The Outback Doctor's Surprise Bride

James stirred before the sympathy he saw in her gaze blindsided him to the facts. Helen Franklin was a woman who liked to be grounded. He’d avoided her type for years.

They were incompatible. He was just a little weakened from the pain that was starting to gnaw at his leg again and her terrific home cooking.

‘Still, I inherited his bike. I guess I have that to thank him for.’

That explained why he’d been so concerned about the machine. It wasn’t just because it was highly valuable, it obviously had sentimental value to him.

‘She’s a beautiful Harley,’ Helen commented. ‘Is it a ’60 or ’61?’

James regarded her for a moment. ‘You know something about bikes?’

Helen stifled the smile that sprang to her lips at his amazement. ‘I know a little.’

‘It’s a 1960.’

‘It seemed to survive the crash OK.’

He smiled. ‘An oldy but a goody.’

She grinned back at him. It was something her father would have said, his own classic Harley being his most prized possession. Looking at James, she could see why her mother had fallen for her father. The whole free-spirit thing was hard to resist. James’s handsome face was just as charming, just as charismatic as the man who had fathered her.

She blinked. ‘So…what…you just roam around the country, going from one locum job to the next?’

He nodded. ‘Pretty much.’

‘Sounds…interesting.’ Actually, she thought it sounded terrible. No continuity. No getting to know your patients or your colleagues or your neighbours. It sounded lonely.

‘Oh, it is. I love it. The bush is drastically under-serviced. There are so many practices crying out for locums. Too many GPs working themselves into the ground because they can’t take any time off. Much more than city practices. I really feel like I fill a need out here. And bush people are always so friendly and happy to see you.’

‘But don’t you ever long to stay in one place for a while? Really get to know people?’

He shrugged. ‘I prefer to spread myself around. Locums are in such high demand out here—’

‘Tell me about it,’ Helen interrupted.

He smiled. ‘I’d like to think I can help as many stressed out country GPs as I can rather than just a few for longer. And, anyway, it suits my itchy feet.’

She suspected James Remington could have done anything he’d put his mind to. He looked like a hot-shot surgeon at home breaking hearts all over a big city hospital yet he chose to lose himself in the outback. ‘Not a lot of money in it,’ she commented.

‘I do all right,’ he said dismissively. ‘General practice has its own rewards.’

As an only child growing up in a very unhappy household, James had never felt particularly wanted by either of his parents. Oh, he hadn’t been neglected or abused but he’d been left with the overwhelming feeling of being in the way. Being in the way of their happiness. They’d stayed together for him and had been miserable.

Being a GP, especially in the country, looking after every aspect of a patient’s health, had made him feel more wanted and needed than his parents ever had. Not just by his patients but by his colleagues and the different communities he’d serviced. And James knew through painful experience you couldn’t put a dollar value on that. Some rewards were greater than any riches.

Helen nodded. ‘I agree.’

They watched television for a while. Helen found her gaze drifting his way too frequently for her own liking. She yawned. ‘Think I’m going to turn in for the night.’ She stood and leaned over to take his tray, his spicy scent luring her closer.

‘Yes, I’m kind of done in myself.’

She straightened, pulling herself away. ‘See you in the morning.’

‘Night,’ he called after her retreating back.

James woke at two a.m. his leg throbbing relentlessly. He shifted around trying to get comfortable for fifteen minutes and gave up when no amount of position change eased the constant gnaw. He reached for his crutches and levered himself out of bed. He’d left his painkillers in the bathroom.

Quietly he navigated his way through the unfamiliar house to the bathroom. He didn’t want to switch on any lights in case he woke Helen. He didn’t know whether she was a light sleeper or not and the last thing he wanted to do was annoy her on their first night under the same roof.

He located the pills and swallowed two, washing them down with some tap water. The thought of trying to get back to sleep before the painkillers had worked their magic didn’t appeal so James decided to sit in the lounge, put the television on low and try and distract himself.

He picked his way gingerly through the lounge room, trying not to make too much noise or bang into any furniture. He felt for the couch as he balanced himself on his crutches and was grateful when he finally found the edge. But as he manoeuvred down into its squishy folds his crutches wobbled and one of them fell.

James made a grab for it but the sudden movement jarred through his fracture site. He cursed to himself as he clutched his leg, helpless to prevent the crutch from crashing down loudly on the coffee-table.

