A Wedding for the Single Dad Read online

  Dragon?

  Lauren?

  He was spending too much time with Maddie, for whom dragons—mostly friendly—lurked in every corner.

  He was just beginning to think he’d have to abandon his means of transport and go in himself when his daughter reappeared, helmet swinging from one hand, the other towing Lauren behind her.

  ‘She had to finish with someone else,’ Maddie announced as she delivered her prize to her father.

  ‘Are you mad?’ the prize demanded, in what seemed like an echo of those other words she’d spoken to him. ‘Riding around on Henry’s old motorbike with only one hand?’

  He shrugged, unwilling to say that yesterday’s koala adventure had left his ankle far more painful than his shoulder, especially as she was still frowning at him.

  ‘I did cheat and use the other hand—and the shoulder feels fine. You did a good job!’

  She brushed away the compliment, no doubt aware he was buttering her up.

  ‘Isn’t there a car?’ she asked, then answered herself. ‘I guess the locum is using the four-wheel drive, but I’m sure there’s another car—’

  ‘Then you might remember the size of it,’ he said, and won a half-smile.

  ‘Bit hard to get in and out of?’ she guessed. ‘Painful, too, I’d imagine. Not that you should be driving with only one hand, so that was a silly suggestion anyway.’

  ‘Anyway, Madge has taken the small car into the village. That’s why we’re here.’

  ‘You’ve escaped? Made a dash for it?’

  He grinned at her and shook his head. ‘My mother,’ he said in mock-repressive tones, ‘has gone shopping for a leg of lamb. Apparently, women living on their own never cook themselves a leg of lamb.’ He paused, and then added, ‘Men either, I suppose. But, anyway, she wants to thank you for rescuing me yesterday, and would like you to come to dinner tonight.’

  ‘You assume I live alone?’ she asked, eyebrows rising, and he sighed.

  Bad enough that he lived with two women—well, one and a half—who argued with him all the time, but now this neighbour—his only close neighbour, his quite beautiful neighbour...

  ‘We were together on our koala rescue mission for several hours last evening and you didn’t call or text once. Not a single “I might be late” message, or an incoming phone call from a worried husband, friend, relative, partner...whatever. Then you stayed the night—which, I realise, you did for Maddie, not for me, but still...’

  He paused, trying to work out how they’d got so side-tracked.

  Back to the subject of his visit. ‘So, will you come to dinner? Seven?’

  ‘Madge makes great puddings,’ Maddie put in as she pulled on her helmet and clicked the straps together.

  ‘Thank you. I’d be happy to join you,’ Lauren said, and he felt a surprising flip of pleasure at the thought. ‘But you shouldn’t really be moving around too much on that ankle—and get that hand back in the sling as soon as you get home.’

  ‘We rode very slowly, and only on the bush track between our houses.’

  ‘Well, go home and rest anyway,’ she said severely, shaking her head at his folly, although he thought he glimpsed the sparkle of a smile in her eyes.

  ‘Yes, Doctor,’ he said, raising his hand to his forehead in a smart salute, then turning to settle Maddie on the bike behind him, checking her helmet was secure.

  ‘We go very slowly,’ Maddie piped up, ‘because Daddy really doesn’t know how to ride a motorbike! He just likes finding things in Uncle Henry’s old shed and trying them out.’

  He watched Lauren roll her eyes and shake her head, and had to grin. ‘It’s been a while since I rode a motorbike,’ he said.

  A call from inside had her turning away.

  ‘Seven,’ he called after her, really pleased that she’d left the scene before he kicked the engine into life and wobbled his way down the path.

  * * *

  Lauren was glad she had patients to take her mind off this latest encounter with her neighbour—although, as she should have realised, he was one of the main topics of their conversation.

  ‘It’s nice to have some young people up this end of the lake again, isn’t it?’ said Mrs Brimblecombe, while Lauren took her blood pressure.

  ‘Aren’t you counting me as young?’ she teased, smiling at the woman she’d known since she was a child.

