New Doc in Town / Orphan Under the Christmas Tree

by Meredith Webber

And set alarm bells clanging in her head!

  ‘It’s something I can do,’ he announced, still beaming with delight at whatever he was thinking. ‘Something I can set up. If not a regular programme at least a support-slash-discussion group.’

  It was an excellent idea, and something she and Lauren had often discussed, but why was Cam being so helpful?

  So he’d have to stay on?

  ‘You’re only here for a couple of months,’ she reminded him.

  ‘On trial for a couple of months.’ His retort was so swift she knew he’d followed her thoughts. ‘Anyway, if it doesn’t work out here at the clinic, I could always stay on in town and surf for a few more months, maybe pick up some shifts at the hospital. Tom said yesterday that they could probably get funding for a part-time doctor, and after the holidays I can live in my van in the caravan park so I wouldn’t be bothering you.’

  Bothering her?

  Had he guessed how she was reacting to him? Well, not her so much but her body …

  Whether it was his proximity—the hall was getting narrower by the minute—or the thought of Cam being around for longer than was absolutely necessary, Jo didn’t know. All she knew was that she feeling extremely flustered and she did know she didn’t do flustered.

  Ever.

  ‘We’ve both got patients to see,’ she reminded Cam, and stomped away, even more put out because the soft-soled sandals she wore didn’t make satisfactory stomping noises.

  Hmm.

  Cam watched her go.

  Had he flustered her?

  Jo Harris didn’t strike him as a woman who flustered easily.

  And why was he thinking about her—in particular, why was he thinking about her as a woman? He may not have PTSD, but he certainly wasn’t in any state to be getting involved with a woman. He couldn’t blame Penny for cutting him out of her life, knowing the man who’d returned to her hadn’t been the man she’d loved, but if she couldn’t love the new him, who would?

  Remote, she’d called him. Remote, detached, and morose.

  He hadn’t liked the morose with its undertones of brooding, but the remote bit had really got to him. It was a word that sounded unpleasant. It could never be used to describe Jo. He’d seen her angry, and snappish, and competently assured as she’d knelt by the injured moped driver. He’d even seen the shadows of sadness in her face, but she was always involved—ready with an opinion, seeking new ideas.

  Remote suggested a detachment from the world, and for sure it was one of the symptoms of PTSD that he had been able to tick. On leaving the army, he’d felt as if the world he’d returned to was a parallel universe and he was rudderless in it. He’d been on the outside, looking in, aware that none of the people around him could, in their wildest dreams, have imagined what he’d seen and been through.

  The strange thing was that he didn’t feel that way now. Maybe it was the surf at Crystal Cove clearing his head, but the idea of starting a support group had stirred something akin to excitement in him, and he was looking forward to doing some research on IVF treatments for older women.

  Looking forward to helping people?

  Getting involved?

  He wasn’t sure what had caused the change, but though he might be on the right track he suspected he had a lot more healing to do before he could think in terms of a relationship with a woman.

  Although Jo obviously had her own baggage—her sister’s death, for a start.

  Could two wounded souls somehow help each other heal?

  He remembered how her eyes had looked—clear green pools—and his body stirred in a way that was totally inappropriate as a reaction to one’s boss, however temporary his employment might be …

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ‘I HADN’T realised how much more quickly we’d get through the day with two doctors.’

  Jo had been chatting to the receptionist when Cam showed his final patient out. Now she walked with him back along the hall.

  ‘I phoned Lauren, who runs the refuge, earlier. The two families who are living there at the moment are having a “treat night” tonight, which means there’s no one at the house. We could go over later if that suits you. You could see the place and talk to Lauren about how it works and also about the men’s programme. Funding is always difficult—sometimes impossible. Originally we got the bequest to set up the refuge, but that’s not enough to keep it going these days so poor Lauren gets bits and pieces from different government agencies. One of the local service clubs has it as their main charity, but I can’t promise you’d be paid for running a men’s programme, although if you start it while you’re working for me, but then … ‘

  She stopped and looked up at him, a worried frown knitting her eyebrows.

