by Annie O'Neil
Whatever. He couldn’t worry about that now. He had a district nurse to collect and patients to see and joy to spread. He’d get a smile from each and every one of his patients if it killed him.
He gave his feet a stamp and his leather-gloved hands a brisk rub. Island cold was definitely different from mainland cold. A childhood on Bourtree should’ve made him immune to it but, despite the layers, fifteen years away from the island meant that today’s wind was digging straight through to his bones.
His gran’s voice came through clear as a bell. ‘There’s no such thing as bad weather, Coop, only bad clothing choices. Every day’s fine as the next so long as you’re dressed right.’
His grandmother had had a truism for everything. Even him.
‘Cooper, your problem is you’re too busy looking to the future to notice the here and now. Stop and smell the roses, laddie. Otherwise the only thing you’ll end up with is a life with no memories and no one to share it with.’
So here he was. Trying to make some good memories on Bourtree. Memories he wished like hell he could share with her.
He looked up the long cobbled lane that led to the enormous Bourtree Castle Christmas tree. The castle ruins and the glittering tribute to Christmas spearheaded the small town square some twenty-odd metres above the docks. He gave the tree a respectful nod. He’d chosen it as a visual reminder that the Christmas spirit started at home and, like it or not, Bourtree was home. For the foreseeable future anyway.
A big man—muscular, not fat—wearing rugby shorts and a short-sleeved shirt walked up alongside him and the small crowd of folk waiting for the ferry coming in from Glasgow.
Strewth. Shorts and a T-shirt in this weather? The man was either mad or Bourtree Castle through and through. Red hair, face covered in freckles, light blue eyes. Could be from any number of families on the island.
‘Coop.’ The guy gave him a nod and a smile.
‘All right, mate?’ Cooper replied, not at all sure what the man’s name was.
He looked familiar. Had they been in the same class at school, or had Cooper seen him in one of his gran’s stacks of local papers, fist in the air, cheering some sort of rugby triumph?
He still had a face full of acne... The cauliflower ear was new. As was the nose that looked to have been broken a few times and...yup...the scar cutting across his eyebrow. A scar mostly likely ‘won’ when the opposing team had crushed him at the bottom of a scrum pile.
It was a level of tough-as-nails that Cooper had never aspired to. Not that he shied away from sports. He went to the gym. Ran regularly. Did his weekly weights routine. But bulking up to get tangled in a pile of men who could throw a caber as easily as they could a toothpick? No, thanks. Fixing their compound fractures afterwards? Yeah. That was more his thing.
‘Gone soft over there in Glasgow, have you?’ the man asked, taking in Cooper’s layered ensemble and foot-stamping.
‘Hardly!’ Cooper barked, despite the fact they both knew otherwise. ‘Life on the mainland’s like bootcamp in the arctic. Harder.’
The white lie dug the sharp knife he’d been carrying around in his ribs just that little bit deeper. Who the hell was this guy? He should know him. He squinted, stripped away the crinkles round the man’s eyes, then tried to imagine him scrawny. That was it. He used to be scrawny.
‘Robbie? Robbie Stuart?’
‘Aye. Well done. Knew you’d get there in the end. Changed a bit, me, haven’t I?’ Robbie grinned, thumped his chest with one of his fists, then gave Cooper a proper thump on the back with the other. ‘Good to have you back on the island, even if—well—we’re all missing her. Your gran. Never met a woman with more spark in her. Or more sense of community spirit—specially this time of year. The Nativity’ll never be the same. Like herding cats to pull that thing off, and she always did it. A tough-as-old-boots islander through and through, Gertie was.’
‘Aye, well...’ He was trying to fill the Gertie void as best he could, but growing up on Bourtree hadn’t exactly been a bed of roses for him. A change of topic might be in order.
‘What sort of get-up do you call this?’ He tipped his head at Robbie’s shorts and T-shirt ensemble.
‘It’s my work gear, isn’t it? I just finished a PE session down at the college, then got a call from my brother to come and pick up my wee sister, as he’s helping out Dad down the shop.’
