From Bachelor to Daddy Read online

  ‘I’ll be back for you,’ he said, touching her lightly on the shoulder, and this time she didn’t argue, backing away towards the rocks to avoid the rotor-generated sandstorm.

  CHAPTER TWO

  AS THE LITTLE aircraft lifted into the air, she watched it until the noise abated, aware all the time of the part of her body his hand had touched.

  It had to be caused by comfort for some kind of atavistic fear, she decided. A reaction to being left so completely alone in a place she didn’t know at all.

  * * *

  Ring Dad.

  Speaking to her father calmed her down. As ever he was his wonderful, patient self, assuring her the boys were already eating their dinner, having had a busy day helping him in the garden.

  Emma laughed.

  ‘I can just imagine their idea of helping!’

  ‘No,’ her father said, quite seriously. ‘Once I’d explained which were weeds to be pulled out and which were plants to be left behind, they only removed about half a dozen chrysanthemums that needed thinning anyway, and one rather tatty-looking rosemary that looked as if it was happy to give up the struggle to live.’

  There was a pause before her father added, ‘But more importantly, what about you? You’re out near the coast path? I saw on TV that the fire had swung that way.’

  ‘I’m on a beach, and quite safe. I’ve even had a swim.’

  She told him about the man in the water and made light of being left behind, doing her best to give the impression she wasn’t alone.

  ‘I’m just not sure what time the chopper will be able to get back,’ she told him, ‘so I may not be home before morning.’

  For all Marty’s ‘I’ll be back’ she just couldn’t see it happening. The dune at the top of the beach might still be dry, but it would be impossible to land anything bigger than a drone on it.

  She spoke to both the boys, who were full of their gardening exploits, then said goodbye.

  An emergency telephone would be kept fully charged, but it was not for idle chatter. Who knew when she might need it again?

  * * *

  Marty delivered his passengers to the hospital, following the stretcher with the burns victim into Emergency. He’d radioed ahead to make sure there was a senior doctor on duty, and was relieved to see Matt, another of the chopper pilots also there on standby.

  ‘I’ll do the major hospital run,’ he told Marty. ‘You’ve had enough fun for one day.’

  As he’d spent hours this morning helping out with water bombing the fire, Marty knew his official flying hours were just about up. But his day was far from finished. He left the hospital, getting a cab back to the rescue service base where his pride and joy was kept—his own, smaller, private helicopter.

  A quick but thorough check and he was in the air again, this time heading for the seaside town of Wetherby. The man he and all his foster siblings called Pop had levelled a safe landing area for him behind the old nunnery that had housed his foster family, and within ten minutes he was home.

  Home. Funny word, that—four small letters but, oh, the massive meaning of it, the security it held, the memories...

  Hallie was first out through the back garden to meet him, Pop emerging more slowly from his big shed. Both of them were older now, well into their seventies, but still fit and healthy, always ready with help or advice, or even just a cup of tea. They had been the first people in the world to offer him love—unconditional and all-encompassing love—and were still the most important people in his life.

  He lifted Hallie in the air and swung her around, explaining as he swung that he couldn’t stay. He’d left a woman on Izzy’s porpoise beach and had to get her off while the tide was still high enough to take the jet ski in.

  ‘What jet ski?’ Hallie demanded. ‘You boys took all your fast, noisy toys when you left here.’

  He grinned at her.

  ‘The jet skis at the surf club are bigger, stronger, and faster than any we ever had, poor orphans that we were!’ he said, unable to resist teasing her. ‘I’ve phoned a mate to have one fuelled up for me.’

  ‘You’re going around there on a jet ski in the middle of the night.’

  He had to laugh.

  ‘Hallie, it’s barely seven o’clock. We’ll be back before you know it. I’ll take her straight to Izzy and Mac’s as she’ll need a shower and some dry clothes. Something of Nikki’s will probably fit her. There’s not much of her.’

