‘You think he’ll be fine?’

‘I’m sure he’ll be fine. Why wouldn’t he be?’

Cady might be improving but he was still a very tired little boy. He was awake for barely half an hour before his eyes were closing again and Gemma tucked him back into bed. Which left her free.

But Nate wasn’t free. Out the hospital window she could see people arriving at the clinic to see him. He had a full day’s consulting before him.

‘Let me help,’ she urged.

He shook his head. ‘Not today.’

‘I can.’

‘I’m very sure you can.’ His tone was gentle-full of caring-and it had the capacity to unsettle her in a way she didn’t fully understand. ‘But you’re still suffering from the shock of last night and I don’t want you. Tomorrow I’ll set you to work but today is declared a Gemma-holiday.’

A Gemma-holiday. She’d never heard of such a thing. There had been so much on her shoulders lately she hadn’t known which way to turn. And sleep… She’d slept more last night than she’d slept for a month and here was this man urging her to have more.

‘I don’t need-’

‘You do need.’ Nate took her shoulders and propelled her to the glass doors opening onto the veranda. ‘There’s a hammock down by the river which is my very favourite spot in the whole world. Go find it, Dr Campbell. And use it.’

‘But-’

‘No buts. You get yourself rested and recovered. Now.’ He gave her a gentle push toward the edge of the veranda-and then walked inside and closed the door firmly behind her.


She was free to wander as she willed.

The sensation was so novel Gemma could hardly take it in. How long had it been since she’d had some time to herself? Years.

Dazed, she wandered down to the river, and there was Nate’s hammock. It was slung between two trees right at the water’s edge. The sun was dappling through the leaves of the huge eucalypts and the water was rippling between boulders, making a lullaby all by itself. The setting was just perfect. She could see why it was Nate’s favourite place.

She could see Nate here.

But he wasn’t here. He was working. As she should be working. She always worked.

But what had Nate said? It’s a Gemma-holiday.

‘I shouldn’t,’ she told herself. But she did. The sun was warm on her face, the river was rippling and gurgling, there were kookaburras chortling in the gums overhead…

Cady was sleeping. Cady was recovering. Mia was being well cared for by the redoubtable Mrs McCurdle.

God was in his heaven. All was right with her world. For now.

She climbed into the hammock and looked up through the eucalypts at the sky above. And slept.


‘Will it be my lot in life, ad infinitum, to wake you up?’

She opened her eyes. Nate’s face was six inches away from hers and he was laughing at her. ‘Hey, sleepyhead, it’s almost dinnertime.’

Dinnertime.

Dinnertime! She sat up with such a jolt that the hammock veered crazily sideways. She would have fallen but Nate reached out and caught her shoulders, steadying her. And when she was steady he didn’t pull his hands away.

‘Are you OK?’

Was she OK? She thought about it. She was warm and sleepy and incredibly comfortable-and Nate was holding her as if he cared. Was she OK? Yes. A whole lot more than OK.

‘I’m fine.’ She pulled back a little but he didn’t release her.

‘We were starting to get worried.’

‘Worried?’ She sounded dazed. It was the feel of his hands, she thought. It made her feel…well, dazed.

‘I checked at lunchtime and found you sleeping, but I couldn’t believe you’d keep sleeping this long. If your car wasn’t still parked outside I would have thought you’d bolted back to Sydney.’

She looked at him, astonished. ‘Are you kidding? How could I have left Cady?’

‘No.’ His eyes were still inches from hers. Questioning her with no need for words. ‘No, I guess you wouldn’t do that.’

‘I wouldn’t.’

Nate’s gaze was still probing. ‘And yet you’d leave Mia?’

‘Mia is your baby. Not mine.’ She pulled away from him then and sat up. The hammock swung wildly again and she had to shove her feet down fast to hold herself steady. She missed his hands. They were good hands, she thought inconsequentially. Big. Warm and strong and capable. Doctor’s hands.

She was being ridiculous.

And he was watching her as if he could read her mind.

‘I shouldn’t have gone to sleep,’ she said quickly-too quickly-and he smiled, with the indulgence of an adult giving a child a treat.

‘Of course you should. Your nephew has slept the day away and I’ve a feeling his aunt needed the sleep even more. If Cady hadn’t collapsed I think you would have collapsed in his stead. How long have you been burning the candle at both ends?’

She thought about it. ‘I guess… There has been so much to do. Since Fiona died. And Mia isn’t a restful baby-as you’ll no doubt find out.’

