A Forever Family for the Army Doc

by Meredith Webber

  He was, Izzy realised when they had a break in customers late afternoon, the most organised doctor she’d ever worked with, and his efficiency seemed to make the whole process move more smoothly.

  Swing shift nurses and aides had come in, taking over from anyone who had to go off duty on time to collect children or meet appointments, but the flood was once again a trickle and all but Izzy had returned to normal duties.

  Mac was sitting behind the reception desk, eating a sandwich that had grown stale enough to have the edges of the bread curling up in a most unappetising manner.

  ‘Want some?’ he said.

  ‘Eugh! No way! I did grab something earlier but I’m going to make a cuppa while the place is quiet. Do you want one?’

  He shook his head, lifting a can of soda that was sitting on the desk.

  But the image of him, sandwich in one hand, soda in the other, stayed with Izzy as she hurried to the tea room.

  He was just a man, an ordinary man—good doctor, though—but still just a man!

  So why was he affecting her the way he was?

  Why so instantly?

  Why him when other men roused no emotion whatsoever?

  It must be, she finally decided, just one of life’s mysteries to which there was no answer—no logical explanation.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  MAC WATCHED HER disappear out the door and wondered about attraction. Why one woman and not another?

  He looked at the curling edge of the sandwich and decided she’d been right—it wasn’t worth eating. Dumping it and the empty can in the bin, he picked up the ED admissions book, looking back through the pages, seeing more than one night a week when they had no patients at all.

  Had he brought the rush of emergencies to this small town?

  That was nearly as ridiculous a thought as the attraction one he’d had earlier!

  But forcing himself to focus—so as not to think about the other matter—he could see that this time of the day was always quiet. Patients, it seemed, came into the ED late afternoon, three to five, then the numbers dropped off until six-thirty when another trickle might arrive.

  With the news about Rhia spreading, tonight’s trickle would more likely be a flood.

  ‘Will we have extra staff on this evening in case the people Belle phoned start coming in?’ he asked Izzy, who was coming through the door with her cup of tea.

  ‘Yes, we will,’ a voice that wasn’t Izzy’s answered, and he realised Roger was right behind her. ‘But I mean “we”, not “you”. Time the pair of you were off. The hospital can’t afford overtime, you know.’ He smiled, then added, ‘Well, not the amount of overtime you’ve racked up over the weekend. Izzy doesn’t count as she wasn’t even on duty so how could she possibly claim overtime?’

  As a nurse Mac had met, but whose name he couldn’t remember, had followed Roger into the room, it was hard to argue.

  ‘I’m happy to leave you to it,’ Mac said, then turned to Izzy. ‘And as I’ve just thrown my lunch into the bin and I know you haven’t eaten, how about we duck into town for an early dinner at that Thai restaurant you mentioned? I’ve a few things to go over with Roger, so you’d have time to slip home and change.’

  He hesitated, then added, ‘Nikki might like to come, too—save you having to feed her.’

  Was it nothing more than a friendly gesture, or was it a test? Izzy wondered. She’d told him she hadn’t dated because she didn’t want men coming in and out of Nikki’s life, so asking Nikki made it just a casual dinner.

  Didn’t it?

  And asking in front of other staff, that was casual, too—or had he done that to make it hard for her to refuse?

  ‘Go and change, the man said.’ Roger’s voice broke into her muddled thoughts. ‘No one in their right mind wants to be seen eating in town with someone in that appalling uniform.’

  ‘It’s practical and not that appalling!’ She automatically defended the uniform Hallie had chosen, although Izzy had never yet met anyone it suited.

  ‘Just go!’ Roger ordered, and she went.

  Befuddled, that was what she was.

  And tired now the let-down after a busy day was seeping into her body.

  Better tiredness than the things she felt when she was with Mac.

  So why was she going to dinner with him?

  Again!

  With him and Nikki—that sounded better, and felt better, too, the tiredness leaving her as she wondered whether the two would get on well.