  ‘Then bring her here for dinner when she’s dry,’ Hallie insisted, but he shook his head.

  ‘She has her own family to get back to,’ he said, ‘but we have to come back here to get the chopper so I’ll introduce you then.’

  He turned to Pop.

  ‘Okay if I take your ute down to the club?’

  ‘Just don’t run into anything,’ Pop growled, and they all laughed as the ute was ancient and, having survived numerous teenagers learning to drive in it, was a mass of dents and scratches.

  Down at the club, while his mate checked the fuel on the jet-ski, he called the emergency phone, and knew from Emma’s voice when she answered that he’d startled her.

  ‘It’s okay, it’s only me, Marty. I’m coming to get you and want you to stand in the middle of the beach and point the torch that’s in the emergency kit straight out to sea so I don’t run aground on the rocks.’

  Silence on the other end told him she didn’t know what to make of these instructions, but the jet ski motor was on and he had to get going, this time while the tide was high, not low.

  ‘See you soon, don’t forget the light,’ he said, and disconnected.

  Fortunately, the sea was calm, as it often was when a westerly had been blowing across the land. But his heart raced as he thought of the woman he’d left on the beach—standing there in the darkness, the world behind her ringed with fire. Surely she’d be...

  Frightened?

  The thought made him smile. He might not know Emma Crawford very well—not at all, in fact—but he doubted fear would be upmost in her mind.

  Apprehension, yes, but fear?

  He revved the engine, anxious to get to her—frightened or not, it must be an unnerving experience for her, especially on her first day at work!

  * * *

  Emma stared at the phone in her hand.

  Had it really rung?

  Was Marty serious about coming in by water to get her off the beach—what little of it was left?

  Presumably...

  She lifted the emergency backpack he’d left with her, took out the torch, and slipped the pack onto her shoulders. She then paced the beach and decided where the centre of it was, waded in knee deep then turned on the torch as instructed, pointing its beam out to sea.

  She was just beginning to feel a little foolish when she heard the loud roar of an engine, definitely somewhere in the darkness of the ocean, then light appeared, at first shining across the width of the bay, the motor throttling back but still very loud in the otherwise silent night.

  Now the light turned towards her and, as if drawn along the path of torchlight, a large jet ski rumbled her way, the noise cutting as it approached so it drifted right up to where she stood.

  Marty was off in an instant.

  ‘On you hop,’ he said cheerfully, while she was still considering what seemed like a miracle night rescue.

  ‘Quickly—we need the tide high now,’ he added, holding the craft steady in the small waves while she clambered on board.

  ‘Now shove back to make room for me, then hang on tight,’ he said, and before she could say thank you, or marvel at the fact that he had come for her, he had the craft moving again and they were off, the roaring motor preventing even the most basic of conversations.

  But she did hang on tight, very tightly indeed, for they were travelling at what seemed a ridiculous pace, boun
cing over waves as they sped back to wherever he’d come from.

  Wetherby?

  The beach town she and the twins had visited last week?

  Was that the closest place?

  And was she thinking these thoughts to keep from considering the strange reaction she was experiencing with her arms around a man’s body, her breasts pressed against his back—the solidity of it, the different feel...

  The maleness...

  Not that she’d been clasping a woman’s back recently, but there was something decidedly odd going on within her body.

  Decidedly odd and totally unnecessary, but just as she considered not holding on quite as tightly, they leapt another wave and her arms tightened around him even more.

  Maybe as well as needing a father for the boys, she needed a man.

  Although friends and relations had been suggesting such a thing for some years now, she’d never given it a thought, probably because she’d never experienced a physical...

  What?

  She didn’t want to call it need, but it was certainly a male-female kind of thing she was feeling right now.

  Though this particular man—a commitment-shy lover boy—was definitely not for her.

  There was no way she could tarnish the memory of the intense and beautiful love she and Simon had shared with a quick affair to satisfy a...

  ‘Need’ did seem to be the word...

