Now that he’d been pulled back he was feeling sick and empty. Maybe…just maybe loving again wouldn’t be so bad.

Just Ginny, he told himself hastily in case his mind should get any funny ideas about taking it further. Maybe Ginny and I could have some sort of relationship. The thought of holding her again, of lying with her, of burying his body in hers, was infinitely appealing. And Ginny didn’t want attachments. She wouldn’t want children. They could be a career couple, carefully independent but meeting somewhere…

Meeting where? In marriage?

His mind closed on the idea-but then the thought of Ginny rose up before him. He let the image stay and the more he let it drift in his mind the more seductive the image grew.

‘Just Ginny,’ he said into the darkness. ‘If she’ll have me. If she’ll let some of her precious independence go. Not that I want her to be dependent…’

What did he want?

And the answer came back.

He wanted Ginny.

His cellphone rang again and he clicked through to the speaker on his truck console.

‘You on your way, Doc?’ It was Clive Horace, sounding anxious. ‘Stephanie’s just chucked again and that makes it five times since midnight. Won’t she be getting dehydrated?’

Yeah, Fergus thought, shoving away the image of the seductive Ginny until he had more time to focus. Stephanie would. He needed to concentrate on medicine.

Ginny would have to wait.

But not very long, he told himself fiercely. She was still at the boatshed, lying sleepily in her cocoon of ancient blankets.

Maybe if he was fast…

He wouldn’t be fast. If Stephanie had vomited five times since midnight, she’d probably need to be admitted.

Medicine was for now.

Ginny was for tomorrow.


Their paths didn’t cross in the morning. Ginny came into the hospital early and spent two hours running a prenatal clinic she’d organised. She’d done it simply by putting a notice in the window of the general store.

“If you’re pregnant and would like your check-ups done here instead of Bowra, come along on Tuesday morning.”

The obstetrician in Bowra was delighted to have pressure taken off what was a vast workload, and Ginny ended up with twelve ladies to see. She did the antenatal checks but it ended up as an impromptu get-together of Cradle Lake’s prospective mums-something just as valuable as any medical advice she could have given.

Fergus came in at the end, but Ginny had just left.

‘She’s left us to natter,’ one of the ladies-a woman who by the look of her was planning on delivering her entire family in one hit-told him. ‘Oh, but she’s lovely. We were just telling her that when you leave we’ll try to persuade her to stay, and she didn’t say no. Wouldn’t that be fantastic?’

Fantastic?

Fergus frowned. Richard didn’t have long left. Ginny would leave straight away-he was certain of that. She’d organise Madison’s adoption and then head back to the city.

Which was where their relationship could maybe become something they could take seriously. Maybe they could take a step or two toward permanence.

Hell, it had been a one-night stand so far, he told himself, startling himself with where his thoughts were going. He’d made love to a woman who’d made him feel alive again, and it had started him thinking that maybe he didn’t need to cut himself right off from the world.

Fine. But one step at a time. If it worked out…

It had to work out.

No, it didn’t, he told himself, saying farewell to the happy cluster of mums-to-be and striding out to the truck to take a quick ride out to see Richard. He’d promised to drop in on Richard this morning and it was almost lunchtime.

And Ginny would be there.

There was no reason at all for his steps to quicken as he strode out of the hospital toward…

Toward Ginny?

His steps definitely quickened.

CHAPTER EIGHT

THERE were dogs at Ginny’s farmhouse.

Fergus pulled into the yard and he could see things had changed. There was a fenced-off area to one side of the veranda, a temporary construction of chicken wire and garden stakes.

There were three dogs inside the pen and Ginny was sitting in the middle of them.

Up on the veranda sat Madison. Every time he’d come she’d been sitting lethargic and uninterested. Now she was sitting on the top step, watching with what seemed almost eagerness.

Richard was still in bed. He was getting weaker by the day and it was too much to expect him to get up now, but Tony had hauled his bed around so that he, too, could watch. Tony was sitting on the end of the bed, overseeing the entire proceedings.

This was some strange hospital.

‘You’re going to have to be polite if you want some hot dog,’ Ginny was saying, and he hauled his attention back to her without any effort at all. ‘Sit.’

What was she doing?

Three dogs. Three disreputable mutts. One looked like some sort of whippet, long, rangy and lean. There was a black and white border collie with a little bit of kelpie thrown in for good measure, and there was a little dog, a wiry-looking terrier who looked sharply intelligent. It was this dog Ginny was addressing. The other two were already seated, waiting expectantly.

