Читать книгу Unlocking Her Surgeon's Heart - Fiona Lowe, Fiona Lowe - Страница 10

LILY TURNED THE music up and sang loudly as she drove through the rolling hills and back towards the coast and Turraburra. As well as singing, she concentrated on the view. Anything to try and still her mind and stop it from darting to places she didn’t want it to go.

She savoured the vista of black and white cows dotted against the emerald-green paddocks—the vibrant colour courtesy of spring rains. Come January, the grass would be scorched brown and the only green would be the feathery tops of the beautiful white-barked gum-trees.

She’d been out at the Hawkers’ dairy farm, doing a follow-up postnatal visit. Jess and the baby were both doing well and Richard had baked scones, insisting she stay for morning tea. She’d found it hard to believe that the burly farmer was capable of knocking out a batch of scones, because the few men who’d passed through her life hadn’t been cooks. When she’d confessed her surprise to Richard, he’d just laughed and said, ‘If I depended on Jess to cook, we’d both have starved years ago.’

‘I have other talents,’ Jess, the town’s lawyer, said without rancour.

‘That you do,’ Richard had replied with such a look of love and devotion in his eyes that it had made Lily’s throat tighten.

She’d grown up hearing the stories from her grandfather of her parents’ love for each other but she had no memory of it. Somehow it had always seemed like a story just out of reach—like a fairy-tale and not at all real. Sure, she had their wedding photo framed on her dresser but plenty of people got married and it ended in recriminations and pain. She was no stranger to that scenario and she often wondered if her parents had lived longer lives, they would still be together.

Although her grandfather loved her dearly, she’d never known the sort of love that Jess and Richard shared. She’d hoped for it when she’d met Trent and had allowed herself to be seduced by the idea of it. She’d learned that when a fairy-tale met reality, the fallout was bitter and life-changing. As a result, and for her own protection, and in a way for the protection of her mythical child, she wasn’t prepared to risk another relationship. The only times she questioned her decision was when she saw true love in action, like today.

Her loud, off-key singing wasn’t banishing her unsettling thoughts like it usually did. Ever since Noah Jackson had burst into Turraburra—all stormy-eyed and difficult—troubling thoughts had become part of her again. She couldn’t work him out. She wanted to say he was rude, arrogant, self-righteous and exasperating, and dismiss him out of her head. He was definitely all of those things but then there were moments when he looked so adrift—like yesterday when he’d appeared genuinely stunned and upset that his words had distressed Bec Sinclair. She couldn’t work him out.

You don’t have to work him out. You don’t have to work any man out. Remember, it’s safer not to even try.

Except that momentary look of bewilderment on his face had broken through his I’m a surgeon, bow down before me facade, and it had got to her. It had humanised him and she wished it hadn’t. Arrogant Noah was far more easily dismissed as a temporary thorn in her side than thoughtful Noah. The Noah who’d sat back and listened intently and watched without a hint of disparagement as she’d talked with Mandy Carmichael about her weight was an intriguing conundrum.

She braked at the four-way intersection and proceeded to turn right, passing the Welcome to Turraburra sign. She smiled at the ‘+1’ someone had painted next to the population figure. Given the number of pregnant women in town at the moment, she expected to see a lot more graffiti over the coming months. Checking the clock on the dash, she decided that she had just enough time to check in on her grandfather before starting afternoon clinic.

Her phone beeped as it always did when she drove back into town after being in a mobile phone reception dead zone. This time, instead of one or two messages, it vibrated wildly as six messages came in one after another. She immediately pulled over.

11:00 Unknown patient in labour. Go to hospital.

Karen.

11:15 Visitor to town in established labour in Emergency. Your assistance appreciated.

N. Jackson.

‘What have you done with the Noah Jackson I know and despair of?’ she said out loud. The formal style of Noah’s text was unexpected and it made Karen’s seem almost brusque in comparison. The juxtaposition made her smile.

11:50 Contractions now two minutes apart. Last baby I delivered was six years ago. Request immediate assistance.

NJ.

12:10 Where the bloody hell are you?!

N.

‘And he’s back.’ Although, to give Noah his due, she’d be totally stressed out if she was being asked to do something she hadn’t done in a very long time. She threw the car into gear, checked over her shoulder and pulled off the gravel. Three minutes later she was running into Emergency to the familiar groans of a woman in transition.