“I have a surprise for you.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Is it better than chocolate milk and salt and vinegar chips?”
“A hundred times better. A thousand times better.”
She found herself fighting back a giggle. A giggle? Good lord, how old was she?
He handed her an envelope, his grin so wide it was set to split his face. She stared at him for a long moment and something in her chest shifted. He looked good. Really good. And that was…
She shook herself. That was good, of course.
But that grin of his…
She found herself starting to laugh. “You look like the cat that not only got the cream, but got the dog into trouble while you were at it. What are you up to?”
“Open that and see,” he ordered, gesturing to the envelope.
With a final peek up into his face, she lifted the flap and emptied the envelope’s contents into her lap. “These are…” She picked them up. “These are two air tickets to Cairns for…” Her jaw dropped. “For a week’s time!” She picked up the other document. “This is a booking for a resort at Trinity Beach.”
“Merry Christmas, Erin. One of those air tickets is mine and the other is yours.” He pulled out his tablet and then turned it to face her. “Palm-fringed beaches, white sands and turquoise seas. The Great Barrier Reef is only one kilometer that way.” He gestured out to sea.
She stared at the picture. “It…” It looked like some divine tropical wonderland!
“Erin, we’ve worked practically non-stop for the last three years getting the practice up and running. We’ve earned a break.”
How brilliant would it be? A week in paradise and—
Her thoughts slammed to a halt as reality intruded. For a moment her throat closed over with the force of her disappointment. Very slowly she shook her head, waving her hands in front of her face. “You absolutely should go, Josh. Have a brilliant time and take lots of photos to make me green with envy, but I can’t leave Mum. Especially not in the holiday season. Besides,” she straightened, “one of us needs to be on-call here. There’s bound to be the odd emergency and—”
“I’ve found us a locum.”
He’d what? Without even consulting her?
He raised his hands palm outward. “Nothing is signed on the dotted line yet.”
“Just as well. We’re supposed to be partners—joint decision makers.”
“Just stop and think about it—consider the possibility for a few moments. What could be better than seven days of lazing on a beach, sipping cocktails by the pool and dancing into the wee small hours?”
“Dancing?” The word whimpered out of her.
“Dancing,” he repeated more firmly.
Nothing could be better than what he’d just described. “It sounds like a wish come true, but it doesn’t change the fact that I can’t leave Mum.”
He started listing all the things they could do—exciting, beguiling things—but she broke in again with, “I can’t leave Mum.”
He switched off his tablet. “I have it on good authority that you could leave her if you chose to. You mother is nowhere near as helpless as she’d have everyone believe.”
She glanced across at him. Good authority? His father was her mother’s doctor. Was that…?
“My parents want your mother to spend the New Year with them at their beach house in Foster.”
“She’d never agree to go.” She’d hate it.
She hates everything, so what difference does that make?
He held her gaze. There was something in the blue of his eyes—blue like a tropical beach at dusk—that refused to release her, that made her chest tighten.
“Don’t give her a choice, Erin.”
She swallowed. “I couldn’t do that.”
The expression in his eyes turned suddenly grim. “Yes, you could.”
She wrenched her gaze away. “And I couldn’t impose on your parents like that. Do you know what a misery guts she’d be? She’d totally ruin their holiday.”
He laughed at that. “I’d like to see her try. There’s going to be my mother, my father, four of my siblings with assorted partners and friends, and probably the odd cousin or two. Believe me, Erin-Heron, if they can’t brisk her up then they’ll certainly drown her out. Her grouching and complaining will fall on deaf ears.”
She almost laughed at that.
Bad daughter.
She dragged a hand back through her hair. She’d accuse Erin of abandoning her. And she’d be right. She’d threaten to—
She stared down at her hands. It took all her strength to stop them from clenching to fists. “I’m sorry, Butternut-Squash-Josh, but it’s out of the question.”
The childish nicknames did nothing to allay the tension that rose up between them.
He was silent for a long moment then pulled in a deep breath. “Then I’m going to have to pull rank.”
She nearly choked on her chocolate milk. “You’re what?”
“You remember the deal we made when we set up business together?”
“Of course I remember!” She swung around to face him more fully and for some reason the grim expression on his face drew her attention to the breadth of his shoulders. Josh had broad shoulders. Strong shoulders. Determined shoulders.
So what! Josh had great shoulders—no secret there. Her hands clenched and she reefed her mind back to the issue at hand. “Pulling rank is for when things get serious, and I don’t see—”
“How much more serious do you want them to get?” He slid off the bed of the truck to pace its length and back again. “Dealing with a demanding job and a demanding mother day-in day-out without a rest, it’s—” He lifted his hands in the air as if searching for an appropriate word.
Or as if pushing back a word that would offend her, hurt her.
He planted his hands on his hips. “You’re in danger of burning out.”
She couldn’t deny there was an element of truth in that. She went to bed at night bone-tired. She woke in the mornings still tired. And all day—all day—she carried a weight in her chest that seemed to be growing heavier as the year went on. It was wearing her out, and she knew it’d be crazy to ignore it.
