With A Little Help. Valerie Parv

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      But her tone said she reserved the right to toss him in with all the other medical people she knew. What had they done to her to prejudice her so thoroughly against an entire profession? Most people thought of doctors as valuable members of a community. Emma treated them as arrogant bastards who were out to make her life unpleasant. Maybe while she worked for him, he could ferret out the reasons for her hostility. He realized he wanted to do that very much. Did he think that once he overcame the hurdle, whatever it was, he’d have a chance to get to first base with her? That seemed selfish. Yet the more he tried to convince himself he wanted to help for Emma’s sake only, the hollower it sounded.

      His own psychoanalysis could wait, he decided. There was still that blasted party he didn’t want, but which his friends clearly expected him to make happen. He found he also didn’t want to do it without Emma. Afterward, he could worry about where they went next.

      EMMA’S THOUGHTS WERE IN turmoil as they set off again down the wide path past Timbrell Park, where a family group was enjoying a ball game. Seeing a father chase after his toddler, she felt an unexpected pang. What would it be like to have a man give you children, then cherish you both the way this man obviously did?

      The child giggled as he was scooped up and carried shoulder-high back to his mother. The sight made Emma smile. What a contrast to her own father, rigid with anger, returning his four-year-old Emma to her mother in Gramma Jessie’s kitchen.

      Emma’s smile faded. No loving warmth for her, only disapproval over the worry she’d caused. Emma’s cuts and scrapes had been treated with clinical care, but her emotional distress had been completely ignored. As an adult, she still suffered occasional nightmares about being lost in a dark, forbidding place as a result of that experience, but apart from Jessie’s interest, her family had never mentioned the incident again.

      She dismissed the memory and focused on Nate’s assertion that she was the one putting ideas into his head. One impetuous kiss at a party didn’t amount to an open invitation. Had she sent subtle signals of her interest to him in other ways she hadn’t been aware of, or was he simply confirming her belief that doctors made their own rules?

      The solution was to be as clinical as her parents in her dealings with Nate. From now on there would be no casual meetings in gardens, on walking trails or anywhere outside their respective offices. He would soon get the message that their dealings were to be strictly business.

      Nate looked equally deep in thought as they paced out the remaining distance back to the Iron Cove Bridge. She’d read that the bridge had replaced an earlier one from the eighteen-eighties that had once carried trams, and tried to imagine the now busy suburbs when horses and carts had ruled the roads.