A Family To Come Home To

“And I’m happy to stay on for the rest of the three months, with an option for a further three,” Ben offered, even as a small voice was shrieking warnings inside his head

He’d already grown far too close to this little family and staying any longer was a bad idea. But he couldn’t in all conscience leave her to be buried under that mountain of responsibilities again—at least, not until she’d found someone reliable to take over from him.

The look of relief and pleasure that spread over her face was like the sun coming up in the dark places inside him. But it also made his misgivings cast deeper shadows.

Kat was an incredibly strong woman, and as for her boys…What was it about Kat Leeman that had started to melt the block of ice around his heart?

Dear Reader,

I’m a member of a big family that’s growing larger with every year—brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces, in-laws. Sometimes the sheer numbers at a family get-together can be overwhelming, but the other side of the coin is the knowledge that there will always be plenty of people willing to help if one of us is in trouble.

Kat isn’t so lucky. She’s all alone and desperately needs help as she tries to cope single-handedly with her two boys and a busy family practice.

Ben certainly can’t be the answer to her dreams because, on his own admission, he won’t be around for long. Ever since he lost his wife he hasn’t been able to settle anywhere for long, and will only promise to stay for three months. Except time doesn’t seem to matter when Kat’s heart recognizes that he is everything she needs. And when her younger son is diagnosed with a life-threatening illness, Ben can’t help but show how much he cares—discovering that he needs Kat and her boys every bit as much as they need him.

I hope you enjoy seeing how the two of them heal each other’s broken hearts and become the family they all need.

Happy reading!

Josie

A Family to Come Home to

Josie Metcalfe

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CONTENTS

COVER

Dear Reader

TITLE PAGE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

COPYRIGHT

CHAPTER ONE

‘HE’S here!’ the voice in her ear said with an unexpected touch of excitement.

Kat stifled a grin when she heard the attempt at a confidential whisper, glad that her receptionist couldn’t see her amusement on the other end of the phone. Obviously, the candidate in question was standing nearby and had somehow impressed her…By his manners? By his good looks?

Well, manners and good looks were all very well, she thought as she straightened her shoulders, ready for yet another waste of time, but they weren’t what she was looking for in the GP she needed to share the burden.

‘Then you’d better show him in, Rose,’ she suggested, hoping her weary tone wasn’t too obvious.

How many interviews had she conducted so far? She’d lost count. She supposed she should be grateful that she’d had people willing to apply, but this prospective locum was unlikely to be any more interested in the position than any of the others, not when he found out exactly how dire her situation was.

A brisk tap at the door snapped her into professional mode and she forced herself to stretch her mouth into some semblance of a welcoming smile.

‘Come in!’ she called, expecting to see Rose’s beaming motherly face as she led the man in. Instead, there was the man himself, tall, almost gaunt with the most sombre expression she’d ever seen. So it hadn’t been his charm that had bowled Rose over, she thought inconsequentially.

‘Your receptionist said to tell you that she had to stay to deal with the O’Gormans,’ he reported in an unexpectedly husky voice as he stepped into the room and closed the door.

For just a second Kat nearly asked him to leave it open, the air around her feeling strangely charged by his presence and making it hard to catch her breath.

‘Please, take a seat, Dr…’ She gestured towards the chair that her patients usually used, horrified to find that she’d completely forgotten the man’s name.

‘Ross. Benjamin,’ he supplied, then looked straight at her and met her gaze for the first time. ‘But I usually answer to Ben.’

He’s got green eyes! she thought in amazement, the colour almost unearthly when they weren’t being shadowed by his thick dark lashes. One dark eyebrow rose and she realised with a swift surge of colour that she’d actually been staring at him.

‘Well, then, ah, Dr Ross…Dr…ah, Ben…’ she stumbled, trying frantically to get her thoughts back on track.

‘Just stick to Ben. It’s easier,’ he said quietly, but the hand knotted around a copy of the practice’s brief prospectus Rose must have given him belied his apparent calm.

‘Ben,’ she echoed, conscious that it felt strangely intimate to use a diminutive of his name so soon after meeting him. ‘How much do you know about the situation here at Ditchling?’

