‘You’re not even asking me, are you?’
‘No, now I’m telling you. I’m ordering you. I’m not messing around, and I’m not taking no for an answer. You love me. Repeat after me, “I love you, Laird.”’
‘I love you, Laird,’ she said helplessly.
‘There. Was that so hard?’
‘That’s the easy part.’
‘It’s the powerful part. It’s the engine that drives everything else. We’re not going to rush this. We’re not going to skimp on the details. But we’re going to get there.’
‘Where’s there? What’s happening then?’
‘You’re going to marry me,’ he predicted, with a medical specialist’s arrogant certainty, and the same blunt honesty that she’d delivered to him from the start. ‘When the time is right, I’m going to ask you, with bells and whistles and my whole heart on a plate, and you’re going to say yes, the moment I do.’
* * *
She did say yes.
Six months later.
After they’d spent many mornings at the garden centre, buying way too many shrubs and trees, and three weekends at the beach, making castles in the sand. After they’d taken all five kids on countless pony rides at the vineyard—with a few more falls and lots of carrots and apples. After they’d spent some time getting to know each other’s parents, and taken evenings out for just the two of them, tasting from each other’s plates.
He asked her to marry him at the vineyard in the autumn on a mellow, golden afternoon, and they had the wedding there, too, several months later, with Laura, Lucy and Sarah as flower girls and Lachlan and Ben firmly declining any formal role. Tammy wore a cream dress of soft lace that hugged the figure Laird found so luscious and wonderful, and Laird wore a suit that was quite definitely Armani this time, thanks very much.
It was a September wedding, out of doors on the back lawn, edged by the new roses, with Amira, Banana and Solly looking on. Oh, and several ducks, too. The weather had begun to warm up and the new pale green growth had begun to appear on the vines. Tarsha was there, with Olivier. They had wedding plans of their own, but she was driving her fiancé mad with her quest for the right designer to make her dress. They had been travelling back and forth between Australia and Europe for several months, sorting out their lives.
The details of Tammy and Laird’s new life were already in place. Tammy was selling her house in the suburbs and she and Mum and the children were moving out to the vineyard. There was a little cottage on the corner of the property, which Mum had already begun to make her own. Laird was keeping his townhouse near the hospital for times when the forty-five-minute drive between the hospital and the vineyard seemed too far for a busy neonatal specialist and his wife.
Tammy expected that she would be cajoled into taking frequent second honeymoons in the townhouse with her new husband. She’d already told her mother, ‘It’s too much for you, Mum.’
But Mum hadn’t listened. ‘You’re cutting down to two shifts a week at the hospital. Of course I can look after the kids while you spend some time on your own with Laird. He doesn’t want to have to come home from the hospital to an empty place in town on the nights he doesn’t drive out here. And you’re getting professional help with the house. The kids and I will have a ball with the ducks and the donkey and the ponies on our own, when you two aren’t around.’
Tammy suspected that hand-reared lambs were only a breeding season away.
And maybe another kind of hand-reared infant as well. The human kind. There was plenty of room in their lives for six ducks, a donkey, two ponies, two lambs, five children and a baby.
And yet somehow, despite all of this, as Laird had said, it was very simple, like the goodness of apples.
They loved each other, which made everything else fall into place.
A Wife For The Baby Doctor
Josie Metcalfe
‘Dammit, Dani—’ Josh began, but this time she wasn’t going to take no for an answer—not when it was obviously what they both wanted.
Her mind wasn’t really on what she was saying. What did conversation matter when she was finally where she’d wanted to be for so many years?
And it felt so good.
Ever since she’d first fallen in love with him she’d imagined what it would feel like when he finally held her in his arms, but this surpassed anything she’d ever dreamed. He was so tall and strong—the sort of solid bulwark that a woman could depend on to protect her when life turned rough.
‘Dani…’ he muttered, almost incoherently, and his head swooped down towards her even as he swept her up into his arms and pressed his lips to hers.
