‘I shouldn’t have gone to sleep,’ she said quickly-too quickly-and he smiled, with the indulgence of an adult giving a child a treat.
‘Of course you should. Your nephew has slept the day away and I’ve a feeling his aunt needed the sleep even more. If Cady hadn’t collapsed I think you would have collapsed in his stead. How long have you been burning the candle at both ends?’
She thought about it. ‘I guess… There has been so much to do. Since Fiona died. And Mia isn’t a restful baby-as you’ll no doubt find out.’
‘She looks pretty restful to me.’
‘Yeah. And how long have you stayed with her?’
‘Hours and hours.’ He gave her a look of pure unsullied virtue which made her smile.
‘Yeah, right.’
But he was moving on. ‘Do you want a hospital tour before dinner? We have time.’
‘Um…’ She looked down at her rumpled self. ‘I guess. Though I’m not exactly looking my professional best.’
‘You look pretty good to me.’
There it was again. That jolt. It was a stab of warmth that had her understanding exactly why Fiona had chosen him to be the father of her child.
‘Yeah, right.’ She didn’t meet his eyes-just scuffed her trainers on the grass and looked up toward the hospital. ‘OK. Lead the way.’ He looked every inch the doctor and she looked every inch the poor relation.
So what else was new?
Fiona had made her feel like an also-ran from the moment of her birth. She should be used to it by now.
‘It’s a casual sort of hospital,’ he told her, and there it was again-the reading of minds that she was starting to dread. ‘No specialists with bow-ties need apply. The people here are farmers and they don’t look for sophistication. They look for caring-and it seems to me that caring’s what you have in spades.’
Of course. Caring was what she was principally good at.
Caring…
It went on and on for ever.
Once on her tour of inspection, however, Gemma forgot her concerns about her appearance. She forgot everything except the hospital, and the hospital was great.
The doctor who’d built it all those years ago had suffered delusions of grandeur and had built a hospital that could have accommodated three times the number of beds they had.
‘We’re accredited for twenty patients,’ Nate told her as she exclaimed at the size of the place. ‘And no one can say we’re crowded.’
They certainly weren’t. The wards were double or single and they were roomy, comfortably furnished and ever so slightly over the top.
‘There were chandeliers here when my uncle arrived,’ Nate told her. ‘He got rid of them because of the dust- and because the local farmers thought they’d died and gone to heaven. They’d have a minor operation and wake up to this-and damn near arrest on the spot.’
‘I can imagine.’ Gemma looked up at the high pressed ceilings with their ornate cornices and beautifully moulded plasterwork and shook her head in disbelief. ‘All you need is a few Michelangelo friezes and you could be in the Sistine Chapel.’
‘Maybe we could have a working bee and paint a few.’ Nate was grinning down at her. Life was a constant joke to him, Gemma thought with just a trace of anger. Then his smile caught her and she had to smile back. Sort of.
‘A working bee to paint the ceilings…’ She smiled. ‘What a great idea. Can I help? I paint a really mean elephant. From the rear.’
‘I’ll bet you do.’
And they were grinning at each other like fools and it took Mrs Draper-an elderly lady with gout-harrumphing from her bed to haul them back to order.
Over the top or not, the hospital was run as a well-oiled machine. The staff greeted Gemma with interest, chatting to Nate with real friendliness. There was nothing of the distance between nurses and doctors she saw in the big city hospitals.
And the patients were the same. Nate greeted them with ease and introduced them to Gemma in turn. They chatted, they checked Gemma out with a curiosity she saw would instantly turn to gossip the moment they left, and in the end she was left feeling as if the place consisted of one big family.
‘That’s what country practice is all about,’ Nate told her as she exclaimed over the sensation. ‘Do you want to give us a go?’
And at the end of the tour she felt her doubts dissipating. This could work. It could.
‘Yes, please.’
‘That’s great.’ His smile was so intimate it warmed parts of her she hadn’t begun to realise were cold.
‘Fantastic,’ he told her. ‘Let’s go to dinner.’
Dinner was lovely. Sitting in the huge kitchen, listening to Graham and Nate gossip over the events of the day, Gemma felt more and more at home. Mrs McCurdle had left them the king of all casseroles. Mia was gurgling sleepily in her cot, the dog was asleep again before the fire and it felt like family. And family was something Gemma hadn’t felt for a very long time.
‘Gemma?’
Nate was talking to her, she realised, and she had to blink to haul herself back to reality. She’d been floating in a fuzzy little dream where country practice, Cady and Mia-and Nate-were all mixed up in a rosy future.
She looked at him blankly. ‘Sorry?’
‘Penny for your thoughts.’
She blinked at that. ‘You don’t want to hear them.’
‘I bet I do.’
She smiled but she shook her head. ‘No way.’ If he couldn’t guess, she wasn’t telling him. ‘Was there something you wanted?’
He hesitated and she could see what he was thinking that maybe now wasn’t the time to ask. He wanted a favour, she decided, and he was wondering whether she was up to it.
But she’d slept all day and she felt terrific.
‘Go on. Ask. I can always refuse.’
His brows rose at that and she thought, Great-he’s not the only one who can read minds. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Nate Ethan.
She’d disconcerted him and it showed. When he spoke again his voice had lost some of its certainty. ‘I was wondering…’
‘You were wondering what?’
And out it came. ‘OK. I was wondering whether you’d cover me tonight.’
She thought about it. ‘Medically?’
‘Certainly medically.’ He smiled that endearing smile that would obtain anything he wanted. ‘Graham’s involved with the local repertory society-he’s playing the Major-General in their production of
‘The Major-General?’ Gemma twinkled across the table at Graham. How wonderful. She could really see him in the role, waving his walking sticks at the pirates and the world in general and thumbing his nose at his disabilities. ‘That’s fantastic.’ She turned back to Nate. ‘So don’t tell me. You need to go, too, because you’re the Pirate King.’
‘No.’
Her nose wrinkled in disappointment. ‘That’s a pity.’ She had a great vision of him bare-chested and piratical, complete with cutlass and sword. The thought was enough to make her blink. ‘You’d make a wonderful pirate.’
He didn’t know how to take that one. ‘Thanks very much.’
‘Think nothing of it,’ she said expansively. The food, the warmth and the overall sense of security were getting
