A Month To Marry The Midwife. Fiona McArthur
She glanced at the man in front of her—experience in a suit. But not big on conversation. Still, she was tenacious when there was something she wanted, and she’d drag it out of him. Eventually.
In the scheme of things Lighthouse Bay Maternity needed a shake up and maybe she could use him. He’d be totally abreast of the latest best-practice trends, a leader in safe maternity care. He should be a golden opportunity to sway the sticklers to listen to the mothers instead of the easy fix of sending women away.
But, if he wasn’t going to sit down then she would deal with him outside the confines of her office. She stood and slipped determinedly past him. It was a squeeze and required body contact. She’d just have to deal with it. ‘Would you like a tour?’
* * *
Lemon verbena. He knew the scent because at the last conference he’d presented at, all the wives had been raving about the free hotel amenities and they’d made him smell it. It hadn’t resonated with him then as it did now. Sam Southwell breathed it in and his visceral response set off rampant alarm bells. He was floundering to find his brain. There was something about the way her buttoned-to-the-neck, long-sleeved white shirt had launched a missile straight to the core of him and exploded, and now the scent of her knocked him sideways as she brushed past.
The way her chin lifted and her cool, grey eyes assessed him and found him wanting, giving him the ultimate hands-off warning when he hadn’t even thought about hands on—hadn’t for a long time until now—impressed him. Obviously a woman who made up her own mind. She wasn’t overawed by him in the least and that was a good thing.
He stared at the wall where ‘Swift’ had stood a second ago and used all of his concentration to ram the feelings of sheer confusion and lust back down into the cave he used for later thought, and tried to sound at least present for the conversation. She must be thinking he was an arrogant sod, but his brain was gasping, struggling, stumped by the reaction he was having to her.
She was right. Being jammed in this shoebox of an office wasn’t helping. What an ironic joke that his father had thought this isolated community would help him return to normal when in fact he’d just fallen off a Lighthouse Bay cliff. His stomach lurched.
He turned slowly to face her as she waited, not quite tapping her foot. He began to feel better. Impatience wasn’t a turn-on.
‘Yes. A tour would be excellent,’ he said evenly. She must think he was the most complete idiot but he was working to find headspace to fit it all in. And he could work fast.
The place he could handle. Heck, he could do it in his sleep. He had no idea why he was so het up about it. But this woman? His reaction to her? A damnably different kettle of fish. Disturbing. As in, deeply and diabolically disturbing.
‘How many beds do you have here?’ A sudden picture of Ellie Swift on a bed popped into his head and arrested him. She’d have him arrested, more likely, he thought wryly. He was actually having a breakdown. His dad was right. He did need to learn to breathe.
SAM HADN’T SLEPT with a woman for years. Not since his wife had died. He hadn’t wanted to and in fact, since he’d used work to bury grief and guilt, with all the extra input, his career had actually taken off. Hence, he hadn’t had the time to think about sex, let alone act on it.
Now his brain had dropped to somewhere past his waistline, a nether region that had been asleep for years and had just inconveniently roared into life like an express train, totally inappropriate and unwelcome. Good grief. He closed his eyes tightly to try and clear the pictures filling his head. He was an adolescent schoolboy again.
‘Are you okay?’ Her voice intruded and he snapped his lids open.
‘Sorry.’ What could he say? He only knew what he couldn’t say. Please don’t look down at my trousers! Instead he managed, ‘I think I need coffee.’
She stopped. Dropped her guard. And as if by magic he felt the midwife morph from her as she switched to nurture mode in an instant. No other profession he knew did it as comprehensively as midwives.
‘You poor thing. Of course. Follow me. We’ll start in the coffee shop. Though Myra isn’t here yet. Didn’t you stop on the way? You probably rushed to get here.’ She shook her head disapprovingly and didn’t wait for an answer but bustled him into a small side room that blossomed out into an empty coffee shop with a huge bay window overlooking the gardens.
She nudged him into a seat. Patted his shoulder. ‘Tea or coffee?’ It had all happened very fast and now his head really was spinning.
‘Coffee—double-shot espresso, hot milk on the side,’ he said automatically, and she stopped and looked at him.
Then she laughed. Her face opened like a sunburst, her eyes sparkled and her beautiful mouth curved with huge amusement. She laughed and snorted, and he was smitten. Just like that. A goner.
She pulled herself together, mouth still twitching. ‘Sorry. Myra could fix that but not me. But I’ll see what I can do.’
Sam stared after her. She was at least twelve feet away now and he gave himself a stern talking-to. Have coffee, and then be normal. He would try. No—he would succeed.
* * *
Poor man. Ellie glanced at the silent, mysterious coffee machine that Myra worked like a maestro and tried to work out how much instant coffee from the jar under the sink, where it had been pushed in disgrace, would equate to a double shot of coffee. She didn’t drink instant coffee. Just the weak, milky ones Myra made for her from the machine under protest. Maybe three teaspoons?
He’d looked so cosmopolitan and handsome as he’d said it—something he said every day. She bit back another snuffle of laughter. Classic. Welcome to Lighthouse Bay. Boy, were they gonna have fun.
She glanced back and decided he wasn’t too worthy of sympathy because it was unfair for a man to have shoulders like that, not to mention a decidedly sinful mouth. And she hadn’t thought about sinful for a while. In fact she couldn’t quite believe she was thinking about it now. She’d thought the whole devastation of the cruelty of men had completely cured her of that foolishness.
She was going to have to spend the next month with this man reappearing on the ward. Day and night if they were both called out. The idea was more unsettling than she’d bargained for and was nothing to do with the way the ward was run.
The jug boiled and she mixed the potent brew. Best not to think of that now. She needed him awake. She scooped up two Anzac biscuits from the jar with a napkin.
‘Here you go.’ Ellie put the black liquid down in front of him and a small glass of hot milk she’d heated in the microwave.
He looked at it. Then at her. She watched fascinated as he poured a little hot milk into the mug with an inch of black coffee at the bottom.
He sipped, threw down the lot and then set it down. No expression. No clues. She was trying really hard not to stare. It must be an acquired taste.
His voice was conversational. ‘Probably the most horrible coffee I’ve ever had.’ He looked up at her. ‘But I do appreciate the effort. I wasn’t thinking.’ He pushed the cup away. Grimaced dramatically. Shook his whole upper body like a dog shedding water. ‘Thank God I brought my machine.’
She wasn’t sure what she could say to that. ‘Wow. Guess it’s going to be a change for you here, away from the big city.’
‘Hmm...’ he murmured noncommittally. ‘But I do feel better after the shock of that.’
She grinned. Couldn’t help herself. ‘So you’re ready for the walk around now?’
He stood up, picked up the biscuits in the napkin, folded them carefully and slipped them into his pocket. ‘Let’s do it.’
Ellie