‘How can life get better than this?’ Em said happily. ‘Look out, Ruby. This wave’s a big ’un. It’ll get your dinner.’
Ruby squealed and raised her fish and chip parcel high-then went happily back to eating until the next wave.
Em was doing an even trickier balancing act. She was bouncing Robby on her knee, while trying to keep her own fish and chips dry.
‘It’s not going to work,’ Jonas told her, grinning as he watched her. ‘Go up past the high-water mark, Dr Mainwaring. It’s the only way you can cope. Plus it’ll keep Robby’s dressings dry. It’ll take you half an hour to change them if he gets wet.’
In fact, it’d help him as well. He was having trouble concentrating. Em was wearing a really simple black bathing costume. It shouldn’t have the power to do anything to him, but the sight of her in it…
Well, it was enough to put a hungry man off his fish and chips. And right onto something else!
‘In your dreams,’ she retorted. ‘Robby loves the sea-don’t you, Robby?’ Right on cue, the baby squealed in delight to confirm it. ‘And I do, too. If you knew how much I’ve been longing to be near the sea all day…’
‘Then let me help you.’ And before she knew what he was about, he’d taken her fish and chips from her. As she lifted Robby from wave to wave, letting his toes just touch the foam and watching him chuckle and chuckle some more, Jonas proceeded to feed her. A chip at a time. One for him, then one for her.
The action was weirdly intimate. Like a joining…
Robby chortled and bounced on Em’s knee-his bandages were getting wetter and wetter, but Em refused to worry because surely this amount of joy warranted the trouble of changing them-and the sensation Em felt was indescribable.
Totally indescribable.
She looked around at the kids and the baby and Jonas, a wave broke over her bare toes, Jonas popped another chip into her mouth and for a moment she thought she might cry.
Which was just stupid. Stupid!
‘I…I should go home,’ she said weakly as the last chip went the way of its counterparts. ‘There’s work-’
‘Your phone hasn’t rung.’
‘I have so much medico-legal work to catch up on, it’s coming out my ears.’
‘I’ll help you with it after the kids go to bed,’ Jonas said promptly, and that caused an even greater wave of sensation to break over her. The thought of this man sitting up with her into the night, ploughing through her mass of paperwork…
‘You don’t need to do that.’
‘I want to,’ he said gently, popping a last chip into her mouth, and before she knew what he was about he’d leaned over and lifted Robby into his arms. ‘OK, guys. Sam, Matt, Ruby! Collect every single bit of rubbish, take it over to the bin over there and come back. This instant.’
‘Why?’ asked Sam, ever the suspicious one. He had his uncle’s red hair and green eyes, and Em had to grin at the sight of him. Sam was just like Jonas would have looked like at eight years old, she thought. He was so cute.
‘Because we’re going swimming, of course,’ Jonas told him. ‘All of us. And anyone who doesn’t gets spiflicated.’
They gazed, round-eyed. No one knew what the word meant, but it sounded delicious.
And then Sam tilted his chin.
‘You wouldn’t dare.’
‘Want to not come swimming and find out?’
The boy’s face split into a grin.
‘Nope,’ he confessed.
‘Then what are we waiting for? Let’s go!’
And Em was left sitting in the shallows, watching as Jonas and the children splashed and yahooed and chortled and wallowed.
With Robby safely tucked in Jonas’s arms, the rest of the children were growing braver and braver-and venturing deeper and deeper.
As was Em.
She was falling deeper in love by the minute!
By the time they had the kids settled into bed it was almost ten o’clock. Em emerged from giving Robby his last bottle to find Jonas sorting things on her desk.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ she asked, startled, and he grinned.
‘Making room for both of us. But I’d change first if I were you.’ He looked virtuously down at his showered self, and his clean linen shirt and tousers. He’d showered with the boys. In contrast, Em, who’d had to bath Robby, reapply his bandages, take him through his stretches and give him his last bottle, was still dressed in her bathing suit, her only other covering being a sarong casually twisted around her waist.
She looked lovely, he thought. Just gorgeous! But he couldn’t work with her!
‘I don’t see myself working beside you like that,’ he told her.
‘I don’t see you working beside me at all,’ she said, in a voice that was way firmer than she felt. ‘It’s
‘We’re partners.’
‘You don’t know anything about my patients.’
‘I can do medico-legal work with my hands tied,’ he told her. He gestured to the computer. ‘I have the lawyers’ letters. Courtesy of your computer, I have your patient notes. We have my laptop. We can look up your notes, you can decide what we can say and I can edit it and type it as we go. Now-any arguments?’
None at all, Em thought, and looked at the mound of solicitors’ letters. This pile had been building up to insurmountable levels. It seemed that for every second patient she saw there was an insurance claim or motor- accident form to complete.
And the thought of sharing it was tantalising.
‘Just shower, though.’ Jonas’s voice was gruff. ‘I’m not sitting beside you like that, or I won’t answer for the consequences.’
And neither would she. She looked down at her bare toes, she looked across at Jonas’s laughing face-and she fled.
Because she didn’t trust herself in the least. Not one bit!
There was a problem.
Her hair.
Em normally washed her hair once a week. It was a thick, woven mane, it took hours to dry and she had to unbraid it to wash it.
She didn’t want to wash it now.
But it was full of sand and salt and, she suspected, the odd bit of baby food where Robby had grabbed it with glee.
‘I should cut it off,’ she told the mirror crossly. ‘It’s stupid vanity to wear it like this.’
But her grandpa had loved it, and so had Charlie.
And so did she.
‘So wash it and blow-dry it,’ she suggested to herself.
‘That’ll take an hour and Jonas is waiting. He’s doing
So she did what she had to do. She unbraided her hair, she washed it and combed it through, then slipped into her gnome-pyjamas and made her way back to the living room with her hair unbraided.
Jonas was on his feet before she was two feet into the door. He stared-and then he whistled, causing Em to blush from the toes up.
‘There’s no need for you to whistle,’ she snapped. ‘I’m still gnome-like. I’m just hairier.’
‘I like hairy gnomes,’ he told her, and his eyes told her that he spoke the truth. He did indeed like hairy gnomes. Very much indeed!
