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“Right, well… I have to go. Final planning meeting tonight, and it will no doubt be a fractious one. When we get to this time of year they usually are, because everyone is so frazzled and behind on everything. If you need anything give me a shout. I always have my phone on me.”
He paused halfway out through the door.
“Oh, and there’s an Armistice Day ceremony at the cenotaph on Monday, starting at ten. Come along, if you’d like.”
Then he was gone, clattering down the stairs, leaving her to wonder why, when she had been so determined to stay away from Christmas, she’d landed in the North Pole of Scotland. And why, having decided to ignore men, she found her boss so damned handsome.
Cam had been right about the meeting being contentious, but he couldn’t seem to keep his mind on the grumbles and arguments going on around him. Instead he found himself thinking about his new nurse. Her sometimes curt way of speaking, juxtaposed with her delightful throaty giggle as he listed the CIs eating habits, made her a fascinating enigma. And, yes, her delicious looks.
Even though he wasn’t interested in relationships he was still all-male—able and willing to appreciate a beautiful face and a lovely curvy figure. As long as he remembered he could look but not touch, it was all good.
“Melanie, the theme was decided back in February. It’s not our fault if you’ve not gotten on board with it.”
At the sound of Dora’s firm rebuttal Cam pulled his thoughts away from Harmony Kinkaid and back to the battle of wills going on in front of him.
“But it’s silly. We did Love as a theme before. Why do it again?”
Melanie was as stubborn as ever, and as one of Scotland’s best-known living potters always felt her word should be law. But Dora never fell in line with that concept.
“That was nigh on twenty years ago. And what better theme could we have for the Winter Festival than that? No matter the religion, or the holiday, love is at the center of them all, isn’t it?”
Cam intervened, before things got too heated.
“Melanie, you know full well it’s too late to change the theme, so either you’ve gone with it or not. The choice was yours.”
Then Hugh Jacobson had a complaint about the decision to extend the festival hours to ten at night. “The strain on the electricity grid will increase, along with the costs. I don’t subscribe to this.”
Cam doubted that was his real reason for complaining. Hugh was probably worried that the extra noise and lights would disturb his mother, but didn’t want to come right out and say so.
“Hugh, the new wind turbine provides more than enough power to cover the additional load, and the generators were serviced last month. The increased revenue for us all will more than offset any additional costs, so I’m sure we’ll be fine.”
“But the noise…the lights on until so late. It’s untenable.”
“I’ll buy you some blackout curtains when I go to the mainland next Wednesday,” Sela interjected, and although Hugh still looked unhappy the meeting moved on.
Afterwards Cam realized he wasn’t the only one thinking about Nurse Kinkaid—although, perhaps not in the same way.
“I thought your new nurse might have come to the meeting. She looks as though she’d be a good addition to the planning team” was Dora’s opening sally.
The last thing Cam wanted was to spend more time with Harmony Kinkaid than necessary. His unsettling reaction to her made keeping her at arm’s length a good thing. Besides, every time he’d mentioned Christmas she had withdrawn at the talk of the season.
But there was no way he was letting Dora and the rest of the nosy CIs know that. His nurse would get no peace until they’d ferreted out the reason for her aversion.
So, trying to protect her as best he could, he said, “First off, let her settle in a bit before you expect her to get into the middle of island life. And, secondly, she’s only going to be here for a short time. Why would you think she’d be interested?”
“Oh, I don’t know that she will be, but it’s always nice to have a fresh face and a new viewpoint in the proceedings. I’m hoping she’ll lend a hand once she finds her feet.”
Thankfully, before he had to think up another round of excuses as to why Harmony probably wouldn’t, Dora and the other ladies were departing with hugs and waves, according to their personal preference.
As he strode down Main Street Cam considered the unlikely friends, each so different and yet all completely devoted to the others. They were the soul and the backbone of the Winter Festival—a point Cam had to concede, despite being almost always annoyed with their attempts to interfere in his life too.
Their organizational skills alone were worth their collective weight in gold, but along with that they also contributed in so many other ways. Designing and sewing costumes, painting backdrops, deciding on the lighting for the public areas and the decoration of the green, making sure everyone who needed help got it… The list went on and on.
