enjoying it.
‘You’ve had a sore knee for months? Dr Spencer will be happy to see you, but not until Tuesday. He’s busy right now.’
Actually, the doctor was examining puppies when that call came. Dom’s vet-friend, Fiona, had found an excuse to drive over and check for herself that her instructions had been carried out. Dom and the elderly vet were checking each individual pup. Erin had been the one closest to the phone and Dom seemed okay-even grateful-that she answer it. She glanced through to the kitchen as she replaced the receiver. Dom looked a query-doctor examining patients while stretched out on the kitchen floor in front of woodstove He smiled at her. Her heart did a silly backward somersault-and she was suddenly even more determined to stay.
Any more determined they’d soon have to prise her out of here with a chisel, she thought. Superglue had nothing on how she was starting to feel.
After Fiona left, at Dom’s suggestion they took a family drive. No, make that a communal drive, she corrected herself. This was not a family-Mum and Dad in the front and kids in the back. Regardless, they headed out to her crashed car. Yesterday her feet had been too sore, she had been too shocked and Marilyn had needed supervision, but she really wanted her clothes.
In the daylight the crash scene looked appalling. She’d been dead lucky. She and the boys watched as Dom climbed down the river bank and retrieved her overnight bag from the trunk-and her cellphone and her shoe.
‘A good scrub and it’ll be good as new,’ he said, handing over a blood-stained, mud-soaked trainer.
‘Yum,’ she said, taking the shoe gingerly. He grinned again and there it was. Slam. Backward somersault-with pike this time.
They returned to the house. Dom saw a couple more patients. She tried not to think about that grin.
She answered the phone and she baked.
There was something really therapeutic about baking on a firestove. She couldn’t figure what it was, but her foot felt better every minute she spent there.
The little boys loved it, too. She was getting comfort as well as giving it, she thought, watching them wrap themselves round meatloaf and apple pie for lunch. Dom asked for a second helping of pie, he smiled again…and wham.
This had to stop. It was making her dizzy. She was out of her depth, diving too hard, too fast and not knowing where she was going.
She met Dom’s gaze and his smile faded.
He’s just as confused as I am, she realised, and the idea was…unsettling.
Dom was clearly unsettled. He took himself back to his surgery to catch up on paperwork.
He had too much work to do. Far too much for one doctor.
An idea was seeding in the back of her brain. She refused to give it countenance. It was too soon. Way too soon.
Concentrate on the kids, she told herself. Concentrate on anything but the way Dom’s smile made her feel. And this tiny germ of an idea…ridiculous.
Martin was quiet, passive. They played Scrabble and did a jigsaw puzzle and Martin grew quieter. Nathan helped her cook corn fritters for dinner, but Martin watched, silent. Then they settled down with books in front of the living-room fire.
Finally Dom joined them. He had a couple of kids’ books to read out loud. Nathan enjoyed them but Martin was getting quieter.
She was flicking through a magazine-this month’s
Martin looked strained. Why? She watched Dom, who was clearly worrying about him. At eight he lifted Martin from where he’d been drooping by the fire. He took Nathan’s hand and bade her goodnight.
‘You’re coming back down?’ she asked, startled, and he shook his head.
‘I have a lot of medical journals to catch up on.’
‘So catch up on them here.’
‘It’s distracting here,’ he said gently. ‘I can’t afford to be distracted.’
Ouch.
‘But we’ve really appreciated your help today,’ Dom said, still in that gentle, reasonable voice that made her want to hit him. ‘Haven’t we, boys?’
‘Yes,’ Nathan said, definite, but Martin burrowed his face into Dom’s shoulder and didn’t say anything.
‘Erin cooks great meals, doesn’t she?’ Dom said, pressuring Martin to respond.
There was a faint sniff, miserable. ‘She’s like my mum.’
Oh, heck. Whatever was going on in this little boy’s background, one thing stood out. He missed his mother with all his heart. Those four words had been a cry like from a little boy lost.
‘I know you do,’ Dom said softly, and he looked at Erin over Martin’s head and gave his own head an imperceptible shake. Meaning there’s nothing she could do to help.
There wasn’t.
She watched them go upstairs and she ached. She wanted to help so much it hurt.
She’d been here for a day. What right did she have to mess with these people’s lives?
What right did she have to ache to be a part of theirs?
She remade her settee. She went out and said goodnight to Marilyn. She climbed into bed and tried to sleep.
It was too early. There was too much in her head. Like how to get close to this little family? Like who was Tansy-where did she fit? Like how much Dom needed her. Like how one guy could cope with such a medical practice and still have time for these kids?
Over and over the image of Dom played in her head-the sight of him comforting Martin, the memory of him smiling at her that morning when he’d been examining the puppies, the way he was just…Dom.
She sat up and read about six of the kids’ books, trying to get herself tired. She lay down again and watched the flames.
Dom. Dom, Dom, Dom.
She was going nuts. She put her head under her pillow and groaned.
Finally she slept. But when she slept she dreamed of Dom.
She woke up to fire.
CHAPTER SEVEN
MAYBE the fireplace was smoking. It was her first thought, but it was fleeting. The fire in the hearth was almost dead-a soft glow of coals and nothing more. But the smell of smoke had intruded on her half-sleep and Marilyn was barking.
She stumbled out of bed, worried, and the fire alarm started as she reached the door. She flung open the door into the hall, the faint smell of smoke became a thick wall of fog and the scream of the smoke alarm became almost deafening.
From the kitchen Marilyn let out a yowl of distress but the smoke wasn’t coming from the kitchen, either. It was billowing down from the top of the stairs. The security lights on the stairs and in the entrance were showing a faint sheen of smoke around her feet, but at head height the smoke was already so thick she could scarcely see.
‘Dom,’ she screamed-entirely without need when the fire alarm was doing her screaming for her. She hit the stairs, two at a time, forgetting about her injured feet, forgetting everything except that Dom and the boys were somewhere in the midst of the source of the fire.
‘Dom…’
The cry was from one of the kids, a terrified scream, high and filled with horror. She was at the landing now, her hand on the balustrade, feeling her way rather than seeing.
And then the smoke swirled back and Dom was there. An armload of child was thrust at her. Nathan. She clung