‘If you mean, have I seen any adverts, then, no, I haven’t because I wasn’t really looking for a job,’ he admitted bluntly. ‘I heard that you were looking for help through a friend…of your husband’s?’ he ended on a questioning note.

‘It could be,’ she said quietly, quelling the stab of pain that came with the memories. ‘Richard died of leukaemia almost a year ago, just three weeks after he was diagnosed. He never went into remission.’

She wondered at the flash of agony she glimpsed in those extraordinary eyes before he shuttered them behind a screen of thick dark lashes.

‘I take it the two of you were partners in the practice?’ he asked, his voice huskier than ever. ‘Have you been trying to cope by yourself since then?’

Trying and failing, said a morose voice inside her head, but she refused to pay it any attention.

‘With the help of one arrogant potential partner and subsequent intermittent locums,’ she admitted, then, when she saw his frown, explained a little further. ‘The potential partner had just finished his GP training in a big city practice and, in spite of the fact that he was still as green as grass, thought that he was going to take over as the principle partner purely on the basis that he was a member of the superior sex.’

Ben winced and she almost allowed herself to smile.

‘Since then, I’ve found it a problem to interest anyone wanting a partnership to work the hours I need. Most of them complain that it would be too restrictive for either their family life, if they were married, or their social life, if they were single.’

‘And the locums?’ he prompted.

‘Are expensive,’ she returned immediately. ‘Sometimes I just don’t have any option, but…’ Kat shrugged, remembering the most recent spell of essential cover with an inward wince. It would be months before she could afford to take any time off at that sort of rate. But if Ben looked even halfway interested…

‘So,’ she began briskly, suddenly remembering that it was her responsibility to conduct the interview, and that meant asking questions, ‘what made you decide to move to the West Country? Have you got family in the region, or are you bringing your family with you to settle down here?’

‘No family joining me,’ he said crisply, the topic clearly not up for discussion. ‘And it’s a part of the country I haven’t visited before.’

Kat’s heart sank at the realisation that he was unlikely to want to stay in the practice long—what single man would? There really weren’t very many options for meeting women in this quiet little backwater. But even as she silently berated herself for getting her hopes up, she was telling herself to look on the bright side. If she could persuade him to stay a while, on an associate’s salary, it would give her some time to recoup and look for someone permanent.

She bit the bullet.

‘So, if your references are acceptable, how long were you thinking of staying?’ she asked, her fingers crossed out of sight as she wagered with herself. Even a month would be a help. More than that would be a bonus.

‘If we say a fortnight,’ he began, and she was hard-pressed not to moan aloud. It was hardly worth going to the effort of all the form-filling for that. ‘In that time, we would each be able to decide whether we work together well,’ he continued calmly. ‘If not, I would leave at the end of the fortnight.’

‘And if we did?’ She was actually holding her breath as she waited for his answer, surprised just how much it suddenly meant to her.

‘If we work well together, I would definitely stay for three months and perhaps extend it to six,’ he suggested. ‘I don’t usually stay much longer than that.’

She almost asked why, but the closed expression on his face didn’t invite personal questions. Anyway, the last thing she wanted to do was put him off before he’d even accepted the job by sounding nosy. There would be plenty of time to find out more about him if he decided to stay on.

The phone on her desk rang, startling her.

‘Excuse me,’ she said with a distracted smile as she reached for it. ‘Yes, Rose?’

‘Josh and Sam are here,’ the motherly woman announced. ‘They came home on the bus. Something about Sam forgetting his kit for sports club tonight.’

Kat glanced at her watch and groaned. The boys were supposed to have stayed on at school that day, allowing her to schedule a longer clinic and tack on the interview with Dr…with Ben at the end. Instead, they’d come straight home at the end of classes to collect the kit needed for the after-school club and now she’d have to drive them all the way back.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she said as she began a frantic tidying of her desk, quickly shutting down the computer and stowing everything movable into her desk or the top drawer of the filing cabinet and locking both. ‘This is one of the problems that keeps sending everything pear-shaped. Forgetful children.’