While he watched, the little dog gave a tentative yap.

‘Your friends are waiting,’ Ginny said. ‘You sit and you all get a bit of hot dog. Sit, sir.’

‘Yap.’

‘You heard what I said.’

The dog stood four square and looked at Ginny. Ginny sat on the grass and eyeballed the dog straight back.

‘You want the hot dog? Then sit.’ She raised the hot dog over the little dog’s head so it was forced to look up. She pressed the dog’s chest very gently.

The dog sat.

‘Well done,’ she said, and beamed, and handed out three pieces of hot dog.

From the veranda came the sound of clapping. Fierce clapping from Tony. Faint clapping from Richard. And-amazingly-an even fainter clapping from Madison.

‘What’s going on?’ he demanded, and all eyes swivelled to Fergus. The dogs reacted with startled aggression, hurling themselves against the chicken wire.

‘Hey,’ Ginny said. ‘Manners. You want more hot dog? Quiet!’

Her last word was a roar. Three tails went between six back legs. ‘Sit,’ she said, and beamed as they sat. She promptly distributed more hot dog.

‘They’re Oscar’s dogs,’ he said on a note of discovery, and she grinned and climbed over the chicken wire.

‘I knew you were clever.’

‘Why are Oscar’s dogs here?’

‘Ginny always was fabulous with dogs,’ Richard managed, giving his sister a faint smile.

She bounded up the veranda steps, three at a time, reached the bed and gave her brother a hug.

‘I still am. I still will be. Weren’t they great?’

‘My daddy likes dogs,’ Madison said cautiously, and Richard smiled at his daughter.

‘Your daddy certainly does.’ He had to stop there-energy was fading as they watched-but some sort of link had definitely been made, Fergus thought. My daddy… Things had happened since he’d been here last.

‘Oscar had six dogs,’ he said, feeling his way.

Ginny plumped down on the step beside Madison and hauled her in so they were linked hard, side by side.

‘These are the good dogs. The others had to go to a home for bad dogs.’

Fergus stared at the dogs. He stared at Richard and then at Ginny and Madison. Then he turned to the nurse on duty. ‘Do you know what’s going on?’

‘You know Oscar’s agreed to stay in the nursing home?’ Tony asked, and Fergus nodded.

‘Yeah.’

‘The council ranger called at the place yesterday,’ Tony told him. ‘Ginny’s been feeding the dogs and caring for the stock in general. One of the neighbouring farmers has agreed to take on the sheep until things are sorted out but no one wants the dogs. Oscar’s said he doesn’t care, so the ranger told Ginny yesterday that he’d take them to…’ He hesitated and glanced at Madison. ‘To the dogs’ home.’

‘Right,’ Fergus said, still feeling his way. He looked at the way Ginny was hugging Madison and he thought, She’s changed. Something’s definitely changed.

Was it the way he thought about Ginny?

Sure, that had changed, but there was more. Until yesterday Ginny had treated Madison with kindness. She’d held her at the funeral. She’d treated her feet, she’d told her stories, she’d done the physical caring, but there’d been that tiny distancing. A professional distancing, he’d thought.

Today there was no such distance. Today she was hugging Madison as if she meant it.

‘I went over this morning,’ Ginny told him, still hugging Madison. ‘On the way back from…where I’d been. I knew the whippet-or sort of. Years ago, when we left our farm, Oscar took over our two dogs. He always liked a dog pack, even if he never trained them, and back then when I was a teenager it was either leave our dogs with Oscar or have them put down. The social worker who…who took me away said I didn’t have a choice.’ She gestured down to the whippet in the pen. ‘I’m guessing this one’s related. Anyway, I ran them all through their paces.’

‘Paces?’

He still sounded cautious, he thought, but it behoved him to be cautious. He’d come out here with plans for himself which just might include Ginny. But suddenly Ginny’s side of the equation didn’t look quite as uncomplicated as it had last night.

‘I fed them and took their food away halfway through their meal,’ she said. ‘I’d fed them last night so they weren’t all that hungry but, despite that, three of them tried to bite me. The other three looked at me like I was being mean but they let me do it. That was test one. I sat down with them for an hour and at the end of the hour I had the three non-biters on my knee, all telling me they were prepared to be devoted. The other three took themselves off to the other side of the yard and refused to be friendly.’