  ‘Of course you’re young,’ her patient said. ‘But there’s the new vet, and Kelly, who’s started that café just along the shore a bit, and Beth and her new baby coming...’

  Lauren wrote out the prescription Mrs B had come for while the lady listed all the young people and families who had moved to this end of the lake in the last six months, and although Lauren only half listened, it still seemed a lot.

  How had she not noticed it, this influx of youth?

  Because you’re no longer what most people would consider a youth, she reminded herself.

  But as she saw Mrs B out through the door and ushered in another elderly local—Mr Clarke—her mind was back on the new vet.

  Now, he was young.

  She wondered how long a veterinary course might be in the UK—here it was five years, longer if one wanted to specialise, but over there—

  ‘I was asking if you had all the pieces,’ Mr Clarke said, quite sharply, alerting Lauren to the fact that she’d missed quite a bit of his conversation.

  ‘Of the ultralight?’ she guessed.

  ‘Of course the ultralight,’ Mr Clarke said. ‘I was saying I might be able to help you put it back together. A few of us thought we could help. As a tribute to Henry, you know.’

  Am I that old, she wondered, that aged pensioners of the area are offering me their help?

  ‘I’ll have to have a good look when I have some time,’ she said, aware of the lameness of her answer.

  But if she accepted their help she’d be committing to endless mornings or afternoons listening to discussions on their bowel problems, or comparisons of their drug routines. She’d had experience of that on the rare occasions when she’d dropped into the sailing club for a drink.

  She’d been thinking the rebuilding of the ultralight would be a break away from work...

  She fixed her mind on her patient, listening to his list of symptoms, sloughing off the purely irrelevant items on the list, like the funny noises in his left ear, and deciding, after she’d done the regular checks, that there wasn’t anything much wrong with him.

  ‘Although you do have quite a build-up of wax in both ears,’ Lauren told him. ‘I can easily syringe them out.’

  ‘My mother told me that you should never put anything smaller than your elbow in your ear,’ her patient said, then he smiled. ‘I suppose that’s silly, because you can’t get your elbow into your ear, can you.’

  He proceeded to try the process with both elbows and both ears, while Lauren quietly prepared what she’d need.

  * * *

  ‘It’s not that I mind that they’re all so healthy,’ she said, over a delicious dinner of roast lamb. ‘It’s just that occasionally I’d like—I don’t know—perhaps a challenge.’

  ‘Be careful what you wish for,’ Madge said to her. ‘That one—’ she nodded towards her son ‘—can get into trouble just sitting at his desk. I mean, how many vets do you know who’ve been bitten by a tiger?’

  ‘It was a very small tiger,’ Cam said quickly, but Lauren was shaking her head in disbelief.

  ‘A tiger?’ she echoed.

  ‘It was at the zoo,’ Cam said, defensive now. But he could see he wasn’t going to get away with that. The gleam of mischief in Lauren’s dark eyes told him that much, while that same gleam raised far too many disturbing sensations within his body.

  Attracted to the girl next door—what a cliché!

  ‘And it was just a cub,’ he said, hopi
ng his voice sounded less distracted than his mind was.

  Lauren was hanging on Madge’s every word, her lips quirked into a teasing smile, loving these tales of him as a foolish young student.

  ‘A cub bite that put you in hospital for a week,’ Madge reminded him, relishing his embarrassment.

  ‘It had bad teeth.’

  He was even more defensive now, but the smile on Lauren’s face told him she was enjoying this as much as Madge.

  Not that he minded Lauren smiling and laughing at him.

  In fact, his earlier impression that she was beautiful was enhanced by that smile.

  ‘Pardon?’ Lauren had spoken. He shouldn’t have been thinking about her smile.

  He had far too much on his plate, what with learning about the practice while the locum was still here, settling Maddie into school, and just generally getting himself organised. He had to do something about Maddie’s mother, too! Get that part of his life organised. She wasn’t coming back, so it was time he insisted she sign the divorce papers.

