His Runaway Nurse Read online

  Fearful?

  Flynn drove away, away from memories. It was fanciful after all this time to think she’d paled at the rebuke, ridiculous to imagine fear in the way she’d fled. The old man had been strict, but he’d been the fairest man Flynn had ever met. Stern and unapproachable in many ways, demanding perfection, yet fair in his judgement of the tasks he’d set the boy who’d come to work for him—the boy Flynn—and more than fair with his generosity, helping Flynn’s family financially, putting Flynn himself through university…

  ‘I can’t possibly afford to buy the house.’

  Majella had returned to the stall and lifted Grace into her arms, hugging her daughter close, needing to feel her chubby warmth—needing the present to blot out the past.

  And with Grace still in her arms she’d turned to Helen, wanting to see her friend’s face as she made this announcement.

  ‘It was the executor you went to see. Who is handling that job? Your grandfather’s solicitor? Or someone you know? Someone you might be able to talk terms with?’ Helen asked.

  Majella gave a huff of sarcastic laughter.

  ‘Talk terms with Flynn?’ she muttered, hugging Gracie even tighter.

  ‘Flynn’s the executor?’ Helen echoed.

  She was asking for a simple confirmation, but Majella could sense a dozen other questions—more emotional than practical—hiding behind it.

  ‘He is,’ Majella confirmed. ‘It was—awkward.’

  Helen nodded.

  ‘Coming back was always going to be hard, love,’ she said, and she gave Majella and Grace a quick hug then turned to tend a customer.

  This was the first time the Sherwoods had exhibited their natural products at the festival, Majella remembering it from her childhood and thinking it would be a good place to promote their fledgling business. She and Helen had discussed it at length, Majella knowing a return to Parragulla—putting the past behind her—was a necessary step in her path towards the independence she sought. Being part of the festival, she’d decided, might be an easy way to do it.

  So they’d booked a stall and then the ad for the auction of Parragulla House had appeared in the paper. Was the synchronicity of it an omen that she was doing the right thing? Although she was far too practical to believe in omens, it had felt right to Majella—so much so she’d begun to consider buying the old house, begun to see herself and Grace living there, bringing life and laughter into those secret nooks and shadowed corners.

  Although the festival didn’t officially open until the following day, today was for the locals, who wandered around the stalls, checking out new products and stocking up on things they’d tried before.

  Flynn strode down the aisles. He might keep up his pretence of indifference as far as the festival itself was concerned, but he’d long since embraced solar power. Thanks to information he’d gleaned and equipment he’d purchased at previous festivals, he now had four eighty-watt panels on his roof, and this year he wanted advice on the inverters he’d need if he decided to put up more. And then there were the wind-farm people. He was pretty sure a couple of the new graceful windmills could provide enough stored power for the hospital in case of power outages and they could do away with the noisy generators they used now.

  But today he had another object in checking out the stalls. The braided hair suggested Majella might be involved, combining her time at the festival with enquiries about the house.

  Although the solicitors had told him over and over again that the condition of her inheriting the house was unbreakable, he knew there had to be a way out of this mess. And the best way to sort through it was to talk to her.

  Talk properly, without emotion stirred by memories of the past intruding.

  Was that the only reason he was looking out for her?

  He felt the same stirring in his body he’d felt earlier and wondered…

  As well as checking out the windmills, he wanted to buy some cakes of lemon myrtle soap for his mother. He’d been ten when he’d first walked past a stall and smelt the light, tangy fragrance. He’d bought a cake of the scented soap for his mother that year—with money earned riding the old man’s horses—and had been buying it for her, on and off, ever since!

  He glanced at all the stalls as he passed, then stopped to talk to a woman who now supplied the hospital with massage oil, which incorporated essence from the wild billy goat plum, known to natives in areas where it grew to be good for skin problems.

  ‘The oil is wonderful,’ he told her. ‘We haven’t had one person react negatively to it—even the most allergy-prone patients.’