If they’d just accept the fact that Cam wasn’t the type to be controlled or tied down, and nor would he be guilt-tripped into things, they’d all get along much better. He’d had enough of that growing up—from his mother. The last thing he needed now was to have four more women fussing over him, trying to get him to do what they thought was best.
When he’d been diagnosed as a type 1 diabetic at the age of four, his mother’s reaction had been to coddle him, fearful of what might happen if he did any of the normal childhood activities. If it hadn’t been for his grandfather, taking him in hand at the age of eleven and teaching Cam how to control his disease, encouraging him to be more adventurous, Cam had no idea how he might have turned out.
Nearing the cemetery, Cam instinctively turned in, walking the familiar path to the spot under a gnarled and now bare oak where a number of his ancestors were interred.
“Evening, Grand-Da,” he said, reaching down to brush a couple of late-fallen leaves off his grandfather’s headstone. “Just left the planning meeting. All the usual nonsense for this time of year. I wonder if there’ll ever be a time where things run smoothly.”
The bench was cold, yet dry, and the evening breeze brisk, but Cam settled in for a little visit. Stuffing his hands into the pockets of his jacket, he looked up at the sickle moon.
“Got a new temporary nurse in today and I’m hoping she’ll work out okay.”
He was hoping more than anything else that Harmony Kinkaid wouldn’t turn the relatively stable island world upside down.
Wouldn’t turn his world upside down.
As long as she did her job, he shouldn’t care about anything else. He just needed to get through the winter rush with someone he could count on to keep the surgery going and his patients taken care of, along with aiding with any injuries. After that he’d have the time and head space to find a permanent employee.
All he could hope for was a certain level of professionalism and competence from Harmony Kinkaid. If she could produce that, all would be well.
CHAPTER FOUR (#uf4d7c5b1-46b0-5077-8f2c-f373c9e6992e)
DAY THREE OF her island experience and Harmony looked at the clock again, giving a huff. Thank goodness this was a temporary position, because otherwise this place would drive her to drink. She’d been waiting for Dr. MacRurie’s next patient to arrive for almost ten minutes and there was no sign of him. No call either.
She’d spent Sunday exploring the surgery, making lists of things she needed to get done. The lower floor held the waiting room, an X-ray room, the records room, two examination rooms and Dr. MacRurie’s office, along with a reception/office area for Harmony and, in the back, a kitchenette.
Climbing the steps to the second floor, she’d found a larger office, now clearly used for old records and abandoned furniture, and five bedrooms, which seemed set up to house patients. This had been confirmed when she’d located a relatively modern elevator at the back of the building—big enough to accommodate a stretcher. Having not noticed any corresponding doors downstairs, she’d ridden it down and realized it came out into what she’d assumed to be a maintenance closet behind the kitchenette.
When she’d asked the doctor about the second floor the next morning he’d explained that occasionally they’d have a patient who needed overnight observation. Or, if the weather was forecast to be terrible and he was worried about outlying elderly folks, he’d bring them in and house them there.
While Caitlin had written her up a list of duties, with notations on where to find things, in just that first go-through Harmony had been able to see areas in need of improvement. Caitlin was a fine nurse, as Harmony knew, but her administrative skills left something to be desired. At least in Harmony’s opinion.
She’d spent the first part of Monday morning trying to put the records into some semblance of order. The files weren’t stored to her preferred specifications, and she had broken a sweat moving armfuls of records back and forth. Then, and only then, had she started on a pile of notes that hadn’t been dealt with—probably from the time between when her friend had left and the present.
Luckily she was an expert in interpreting “doctor write,” because Cameron MacRurie’s penmanship was something to behold. She’d often thought that doctors wrote so poorly because their brains were going faster than their hands could follow. If that were the case, her new employer must be a genius!
They’d opened early, because of the Armistice Day ceremony, and she was down in her office before seven. But her frustration levels had risen as their eight o’clock patient had been a no-show, and the eight thirty had sauntered in almost fifteen minutes late. To add insult to injury, the woman had insisted there was no need for Harmony to do any kind of pre-examination tests.