“Fine. I’ll start meditating. I’ll make sure to take some time out for myself.” She’d come and sit down here by the river and let it fill her with peace. She flashed to an image of her mother’s face and her scathing words in reaction to Erin’s bid for a little solitude and winced. “I’ll take measures to ensure it doesn’t affect my work.”
He pushed his face in close to hers. He smelled of cinnamon and limes and antiseptic and cow. The scent was so familiar and warm she wanted to lean her head on his shoulder and keep breathing it in until the tempest raging inside of her eased.
“Erin, it is affecting your work.”
Her head rocked back. He couldn’t have hurt her more—shocked her more—if he’d stabbed her through the heart.
His face gentled. “I’m sorry, Erin, I didn’t want to pull rank, but things are getting out of hand and I don’t want them escalating any further.”
He truly thought her work was suffering?
“I heard about the lecture you delivered to Mrs. Sattler about overfeeding Cleo.”
“She deserved it! She’s killing that poor animal and—”
“Nobody deserves to be spoken to in that way, Erin! Bethany Sattler is lonely and Cleo is the focus of her whole world.”
“But—”
“And I don’t see you going out of your way and easing her loneliness in the interests of both her and Cleo’s health.”
Her heart stuttered. He had a point. But…where on earth would she find the time to drop in and have coffee and cake with Mrs. Sattler?
“It’s our job to educate our clients, not to harangue them. You’re alienating our clientele. That’s bad business practice. If they take their business elsewhere, we’re sunk.”
Dear God. Acid burned her throat. She was turning
into her mother.
“You need a holiday, Erin. You can either holiday with me here.” He lifted the plane tickets and resort reservation. “Or you can holiday on your own. Your call.”
She slid down from the bed of the truck. It took a moment for her to find her balance. “It’s time I got home.”
She could not turn into her mother.
“And this mightn’t have occurred to you, but a few days away at my parents’ beach house could be good for your mother. It could be exactly what she needs.”
She swung back to stare at him. She wanted to believe that so badly that she mistrusted its truth.
His gaze burned into hers. “You can tell me your decision tomorrow.”
“What do you call this? Soon? I texted you forty-seven minutes ago!”
Her mother waved her phone at Erin, her mouth stretched thin and her eyes narrow and watery. She rose from her chair to plant her hands on her hips, but the ponderous slowness of her movements robbed them of any real menace.
The weight in Erin’s chest grew. It took all of her strength to remain upright. “I’m sorry. Josh called an emergency meeting.”
“What right does he have to make you work all hours?”
Erin bit her tongue as Eunice shuffled into the kitchen to click on the jug, her cane tap-tapping against the cheap linoleum. It was the same every afternoon—her mother upbraiding her about something…while making her a cup of tea.
Erin wished she looked forward to that cup of tea instead of dreading it. Sharing a cup of tea with your mum shouldn’t be a chore.
“It’s all right for you,” Eunice grumbled. “You’re out and about in the world all day seeing people, doing things, having fun. I’m stuck here in this godforsaken house with no company and nothing to do.”
Erin took a seat at the table and counted to three. “Joan dropped by the surgery this morning. She mentioned she was going to pop in on you.”
“That woman is such a busybody. She was trying to drum up numbers for the Housie at the community center.”
“You just said you were tired of being housebound. Why don’t you go along? There’s a courtesy bus that’d pick you up and drop you off.”
“What do I want to go to stupid Housie for?”
“To see people? To—”
“Most of them don’t have two brain cells to rub together. Why would I want to socialize with a bunch of blockheads?”
Erin’s hands clenched. “Has it ever occurred to you that the reason you don’t have any friends is because you’re so mean to people?”
The moment the words left her Erin wished them back.
Eunice slammed a mug down in front of her. “Don’t speak to me in that tone of voice. I’m your mother. I deserve your respect.”
A vision of a tropical beach rose in Erin’s mind.
She lifted her mug to her lips, biting back a sigh. “Why won’t you make more of an effort, Mum?”
Eunice lowered herself heavily into the chair opposite. “What’s the point?”
“You keep saying you hate being stuck in the house all day, but whenever someone offers you an alternative you pooh-pooh it like it’s the worst idea in the world.”
She thrust out her jaw. “I don’t like Housie.”
“What about chess or bridge?”
“Not on your life.”
Erin straightened. “Why don’t we start a book group? People could come here once a month and we could discuss a book over wine and cheese. That’d be fun.” They could invite Bethany Sattler.
“And who’s supposed to clean up afterwards?”
“I’d do that.”
“Read some stupid book someone else has picked that I’ve no interest in? I don’t think so.”
Erin thought back to that moment by the river when she’d stared at the slow-flowing water and peace had descended over her. She tried to channel that again now, but it eluded her. “What is it you do want?”
“What do I want? What do I want? It’s as plain as the nose on your face!” She stabbed a finger at Erin. “What I want, my girl, is for you to quit your job and stop gallivanting around the countryside and become my fulltime carer.”