  ‘Of course you don’t have to come with me, you might prefer to go surfing or have other stuff you want to do but—’

  ‘Jo!’

  Cam held up his hands as he said her name—a placating gesture, not surrender.

  ‘Calm down. We can’t change the entire world right now. Let’s take it one step at a time. I’m more than happy to go with you to see the refuge, and seeing it when no one’s there is an excellent idea. Do I have time for a quick shower and change of clothes before we go?’

  She was staring at him, a bewildered look on her face, then he watched as she gathered herself together, shaking her head just slightly as if to get everything back into place.

  ‘I never blather on like that!’ she said, her tone so accusing he had to laugh.

  ‘Blathering’s okay,’ he assured her, but the worried look on her face told him she didn’t believe him. He diverted her by repeating his question.

  ‘Shower?’

  ‘Of course,’ she said, but he guessed it had been an automatic response, her mind still occupied by the blather business.

  Jo was glad he’d left as soon as she’d agreed they had time to freshen up, because now, maybe, she could sort out what was happening to her.

  The men’s programme was an excellent idea, and she had no doubt Cam, with his training and experience, would be just the man to set it up and run it.

  And even if the refuge closed, the programme could still run, so it wasn’t that disturbing her …

  Was it because he’d talked of staying on that she’d been thrown into a dither?

  Had she somehow convinced herself that she could put up with the distraction he was causing her body for a couple of months but once the issue of his staying longer had arisen, her brain had gone into meltdown?

  She couldn’t answer either of her questions so she locked her office door, said good-bye to Kate who was working Reception today, and hurried up the steps at the back of the surgery.

  Maybe a shower would help her brain return to normal, but cold or hot she had no confidence in it doing anything to stop her body reacting to her temporary employee.

  It was only a couple of months!

  But could she let him live in his van in the caravan park if he stayed on to run a men’s programme?

  She had the flat …

  Best not to think ahead.

  But for the second day in a row, she put on just a little lipstick.

  Pathetic.

  The refuge was behind one of Crystal Cove’s still functioning churches. It had been the minister’s house—the manse—once, but now the minister lived forty miles up the coast and served a flock spread over a wide area, holding services at the Cove once a fortnight.

  ‘It’s fairly obvious, isn’t it?’ Cam asked as Jo pulled into the driveway.

  She looked around at the high wire fence, the security cameras at the corners of the old wooden residence, the playground equipment out the back.

  Turned back to Cam.

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Well, I thought they had to be anonymous places, women’s refuges, hidden away—ordinary houses but their use not known even to neighbours.’

  Jo smiled at him—he was so darned easy to smile at.

  And she’d better
think about that thought later.

  ‘In bigger towns and cities that might be possible and it’s definitely desirable, but in a town this size? As you’d surmised, towns this size don’t usually have a refuge. We’re lucky because the church not only lets us have the premises rent free, but they pay expenses on it—rates and such. The service clubs did a lot of renovations and they do any maintenance that’s required, so immediately you have several groups of people who know where it is and what it’s for. And it is only two doors from the police station so there’s never any trouble here. ‘

  She frowned now as she added, ‘Am I blathering again?’

  He grinned at her.

  ‘No way. That was a most sensible explanation, very to the point and concise.’

  The grin was her undoing. Any good the shower might have done was undone with that grin—a quirky, amused, sharing kind of grin.

  Good grief! How could she possibly be thinking this way?

  Analysing the man’s grin?

  ‘Let’s go,’ she said, opening her door and leaping down from the high seat of the four-wheel drive that had been her Christmas present to herself last year.

  Good thing, too, she thought, patting the car when she’d shut the door. Having Cam in the big vehicle had been bad enough, she could only imagine how uncomfortable it would have been if they’d been squashed together in a small sedan.

  Lauren Cooper, blonde, beautiful but far too thin and with dark shadows of worry under her eyes, came out of the house to greet them.

