A Wedding for the Single Dad
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Meredith Webber
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CHAPTER ONE
‘WHO THE HELL are you?’
‘Says the man lying in a creek bed and lucky to be alive! Shoulder bad? Possibly dislocated, from the look of things,’ Lauren said, hoping she sounded cooler and more in command than she felt. There’d been something about the very English male voice that had made the demand sound more abrupt than it might otherwise have.
Something about it, too, that had skittered down her spine.
She’d come expecting injury, but not an enormous man—at least six foot two or three—with night-dark tousled hair and a chippy attitude.
She smiled at him to cover her own uncertainty—she just didn’t do skittery spines.
‘I’m your friendly neighbourhood rescuer, Lauren Henderson, although what you were doing flitting around up there in Henry’s home-made flying machine I can’t imagine.’
She’d drawn closer to the man by now, and he didn’t look any smaller. From his snapped retort—‘It’s an ultralight!’—it was clear he also wasn’t any happier.
‘Which doesn’t answer the question, but I guess I’d better have a look at you. There’s a team trudging up the path somewhere behind me, but even on a stretcher you’ll be more comfortable if I get your shoulder back into place before they carry you down.’
A grumbling noise suggested that he might argue about being carried down the gully, but really he had no choice.
She approached him fairly tentatively, and not only partly because of the rocky terrain—the dangers of wounded wild beasts were featuring in the forefront of her imagination...
There was no sign of blood, which didn’t rule out the possibility that he wasn’t lying in a puddle of it, and his eyes—an unusual dark blue—were alert.
Too alert?
‘Apart from your shoulder, are you in pain?’ she asked, easing her backpack off her shoulders and setting it to one side as she knelt beside him.
‘I fell out of the sky! Of course, I’m in pain. Ouch!’
Lauren had been feeling around his head as he muttered at her, and touching the slight lump on the back of his skull had caused the ‘ouch’.
‘Can you move your legs and your good arm?’ she asked, and although he groaned as he did it the three limbs moved fairly normally.
‘Well, let’s get your shoulder sorted,’ she said, ‘before the others get here.’
‘What do you mean—get it sorted?’
The man was in pain, so she bit back a smart retort.
‘Pop it back into place. You’ll still need to be carried out and have it X-rayed when you get to civilisation, because there will be damage to the cartilage and tendons.’
She’d removed ‘the magic green whistle’, as football players called the handy device, while she was speaking, and now passed it to him. ‘Take about six breaths,’ she said.
Dark blue eyes narrowed suspiciously. ‘What’s in it?’ he asked.
‘Methoxyfluorane,’ she said calmly, getting herself into position beside his left shoulder, prepared to lift his arm whether it hurt him or not. But the man was in a lot of pain—she had to grant him a little leeway...
Also, he was very intriguing and very attractive. And quite possibly—probably—her new neighbour. Henry’s nephew or great-nephew, she seemed to remember...
She watched him breathe in the pain-relief drug and hid a smile as it obviously started to work, relaxing the tension in his body.
‘Now, I’m just going to bend your arm at the elbow and move it like this, and with a bit of pressure I should be able to slip it back into place.’
‘Are you a qualified paramedic? Should you be doing this?’
Okay, so methoxyfluorane hadn’t improved his mood. But he had crashed down from the sky, and he was probably feeling extremely foolish for having attempted to fly the ultralight, as well as being in a great deal of pain.
So she smiled sweetly at him.
‘No and yes,’ she said, and before he could voice further objections she lifted his folded arm and moved it upward and outward until she felt the joint slip back into its socket.
‘Better?’ she said, although she knew it would still be painful—just not agonisingly so.
He muttered something she was charitably willing to accept as assent, and she began to examine the rest of him. Bloody graze on his left hand—he’d probably put it out to break his fall—and his left ankle looked a little swollen.
‘Sore?’ she asked, moving it slightly.
More muttered complaints followed as she unlaced his light canvas shoes.
‘I’m going to take off your shoe and sock so I can bandage it,’ she told him. ‘If we leave them on and your ankle swells, your shoe will have to be cut off—which would be a pity with such good-quality footwear.’
More mutterings. This time she gathered something about what a woman would know about men’s footwear. She ignored the words and went ahead, removing his shoe, and then his sock, revealing a long, pale foot, with blue veins visible beneath milky skin.