Shock had Erin lurching out of her chair. She went cold all over, and then hot. Become her mother’s fulltime carer? “If you want a carer, Mum, I can organize one.”
“I don’t want an anonymous carer in my house, poking through my things.”
No!
“You owe me!”
Erin gripped the back of the chair so tight her fingers started to ache. “You want to spend sixteen hours a day doing this—telling me how awful your life is, disparaging every person in town all while telling me what an ungrateful piece of work I am? How on earth can that be what you want?”
“You promised!”
She had promised. That was the problem. But she’d been twelve years old. No one in their right mind held a twelve year old to that kind of promise. Except…
A black pit of acid burned in Erin’s stomach. “You want my life to become as wretched and miserable as yours. You want me to hate my life as much as you hate yours. You want me to become as bitter and hateful as you are.”
Eunice thrust out her chin. “I’ve had a hard life, harder than most people in this miserable town. And you know you owe me.”
She didn’t owe her that! Erin retreated to the other side of the room to stand beside their tired Christmas tree. Merry Christmas, Erin. She shoved her shoulders back. “No.”
“Yes!”
“I’m sorry, but it’s not going to happen.”
“If you don’t agree then I’ll—”
“I’ve made plans to go away after Christmas,” Erin said, not believing she’d spoken the words out loud, but desperate to cut off the threat hovering on the end of her mother’s tongue. “For a whole week.”
Eunice froze.
Before her mother had a chance to find her feet again and continue with the threat that broke Erin’s heart every single time, she pulled her phone out and punched in Josh’s number.
“Erin,” he said by way of greeting.
“Count me in,” she said without preamble.
“Brilliant! I swear you won’t regret it.”
She was already regretting it.
“Erin’s in,” he shouted to someone in the background—probably his mother.
“I want—I need—to spend seven days on a tropical beach, Josh.”
“Have you told your mother yet?”
“I need to explore a new place—like the Great Barrier Reef—and forget all about work and…and other things.”
“Erin, what about your mother? How’s she taken it?”
She gave a high-pitched laugh. “I really need to sip cocktails by a pool.”
“Eunice is being difficult,” he said to someone at the other end.
“And, Josh, I want to go dancing until the wee small hours.”
With every sentence Erin uttered, her mother’s face became more indignant. Erin pulled in a breath. “I need to lie on white sand and feel the sun on my face.”
“Eunice is giving her a really hard time,” Josh added.
“I need to go swimming in turquoise seas and—”
“Dad wants to talk to Eunice.”
“Right.” She handed the phone to her mother. “Dr. Halliday wants to talk to you.”
Eunice glared at her, but took the phone. “Dr. Halli-”
The good doctor had obviously cut her mother off. Erin watched in amazement as the indignation on her mother’s face was slowly replaced with an odd kind of furtive embarrassment. The glare she’d fixed on Erin slid away. She picked at a thread on her shirt.
“Mmm.” It was a disgruntled sound, but not an inflammatory one.
A moment later Eunice heaved a sigh. “Yes.”
Yes? Yes! Was her mother agreeing to spend the holidays at the Hallidays’ beach house?
“I said yes didn’t I?”
She winced at her mother’s rudeness
and made a mental note to apologize to Dr. Halliday the next time she saw him.
“Yes, yes, yes! All right. You don’t need to keep harping on.”
Eunice thrust the phone back at Erin, folded her arms and turned sideways in her seat. Erin stared at the rigid line of her mother’s back and pressed the phone to her ear. “Hello?”
“I’ve had a word with your mother, Erin.”
“I appreciate that, Dr. Halliday.”
“If she gives you a moment’s trouble I want you to call me.”
“I’m sure everything will be fine.”
“I want you to promise me.”
“I’m sure that won’t be necessary.”
“Erin,” he warned.
She puffed out a breath. “Okay, I promise.”
She hung up, wiping suddenly damp palms down her work pants. “Mum?”
“I will never forgive you for this.”
She winced at the anger in her mother’s voice. “I’m sorry you find this so hard.”
“You’re an ungrateful girl.”
Erin took her now lukewarm tea to the sink and tipped it down the drain. “You’ve not forgiven me for what happened fourteen years ago. I don’t see why the next fourteen should be any different.”
“You know I’m going to hate it!”
She rested back against the sink to combat her exhaustion. “How will that be any different from if I’m here? You derive absolutely no joy from my company either. You’ll get to hate your life with the added bonus of a beach view.”
“One day I’ll—”
Her threat snapped off when Erin straightened. Erin’s heart pounded in her throat with a ferocity she swore would leave bruises. “Do you mean to finish that sentence?” she croaked.
Her mother said nothing, just stared stonily at her hands.
“Do I have to ring Dr. Halliday?”
“Don’t be daft! Now when are you going to get my dinner ready?”
“Right now.”
Before her mother could harangue her any further, Erin leapt to the refrigerator to pull out the chicken thighs she had marinating there. Her hands shook. In seven days she’d be in Cairns. She was going to spend seven whole days in a tropical paradise. ’Tis the season to be jolly.
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