The Doctor’s Proposal

As well as that, she’d practised medicine again. It was an odd sort of general practice-anaesthetics, pain management and the odds and sods that Jake didn’t want. But it had been fun giving assorted schoolkids their shots, watching them screw up their faces in terror and offer their bare arms like lambs to the slaughter-only to be astounded when she’d managed to give the shot with hardly a pinprick of pain.

She’d also had fun at the castle. Kenneth’s threats had become a catalyst to make everyone seem a family and…

And for the first time in a very long time she’d seemed part of a family. Most of that was because of the man beside her.

It was no wonder that her hormones were playing tricks on her, she thought dimly, and then she thought it didn’t help that he was so drop-dead gorgeous and he was so drop-dead caring and he was so drop-dead… everything.

‘Penny for your thoughts,’ Jake said, and she jerked out of her reverie, surprised to see they’d walked almost half a mile. They’d been walking in the shallows, separated by a few feet so the splashes she was making didn’t hit him and vice versa.

‘I’m just thinking this has been fun,’ she told him.

‘Fun?’

‘Giving kids shots. Watching Angus and Susie have races. Bouncing around the castle with Boris and Penelope and Alice.’

‘They’ve had fun, too.’ They paused. The sun was a vast, golden ball dropping low over the distant mountains, slipping every moment until, pop, it suddenly disappeared altogether, leaving only the glorious hues of sunset. ‘We’d better go back.’

They turned but he seemed as reluctant as she was.

Silence again. Why didn’t he talk? she wondered. He acted as if he was afraid of her.

‘So you’re never going to have a relationship again?’ she asked softly, and the silence intensified.

‘Sorry?’ she said at last. ‘I didn’t hear your answer.’

‘I was trying not to hear your question.’

‘I’m allowed to ask,’ she said, a trifle indignantly. ‘After all, remember hubby and the six kidlets back home.’

‘I’d forgotten them,’ he said, starting to smile. ‘Maybe because you don’t wear photos of them in a locket round your neck.’

‘Too many,’ she said sagely. ‘I’d get a sore neck.’

‘But if you did, it’d stop the locals talking about us,’ Jake told her.

‘That really gets to you.’

‘It does,’ he agreed. ‘Every single woman in this place seems at some time or other to be bracketed with me. It gets tiring.’

‘I’d imagine it would,’ she said faintly. ‘All those women.’

‘It’s just…’ He kicked spray up before him with a sudden savage swipe that had his pants and shirt covered with spray. No problem, Kirsty thought. The unseasonable cold snap as they’d arrived had lasted a whole three minutes and it was now back to late-summer gorgeous. He’d dry before they reached the end of the beach. ‘Look, the small-town thing is dumb. It’s why I came here-because everyone cares for everyone-and this is just its downside so I shouldn’t complain.’

‘Why do you care what they say?’ she asked cautiously. ‘Is it so important? If someone sees you kissing someone else and sets it about that you’re having a hot affair-is that such a tragedy?’

‘My kids.’

‘It’s hardly going to affect your kids,’ she said, with more asperity than she’d intended. ‘They’re four years old. They’re hardly likely to be corrupted.’

‘But if the woman gets the wrong idea…’

‘You’re scared that touching a woman leads to immediate presumption of marriage. You know, that does seem a trifle…presumptuous.’

‘It does,’ he said, giving her a rueful smile. ‘It sounds conceited.’

‘It definitely does.’

‘So if I kissed you, you wouldn’t think it’d lead anywhere.’

She thought about that. ‘I guess it couldn’t,’ she agreed cautiously. ‘On account of hubby and rug-rats back home.’

He motioned up to the headland. There was a car park overlooking the harbour, a place Kirsty had discovered was a favourite with the locals. They drove up there at odd times in the day just to check to the state of surf, the tides, whether the fishing fleet was in sight. At any time of the day there were never less than half a dozen cars parked there, and now Kirsty could count at least ten.

‘You know,’ Kirsty said cautiously, ‘if you were to kiss me now, you could use it as armour for years.’

‘How so?’ They’d slowed, and now they stopped, ankle deep in the surf.

‘It’d be all over town by morning. Doctor has passionate affair with other doctor. Then nothing. Doctor goes back to New York, leaving bereft country doctor behind. You could hide behind your broken heart for ages.’

‘Gee, thanks.’

‘Just a thought,’ she said, and grinned. ‘Just offering myself in the greater good. If you need armour, what better than a broken heart? Or…’ She paused. ‘I could tell everyone you knew about hubby and the six kids. That’d work. Maybe it’d even work better.’

‘How would it work better?’ He was staring at her as if she’d grown antennae.

‘Mothers would warn their daughters about you. Don’t go near him, dear, he’s a home-wrecker.’

‘You’ve got it all worked out.’

‘Just trying to be helpful.’

‘Why?’

‘You’re miserable,’ she told him. ‘I’m a pain specialist. Fixing pain is what I do.’

‘What makes you think I’m in pain?’

‘I think you’re lonely as hell,’ she said bluntly. ‘I think your wife walking out on you has left you bewildered and hurt and scared. You want to keep you and your two little girls safe from being hurt again, and you’re using local gossip as an excuse not to let anyone close.’

‘That’s nonsense.’

‘Is it?’ She turned to face him then, head on. ‘Is it really, Jake? It’s partly what you told me. We’d hardly met before you were telling me to back off, and you know there’s a solid mutual attraction. Fictional kidlets aside, is there really a sensible reason why you’re not kissing me now? When you know we both want to?’

‘I…’

She raised her brows in mock enquiry and turned away, taking a few more steps in the shallows. Was she mad? Solitude and fear over the last month had driven her to the edge, she thought, and any minute she’d be declared as crazed as Kenneth.

And then she heard Jake splash behind her.

She paused, not knowing whether she should be hopeful or not. But she was hopeful.

‘Kirsty?’

‘Yes?’

‘It’s either kiss you or throttle you,’ he told her, sounding much more exasperated than passionate. ‘So turn around and be kissed.’

He kissed her.

He was crazy. This was dumb. She’d goaded him into it and it made all the sense in the world to walk away, but she was too…

Too Kirsty.

It stunned him. She’d walked into his life and something had lit that hadn’t been lit for years-if it ever had been lit, and somehow he doubted it. He’d thought he’d been in love when he’d married, but he hadn’t felt like this.

Like he was balancing on a knife-edge.