The bare foot made him seem vulnerable, and for all his tetchy remarks she suddenly felt sorry for him.
Which, she decided, was distinctly better than the physical reaction she’d had earlier...
She’d just finished binding the ankle when voices told her the SES team had arrived.
‘He okay?’ the lead man asked.
Lauren nodded. ‘I’ve just reset a dislocated left shoulder—it’ll need to be X-rayed—and checked him over for other injuries. His left arm will need to be put into a special sling for a while, and his left ankle...’
But the team were no longer listening.
‘Geez,’ one of them said, peering up at the tangle of fine wood and plastic in the midst of the dead black trees that bordered the gully. ‘Is that old Henry’s flying machine up there? Boy, he’ll be cranky up in heaven!’
‘Or down in hell,’ another suggested, and all four laughed before slowly returning their attention to their patient.
‘You did that?’ they more or less chorused, all shaking their heads in disbelief.
‘Okay,’ Lauren said, calling them to order as they started to suggest the punishments old Henry would have meted out to someone crashing his most favourite toy. ‘You’ve actually got a patient here, and if you want to get him down the track in daylight I’d suggest you get him strapped onto whatever you’re carrying and start moving.’
‘I don’t need to be carried.’
Not muttered, but definitely not happy.
‘You might have other injuries, and possibly concussion,’ she told him, adding firmly, ‘So you will be carried.’
Recalled to their job, the team set to work, and as they slid the pieces of stretcher under the injured man Lauren could practically read their minds.
Although in case she’d been in any doubt Joe, their leader, muttered, ‘Cor, he’s a big bugger!’
‘I’ll take the head end and you can go two each side,’ she said. ‘The ambulance will be down on the road. You can radio for their two guys to start up the track to help.’
They worked well, the team, getting the bits of board under the patient and snapped together, strapping him firmly onto it.
‘Just use the magic whistle if you need to,’ Lauren reminded the man, as they all got into position to lift him.
He gave her a look of such disbelief she had to smile.
‘They have done it before,’ she said, and he shut his eyes, as if better to pretend this wasn’t happening.
He’d been rescued by—he couldn’t think off-hand of a bunch of comedians to compare this lot to—vaudeville slapstick clowns, perhaps?
Campbell Grahame shook his head—big mistake, as it brought the sore lump on it into contact with the board to which he’d been strapped. He clutched the device his rescuer had called ‘the magic whistle’ to his chest, wondering if he should take a few more puffs as the lurching downhill journey was anything but comfortable.
His rescuer!
Maybe he’d think about her instead of the pain.
She’d seemed to appear from nowhere, startling him as he’d tried to work out just how seriously he was injured. And told himself how stupid he’d been! He’d been angry with himself, as well, for flying so far in an old machine he didn’t know at all. Apart from anything else, it had been totally irresponsible.
He turned his attention back to his rescuer.
Totally unsympathetic, she’d been, whoever she was. But perhaps brisk efficiency was what was needed in rescue situations.
Still, a rescuer with long, tanned legs, clad in short red shorts and a singlet that clung to a curvy upper body like a second skin...? The men at least were in uniform—with the words State Emergency Service embroidered on their shirts.
The peaked black cap she was wearing, pulled down tightly on her forehead, meant he hadn’t been able to see the hair tucked under it, but dark eyes and eyebrows suggested it would be brown or black.
He raised his eyes to take another look at her face, hoping she was concentrating on where she was putting her feet rather than on him.
But it was a surreptitious glance, just to check that her face was as lovely as he remembered it.
It was.
It was well put together, with a straight nose and wide, shapely lips, a small, determined chin—yes, she was something of a beauty...although he did wonder if other people would think so.
Perhaps it was just a face like any other, and he’d imbued it with beauty because she’d rescued him?
Whatever. The fact remained he’d been damnably rude to her.
He sighed, and the beauty—he was pretty sure she was a beauty—said, ‘Don’t be afraid to use the whistle. This isn’t exactly the smoothest ride you’ll ever have, and there could be other things wrong with you.’
But he knew there weren’t. The team had carried out the basic tests—blood pressure, heart-rate, breathing—and although he felt pain as they trekked down the rough track, he knew it wasn’t anything serious.
