Making Christmas Special Again. Annie O'Neil
dog, but...
When she looked back up at the screen Max was all business. Times. Schedules. Anything else they needed to bring. She answered his questions as efficiently as possible, all the while telling her hammering heart that she could do this. She could survive a week with Max Kirkpatrick. Besides, the second her brother Charles laid eyes on him she knew he wouldn’t pass the big brother approval check list. Not that Charles was officially in charge of who she dated but having a second opinion after her disastrous elopement had seemed pretty wise, all things considered.
She followed Max’s hand as it stuffed a few of his wayward curls back into submission.
What Charles didn’t know...
As they signed off, Esme looked out the window towards the castle, merrily twinkling away in the early evening gloaming. It looked like something out of a fairy-tale. It was far too easy to imagine that long dreamed-of kiss under the starlight with all of the glittery warmth still swirling round her chest. Glittery warmth brought to life by one dark-haired, reluctant hero.
Good grief.
What had she just agreed to?
‘How long’s it going to take, Doc?’
Max gave his back-seat passenger a quick glance. ‘As long as it takes, Euan.’
About eight days with any luck. Then he wouldn’t have to go through the hoop-jumping Esme had no doubt set up for him. Attending Euan’s training classes. Ensuring Fenella, his other ‘volunteer’, was all right as her elderly mother couldn’t come along either, owing to previous commitments. Day in. Day out. Dining together. Training together. ‘Fun time.’ Whatever the hell that was. Together.
Bonding.
He didn’t bond. He assessed, treated, then moved on. Precisely why he’d opted to work in A and E after hanging up his camos. Move ’em in, move ’em out. Zero time to bond.
Bonding made you start Plants to Paws, mate. You’re going to have to own it one day.
Unbidden, an image of Esme introducing the dogs via the video call to Euan and Fenella popped into his head. He was pretty sure he was the only one who’d caught the little surreptitious swipes she’d made at her cheeks when the patients’ eyes had first lit on the pooches. He was positive he was the only one in the room who’d itched to reach out and wipe them away.
‘D’you think Ajax is going to be allowed in the castle?’
‘How would I know? Do I look like I was raised in a castle?’
Euan snorted then asked, ‘Hey, Doc, I was supposed to do a maths quiz today. Epic thanks for getting me out of school, mate!’
Max glanced into the rear-view mirror of his clunky old four-by-four and meet the lad’s eyes. ‘I’m not your mate and this isn’t a jolly, pal. There will be homework tonight. Of that you can be sure.’
‘Why’re you so tetchy?’ Euan countered in a tone that suggested he was well used to cranky adults.
‘I’m not tetchy.’ Max’s knuckles whitened against the steering wheel.
‘Actually,’ Fenella gently cut in, ‘you are a bit tetchy.’
Max harrumphed. Whatever. So he was a bit out of sorts. Spending a week with a fairy dogmother who, via numerous phone and video calls, had managed to do all sorts of things to the steel walls he’d built round his psyche wasn’t exactly something he’d been looking forward to.
Not to mention the annoyingly inviting visions that kept popping into his head of Esme in a ski suit. Esme in a onesie sprawled in front of a roaring fire. Esme in nothing at all.
He pulled off the multi-lane motorway that led north from Glasgow. The fastest option. ‘We’ll go the scenic route,’ he growled.
Esme checked her watch. Again.
‘The more you look, the longer he’ll be,’ her colleague Margaret teased, then gave Esme’s shoulder a little pat. ‘Don’t worry. Lover boy will be here soon.’
Esme gave a dismissive click of her tongue. Good thing they were friends as well as co-workers.
‘He’s not lover boy! And I’m definitely not worried.’ Esme flounced away from the window. Worry wasn’t her problem. Lust was. And the last person she was going to tell was Margaret—a woman on a single-track mission to get Esme to date someone ‘interesting’. Just because Margaret was now madly in love, it didn’t mean Esme had to be as well.
‘What’s he like? Your sexy doc? And don’t trot out the line about how you can’t say until Charles meets him because we both know what the men he approves of are like.’ She feigned an enormous yawn to show just how interesting she thought his choices were.
Esme laughed. Her brother did have a tendency towards introducing her to men who...well...lacked lustre, but she’d told him she wanted a man who didn’t have a single surprising thing about him. He’d taken her at her word. Not that he played cupid all that often, but when he did? Suffice it to say there had yet to be a love match.
‘Ez? C’mon. Details, please.’
‘I told you. He’s a Glaswegian A and E doctor.’ With gorgeously curly brown hair and the darkest, most fathomless brown eyes she’d ever seen. He’d been a bit stubbly when they’d had their last video call. She could just imagine his cheek rasping against hers when he—No! No, she could not.
Margaret grabbed a gingerbread man from the tray Mrs Renwick, Heatherglen’s long-term cook, had given the therapy centre staff and held it in front of her face. ‘Won’t you tell your dear friend Mags something more interesting about the big handsome doctor?’
‘Who said anything about him being handsome?’
Margaret just about killed herself laughing. ‘You didn’t have to. The way your cheeks go bright pink each time you come off a video call with him tells me everything I need to know.’ She began to chant in a sing-song voice, ‘Esme needs some mistletoe!’
Esme picked up another gingerbread man and stuffed it into her friend’s open mouth.
‘Do not.’
Margaret tugged on her staff hoodie. When her head reappeared she grinned. ‘Suit yourself.’ She pulled on a gilet over her hoodie. ‘I’ll see for myself in a few seconds.’ She flicked her thumb towards the window. ‘Lover boy’s here!’ Before Esme could protest—again—Margaret was on her way out the door, saying she’d get the dogs ready.
Esme tried to ignore the tiny tremor in her hand as she took a distracted bite of the gingerbread man, her eyes glued to the battered four by four that would give their new vet Aksel’s bashed-up staff vehicle a run for its money. His arrival had been a godsend at the busy veterinary clinic. Running it and the canine therapy centre was a Herculean task and Aksel tackled everything Esme put his way with a fabulous mix of pragmatism and care. Mind you. Aksel was so loved up these days they could’ve issued him a wheelbarrow and a workload for ten men and he would’ve accepted with a smile.
Her thoughts landed in a no-go zone. It was a bit too easy to picture Max gazing at her in the same adoring way Aksel lit up whenever Flora, the rehab centre’s physio, appeared.
The last time Esme had looked at someone like that she’d lost her heart and hundreds of thousands of pounds of her family’s money. Not to mention her dignity, sense of self-worth and, yes, she might as well admit it, since the divorce papers had been finalised, nearly nine years ago now, she’d found it hard to believe she was worthy of love. All the compliments Harding, her ex-husband, had lavished on her had turned out to be lies.