  ‘Fab!’ was Nikki’s reaction. ‘Shan and I can get on with the project.’

  ‘After you’ve eaten,’ Izzy told her firmly. ‘Mac was good enough to ask us both so you’ll sit and eat with us. It’s an early dinner so if you like Shan could come back here with us and stay over if you’ve work you’d like to do.’

  Nikki surprised her with a warm hug.

  ‘You’re the greatest, Mum!’

  And Izzy’s heartbeats went erratic again, although a very different kind of erratic from the way it reacted to Mac.

  Enough! Shower and change, go downtown and eat with the man, then home to bed.

  Inviting Nikki to dinner was nothing more than kindness.

  As for the attraction—well, that was nothing but chemistry, a reaction.

  Like a nuclear explosion?

  Ridiculous, but that was how it felt—sudden and totally inexplicable, but so powerful...

  She really shouldn’t be seeing him again tonight!

  She left the shower and dressed quickly, pulling on a long shift that swirled about her ankles.

  Hair!

  Always a problem, but tonight there was no time to fight it so she rammed combs into each side to hold the rebellious curls back off her face. If she hadn’t spent so long in the shower, pondering imponderables, she could have put it up, but it was too late for regrets.

  She grabbed a shawl to put around her shoulders in case the night turned cool, and walked into the living room, calling to her daughter.

  Rather to her surprise, Nikki’s clothes were, for her, remarkably conservative—jeans and a blue and white striped top.

  ‘What, no holes or rips in your gear?’ Izzy teased, and Nikki laughed.

  ‘I didn’t want to embarrass your doctor friend on our first family date.’

  ‘He is not my friend and it’s not a date,’ Izzy retorted, then plunged into further trouble. ‘Well, he is a friend the way colleagues become friends but it definitely isn’t a date.’

  They were walking down the path to the doctor’s house by now, so Izzy couldn’t see Nikki’s face when her daughter asked, ‘Why not a date, Mum? Is it because of me?’

  Izzy sighed.

  ‘Not really, although probably, early on, yes, I worried you might get to like a man I was seeing then he’d disappear, then later I worried—’

  ‘About me being affected by you having someone else? Shared love? Possible abuse?’

  ‘You’re too smart for your own good,’ Izzy said, putting her arm around Nikki’s shoulders and giving her a hug.

  ‘Not really,’ Nikki told her. ‘You can’t help hearing and reading about all that kind of thing, but it’s time you had someone special in your life, Mum. I’m old enough and we’re close enough for me to tell you if I thought anyone was creepy. I mean, I know Roger’s always giving me a pat but he’s not creepy, not like that cleaner you had at the hospital a few years back. He was an old man—’

  ‘At least forty,’ Izzy put in.

  ‘Old!’ Nikki reiterated. ‘He used to give Shan and me lollies and then we’d run away.’

  Sheesh! Izzy knew exactly who Nikki meant but this was the first she’d heard of the lollies. The man hadn’t been there long, mainly because other staff members were uneasy about hi
m, but if she hadn’t known that about her daughter what else might she not know?

  ‘Mum, we’re here, and there’s Mac waiting at his gate and I know you’re thinking bad mother thoughts but, really, we were fine and if we’d told you, you’d have put a stop to it and we liked the lollies.’

  ‘You okay?’ Mac asked, touching Izzy lightly on the shoulder.

  Fortunately she was so numbed by what Nikki had just told her that the electricity that flashed through her body was only a half-charge, although her knees felt wobbly and she was pleased when he hooked his arm through hers, his other arm through Nikki’s, and led them down towards the town.

  ‘Not often I get to take two beautiful women out to dinner,’ Mac said.

  Then he laughed when Nikki retorted with, ‘Flatterer!’

  She then asked him about the meningococcal, having heard about it at school.

  ‘I’ve had the vaccine—actually, I’ve had every vaccine ever developed, thanks to an over-anxious mother.’

  She was teasing Izzy, Mac knew, but there was a gentleness in it that suggested a maturity beyond her age.