Hearing about family members helping family members as naturally as they breathed should’ve been a heart-warmer. Especially this time of year. Instead it dug that proverbial knife in deeper still.
‘Do you remember Rachel?’ Robbie asked. ‘She’s living over in Glasgow now. A librarian at a kiddies’ school, but comes home twice a month, rain or shine. Sometimes it takes a bit of wrangling, what with her roster and her boyfriend and all that, but she makes it work.’
Cooper, to his shame, neither remembered Rachel nor knew her routine. To say he hadn’t been a regular on the Bourtree-Glasgow ferry would’ve been a massive understatement.
He’d spent most of his time on Bourtree plotting ways to get off the island, not back on it. Staying away had been a far easier way to avoid stories about his mum and dad. A car accident had taken them in the end. Little wonder with the way they’d regularly shirked the drink-driving laws.
Each time he had a patient suffering from liver failure, he thought of his parents and how they’d got off easy. It was a painful way to go.
‘Speaking of get-ups...what’s this for?’ Robbie asked, tweaking the fabric of Cooper’s jacket between his massive fingers. ‘You preparing to throw yourself down some chimneys?’ He laughed at his own joke.
‘Picking up the new district nurse,’ Cooper corrected.
‘Oh, aye? Getting your foot in the door with Dr Anstruther, are you?’
‘Just helping out.’
He was testing the waters. Seeing if working here would do something—anything—to ease his guilt over not having been here for his gran. The ‘uniform’ was as much a buffer for him as it was for the patients who might not be so keen to have the island bad boy turn up at their door with a doctor’s case in hand.
He should’ve told Doc Anstruther he’d take the job the day he arrived. Made the decision as quickly and cleanly as a surgeon made an incision. He knew they were taking bets down at the pub about whether or not he’d stay.
It was a simple bet—would he stay or go?—but really he knew it went deeper. The decision he made would cement the way folk thought about the MacAskill name. Was he a good islander like his grandmother? Or a bad seed like his father? His sister had made her own decision by moving to New Zealand years back. Cooper had kept folk guessing long enough.
He knew opinions about him swung to both ends of the spectrum. Some thought his grandmother’s firm but fair hand in raising him and his sister once their parents had died had made all the difference. Others weren’t so generous.
A fair call, when being here tapped into his darker side. Anyway... He hadn’t made the call and he wouldn’t yet. He’d learnt the hard way about making promises he couldn’t keep. If he made this promise he’d have to know in his marrow he was going to keep it. The intention was there. All he had to do now was see if he had the follow-through to ensure the island still had a ‘good’ MacAskill on it.
‘Good to have you back for a wee while, Coop. And as Mr Holly Jolly himself, no less.’ Robbie gave him another thump on the back. ‘Brilliant. Your gran would’ve loved this, she would.’
Despite himself, Coop’s lips curved into a half-smile as they both examined his outfit. His grandmother would’ve loved it. Thick black boots with a solid tread. Dark red trousers. A huge but lightweight jacket that fitted like a dream over his thermal top, wind-resistant fleece and gilet. Some might argue that the floppy hat with ermine lining was a bit OTT, but if there was a beautiful woman teasing him about it he’d flirtatiously su
ggest that it brought out the blue in his eyes.
But he was with Robbie, and not feeling remotely flirty. He was feeling antsy and guilty and quite a few other things he was used to shoving in a box to worry about when hell froze over.
He glanced at his watch. The ferry was making a real production of pulling in half an hour later than scheduled.
Fog.
Surprise, surprise.
‘This the new regulation uniform, then, Coop?’
‘For house calls,’ Cooper said, playing it straight.
‘Aye, well... I dare say folk’ll appreciate the effort.’
‘Hope so.’
And he did. Truly, he did. He might not be able to fix the way his gran had gone—alone—but he was going to pour every ounce of energy he had into making sure no one else’s loved ones felt sad, or lonely, or any worse than they had to over the Christmas holidays. He’d chop down a Christmas tree for each and every one of them if necessary.