Not that Harmony hadn’t tried to get her job done.
“Dr. MacRurie will expect me to have weighed you, taken your blood pressure and temperature, plus asked you about the reason you’re here so I can make notes.”
“Och, no,” Mrs. Campbell had rebutted, in the strongest Scottish accent Harmony had heard since arriving on Eilean Rurie. And from her steely glare Harmony had been able to tell she meant business too. “The Laird’ll do all that himself. I’ll show myself in.”
And before Harmony had been able to react the elderly lady had marched right past her and into Dr. MacRurie’s office without even a knock on the door.
Rushing after her, file in hand, Harmony had expected a reprimand from the doctor, but all he’d said was “Ah, here’s your file, Amelia. Thank you, Harmony.”
Taking it as a dismissal, and thankful not to have got a flea in her ear from him, she’d scuttled back to her desk. Yet, it had still burned when Mrs. Campbell had marched past her at five past nine without even a fare-thee-well.
She wasn’t used to patients totally dismissing her that way, and now, with their nine o’clock also a no-show, she was decidedly out of sorts.
She decided it would be best to ask how she was supposed to handle this type of situation, so she walked down to the doctor’s office and knocked.
“Come in,” he called, and Harmony pushed open the door, just in time to see him pulling up his shirt. “Is Mr. Gibson here?”
“Um…no,” she replied, surprised to realize he was injecting himself with an insulin pen. Taken off guard, she forgot why she was there and asked, “You’re a diabetic?”
“Yes. Have been since I was four.”
He said it casually, but Harmony was still taken aback. Caitlin hadn’t mentioned this, and all around the room there were pictures of him doing all kinds of dangerous stuff: mountain-climbing, caving, hang gliding, hiking through remote-looking terrain… Not that having diabetes should preclude him from doing any of those things, just as her father’s heart condition hadn’t stopped him from indulging his own daredevil spirit.
But look how that had ended.
Already in a bit of a snit because of the patients, now she found her mental comparison of Cam to her father was making her cross her arms, trying to hold in the spate of words hovering on her tongue.
Instead of letting them loose, she took a deep breath, then asked, “Did you plan to tell me?”
Cam glanced up, his eyebrows lifted. “Why would I tell you something so mundane when you’d no doubt find out about it sooner or later?”
Although his tone was even, there was an unusually cool expression in his eyes.
“Well, I’m your nurse. The only other medical practitioner on the island that I know of. What would happen if you went hypo or hyperglycemic and I wasn’t aware of your condition?”
“I’m very well versed in the monitoring and treatment of my diabetes, and I haven’t had an incident in ages. Don’t fuss, Nurse Kinkaid.”
She wanted to ask what he meant when he said, “ages,” but there was no mistaking the steel in his voice. Not to mention his reversion from calling her Harmony to Nurse Kinkaid, so she kept her mouth shut, for a change.
“Was there something you wanted?”
He was putting away his diabetes kit, and although the chill might have gone from his voice, Harmony still felt the flick of his disapproval keenly.
She adopted a formal tone in return. “What is your official policy on missed appointments?”
“Reschedule the patient.”
Really annoyed now, Harmony said, “No, I mean how do I charge them for not showing up nor even calling to say they wouldn’t be coming? Do I do it through the mail?”
Cam’s eyebrows rose again, and he stared at her for a moment, before chuckling. “Ha! Only do that if you want to have a stream of highly upset people coming in to see you. Don’t worry about it.”
“But it’s a waste of my time, and yours. Don’t you charge them at all?”
Cam got up and stretched. “Most of the time everyone keeps their appointments, but this time of year things get a little crazy.”
Distracted by the sight of his muscles rippling beneath his shirt, Harmony tried to look away, but she had a hard time forcing herself to meet his gaze.
“Since Mr. Gibson hasn’t shown up I’m going to run back up to the Manor before the ceremony. After it’s over I have a quick house call to make, and then I thought I’d take you around the island and show you where the patients you’ll need to visit live. Interested?”