  Growing up in a house with grandparents, as Hallie and Pop surely were?

  Not that he had time to ponder the question, for she was speaking again.

  ‘Sorry, miles away, what did you ask?’ he said.

  ‘Do you know anything about global warming?’

  ‘Nikki!’ Izzy protested, ‘Let’s just have a nice peaceful dinner without any debates on the problems of the world.’

  ‘It’s for my project, and he’s a doctor—he’d know a lot of science.’

  Time to intervene, Mac decided, though he’d far rather just keep walking, feeling the warmth of Izzy by his side, imagining how things could be—might be?

  Probably wouldn’t be...

  ‘But not how to cure global warming, Nikki,’ Mac told her. ‘It’s something that’s going to take a lot of research and there still won’t be a vaccine for it, but what, apart from sharks and global warming, do you do at school? You’re in high school, right?’

  Nikki listed off her subjects, gave character sketches—not always good but none too bad—of her teachers, and by that time they’d reached the restaurant and he had to relinquish his hold on Izzy.

  Which was just as well, because seeing her in the bright advertising lights outside, his body tightened, his lungs seized, and he rather thought he might be shaking.

  This was ridiculous!

  Or was it, when she looked so ravishing? Red hair pushed back so it was a mass of rioting curls behind her head. A long dress with swirling patterns of what looked like autumn leaves, skimming across her lithe figure, emphasising pert breasts, a slim waist and hips that were designed to be held, in order to draw her closer.

  ‘Are we going in, or are you going to stand there all night, staring at Mum?’

  Had he been staring?

  Surely not—he wasn’t some schoolboy seeing his first woman.

  Besides, the last thing she wanted in her life right now was a man...

  He shuffled the pair of them in front of him into the restaurant, although it was an effort not to feel the silky material of that miraculous dress.

  Miraculous dress?

  He was losing it!

  Or maybe he’d spent so many years seeing women in camouflage or uniform or khaki fatigues that the dress had affected him.

  The dress or the woman inside it?

  Nikki was introducing him to Shan’s mother, who ran the front of house at the restaurant. She led them to a table in a quiet alcove, leaving them with menus and a bottle of cold water.

  ‘You’ve had too big a day,’ Izzy said to him. ‘You look punch-drunk!’

  ‘You’ve had a bigger day and you look magnificent!’

  ‘She does, doesn’t she?’ Nikki said, adding, with the candour of youth, ‘That’s Mum’s favourite dress.’

  Izzy blushed and shook her head, then filled her water glass and drank deeply, thankful she didn’t have a coughing fit or embarrass herself in some other way, given that her daughter had already mortified her.

  Mac’s head was bent over the menu, Nikki’s close to his as she pointed out the best dishes, and seeing the pair of them Izzy felt a pang of conscience.

  Maybe she should have done something about finding a father for Nikki earlier. Back when she was little—starting at pre-school where other kids had fathers—she’d sometimes asked about hers, but as none of them had a clue who’d fathered her sister’s baby, Izzy could only tell the truth, that not even her sister had known.

  At four, Nikki had accepted it, but Izzy knew that any day now Nikki would begin to wonder about a mother who hadn’t known who her baby’s father was. She knew her mother had been sick and died, but not about the drugs—something else that would have to be a conversation soon.

  Izzy sighed, and Mac turned towards her.

  ‘You don’t have a favourite? It’s too hard to choose?’

  He smiled and her toes curled obligingly and she was glad they were sitting, with her feet tucked safely under the table, so no one could see that reaction. Perhaps in future she should wear shoes, not sandals, when out with Mac.

  Although there was no real reason why she should be out with Mac again, and plenty of reasons why she shouldn’t.

  ‘I’m having the chicken pad Thai and coconut prawns,’ Nikki announced, and, too bamboozled by her emotions, Izzy took the easy way out.

  ‘I’ll have the same,’ she said, then caught Nikki’s questioning look.