So he could think about the woman again—tall, as well as good looking...
‘What’s your name?’
His question came out without much forethought, and she frowned down at him, as if she wasn’t certain of the answer.
Had she already told him?
He couldn’t remember...
‘Lauren Henderson,’ she said eventually, before adding, ‘And yours?’
Cam frowned. He had introduced himself earlier—but had that been just to the team?
Surely she’d heard?
‘Campbell Grahame—I’m usually called Cam.’
One of the two men who held the stretcher at Cam’s shoulder level turned briefly towards them, but a slight slip on a rock had him turning back, concentrating on where he was going, almost immediately.
‘How do you do, Cam?’ Lauren said, in the slightly husky voice that somehow suited her. ‘I won’t shake hands because I’d probably drop you.’ Silent for a moment, she then said, ‘And what were you up to—flying over the forest in old Henry’s ancient machine?’
All four of the heads he could see in front of him turned at this question, and he wondered if perhaps they should leave conversation until they were well away from the rough track by the creek bed.
But she had asked...
‘I thought it might be useful to spot any injured wildlife returning to their burnt-out homes.’
‘You’ve never heard of drones?’ It was a question edged with sarcasm, but perhaps—
‘Is that why I crashed? You had a drone up and it hit me?’
She gave a huff of laughter and shook her head. ‘You crashed because you were flying so low your left wing-tip hit a tree, and you were lucky I did have a drone up—because otherwise it would have taken a full-scale search, and almost certainly plenty of man hours, to find you. The forest might be burnt out, but there’s thick regeneration in the undergrowth, and with the deep gullies even a helicopter search would have been difficult, if not impossible.’
‘Well, that’s telling me,’ he muttered to himself, feeling put out that he wasn’t being treated more kindly, considering he was injured. Not that he’d earned any kindness, the way he’d been earlier—though his bad temper was more to do with his own foolishness than these innocent rescuers.
They continued down the path in silence, and as the journey went on he realised just how far this group had walked to rescue him—idiot that he was to have even got into the damn microlight.
‘Do you do this often?’ he asked.
‘Rescue blokes from crashed flying machines?’ one of the men responded. ‘Not so much. But I reckon a couple of dozen times a summer we get call-outs to search for someone who hasn’t come back when they should...a fisherman stranded on rocks in the lake as the tide rises, lost bush-walkers, kids—we keep busy.’
Intrigued now, Cam wanted to know more. ‘Only in summer?’
Another of the men shook his head. ‘Nah! Winter’s actually worse—cooler for people who want to walk some of the trails though the bush, who then get off the trail and end up lost.’
‘Not that there’ll be much bush to walk in this year,’ another said, gloom shrouding his words.
And then the talk turned to the bushfires that had so recently ravaged the area. Most of South Eastern Australia had suffered to some degree, and Cam, who’d arrived in the country six days ago, in the aftermath of the fires, had discovered that as well as inheriting a veterinary practice from a great-uncle he’d only met once, many years earlier, he’d inherited a small hospital for injured wildlife—complete with, and run by, mostly volunteer helpers.
And an ultralight!
He bit back a groan, more of anguish than agony. Flying the wretched machine had seemed like a challenge. And it had brought back such vivid memories!
The only time he’d met his great-uncle, Henry had helped him build his very own ultralight, and taught him how to fly it. So, seeing what must have been Henry’s old machine in the shed, it had been hard to resist—particularly as his daughter had been so excited that Daddy could fly such a thing.
Showing off to Maddie. How pathetic had that been?
Idiotic too.
Maddie!
Hell!
He looked up at rescuer number one. ‘Can someone radio the vet surgery and let my mother know I’m okay? She’ll be worried.’
‘I’ll do it,’ one of the men at the foot of the stretcher said, keeping hold of his burden with one hand, while the other tapped away at a radio Velcroed to his chest.
No need to tell them his mother was the last person who’d be worried. She was probably trailing along the lake’s edge with her fishing line, with Maddie following in her wake like a small shadow, her own fishing line tangled around the small rod, because to her shells had far more appeal than fish.
But at least his mother would know to listen to messages on the surgery line as well as the home phone when she returned from her excursion.
