‘You love Anna,’ she said gently on a note of discovery, and the man’s face grew even more strained.
‘She’s a great lady. Doc, I can’t bear it if anything happens to her.’
‘It won’t,’ Jonas said, and he could contain himself no longer. His voice was exultant. Damn, he wanted to spin
‘The results are great,’ he told them. ‘The margins around the lump are clear. The nodes are all negative. It’s looking more and more like it’s been caught before it can do any damage. There’s more tests to be done to confirm things, but at this stage it’s looking fantastic.’
Jim’s face went slack with relief.
‘Oh, that’s… Great news. The best.’ The fire chief backed away from them, as if it was suddenly necessary to get away-to take on the news by himself. ‘It…it…’
His face crumpled and he fled.
Which left Em and Jonas, and Jonas was grinning like a goofy schoolboy who’d just been made class monitor. He still had the urge to spin. But then Em was standing on tiptoe and giving him a tiny kiss, right on the lips-and suddenly he didn’t feel like a schoolboy any more.
It wasn’t a huge kiss. Maybe it wasn’t even a kiss for noticing-but it was one he noticed all the same. He noticed very much!
‘I’ve already heard the news,’ she told him. ‘I came home as soon as I could. It
‘How the heck do you know?’ He pulled back, puzzled, and she gave him a wry look.
‘Anna is my patient, clever-clogs. I had Pathology ring the results straight through to me as soon as they knew. If the results had been bad I would have driven up to Blairglen to see Anna, but I figured you and Patrick could explain these results to her all by yourselves. They’re wonderful.’
Em would have come up…
Of course she would. Because she cared.
Jonas’s shoulders went slack from relief-or from exhaustion-or maybe from a mixture of emotions so great he could hardly fathom them.
What was happening here? he asked himself. He normally kept so cool. So distant. He’d learned early to be dispassionate, but here he was, a grown man, and all he wanted to do was burst into tears.
‘They haven’t graded the tumour yet,’ Em was saying, watching him with a strange look on her face. ‘Or seen whether it’s hormone receptor positive or not. But Patrick seems to think it’s cause for celebration.’
‘He’s pretty sure it’s grade one.’
‘Well, he saw it, and he’s good,’ she reassured him. ‘I’d expect that Patrick’s gut reaction is right. And if he is, that probably means she’ll choose no chemotherapy. Just radiation to mop up anything that might have been left, a tiny silicone insert fitted into her bra to make both sides match, and Anna can get on with her life.’
But Jonas was still struggling with mixed emotions. ‘Thank…thank God,’ he managed, and it sounded inane even to him.
‘And it’s the same for you, too,’ she said gently, watching his face. ‘You can go back to being Jonas Lunn, independent surgeon.’
‘In three months,’ he said shortly. ‘After she’s had radiation.’
‘She’ll let you help her for that long?’
‘She’ll need help while she has the radiotherapy,’ Jonas said. ‘She must accept it. How will she cope alone?’
‘There’s a daily bus to Blairglen for radiotherapy.’
‘Oh, great. Two hours there, two hours back, every day for seven weeks. She needs to stay at Blairglen.’
‘Maybe you could rent a house for all of you,’ Em said slowly, still watching the gamut of emotions running over his face and sensing his confusion. ‘Take the kids. Stay with her.’
‘As if she’d let me do that.’
‘You could try.’
‘And how about you?’ His emotions still weren’t totally focused on Anna, no matter how much Em tried to direct them that way. ‘How will you cope?’
‘Like I always have,’ Em said carefully. ‘Alone. Nothing’s changed for me, Jonas.’
‘But there’s Robby.’
Her face closed, and he saw pain wash over it. ‘Yes,’ she conceded. ‘There’s Robby. But Lori will be back soon. The news from Sydney is good. Ray’s on the list for an emergency bypass. It’ll be a few weeks before Anna is ready for radiotherapy, so maybe… Maybe you could stay here until then. Until Lori comes back, I mean. That way I can look after Robby for a bit longer, and I don’t need to depend on Amy so much.’
‘I’ll do that.’ His face softened. ‘You know I’ll do that. Hell, Em, I feel so damned good about all this. I feel like…’
She smiled at the joy behind his words. He’d been worried sick and it was obvious. ‘Celebrating?’ she suggested, and he grinned.
‘I think that’s the word.’ He glanced at his watch. His stomach was telling him it was time to eat, and his stomach was right. ‘How about I take you out for a meal?’
‘Hmm.’
His brow snapped down at that. He wasn’t accustomed to women reacting to his invitations with noncommittal grunts. ‘What does “hmm” mean?’
“‘Hmm” means you’ve forgotten your responsibilities, Dr Lunn,’ Em said demurely. ‘Amy’s due to go home, and we need to feed and care for our four children.’
‘But-’
‘No buts. It’s called responsibility.’
He glowered but, damn, she was right. Of course she was right. He’d offered to take care of these kids, and now he had to live with the consequences.
Which meant that he couldn’t ask a lady for a date without asking four kids along as well. Unless he changed ladies.
Which, for some inexplicable reason, seemed impossible.
‘It’d better be fish and chips on the beach, then,’ he said weakly, and she grinned.
‘Wise choice.’ She motioned to the beeper on her belt. ‘As long as this doesn’t go off.’
‘It’d better not.’ He squared his shoulders and readjusted his concept of a perfect date. ‘It won’t. It’s a magnificent night, we’ve just had some wonderful news, and we deserve an absolutely fantastic meal. All of us. What do you say, Dr Mainwaring?’
What did she say?
Em knew what she ought to say. She ought to say she would have a quiet meal at home with Robby, while Jonas took Anna’s children to the beach. She ought to insist they stay separate.
But the thought of what he was inviting her to was insidious in its sweetness. A family meal on the beach. Jonas and herself and four fabulous kids.
How could she refuse an offer like this?
How could she refuse a man like Jonas?
It was, indeed, a magical night.
Fish and chips had never tasted so good. Reassured as to their mother’s well-being, and becoming more accustomed to Em and their uncle by the minute, the children set out to enjoy themselves. The summer sun had lost its sting but it had left behind enough heat to make the beach wonderful, and they ended up sitting right at the water’s edge, individual bags of fish and chips balanced soggily on their knees as the waves washed over their toes.
Even Bernard was there and, to Em’s amazement, he was hopping in and out of the waves and running eagerly back and forth to be fed chips by the kids, with all the energy of a pup!
‘Maybe he’s been missing children,’ Em said wonderingly. ‘All these years…maybe he’s been seriously depressed and we hadn’t figured out why. But look.’ Sam fed him a chip and his great red tail wagged like a flag. ‘He just needed a family!’
A family. A sweetly insidious thing…