  ‘You’re going to eat noodles in front of Mac? And in your favourite dress?’ her daughter said, in a voice that couldn’t have been more incredulous. ‘You know what a mess you always get into with noodles.’

  ‘Not always,’ Izzy said weakly, but with Mac now looking at her she wasn’t about to back out.

  She got into a mess with the noodles. For reasons beyond her comprehension, where other people could manipulate their spoons and forks to get them neatly into their mouths, the best she could manage was to get one end in and slurp the rest, leaving the juice all down her chin.

  Or the whole lot fell out of the spoon as she lifted it towards her chin and she splattered herself, the tablecloth and anyone within arm’s length of the disaster.

  Nikki refrained from saying ‘I told you so’, and Mac was super-helpful with extra napkins, but if she’d thought her daughter’s mention of her favourite dress was mortifying, this was fifty times worse and probably had a special name but she didn’t know it.

  The meal was delicious, and Shan’s mother insisted it was on the house, but as they left Izzy realised that suggesting Shan return with them to stay the night hadn’t been such a good idea. The pair went on ahead, way ahead, and the chatter and laughter drifting back grew fainter and fainter.

  ‘Are they making sure we’re left on our own for the walk home?’ Mac asked.

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ Izzy answered gloomily. ‘It seems Nikki’s decided I need a man in my life and as long as you don’t have a demented ex-lover then you’ll do!’

  ‘I’m flattered. And, no, no demented ex-lover.’

  Their stroll had slowed so much they were dawdling and as they reached the deep shadows of the old fig tree he paused, touching her lightly on the shoulder to turn her towards him.

  ‘And what about you?’ he asked quietly. ‘Would I do for you?’

  It was too dark to see any reaction on her face but he watched her shake her head.

  ‘It’s all too hard just now,’ she murmured. ‘And you really don’t want this either, for all the attraction there is between us.’

  ‘So you do feel it?’

  His voice was rough with some emotion he didn’t understand, but the kiss he dropped on her lips was nothing more
than a breath of air—the brush of a butterfly’s wing.

  Yet he felt the tremor that ran through her body, felt it in her shoulder where his hand still rested lightly.

  He wanted her in a way he’d never felt before, yet knew it couldn’t be. She wouldn’t—couldn’t—take the risk of losing her child, although how realistic that risk was he wasn’t sure.

  Neither was she a woman he could dally with—she was too fine, too caring, too loving and the way he was, his head still in a mess, nightmares roaring through his sleep—he’d end up hurting her.

  Yet he couldn’t let her go—couldn’t ease her away when she leant into him—couldn’t not kiss her when she raised her face to his, her lips an unseen invitation in the gloom beneath the tree.

  Long and deep, this kiss! He probed her lips, tasted them with his tongue, felt her mouth open to the unspoken invitation and was lost. His arms wrapped around her, clamping her body to his, and his heart beat with a frenzied tattoo against his ribs.

  She breathed his name, her fingers on his face now, moving across his cheeks, his temple, learning him through touch while he learnt the secrets of her mouth, the taste of her, her soft shape against his hardness.

  It knew no bounds, this kiss, until the need to breathe, to replenish empty lungs with air, forced their heads apart. Knees weak, he stepped back to rest against the massive trunk of the tree, Izzy moving with him, still in his arms.

  And with her hands now framing his face, which he knew would be nothing more than a faint oval in the darkness, she whispered, ‘Do you really think a short affair would cure this? Do you think it would ever be enough?’

  He drew her close again, his lips moving against her hair, kissing as he answered.

  ‘I have no idea,’ he said, because honesty was suddenly important. ‘I’d be willing to find out, but you’re the one with most at stake, my lovely one, so it’s up to you.’

  He felt her slump, as if her bones had melted, felt her head shake against his chest.

  ‘I don’t know!’

  The plaintive response cut into him, as painful as a knife wound.

  ‘Then let’s just wait until you do,’ he told her, straightening up from the tree, steadying her with his hands, brushing his fingers over her hair, then his thumb across her lips.