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A Special Kind of Family
Marion Lennox
The doctor’s patchwork family Having accepted a new job and rejected a marriage proposal, Dr Erin Carmody was already reeling. After crashing her car and staggering to the door of GP Dom Carmichael, she barely knew which way was up. And that’s how she reasoned the crazy, wonderful attraction she felt for this man on first sight.Then, as Erin began to heal, she began to believe the unbelievable. She was meant to be here, helping Dom care for the people of Bombadeen, being a mother to his two little foster sons, and above all as Dom’s wife.He’s shown her what true love is, and she’ll do the same for him, if he’ll only let her convince him that what they have is truly real.
‘Um…doesn’t your wife cook?’she asked, but the idea didn’t last.
She almost forgot the question before it was out of her mouth. The heat of the fire, the morphine and the events of the night were catching up with her. Her words were slurring.
He smiled back at her. ‘You want to concentrate on staying awake ’til your bed’s made?’
She tried. But as he lifted her over onto the fresh sheets, as he drew the blankets over her, she felt her lids drooping and no amount of effort could keep them from closing.
‘Thank you,’ she murmured. It seemed enormously important to say it. ‘Thank you for everything.’
‘My pleasure,’ he said, in an odd, thoughtful voice. ‘It’s all my pleasure, Dr Carmody. You go to sleep and don’t worry about a thing.’
He touched her face. There it was again—this…strangeness. It was a tiny gesture, and why it should seem so personal…so right…
There was no figuring it out. She was too tired to try.
‘G’nigh…’ she whispered.
Praise forMarion Lennox’s Medical™ Romance writing:
‘Marion Lennox’s RESCUE AT CRADLE LAKE is simply magical, eliciting laughter and tears in equal measure. A keeper.’
—Romantic Times BOOKreviews
Marion Lennox is a country girl, born on an Australian dairy farm. She moved on—mostly because the cows just weren’t interested in her stories! Married to a ‘very special doctor’, Marion writes Medical Romances™ as well as Mills & Boon® Romance. (She used a different name for each category for a while—if you’re looking for her past Mills & Boon® Romance, search for author Trisha David as well.) She’s now had over 75 romance novels accepted for publication.
In her non-writing life Marion cares for kids, cats, dogs, chooks and goldfish. She travels, and she fights her rampant garden (she’s losing) and her house dust (she’s lost). Having spun in circles for the first part of her life, she’s now stepped back from her ‘other’ career, which was teaching statistics at her local university. Finally she’s reprioritised her life, figured out what’s important, and discovered the joys of deep baths, romance and chocolate. Preferably all at the same time!
Look out for the first book in Marion Lennox’sbrand-new royal trilogyMarrying his Majesty.
CLAIMED: SECRET ROYAL SON is availablefrom Mills & Boon® Romance next month.
Recent titles by the same author:
A BRIDE AND CHILD WORTH WAITING FOR*
WANTED: ROYAL WIFE AND MOTHER†
*Mills & Boon® Medical™ Romance—Crocodile Creek †Mills & Boon® Romance
A SPECIAL KIND
OF FAMILY
BY
MARION LENNOX
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
To my Number One Marion, my Number One Reader,
my Number One Mum.
Love you for ever.
CHAPTER ONE
THE doorbell rang at one in the morning. Dominic Spencer, Doc to the locals, swore and thumped his basin of dough into the trash. The locals knew he couldn’t go out tonight. Was a patient coming to him?
Happy Easter, he thought, and tried not to glower as he stomped through the hall to the front door. It had better be serious.
It was.
The girl standing on his veranda was a bedraggled, muddy mess. Age? Somewhere between twenty and thirty. It was hard to be more precise. She was five feet six or so, slightly built, and wearing jeans and a windcheater, both coated with mud, and with blood. One leg of her jeans was ripped to the knee, and there was blood on her bare shin.
What else? She was wearing one filthy shoe, but only one. The other foot was partly covered by a sock, but the sock had long abandoned the idea of being footwear.
Her brown-black curls were drooping in sodden tendrils to her shoulders. Her eyes were huge. Scared. A long scratch ran from her left eyebrow almost to her chin, bleeding sluggishly.
She was carrying one of the ugliest dogs he’d ever seen. Maybe an English bulldog? Fat to the point of grotesque, it lay limply in her arms—a dead weight.
‘Oh, thank God,’ the girl managed before he had a chance to speak. She shoved the dog forward, lurching like she was drunk. He grabbed the dog, then watched in dismay as she sank onto the veranda, put her head between her knees and held her head down with both hands.
Triage, he thought, his arms full of dog. Woman first, dog second.
Get rid of the dog.
Rain was blasting in from the east, reaching almost to the door, so he turned and laid the dog on the mat inside the hall. The dog sagged like a rag doll, but the girl was his priority.
‘What’s wrong?’ He caught her wrist. Her pulse was racing. She was sweating, and as he knelt beside her she started to retch.
‘H-help me,’ she stuttered, and couldn’t manage more.
A child’s sand bucket was lying on the veranda. He hauled it forward but she didn’t need it. This hadn’t been the first time she’d vomited tonight, then.
Now wasn’t the time for questions. He did a more careful visual examination as he waited for the nasty little interlude to be over.
She was kneeling, which meant the damage to her leg must be superficial. The scratch on her face wasn’t deep either. She was moving her arms freely. There didn’t seem to be any major injury.
Maybe she was retching from exhaustion. If he’d had to carry that lump of a dog far, he might be retching, too.