“Sure, that’ll be really helpful.” She’d been worried about losing her way on her rounds, so that was a relief.
“Actually, you can come with me to see Mrs. Jacobson too. She’s just a few steps away from the surgery, and I’ll be asking you to start looking in on her, as well. She’s in the final stages of liver failure—cirrhosis caused by hemochromatosis, poor soul. She moved here to be close to her son, Hugh, once she’d decided not to undergo any further treatment. I’ve had her on a bi-weekly visit, but I think it’s time to increase the frequency.”
“Do you need me to pull her file?”
“No, I have it here,” he replied, tapping the folder on his desk.
He spoke a little more about Mrs. Jacobson’s prior treatment, and what he’d prescribed to battle the ascites and hepatic encephalopathy. It was, in effect, palliative care, and Harmony wasn’t surprised he wanted to up the number of times she was seen.
“I told Hugh I’d be by at one, so maybe grab something to eat after the ceremony, and if you could be ready at a quarter to, that would be great. Oh, and do you have a pair of wellies?”
She’d been wondering why they needed fifteen minutes to go a few doors down when he asked the question and it distracted her. “I haven’t worn Wellington boots since my days in the Guides. Do I need them?”
“Some of the farmyards will be a quagmire after the rain we’ve had, so they’d be a good idea for when you go to do your rounds.”
Unimpressed with the thought of messing up her trainers, which were pretty new and had been a splurge buy, she asked, “Is there somewhere I can buy some?”
Cam shook his head. “You’d have to go to the mainland—or order online and have them delivered, which would take longer. We have a bunch of them up at the Manor. What size do you wear?”
“Seven and a half.”
“Okay.” He sent her one of his heart-stopping smiles. “I’ll hunt out a pair for you.”
Cam was already heading for the door and Harmony watched him go, still stinging from his earlier set-down, and annoyed at the way her heart leapt and fluttered whenever he grinned that way.
The thought of spending time with him as he showed her around the island flustered her. Hopefully it was just because he was her boss and she wasn’t used to him yet, she mused, knowing it was more. She was attracted to him—which was another wrinkle in what was already a situation so far outside her comfort zone as to be in a different universe.
It would be a lot easier not to have a physical reaction to him if he were a little less handsome and didn’t have a gazillion-kilowatt smile. Not even the knowledge that he was a risk-taking daredevil could stop those butterflies from invading her insides whenever he entered the room or smiled her way.
But it should, she reminded herself. The very last thing she needed was to be attracted to a man like her father. The type of man who put his need for adventure before everything else—even his health, or the people who loved him.
Cam made his escape, wondering how he was going to get through the next month and half.
Harmony Kinkaid, his fussy, big-city nurse administrator, was already making him crazy.
She’d rearranged all his files, so he couldn’t find anything. She wanted to come down hard on patients who didn’t turn up for their appointments. She’d silently showed her displeasure when he’d mentioned he’d be leaving on a hiking and rock-climbing trip to Peru just after Hogmanay, even when he’d said there’d be a locum to fill in for him.
But it had been her expression when she’d realized he had type 1 diabetes that had really aggravated him. She, of all people, should know it was no reason for him not to live fully.
Thank goodness for Grand-Da, who’d shown Cam that the disease wasn’t an impediment to having a good, exciting life.
“It’s something to be managed,” Grand-Da had told him in his habitual no-nonsense way, that first summer he’d come to stay. “Once you learn how to do that anything is doable. You just have to accept you have it and be smart about it.”
Learning how to control the effects of his diabetes had given him a freedom beyond his wildest imagining. Gone had been the days when he’d only watched other boys enjoying themselves, never being allowed to join in. And at the age of thirteen Cam had embraced his new-found independence with gusto. Pitting himself against nature, or against his own limitations or fears, had brought him fully alive.
He’d seen Harmony glance at the pictures on his wall, had almost been able to hear her internal dialog regarding the pastimes he chose. As she was a nurse he was surprised at her reaction. Hell, there were type 1 diabetics playing rough professional sports. It all came down to how you took care of yourself and managed the disease.