He jogged in place for a minute.
‘What’s this, then, Coop?’ Robbie gave him a jab in the ribs. ‘It’s a bit late to get fighting fit for the new district nurse, isn’t it? Bit of a hottie, is she?’
‘No idea.’
Romance was the last thing on his mind. Another of his periodic relationships had bit the dust a few months back, and he’d been too busy working to think about it since. Too busy working to be here for his gran during what had turned out to be her final days. The promise he should’ve made to her years ago—that he’d make her proud of the man he’d become—he’d had to make over her grave.
‘Never met her. I just hope she’s a good nurse. We’ve got to go straight out on some calls.’ He nodded out towards the car park, where the medical four by four stood ready and waiting.
Robbie’s eyes opened in surprise. ‘I still can’t get my head wrapped round the fact Cooper MacAskill is doing calls on Bourtree. I thought you’d be too much of a bigshot over there in Glasgow for the likes of us.’
Cooper only just managed to keep his expression neutral. ‘Doc’s busy in the surgery, so I said I’d do the house calls and take the nurse on her first few sets of rounds.’
Robbie nodded. ‘Someone down at the Puffin said you were doing a few days to help out Doc Anstruther, but I said I wouldn’t believe it till I saw it. Cooper MacAskill on Bourtree?’ He laughed, as if the idea was ridiculous.
Cooper gave his best stab at a nonchalant shrug, gritting his teeth against having his face rubbed in the past. A better reaction than connecting his fist to Robbie’s nose, anyway. An instinct from back in the day.
If he decided to stay, punching people wouldn’t exactly be kicking things off on the right note, so he took a deep breath, smiled, and prayed for the ferry to dock. Immediately.
Ach, well. If he decided to become the island’s doctor he’d better get used to having these sorts of conversations. He owed it to Bourtree. More importantly, he owed it to his gran. Not that doling out aspirins and wrapping up sprained ankles while the doctors over in Glasgow got properly stuck into the type of emergency medicine he was trained for was his idea of heaven, but the simple truth was nothing could change the fact he’d not been by his gran’s side when she had passed away.
Just a cold.
He should’ve known better. It was pneumonia season and, no matter how hale and hearty she’d been, older folk were always more vulnerable to contracting it after a virus. Particularly when they insisted upon riding their bicycles and paying house calls to elderly friends on a wintry Scottish island constantly cloaked in a shroud of cloud.
He should’ve been here. Driven her around. Brought her hot toddies and tea when the first round of sniffles hit. Nodded and smiled as she and her friends nattered on about needlepoint or whatever it was they talked about, whilst he daydreamed about life back in the A&E in Glasgow. He should have put an oxygen mask on her when she got short of breath.
‘It’s taking a wee while to find the mooring, isn’t it?’ Robbie nodded at the ferry, which was crawling towards the docks at a snail’s pace.
A pace Cooper would’ve railed against if it were an ambulance pulling into the bay at Glasgow Central.
‘Island pace’, his gran had called it.
Slow down, Coop. Nothing’s going to change for the sake of an extra ten minutes.
That was what she hadn’t understood. He’d been wired differently. Wired to respond to things in an instant. To a parent whose mood could turn on a dime. To an unkind child whose taunts might gain traction. A grandmother to please, a sister to protect, a reputation to—
Anyway... His ability to respond quickly meant A&E medicine suited him to a T. A seemingly innocuous situation could change to life-threatening in a matter of minutes. Seconds, even. A nicked artery. A septic wound.
A grandmother’s cold shifting into pneumonia as her grandson made excuses, yet again, as to why he couldn’t come back and have a wee look in on the woman who’d raised him when his own parents had fallen so short of the mark.
‘So, when’ll you be heading back to Glasgow?’ Robbie asked as the ferry staff finally started securing the boat to the dock and a crowd of foot passengers began to gather out on deck to disembark.
‘Good question,’ Cooper said, eyes peeled for an unfamiliar face as the small crowd of regulars bowed their heads against the wind and headed for the car park or scanned the small group of folk he was standing amidst for a loved one. ‘One I don’t have an answer for.’
