear his mother’s voice telling him.

  But, hell...

  He was a grown man with a daughter—what he was feeling surely couldn’t be self-pity.

  It was nothing more than irritation with the bloody alpacas, for whom he had yet to develop any fondness.

  Shaking off his wayward thoughts, because there was work still to be done, he followed Lauren into the house, catching her in the kitchen and giving her a hug.

  She turned to face him, a What was that for? question in her eyes, but somehow their lips met and the hug became a kiss.

  And, given the way he’d been feeling all morning, it was only with the strongest of will power that he refrained from mentioning the marriage thing again.

  Refrained from just asking on the off-chance...

  Because he couldn’t get it out of his head...

  * * *

  ‘Enough!’ Lauren said, breaking away and pointing him towards the list held by a magnet to the door of the refrigerator. ‘Ellen—that’s her daughter,’ she said, her finger on a name. ‘I’ll phone her, because she knows me, and she’ll be able to tell us who to call to keep an eye on the animals. Would you mind going through the house and closing the windows, locking the outside doors, and—’

  ‘Checking there are no appliances left on?’ he finished for her.

  She grinned at him. ‘Okay, I know you know as well as I do how to check things out. It’s just me being—’

  ‘Bossy?’

  ‘Go!’ she ordered. ‘I’ve got a difficult call to make.’

  * * *

  It took another half-hour to make sure the family knew what had happened, to check on Celia’s status at the hospital—she was in Intensive Care—and to organise a neighbour to take care of the alpacas.

  They were fairly quiet on the drive back. Lauren was still testing the revelation that had struck her earlier about her feelings for this man. She found herself sneaking quick glances at him, as if seeing him in profile, or talking, or frowning over something, might help her work out why she was feeling as she did—why she’d been stupid enough to actually fall in love with him.

  He was just a man, after all.

  A nice man—well, mostly. He was crabby when he was in pain, but who wasn’t?

  And it wasn’t as if she hadn’t met other nice men over the years—even gone out with several of them while Henry sat with her father. But the truly weird, heart-clenching realisation of love had never featured in any of those brief relationships.

  Maybe it wasn’t love she felt for Cam. Maybe it was just some kind of heart arrhythmia and he’d just happened to be there when it happened...

  Several times.

  Almost constantly, actually.

  She sighed, even though she’d thought she’d given up sighing.

  ‘You okay?’ he asked.

  She nodded. Then, because his eyes were on the road, she added, ‘Fine.’

  Time to take control, she decided. Forget this heart-love business!

  ‘Have you heard anything from Brendan?’ she asked, but he shook his head.

  ‘He doubted anything would happen before the weekend, and he’s got the place he thinks is their headquarters covered by drones.’

  Back at the surgery, they found a note from Debbie explaining that she and a friend were dropping notices in letterboxes and there’d been no phone calls.

  But the note didn’t finish there.

  We’ve taken Maddie with us, so we won’t go far.

  Madge said it would be okay, but here’s my mobile number if you want to check.

  Debbie had then listed her number, and her boyfriend Harry’s number for any emergency, and signed off with a flourish, a little heart dotting the ‘i’ in her name.

  ‘Even in a note she talks a lot,’ Cam said gloomily.

  Lauren laughed at him. ‘Go on with you,’ she said. ‘Debbie is just what you need to brighten this place up.’ She looked around and added, ‘Well, a coat of paint wouldn’t go amiss either!’

  But their conversation, although relieving Lauren’s fears about the dog-fighting man returning, had done little to dispel the aftershocks of the discovery she’d had made on the drive to the alpaca farm. The certainty of this love thing had left her mind and her body churning helplessly.

  It could go nowhere—she knew that—even if the wretched man mentioned marriage at least once a day.

  It just felt wrong. And the age difference, her fear of potentially facing dementia herself one day, and the suddenness made it all the more overwhelming.

  CHAPTER NINE

  SHE’D BARELY OPENED her afternoon session when Cam arrived, with a drowsy, unresponsive Maddie in his arms.

  ‘Call an ambulance,’ she said to Janet, as soon as she saw the child.

  She ushered Cam inside her office.

  ‘What happened?’ she asked as she checked Maddie’s temperature—thirty-nine degrees—something the flushed face and body had already suggested.

  ‘She went to her bedroom to have a rest and then we couldn’t wake her,’ Cam said, his voice coarse with panic and concern.

  She injected paracetamol into the child’s limp arm and brought damp cloths to bathe the burning skin.

  Meningococcal had been Lauren’s first thought, and shame that she’d let events at the sanctuary take precedence over talking to Cam about the vaccination gnawed at her stomach. But as she checked Maddie’s body she saw there were no tell-tale signs of the disease. She was flushed all over, but with no darker spots or splotches.