Helen sprang from her bed as the noise pulled her out of her sleep. James? Had he fallen? She dashed outside pushing her sleep-mussed hair out of her face.

She snapped on the light, flooding the lounge room in a fluorescent glow, putting her hand to her eyes at the sudden pain stabbing into her eyeballs. ‘What? What’s wrong?’

James squinted, too, the pain in his leg still gripping unbearably.

‘Are you OK?’ Helen asked, slowly removing her hand as her eyes adjusted.

He nodded. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.’

James’s eyes came open slowly and he wondered if the pain and the medication were making him delirious. Before him stood a very different Helen Franklin. Gone was the prim ponytail. Her hair was down, a deep rich brown tumbling in sleep-mussed disorder to her shoulders. It made him want to put his face into it, glide his fingers through it.

Gone was the shapeless uniform. She was wearing some kind of silky sleep shirt the colour of a fine merlot, which barely skimmed the tops of her thighs and clung in interesting places. It left him in no doubt that her pert breasts were no longer encased in pink lace. In any lace at all. He could see the jut of her hip and the curve of her waist and a whole lot of leg.

A sudden image of her riding on the back of his Harley dressed as she was right now, her breasts pushed against his back, stormed his mind and he was rendered temporarily mute. That medication he’d been given was powerful stuff!

‘Oh, no!’

James roused himself at her plaintive cry and tracked her progress with eyes that seemed to be seeing in slow motion only. Her body moved interestingly beneath her silk shirt.

She was kneeling beside the coffee-table, gathering some broken glass from a photo frame, before he registered what had happened.

‘Oh, hell. Sorry. I didn’t realise I’d broken anything. I’ll replace it.’

Helen looked down at the broken glass that had framed a picture of her at fifteen and her father on his Harley. ‘It’s OK,’ she said dismissively, tracing his devil-may-care smile. ‘It’s just glass. I can replace it. I should remove my pictures anyway. I’ve been here by myself for so long I kind of took over.’

‘No, please, don’t.’ He placed a hand on hers. ‘I’m only here temporarily, it would be silly to put them away.’

Helen looked down at his big hand covering hers. Only temporary. Just like the guy in the photo.

James removed his hand and watched the way she touched the picture with a strange kind of loving reverence. ‘Your dad?’

Helen nodded, still staring down at the photo.

‘Is he…?’

She glanced up at him as he trailed off. His hair was sleep-tousled, his wavy fringe flopping across his forehead, and she was pleased that the coffee-table was between them. ‘No. He’s very much alive and roaming some highway somewhere.’

He saw the love in her eyes as she gazed at the picture but heard the bitter note in her voice. Obviously her father aroused intense emotions. It also explained how she knew about Harleys. And maybe it even explained her desire to stay grounded.

‘Anyway,’ she said, becoming aware of his intense gaze and the building silence and belatedly the fact that she was in her pajamas, ‘are you going to be OK?’

He nodded. ‘I’m just going to watch some telly until the painkillers start to take effect.’

Helen rose and backed away, still clutching the frame. She was suddenly acutely aware of her state of undress. How bare her thighs were. How braless she was. How her shirt barely covered her rear. How…interested he seemed.

‘See you in the morning.’ She took a deep breath and turned at the last moment, praying that he wasn’t watching her.

But he was. James caught a brief glimpse of firm cheek as the shirt flared when she whipped around. And leg. A lot of leg. Suddenly his time in Skye had become very interesting indeed.

He was living with someone who was as sexy as hell underneath her ponytailed primness and knew about Harleys.

Suddenly she seemed more and more his type.

CHAPTER THREE

HELEN didn’t dare come out into the main part of the house until she was dressed the next morning. She’d lain awake for an hour, thinking about James’s heated gaze and how liquid heat had pooled low in her belly. She knew that even after a day in his company she was treading on dangerous ground.

She was attracted to him. Not such a bad thing to admit to, she supposed, except for the fact that he was way out of her league. The regular attentions of Skye’s bachelors paled into comparison with one hot look from James. She’d do well to remember he was only there for four months and she’d never had a casual relationship in her life.

When she was dressed she made her way out to the lounge room to find James fast asleep where she’d left him. She stopped in mid-stride and almost tripped. The man was utterly gorgeous. A dark shadow adorned his jaw and his broad chest rose and fell in hypnotic splendour. His jet-black hair lay thick and luscious across his forehead.