  Consumed by her thoughts, she was unaware of the silence that had fallen, but the jolt as the jet ski glided up a ramp onto the deck outside the surf lifesaving clubhouse told her the journey was over.

  She let go of the body that had started such bizarre thoughts in her head, and dismounted as quickly as she could, although the wet clothes she was wearing made that difficult, sticking to the plastic seat and tangling around her legs.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, as Marty put out his hand to steady her. ‘And for rescuing me as well. I’d have been okay staying there till morning, but Dad would have worried.’

  ‘Only Dad?’ Marty queried, and it must have been the tiredness that was creeping over her that stopped her thinking the question at all odd.

  ‘Well, the boys as well, but they’ve grown up with my erratic hours of work, and my coming and going, and they don’t seem to mind. Dad’s been there for them far more than I have.’

  She’d smiled at him as she’d explained, this small, wet, matter-of-fact woman, and Marty didn’t know if it had been the smile or the love she somehow invested in the word ‘Dad’ that caused an uneasy lurch in his usually reliable stomach.

  ‘This way,’ he said, and although he would normally have slung an arm around a woman’s shoulders to lead her to the car, tonight he couldn’t do it, so he stomped ahead, slightly perturbed, although he didn’t do perturbed any more than he did stomach lurches. For most of his life he’d kept his demons at bay by being the joker, the light-hearted mate, just a ‘good bloke’ in the Australian vernacular...

  He grabbed a couple of towels Hallie had thrown into the ute, and handed one to Emma, using the other to dab himself dry before tying it around his waist. Woman-like, she wound hers around above her breasts, though not before he’d noticed the way her wet clothing clung to a very curvy figure.

  You like tall, slim, blonde women, don’t date hospital staff, and don’t do commitment, he reminded himself. And a woman with ‘boys’ would be looking for commitment. Would need commitment...

  ‘We’re both wet through and will be chilled to the bone by the time we get home so I’m taking you to Izzy and Mac’s,’ he told his passenger. ‘Izzy’s one of my foster sisters, and Mac, her husband, is the local doctor here in Wetherby. They actually met at the little cove where we rescued the kids, only they were rescuing a porpoise. Their daughter Nikki is about your size, and should be able to provide some dry clothes.’

  Sensible talk—that was the way to handle the strangeness he was experiencing, which, as he now considered it, was probably caused by his having to leave her alone on the beach in the first place. It had brought out all his protective instincts, nothing more...

  Izzy, obviously primed by Hallie, had Emma through the door and into the bathroom while he was barely out of the ute.

  Mac met him on the wide veranda of the centuries-old doctor’s house.

  ‘You can use the back bathroom, I’ve put some dry duds in there,’ he said, waving Marty along the veranda, following to ask about the rescues, about the injuries to the burns victim, the hospital network having already filled Mac in on what had transpired during the afternoon.

  ‘At least the temperature and the wind have dropped,’ he said, ‘and the forecast for tomorrow is rain, so it should dampen what’s left of the fires on the coastal fringe, although those in the national park will be harder to stop.’

  ‘Great news,’ Marty replied, pleased to have talk of bushfires diverting his brain from its seeming obsession with Emma. He could do bushfire talk! ‘The firefighters will get a break, and with decent rain these might be the last of the fires for the season.’

  ‘Let’s hope so,’ Mac said. ‘I’ll leave you to have a shower, then Izzy’s made some sandwiches. If you want to get straight back to Braxton you can eat them on the way.’

  Marty turned in the doorway of the bathroom that had been tacked onto the veranda at the back of the house.

  ‘Thanks, Mac, I appreciate it.’

  Mac smiled at him.

  ‘That’s what family’s for,’ Mac reminded him.

  Marty took the words into the shower with him and as the water splashed down over his body he thought of the main one—family. How lucky had he been to have landed with foster parents whose determination had been not merely to provide a home for abandoned or damaged children but to provide them with a family—to meld them into a family in the truest sense of the word—a group where they belonged?

