From Bachelor to Daddy Read online

  ‘No, it’s not,’ she agreed, but it wasn’t only the type of accident that was different. The man’s cheerful good humour was like the friendly phone call she’d had earlier. Somehow people seemed to have more time to chat, or perhaps felt freer to talk than they did in the city.

  From time to time she checked on Mr Armstrong, but she had no time to think about the man as anything other than a patient.

  Although he did have an engaging grin, and the kind of rugby-player build that made her think he probably could kick a ball.

  Not that ball-kicking ability would have been top of her list of desirable qualities in a father for the boys—

  Not that she had a list.

  But as she walked home later that day, she was slightly startled to find herself thinking about a list. Well, not actually a list but what she might want to consider necessary attributes in a father for her boys.

  Was she being silly, thinking this way?

  Had growing up without a mother—wonderful though Dad had been—sown the seed about wanting a father for the boys?

  But a father for the boys would also be her husband.

  Was she ready for that?

  For love?

  Because, in all fairness, that’s what it would need to be...

  She shrugged off the thought and had got to the gate before she’d reached any conclusion in the matter.

  And now the ‘puppy’ was stopping her, standing behind the gate so she had to shove hard to open it, reminding it that this was her home not his.

  ‘You’re just passing through,’ she told him firmly, as he showed apparent delight at her return by standing on his hind legs to lick her cheek.

  ‘Here, boy!’

  The male voice that wasn’t her father’s startled her, but the dog must have heard authority in it for he immediately stepped back from her before gambolling away towards the house.

  Emma was moving in that direction herself when clear shouts of ‘Mum, look at us,’ had her turning towards the big mango trees that lined one side fence.

  When she’d left for work the previous day, her father had been in the process of assembling a double swing set. She’d arrived home in the dark last night but now she could see what the excitement was about.

  ‘It’s like seeing double,’ she said as she walked towards the trees where two identical teenage girls were pushing two small, identical boys.

  ‘These are our friends,’ Xavier told her.

  ‘They’re called Milly and Molly,’ Hamish added.

  The two girls laughed.

  ‘Mandy and Molly,’ one of them explained. ‘I’m Mandy.’

  ‘And I’m Molly.’

  They’d stopped pushing the swings and moved towards Emma, holding out their hands as they introduced themselves.

  ‘Marty thought you might be looking for babysitters—well, a babysitter but we come as a pair, although we don’t charge double.’

  Molly—or it might have been Mandy—was explaining this but Emma’s brain was still getting over a jolt of recognition. It had been Marty’s voice that had called ‘Here, boy’—Marty Graham, who didn’t do commitment so certainly wouldn’t make even a secondary list for a possible father for her boys!

  But if his voice was here, so must he be.

  The girls were pushing the swings again, so there wasn’t anything to keep Emma under the mango trees.

  Nothing at all—

  ‘Emma, I’ve made a fresh pot of tea.’

  Her father’s voice this time.

  She had to go and join him and...

  Well, whoever was with him.

  Yet try as she might, she couldn’t figure out the reluctance that weighed her down as she made her way towards the house.

  Marty stood as she approached the table.

  ‘Have you had a busy day?’ he asked, and she heard sincerity in his voice. But it wasn’t the tone of voice or even the words that held her in limbo on her approach to the table.

  Something else—something she didn’t understand—had stopped the world for a moment. She could see the low table set with tea things and leftovers from Hallie’s basket, with another chocolate cake added to the feast. And there was a woman, sitting smiling at her, speaking words Emma couldn’t hear.

  Because of Marty?

  Couldn’t be!

  He took her elbow, leading her forward, introducing her to his sister Carrie, mother of the babysitting twins, and probably maker of the new chocolate cake.

  Marty dropped his hand, and the world righted itself again, so she was able to smile at Carrie and tell her how happy the boys seemed to be with her girls.

  ‘But it’s a bit of a shock,’ Marty said, his blue eyes smiling at her in a quite unnecessary way, ‘seeing the four of them together. I thought I was seeing double—which I suppose I was—but it was weird.’

  ‘Exactly my reaction,’ she told him, but switched her attention to Carrie as she spoke so she didn’t have to dwell on the blue eyes.

  Dwelling on blue eyes was a definite danger—she knew that as certainly as she knew her own name, even if she had no explanation for the knowledge.

  ‘Tea?’

  Her father held up the fresh pot and Emma nodded, taking the chair Marty had pulled closer to the table while she was battling to stay focussed. Carrie was telling her how amazing it had been to meet up with Ned again and, glancing at her father, Emma rather thought he considered it special as well, for he was smiling at the attractive, dark-haired woman as she spoke.

  Emma settled back in the comfortable cane chair her father had inherited with the house, and sipped her tea. It was a pleasant, unexpected distraction after a busy day, but seeing her father chatting away to their visitors, she felt again the stab of guilt that the demands of the boys had kept him from the normal social interaction a retired man might expect.

  Especially a younger retired man...

  Not but what bringing her up had probably stopped any normal social interaction long before she’d had the twins...

  She finished her tea and stood up, intending to take her cup to the kitchen, explaining she’d better start on the vegetables for the boys’ tea.