  How could he concentrate on all these things if a simple smile from a woman he barely knew threw him into a spin?

  ‘I wondered if it was septicaemia that had you in hospital?’ Lauren was asking, the smile still lingering in her eyes despite the fact that septicaemia was a serious issue.

  He shrugged, and took a gulp of the red wine he’d found in the cellar. ‘They didn’t say so, but it had to be something similar.’

  ‘Poor you,’ she said, with a slighter smile this time, taking a decorous sip from her wine.

  ‘And then there was the elephant seal,’ Madge reminded him.

  Cam looked apologetically at Lauren. ‘Once she’s started thinking of all the most embarrassing moments of my life it’s hard to stop her.’

  ‘Oh, but I’d love to hear about the elephant seal,’ Lauren said.

  He knew she was teasing...quite liked it, in fact. But it was time to bring this to an end.

  Right now his life was complicated enough, without introducing a smiling, teasing and, yes, tempting woman into it.

  If Kate would only sign those divorce papers...

  He pushed the thought away and joined the conversation.

  ‘Next thing we know we’ll be back in my childhood, with Madge bringing up my being chased by the Loch Ness monster.’

  ‘Were you chased by it?’ Lauren asked, with so much merriment dancing in her eyes that he wanted to kiss her.

  ‘He only thought it was the monster,’ Madge put in—which, Cam knew, would only make Lauren more determined to pursue it.

  ‘Oh, look at the time,’ he said. ‘Please excuse me for a few minutes. I’ve got to read Maddie’s bedtime story.’

  ‘I want Lauren to read it.’

  The determined voice from the top of the stairs suggested she’d been there for some time.

  ‘No—’ he began, but Lauren was already pushing back her chair.

  ‘I’d love to—if you’ll both excuse me? That lamb was delicious, Madge. I’ll be back soon.’

  ‘She’s in the small bedroom to the right of the stairs,’ Cam said, then took a very deep breath and looked at his mother.

  ‘Really, Ma you didn’t have to trot out all those stories.’

  ‘Nonsense, she loved them,’ Madge replied, her face alive with delight. ‘She’s really nice, isn’t she? And Poppy, the young woman who was in the sanctuary today, says she’s single.’

  ‘Ma!’ Cam said, turning quickly to make sure Lauren hadn’t escaped from Maddie after only one story.

  ‘Well, it’s time you started thinking about marrying again. Maddie needs a mother, and I can’t stay with you for ever. I’ve got my own life to lead.’

  ‘Maddie’s already got a mother,’ he reminded her. ‘She could still return!’

  ‘Do you want her to?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he muttered, but the new image in his mind of a laughing woman with warm brown eyes told him that answer wasn’t entirely true.

  Glory be, he thought. Who knew Uncle Henry’s bequest would lead to such a dilemma?

  * * *

  The story was about a family going on a bear hunt, and as Lauren read she wondered what it would be like to have a family—to be part of one. A family with children like Maddie, always interested and keen to know things.

  Like so many children who’d grown up without a mother and without siblings, she’d often dreamed of having a family of her own. And then, what seemed like a very long time ago, she’d had...not dreams so much as expectations that all those things would happen.

  Engaged to David, expecting life to spread out before her in the seemingly normal way...for her, nearly through her medical degree, ‘normal’ had seemed like a wedding, children, family holidays here at the lake.

  Caring for a beloved parent with Alzheimer’s hadn’t been in the plan, and it certainly hadn’t fitted in to David’s plans. But how could she have walked away from the man who’d brought her up—been mother and father to her? And how deep could David’s love have been that he’d refused to countenance any compromise?

  That had hurt the most.

  Would Cam...?

  She batted away thoughts of Cam—it was a totally senseless comparison. She might be attracted to him, but surely that was just physical. And even if it wasn’t, he was far too young for her—there had to be a ten-year gap between them, and the memory of David—the pain of losing him—still lingered deep in her subconscious...had left a lack of trust...