  ‘You have to take some time off,’ Jo scolded her best friend.

  ‘I’ll have plenty of time off if we have to close,’ Lauren reminded her quietly, but her dark eyes lit up as she took in the man Jo was introducing to her.

  ‘Well,’ she teased after she’d shaken Cam’s hand, ‘you’ll certainly be a great addition to the male talent in this town.’

  ‘All six of them?’ Jo countered.

  ‘In our age group,’ Lauren agreed, counting on her fingers as she listed the local, older, unattached men. ‘Mike at the police station, Tom at the hospital, that new schoolteacher—’

  ‘He’s got a partner,’ Jo protested, before adding firmly, ‘Anyway, that’s enough. Cam’s already likely to get a swollen head because I’ve been praising his idea of the men’s support programme. We’re here to see the refuge and to talk about how we could run a men’s programme—not to mention whether men might come.’

  ‘It could be court mandated,’ Cam offered, pleased the conversation had shifted from male talent in the town. His body might have reacted to his boss and landlady but after Penny’s fairly brutal rejection, he’d accepted that until the mess in his head was sorted out, it would be unfair to get involved with any woman.

  Although a woman with killer green eyes …

  ‘Wow!’

  His exclamation was involuntary, and his mind right back on the refuge as Lauren led them first into what she called the playroom. Obviously it had been set up with kids in mind, but whoever had conceived and carried through the idea had done an amazing job. Blackboard paint had been used to adult waist height on all the walls so there were chalk drawings everywhere. At one end of the long room—a closed-in veranda, he suspected—was a sitting area with comfy armchairs and bean-bags in front of a television set with a DVD player on top of it. Beside that a cabinet held what must be at least a hundred DVDs.

  The other end of the room was obviously for very small people, blocks and jigsaw puzzles neatly put away on shelves, plastic boxes of farm animals, zoo animals, dinosaurs, toy cars and little dolls stacked further along the shelves.

  ‘It’s incredibly well stocked,’ he said, ‘and so tidy.’

  ‘Well-stocked but not always so tidy,’ Lauren told him. ‘We’ve instituted star charts. Stars for putting away the toys, stars for cleaning teeth, stars for just about everything you can imagine. Once you get a certain number of stars, you get a treat—like dinner at a fast-food outlet of your choice, which is where everyone is tonight. They left early as they’re going on to a movie after their meal. Everyone’s been really good this week!’

  Lauren showed them through the rest of the house, allowing Cam a glimpse into the three big bedrooms that could accommodate up to five people in each.

  ‘So you can have three women with children—no more?’ Cam asked.

  ‘Well, we could arrange to take more if it was necessary, squeeze in a woman on her own, for instance, but the turnover is fairly rapid.’

  ‘So no one is here long term?’ Cam asked.

  Lauren smiled at him, the smile lifting the tiredness from her face and making him wonder why this beautiful woman—smiling at him—had no effect at all on his body, while the small, pert redhead who was usually frowning, glaring or arguing did.

  Not that he needed to give it much thought—he was moving on.

  And even if he stayed, he’d be moving out.

  And then there was the baggage.

  And his lost passion …

  ‘Four weeks.’

  He’d missed the beginning of whatever Lauren was saying but assumed she’d told him the time limit on stays as she led him into the communal lounge, the dining area and finally a well-equipped kitchen.

  ‘You’re really well set up,’ he said, not bothering to keep the admiration out of his voice.

  ‘That’s what makes the thought of it closing so hard.’

  He heard the pain in Jo’s voice, but it was the content, not the pain, he had to think about.

  ‘But as long as you’re fighting the closure you’ve got a chance of keeping it open,’ he protested. ‘I thought it was because of the refuge you were employing another doctor. The fortyish woman, remember.’

  He won a slight smile.