  ‘Sit down,’ her father said—not quite an order but close. ‘And leave the cup, we can sort it later. I’ve already asked Carrie and Marty to stay for dinner—we’ll have a barbecue. I bought lamb chops and sausages today and you can throw a salad together while I cook.’

  ‘I’ll give you a hand, Ned. I love a barby,’ Marty said, and as he pushed back his chair and moved away from the table, Emma dared a sneak look at him.

  It wasn’t that he was drop-dead handsome or even, to her way of thinking, all that sexy, but something about the man drew her to him.

  The lure of the unattainable?

  Was it easier to moon over someone totally unsuitable than to go through the ‘getting to know you’ procedure with another man? Was that what was causing her uneasiness over Marty?

  Uneasiness?

  Yes, uneasiness! She was damned if she was going to call it attraction.

  ‘Don’t you agree?’

  She came out of the fuzz in her head and was wondering just what Carrie had been saying to her when her phone buzzed.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said to Carrie. One glance told her it was the hospital, and as she stood up and moved a little apart to take the call, she saw Marty walking back around the veranda.

  ‘Duty calls,’ he said, waving his phone at her.

  ‘I’m wanted too,’ Emma told him, before heading for the kitchen to tell her father.

  * * *

  Marty watched her slip away before hurrying down the front steps and out to his car.

  Should he wait for her?

  Offer to drive her?

  It would be no trouble to drop her back later...
>
  He heard her voice and saw her out in the yard now, saying goodbye to the two little boys, thanking Carrie’s girls for playing with them.

  ‘Are you on duty for the chopper?’ he asked as she came towards him.

  ‘Seems so,’ she said. ‘Traffic accident on some road I’ve never heard of so I’m glad you’re the pilot, not me.’

  She smiled at him and he knew the blip in his heartbeat was something he had to ignore. For all he’d been startled by his reactions to Emma, she wasn’t for him. A woman with children needed commitment...

  ‘I’ll give you a lift to Base,’ he said, mainly to show the blip and his other reactions they didn’t matter and that he could be in her company without ever thinking of her in a non-platonic way.

  Perhaps.

  ‘The hospital will have sent whatever supplies you’ll need straight to the chopper,’ he added persuasively, although he knew he should be organising things so he saw less of her, not more.

  She studied him for a moment—a fleeting moment—then shook her head.

  ‘I’ll need my car to get home,’ she told him in a voice that suggested it was the end of the conversation.

  ‘I’ll drive you home, it’s no bother. If we’re in the same car we can pool whatever we’ve been told about this accident and maybe work out how we’re going to tackle it.’

  He wasn’t really holding his breath, but when she nodded her agreement, the relief that swept through him suggested he might have been.

  ‘I was told it was a traffic accident,’ she said, as they pulled away from the house. ‘The driver’s badly injured and is still being cut out of the car.’

  She paused, then asked, ‘Wouldn’t an ambulance have been just as quick?’

  He glanced towards her, glad she was already mentally attuned to the situation, as he should have been. But, no, he was taking the opportunity to study her.

  Just briefly!

  Study her and wonder just why she affected him the way she did—this small, quiet woman.

  Looking at her didn’t help, so he turned his thoughts firmly to what lay ahead.

  ‘With badly injured patients, we often just grab and go. Stabilise them as much as possible but get them into the air and en route to a major hospital as quickly as we can. That’s why we take a doctor, so you can work on the patient while we’re in the air. Statistically, it’s better for the patient.’

  ‘I hadn’t thought of that. In the city, the nearest hospital is usually a major one so it’s not an issue. What’s the nearest one to the crash site?’

  ‘Retford, a thirty-five-minute flight each way.’

  ‘And if the patient needs better stabilisation than we can do on the ground?’

  She was good, this woman, thinking her way through all the possibilities.

  ‘Then it becomes a very long night. We bring him—or her—but we’ll stick to him, to Braxton, stabilise him, then take him to Retford.’

  They’d reached the base and he was pleased to see Emma out of the car as soon as he pulled up, already hurrying towards the open side door of the chopper. He caught up with her and they jogged over together, Mark, his paramedic air crewman putting out his hand to help Emma up.

  ‘And up front is Dave,’ he told Emma. ‘These are the best two crewmen in the skies. Mark’ll give you a helmet so you can listen to the chat.’

  He slid into his seat, his mind now firmly focussed on what lay ahead, Dave giving him the latest information from the crash site, and the co-ordinates he needed.

  The big chopper lifted into the air, and the sense that this was where he belonged swept over him. It was here, in the air, that he really lived, the muddy waters of his early years receding like the tide so he was whole again.

  He thought of his foster sister, Liane, wondering if she’d had some place she could go where all the past was forgotten. Perhaps if she had, she might have lived.

  Dave’s quiet voice brought him out of the useless speculation, and now he could see the bright arc lights of the emergency services teams revealing a macabre scene of twisted metal wrapped around a substantial tree.

  He put the chopper down as close to the scene as he possibly could. Word had come through that the two passengers in the car had been taken to Braxton by ambulance, both suffering from minor injuries.