‘She looks pretty restful to me.’

‘Yeah. And how long have you stayed with her?’

‘Hours and hours.’ He gave her a look of pure unsullied virtue which made her smile.

‘Yeah, right.’

But he was moving on. ‘Do you want a hospital tour before dinner? We have time.’

‘Um…’ She looked down at her rumpled self. ‘I guess. Though I’m not exactly looking my professional best.’

‘You look pretty good to me.’

There it was again. That jolt. It was a stab of warmth that had her understanding exactly why Fiona had chosen him to be the father of her child.

‘Yeah, right.’ She didn’t meet his eyes-just scuffed her trainers on the grass and looked up toward the hospital. ‘OK. Lead the way.’ He looked every inch the doctor and she looked every inch the poor relation.

So what else was new?

Fiona had made her feel like an also-ran from the moment of her birth. She should be used to it by now.

‘It’s a casual sort of hospital,’ he told her, and there it was again-the reading of minds that she was starting to dread. ‘No specialists with bow-ties need apply. The people here are farmers and they don’t look for sophistication. They look for caring-and it seems to me that caring’s what you have in spades.’

Of course. Caring was what she was principally good at.

Caring…

It went on and on for ever.


Once on her tour of inspection, however, Gemma forgot her concerns about her appearance. She forgot everything except the hospital, and the hospital was great.

The doctor who’d built it all those years ago had suffered delusions of grandeur and had built a hospital that could have accommodated three times the number of beds they had.

‘We’re accredited for twenty patients,’ Nate told her as she exclaimed at the size of the place. ‘And no one can say we’re crowded.’

They certainly weren’t. The wards were double or single and they were roomy, comfortably furnished and ever so slightly over the top.

‘There were chandeliers here when my uncle arrived,’ Nate told her. ‘He got rid of them because of the dust-and because the local farmers thought they’d died and gone to heaven. They’d have a minor operation and wake up to this-and damn near arrest on the spot.’

‘I can imagine.’ Gemma looked up at the high pressed ceilings with their ornate cornices and beautifully moulded plasterwork and shook her head in disbelief. ‘All you need is a few Michelangelo friezes and you could be in the Sistine Chapel.’

‘Maybe we could have a working bee and paint a few.’ Nate was grinning down at her. Life was a constant joke to him, Gemma thought with just a trace of anger. Then his smile caught her and she had to smile back. Sort of.

‘A working bee to paint the ceilings…’ She smiled. ‘What a great idea. Can I help? I paint a really mean elephant. From the rear.’

‘I’ll bet you do.’

And they were grinning at each other like fools and it took Mrs Draper-an elderly lady with gout-harrumphing from her bed to haul them back to order.

Over the top or not, the hospital was run as a well-oiled machine. The staff greeted Gemma with interest, chatting to Nate with real friendliness. There was nothing of the distance between nurses and doctors she saw in the big city hospitals.

And the patients were the same. Nate greeted them with ease and introduced them to Gemma in turn. They chatted, they checked Gemma out with a curiosity she saw would instantly turn to gossip the moment they left, and in the end she was left feeling as if the place consisted of one big family.

‘That’s what country practice is all about,’ Nate told her as she exclaimed over the sensation. ‘Do you want to give us a go?’

And at the end of the tour she felt her doubts dissipating. This could work. It could.

‘Yes, please.’

‘That’s great.’ His smile was so intimate it warmed parts of her she hadn’t begun to realise were cold.

‘Fantastic,’ he told her. ‘Let’s go to dinner.’


Dinner was lovely. Sitting in the huge kitchen, listening to Graham and Nate gossip over the events of the day, Gemma felt more and more at home. Mrs McCurdle had left them the king of all casseroles. Mia was gurgling sleepily in her cot, the dog was asleep again before the fire and it felt like family. And family was something Gemma hadn’t felt for a very long time.

‘Gemma?’

Nate was talking to her, she realised, and she had to blink to haul herself back to reality. She’d been floating in a fuzzy little dream where country practice, Cady and Mia-and Nate-were all mixed up in a rosy future.

She looked at him blankly. ‘Sorry?’

‘Penny for your thoughts.’

She blinked at that. ‘You don’t want to hear them.’

‘I bet I do.’

She smiled but she shook her head. ‘No way.’ If he couldn’t guess, she wasn’t telling him. ‘Was there something you wanted?’

He hesitated and she could see what he was thinking that maybe now wasn’t the time to ask. He wanted a favour, she decided, and he was wondering whether she was up to it.