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She was being hysterical. Insulting.
But she had no breath to say it. She could only lean on his car and gasp. And then he was out of the car, taking her hands, tugging her toward him. He looked shocked to the core, as well he might be. Crazy woman runs straight into path of car.
She had to explain. ‘I—I can’t leave Gran,’ she stammered. ‘You have to take me home. You must. You can’t leave me here.’
She could hardly breathe through fright. He swore and held her, and then as she couldn’t stop trembling he held her tighter.
‘Hey, Maggie, I’m not leaving,’ he said, sounding appalled. ‘I swear. I’m not that big a rat. I was just turning the car away from the bend so it’s safe for you to get in.’ And then as she tried desperately to think how to respond and could only think that her leg hurt and she was close to tears and she could have killed her baby, by running into a car of all things, how could she have been so stupid, he swore again, tugged her even tighter into his arms and held her close.
‘It’s okay,’ he whispered into her hair. ‘I won’t leave you. You’re safe. I’ll take you back to Gran, whoever Gran is. I’ll do whatever we have to do. We’ll do it together.’
His chin was resting on her hair.
He’d assumed she’d realise he was just moving the car; that he had no intention of leaving her. But why would she assume anything? He was a stranger.
Up until now it had been all about him, he thought, savage with himself. Sure, he’d reacted to her injuries, but he’d reacted as if she was a patient in Emergency where he was one of a team; the surgeon doing his job without looking at the whole picture.
But here he had to see the whole picture.
She had no obvious life-threatening wounds, but she was hurt, she was shocked and she was pregnant. Her truck was a write-off, and without a working cellphone she was stranded.
He’d climbed into his fancy car and turned away, probably making it clear by his body language he wanted to be shot of her. Her reaction—that he was about to leave—was so understandable he felt ill.
So he held her close and waited until her racing heartbeat eased, until he felt the rigid terror go out of her. Finally he felt her body soften, mould into his, take comfort from his hold.
It wasn’t exactly professional, to hold her like this, but who was worrying? He’d been shocked, too. If it felt good to hold onto this woman, then so be it. He could take comfort as well as give it.
And it felt good.
Different.
He’d hardly touched a woman for six years. He hadn’t wanted to. Now slipping into the edges of shock and concern and the need for professional care came something else.
Desire?
Surely not. There was no way he could desire this woman, for she was everything he most wanted to avoid. To feel like this within moments of meeting her was crazy. But there was no escaping the way touching her made him feel. There was no avoiding the way his body was responding.
Her body was soft, yielding against him. Her hair was naturally curly, and her curls were escaping their braids. Her hair was really cute.
Really soft.
Nice.
And then…pow!
The thump between them was such a surprise it drove them apart. They stood at arm’s length, staring at each other in astonishment. Then staring down.
‘I’m s-so…’ she stammered. ‘I’m so s-sorry.’
‘I don’t think it’s you who needs to apologise for that one,’ he growled. The sensation of her baby had slammed the need for sense into his head and he took a step back. Literally as well as emotionally. What the hell had he been thinking?
Caring for a pregnant woman…No and no and no.
Her wide green eyes stared up at him, and then down at her still heaving bump.
‘He’s got a good kick,’ she ventured, cautiously.
‘He surely has.’ New emotions were surging in now, and his head was scrambling to reassemble his emotional armour. How long since he’d felt a baby’s kick? It made him feel…
No. Don’t even think about going there.
‘Maybe it’s to reassure us he’s okay,’ he managed, feeling lame, dredging up a smile.
‘Maybe,’ she said and wobbled a smile in return. And then: ‘That was unforgivable,’ she said. ‘Thinking you were leaving.’
‘I hadn’t told you otherwise. I’m sorry. But consider me kicked. By…’
‘Archibald.’
‘Really?’ He found himself smiling properly this time, caught by her fierce determination to apologise, and her equal determination to insert humour into the situation. This was one brave woman. The sensations he was feeling toward her were inappropriate but clinical approval was fine. ‘You’ve decided on his name already?’
