Meanwhile, Laura and Lucy only liked cute animals. Kittens. Ponies. Sarah had begun to develop a certain age-ap-propriate interest in ponies also, but had a warm enthusiasm for creepy animals as well, preferably the kind without legs.
Tammy, meanwhile, had no tastes or preferences what-soever. Mothers of large families learned not to, because it only complicated things further. She just wanted there to be no fighting between them all.
And once you factored in snacks, and lunch, and water bottles, and hats, and sunscreen, and tired legs, and the issue of whether she should take the now-battered double-seater pram, which two triplets at a time just managed to still fit into…
‘If you’re serious,’ she told Laird, ‘I’d suggest the zoo.’
‘This is not just a test, is it?’ he said, indicating that he’d indeed read her mind a minute ago. The light in his grey eyes was both exasperated and amused. ‘It’s a gruelling six-hour exam!’
They arranged it for the following Saturday.
The weather forecast co-operated with a prediction of full sunshine, although this meant it might get uncomfortably hot for several hours in the middle of the day. Laird arranged to drive to Tammy’s, from where they would proceed to the zoo in her battered second-hand seven-seater minivan—for which she didn’t apologise, because she’d gained a firmer grip on herself now, thanks to mental pep talks for several days. As Laird had divined, this was a very serious, very important exam, and if he couldn’t deal with the humble nature of her minivan, then he wasn’t going to score a passing grade.
Hmm. No sense making the whole thing too tough on an otherwise promising student, however.
After lying awake in the night, worrying about the strong possibility of there being empty muesli bar packets and old notes from school lying crumpled on the minivan floor, Tammy got up at six and cleaned the whole thing before any of the kids woke up.
Although the disappearance of camouflaging dirt did then serve to emphasise the scuffed seating and exterior dents and scrapes, the debris-free floor and polished chrome and glass were nonetheless an improvement.
At the zoo, the seven of them felt like a family.
While she often earned stares from strangers when out with the kids on her own—what was any woman doing by herself in public with such a large family?—the looks she received today were significantly more smile-laden and forgiving. What cute triplets! What a distinguished-looking dad they had! And look at the way he kept abreast of Lachlan’s impatient whirl from zebras to wombats to snakes, and steered him cheerfully back to Tammy and the others! Distinguished and hands on.
‘Should I try and rope him in more firmly?’ he asked her at one point, not as if Lachlan was being a brat but as if Laird himself scrupulously wanted to do the right thing.
‘It’s tough,’ Tammy answered. ‘He’s a good little lad, but he’s just not as interested in creatures as the other four. He’s more of a building and engineering type. I went with the majority preference, so he’s the one who’s hard done by.’
‘How about we go for a carousel ride? Would he like that?’
‘They’d all love it.’
‘You, too?’ He grinned at her.
‘There have to be a few perks for being a parent! Yes, I’ll have a ride.’
So they all did, even Laird. The triplets were old enough now to have a horse each, as long as Tammy rode her own wooden mount close by. The children were grinning and laughing, which made her grin, too, sharing their pleasure.
‘You were joking about the perks,’ Laird told her when they stepped down from the ride, all feeling a little dizzy. ‘But you’re right. It is a perk. Recapturing the innocence, or something. I hadn’t realised how good that would feel.’
‘Recapturing the wonder,’ she suggested.
He nodded. ‘That’s it. The wonder. Hmm, and the nausea, too. Woo, I think my stomach must be empty.’
They ate a sandwich lunch bought from one of the zoo kiosks and juggled the children’s wants and needs successfully until after four o’clock. The reptiles for Sarah, the animal nursery for Laura and Lucy, the scientific details Ben needed about every creature they saw, and the running around that Lachlan wanted to do. On the way home, all three triplets were tired enough to sleep in the car.
Laird had made a dinner booking for seven o’clock, and Tammy thought he’d go off and grab a couple of hours of breathing space and sanity before he picked her up again, but he insisted on coming into the house.