  The woman smiled her agreement—not an ‘I told you so’ smile, but one of happiness that the product she’d developed and refined was doing good.

  Flynn moved on, greeting friends and patients, lifting product samples and sniffing them, or rubbing cream into his hands. Not thinking of Majella. Well, not to the exclusion of all else. In the back of his mind was an idea that there had to be a more effective hand cream than the product they currently used at the hospital. Some of the nurses suffered dreadful irritations of the skin on their hands, brought on by the constant washing and drying.

  He wandered back to the woman who sold the massage oil.

  ‘No, I haven’t anything, but there are some new exhibitors this year—a mother and daughter—Helen and Sophie Sherwood. They call their products Nature’s Wonders. I know they have a hand cream and from what I’ve tried myself and heard from others, all their products are excellent. Very well researched, and completely natural.’

  Sherwood?

  How could he not think of Majella?

  He continued in the direction the woman indicated, wondering whether they made a decent living, these people committed to providing the public with alternatives to the mass-produced and often chemically enhanced products available in supermarkets.

  Wondered, too, about the Native Animal Rescue Service, whose big display he could see ahead of him. This was the first time he’d seen the service exhibiting at the festival, although he’d been reading a great deal about it lately. At first it had meant nothing more to him than occasional signs along the road, providing a phone number to call if one found an injured native animal, but now he knew there were sanctuaries springing up in rural areas, where injured animals and birds could be nursed back to health.

  He drew closer to the sign, smiling to himself as he saw the image on the advertising poster—a small, pretty-face wallaby holding up a bandaged paw. Smiling even more broadly as a small girl wandered out from behind the sign, a tattered toy koala clutched in her arms—a living advertisement for saving wildlife.

  Flynn squatted down in front of her.

  ‘Is your koala hurt?’ he asked, seeing the slightly grubby bandage around the koala’s ear.

  ‘Ear,’ the little girl said, pointing at the koala’s ear, then reaching for Flynn’s, lifting her head as she did so—revealing clear pale eyes, the translucent green of rivers fed by snow-melt from the mountains.

  ‘Gracie!’

  A voice he knew, then Majella appeared from behind the sign, her hands full of bumper stickers that urged people to look out for wildlife on the roads.

  ‘Man’s ear!’ the small child said, grabbing delightedly at Flynn’s ear and tugging at it.

  Majella dropped the stickers on the small table set up in front of the sign.

  ‘You’re with the animal rescue service?’ Flynn said, detaching Grace’s hand from his ear and offering her his fingers to grasp instead.

  ‘It’s why I went to see the house,’ Majella said, her evident enthusiasm for the cause chasing away the coldness that had strained the air between them earlier, although some tension remained. ‘The dog kennels and runs would be ideal recovery areas for injured animals, and with tourism growing in the region there are more cars on the road, so the service needs a sanctuary somewhere in this district.’

  ‘We can work this out, Majella,’ Flynn said. ‘The house should have been yours wit
hout conditions—we can find a way through the legalities.’

  She shook her head, such sadness in her eyes he wanted to take her in his arms and hold her until whatever pain she felt had passed.

  Maybe kiss away the hurt…

  Though he doubted a kiss would ease the pain of a dead husband…

  He looked away, down at the child who was examining his hand and fingers as if they were novelties she’d not encountered before. She put her small palm against his far larger one and looked up at him, laughing in delight at the difference in their sizes—laughing in a way that made something catch in Flynn’s heart.

  Made something hurt!

  Majella watched her daughter twisting Flynn’s hand this way and that, examining his fingers—bending them and opening them again—intrigued as she always was by her ability to make things happen.

  ‘I don’t want Grandfather manipulating me,’ she said, looking back at Flynn who ignored her statement, busy showing Grace how to lock her fingers together to make a church and steeple. His younger sister would have been Grace’s age when their father had deserted them. Had Flynn taught her the rhyme? Opened up his hands to show her the people in the church?