  But whoever was still trapped inside—well, he didn’t want to think about it, because the front of the vehicle had concertinaed and pushed the engine back onto the driver.

  A fire officer was using the huge cutters to free the man—his gender confirmed on arrival at the scene. Emma was squatting close by the vehicle, checking what the ambos had already done to help the victim—checking the victim himself as best she could, given that a low, heavy branch of the tree prevented her from getting right up to him.

  ‘We need to hook the rear of the vehicle up to the fire truck and see if we can haul it off the tree,’ the fire officer told them. ‘Problem is we don’t know if it will make things better or worse for him.’

  ‘The way the dashboard has come back on him, there could be injury to the femoral artery on both legs,’ Emma pointed out, ‘so we’ve got to be ready for massive blood loss.’

  She was speaking to Mark, who nodded his understanding, hauling pads and bandages out of one of the flight bags.

  ‘And hypovolemic shock?’ Marty muttered, thinking through what lay ahead, the paramedic he’d once been never far away at the scene of any accident.

  ‘Definitely. But we deal with the normal things, check his airway, immobilise him on the stretcher...’ she turned around and nodded when she saw that Dave had the stretcher ready behind her ‘...put pressure on any wounds to slow the bleeding. I’ll start IVs in the air and check him over properly, but getting him to hospital as quickly as we can will be the best thing we can do for him.’

  The deep growl of the fire engine made them both step back, and slowly—protesting noisily—the vehicle was dragged away from the tree. Marty moved in to help the fire officers who were still working on freeing the patient, helping them fit a block and tackle to the front of the vehicle, already cut free, so they could lift it off the injured driver.

  And Emma was proved correct. As the pressure lifted, blood spurted from the man’s thighs. Being closest, Marty clamped his hands against the wounds and held tight until Mark and Emma came with dressings.

  ‘Bind it tightly,’ Emma said to Mark, then she half smiled. ‘Sorry, telling you something you already knew, wasn’t I?’

  And while Emma bound the man’s other leg, Marty fastened a collar around the man’s neck while Dave slid a spine board down behind him. Once strapped to that, Emma was happy for them to lift him onto the stretcher.

  ‘Let’s get him airborne,’ Marty said, hurrying to the chopper, Mark and Dave following him with the stretcher, while Emma jogged alongside, adjusting the oxygen mask the ambos had fitted.

  He had the aircraft ready for lift-off by the time Mark confirmed the patient was secure, and as they rose into the air, he glanced into the rear-view mirror in front of him and saw Emma kneeling by the patient, fitting a cannula into the patient’s hand, ready for fluid resuscitation.

  All in all, it had been a good grab and go—slightly delayed by the problem of extricating the man but they’d still make it to hospital not far outside what the emergency staff considered the first golden hour.

  He felt a sense of satisfaction, although another glance in the mirror—another glance at Emma attending to their patient—reminded him the job wasn’t finished.

  Not yet.

  * * *

  The flight home from Retford to Braxton was uneventful, and beyond Marty congratulating them all on a job well done, there wasn’t much chat.

  No doubt, Emma thought, because none of them felt confident about their patient’s future. His injuries had been horrific, not only the
damage to both legs but internal injuries caused by the steering wheel being driven back into his body.

  ‘I’m glad I’m not in Retford Emergency tonight,’ she said quietly, and while Mark and Dave murmured their agreement, Marty was far more positive.

  ‘At least there they had a full team of trauma specialists standing by and he’ll be whisked into Theatre probably before we get home.’

  ‘Is he always this positive?’ Emma asked, and Mark and Dave laughed.

  ‘He’s the world’s greatest optimist,’ Mark told her.

  ‘Yep,’ Dave added, ‘his glass isn’t just half-full, it’s practically brimming over.’

  Why? Emma wanted to ask, but the two crewmen were indulging in a ‘remember the time’ conversation and she tuned out to think about her own positivity, which she believed was fairly strong.

  Except when she was tired, or the boys were playing up, or—

  No, she told herself firmly, she was a very positive person.

  But driving home with Marty, in the close confines of a vehicle, with whatever it was going on inside her body whenever he was near, she was positively confused.

  How ridiculous!

  She was tired, probably exhausted, that’s all it was.

  ‘You tired?’ he said, picking up her thought.

  ‘Not really,’ she said, though why she denied it she had no idea.

  ‘Liar,’ he said softly. ‘I can see your head nodding. You’re nearly asleep.’

  And whatever restraint she’d been managing to hold onto snapped.

  ‘Okay, I’m tired, exhausted, in fact. There, are you satisfied now?’

  ‘Hey,’ he said softly, reaching out to touch her arm. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you. I was just teasing.’

  ‘Then don’t,’ Emma retorted, although she rather thought she meant Don’t touch me rather than Don’t tease.

  ‘I won’t again, I promise,’ he said, but as she turned towards him she saw a smile hovering about his lips and knew his eyes would be smiling as well.

  What was it with this man, that stirred her up so much?

  He pulled up outside her house and she hesitated before opening the door, wanting to make amends for her earlier tetchiness.