‘I have to get dinner organised for Mum,’ she warned him bluntly, because if he imagined the two of them sitting on the back veranda, sipping cool drinks with little paper umbrellas in them for the next hour, he was very wrong.
‘So I’m on entertainment duty?’
‘You could go home. Or you could cheat, and put on a DVD.’
‘Might be able to come up with something better than that.’
‘You don’t actually have to stay, though, Laird, I mean it.’
‘I have a change of clothing in the car,’ he drawled. ‘I was a Scout once, I’m prepared.’
Helplessly, she said, ‘OK, if you’re that much of a sucker for punishment,’ and turned her attention to making chicken casserole and spaghetti sauce—a double batch of each so that she would end up with a meal for tonight and three more frozen for the future. In the background, she heard the kids’ voices and Laird’s, and when she went to see what they were doing, she discovered they were building a zoo.
‘Isn’t it fantastic, Mummy?’ Sarah yelped excitedly.
It was.
Lachlan tackled the construction, using wooden and plastic blocks, a blue teatowel and a green handkerchief for water areas, even wooden train tracks for a miniature zoo railway. Ben grouped the animals thematically. ‘We can’t have lions in with kangaroos, Lucy! Lions are carnivorous!’ Sarah was the head keeper for the reptiles and nocturnal animals. Laird supervised the whole thing, settled disputes, threw in creative suggestions, and probably got more of a physical workout, crawling around on the carpet, than he’d expected.
‘Show-off,’ Tammy said to him, because it unsettled her that he was being so good about this. How long since she’d had an energetic, willing, intelligent man in the house to play with her kids? How long before the novelty factor would wear off for him?
‘Next you’re going to remind me that it all has to be cleaned up properly if I want dessert.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Someone’ll cry,’ he warned. He had the sleeves of his light cotton sweater pushed up and several blocks in his hand. He looked strong and relaxed and more like an athlete than a doctor. Tammy had to hide the way her heart flipped at the sight of him.
‘And I don’t want it to be me,’ she said, mock-sternly, ‘coming home at ten-thirty tonight to find all of this littered on the floor, or Mum on her hands and knees, tidying up.’
‘You’re not really angry, are you?’
‘No,’ she admitted. ‘I’m teasing.’
‘And do you really want it tidied up?’
She sighed. ‘I do. But how can I be that much of a dragon, when it’s so spectacular?’
‘I have to admit, though, it’s right in the middle of the carpet. We didn’t survey our site very well. Someone’ll trip over it.’
‘I’ll see what Mum wants when she comes in.’
Tammy went back to the kitchen to finish her cooking, but at six-thirty when the children’s dinner was served and Mum had done her usual rap at the back door— ‘It’s just Grandma!’—the zoo had been carefully transplanted to the edges of the living room, to leave a clear space in the middle of the carpet and an impression of satisfactory order rather than undisciplined chaos.
‘You’d better change,’ Laird said. ‘Can’t go to a Thai restaurant smelling like spaghetti.’
That night there was no emergency phone call from Mum. They lingered over a meal fragrant with lemon grass and coriander and chilli until almost ten o’clock, and still Tammy di
dn’t want to go home.
‘But we must,’ she said, convincing herself more than him.
A glass and a half of white wine had softened everything around the edges, including her never-very-impressive ability to hide her feelings. Oh, she was having such a nice time tonight! They’d talked non-stop. He kept making her laugh, and when she said something funny herself, he laughed, too. A lot of men didn’t think funny meant sexy when it came to women, but Laird apparently did.
‘Mum won’t go to bed until I’m back,’ she went on, ‘even though her flat’s only thirty metres away from the house, across a piece of lawn.’
At home, after Laird had insisted he would see Tammy inside and say thanks and goodnight to her mother, all was quiet. Five kids asleep, Mum beginning to doze on the couch, with the TV sound turned low. She yawned as she promised Tammy that no one had given any trouble. They’d all been hungry, they’d all cleaned their teeth. Even Sarah, the latest up, had been asleep by eight-thirty.
