The Australian's Proposal (Mills & Boon By Request): The Doctor's Marriage Wish / The Playboy Doctor's Proposal / The Nurse He's Been Waiting For (16 page)

He glanced around, then tried to make a joke of something that was obviously killing him.

‘We’re back at wrong time and wrong place, aren’t we—me declaring my love in the hospital dining room?’

And it was this feeble attempt at a joke that hurt Kate most. It pierced her heart and left it oozing pain.

She searched for words to make things better, but couldn’t find any. She could only shake her head, slowly and sadly, not knowing now if the utter sadness inside her was for herself or Hamish.

Perhaps for both of them.

She sighed and went for practicality.

‘I can’t eat. I’m going back to sit with Lily,’ she said, pushing back her chair and standing up. ‘Isn’t Mike organising a fire at the beach? Shouldn’t you be helping or at least on your way there?’

Hamish offered a smile so pathetic she wished he’d growled or yelled at her.

‘That’s tomorrow night,’ he said, then the slightest of gleams returned to his dark eyes. ‘You’re off duty and, as it happens, so am I. It won’t be a date, of course, but we’ll be sure to see each other there.’

Kate felt the shiver grey eyes hadn’t caused. The beach, a fire, night sky, wave music lapping at the shore …

She’d run away from all that last time—but hadn’t run far enough.

Hamish was persistent. She’d pushed him away but the gleam and his words suggested he hadn’t quite given up.

This time would Hamish leave her at the door?

Maybe she should have gone out on the river with Harry after all.

In the end, they both missed the fire.

It had started innocently enough, with Lily asking Kate where they were keeping Oscar’s food.

Hamish, Kate and Lily, still in hospital pyjamas, were sitting on the cow paddock fence watching Oscar who, to Kate’s eyes, seemed perfectly content eating grass.

Hamish had arrived not long after dawn and, once assured Lily’s obs were perfect and that both she and Kate had slept most of the night, had whisked Kate off to breakfast in the dining room. They’d returned to the children’s room to find Lily up and about, demanding to be taken to visit her friend.

So here they were.

‘Food?’ Kate repeated vaguely, her mind involved with whether she felt the effects of Hamish’s presence more keenly in the morning or the afternoon. ‘Isn’t grass food?’

‘No, silly, he needs his pellets.’

Kate had heard of pellets, but she rather thought it had been in connection with guns of some kind. Air rifles? Shotguns?

‘Pellets?’ Hamish repeated, saving Kate the embarrassment of mentioning firearms.

‘Pellet food. It’s at home,’ Lily continued. ‘We’ll have to go and get some.’

The three of them had already had a number of conversations about Lily’s missing parents but Kate wondered if the little girl really understood they were dead. Was this interest
in Oscar’s food an excuse to go to her place? Was she thinking her parents might be there?

And if so, would going there and not finding them make it harder or easier for her to accept their loss?

She glanced at Hamish over the child’s head and read the same worries in his face and in the small shrug he gave.

‘We’d better talk to Charles,’ Kate said, surprising herself at how easily she’d fallen into the way of all the hospital staff who saw Charles as the solver of all puzzles large and small. Although if Charles was a relative …

‘OK,’ Lily said happily, climbing down from the fence and heading towards the hospital.

‘How do you know where his office is?’ Hamish asked, as Lily led them unerringly towards it.

‘I talked to Charles and Jill this morning when you two were at breakfast,’ Lily told her. ‘He asked about my dad’s family, if I had aunts and uncles, and I told him I didn’t have any, but he’s a kind of cousin and he says I can stay with him until something is sorted out.’

Lily paused in her forward progress and turned to Hamish.

‘Charles knows a lot about bulls,’ she confided. ‘As well as a lot of other stuff. And Charles says there are plenty of people around the hospital who can take care of me when he’s working. Do you know Mrs Grubb?’

Hamish smiled at the little girl.

‘I do know Mrs Grubb,’ he assured her, while Kate guessed the woman in question had already found her way to Lily’s heart through chocolate-chip cookies.

But Charles?

Kate smiled to herself.

What could be more perfect—if Charles was lonely—than to have a lively little girl like Lily come into his life?

‘Happy families?’ Hamish murmured, reading Kate’s thoughts again as Lily hurried ahead of them. ‘Would it work?’

‘It might,’ Kate responded cautiously, hoping it would but knowing how ephemeral happiness could be.

Reaching the office, Lily wandered in as if she already belonged in the hospital family and greeted Charles like an equal. She then explained the food problem, far more succinctly than Kate could have.

‘Ah!’ Charles said, nodding and smiling at his new young friend. ‘Did you explain to Kate and Hamish what the pellets are?’

‘I told them they were Oscar’s food,’ Lily replied, and it was Charles who provided more information.