  ‘She’ll be safe in the ambulance and you can travel with her,’ she said to Cam, hoping her voice would be enough to calm him down a little. ‘I’ll come up later, bring Madge and clothes. There’s a new children’s hospital just south of Riverview—it’s about three-quarters of an hour’s drive. There’s accommodation attached to it where you and Madge can stay. I’ll arrange all that when I get there.’

&
nbsp; She wasn’t sure he’d heard any of it. His whole being was focussed on willing his child to keep breathing.

  The ambulance arrived, and with the paramedics’ usual seamless efficiency sped away within minutes.

  Lauren saw them off, then phoned Madge.

  Of course Madge wanted to go, so Lauren explained that she’d collect her at six and reminded her to pack a few things for Cam, as well as for herself and Maddie.

  ‘And some story books and a toy or two,’ she added, then hung up to get back to her patients.

  * * *

  By the time Lauren and Madge arrived at the hospital that evening Maddie had been admitted to the ICU.

  Cam kissed them both, but looked so utterly weary that Lauren handed him a bag of clothes and toiletries and sent him across to the accommodation block to have a shower and a rest.

  ‘You’re booked in there. Madge and I will both stay with Maddie while you take a break,’ Lauren told him.

  ‘Jake’s here—from the sanctuary. He said he’d look after her. He did a lumbar puncture,’ Cam said, in a helpless voice that made her want to hug him. ‘But I don’t think the results are back yet. He’s thinking meningitis.’

  ‘They’ll all look after her—and we’ll be with her. You go and rest.’

  He kissed her again, and left reluctantly.

  ‘Isn’t that what we were talking about when I brought her in to see you?’ Madge asked.

  Lauren shook her head. ‘Meningococcal is slightly different,’ she told her. ‘If this is a viral infection, rather than a bacterial one, I doubt a vaccination would have made a difference. A viral infection is most likely to have come from a virus Maddie’s picked up somewhere. It could have been something as small as someone sneezing in a shop.’

  ‘We were in town the other day and every second person seemed to have a cold,’ Madge said. ‘And she’s been playing in that old shed a lot lately.’

  Lauren shook her head. She knew you could eat off the floor of Henry’s shed. Even as he’d grown older, his long-time cleaning woman would come and clean it weekly.

  ‘She has been a bit sniffly lately,’ Madge said, the vague tone suggesting that she was running back through Maddie’s life over the last few weeks.

  ‘Stop fretting about it,’ Lauren said firmly. ‘Whatever has happened has happened, and now Maddie needs us. Which is her favourite book? I’ll read it to her.’

  To Lauren’s surprise, Madge handed her a very old copy of Winnie the Pooh, which Lauren recognised as one that had belonged to Henry as a child. She’d borrowed it to read herself, many times.

  She smoothed her hand over the rather tired blue cover, then opened it and began to read.

  * * *

  Maddie’s condition barely changed over the next two days—the little girl remained either asleep or too drowsy to do anything other than smile weakly at whoever had appeared at her bedside.

  So when Lauren came to relieve Cam at midnight three days later, sitting next to him and holding his hand, she broached a subject she wasn’t at all sure he’d want mentioned.

  ‘Do you think her mother should be told?’ she asked. ‘You said she was in Australia at the moment.’

  He frowned at her, shook his head, then nodded.

  ‘I have let her know,’ he said. ‘I phoned her the night Maddie was admitted. She is in Australia—up north somewhere in the rainforest. She sends a card to Maddie from time to time. Usually with a lizard on it—Aboriginal paintings of lizards. Snakes too.’

  ‘And...?’ Lauren prompted.

  Cam shook his head as if trying to focus. ‘I think she said she’d come, but that she had things to arrange. She has my number, so I suppose she’ll let me know.’

  It all seemed very vague and totally unsatisfactory to Lauren, but she knew it was none of her business, and she didn’t want to push Cam in the state he was already in.

  But Maddie’s mother—Kate—did arrive. On Sunday afternoon she swept into the hospital in a blaze, scattering ‘darlings’ at all the staff, crying by her daughter’s bedside, then pronouncing herself utterly spent and asking to be shown to her room.

  She took the room Lauren had been using. Lauren had packed and left that morning, explaining to Madge that she’d be more use back at the lake, organising Cam’s practice and getting back to her own work.

  Kate was still Cam’s wife and the mother of Maddie. A good mother, she remembered Cam saying. Lauren knew she was best off out of the way.

