A Wedding for the Single Dad Read online

  And an ultralight!

  He bit back a groan, more of anguish than agony. Flying the wretched machine had seemed like a challenge. And it had brought back such vivid memories!

  The only time he’d met his great-uncle, Henry had helped him build his very own ultralight, and taught him how to fly it. So, seeing what must have been Henry’s old machine in the shed, it had been hard to resist—particularly as his daughter had been so excited that Daddy could fly such a thing.

  Showing off to Maddie. How pathetic had that been?

  Idiotic too.

  Maddie!

  Hell!

  He looked up at rescuer number one. ‘Can someone radio the vet surgery and let my mother know I’m okay? She’ll be worried.’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ one of the men at the foot of the stretcher said, keeping hold of his burden with one hand, while the other tapped away at a radio Velcroed to his chest.

  No need to tell them his mother was the last person who’d be worried. She was probably trailing along the lake’s edge with her fishing line, with Maddie following in her wake like a small shadow, her own fishing line tangled around the small rod, because to her shells had far more appeal than fish.

  But at least his mother would know to listen to messages on the surgery line as well as the home phone when she returned from her excursion.

  New voices and laughter preceded the arrival of the ambulance crew, who greeted everyone cheerfully, assured him he’d soon be more comfortable in their care, and then joined the effort of carrying him down to the road.

  He was about to lose Lauren Henderson from her place at the head of the stretcher.

  As she moved away he reached out with his good hand and caught her fingers. ‘I’m sorry for being such a bear,’ he said. ‘I was just so annoyed with myself for bringing Henry’s machine down. It was a stupid and totally irresponsible thing to do.’

  She smiled at him. ‘It was,’ she agreed, but the smile had taken any sting out of her words.

  Then she was gone, striding on ahead of the team carrying him down the track.

  He wanted to ask about her—who she was, and what she did. She hadn’t been sympathy personified, but she’d reset his shoulder—besides which, she was damned attractive.

  Knowing someone’s name really told you nothing, he was thinking when the paramedic who’d taken her place said, ‘The doc reported a dislocated shoulder—looks like she got it back in place. Left one, was it?’

  He nodded his reply—mainly because, back in place or not, his shoulder was hurting like the devil, and he really didn’t want to be taking any more of the drug.

  And why is that? a small voice in his head asked.

  He closed his eyes, as if he might shut out the question, but he had a suspicion it might be pride—not wanting these tough men carting his considerable weight down the mountain to think him a weakling.

  Stupid pride, at that!

  He lifted the little ‘whistle’ to his lips and took a deep breath.

  ‘Take a few,’ said the man at his head. ‘Moving you to the ambulance will hurt a bit.’

  Cam took a few more puffs. Given the Australian talent for understatement he’d already encountered in his short time here, it was likely going to hurt like hell!

  * * *

  Lauren didn’t wait to see her patient loaded into the ambulance. She turned and went back up the path. Telling herself her plan was stupid and futile failed to stop her forward momentum.

  As a child, she’d helped Henry—or mainly watched—as he’d built his little ultralight, and it deserved a better end than to be stuck in the burnt-out scrub at the head of the gully. And rescuing the bits would distract her from the reaction she’d felt when the stranger had grabbed her hand and pressed it gently as he’d apologised.

  For some reason, that slight touch had left her fingers tingling.

  Think about the wreckage!

  Even if she couldn’t rescue all of it, if she could just recover the frame and the little leather seat Henry had fashioned out of an old saddle...

  She thought back to those days when she’d been Henry’s little shadow—far closer to him than she’d been to her own father when she was small. Probably because her father’s practice hadn’t involved animals large and small.

  Henry hadn’t talked much about his family, although hadn’t he once visited a sister or a niece back in England?

  Mary?

  Marion?

  Madge?

  It had been Madge—a niece. Maybe she’d inherited the old house and the veterinary practice?

  And if he lived with his mother—the tall man with the blue, blue eyes who’d made her spine skitter and her fingers tingle—then that was probably Madge, because the house certainly hadn’t been on the market. The lakeside gossip net would have known if it had been.

  But living with his mother? Unusual in this day and age... Although she’d lived with her father for years—for ever, almost...

  Was he a vet, that tall man with the very blue eyes?

  Silly question. Henry had talked occasionally about his great-nephew with a veterinary practice in London—spoken of him with pride. And if she’d ever thought about it, she should have guessed he’d inherit Henry’s place and his practice.

  But who’d leave London to come to a practice in the bush?

  And why should it matter to her, anyway?

  Just because he was good-looking?

  Because he’d sparked something in her although he’d been abrupt and cranky?

  And made her fingers tingle when he’d caught her hand.

  And he was going to be living next door.

  This last realisation made her feel...not exactly queasy, but unsettled inside.

  Puzzling over it kept her feet moving, so she was soon past where she’d met the man, and the wreckage of the ultralight was much more visible—and not as badly shattered as she’d pictured it.