‘He knocked my mug of tea over last week,’ she said darkly. ‘I had to run cold water over my tummy for ten minutes until I stopped stinging. Until then, she was going to be Chloe or he was going to be William, but that’s in the past. Archibald it is.’
‘Named for the baby’s father, then?’ he said, still striving to sound professional. He smiled again, but it was her turn for her smile to fade.
‘His father would be William, but Archibald takes precedence.’
He was still holding her, by both hands, but now she made to pull away, as if naming the baby’s father had brought her to her senses. Both of them had to come to their senses. ‘Look, I am sorry,’ she whispered.
‘And I’m sorry, too,’ he said. ‘So let’s stop apologising and get things moving. I need to take you to hospital.’
‘I’m not going to hospital, but I do need to get back to Gran’s. It’s not far. If I hadn’t hurt my leg, I could walk.’
Yes! Suddenly things seemed simple. This wasn’t his problem. He could take her to her family and explain the need for hospital assessment. She’d said Gran was ill, but where there was a gran surely there’d be other relatives. He could hand her over with instructions to take her to the nearest hospital, and his nightmare of a weekend would be over.
‘The calves won’t go anywhere,’ she said, thinking out loud. ‘With Bonnie’s help Angus can drive them home by foot from here.’
Hooray for Angus, he thought. And William and Gran. A whole family. Better and better.
But she was wilting, and he was wasting time.
‘Okay,’ he said, and ignoring protests he lifted her across to his car, blessing the fact that the Aston Martin had a rear seat. Once again, though, he was surprised at how little she weighed.
Were things okay? Was this a normal pregnancy?
This was Not His Problem, he reminded himself sharply. He needed to cope with the emergency stuff only. She’d have her own obstetrician. Her family could take her there.
Stay professional and stay clinically detached.
But as he lifted her into the car he smelled a faint citrusy perfume, and he was caught once again in a totally unprofessional moment.
Her luminous green eyes were framed by long, dark lashes, surely unusual in a redhead. Her freckles were amazingly cute. Her flame-coloured curls were still doing their best to break out of their braids, and he had an almost irrational desire to help them escape.
Whoa. What was it with him? He was being dumb and irrational and stupid.
This was his patient. Therefore he could stop thinking dumb thoughts about how she smelled and how she felt against him and how her hair would look unbraided.
So turn professional.
‘Let’s do formal introductions,’ he said, trying to sound like he was about to key it into her patient history. ‘Can you tell me your full name?’
‘Maggie Maria Croft. You?’
‘Maxwell Harvey Ashton.’
‘Dr Ashton?’
‘Max is fine, we’ll forget the Harvey and I’m hoping we don’t need the Doctor. But if necessary…’ He hesitated but it had to be said. ‘If your family can’t take you, I’ll drive you to the hospital at Gosland—or even to Sydney if you prefer.’
‘Thank you,’ she said, courteously but firmly. ‘But it won’t be necessary. If you can just take me back to the farm I can sort this mess out by myself.’
CHAPTER TWO
SO FIVE minutes later he turned into the farm gate—and found himself staring at a graveyard. A tractor graveyard.
The driveway from the road to the house was a long avenue of gumtrees, and underneath their canopies old tractors were lined up like sentinels. There were tractors from every era, looking like they dated from the Dark Ages.
‘Wow,’ he breathed, and involuntarily slowed to take a better look. Some of the tractors looked like they could be driven right now if he had the right crank and didn’t mind using it. Some were a wheel or two short of perfect. Some were simply skeletons, a piece of superstructure, like a body without limbs.
‘William likes tractors?’ he ventured.
‘Gran and Angus like tractors. Gran bought her first one when she was fifteen. I believe she swapped her party dress for it. The tractor didn’t work then. It doesn’t work now, but she still thinks it was a bargain.
‘She sounds a character.’
‘You could say that,’ she said morosely. ‘Or pig stubborn, depending on how you look at it.’