New voices and laughter preceded the arrival of the ambulance crew, who greeted everyone cheerfully, assured him he’d soon be more comfortable in their care, and then joined the effort of carrying him down to the road.
He was about to lose Lauren Henderson from her place at the head of the stretcher.
As she moved away he reached out with his good hand and caught her fingers. ‘I’m sorry for being such a bear,’ he said. ‘I was just so annoyed with myself for bringing Henry’s machine down. It was a stupid and totally irresponsible thing to do.’
She smiled at him. ‘It was,’ she agreed, but the smile had taken any sting out of her words.
Then she was gone, striding on ahead of the team carrying him down the track.
He wanted to ask about her—who she was, and what she did. She hadn’t been sympathy personified, but she’d reset his shoulder—besides which, she was damned attractive.
Knowing someone’s name really told you nothing, he was thinking when the paramedic who’d taken her place said, ‘The doc reported a dislocated shoulder—looks like she got it back in place. Left one, was it?’
He nodded his reply—mainly because, back in place or not, his shoulder was hurting like the devil, and he really didn’t want to be taking any more of the drug.
And why is that? a small voice in his head asked.
He closed his eyes, as if he might shut out the question, but he had a suspicion it might be pride—not wanting these tough men carting his considerable weight down the mountain to think him a weakling.
Stupid pride, at that!
He lifted the little ‘whistle’ to his lips and took a deep breath.
‘Take a few,’ said the man at his head. ‘Moving you to the ambulance will hurt a bit.’
Cam took a few more puffs. Given the Australian talent for understatement he’d already encountered in his short time here, it was likely going to hurt like hell!
Lauren didn’t wait to see her patient loaded into the ambulance. She turned and went back up the path. Telling herself her plan was stupid and futile failed to stop her forward momentum.
As a child, she’d helped Henry—or mainly watched—as he’d built his little ultralight, and it deserved a better end than to be stuck in the burnt-out scrub at the head of the gully. And rescuing the bits would distract her from the reaction she’d felt when the stranger had grabbed her hand and pressed it gently as he’d apologised.
For some reason, that slight touch had left her fingers tingling.
Think about the wreckage!
Even if she couldn’t rescue all of it, if she could just recover the frame and the little leather seat Henry had fashioned out of an old saddle...
She thought back to those days when she’d been Henry’s little shadow—far closer to him than she’d been to her own father when she was small. Probably because her father’s practice hadn’t involved animals large and small.
Henry hadn’t talked much about his family, although hadn’t he once visited a sister or a niece back in England?
Mary?
Marion?
Madge?
It had been Madge—a niece. Maybe she’d inherited the old house and the veterinary practice?
And if he lived with his mother—the tall man with the blue, blue eyes who’d made her spine skitter and her fingers tingle—then that was probably Madge, because the house certainly hadn’t been on the market. The lakeside gossip net would have known if it had been.
But living with his mother? Unusual in this day and age... Although she’d lived with her father for years—for ever, almost...
Was he a vet, that tall man with the very blue eyes?
Silly question. Henry had talked occasionally about his great-nephew with a veterinary practice in London—spoken of him with pride. And if she’d ever thought about it, she should have guessed he’d inherit Henry’s place and his practice.
But who’d leave London to come to a practice in the bush?
And why should it matter to her, anyway?
Just because he was good-looking?
Because he’d sparked something in her although he’d been abrupt and cranky?
And made her fingers tingle when he’d caught her hand.
And he was going to be living next door.
This last realisation made her feel...not exactly queasy, but unsettled inside.
Puzzling over it kept her feet moving, so she was soon past where she’d met the man, and the wreckage of the ultralight was much more visible—and not as badly shattered as she’d pictured it.
Carefully avoiding any chance of slipping and injuring herself, she gathered up the pieces—one almost complete wing, the bones of the shattered one, and the cockpit, as Henry had grandly called the seat and control panel—and some other bits and pieces not immediately recognisable.
Wishing she’d stopped long enough to get some big bin bags, she untied her light jacket from her waist and tied it around the awkward bundle. She hitched it on to her shoulder and set off, yet again, down the rough track.
By the time she reached her house, drenched in sweat, she was regretting what now seemed like a totally irrational decision.