  Carefully avoiding any chance of slipping and injuring herself, she gathered up the pieces—one almost complete wing, the bones of the shattered one, and the cockpit, as Henry had grandly called the seat and control panel—and some other bits and pieces not immediately recognisable.

  Wishing she’d stopped long enough to get some big bin bags, she untied her light jacket from her waist and tied it around the awkward bundle. She hitched it on to her shoulder and set off, yet again, down the rough track.

  By the time she reached her house, drenched in sweat, she was regretting what now seemed like a totally irrational decision.

  Just what was she intending to do with the wreckage?

  Rebuild the thing?

  She dropped the bundle just inside her back gate, unwrapped her jacket and used it to mop the sweat from her face.

  ‘Are you going to put it together again?’ asked a quiet, precise voice, and she turned to see a small child with dark tousled hair standing at the fence, dark blue eyes fixed intently on her.

  ‘I’m not sure I’m clever enough,’ she answered honestly, seeing the wreckage more clearly now.

  ‘My father could help you,’ the little girl told her. ‘He knows how.’

  Lauren smiled, because the words held such certainty. This was a child who firmly believed her father could do anything—although, if the father was who Lauren guessed he was, putting the ultralight back together again was probably the last thing he’d want to do.

  Time to change the subject.

  ‘Does your mother know where you are?’ she asked.

  The small child climbed onto the gate and began to swing back and forth on it. ‘I don’t have a mother,’ she said. ‘Daddy said she left to find herself. But I think you are yourself, and that’s where you are.’

  It was slightly convoluted, but Lauren could see where she was coming from, and was amazed yet again at the w
isdom of children.

  ‘Do you have a name?’ she asked—although she should be asking exactly who was in charge of her, and what she was doing at her back gate.

  ‘I’m Maddie,’ she said. ‘It’s really Madge, after my grandmother, but Daddy says that’s a name for an old person not a...’ she paused, as if trying out the next word in her head, and finally came up with ‘...youngser like me.’

  ‘Well, Maddie, perhaps your grandmother is looking for you and you should go home. Do you know the way?’

  The girl rolled her eyes. ‘It’s just next door,’ she said, and Lauren thought she heard the echo of an unspoken Stupid! lingering at the end of the statement. ‘Although it’s not as next door as the next door was when we lived in London.’

  From London to Paradise Lake. From a bustling, cosmopolitan city to a virtual backwater with a string of houses around a tidal lake. What a huge shift in their lives.

  A huge shift in work, too, for the man she’d rescued. From city vet to a country one—and a different country at that.

  Had he realised that when he’d come out here?

  Did he intend to stay, or merely check out the place and put it on the market?

  ‘I could walk you home,’ she offered, concerned about the child, because she’d been quite right. ‘Next door’ here was about three hundred metres away, and once the sinking sun disappeared it would be gloomy in the sparse bushland between the two houses.

  ‘If you like,’ Maddie told her, climbing off the gate. ‘We have heaps of baby animals at our place—more than ten, anyway. People come in to help, because some of them are hurt, and some are too little to live in the... Well, we’d say woods in England, but here it’s called the bush—even if there isn’t any bush to live in.’

  She waved a hand towards the blackened hills behind them, while Lauren realised that it must be another after-effect of the fires that she’d heard nothing of these new people in Henry’s house—not a hint of the gossip which was usually the life-blood of Lakesiders’ conversations.

  There’d been a locum, of course, and she’d met him one time. And she’d known that volunteers were working all hours to keep the wildlife hospital and sanctuary going. She had done a couple of night shifts there herself, but because she entered and left through the gate in the animal cage, she hadn’t met or even considered the new owners.

  She took Maddie’s hand, and was just leading her to the track she always took between the two places when a tall, dishevelled and totally distracted figure appeared, his left arm held tight to his chest by a sling, his left ankle tightly bandaged.

  Campbell Grahame stopped and leaned on the stick he held in his right hand.

  ‘You shouldn’t be out walking after that fall,’ she said.

  But he ignored her, calling out to his daughter and grabbing her as she raced towards him and flung herself at his legs.

  ‘What have I told you about wandering off into the bush?’ he demanded, though he didn’t sound as cross as she imagined he must be feeling after finding her missing.

  ‘But I only went next door. And this nice lady is going to build the flying machine again after she’s walked me home.’

  ‘You must be out of your mind,’ he said, and then must have realised he’d already been far too rude to her today. ‘Sorry. That was rude. I’ve been worried about Maddie.’

  ‘I said you’d help her,’ Maddie offered hopefully.

  The man just shook his head and awkwardly scooped her up with his right arm, his stick now waving uselessly in his hand.

  ‘You should let Maddie walk,’ Lauren said, changing the subject before it became even more complicated. ‘You shouldn’t be bearing your own weight on that ankle, let alone hers.’

  He frowned at her, but did let Maddie slide back to the ground.

  Okay, the man was in pain, and he must have been worried sick about his daughter’s disappearance—but, really, one ‘sorry’ didn’t cover his rudeness.