‘Goodnight, love.’ In the kitchen, by the back door, she hugged Tammy and kissed her on the cheek, then gave off an even more massive and this time transparently faked yawn, which Tammy just knew was intended as a subtle hint and reassurance.
If Laird happened to stay for coffee, and the coffee happened to get a little more intimate after a while, Mum would already be tactfully fast asleep.
Thanks, Mum. I love you, too.
She found Laird on his knees in the living-room, making some improvements to the zoo. He laughed when she caught him at it, and climbed to his feet. ‘Sprung! I never totally grew up, did I?’
‘You really are a show-off,’ she told him.
‘I’m a perfectionist. The primate enclosure was too small.’
‘This is what you’re going to do at your vineyard, isn’t it? Play around with it until it’s perfect. I bet the trees will look spectacular.’
‘Come and see them. They’re all planted—straight, this time—although I’m planning to order a couple more truck-loads. Bring the kids.’
‘It sounds nice. I—I don’t know.’
‘Yes, you do.’
There was a moment of awkward silence while they smiled at each other in a goofy kind of way.
‘So, did you want coffee?’ she asked him.
‘No, I thought we’d skip straight to the hard stuff.’
‘Hard?’
‘You. Hard to get. Let me kiss you properly tonight, Tammy…’
Before she could give him an answer, he’d taken charge, had switched in seconds from the relaxed type who was happy to crawl around the floor, playing zoos, to a man who knew what he wanted, wanted a heck of a lot and was totally accustomed to getting it.
He stepped in front of her and pushed her hair away from her face. She’d left it loose tonight. Felt safer that way. At a pinch, her hair could screen a blush or a smile. It would shadow her face if she had to look down because she could no longer meet the light in his warm eyes. Laird liked her hair, and it apparently gave some people the illusion that she was pretty.
But now it betrayed her.
His fingers ran through it, releasing the scent of her shampoo all around them. Her scalp tingled and sent shivers all down her spine and across her skin. He bent and buried his face in the hard-to-tame waves, then kissed her neck, trailing his lips across her skin with slow, teasing intent. His breath felt hot. His touch sent up sparks. She shuddered and gasped, wrapping her arms around his body because she needed the support. She just needed him.
‘I want you,’ he said. ‘There’s something about you. Every inch of you. Your skin. The weight of your breasts in my hands. The way you smell. The way you laugh. The way you call me on things like my hobby vineyard and my pretty new trees.’
‘But I’d love to see them.’
‘You will. Soon. As soon as we can manage it. You’re real, Tammy Prunty. I don’t think I’ve ever met a woman as real as you.’
‘I want you, too. So much. Sometimes I can’t breathe. Or blink. Or speak. Or believe it’s happening. Or—or think that this is really me. That this is happening to me.’ The words spilled out on their own, and she cursed her own honesty.
A little restraint, Tammy, for once?
She couldn’t.
She wasn’t made that way.
His body felt so hard and warm and wonderful. He smelled right. Familiar and delicious, but new, too. She breathed him in, felt herself surrounded by his fresh male scent and it lit up something inside her that she’d forgotten or maybe had never known. His thighs brushed against her, his chest was like a wall, and she felt utterly safe with his strength, even on such new ground.
‘What are we going to do about it?’ he muttered.
She didn’t answer, just lifted her face in search of his kiss. Their mouths crushed together, breathless and hungry, too impatient to be gentle or tender. It was a huge kiss, deep and almost bruising. Her body throbbed and ached and tingled and sang as she tasted him.
He had his hands in her hair again, lifting it off her neck, stroking her skin and curling the strands around his fingers. She arched her back, pressing her breasts against him so that he’d know what he’d done to her, shameless about it. Her nipples were hard and tight and tender.
She felt his hardness, too—the unique maleness of it nudging her body, betraying his need. He moved his hands to her breasts, cupping and lifting them so he could kiss the swollen slopes that rose above the dipping neckline of her shimmery, thin-strapped black top. She touched him everywhere she could reach, learning his body by heart, learning the way he responded, and all the different ways they fitted together.