Just what was she intending to do with the wreckage?
Rebuild the thing?
She dropped the bundle just inside her back gate, unwrapped her jacket and used it to mop the sweat from her face.
‘Are you going to put it together again?’ asked a quiet, precise voice, and she turned to see a small child with dark tousled hair standing at the fence, dark blue eyes fixed intently on her.
‘I’m not sure I’m clever enough,’ she answered honestly, seeing the wreckage more clearly now.
‘My father could help you,’ the little girl told her. ‘He knows how.’
Lauren smiled, because the words held such certainty. This was a child who firmly believed her father could do anything—although, if the father was who Lauren guessed he was, putting the ultralight back together again was probably the last thing he’d want to do.
Time to change the subject.
‘Does your mother know where you are?’ she asked.
The small child climbed onto the gate and began to swing back and forth on it. ‘I don’t have a mother,’ she said. ‘Daddy said she left to find herself. But I think you are yourself, and that’s where you are.’
It was slightly convoluted, but Lauren could see where she was coming from, and was amazed yet again at the wisdom of children.
‘Do you have a name?’ she asked—although she should be asking exactly who was in charge of her, and what she was doing at her back gate.
‘I’m Maddie,’ she said. ‘It’s really Madge, after my grandmother, but Daddy says that’s a name for an old person not a...’ she paused, as if trying out the next word in her head, and finally came up with ‘...youngser like me.’
‘Well, Maddie, perhaps your grandmother is looking for you and you should go home. Do you know the way?’
The girl rolled her eyes. ‘It’s just next door,’ she said, and Lauren thought she heard the echo of an unspoken Stupid! lingering at the end of the statement. ‘Although it’s not as next door as the next door was when we lived in London.’
From London to Paradise Lake. From a bustling, cosmopolitan city to a virtual backwater with a string of houses around a tidal lake. What a huge shift in their lives.
A huge shift in work, too, for the man she’d rescued. From city vet to a country one—and a different country at that.
Had he realised that when he’d come out here?
Did he intend to stay, or merely check out the place and put it on the market?
‘I could walk you home,’ she offered, concerned about the child, because she’d been quite right. ‘Next door’ here was about three hundred metres away, and once the sinking sun disappeared it would be gloomy in the sparse bushland between the two houses.
‘If you like,’ Maddie told her, climbing off the gate. ‘We have heaps of baby animals at our place—more than ten, anyway. People come in to help, because some of them are hurt, and some are too little to live in the... Well, we’d say woods in England, but here it’s called the bush—even if there isn’t any bush to live in.’
She waved a hand towards the blackened hills behind them, while Lauren realised that it must be another after-effect of the fires that she’d heard nothing of these new people in Henry’s house—not a hint of the gossip which was usually the life-blood of Lakesiders’ conversations.
There’d been a locum, of course, and she’d met him one time. And she’d known that volunteers were working all hours to keep the wildlife hospital and sanctuary going. She had done a couple of night shifts there herself, but because she entered and left through the gate in the animal cage, she hadn’t met or even considered the new owners.
She took Maddie’s hand, and was just leading her to the track she always took between the two places when a tall, dishevelled and totally distracted figure appeared, his left arm held tight to his chest by a sling, his left ankle tightly bandaged.
Campbell Grahame stopped and leaned on the stick he held in his right hand.
‘You shouldn’t be out walking after that fall,’ she said.
But he ignored her, calling out to his daughter and grabbing her as she raced towards him and flung herself at his legs.
‘What have I told you about wandering off into the bush?’ he demanded, though he didn’t sound as cross as she imagined he must be feeling after finding her missing.
‘But I only went next door. And this nice lady is going to build the flying machine again after she’s walked me home.’
‘You must be out of your mind,’ he said, and then must have realised he’d already been far too rude to her today. ‘Sorry. That was rude. I’ve been worried about Maddie.’
‘I said you’d help her,’ Maddie offered hopefully.
The man just shook his head and awkwardly scooped her up with his right arm, his stick now waving uselessly in his hand.
‘You should let Maddie walk,’ Lauren said, changing the subject before it became even more complicated. ‘You shouldn’t be bearing your own weight on that ankle, let alone hers.’
He frowned at her, but did let Maddie slide back to the ground.
