From Bachelor To Daddy. Meredith Webber

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ not a tall blonde and I went out with him for a while.’ This from a complacently pregnant red-haired woman Emma hadn’t seen before.

      ‘That’s Helen,’ Angie told her. ‘She’s on the swing shift too, but comes in early to eat our sandwiches because she’s always hungry.’

      ‘Not true,’ Helen said, although she was eating a sandwich. ‘It’s just that Pete can drop me off so I don’t have to drive, and as for Marty, everyone who goes out with him knows the score. He’s quite open about not wanting a permanent relationship and if you look around the town most of the women he’s been out with are still friends with him. In fact, it was Marty who introduced me to Pete.’

      Emma, although curious about this Marty—maybe he was a GP who did visits at the hospital—turned to Helen, asking when the baby was due.

      ‘Another three months and I’m already so uncomfortable I wonder why I thought it was a good idea.’

      She paused, then added, ‘You’ve got twins, is that right?’

      ‘Small town,’ Joss explained when Emma looked surprised, but she smiled and agreed she did indeed have twins.

      ‘Three years old, and wild little hooligans already. I’m just lucky I’ve got my father to help with them.’

      ‘He minds them while you’re at work?’ Helen sounded slightly incredulous as she asked the question, but Emma just nodded.

      ‘Even does night duty when I’m on night shifts,’ she said.

      She didn’t add that it had been her dad’s idea she have the children—well, a child it had been at that time, having two had been a surprise.

      Dad had taken very early retirement when she’d all but fallen to pieces—well, had fallen to pieces—after Simon had died, moving in with her and becoming, once again, a carer to her—a role he’d first taken on when she’d been four and her mother had walked out on the pair of them.

      A pang of guilt—one she knew only too well—shafted through her. Dad really should have a life of his own...

      Perhaps here...

      Soon...

      But the conversation was continuing around her and she tuned back into it to find the women discussing unmarried men around town who might suit her.

      She shouldn’t have been surprised. The remark earlier about her being a possible candidate for the unknown Marty’s new woman told her they already knew she was a single mother—single being the operative word.

      Small town, indeed.

      But before she could protest that she didn’t want to go out with anyone, the chat swerved off to the fire. Joss lived out of town on a cattle property and although they were always prepared, she thought this time they’d be safe. She was explaining how they kept the paddocks close to the house free of trees or tall grass when Sylvie came to the door.

      ‘Emma, you’re needed on the chopper. It’ll put down here to collect you. You have about ten minutes. You know where the landing pad is?’

      Emma nodded confidently in answer to Sylvie’s question but inside she felt a little nervous. Although, as an emergency department doctor in a small town, she knew she’d be on call for the search and rescue helicopter, and she’d been shown over it by one of the paramedics, she hadn’t had much time to take it all in.

      By which she really meant she’d refused to think about it. She’d done the training originally to help her overcome her fear of heights, and although she knew most rescue crews got an adrenaline rush at the thought of a mission, her rush was more one of trepidation than anticipation. Yes, she could do her job and do it well, but no amount of training or practice would ever stop the butterflies in her stomach as she waited to hang in mid-air, suspended from a winch.

      ‘—party of older children with special needs from the unit at the high school,’ Sylvie was explaining as they left the room together. ‘They were walking the coastal path, just this end of it. Apparently, the wind turned suddenly and the fire came towards them, so you can imagine the panic. We know one child with asthma is having breathing difficulties. No idea about the others but they’re stuck where they are and will have to be evacuated.’

      Beach rescue, no winch!

      Her tension eased immediately...

      Even inside the hospital Emma could hear the helicopter’s approach and hurried to collect the black bag that held all the drugs she could possibly need. But she checked it anyway, relieved to see a spacer for an asthma inhaler, a mask for more efficient delivery of the drug, and hydrocortisone in case the child was badly affected.

      Outside, she waited by the building until the bright red and yellow aircraft touched down lightly. Then, ducking her head against the downdraught from the rotors, she ran towards it.

      The side door slid open and an unidentifiable male in flight suit and helmet reached out a hand to haul her aboard. She’d barely had time to register a pair of very blue eyes before she was given a not-so-gentle nudge and told to take the seat up front.

      She clambered into the seat wondering where the air crew were, but there was no time to ask as the man was already back behind the controls, handing her a helmet with a curt ‘Put it on so we can talk’, before lifting the aircraft smoothly into the air.

      Emma strapped herself in, settled the bag at her feet and pulled on the helmet with its communication device.

      ‘I’m Marty,’ her pilot said, reaching out a hand for her to shake. ‘And I believe you’re Emma. Stephen told me to look out for you.’

      ‘Stephen?’ She had turned towards him and shaken his hand—good firm handshake—but wasn’t able to take in much of the man called Marty. Unfortunately, checking him out had diverted her from working out who Stephen might be.

      ‘Stephen Ransome—he was up a couple of months ago to introduce the family to Fran. He’s my foster brother. You know he got married?’

      Steve Ransome was this man’s foster brother? Why? How? Not questions she could ask a stranger so she grasped his last bit of information.

      ‘No, I didn’t know, but I’m so pleased. He’s a wonderful guy and deserves the best.’

      ‘He is indeed,’ Marty agreed, and Emma turned to look at him—or at what she could see of him in his flight suit and helmet.

      Tanned skin, blue eyes, straight nose, and lips that seemed to be on the verge of smiling all the time.

      So, this was Marty, subject of the hot gossip and, apparently, the local lover-boy!

      Foster brother of Steve, who ran an IVF clinic in Sydney and had been her specialist when she’d decided to use Simon’s frozen sperm to conceive the boys.

      Simon...

      Just for an instant she allowed herself to remember, felt the familiar stab of pain, and quickly shut the lid on that precious box of memories.

      She was moving on—hadn’t that been another reason for the shift to Braxton?

      Marty СКАЧАТЬ