‘Rodeo stock need special care. The owners work out exactly what they need and write out … a recipe, I suppose you’d call it, with the balance of protein, vitamins and minerals each particular animal requires, then stock-feed companies make it up into pellets. Oscar would be fed these in the morning and some hay when he’s brought into his own pen in the afternoon. It’s one of the reasons rodeo stock is easier to handle, because the animals
are
fed twice daily and are used to their handlers being around.’

Kate looked at him and shook her head, while Hamish appeared equally bemused.

‘If Lily had a pet shark, would you know what to feed him as well?’ Kate asked, remembering Daniel talking about some trendy friend who kept a shark in his living room.

Charles smiled at her.

‘Fish, I would think,’ he said, then turned his attention to Hamish.

‘I’d go myself but there’s a Health Department bigwig flying in this morning. Would you mind driving Lily out there? You can take the station wagon and pick up a couple of bags of the pellets. Eventually we’ll get it all shifted to Wygera.’

‘Can Kate come?’ Lily asked, grasping Kate’s hand.

Charles’s eyes met Kate’s above the blonde head, and Kate
knew he was thinking what she’d thought earlier—that maybe Lily needed to see for herself that there was no one there.

And maybe when she saw that, she’d need someone to hold her while she cried …

‘Is it far?’ Kate asked, all innocence.

‘Oh, no,’ Charles said. ‘Two hundred—not much more.’

‘Miles?’ Kate said weakly.

And Hamish laughed.

‘City girl!’ he teased. ‘Up here, it’s what’s known as a nice Sunday drive. Isn’t that right, Charles?’

It
was
a nice Sunday drive, but the togetherness of it disturbed Kate. Too many emotions mixed and intermingled—the pleasure of being in a car with Hamish, the genuine joy she felt in Lily’s presence, the heart-breaking strength of Hamish as he carried a very subdued little girl through her deserted home then knelt with her, helping her choose toys and clothes for Kate to pack. Singing silly songs as they drove home, until Lily fell asleep in the back seat.

It was family yet not family.

It was something glimpsed then snatched away.

It was very, very confusing for a bruised and aching heart.

T
HREE WEEKS AGO
, Hamish had been looking forward to this dinner with Charles. It was to be Charles’s private farewell to him, on the Tuesday night before Hamish’s departure on the Friday.

But now …

‘For a man returning home to the job of his dreams, you don’t seem particularly happy,’ Charles remarked, and Hamish, who was sure he’d been hiding his misery, shrugged his shoulders at the man who had become a friend.

‘Kate?’

This time Hamish nodded, not wanting to talk about the woman with whom he’d so foolishly fallen in love.

‘Well, it can’t be that she doesn’t love you,’ Charles said, startling Hamish into speech.

‘I beg your pardon?’

Charles smiled at him.

‘I said it can’t be that she doesn’t love you. One only has to stand near her when you’re around to feel the warmth of love radiating out of her body. Does she not want to go to Scotland? Has she reasons for wanting to stay in Australia? Perhaps she’s afraid of starting a new life so far away from her family.’

‘She doesn’t have a family!’ Hamish muttered crossly. ‘That’s the whole bloomin’ trouble. Or I think it is. I think
you’re right about her at least liking me enough to give it a go, but she’s been through so much …’

She’d kill him if he talked about her troubles—with a scalpel, he thought, or was that fate reserved for anyone who pitied her?

‘Tell me.’

Two words, quietly spoken, but enough for Hamish to stop pretending to eat the delicious stuffed vine leaves he’d ordered for dinner and forget death by scalpel. He poured out the whole story into Charles’s receptive ears.

‘So she came up here to find her father?’

Charles had somehow found the main issue in the muddled tale Hamish had told.

‘Has she found him?’

Hamish looked at his friend, Kate and her problems for once relegated to a position of lesser importance in his mind. Charles was sounding stressed and anxious. He’d been through some tough emotional crises recently—could they have affected his health?

‘Has she?’

The abrupt demand brought Hamish back to the conversation in hand, though he’d speak to Cal about Charles’s health as soon as he got back to the house.

‘Well, no,’ Hamish admitted. ‘I think the shock of finding out she was fostered and then losing her rat of a fiancé propelled her into immediate action. She tracked down her mother first, but she had died. People in the place where her mother had lived mentioned Crocodile Creek. Kate was running on emotion and it wasn’t until she arrived here that she realised a twenty-seven-year-old daughter might not be quite what her father wanted in his life. All the what ifs surfaced in her head.’

‘She’s twenty-seven? When is her birthday?’

Hamish was sure this was the least important part of the conversation he’d had with Charles, but he was now seriously enough worried about the man to go along with it.

‘August. I only know because her birthday is the same day as Lucky’s.’

‘Of course it would be,’ Charles muttered, making so little sense Hamish wondered about a stroke, although the words were clearly enunciated. ‘What’s her mother’s name? Has she told you?’