His leg was raised on some cushions. His other leg positively exuded testosterone, its well-defined quadriceps and calf muscles complemented by a perfect covering of dark hair. His large bare foot seemed oddly out of place with his sexy he-man image, made him seem vulnerable somehow, and the nurturer in her wanted to go get a blanket and cover him up.

She gave herself a mental shake and ordered herself to stop gawking like a teenager. She turned away and headed for the kitchen. Damn him for lying around her house, looking sexy and vulnerable all at once. She got two slices of bread and jammed them into the toaster. She pushed the lever down harder than required and hoped he had almighty backache this morning. If she had to trip over his barely covered body every morning, it was going to be a long four months!

James awoke slowly. He could hear music and noises coming from the kitchen and the mouthwatering aroma of toast teased his nostrils. He grimaced as he sat up and rubbed the crick in his neck. There was a slight ache in his leg but it was feeling much better than it had last night when his midnight wanderings had disturbed Helen.

A vision of her in her sleep shirt played in his mind again and he smiled to himself. Maybe it had been the medication, maybe it had been seeing a scantily clad Helen in the middle of the night, but something had fuelled some fairly erotic dreams and he felt his loins heat as he recalled the images.

He rose awkwardly, using his crutches for support. He needed a shower. A cold one. But given how logistically impossible that would be, he’d settle for coffee instead. He hoped Helen owned some decent stuff, not some horrible instant brand.

Even on the road he made sure he carried a supply of freshly ground coffee. Life was too short to drink the instant stuff. In fact, that was pretty much his motto for life. Life was short, grab it by the horns and ride it for all it was worth. He’d grown up seeing his parents waste their lives stuck in a situation they hadn’t wanted to be in, and he was damned if he would.

He drank good coffee. He went where he wanted. He followed his own rules. He worked wherever the road took him and kept his relationships short and sweet. And even if his heart did occasionally yearn for something more, he hadn’t been in a place yet or met a woman yet who could ground him. In fact, he seriously doubted either existed.

He swung into the kitchen and stopped in the doorway. Helen was standing at the sink, her back to him, eating toast as she bopped along to a country song playing on the radio. Her head was moving to the beat, her hips were swaying and her feet tapping.

He leant heavily on his crutches for support. She was back in her uniform again, her hair tied back in its prim ponytail, not a hair out of place. But it didn’t stop the leap of interest in his groin or a pang of something he couldn’t quite name hitting him in the chest. He knew she probably had some lacy concoction on under that prim white blouse, knew the contours of her hips from the cling of fabric last night, knew that her bottom cheeks were cute and perky as hell.

She could be the one. James clutched the handles of the crutches harder as the insidious voice invaded his head. Preposterous! Yes, he fancied her. He was a man, for crying out loud, and she was a very attractive woman. But that was it.

For God’s sake, he’d only known her for a day. OK, it had been a tumultuous day. She had, after all, rescued him and his broken leg from the bush, but there was no need to let his imagination get carried away.

The funny feeling he’d got in his chest when he’d looked at her just now was easily explained. It was lust. The tantalising stirrings of sexual attraction. The allure of possibility. And that was all. He was a thirty-five-year-old man. He was in charge of his life—not his hormones.

He cleared his throat. ‘I don’t suppose you have any decent coffee in this neck of the woods?’

Helen jumped. She hadn’t heard him approach. She turned. ‘You nearly gave me a heart attack,’ she said accusingly, talking around her last mouthful of toast.

He grinned. ‘Sorry. I was enjoying the show, though.’

Helen swallowed the remnants of her breakfast. How long had he been standing there? She straightened and gave him a don’t-mess-with-me look. ‘Show’s over.’

He shrugged. ‘I prefer rock music anyway. Does the local radio station play any of that?’

‘Sure. Country rock.’

James chuckled. ‘About that coffee?’

Helen pointed to the percolator sitting on the bench and the expensive coffee-jar sitting beside it.

James eyes lit up at the unexpected sight of his favourite Italian blend. Helen Franklin may live in outback Queensland but she obviously had style. ‘Ah, a woman who appreciates fine coffee.’

Helen shrugged. ‘Life’s too short to drink bad coffee.’

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