  ‘I was employing her—or you—to ease my load at work so I could put more time into this, time for paperwork mainly, applying for grants, and so on. As I told you yesterday, the refuge began with a bequest and the building itself is available to us free of charge, but ongoing funding for residential staff—the people here every day, including the child-healthcare worker—has to come from the government. The government is forever issuing new guidelines and procedures and so-called measurements of success—criteria we have to meet before they’ll give us money.’

  ‘Sounds like the army,’ Cam said, ‘but I thought women being saved from abuse would be counted as successes.’

  ‘You’d think so,’ Jo told him, ‘but they like “projects”.’ She used her fingers to put the word in inverted commas. ‘That’s why a men’s programme would be fantastic, and we could do more work in schools. It would be such a waste to have to close it now, when we’ve come so far.’

  She smiled, but it was a weak effort.

  ‘The thing is, we’ve worked so hard for the women who need us to accept us and on top of that we have the most wonderful local support,’ Lauren explained. ‘People from all walks of life help out in different ways. The local bakery gives us its unsold bread at the end of each day—not to mention buns and bread rolls. We get a discount at the butcher’s and the supermarket, and the fruit shop in town also hands over any produce they aren’t able to sell.’

  ‘Which is a blessing,’ Jo put in, with a far better smile, this time broad enough to gleam in her eyes, ‘given that the back yard has a virtual zoo, with rabbits, guinea pigs, chickens and a duck with one leg that someone gave us. At one stage there was a lamb but it turned into a sheep and the neighbours complained about the noise it made.’

  Cam looked at the smiling woman who did affect his body and regretted mentioning a programme for abusive men. Much better if he moved on at the end of the holidays. He didn’t need to get involved in the problems of the refuge, did he? There were other towns with good surf. In fact, he had thousands of miles of coastline to choose from.

  But no snappish, elfin-faced, green-eyed doctor …

  ‘If there’s a programme up and running in Port, maybe I could go down and speak to whoe
ver runs it,’ he heard a voice say.

  He was reasonably sure it was his voice.

  A buzzing sound made him turn towards the woman he’d been considering, and he watched as she pulled her mobile out of her pocket.

  She walked through the back door and spoke quietly, but not so quietly he and Lauren didn’t hear her end of the conversation.

  ‘I’ll come at once,’ she said. ‘Pack just what you need, and don’t forget any medication and the little bundle of papers that were on the list I gave you. We’ll be fifteen minutes getting there, but if you feel unsafe leave the house now—go to a neighbour and phone again from there.’

  ‘New tenant?’ Lauren asked as Jo came back into the kitchen.

  ‘Jackie Trent, I talked to you about her.’

  Lauren nodded and followed Jo, who was hurrying towards the front door.

  It was a case of trailing along behind.

  Cam trailed, then four of the words Jo had spoken were suddenly clear in his head.

  If you feel unsafe, she’d said.

  He stopped trailing and hurried ahead, reaching the passenger side as she clambered in behind the wheel, his presence obviously forgotten.

  ‘I’m coming with you,’ he said.

  ‘You don’t need to,’ she replied, her attention on fastening her seat belt. ‘You can stay and have a coffee with Lauren and learn more about the house—talk about the men’s programme. I’ll collect you later.’

  ‘No, I’ll come,’ Cam told her, fastening his seat belt in turn.

  ‘She’s scared,’ Jo said, not arguing exactly as she started the engine, put the vehicle into gear and backed out of the drive.

  ‘I won’t scare her more,’ Cam assured her, not adding that the woman must have reason to be scared and if she did then Jo, also, should be scared. There was no way he was leaving two scared women with no protection.

  ‘She’s talked about leaving for the last six months,’ Jo told him. What she didn’t tell him was that in her heart of hearts she was very pleased to have his support on this rescue mission. ‘Apparently he’d always arranged every detail of their lives, but Jackie had seen that as part of his love for her, but then, just last year, he hit her. She was pregnant at the time. She fell, and a few hours later she lost the baby. It wasn’t necessarily the fall that caused her to miscarry, it could have happened anyway, but the two things were definitely connected in her mind. She was so upset about it she told me about him hitting her … ‘