Hamish tried to remember, then shook his head.

‘But I’ve seen a photo. She was going to show it to Harry because he’s lived here for ever, then she got cold feet about it all, but she showed it to me.’ Hamish paused, still concerned about his dinner companion, but as Charles wasn’t showing any symptoms of imminent collapse, he continued. ‘Mind you, she doesn’t really need the photo. She’s the dead ringer for her mother.’

‘Two years in the country and you’re talking like a native,’ Charles said, pushing his half-eaten dinner away and wheeling back from the table. ‘Come on, we’re getting out of here.’

He waved to Sophia Poulos, who was used to hospital staff leaving halfway through their meals, apologised when she came over and asked her to put the bill on his tab, then led Hamish out of the restaurant, down the ramp and out to his specially modified vehicle.

Hamish kept his mouth shut, although the questions he wanted to ask were clamouring to escape.

‘Kate at home?’ was all Charles said, as they drove back across the bridge, past the hospital and up to the house.

‘She’s not on duty,’ Hamish managed to admit, although he was becoming more and more disturbed by Charles’s behaviour.

‘Good! See if you can find her, would you, and ask her to see me in the downstairs lounge. You’d better come, too. Might come as a shock to her to learn I’m her father.’

‘
What?
You? Oh, come on, Charles! You can’t know that! You don’t even know her mother’s name—’

‘Oh, yes, I do!’ Charles snapped. ‘It was Maryanne, all one word, no hyphen. And she was, as you said, a dead ringer for Kate, only you said it the other way around.’

Hamish struggled to absorb this information, and struggled even more with his reaction to it. Loving Kate as he did, surely he should be glad for her if Charles did turn out to be her father. Charles, in fact, would be the perfect choice. No wife or children to cause awkwardness, a loving man who would take Kate into his heart without reservation and give her all the love and security she so badly needed.

But to Hamish it was the death of his last hope—the one that if Kate decided not to worry about finding her father she might give in to his pleas and join him in marriage, making a family of their own.

‘I’ll see if I can find her,’ he told Charles, ‘though I hardly think that room downstairs is the right place for this conversation. There are sure to be some of the staff down there, and Kate’s a very private person.’

‘The garden, then,’ Charles suggested, as the hoist on his car lowered his wheelchair. ‘Kate’s told me how much she loves the garden, so she’ll feel at ease there.’

I always seem to be waking her up, Hamish thought as he stood in the doorway of Kate’s bedroom and looked at her sleeping figure. It was only ten, but she’d been on duty at six, then had played with Lily when she’d finished work.

Hamish sighed, knowing he had to wake her—knowing for her this might be the most wonderful news in the world.

Knowing it was going to break his heart.

But he couldn’t yell from the door—everyone in the house would wonder what was going on—so he went quietly into the bedroom, saying her name as he did so, coming to the bed and bending to touch her shoulder.

‘Kate, it’s Hamish.’

She woke as quickly as most medical staff did, used to
being on call. She sat straight up, the hippo stretching out across her breasts.

‘Hamish?’

Her voice was muddled with sleep, but full of … well, affection at least, though to Hamish it sounded like love.

‘It’s OK,’ he said gently, sitting down on the bed and putting his arms around her. ‘I’m sorry to wake you but Charles wants to talk to you.’

‘Is it Lily?’

He tightened his arms around her when he heard the panic in her voice and reminded her that Lily was sleeping over with CJ, reassuring her Lily was just fine.

‘But Charles? Me? What time is it?’

A lot less love or affection now, and who could blame her, considering the broken nights’ sleep she’d been having lately?

‘Just gone ten. He’s in the garden. It’s important, love.’

‘It had better be,’ his love snapped, shrugging away from his embrace so she could get out of bed. ‘It had bloody well better be! Jack’s OK, Lily’s OK, I was looking forward to the first good night’s sleep I’ve had since I arrived in this place.’

She was pulling on her sweatpants as she grumbled, then she ran a brush through her hair, slipped her feet into sandals—this time pink ones with a rose between the toes—and left the room.

Once again, though cravenly this time, Hamish wanted nothing more than to slide between her body-warmed sheets and stay there at least until morning—possibly until he had to leave Australia.

But he followed her out of the house, catching up with her on the back steps.

‘What on earth’s this about?’ she demanded, slightly less aggrieved now.

‘It’s personal,’ he said, slipping an arm around her shoulders and holding her close.

Wrong move. She stopped abruptly and turned towards him, and though it was dark he could see the flare of anger in her eyes.

‘Personal? How? Don’t tell me you asked him to intercede on your behalf? Asked him to talk to me about going to Scotland with you?
And
woke me up!’

Then she answered her own questions with a decisive shake of her head.

‘No, you wouldn’t do that. I’m sorry. But personal?’