‘Rose’s or yours?’ Ben had risen to his feet as soon as she had but it had been so long since anyone had shown her that old-fashioned politeness that it made her feel flustered.

‘Oh, definitely mine,’ she grumbled as she retrieved her handbag from the bottom drawer.

‘Who’s he?’ demanded Josh with all the disdain that an eleven-year-old could manage when they emerged into the reception area.

‘Manners, Joshua,’ Kat reminded him softly, her heart aching for the turmoil her elder son was going through with the loss of his precious father. Unfortunately, those who told her it would get easier with time were wrong. Josh seemed to be getting worse by the week.

‘Well, who is he?’ Josh reiterated belligerently, somehow recognising that Ben was something more than just another patient. At least he couldn’t possibly know how conscious she was of the man’s quiet presence behind her.

‘These are my two sons, Josh and Sam,’ Kat said, holding on to her temper by a thread, sure that it would be an easier task if only she’d had more than five hours’ sleep a night for the past year. ‘And this gentleman has come here for an interview.’

‘An interview to work here?’ Sam clarified, her formerly happy-go-lucky eight-year-old asked, now needing everything to be precise and ordered in his mind. ‘So you’re a doctor, like Dad was.’

‘Exactly,’ Ben responded, with the first real smile Kat had seen, albeit a small one. ‘Your mother wants to be able to spend more time with the two of you, so she needs me to take over some of the practice duties.’

Josh’s scowl had grown even darker at the mention of his father and Kat knew he wasn’t in any mood to give Ben the benefit of the doubt. Sure enough, before she could even draw breath to head him off, he was issuing the challenge.

‘But you wouldn’t want to work here because there’s nowhere interesting to go and nothing exciting to do. You could work in a hospital.’

‘I could do,’ Ben agreed thoughtfully. ‘In fact, I have in the past, but I wanted…I needed a change.’

Kat wondered at the change of emphasis in that word, but it certainly wasn’t something she could question with her antagonistic son looking on.

‘Anyway,’ Ben continued with a fleeting glance in Kat’s direction, ‘your mother and I have agreed that I’ll come for two weeks, just so she can have a bit of a rest and catch up with herself.’

Kat blinked but held her tongue. As far as she could remember, she hadn’t actually had the time to go as far as offering him the job, but he’d certainly read her situation exactly…

‘Mum, we’re going to be late for sports club if we don’t go now,’ Sam interrupted.

‘Sam…’ It was a warning. She knew he needed his life to run to schedule, but that was no excuse for rudeness.

‘Oh, sorry!’ Her youngest ducked his head in apology. ‘I’m sorry for interrupting, but…’ He was almost hopping from foot to foot.

‘Here you are, then,’ Kat said as she separated the front door keys from the rest of the bunch and held them out to him. ‘Go out to the house and get your kit. I’ll meet you at the car. Don’t…run,’ she finished with a despairing roll of her eyes as he thundered out of the room and out of sight. She winced when the front door slammed behind him.

‘Are you sure you don’t want to change your mind?’ she offered. ‘It could be a very noisy two weeks living with us.’

That got more of a reaction out of him than almost anything else she’d said.

‘Living with you?’ he repeated faintly, clearly taken aback.

‘Accommodation provided?’ she reminded him. ‘The practice is a purpose-built extension on the bungalow the other side of that wall and your part is in the roof conversion—a self-contained little flatlet…Well, that’s a bit of a generous description,’ she rattled on, unable to meet the searing green eyes comfortably while she was thinking about this man living…sleeping…showering…and all just above her head. ‘There’s a bedroom and en suite and the other room has a rudimentary kitchen in one corner, but you’re welcome to join us for meals. The other locums did sometimes,’ she added with a weak attempt at nonchalance when he started looking every bit as uncomfortable as she felt.

Don’t let it change his mind about staying, she prayed, and was suddenly shocked to realise that it wasn’t just for the sake of the practice. There was something about this quiet man that told her he’d been…wounded, and she felt a sudden urgent need to…to what? Heal him?

