To the Doctor: A Daughter

‘You promise?’

‘I promise.’

She stared up into his eyes. She doesn’t believe me, Nate thought, and then decided that she had the right to have doubts. He had doubts himself.

‘I should go. I’m crazy to stay.’

‘No. You’re sensible.’

‘There’s not a single thing sensible about it.’

‘You want me to list all the very sensible reasons why you should stay?’

‘No.’ Gemma backed away from him and her scowl returned. ‘You could talk your way out of an iron lung.’

‘I bet I couldn’t.’

‘I bet you could. There’s nothing I wouldn’t put past you.’

‘No.’ That was enough. It was time he called a halt. ‘Gemma, what have I ever done to you to make you distrust me?’

‘You made my sister pregnant.’

But Nate wasn’t buying into that one. ‘Gemma, if your sister wanted to get pregnant then she was going to get pregnant, whether it was with me or with someone else. You’re right in thinking I was a fool to let myself be used, but she’d decided to self-destruct anyway. She used me just as she used you. You’ve been more deeply hurt than I have but I won’t add to that hurt. For what it’s worth, you can trust me.’

Now, why had he said that? Why had he suddenly made the conversation so deadly serious?

It was the way she was looking, he thought-as if the bottom had dropped out of her world. And why?

It was because he’d offered her a way out, he thought bitterly. He’d offered her a life here as a country doctor and a future for herself and her nephew-and then he’d hauled it away again with one stupid, senseless act. Assuming she’d look after Mia.

‘I won’t try to palm the baby off on you again,’

‘The baby…’ she repeated, and she winced.

He thought it through and heard where she was coming from. Maybe it did sound a bit harsh. The baby… He tried again. ‘Mia.’

‘No.’ She fixed him with a look. ‘No. She’s not “the baby”. She’s not Mia. She’s your daughter. Say it, Nate.’

And he tried. ‘My daughter.’ Hell. It was harder to say it than he would have thought possible. My daughter. It sounded really, really strange.

‘Right. Your daughter.’

OK, he’d got over that hurdle. Now the next. ‘You wouldn’t want to unpack your bag and stay?’

‘What? Take my hairbrush out of my handbag?’

‘That’s the one.’ He frowned. She couldn’t keep wearing the one pair of jeans for ever. ‘We really need to do something about your wardrobe. How about a shopping trip tomorrow?’

‘Thanks but I don’t need it. I rang a friend in Sydney before I went to sleep this morning. Her apartment’s next to mine at Sydney Central. She agreed to gather a few things together and she’ll put a suitcase on the train today.’

‘Then that’s another reason why you can’t leave,’ he said triumphantly. ‘Your clothes will pass you as you speed up the highway-and we’ll be stuck here with clothes for a complete doctor but no doctor to put them on.’

‘Don’t push your luck.’

‘No. Right.’ He ventured a lopsided grin. He was in complete agreement. A wise man knew when to shut up. ‘So now what? I’m not going out and neither are you. How about a game of Scrabble?’

‘Scrabble? Instead of a pre-wedding party?’

‘I think maybe going to the pre-wedding party was a bad idea.’

She eyed him doubtfully. Did he mean it? ‘You know, you could take Mia with you.’

‘It wouldn’t be the same,’ he told her, not without a tinge of regret. ‘I’d arrive with the…with my daughter and my nappy bag and my bottle of milk instead of a bottle of wine and Donna would stalk in a hundred yards behind and bad-mouth me for the rest of the evening. And the gossip would be astonishing.’

‘So you’d prefer Scrabble?’

‘I’m a whizz at Scrabble,’ he said modestly-but he didn’t look the least bit modest. ‘I always win.’

Gemma stared up at him for a long moment and Nate gazed back. There it was again-that lurking twinkle that had the capacity to make her heart do handstands. But…he was staying home. He was trying.

Finally she let herself relax. Just a fraction. ‘I’m not bad myself.’

‘That sounds like a challenge.’ His twinkle became a grin. ‘And I’m a man who always meets a challenge. So what about it, Dr Campbell? Do you want to play?’

Did she want to play?

Play. It was a word that hadn’t been in her vocabulary for a very long time.

But he was smiling down at her and his gorgeous eyes were filled with lurking laughter. And more. They held a hint of caring. She stared up at him. The future of the medical practice of the town hung on this very moment and Nate found he was holding his breath. Would she?

And then, suddenly, she was smiling back at him and it was as if the sun had come out. More. It was a wonderful, wonderful smile.

‘OK, Dr Ethan. Bring out your Scrabble board. I’m about to let you know exactly who’s boss around here.’

It was a very silly game of Scrabble.

‘Piffle!’

‘Piffle’s a word.’ Nate looked wounded to the core that she should suggest otherwise. ‘How can you query piffle?’

Informality was definitely the order of the night. They were sprawled on cushions on the rug before the living room fire, Nate had changed into jeans and a sweatshirt that was almost as old as Gemma’s, and they might have been playing Scrabble for years. It felt…great, Gemma thought, almost afraid to acknowledge how great it was.

‘But if we’re speaking of piffle,’ Nate said cautiously, eyeing what she was doing with astonishment, ‘let’s look at this current offering. “Flowery”? Is “flowery” a word?’

‘Of course it is. You can say this sofa’s all flowery. Or your conversation is flowery.’

‘Hey! It is not.’

‘It might be.’

‘Flowery… Never in a million years.’

‘Well, think of Mrs McCurdle talking about her plans for the spring fete… Definitely flowery.’

“‘Floury” I might allow, like floury hands when you’re making scones.’

‘Yeah, but I don’t have a U. And if I put “flowery” on the end of your “bull” then “bull” becomes “bully”-which is definitely a word-and “y” is on the double word score. That means I get double scores for both words. With an “o” on a double letter that gives me twenty plus thirty-four-plus a bonus of fifty for using all seven letters. A hundred and four. Wow!’ She beamed her satisfaction.

And her beam had him fascinated. She sort of lit up from within.

But there were important issues to concentrate on here. Like winning Scrabble. A man had his pride after all. ‘And it’s exactly because it’s a hundred-and-four-point word that I won’t allow it.’

‘No?’

‘No!’

Gemma let herself look woebegone-cocker-spaniel style. ‘Not even because you feel sorry for me?’

‘Don’t you do the sympathy thing on me. Nothing gets in the way of me and winning a game of Scrabble.’

‘Not even brute force?’ Laughing, she raised a cushion-and Nate cowered in mock fear.

But then the phone rang. Damn. For some reason it really irritated him, and it wasn’t just that he was still in the lead. Reluctantly he rose to answer it while Gemma calmly put down her letters. Flowery… She grinned and added a hundred and four points to her score, which meant she was winning by a mile, but she was listening to what Nate was saying all the while.

And his voice was suddenly serious. ‘Right, bring her straight in.’