How long since she’d done this? Or had wanted to do it?
A long time. Five years. Only days before Tom had moved out, when she’d still thought that they were just going through a temporary bad patch and soon they’d—
Stop, Tammy.
She didn’t want to think about Tom.
But when she thought about Laird, she realised she was giving far too much, far too soon. What was her eagerness telling him? That she wanted to sleep with him tonight? That it would be easy, and without any serious implications?
It wouldn’t.
Just thinking about it made her feel as if a big hand had reached into her stomach, taken a handful of her insides and twisted them into a knot. If she slept with him, she’d give him her heart.
At once.
Completely.
She knew herself well enough to be in no doubt of that. And her heart was so tender and sore. It was only the feeling of bruising and the fear of pain that allowed her to push him away.
Too gently. He didn’t even understand what she was doing at first, and she had to say it in words. ‘Can we stop?’
For several moments she felt him struggling against the demands of his body. He touched his fingertips to her lips and traced their shape while his hips and legs stayed pressed against her, making her fully aware of how aroused he was. ‘Of course we can stop,’ he said at last. ‘But you have to tell me when you next have a day off with no night shift before it.’
‘Um, next Saturday. I try to stay clear of too much weekend work.’
‘So we’ll go out to the vineyard with the kids then, give your mother some more time to herself.’
‘Lachlan and Ben are going to a friend’s place. It would just be the girls.’
‘Whoever, as long as one of the girls is you. Want to meet me out there? I’ll give you directions, or I can pick you up.’
‘Give me directions.’
‘I’ll see you during the week at the hospital.’
‘Give me the directions now. It’s—it’s different at the hospital.’ She trusted this whole sizzle and fire and intensity even less when they were there.
He nodded at her words. Maybe he felt the same. She found a pen and an old note from school and he wrote the directions on the back of it, with a clarity and detail that made her smile. There was something protective about it, and a subtext tha
t said he really, really didn’t want her to get lost.
She felt ridiculously cherished by directions such as ‘Big tree on LEFT’ and ‘If you get to the turn-off to Laidlaw Mountain Road, you’ve gone too far’. He finished the whole thing off with his mobile phone number, his land-line number, and even his home email address, then gave her back the scrappy piece of paper as if giving her a bunch of flowers.
When he’d gone, she folded it carefully and put it in her bag as if it was precious, her vulnerability and doubt battling with the sizzling happiness and expectation in her heart.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THEY had rain during the week and Tammy crossed her fingers for it to clear. She imagined Laird bravely pretending that muddy footprints in his house and bored, housebound kids running and shrieking through the rooms didn’t bother him a bit.
In the NICU, two babies graduated to the high dependency unit. One of them was Max Parry, which was very good news, although his brother would be here in the NICU for longer. Fran was still looking exhausted and Chris had a hard time persuading her to take the breaks she needed. He and Alison Vitelli’s husband Steve ganged up together and sent Fran and Alison off to the hospital cafeteria whenever they could. They were both good fathers, although very different people, and they somehow managed to appreciate each other’s different emotional styles.
Two more newborns arrived, both of whom looked like they would only need a comparatively short stay. Tammy and Laird encountered each other several times a day—bright points in an average week, little memory-making moments that she hugged to herself at night in bed and then worried about.
By Friday, the rain had cleared and the forecast for the weekend was breezy and fine. Laird phoned that evening to confirm that Tammy and the girls were still coming, and she gave him an expected arrival time. ‘I have to drop the boys off first.’
With the precious directions to the vineyard entrusted to Sarah in the minivan’s front seat, Tammy left the city behind on Saturday. Suburban blocks gave way to acreage. There were hobby orchards beginning to fruit, shaggy family ponies standing in grassy paddocks, and they passed the garden centre where Laird had bought his trees.
Six Sexy Doctors Part 1 (Mills & Boon e-Book Collections): A Doctor, A Nurse: A Little Miracle / The Children's Doctor and the Single Mum / A Wife for ... / The Playboy Doctor's Surprise Proposal Page 24