At last!
Josie Metcalfe lives in Cornwall with her long-suffering husband. They have four children. When she was an army brat, frequently on the move, books became the only friends that came with her wherever she went. Now that she writes them herself she is making new friends, and hates saying goodbye at the end of a book—but there are always more characters in her head, clamouring for attention until she can’t wait to tell their stories.
CHAPTER ONE
JOSH peered cautiously through the window in the door that barred the entrance to the unit, wary in case it was that fierce senior sister on duty.
He knew that his mother preferred to collect him from the homework club at school rather than have him walk for five minutes to the hospital on his own; knew he wasn’t really supposed to come up here to wait for her shift to end; and he definitely shouldn’t know the code to let himself into the unit, but he was so fascinated by the tiny babies she cared for that he just couldn’t resist.
‘Hi, Josh,’ called one of his mother’s friendlier colleagues, looking across at him from her position at the desk. He breathed a sigh of relief when he saw her welcoming smile. With Sally Nugent on duty he knew he wasn’t going to be summarily ejected tonight. ‘Your mum’s nearly finished. Go on into the staff lounge while you’re waiting for her. There might even be some biscuits left in the tin.’
His stomach was empty but it was easy to ignore it when there was the fascinating world of medicine surrounding him. He might only be nine, but he already knew what he wanted to do when he grew up.
‘Have you had any new babies in today?’ he asked, lingering beside the desk while Sally frowned at something on the computer screen.
‘Not so far,’ she said with a distracted smile in his direction, just as the phone began to ring.
Josh could only hear Sally’s side of the conversation but he could tell from the expression on her face that she was being told something serious. Usually Sally could manage to find a reassuring smile for everyone, no matter what was happening in the unit. This time he could tell from the way she suddenly went white that something very different had happened.
She clattered the phone down almost before she’d finished speaking, and instead of hurrying him through to wait out of sight in the staff waiting room—the way she normally would—she sat there for several seconds, biting her lip, apparently unable to bring herself to look in his direction.
Suddenly he felt sick with apprehension.
‘Sally?’ he prompted, hating the fact that his voice still sounded like a kid’s when he’d been the man of the house from the moment he’d been born. Had something happened to his mother? She and Pammy were all he had in the world, at least until Pammy’s baby arrived. ‘What’s the matter? What’s going—?’
‘I’m sorry, Josh,’ she interrupted abruptly, getting to her feet. ‘You’re going to have to leave the unit. Go down and wait in the main reception area.’ She started ushering him towards the door. ‘Your… There’s an emergency coming in and your…your mother’s going to need to stay on late tonight. Is there someone who can come and fetch you…to take you home?’
He knew she wasn’t telling him the truth—at least, not the whole truth—and he dug his feet in, refusing to move another inch until he had an answer to the most important question.
‘Is it Mum? Has
something happened to her?’ he demanded, a strange shaky feeling starting deep inside him. It was the same feeling that he’d got the day his mother had phoned to tell him there had been an accident and she was delayed in A and E.
He’d been so convinced she’d been injured that initially he hadn’t been able to hear her telling him that she’d been nothing more than a bystander and was taking care of the victim’s children until their father arrived. He’d known then just how devastating it would be if anything were to happen to his mother or to her best friend, Pammy. The three of them had been together all his life and were the only family he had in the world.
‘Please, Sally. You have to tell me,’ he demanded hoarsely, his heart beating so fast that it felt as if it was going to choke him. ‘Has something happened to Mum? Is she ill? Hurt?’
‘No, Josh. It’s nothing like that,’ she said firmly, giving his arm a squeeze, and the fact that she met his eyes this time reassured him that she was telling him the truth. ‘Your mother’s fine, but she’s…she’s going to be very busy for a while. It would be better if you went out of the unit to wait, just until—’
The sound of the lift arriving only a few feet away had her breaking off with a soft curse under her breath, and he knew that whatever had her so jumpy was about to emerge from those doors.