‘Do you want me to lock up when I go, or would you prefer me to wait until you get back?’ Rose interrupted, before she could laugh at her ridiculous thoughts, and Kat could have hugged her.

‘You might as well lock up and go home as soon as you’ve finished with the files,’ Kat said with a smile, then turned to the silent man behind her. ‘At least it’s only a morning surgery tomorrow, so I should have time to show you all the intricacies of Ditchling’s finest…Ditchling’s only GP surgery.’ A stray thought leapt into her head and she turned back to Rose. ‘Was there any problem with the O’Gormans?’

‘None at all,’ Rose said airily, before giving an evil cackle. ‘I just threatened to sit on them if they didn’t behave.’

Kat couldn’t help laughing, too. Rose’s diet-resistant shape would be enough to strike fear into the rowdiest of preschoolers, even if they arrived in groups of four.

‘Right, well, I’d better get going or Sam will be old enough to drive the car himself by the time I get out there.’ Kat waved farewell and set off for the door, all too aware that she had an eleven-year-old thundercloud following her, one who had been glowering almost non-stop at Ben even before she’d introduced them.

She sighed heavily, hoping she hadn’t just made a monumental mistake. Hiring Ben was supposed to make her life easier, not more stressful.

‘I should be back in about fifteen minutes,’ she said as she pressed the key fob to unlock the car. ‘If you don’t mind waiting, I’ll get you a set of keys and show you where everything is when I get back—unless you’d rather have Rose get them for you and settle yourself?’

‘I’ll wait,’ he said decisively. ‘There’ll probably be questions that only you can answer.’

‘Fine,’ Kat said briefly, managing to limit herself to a single word this time and sliding into the car. If Sam didn’t arrive soon, she’d be making a complete idiot of herself, babbling non-stop. She switched the engine on then glanced into the rear-view mirror to check that Josh had put his seat belt on, before turning her head and starting to reverse out of her parking space in front of the practice.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw the briefest flash of something moving before Josh shouted out and something thumped against the car. Something hard.

‘Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God!’ she wailed as she slammed on the brakes and flung her door open. ‘Sam!’ she shrieked as she leapt out of the car and sped towards the back.

‘Mum…I’m sorry! I forgot!’ wailed her youngest as he threw himself into her arms.

‘Sam!’ Relief that he was apparently totally unharmed took all the starch out of her knees and they nearly buckled.

‘I forgot about going round the front of the car where you can see me,’ he said urgently. ‘It’s all my fault.’

‘Well, you’ll remember next time,’ she consoled him, wiping an uncharacteristic tear from a cheek that still retained a trace of childish chubbiness. All too soon he would be grown up and…She shuddered at the realisation that his whole future could have been wiped out in that split second.

‘At least you weren’t hurt, so—’

‘But he was!’ wailed Sam. ‘And it’s my fault!’

‘He?’ Kat glanced up sharply. ‘Who?’

‘I think he means me,’ said a voice somewhere at the back of her car, and her knees completely gave out.

‘Ben?’ She was reduced to crawling on her hands and knees but she didn’t have to go far to find him, his long legs out of her sight under the chassis while his upper body lay spread-eagled on the ground in front of her. ‘Oh, God, Ben! Are you hurt? Oh, that’s a stupid question! You wouldn’t be lying there if you weren’t. How badly are you hurt?’

Without even realising how she’d got there, she was at his head, her fingers gently winnowing through the thick dark strands as she searched for bleeding, lumps or, God forbid, depressed fractures. It certainly wasn’t the time to notice the sprinkle of silver strands at his temples.

‘Where did I hit you?’ she asked as she worked her way down his neck, conscious of the strong musculature even as she was examining each vertebra for damage or misalignment. ‘How did you fall?’

‘My leg,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘I realised you were going to hit it and tried to get out of the way but…’ He shook his head in spite of her attempts to hold it still. ‘I managed to stop my head from hitting the ground.’

‘Is your leg broken?’ Her hands were shaking now as she continued her assessment with his arms, not daring to examine the rest of his spine while his lower half was restricted by the vehicle. She didn’t have enough people around to log-roll him.