He glanced into the rear-view mirror, and saw a wash of bleakness cross her face—desolation that could have nothing to do with the accident. And her expression caught something deep within him. For a fraction of a second he had an almost irresistible urge to stop the car so he could touch her; comfort her. It took strength to keep his hands on the steering-wheel, to keep on driving.
He did not do personal involvement, he told himself fiercely, confused by his totally inappropriate reaction. This woman was married and pregnant and he hadn’t felt this way about a woman since Alice died. Had he hit his head in the crash? Was he out of his mind?
They’d reached the end of the driveway now, and he pulled up beside an old estate wagon with its bonnet up. The car with the damaged radiator hose. He focussed on that. Something practical and something that didn’t make his heart twist.
‘So that’s your wagon. Is there something else you can use to drive to hospital?’
‘What’s wrong with tractors?’ she demanded, and he caught a glimmer of a rueful smile in the rear-view mirror. Once again, he had that kick of emotional reaction. This lady had courage and humour. And something more.
‘I’ll be fine,’ she told him, seemingly unaware of the effect her smile had on him. ‘Thanks for driving me home. I’ll give you my licence details, and our insurance companies can take it from here.’
So that was that. He was dismissed. He could retreat back to Sydney. Which was what, until an hour ago, he’d been desperate to do.
It seemed to Max that Yandilagong was about as far from civilisation as it was possible to get without launching himself off the New South Wales coast and swimming for New Zealand. Not for the first time, he wondered what he’d been thinking to let his friends—a cohort of career-oriented medicos—talk him into coming.
‘It’ll be fun,’ they’d told him. ‘Music festivals are all the rage and this one has a great line-up.’
Since he’d moved to Australia he’d been asked to many hospital social events, but each time he’d refused. Since Alice’s death he’d immersed himself in his work to the exclusion of almost everything else. Now his surgical list was growing to the point where the pressure had become ridiculous. More and more patients were queuing, and his teaching commitments were increasing exponentially.
Last week, working out in the hospital gym in the small hours, trying to get himself so physically tired that sleep would come, he’d realised he was reaching breaking point.
So he’d accepted, but what neither he nor his colleagues had realised was that the festival was a family event. There were mums, dads and kids, young women holding babies, grandmas bossing grandkids, dads teaching kids to dance. His friends, men and women who were truly married to their career paths, were appalled.
‘We’re so lucky not to be stuck with that,’ they’d declared more than once. ‘Hicksville. Familyville. Who’d want it?’
He didn’t, of course he didn’t, so why had it hurt to hear them say it?
Then this afternoon they’d announced they were bored with music and children, so they’d organised a tour of a local winery. He’d spent a couple of hours listening to his friends gravely pontificate about ash and oak and hints of elderberry, and how wonderful it was to be away from the sound of children, and how the advertisers should be sued for not letting ticket buyers know how many children’s events there’d be.
And then his anaesthetist had rung from Sydney. A woman was being flown in from outback New South Wales with complications from a hysterectomy. When was he coming back?
His registrar could cope. He knew he could, but the choice was suddenly obvious. He’d left feeling nothing but relief. For six years he’d been alone and that was the way he liked it.
He wanted to be alone now. But instead he was parked in a tractor graveyard while a seven-months-pregnant woman was struggling to get out of his car.
Wishes aside, he couldn’t leave her. Not before he’d handed her over to someone responsible.
‘Who’s here?’
‘Gran.’
‘But she’s ill.’
‘Yes.’
‘So where’s William?’ he asked, knowing it was a loaded question but hoping there’d be a solid answer.
‘William was my husband,’ she said flatly. ‘He’s dead.’
‘Dead.’ He felt like he’d been punched. Dead. Hence the bleakness. Hell.
‘Not recently. You don’t need to say you’re sorry.’
Recent enough, he thought, looking at her very pregnant tummy. Alice had been dead for six years yet still…
Well, there was a crazy thing to think. Make this all about you, he told himself. Or not.
‘So who’s Angus?’
‘William’s uncle.’