This afternoon had been sultry before the change, and the kids had set up their paddling pool by the sandpit. A house-proud man might have tidied the place as soon as the colder weather hit, but housework was well down Dominic’s list of priorities. So towels still lay on the veranda, albeit damp ones. As she ceased retching, he used one to wipe the worst of the mud and blood from her face. She submitted without reaction and he thought again, This is exhaustion.
‘Let’s get you inside.’
She looked up then, as if seeing him for the first time. ‘Where…where…?’ She was almost incoherent.
‘I’m the local doctor,’ he said, smiling at her in what he hoped was his best bedside manner. ‘I assume you know that from the sign on the front gate. My name’s Dominic Spencer. Dom for short.’
‘Dominic,’ she managed.
‘Dom will do fine. And your name?
‘Erin Carmody.’
It wasn’t a comprehensive patient history but it’d do for now. ‘What hurts?’
‘Everything.’ It was practically a wail and he relaxed a little. In his experience, patients who were deathly ill didn’t wail.
‘Anything specific?’
‘N-no.’
‘What happened?’
‘I crashed my car.’
Where? The roads round here would be deserted at this time of night. Where had she walked from?
‘Is anyone else hurt?’ he asked, and she managed to shake her head.
‘So there’s no one else at the car.’
‘N-no. I was by myself.’
‘Is the car obstructing the road? Do I need to call the police?’
‘No.’
‘Okay. Let’s get you out of the rain where I can take a look at you.’
‘I shouldn’t be here,’ she managed. ‘It’s really late.’ She stared blindly up at him and he thought he saw fear. Her eyes were wide and brown and shocked.
It was one in the morning. Maybe reassurance was the way to go.
‘Take a look around,’ he said gently, motioning to the jumble behind him—buckets and spades, Nathan’s tricycle, Martin’s pogo stick, the bundle of wet towels left from the day’s play. ‘I’m a dad as well as a doctor. My kids are asleep upstairs. You’re safe here.’
‘The dog…’
‘Even the dog’s safe with me,’ he said ruefully. ‘Safe, reliable Dr Spencer.’
She even managed a smile at that. ‘Don’t say it like you’d rather be a playboy,’ she whispered.
‘Leave my fantasies alone,’ he growled, and smiled back. ‘Now, Erin, don’t get your knickers in a knot but I’m going to carry you indoors. One, two, three, go.’ And before she could protest he swung her up into his arms.
She was older than twenty. She was every bit a woman, he thought as his arms held her close. Pushing thirty? Maybe. Now the worst of the mess was gone from her face he could see smile lines around her eyes. Or worry lines? Nope, smile lines, he thought. She had clear, brown eyes, nicely spaced. Her mouth was generous and her nose was decidedly cute.
That was hardly patient appraisal. He gave himself a swift mental swipe and carried her inside before she could find the strength to protest.
She did protest as he stepped over the dog in the hall.
‘The dog…’ she managed. ‘Put me down.’
‘I’ll attend to your dog as soon as I’ve attended to you.’ In fact, he wouldn’t be surprised if the dog was on the way out. It hadn’t moved an inch since he’d set it down.
But that wasn’t his concern right now. Erin had been retching. He needed to check there wasn’t a ruptured spleen or something equally appalling going on inside. So he stepped over the limp dog with purpose and carried her into the living room.
He’d been reading in here while he waited for his dough to…not rise. The open fire was still sending out warmth, making the place seem intimate and welcoming. The settee was big and squishy, built for comfort rather than style.
She protested again as he laid her on the mound of cushions.
‘I can’t. Your wife… I’ll stain your settee,’ she whispered as he laid her down, but her protest was weak. She was almost past arguing.
‘I have kids,’ he growled. ‘We’ve given up worrying about Home Beautiful years ago. Let’s have a look at you.’
There was a better light in the living room and he could see her more clearly. Lots of superficial injuries, he thought, taking in scratches and bruising. There was blood but not so much in any one place that it merited concern.
‘Can we take the worst of those clothes off?’ he asked, half expecting her to protest again, but she simply looked at him for a long moment, maybe assessing for herself the truth of his statement about reliability, steadfastness—dad material rather than playboy stuff. What she saw must have been okay. She nodded mutely and submitted as he peeled off her windcheater and tugged her jeans away.
He wanted her dry. Her bra and panties were scant and lacy—they’d dry quickly on her, he thought, and he guessed she’d be much happier if he let them be. He pulled a mohair throw from the back of the settee, tucked it round her and felt her relax a little with the warmth.
He felt her pulse again and it was slowing, growing stronger and steadier.
‘How far did you carry the dog?’ he asked, checking an arm gently, watching her face for reaction. No problems there. Her hands were scratched but there were no breaks. He lifted the other arm before she found the strength to reply.
‘Miles,’ she said, and she even managed to sound indignant. ‘This is the middle of nowhere.’
‘What, Bombadeen?’ he asked, pseudo indignant to match. ‘Bombadeen’s the cultural capital of the known world.’
‘Right,’ she managed, and tried for a smile. Then, as he moved to check her legs she added, ‘My legs are fine. Do you think I could have carried him with a broken leg?’
‘Toes?’
‘Also fine.’
But they weren’t. He tugged the lone trainer off her right foot. That was okay. He gently peeled the remainder of the sock from her left foot. Less than okay. Gravel was deeply embedded. The foot was bleeding, rubbed raw.
Not life-threatening, though. Move on for now.
‘Tummy?’
‘That does hurt,’ she whispered, finally acknowledging pain. ‘Like I’ve-just-been-retching hurt. But, no, I wasn’t hit in the chest or abdomen. I’d imagine my kidneys and spleen are in one piece and I’m breathing okay.’
She had medical knowledge, then? He smiled but he didn’t take her word for it. He put his hands gently on her abdomen and felt, still watching her face.