‘If not, it’s the worst dislocation I’ve ever—Agh!’ His attempt at moving it must have been agony but he’d closed his mouth on the curse when Sam had crouched down beside them. Kat was immeasurably touched.

‘It was my fault, Mum,’ he hiccuped. ‘I was right behind the car and he…Is he going to die?’ The words were almost hysterical and she suddenly realised just how traumatic this was for a child who had lost his father only a year ago.

‘I’m too grumpy to die,’ Ben volunteered suddenly, and when Sam gazed at him in surprise, he aimed an exaggerated scowl at her son. ‘And I’ll get grumpier and grumpier the longer I’m lying on the ground.’

‘Kat! Oh, my stars!’ exclaimed Rose. ‘Josh came in to get me. Do you want me to phone for an ambulance?’

‘No!’ It was Ben who answered first. ‘No ambulance.’

‘But, Ben…’ she protested. It was obvious he needed expert help.

He hardly gave her time to speak before he was pushing himself up onto his elbows and beginning to inch himself backwards, out from under her car.

‘It’s not serious enough to warrant tying up an ambulance,’he declared decisively. ‘Drive your car forward again, then you’ll have room to strap my legs together for support…if Rose will fetch some bandages?’ He threw a quick smile in the receptionist’s direction but if he’d looked gaunt before, now he looked ghastly. His skin was pasty and had a waxen sheen and the muscles in his jaw were bulging as he gritted his teeth to brace himself for the next few inches of progress across the tiny car park.

‘You will give me a lift to the hospital, won’t you?’ he asked, almost as an afterthought.

Of course she would give him a lift to the hospital if he was so stubborn as to refuse the offer of an ambulance. After all, it was her fault that he’d been injured. If she hadn’t been distracted with her thoughts about the way he’d almost shanghaied her into giving him the job, she would have been more vigilant.

‘Yes. Of course I’ll give you a lift,’ she said crossly. ‘Just stay still until I’ve moved the car. You could be doing yourself more damage like that.’ She turned to get into the car and saw her two sons staring down at the injured man with very different expressions on their faces.

Sam’s was easy to read—a mixture of terror that he was going to watch another man dying, the way his father had, and guilt that it could have been his thoughtlessness that had caused the injury. Josh’s was more complicated, most of it hidden behind the mask of impassive resignation he’d worn since his father had died, but she was almost certain she could see a measure of respect for the man’s stoicism.

‘Sam, you had better get in the car,’ she ordered briskly. ‘Get in the front and put the belt on. Josh, can you wait beside Ben? I’m going to need your help to get him in the car and then you can look after him on the way to hospital. Can you do that for me?’

For the first time in nearly a year there was a crack in his impassivity, the sudden glimpse of fear swiftly replaced by pride that she’d asked him to do this and determination that he wouldn’t fail her. ‘No problemo,’ he said with a shrug full of the nonchalance of youth. ‘And if you need some pieces of wood for splinting, Sam could get some of the off-cuts left over from when the fence was mended last week.’

‘Good idea,’ she said with a smile for both of them, while a secret doubt struck her.

Had she been going about things the wrong way this last year? she wondered as she quickly pulled the car close to the building again. Had she been wrapping her sons in cotton wool and giving them too much time to brood on all the ways their lives had changed for ever, rather than keeping their minds occupied?

Children’s emotions were such a minefield. There certainly wasn’t any way to practise helping them to cope with the loss of a parent. All she could do was take it day by day.

Kat climbed back out of the car and got her first look at the extent of the damage she’d caused.

She felt sick.

There wasn’t any blood that she could see—Ben’s neatly pressed suit trousers were virtually unscathed. But the shape of the injured leg was a different matter, the damage to the bones just below his knee obvious even from a distance. A classic example of a motorcyclist’s fracture.

‘Here you are, Kat,’ Rose said, as she bustled out with a small stack of towels and several wide bandages tucked under one arm, the other fully occupied with the oxygen cylinder she’d grabbed from the corner of Kat’s surgery. ‘I’ve attached the mask so all you have to do is turn the knob to regulate the flow.’