  She looked him directly in the eyes as she responded, daring him to make another prod at her. ‘Are you always this aggressive, or has the accident dented your masculine pride? Or is it because you were rescued by a woman?’ she asked, aware that it had happened before in the macho world out here in the lakes.

  Without waiting for an answer—or an excuse—she turned on the spot and marched back towards her house.

  Maddie’s, ‘Now look what you’ve done!’ came clearly to her through the still, early-evening air. ‘And she’s a very nice lady!’

  * * *

  Beautiful, too, Cam thought as he took Maddie’s hand and turned back towards Uncle Henry’s house—their house now, he supposed. Not that they had to stay here. A few weeks seeing to some necessary repairs, a bit of paint to brighten the place up, and then Cam and his mother could sell it and go back to the UK.

  The locum the lawyers had arranged was still running the business and he could stay on—he might even like to buy it. If not, the solicitors could find another buyer.

  The thought made him feel even more depressed than the pain in his shoulder. She’d been right, that woman—now soot-stained, probably from rescuing the ultralight—he shouldn’t be walking around. But he hadn’t wanted his mother to go looking for his daughter—that could have ended up with both of them being lost in the bush...

  The bush.

  Could he really go back to the UK after seeing the beauty of this lake and experiencing the sense of community around it? Meeting a few of the locals...learning that he owned, apparently, a wildlife hospital and sanctuary, not to mention some of that burnt-out bush behind the house... Henry and some friends of his had planted trees there—a variety of the special trees whose leaves koalas ate—to encourage the local koala population to stay in the area.

  For so long he’d dreamt about Australia—this strange land at the bottom of the globe.

  Sell out?

  He didn’t think so.

  They were in sight of the house now. The stately old stone building looked so incongruous among the holiday shacks and the new modern houses that straggled along the shores of the lake. He’d learned that it had been built by the owner of a local coal mine, back when the area had first been settled, and the owner had obviously believed strongly in his own importance.

  Even with the old servants’ quarters at the back now annexed by the wildlife hospital and sanctuary, and his veterinary rooms set up on the ground floor at the front, it was still a lot of house for three people. Spacious and elegant, if somewhat shabby.

  ‘I’ve forgotten her name...the lady who lives next door...but her house looks even bigger than ours. And there’s a sign outside with pictures of cakes. Do you think she’s a cake-maker?’

  He thought of the tall, slim woman who’d not only popped his shoulder back into its socket but had then also helped carry him down the hill.

  ‘If she is a cake-maker, I don’t think she eats many of them,’ he said to Maddie.

  She grinned with delight. ‘Because she’s not roly-poly, like Madge says I’ll get if I eat too much cake?’

  He smiled down at this small human who held his heart in her currently rather grubby hands. ‘Exactly,’ he said.

  And they were both smiling as they entered the house through a French door on one side of it, directly into a rather dim but potentially pleasant sitting room.

  * * *

  Having shifted the pieces of the ultralight to her back shed, Lauren went upstairs to shower and change. She studied her soot-stained self in the bathroom mirror and shook her head. Pity to have made such a terrible first impression on her new neighbour!

  Really? a voice in her head replied. Why should it bother you what impression you made?

  She didn’t answer the voice, not wanting to admit that she’d found him attractive—very attractive. And definitely not wanting to admit that seeing him had caused nerv
es in some parts of her body to jangle, and tighten, and heat—nerves that hadn’t felt much for years.

  Certainly not warmth.

  As for heat...?

  Good grief!

  What was she thinking?

  She sighed. It was because she had no life—that was all it was. Years of medical training, the horrors of internship, and then eight years caring for a wonderful but increasingly difficult father had limited her social life to zilch. No wonder someone—a male someone—taking her hand and giving it a gentle squeeze had made her skin tingle.

  Had that ever happened before out here in the very beautiful but isolated Paradise Lake community? No. The residents were mostly retired, or newlyweds building their first house in the place where they’d come for holidays as children.

  Single men were scarcer than hen’s teeth, and as for married men...

  Disaster!

  But she loved the lake, and she had taken over her father’s practice as well as his care when his forgetfulness had finally had to be acknowledged as dementia rather than just old age.

  Don’t brood.

  She’d shower, wash her hair, pull on some jeans and a top and—

  And then what?

  Take herself to dinner at the new restaurant that had opened further along the shore?

  She shook her head, her wet hair flapping about her face. Pulled out a dry towel and rubbed at it roughly, remembering times when she’d have spent half an hour drying it carefully, persuading it into gentle waves that looked as natural as she could make them.

  Looking good for David.

  As she dragged a comb through her still-damp hair, she wondered where that had come from.

  It had been years since she’d given David even a passing thought.

  And, more to the point, why was the man she’d rescued today intruding into her brain?

  Surely not just because he was an attractive man?

  An attractive man who’d made her spine skitter and her skin tingle...

  He was a new neighbour, nothing more, and obviously married as he had a child.