  And watching him with Grace, she wondered about the real reason why he hadn’t married—hadn’t had children of his own.

  Because he’d already been a father to his sisters?

  Had experienced more than his share of responsibility?

  Or because he feared he might be as irresponsible as his own father had proved to be?

  Surely not—that was just too sad a thought to contemplate.

  ‘Maybe it’s not manipulation,’ he said, settling onto the grass beside Grace and allowing her to clamber over him. So patient and caring towards a child he didn’t know, so careful to make sure she didn’t hurt herself. ‘Maybe putting in the condition was a genuine attempt at reconciliation. After all, you’re the one who left.’

  ‘I had to go,’ she whispered.

  ‘You said that before, that you had to go. Why, Majella? And what was so bad with your life that you never came back? The town found it easy to explain, writing your behaviour off as that of a spoilt girl, too busy playing with her city friends to bother with her stricken grandfather. Were they right? Was I wrong, thinking there was more to you than that?’

  ‘No, Flynn, you weren’t wrong,’ she said softly, squatting beside him where he sat with Grace on his knee, once again touching his cheek. ‘And thank you for not believing!’

  Flynn looked down at the child, playing so trustingly with his hand.

  Majella’s child.

  Her fatherless child.

  He’d had personal experience of that often bleak condition and knew that children, whether boys or girls, needed a father…

  One that stayed around…

  ‘I’ll talk to the solicitors again about the clause in the will,’ he said. ‘Surely once you’ve been married you’ve met the intention of the terms. I can’t see that there’s anything to stop you having the house.’

  ‘Only myself—my own reservations about accepting it under such conditions,’ Majella said sadly. ‘I thought I’d buy it—that’s what I really wanted to do—but when the agent mentioned the estimated price…’

  She shrugged her disappointment, then glanced towards the stall where Helen and Sophie were busy with customers. ‘I can’t explain right now. Maybe I can’t explain at all. At the moment, I should be helping over there. I was going to put out these stickers and lift Grace back behind her barrier. She’s a little young to understand stranger danger and talks to everyone.’

  She pointed to where a playpen had been set up, bright toys scattered on the grass, then lifted the little girl with her dark curls and pale eyes and placed her in amongst them.

  ‘You’re working on that stall?’ Flynn asked. ‘Sherwood’s Nature’s Wonders? Of course—your name is Sherwood. Your husband was related?’

  Unsubtle way to find out about the man, Flynn realised, and immediately regretted it as Majella looked at him, eyes bleak and lips trembling slightly.

  ‘He was Helen’s son, and Sophie’s brother,’ she said softly. ‘One split second of chaos and we all lost out!’

  She walked away, crossing to where the other two women were selling the products of their stall, smiling at a customer, reaching for a scarlet box and extracting a small bottle of essence from it, talking about its ingredients and use as if Flynn’s careless question hadn’t just cut deep into her heart.

  ‘Some gynaecologists are now recommending casuarina—they’re the trees we know as she-oaks—essence for hormonal imbalances and PMT,’ she said, as Flynn watched and waited, intrigued in spite of himself. Were gynaecologists really recommending it, or was this just a selling ploy?

  ‘They are!’ a voice said, and he turned towards the older woman of the three, who, having completed a sale was now studying him with an interest that went beyond that of seller and customer.

  ‘Do you read minds as well as selling essences?’ he asked, and she smiled and shrugged her shoulders.

  ‘No, but I know a sceptic when I see one.’

  ‘Sceptic? Me? I’ll have you know I’m well into alternative remedies whenever possible. In fact, I’m here in search of some hand cream I believe you’ve developed.’

  ‘Not just to look at Majella?’ the woman queried softly, then she put out her hand. ‘I’m Helen Sherwood, Majella’s mother-in-law. You, I presume, are Flynn.’