Okay, the man was in pain, and he must have been worried sick about his daughter’s disappearance—but, really, one ‘sorry’ didn’t cover his rudeness.
She looked him directly in the eyes as she responded, daring him to make another prod at her. ‘Are you always this aggressive, or has the accident dented your masculine pride? Or is it because you were rescued by a woman?’ she asked, aware that it had happened before in the macho world out here in the lakes.
Without waiting for an answer—or an excuse—she turned on the spot and marched back towards her house.
Maddie’s, ‘Now look what you’ve done!’ came clearly to her through the still, early-evening air. ‘And she’s a very nice lady!’
Beautiful, too, Cam thought as he took Maddie’s hand and turned back towards Uncle Henry’s house—their house now, he supposed. Not that they had to stay here. A few weeks seeing to some necessary repairs, a bit of paint to brighten the place up, and then Cam and his mother could sell it and go back to the UK.
The locum the lawyers had arranged was still running the business and he could stay on—he might even like to buy it. If not, the solicitors could find another buyer.
The thought made him feel even more depressed than the pain in his shoulder. She’d been right, that woman—now soot-stained, probably from rescuing the ultralight—he shouldn’t be walking around. But he hadn’t wanted his mother to go looking for his daughter—that could have ended up with both of them being lost in the bush...
The bush.
Could he really go back to the UK after seeing the beauty of this lake and experiencing the sense of community around it? Meeting a few of the locals...learning that he owned, apparently, a wildlife hospital and sanctuary, not to mention some of that burnt-out bush behind the house... Henry and some friends of his had planted trees there—a variety of the special trees whose leaves koalas ate—to encourage the local koala population to stay in the area.
For so long he’d dreamt about Australia—this strange land at the bottom of the globe.
Sell out?
He didn’t think so.
They were in sight of the house now. The stately old stone building looked so incongruous among the holiday shacks and the new modern houses that straggled along the shores of the lake. He’d learned that it had been built by the owner of a local coal mine, back when the area had first been settled, and the owner had obviously believed strongly in his own importance.
Even with the old servants’ quarters at the back now annexed by the wildlife hospital and sanctuary, and his veterinary rooms set up on the ground floor at the front, it was still a lot of house for three people. Spacious and elegant, if somewhat shabby.
‘I’ve forgotten her name...the lady who lives next door...but her house looks even bigger than ours. And there’s a sign outside with pictures of cakes. Do you think she’s a cake-maker?’
He thought of the tall, slim woman who’d not only popped his shoulder back into its socket but had then also helped carry him down the hill.
‘If she is a cake-maker, I don’t think she eats many of them,’ he said to Maddie.
She grinned with delight. ‘Because she’s not roly-poly, like Madge says I’ll get if I eat too much cake?’
He smiled down at this small human who held his heart in her currently rather grubby hands. ‘Exactly,’ he said.
And they were both smiling as they entered the house through a French door on one side of it, directly into a rather dim but potentially pleasant sitting room.
Having shifted the pieces of the ultralight to her back shed, Lauren went upstairs to shower and change. She studied her soot-stained self in the bathroom mirror and shook her head. Pity to have made such a terrible first impression on her new neighbour!
Really? a voice in her head replied. Why should it bother you what impression you made?
She didn’t answer the voice, not wanting to admit that she’d found him attractive—very attractive. And definitely not wanting to admit that seeing him had caused nerves in some parts of her body to jangle, and tighten, and heat—nerves that hadn’t felt much for years.
Certainly not warmth.
As for heat...?
Good grief!
What was she thinking?
She sighed. It was because she had no life—that was all it was. Years of medical training, the horrors of internship, and then eight years caring for a wonderful but increasingly difficult father had limited her social life to zilch. No wonder someone—a male someone—taking her hand and giving it a gentle squeeze had made her skin tingle.
Had that ever happened before out here in the very beautiful but isolated Paradise Lake community? No. The residents were mostly retired, or newlyweds building their first house in the place where they’d come for holidays as children.
Single men were scarcer than hen’s teeth, and as for married men...
Disaster!
But she loved the lake, and she had taken over her father’s practice as well as his care when his forgetfulness had finally had to be acknowledged as dementia rather than just old age.
Don’t brood.
