tiny, underweight for his age, with scarring, healing wounds and skin grafts still covering his left side. He’d been burned right up to his chin. The only parts of him that seemed unhurt were his bright little brown eyes, his snub nose and his mop of silver blond curls.
Yes, Em loved him. She’d unashamedly lost her professional detachment, and she’d lost her heart completely.
‘Have you been waiting for me?’ she whispered. ‘I thought you’d be asleep, you ragamuffin!’
‘He’s supposed to be.’ Lori had followed her friend into the room. ‘He’s been down for half an hour. But he’s so accustomed to seeing you in the evenings that I can’t get him to sleep until you come.’
‘What’s the problem?’ Em started at the sound of the deep tones. Jonas also had followed them in and was leaning against the door, watching them.
Em and baby were quite a pair, he thought, and if Em could have known what he was thinking she would have blushed to her socks.
She was a strikingly good-looking woman, tall and dark and beautiful, and now, with the child pressed against her breast, she looked stunningly maternal. Robby was still heavily bandaged. He wore a smooth elastic skin to stop his grafts from scarring, and his white dressings were in stark contrast to Em’s smooth and darker skin.
The sight set Jonas back more than he cared to admit. He shifted against the door and rephrased his question. ‘What happened to the baby?’
And Lori told him, while he watched Em’s skilful hands lift away dressings and elastic to check the healing wounds.
He could have helped, he thought—it took several minutes and Lori assisted, but with Jonas’s help it would have been quicker—but he was content, for the moment, to watch.
He was getting to know Emily Mainwaring, and the more he saw, the more he approved.
‘What?’ Em said crossly, as she taped the last dressing, and he started at her tone.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘You’ve been staring at me for ten minutes. I suppose you have seen burns dressed before.’
‘I have,’ He smiled at her, defusing her crossness. ‘Many times.’
‘There’s nothing different here.’
‘By the look of those burns, he should still be in hospital,’ Jonas said cautiously, feeling his way. Lori was watching both of them with interest, but the tension was all between Jonas and Em.
‘Probably. He has more skin grafts to go,’ Em told him, once more gathering the little boy to her breast and cradling him like her own. ‘But he was becoming institutionalised. I couldn’t bear it.’
‘And Lori’s a good house mother?’
‘The best,’ Em said warmly, and looked over Robby’s fuzzy head at her friend. ‘We’ve had some wonderful housemothers here. Wendy. Erin. The most committed women… And Lori’s the absolute best.’
‘I’m glad to hear it,’ Jonas said simply. ‘I suspected as much, and I’m grateful. I persuaded Lori to look after Anna’s kids today on a temporary basis—I gather she’s the only home mother without a full house—but if there’s a major problem and Anna needs an operation then they’ll need to come here for a while.’
Em frowned, thinking it through. ‘Is that possible, Lori?’
‘It is,’ Lori told her. ‘I’ve just got off the phone from the powers that be. We can juggle it. Jonas wants something concrete to tell his sister tonight. She needs to know that, no matter what, her kids will be safe.’
‘She’s having second thoughts,’ Jonas told Em. ‘About having the tests. She says there’s no one to look after the children if she has to have an operation, so why bother having the tests at all?’
‘She’s badly frightened,’ Em said, and he nodded.
‘I know. That’s why everything has to be settled and easy.’
‘You don’t think you could assure her you’d take care of the kids yourself?’
‘Even if Anna would agree—which she probably wouldn’t—I don’t think I could,’ he admitted honestly, his engaging smile flashing back again. ‘They’re four, six and eight years old respectively, and I’m a bachelor, born and bred. My childminding skills are about nil. It’d be much easier to work for you and pay Lori to do it.’
‘Coward.’
He chuckled out loud. ‘Rather be a chicken than a dead hen.’ Then he paused. Robby had snuggled into Em’s shoulder and was falling asleep before their eyes.
Institutionalised? Maybe not, he thought as he watched. This wasn’t a baby who was turning away from the world. The little one was bonding with the adult who’d become permanent. With Em.
And Em knew it. The bonding was a state Em mistrusted, and it was the real reason the little boy was no longer in hospital. She couldn’t handle her increasing feelings for him, but she had to keep treating him. Apart from being the only doctor in the place, she couldn’t bear not to.
She held him now, and the same familiar longing flooded through her. The longing to hold him for ever had hit unexpectedly when she’d treated him the night his parents had died—the night of the accident—and it had never faded. And, quite simply, she didn’t have a clue what to do about it.
‘Em, you know Lori and you’re great with Anna. I have an idea.’ Jonas was speaking to her, and she had to force her attention away from her baby—no, her patient—and back to Jonas. He glanced at his watch. ‘Have you eaten?’
Eaten? He had to be joking. When did she get dinner before nine at night?
‘No,’ she said shortly, and he nodded.
‘Then can I ask you to eat and then do a house call?’ he said. ‘With me? I’ll prepay you for the house call with fish and chips on the beach.’
‘Fish and chips…’
‘You do eat fish and chips?’ Once more came his resigned tone that told her he thought she was a dope, and she had to chuckle. OK, she was acting like one. Maybe she even deserved to be treated as such.
‘Sure I eat fish and chips,’ she told him. ‘You show me a resident of Bay Beach who doesn’t! If I’m hungry enough—like now—I’ll even eat the newspaper they’re wrapped in. But what’s your house call?’
‘To my sister.’
She’d suspected as much. ‘Why?’
‘To assure her that Lori is perfectly capable of childcare. She doesn’t trust me. It took me three days to have her leave the kids here for two hours this morning. Now I’m working on leaving them here again tomorrow, and then on the possibility of longer-term child care after that. You could help.’
‘Why would she listen to me any more than she’d listen to you?’
‘She doesn’t trust men,’ Jonas said simply, and behind them Lori grinned.
‘Wise lady.’
‘Hey!’ Jonas smiled at them both, and spread his hands in mute appeal. ‘What’s there to mistrust?’
Everything, thought Em, but she didn’t say a word.
‘Do you have any more urgent calls?’ he asked.
‘I have an evening ward round.’
‘That can wait. I’d imagine you wear a beeper.’
‘Of course I wear a beeper.’
‘Then I’ll help you with your ward round and then the evening’s ours,’ he told her grandly. ‘Apart from house calls and emergencies. What more could two people want?’