  But as he dressed in dry, borrowed clothes, his mind returned to Emma and her family—boys, Dad, her—but no wedding ring and no mention of a husband.

  Not that it was any of his business, and neither was he interested in finding out more. He tried not to think about the fact that, given the gossip mill that was the hospital, he’d soon know everything there was to know about Emma Crawford, and probably far more than she wanted people to know.

  He was smiling to himself as he pushed open the door into the kitchen and greeted Izzy with a kiss.

  ‘No Nikki?’ he asked, looking around the room, taking in Emma’s appearance in long shorts and a slightly too tight T-shirt, damp dark hair framing her face like a pixie’s in a story book.

  ‘Studying with her friend,’ Izzy explained. ‘Now, Emma’s having a cup of tea. Do you want one or do you need to get back to Braxton? I’ve made sandwiches to go if you can’t stay.’

  ‘We’ll go but take the sandwiches, not that I expect we’ll be able to eat them all because you know Hallie, she’ll have a basket of goodies already packed into the helicopter. But thanks.’

  He dropped another kiss on her cheek, then bent and kissed her baby bump.

  ‘That’s from your Uncle Marty, Bump. I hope you’re behaving yourself in there.’

  Mac and Izzy laughed, but although Emma smiled, he sensed a sadness in her.

  Or maybe it was just plain exhaustion. For a first day at work, it had been a beauty!

  ‘Come on,’ he said to her. ‘Let’s get you home.’

  Had he spoken too abruptly—too roughly—that she looked startled and stumbled slightly as she stood up, and her hand shook as she put her cup on the table?

  ‘Are you okay?’ he asked, when they’d said their goodbyes and were back in the ute.

  ‘Fine,’ she said quietly, ‘though I’ll be happy to get home. It’s been a long first day.’

  * * *

  But was she entirely happy to be going home?

 
Of course she was.

  Then why the little niggle somewhere deep inside her that suggested she’d have liked to stay a little longer with Marty’s family, sitting in the kitchen, talking about nothing in particular?

  She thrust the thought away, aware that it was something to do with being in a new town, and not having had time to make friends, her life revolving around the boys and now work.

  ‘Tired?’ Marty asked as they pulled up in the shed behind a huge old building.

  ‘I think I must be,’ Emma replied, deciding that would explain all the strange things going on in her head.

  ‘Well, I’ll have you home in no time,’ he told her as he led the way to where two elderly people waited by a little helicopter. ‘Do you have a car at the hospital?’

  His hand was behind her back, guiding her through the dark yard, barely touching her, yet the—probably imagined—warmth from his hand was as distracting as the niggle had been earlier.

  ‘Car? Hospital?’ he asked again as she didn’t reply.

  She shook her head, hoping to clear it.

  ‘No, I walk to work.’

  ‘Then I can run you home. The good thing about Braxton is that nowhere’s far from anywhere else.’

  The small helicopter looked like a toy after the rescue aircraft.

  ‘This is yours?’ she asked, glad of distraction.

  ‘My pride and joy,’ he told her, ‘and the two people standing beside it are my—well, mother and father, Hallie and Pop.’

  He introduced Emma, explaining she was new to Braxton.

  ‘I’ve put a bit of food in a basket behind the seats,’ Hallie told them.

  ‘And Izzy packed us sandwiches,’ Marty said. ‘We might have to stop on the way home for a picnic.’

  Everyone laughed, but the picnic idea had taken hold in Emma’s head. It was such a short flight back to Braxton, and eating on the way would be awkward.

  ‘If you’re driving me home and not in a hurry to get back to your place, we could picnic on my veranda,’ she found herself saying as they flew over the mountain range between the two towns. ‘The boys will be in bed, and Dad will happily join you for a beer if you fancy one, or a glass of wine if you’d prefer. I think after the day I’ve had I’ll be having one.’