There was a confused cacophony of voices and noises, with orders being snapped and vital signs being monitored by bleeping machinery. As the trolley began to emerge through the gaping doorway he could see that the figure on it was having some sort of a fit, like that boy in the top class at school who’d had an epileptic attack in the gym last term. Then he heard someone using the keys he’d pressed to unlock the door into the unit, and out of the corner of his eye saw the unit’s senior consultant stride into view.
‘Is this Pamela Dixon?’ he demanded, and Josh gasped as if he’d been winded by a punch. ‘Take her straight along to Theatre,’ the man ordered briskly after a lightning-quick assessment right there in the corridor. ‘Bloods have been taken for cross-matching, I hope?’
‘What’s wrong with Pammy?’ Josh demanded loudly, completely forgetting that he wasn’t even supposed to be there. ‘Her baby’s not coming for weeks yet. What are you doing to her?’
‘Josh…! Hush!’ He knew the feel of his mother’s arms as they encircled him from behind, even though she smelt of that awful disinfectant in the hand-cleansing gel and not the lavender soap he’d bought her for her birthday. ‘Pam collapsed while she was out shopping. Mr Kasarian is going to try to help her.’
‘But, Mum, he said to take her to Theatre and Pammy can’t have an operation,’ he insisted, looking up into eyes the same golden brown as the ones that met him in the bathroom mirror when he brushed his teeth. Suddenly everything inside him clenched tight as he realised this was the first time he’d ever seen those eyes filled with fear—the same fear that was gripping him by the throat and turning his innards to water. ‘He can’t do it! It might hurt the baby.’
He tried to step forward to stop them pushing the trolley to the other end of the department, towards the one part of the unit that he’d never been allowed to investigate, but his mother held him back.
‘Josh, you don’t understand,’ she said with a quiver in her voice. ‘Mr Kasarian has to operate. He’s trying to save Pam’s life.’
‘But…I don’t understand.’ He was having to blink hard against the hot threat of tears. ‘She was all right this morning. We had breakfast together and she said she was going to walk to the shops after I went to school. She was going to buy some things for the baby, and…and…’
The expression on his mother’s face evaporated the words off his tongue, the desperation there telling him that, no matter what he said, it wasn’t going to change what was happening now.
‘She collapsed in the shop, Josh…in the ladies’toilets… And nobody knew she was there until the cleaner heard noises in the cubicle and realised that the door had been locked for a long time.’
‘Wh-what’s wrong with her?’ His heart felt as if it was fluttering wildly against his ribs, like the little bird that he’d rescued from next-door’s cat. It was going so fast that it was making him feel quite light-headed, as if he was going to be sick. ‘What’s he going to do to her?’
‘Her blood pressure’s gone up much too high—it’s called eclampsia and that’s why she collapsed,’ she explained briefly, and he was struck that, even now, she’d remembered that he always wanted to know why things happened. ‘And the only way to make the blood pressure come down is to take the baby out of her…quickly.’
‘But, Mum, you said…’ His thoughts were such a panicky jumble that it was hard to find the words he needed first. ‘The baby…Pammy’s baby! It isn’t time for it to come out yet.’ Her face looked all blurry as he tried to put his thoughts in order, so he knew he was crying now, but he couldn’t help it. Ever since he’d been told that his mother’s best friend in all the world was expecting a baby he’d been so…so excited. And as soon as Pammy had told him that he was going to be able to help her to look after it…to feed it and protect it…it was all he’d been able to think about.
None of them knew whether it was a girl or a boy… Pammy said she wanted to wait until the baby was born to find out, the way she always waited till Christmas morning to open her presents. Josh had already persuaded her that it should be called Daniel if it was a boy, but if it was born too soon, it wouldn’t be able to live and it wouldn’t matter what it was called because it would never survive long enough to know that he would have been the best big brother ever.
