She slammed the car door. Hard. She stomped into the castle forecourt. She could hear voices-laughter-coming from the kitchen gardens but she wasn’t stopping to investigate.
She disappeared fast to her bedroom, she slammed the door and she didn’t emerge until she heard Jake’s car disappear down the road.
He’d gone. Taking his encumbrances with him.
Good.
Had he been stupid?
Jake worked for the rest of the day with a sense that he’d been an idiot. A huge idiot. A dinner invitation extended to all his family and hangers-on, and he’d reacted as Kirsty had said-as if she’d launched herself at him with the intention of ripping his clothes off.
So he had overreacted just a tad. Just a little.
But in a sense he knew he hadn’t.
Evening surgery was boring. Coughs, colds, requests for repeat prescriptions, Mrs Bakerson’s ever-troublesome knee, which responded only to fifteen minutes listening to how much trouble her kids were…there was nothing there to distract him from what he was thinking about.
He was thinking of Kirsty.
She was gorgeous.
She mightn’t be thinking about relationships, he thought ruefully, but he definitely was. He just had to look at her-listen to her-watch the gentle way she interacted with Angus and with Mavis-and he wanted to take this further.
But she was married…
No, she wasn’t married. She’d just thrown that into the ring to make him feel even more stupid about his repudiation of her dinner invitation.
It hadn’t been a stupid repudiation.
She was a lovely, vibrant doctor with the world at her feet. She was building her career in Manhattan. She’d see her sister safely delivered and then the two of them would be off back to their life in the States.
Leaving him…
‘Can you look at my big toe while I’m here?’ Connie Bakerson was asking. ‘The toenail’s cutting in. You reckon I need an operation?’
He examined Connie’s big toe with all seriousness. Diagnosis was easy. That was one of the good things about being a country doctor. He got the whole picture. Despite her troublesome knee, Connie and her husband spent every spare minute indulging their passion for line dancing. He’d noticed the appalling stiletto cowboy boots she wore, and he’d expected trouble ever since.
But he was still thinking about Kirsty. If he let himself fall in love…
How could he? There was no future in loving anyone except his twins. His girls were totally dependent on him, and he had little enough time for them now. If he spent the next few weeks falling in love with Kirsty and then she left…
Maybe he was being dumb, but he saw nothing down that road except heartache.
‘You’re not very chatty,’ Connie commented, and he hauled himself to attention with an effort.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘You’ll be thinking of those young ladies out at the castle,’ Connie said with sudden perspicacity. ‘Isn’t it great that they’re here? Everyone’s talking about it. One of them pregnant with our Angus’s great-nephew, and the other a doctor. What a combination.’ She tugged her sock onto her foot and beamed. ‘Wouldn’t it be great if they stayed? Great for Angus. Great for you.’
‘Why great for me?’
‘Well, one of them being a doctor, of course,’ Connie said, astonished. ‘I hear she’s already been out on a house-call with you and the locals are saying she’s lovely.’
Of course, Jake thought bitterly. This was a tiny community. News travelled fast.
All the more reason not to think about Kirsty. If he so much as touched her, the news would be all over the district in minutes.
‘Hey, maybe she’s eligible,’ Connie said, beaming some more. ‘I hear she’s really pretty. Both of them are lookers, they’re saying, but the first poor lass has been battered. Knocked about in the car crash when her husband was killed, poor girl. But Harriet in the post office says the doctor one is a real stunner.’ She raised her eyebrows in enquiry. ‘So how about it, Doc? You’ve been single for far too long. Those poor wee mites need a mother.’
He was absolutely right in the way he’d reacted to Kirsty’s invitation, Jake thought grimly as he managed a smile and showed Connie resolutely to the door. Kirsty thought he was inferring too much from one dinner invitation. She didn’t know this town. They just had to see an eligible female and they started planning the wedding.
He just might nip this in the bud.
‘I hear she’s married,’ he said, with something approaching malicious enjoyment. ‘With six kids.’
‘Six kids?’ she said, astonished. ‘No one told me that.’
‘The village gossip network is letting you down. But she told me herself. She’s taken time off to care for her sister but back home she has a poor, downtrodden husband changing diaper after diaper…’
‘You’re having me on.’
‘She told me herself,’ he said, virtuous and sure.
‘Well!’ Connie pulled herself up, figuring out whether to be indignant or not and deciding a little indignation was justified. ‘Gallivanting over here when she has all those kiddies…’
‘Awful, isn’t it?’
‘She must be real worried about her sister.’
‘Maybe she’s just tired of diapers.’
‘We won’t judge her,’ Connie said resolutely. ‘We need to know more. Your Margie was out there this morning, wasn’t she?’
‘She was.’
‘I might just pop in to see Margie on the way home.’
‘You do that,’ Jake said, and suddenly he felt tired. ‘See if you can find any more skeletons in the closet. Oh, and, Connie?’
‘Mmm?’
‘No dancing for a week.’
‘But-’
‘Some things I’m sure about,’ Jake said. ‘Not many, mind, but this is one of them. Sore knee. Sore big toe. I prescribe new boots and rest.’
‘I can’t rest.’
Not when there was gossip to be gleaned, Jake thought, watching through the window as she marched up the hill to visit Margie with nary a limp.
If ever he was going to have a relationship…how could he have it under the eyes of everyone in this town?
He wasn’t having a relationship. End of story.
Move on to the next patient.
Kirsty woke the next morning to the sound of her sister whistling. Unable to believe her ears, she crossed to the window and looked outside.
The change in her two patients was extraordinary.
Susie was dressed and lying on a camping mattress they’d found yesterday. They’d cleaned it so Susie could lie on it while she gardened. The last of the rain had cleared. The day was already warm. Susie had a trowel in her hand, and she was digging around individual carrots.
Kirsty glanced up to Angus’s window and Angus was perched in the window-seat, overseeing operations.
‘You’ll do yourself damage, girl,’ he called. ‘Wait until I get down to give you a hand.’
She was being put to shame by two invalids, Kirsty thought. Angus needed help dressing and he needed his oxygen checked and he was waiting for her.