‘What?’ Robbie gave him a punch on the arm. ‘I thought you would be high-tailing it back to the mainland as soon as Gertie’s immediate affairs are settled. Even put money on it.’
Cooper felt the muscles in his jaw twitch. There had definitely been a time when he would’ve done that. But not after what he’d done. Not with the burden of guilt he now bore.
‘Coop! MacAskill!’
Cooper looked up and saw one of the sailors pointing out a woman in an immaculate white ankle-length coat.
When his eyes landed on her face the wind was knocked out of him. And not because of the cold.
Dark brown almond-shaped eyes, the perfect shade of chocolate, met his straight on. A smattering of freckles made her look younger than he suspected she was. Somewhere around his age? Younger, more likely. Thirty to his thirty-five?
Her hair colour was a bit lighter than her eyes—a chestnut colour styled into an exacting pixie cut. As if she were a woodland faerie with a rulebook as long as her arm. Her overall aesthetic wasn’t one that would’ve landed her at a modelling agency, but there was something about her that appealed to him at a core level. The upward tilt of her chin. The dubiously arched eyebrow.
The huge down jacket made her look expensive, but when he caught a glimpse of her nails as she clutched the coat round her neck he saw practically trimmed, clean nails rather than talons. She was a bit taller than average. Easy enough to pick up and carry over a threshold if she were— Hmm... Best not go there.
Her lips, bright red—from the cold, no doubt—were tipping into a frown. Just as he supposed his own mouth was.
For some reason he’d been expecting a sturdy, no-nonsense, silver-haired, woman who bustled. Most likely because that was exactly what Noreen, the woman she was filling in for, looked like.
Audrey Walsh was decades away from being silver-haired. Nor did she have the look of a bustler. She seemed more hustle than bustle. And, from the way she was giving him the side-eye, no nonsense to the core. Which was a good thing. This was the busy season—and he wasn’t talking about Christmas parties.
Speaking of which... She didn’t look remotely impressed by his effort to spread Christmas cheer to their patients. Which was a bad thing.
‘Ho-ho-ho,’ he said. ‘Welcome to Bourtree Castle.’
Her nose wrinkled as she pasted on a wary smile. ‘I got your text about needing to head stra
ight out to some calls. I presume this...’ she wiggled her fingers at his Santa outfit ‘...is going to come off before we get to work?’
A burst of fire flared hot in his chest. No way. This was for his gran. And a district nurse should know more than most that house calls were about far more than taking temperatures and heartrates.
‘Nope. In fact...’ He held up the clear bag in his left hand, waving his right hand as if he were presenting her with a free car rather than a fancy dress costume. ‘I’ve got something here for you to put on before we head out.’
Audrey’s expression turned icy. ‘Not a chance.’
Perhaps the jacket she was wearing should’ve been a hint that she was more Snow Queen than one of Santa’s cheery helpers. But the Snow Queen’s heart had melted in the end, so...
He held up the costume again. ‘Sure? It’s thermal lined.’
CHAPTER TWO
‘NO,’ AUDREY REPEATED. ‘Absolutely not.’
This was not at all the escape from Christmas and heartbreak that she’d been hoping for when she’d accepted this post.
Her mental checklist had been simple.
A place as far away from London as possible.
Tick.
No excessive Christmas decorations. Anywhere.
Fail.
A crusty old doctor.
Fail.
Epic fail, in fact.
Cooper MacAskill was jaw-droppingly gorgeous. Dark hair. Piercing blue eyes. Full, sensual lips. And he was dressed as Santa Claus. How could she hate all things Christmas when Sexy Santa was standing there offering her a chance to be his adorable elf? It was almost hilarious. And equally cruel.
Of all the tricks fate could’ve played on her, it had landed her on an island with a gorgeous, Christmas-loving doctor whose accent was already sending shivers of pleasure down her spine. This would absolutely not do.
‘I’m not going to wear it. If you insist, I will turn around and get straight back on that ferry.’