‘Josh, they have to operate,’ his mother said in a funny choked voice, and he felt even worse when he saw that she was crying, too. She and Pammy had known each other for hundreds of years…ever since they’d met in that group home when they were little. They always said that they might not have been born sisters, but they were sisters now. Better than sisters.
‘If they don’t operate quickly, Pam will die,’ she continued urgently. ‘She might die even if they do, and then the baby would die, too, so Mr Kasarian really doesn’t have any choice.’
He flung himself into her arms and they clung together, sobbing and terrified that they were going to lose the only family they had in the world.
‘I’m sorry, Sister Weath—Meredith,’ Mr Kasarian interrupted himself, the grey pallor of defeat dulling his stubble-darkened golden skin and robbing his dark eyes of their usual sparkle.
Josh had never seen him like this before; had usually seen him smiling as he answered one of the millions of questions Josh peppered him with, even though he wasn’t supposed to be visiting the unit. ‘Even though Pam didn’t work in this particular department, she was one of ours, too, so you know that we did everything we could…’
‘Of course you did,’ his mother agreed softly from behind a shaky hand, her other hand tightening painfully around Josh’s. He didn’t care how tight she squeezed. Nothing could hurt worse than the pain inside him.
‘If only someone had found her sooner,’ the consultant continued. ‘By the time we got her to Theatre she’d already been convulsing for so long that…’ He shook his head. ‘She was already going into multi-organ failure. All we could do was to try to save the baby.’
‘So they’re both dead,’ his mother mourned, her voice so choked with tears that Josh could hardly understand the words. ‘My best friend and her baby, both gone in one day when we’d got so many plans to—’
‘No!’ the consultant interrupted, suddenly quite flustered. ‘I’m so sorry, Meredith. I can’t have made myself clear. I lost your friend, but her baby is still alive…for the moment, at least.’
‘What? It’s alive?’ Josh wasn’t certain whether he’d spoken or if it had been his mother.
‘Yes, Josh. It was a little girl, and she’s very small, but she’s a real fighter.’
‘A girl!’ Josh didn’t know whether to be disappointed that it hadn’t been Daniel, the little brother h
e’d wanted, or just to be pleased that Pammy’s baby was still alive.
‘Can we see her?’ his mother asked, and for one horrified moment Josh thought she was asking to see Pammy, and the idea that he might see the woman who had been an extra mother to him the whole of his life lying there, dead, made him feel sick.
‘Of course you can, Meredith,’ the consultant said with a reassuring smile, and with a silent sigh of relief, Josh realised that he and his mother were talking about the baby. ‘Just as soon as she’s been settled in the unit and… well, I don’t need to tell you any of that,’ he added with a shrug. ‘You probably know just as much about that side of things as I do…probably more. You’ve been working in the unit long enough.’
‘Oh, Josh,’ his mother murmured when Mr Kasarian left, and when he saw her eyes filling with tears again a feeling of panic filled him in an overwhelming flood.
All his life it had been the three of them coping together against the world, him, his mum and Pammy. He’d never known his own father because he’d died in a motorcycle accident before he’d been born, and he’d never met the father of Pammy’s baby either, but there’d never been a time when Pammy hadn’t been there to help him cheer his mother up when she was sad. Now there was only him, and he had no idea what to say to stop her crying, not when he felt so much like giving in to the tears, too.
‘We’ll manage, Mum,’ he said shakily as he patted her arm, wishing he believed it even as he voiced the words that Pammy had always said. ‘We’re the three musketeers, remember? And we’ll still be the three musketeers…only this time I won’t be the youngest.’
‘The three musketeers,’ Josh murmured as he hung his stethoscope around his neck and stuffed a notepad in the pocket of his white coat. ‘What on earth made me think of that today?’
That scene had taken place at least twenty-seven years ago and had been a pivotal point in his life. The first moment he’d seen that tiny, almost transparent scrap of a baby he’d known exactly what branch of medicine he wanted to concentrate on when he was all grown up.
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 30