She’d shower, wash her hair, pull on some jeans and a top and—
And then what?
Take herself to dinner at the new restaurant that had opened further along the shore?
She shook her head, her wet hair flapping about her face. Pulled out a dry towel and rubbed at it roughly, remembering times when she’d have spent half an hour drying it carefully, persuading it into gentle waves that looked as natural as she could make them.
Looking good for David.
As she dragged a comb through her still-damp hair, she wondered where that had come from.
It had been years since she’d given David even a passing thought.
And, more to the point, why was the man she’d rescued today intruding into her brain?
Surely not just because he was an attractive man?
An attractive man who’d made her spine skitter and her skin tingle...
He was a new neighbour, nothing more, and obviously married as he had a child.
Although hadn’t the child—Maddie—said something...?
The thought of her encounter with the man at the head of the gully reminded her that she hadn’t downloaded her drone’s latest pictures. She’d sent the drone home, grabbed her backpack, and then raced off to find whoever it was she’d seen crash.
Glad to have something to do, she went to her office and detached the SIM card from the small machine’s belly, pushed it into her computer, and sat down to study what it had picked up.
Nothing much, she decided, when she reached the point where her neighbour had crashed. But as the drone had obeyed her instructions and flown back home before she’d headed out on her rescue mission, it had crossed a new area.
And what was that she could see?
A lump in a burnt-out tree—exactly what she’d been looking for. The lumpy shape of a koala.
She checked the co-ordinates but really didn’t need them, for she could see the back fence of the wildlife sanctuary.
She zoomed in.
Could it have come from the sanctuary?
She shook her head.
She’d been there yesterday evening, and knew none of the recovering koalas had been released for over a week. Even those that had been released had gone into suitable forests far removed from the fire grounds.
No, this little fellow—and he or she was little—had somehow escaped the worst of the fires and was trying to find a new home.
In a burnt, and therefore leafless tree...
She grabbed a rope and her spiked climbing shoes and hurried towards the sanctuary, wondering who was on duty tonight, hoping it would be someone who could help her.
‘Oh, Beth!’ she groaned as she let herself in through the security gate in the outer yard. ‘Are you on your own here tonight?’
Petite and seven months pregnant, Beth smiled at her. ‘Just me, and I’m shutting up soon. The animals that need night feeds have gone home with Helen. There are only two of them, and she says they’re pretty good, so she can feed them both at once. The new vet came in to look around early this afternoon, though.’
The new vet with a dislocated shoulder...although his shoulder wouldn’t have been dislocated then...
Henry’s great-nephew, with a voice that sent a shiver down her spine.
But was he here to take over the practice, or sell it and move on?
Enough.
She needed to concentrate on the animal in danger. Night was falling fast, and to try a rescue in the dark would be foolhardy, to say the least.
But on the other hand...
She headed for the inner door—the one that led into the veterinary surgery.
His shoulder had been X-rayed and expertly strapped to his chest, and he’d been walking—albeit with a stick...
She knocked on the connecting door, loudly, because it was more likely he was in the house itself and wouldn’t hear a gentle tap.
The door opened immediately!
‘Yes?’ he said, sounding abrupt.
But when she saw the glass beaker in one hand and the pipette in the other, she realised she’d interrupted something he’d been doing.
Following her gaze, he said, ‘Sorry. I’ve just been testing some of the old supplies at the back of the cupboard. I’ll be right back.’
She’d have liked to tell him again that he shouldn’t be moving about on his ankle, but as she was about to ask his help in an operation more complicated than beakers and pipettes, she kept her lips firmly closed.
And shut her mind firmly to the man himself who—as a man, for heaven’s sake—was causing her more problems than her concern for his welfare.
Internal problems.
Physical problems.
Things she hadn’t felt in years.
The shivery spine and tingling fingers had only been the start...
Get with the program!
‘There’s a small koala, not far from here. My drone picked it up,’ she said, as she confronted her grumpy neighbour for the second time—no, third—today. ‘The problem is, he’s up a burnt tree, and will have realised there’s no food, so as soon as it’s fully dark he’ll climb down and head further into the burnt area and we might not find him again.’
She paused, hoping the look on her new neighbour’s face was incomprehension, not disbelief.