  Her presumption startled Flynn. It wasn’t that he’d been Majella’s boyfriend, but they’d been close enough for him to doubt she’d have talked about him once she’d married.

  ‘Hand cream?’ Helen prompted, and once again he had to set aside the muddle of past and present fusing to concentrate on the here and now.

  He explained he was a doctor and told her about the skin irritations some of the hospital staff suffered from the constant hand-washing they had to do, and Helen turned away, returning with a good-sized yellow tube, a picture of a flower Flynn didn’t recognise emblazoned on the side.

  ‘It has a eucalypt oil base but with ti-tree oil and honey from native bees as well, which helps provide a protective coating to the skin so constant washing doesn’t dry out all its natural oils. It’s the loss of the skin’s own protection that causes a lot of irritation.’

  Flynn reached for his wallet but Helen waved away any offer of payment.

  ‘Just take this tube and get the people who are most affected to try it. Then if it works, I’ll make some up in commercial quantities for you which will be more economical than the tubes if you’re going to use it throughout the hospital.’

  He took the tube of cream then looked around the stall, trying not to watch Majella as she smiled at a young man with dreadful acne and pressed a small pot of salve into his hands, talking reassuringly all the time.

  ‘There are some who say the essence of the dagger Hakea, Hakea Teritifolia, will overcome negative feelings or bitterness towards close family, friends and lovers,’ Helen said softly. She lifted a tiny bottle from a stand at the back of the stall and tossed it to Flynn. ‘A few drops in boiling water and inhale the steam, or just sprinkle it on your sheets and pillows.’

  Flynn caught the bottle automatically, then stared at it, tempted to put it down on the counter and walk away, but Helen’s smile was kind and he didn’t want to hurt her by rejecting her gift.

  Was it bitterness he felt towards Majella?

  No way.

  Negative feelings?

  Maybe.

  He walked away, glancing back towards her, and further back to where the little girl lay curled among her toys—the small hand she’d measured against his curled into a fist, the thumb fixed firmly in her mouth as she slept.

  Majella’s child.

  Emotion, hard and hot, surged within him. It couldn’t possibly be jealousy, although there’d been a time, in spite of his declared cynicism with regard to marriage, when he’d dreamed dreams where Majell
a’s children would be his—dreams where they’d shared the house in which she’d lived, and filled it with kids and pets—filled it with all the love and laughter his family had shared. Even after his father had gone, not right away, but later, laughter had returned to echo through his family’s house, and love had kept it warm and welcoming.

  Young, and idealistic, in these dreams he’d seen himself making up to her for what seemed to him to be a bleak life of boarding school then holidays at home under the old man’s strict regime.

  While she—well, as far as he was able to fathom, she’d never seen him as other than a friend.

  Until he’d kissed her…

  And she’d run away…

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE alarm for the missing children was raised at ten the following morning. Two boys, aged four and six, last seen playing beside their parents’ caravan in the showgrounds, disappearing in the few minutes it had taken their mother to walk from the van to the camp laundry only a hundred metres away.

  ‘Well, look what the cat dragged in,’ the local SES captain greeted Flynn when, summoned by the emergency siren, he turned up at the SES building which always served as a command post in any local crisis. ‘All the woman did was go across to put a few more clothes into the washing machine. She started it and walked back, and by that time the boys were gone, vanished into thin air.’

  Flynn was carrying his bag, not knowing when or even if it might be needed, but wanting it on hand. He rested it on a table as the captain continued to explain.

  ‘Friends of the family have searched the camp site, but I imagine it was haphazard. There’s some army woman here with the festival lot. She’s out there organising a better search now—giving people grids to cover meticulously, including the area inside the show ring where the stalls are.’

  Flynn knew exactly who the ‘army woman’ was, and felt an urge to join her searching group, so he could see the woman who’d once been so shy a girl giving orders to a diverse bunch of people.

  But he knew in this kind of operation, everyone had a particular job.

  ‘What can I do?’