‘It’s about your family.’ Hamish made the admission reluctantly, knowing the anger she’d just quenched could so easily flare again. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t intend to tell him anything, but he wanted to know why you wouldn’t consider coming back to Scotland with me and somehow the bit about looking for your father came out.’

But Kate’s only response was a sigh, then she lifted her hand and touched his cheek.

‘What a mess of a person you got involved with,’ she said quietly.

He forgot about Charles waiting in the garden and the bizarre turn events had taken, and took her in his arms and kissed her.

Though sure she was strong enough to handle Charles’s revelation on her own, Hamish went with her. This was personal—between her and Charles—but he wasn’t going to let go just yet.

Charles was waiting by the garden seat and Hamish could see his tension in the way white-knuckled hands gripped the wheels of his chair.

Maybe he should stay for Charles …

‘Kate!’

Charles said her name and nodded to the garden seat. Hamish guided her towards it, sitting her down but keeping his arm firmly fixed around her shoulders, though Charles reached out to take both her hands in his.

‘I don’t know where to start, my dear, but when Hamish told me—’

He broke off and turned to Hamish, who knew full well he shouldn’t be there—yet Charles seemed to need support now as much as Kate would later.

‘Charles thinks …’ Hamish paused then saw Charles nod for him to continue. ‘He thinks he knew your mother.’

Kate stiffened in his arms and her lips moved, but no words came out so Hamish tucked her closer and dug deeper into his heart, trying to find a way to help two people he loved over such an awesome emotional hurdle.

‘He knew and loved—’ he’d bloody better have loved her, a savage voice muttered in his head ‘—a young woman who looked so much like you, you’ve been like a ghost walking through his life since you arrived.’

Hamish used his free hand to tilt Kate’s chin so he could look into her eyes.

‘Her name was—’

‘Maryanne!’

Charles choked out the word then lifted Kate’s hands in his, waiting, waiting, until finally a nod—so small if might have passed unnoticed if she hadn’t at the same time begun to cry.

‘My dear! Kate!’ Charles raised her hands to his lips and pressed kisses on them, before looking up at her, his face whitely gaunt as he added, ‘Am I right?’

Kate nodded again, more firmly this time, then dropped her head to rest on their clasped hands.

Hamish waited until Charles began to stroke the soft brown curls, then he stood up and moved quietly away.

He’d not go far—Kate might need him later—but right now these two people needed just to be together.

Hamish was dozing, his head against the iron lace that decorated the balustrade on the staircase, when Charles brought her
back, stopping at the bottom of the steps and holding tightly to both Kate’s hands.

Later, Kate knew, they would need to talk some more, but right now, in the early hours of the morning, they were both too overwhelmed by a multitude of emotions to do anything but cling to each other.

‘You need some sleep,’ Charles told her gruffly, and she bent and kissed his cheek.

‘So do you,’ she whispered, then she nodded to her sleeping guard. ‘And so does Hamish.’

Charles released her hands and backed away so he could turn to go back to his car. Light from the house glinted on the wheels of his chair, and picked up the faint sheen of moisture on his cheeks.

Kate waited until he was no longer in sight, then she touched Hamish lightly on the head.

‘Hey! You should be in bed,’ she said, but instead of continuing on up the steps she sat down beside him, knowing he’d put his arm around her—needing the solidity and comfort of it.

He didn’t say anything immediately, which was just as well because she was having trouble sorting it all out in her head, but when he finally said ‘Well?’ the words came tumbling out—the story of a young woman who had been working out at Wetherby Downs and a young man home from boarding school, barely a man at seventeen but man enough to fall in love.

‘He went back to school at the end of January, promising to keep in touch. They were so in love they’d already talked of marriage when he finished school and returned to the property at the end of the year. He wrote and she replied, until the week before the Easter break. When he didn’t get an answer he phoned home, to be told Maryanne had left. He flew home in the mid-year break and contacted Maryanne’s aunt, who’d
brought her up in Crocodile Creek, but the aunt thought she was still at Wetherby Downs. He asked around, but she’d vanished as completely as if she’d never been.’

‘Charles’s father, from all I’ve heard, was a terrible man,’ Hamish said quietly. ‘No doubt if he thought she posed a threat to his plans for his son, she’d have had to go. By Easter, the old man would probably have known or guessed that she was pregnant.’

Kate nodded against his shoulder, too overwhelmed by emotion to say any more. Although, somewhere in her head she was wondering why she wasn’t happier. Why finding her father—knowing she had family—hadn’t brought the joy and ease and peace she’d thought it would?

‘Walk on the headland?’

Hamish’s suggestion eased a lot of her tension. Knowing she wouldn’t be able to sleep, she’d been dreading going back to her lonely room. But Hamish should be sleeping—they were both on duty in the morning—there was no reason she should keep him up.

‘Come on,’ he said, easing away from her to stand up and pull her up after him. ‘I could use the walk myself.’