She tried again. ‘I can climb up and get him. I just need someone to hold the rope and the bag and take him from me so I can climb down.’
He frowned at her, a quick glance taking in her coiled rope and spiked boots, and the bag she’d grabbed as she’d walked through the sanctuary to his door.
‘I know you’re not one hundred percent, but I can’t ask Beth to help me, and it would take too long to get one of the other volunteers here, so do you think you could? Please?’
The silence seemed to echo through the room, and then he smiled in a way that made her wonder if this was a good idea. Plenty of men smiled at her—but none of those smiles sent warmth bubbling through her veins.
Really, this was getting out of hand!
How could she possibly be attracted to a total stranger?
She was tired—exhausted, in fact—after two treks up the gully today, so it was probably just her imagination anyway.
‘I suppose one good turn deserves another,’ he said, and smiled again. ‘I’ll get my walking stick and you can lead the way.’
She threw him her grateful thanks and moved back into the sanctuary, where small wombats poked their noses from old hollow tree trunks and sleepy koalas barely noticed her.
She breathed deeply, smelling the so-familiar scent of eucalyptus leaves, and told herself he probably smiled at everyone that way.
Breathing certainly calmed her nerves, so when he reappeared she was able to say, ‘It’s just out here—not far,’ and lead him out through the side gate of the sanctuary.
She pointed into the second row of the burnt-out plantation. ‘Don’t look at the tree. Look for the lump in it.’
‘Got it,’ he said. ‘But how do we go about this?’
He lifted the coiled rope off her shoulder, his fingers brushing the bare skin on her upper arm.
‘This one’s easy,’ she said, resolutely ignoring the accidental touch, for all it had shaken her. ‘See that branch just below the animal? We throw the rope over that, then I swing on it to make sure the branch will take my weight, rope myself up, and climb. You just have to play out the rope. You’re really here just in case I slip, so you can stop me crashing to the ground.’
She took the weighted end of the rope from him and swung it around before flinging it into the tree.
‘Okay, the branch looks strong enough. Just let out the rope so the end falls back to the ground, then we’ll detach the weight and attach me.’
He played out the rope, but his silence was a little unnerving.
‘Sometimes you have to climb up to attach the rope,’ she said—nervous chatter, she knew, but it was better than silence. ‘Or attach it in stages as you climb, so if you do fall, you don’t fall far.’
She tied the rope around her waist, grabbed the bag, and handed it to him.
‘Make sure you hold him by the scruff of his neck when I pass him to you, and the sooner you get him into the bag the better. They’re fighters, and their claws are sharp and can really rip into you.’
She headed for the tree.
‘And keep one foot on the rope!’ she reminded him as she began to clamber up the trunk.
Struck dumb by the rapid sequence of events, Cam could only shake his head. Keep one foot on the rope—he understood that part. She didn’t want him struggling to put a panicked animal into a bag and forget he was also the brake on her rope.
Stars were beginning to appear in the sky, and his neighbour was already halfway up the tree.
Did she do this often?
He wanted to ask, but also didn’t want to distract her—particularly now, as she was persuading the recalcitrant and possible wounded koala to let go of his perch.
Then she started back down, with the animal making grunting noises—protesting strongly at this treatment.
Cam wound in the rope, secured the coil beneath his feet, and lifted the bag so she could slip the captive into it.
‘There!’ she said. There was satisfaction in the word, but keeping the animal in the bag—one-handed—was easier said than done.
‘You can lift your foot and let me jump down now,’ said his neighbour—Lauren—and he realised she was still several feet above the ground.
He lifted his foot and held out his spare hand to steady her as she landed lightly beside him.
‘Thanks,’ she said, with a smile that made him wonder if this had all been a dream: the beautiful smiling woman, sooty again from the tree, the animal still complaining in the bag, the fading sunset behind the burnt-out forest where they stood and the glimmer of a silvery lake in front of them.
She was not at all the kind of woman who usually sent his body into a perfectly natural male response. Not that this could be compared with anything usual!
The timing couldn’t be worse—just settling into a new life, Maddie to think of, a practice to learn and run, a divorce to be settled—yet still she turned him on.
It had to be an enchantment of some kind.
He checked her out again—a quick, sidelong glance—wondering...
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘We have to check him out.’