  But if Lauren’s departure from the scene was low key, Kate’s arrival had been anything but. The local newspaper, always eager for a bit of glamour to lift its otherwise provincial status, had caught a shot of her arrival at the airport. And the front page that greeted Lauren when she picked up the paper from her doorstep on Monday morning was highlighted by a photograph of a beautiful, petite blonde woman, a filmy handkerchief clutched in one hand.

  Above it, in what seemed to Lauren to be an unnecessarily large font, were the words UK Actress Arrives to Sit by Ill Daughter!

  Actress?

  How come that had never been mentioned? she thought.

  Or maybe it had...

  A beautiful blonde actress...

  It was even worse than Lauren had thought.

  They’d married while at university, Madge had said—in rather disapproving tones. But maybe only Cam had been at university—unless Kate had been doing a drama degree of some kind?

  And Cam had enjoyed being married.

  That he had told Lauren.

  * * *

  Cam had phoned Maddie’s mother, assuming she’d be too busy, or too involved with whatever she was involved in, to want to come.

  So her, ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can,’ had come as something of a surprise.

  Until he picked up a paper in one of the hospital waiting rooms and saw the photo and the headline. As far as he knew, journalists didn’t stalk the small, regional airport in anticipation of celebrities arriving—and even if they did, they’d have seen a pretty woman but would not have had any idea of her name.

  Unless she’d organised the reception committee herself. Which meant, he decided, after tossing around several alternatives, that she was probably looking for work in Australia and needed a bit of free publicity.

  The thought made his heart sink.

  Madge had lived with them since Maddie’s birth—Kate having assured him that children who grew up in multi-generation households were more stable—and even though she’d only come to help out with the new baby, she had soon become the main caregiver—and indispensable in that role, given that Kate was rarely home.

  It had been Madge that Maddie had always turned to—either in excitement or concern—and Kate’s departure had barely caused a blip in Maddie’s existence.

  But maybe he was wrong to be cynical about Kate’s arrival now. She might have found some deeply buried maternal instinct and need to be with her child.

  He wasn’t entirely taken in by the tears she’d shed at Maddie’s bedside. And yet she had sat there for nearly an hour, reading a book she’d brought about animals in the rainforest and generally becoming the centre of attention in the ward—far more than the usual number of doctors and nurses had just ‘popped in’ to see how Maddie was doing.

  ‘Like hell!’ Cam muttered through gritted teeth, as he thought of Kate playing the doting mother to his sleeping child.

  Where was Lauren when he needed her? He needed her common-sense and calm, supportive comfort. Needed her presence by his side and, yes, her body in his bed, so he could lose his fear and dread, even for a brief time, as he lost himself inside her.

  Had he conjured her up? Because she appeared early that evening, offering to sit with Maddie so he could spend some time with his wife.

  She was as lovely as ever, and her smile warmed his blood, but Kate was draggin
g him away, informing him that he should take her somewhere special for dinner as she’d come all this way to see them both.

  And when Lauren raised her eyebrows in a quizzical manner at this statement, he hoped Kate didn’t notice...

  * * *

  She was gorgeous, Cam’s wife, Lauren conceded to herself as the pair departed. Big blue eyes, a neat nose and full red lips—all set in pale, creamy skin, the lot framed by short, almost white-blonde pixie-cut hair.

  It would be good for Maddie if they got back together—wouldn’t it?

  Two parents were better than one, weren’t they?

  She really didn’t know. She’d grown up with just a father and she was okay.

  Wasn’t she?

  Forget it.

  She set aside a book about animals in a jungle—or was it a rainforest?—which looked far too complex for a four-year-old, and returned to reading about Pooh and his friends, getting a slight response when Maddie opened her eyes and said, ‘Lauren...?’

  ‘I’m here, sweetheart,’ Lauren told her, gently squeezing the fingers of one small hand. ‘And I’ll stay right here with you until Daddy gets back, okay?’

  ‘And Puss?’

  The words were slurred, but Lauren knew what she was asking. ‘No kittens yet, but it can’t be long. I’ll tell you as soon as something happens.’

  As Maddie sighed, then slipped back into a deep sleep, Lauren wiped silly tears from her face and began to read again. She’d brought along her own copy of The House at Pooh Corner for after she’d finished this one, and was actually loving reading about Pooh’s life again...

  * * *

  She was singing nursery songs from her childhood, very softly, when Cam returned—without his beautiful wife—close to eleven that evening.

  ‘Are you going to drive back home when you leave here?’ he demanded.

  She smiled, and took his hand, pulled him down into the chair beside her. ‘Sit, relax,’ she ordered, then put her arm around his shoulders and drew him closer in an awkward hug.