Then she wiggled her left foot and thought, no, not minor.
She opened her eyes again. Once more, two heads, but this time they didn’t withdraw.
One head was bright, carrot red, really curly. The other was mousy brown, dead straight.
Five or six years old, she guessed, and then she thought they didn’t look one bit like the man who’d helped her last night.
‘Hi,’ she said, and the redhead gave a nervous smile. He was the oldest. The younger one ducked back behind the door.
‘Dom said we’re not to wake you,’ Red-head said.
Dom. Hmm.
‘Dom’s your dad?’
‘Sort of,’ Red-head said, most unsatisfactorily. ‘He’s in the kitchen making breakfast. The buns didn’t work.’ This sounded like a tragedy of epic proportions.
‘But we’ve got puppies,’ the other little boy said from the anonymity of behind the door. ‘Only Dom said we’re not allowed to wake them, either.’
‘Well, I’m awake,’ Erin said, swinging her feet off the settee. Putting her right foot cautiously to the floor. Wondering if she dared do anything with her left foot. ‘Did your dad tell you I hurt my feet last night?’
‘He said you crashed your car off the cliff and you saved the dog by carrying her for miles and miles.’ Red-head was looking at her like he might look at Superman.
‘It was nothing,’ she said modestly. And then…‘Um…if you guys got on either side of me I might be able to make it to the kitchen.’
‘You want us to help?’ Red-head said.
‘I do.’
They thought about it. Finally Red-head nodded. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Come on, Nathan. We gotta help. I’m Martin,’ he added.
‘I’m pleased to meet you, Martin,’ she said. ‘And Nathan. Can you help me hop?’
Nathan’s head appeared again. ‘Sometimes I help my mum go to the bathroom,’ he said, sounding wise far beyond his years. ‘Do you want us to help you to the bathroom?’
He was a child in a million.
‘Yes, please,’ she said gratefully, and a minute later she had a small, living crutch at each side. She was on her way, via the bathroom, to meet the doctor’s family.
They’d be ready at lunchtime. Maybe.
What sort of father forgot to buy Easter buns? Well, okay, he hadn’t forgotten, but he had forgotten to put in an order, he hadn’t reached the shops until three and they’d been sold out. So he’d thought, no problem, he’d buy yeast and make ’em. Piece of cake.
Not quite. Not even on this, his second try. And he ought to check on Erin.
The door swung open. Erin. And boys. The kids were standing on either side of her, acting as walking sticks. She’d arranged the cashmere throw like a sarong, tucking it into itself so it hung from just above her breasts. Her curls were cascading in a tumbled mess around her shoulders.
She looked…fabulous, he thought, so suddenly that he felt a jab of what might even be described as heart pain. Or heart panic?
Two deep breaths. Professional. She was a patient. Nothing more.
He’d been over the idea of heart pain a long time ago.
‘Hey, welcome to the world of up,’ he said, and managed a smile he hoped was detached and clinically appropriate. ‘I hope you’re not weight bearing on that foot.’
‘I have two great crutches,’ she said, and smiled. ‘One called Nathan and one called Martin.’
‘Great job, boys,’ he said, and nodded, and both little boys flushed with pleasure. Which gave him another jolt. It was hard to get these kids to smile.
Dammit, why had he forgotten the buns?
‘Are they ready yet?’ Martin asked, almost as the thought entered his head.
‘Easter buns are for this afternoon,’ he said, and he knew he sounded desperate.
‘You said we could have them for breakfast,’ Nathan said. ‘The kids at school say they eat buns on Good Friday morning.’
‘I’ve been eating them all week,’ Erin chipped in, and he cast her a look that he hoped put her right back in her place. Talk about helpful…Not.
‘Dom says Easter buns are for Easter and not before,’ Martin told her. ‘Like Easter eggs. He says if the bunny sees us eat an egg before Sunday he’ll know he doesn’t have to deliver eggs to our place.’
‘So if he sees you eat a bun before this morning you won’t get any?’ Erin ventured, eyeing Dom with caution. ‘Your dad’s a stickler for rules, then.’
‘Rules are good,’ Martin said, though he sounded doubtful.
‘They are good,’ Erin agreed. ‘As long as there aren’t interruptions, like dogs having puppies and ladies crashing their car to take a man’s mind off his baking.’
‘Actually, the buns flopped before…’ Dom started, but Erin shook her head.
‘One good deed deserves another,’ she said, smiling at him from the doorway with a smile that said she knew exactly how disconcerted he was. ‘You’re starting another batch now?’
‘I started an hour ago but the instructions say it takes five hours.’
‘At least,’ she said. ‘So your buns will have to be Buns Batch Two.’
‘Pardon?’
‘Do you have self-raising flour?’
‘Um…yes.’
‘Butter?’
‘Yes.’
‘And dried fruit, of course?’
‘Yes. Look, you can’t-’
‘Do very much at all,’ she agreed cheerfully. ‘Marilyn and her puppies are asleep. There’s no job for me there. I’m just hanging around at a loose end in my very fetching sarong. But my foot does hurt. So what say you give me a chair and a bowl and all the ingredients I listed-oh, and milk. I need milk. And turn your oven to as hot as you can make it. In twenty minutes I guarantee you’ll have hot cross buns for breakfast.’
They did. True to her word, twenty minutes later they were wrapping themselves round absolutely delicious hot cross buns.
Or, to be more specific, hot cross scones, Dom conceded as he lathered butter onto his third. But who was nit-picking? He surely wasn’t. Neither were the boys. As per Erin’s instructions, they’d helped rub butter into the flour and helped her cut scones from the dough. They’d painted on glaze to make crosses, using sugar and egg white. They’d stood with their noses practically pressed against the glass oven door as the scones…buns!…rose in truly spectacular fashion. And now they were lining up for their third as well.
As was Erin. She was eating like she hadn’t eaten for a week. He thought back to the retching of the night before. She was running on empty. He should have given her something…
‘I wouldn’t have been able to eat even if you’d offered,’ she said, and his gaze jerked to meets hers.
‘How did you know I was going to say-?’
‘I could see it,’ she said, wiping a daub of melted butter from her chin. ‘You had that look my intern gets when he forgets to take some really minor part of a patient history. Like how many legs my patient has.’
‘Like…’
‘I came on duty one morning a few weeks back,’ she continued, placidly reaching for another scone. ‘According to my intern’s notes, a patient who’d come in during the night was suffering from tingling in his legs. That was all it said. The nurses had set a cradle from his hips down so I couldn’t see. I chatted to the patient for a couple of minutes, then asked if he could wriggle his toes.’
‘And?’ She had him fascinated.
‘And he’d lost both legs in a motorbike accident twenty years ago,’ she said, glowering, obviously remembering a Very Embarrassing Moment. ‘He’d come in because he was getting weird tingling in his stumps and a bit of left- sided numbness. It transpired he’d had too much to drink, gone to sleep on a hard floor, then woken and panicked. I