  ‘You missed a page,’ Maddie told her, bringing her back to the present with a jolt.

  She turned back, read the page, and eventually finished the story, by which time Maddie was sound asleep. But sitting there, watching the sleeping child, made her wonder if she really wanted to go back downstairs.

  She felt at peace—something she was unlikely to feel in the vicinity of Campbell Grahame who, with his eruption into her life, had stirred all kinds of strange sensations within her. Sensations she hadn’t felt or even thought about for years, and definitely shouldn’t be thinking about now. He was a married man with a child, and presumably his wife could return—having found herself—at any time.

  A memory of Maddie’s voice telling her that Madge made lovely puddings reminded Lauren that said pudding had probably been made and, as a guest, she would be required to at least sample it.

  She headed back downstairs, aware of how familiar the house was to her, and yet now, with its new inhabitants, unfamiliar as well.

  ‘It’s a nursery pudding, really,’ Madge announced as Lauren came back into the room. ‘Just bread and butter pudding. But the family love it, and I know Cam will always sneak a bit when he can’t sleep and is wandering the house in the middle of the night, wondering how he came to be sharing his life with so many strange creatures.’

  So he had nights like that, too? Only when it was her she was usually wondering about getting the guttering fixed, and whether she could afford to have that done, and the chimney swept before winter.

  ‘I don’t suppose you can give us the name of a good chimney sweep?’

  The question, seeming to come directly from her thoughts, startled her, and she stared at the man, trying to see some sign that he could actually read her mind.

  Freaky!

  ‘I thought Maddie would like to have a real fire to sit in front of, make toast and snuggle up, even if it doesn’t really get cold enough to justify it.’

  ‘Oh, it gets cold enough,’ Lauren assured him, seizing on a bit of the conversation that was easy to answer.

  ‘Then we’ll need the chimney checked,’ he said. ‘Henry might not have used it for years.’

  ‘I do know someone. I need to get him to check mine anyway, so I’ll give him a call and let you or Madge know when he can come.’

  Good, rational conversation
.

  Far better than considering the effect this man was having on her, or debating with herself over David’s desertion...

  ‘This pudding is delicious, Madge. And you’re right—not only do I never bother to cook roast lamb for myself, but it’s years since I made a dessert of any kind.’

  ‘Then you must come every Tuesday,’ Madge announced. ‘That’s always our roast night.’

  Did she want to get so involved with these people?

  See more of Cam in a domestic setting like this?

  Some instinct—self-preservation—suggested not.

  She was well over David now, and she had a new and different—not to mention extremely busy—life. But that didn’t mean she’d forgotten the pain of his rejection—the pain of loving and losing, the talk in the gossip-starved Lakes area.

  ‘She’s not wearing the ring any more...’

  ‘I heard he’s taken up with someone else...’

  The gossip had reverberated through the community, exacerbating the pain and her feelings of loneliness. To go through that again...

  ‘We’ll see,’ she said. ‘Things are quiet at the moment, but come the school holidays, when all the city people arrive, I’m usually too busy for anything regular.’

  To prevent further pressure from Madge, she turned to Cam, who’d been concentrating far too hard on his pudding.

  ‘How’s our little koala today?’ she asked. ‘Have you seen her?’

  He looked up and smiled at her, as if well aware of why she’d changed the conversation.

  ‘She’s well, and eating leaves,’ he said. ‘The volunteers who were there today tell me we have to change the dressings on her paws every two days, so I’ll do that tomorrow and check the wounds. And we had a baby wombat brought in today. I’ve read up, over the years, on the animals Henry talked of in his letters, but I had no idea they could be so small...and almost totally hairless. Maddie and I both fell in love with it.’

  ‘They’re born about the size of a jelly bean, and then they crawl up into the mother’s pouch—which, in wombats, is backward-facing, so it doesn’t fill up with stones and dirt as she shuffles along. They attach to a teat there, and it kind of swells in their mouth to keep it attached until it’s big enough to occasionally poke its head out.’