A Nurse And A Pup To Heal Him

Stacey squeezed her shoulder. ‘You know I worry about you being alone.’

‘I’m not alone. I live in the same village as the best sister and brother-in-law and niece in the world, I have plenty of friends locally, and I have Archie to keep me company at home.’

Stacey raised an eyebrow. ‘Thank you for the compliment, but you know what I meant. Surely you’d like to share your life with someone who says more than just “woof”?’

Toni laughed. ‘There’s an awful lot to be said for talking to someone who doesn’t answer back.’

As if to emphasise her point, Archie wagged his tail and licked Stacey’s hand and then Scarlett’s foot, making the little girl giggle.

‘I swear you trained him to do that on purpose.’ But Stacey was smiling. ‘Just don’t let Sean the Smug put you off finding happiness with someone else. Not all men are like him.’

‘I know they’re not.’ But she hadn’t managed to pick anyone who felt right before him, either. ‘I’m doing just fine on my own, Stacey. I live in my favourite place in the world, I love my job, and I have my family and friends nearby. I don’t need anything else.’

‘Hint taken, and I’ll stop nagging,’ Stacey said.

For now, Toni thought. She knew her sister’s motives were good, but her life really was just fine as it was. Toni felt very much part of the village where she’d grown up and she had absolutely no regrets about coming here from London. She had a great life; she didn’t need to date someone.

She didn’t need to prove her judgement to herself, either. Of course she knew that not all men were as selfish and demanding as her ex. But if she was honest with herself she knew that the two men she’d dated before him had been just as single-minded and just as selfish as Sean. Sometimes she wondered if she subconsciously picked men who just couldn’t give her love and security so it wouldn’t break her heart when things went wrong. She’d already lost too many people who really mattered at too young an age. Sean had given her an ultimatum: dump her grandmother, or be dumped. That one had been very easy, and she was done with ultimatums.

Single and happy. That was her. And that was the way she intended to stay.

‘Let’s get you back down in your chair, Miss Beautiful,’ she said to her niece, ‘and I’m going to help your mummy cook dinner.’

‘Din-dins,’ Scarlett said, and beamed.

CHAPTER TWO

ON TUESDAY MORNING, Ben was in early for the weekly team meeting. ‘I made brownies,’ he said, taking the lid off the tin and putting it in the centre of the table.

‘Thank you. Good choice,’ Ranjit, the head of the practice, said with a smile.

Everyone except Toni took a brownie; Ben sighed inwardly. Obviously he’d annoyed her enough that she was going to ignore his peace offering. Well, he’d had it with women who were snippy. He’d put up with it from Karen—until he’d learned the bitter truth—and he wasn’t going to bend over backwards to please Toni Butler.

Once they’d gone through the morning’s agenda, Ranjit asked, ‘Is there anything that anyone wants to bring up?’

‘Yes—we need someone out at The Beeches today, please,’ Toni said. She looked at Ben. ‘That’s the local nursing home. Forty beds; and they’re set up for patients with dementia. We need to follow up Liza’s UTI and Renée’s lithium levels.’

‘Can you do the follow-up for us, Ben?’ Ranjit asked. ‘It’d be useful for you to meet Julia and her team.’

‘Sure.’ He looked at Toni. ‘Do you do a regular practice visit, Nurse Practitioner Butler?’

‘Toni,’ she said.

Oh. So she was thawing slightly. Good. He wouldn’t go out of his way to make friends with her, but a decent working relationship would be good both for the team and for their patients.

‘Our practice’s regular visit is on Thursdays, though obviously we pop in whenever we’re needed as well.’ Her grey eyes were very clear. ‘I visit The Beeches on my Monday afternoons off with Archie. He’s a therapy dog. I bring him to the surgery with me on Monday morning because I go straight from here to the nursing home.’

‘A therapy dog.’ He hadn’t expected that.

‘No doubt you disapprove of that, too,’ she said.

He blew out a breath. Maybe he’d asked for that, because he’d reacted badly to the dog yesterday. But she’d been snippy with him, too. ‘No. I’ve seen studies showing that having a pet visiting can really help elderly people, especially those in residential care.’

‘Exactly. It helps the residents—even a small observational study by the manager at The Beeches last year showed that a visit from Archie helps with the residents’ moods and helps with their social interaction with the staff as well as each other. It gives the residents something to talk about other than their illness, and even the ones who don’t really hold a conversation any more smile when they see him. The residents all really look forward to Mondays. And obviously it’s done in a supervised environment, we know that none of the residents is allergic or afraid of dogs, and we’re very aware of infection control. There’s a policy at the home as well as here.’

She’d just covered everything he’d brought up yesterday. Clearly what he’d said still rankled. He knew what he needed to do. ‘I apologise,’ he said, ‘for snapping at you yesterday.’

She inclined her head in acknowledgement. ‘But you don’t like dogs.’

Now she’d brought it up... ‘No. Obviously I’d never hurt one, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to spend time with one.’

‘I get that not everyone’s a dog person,’ Toni said. ‘But Archie is a genuinely nice dog. He’s passed a very thorough assessment—he can be stroked and handled by anyone and he’ll take treats gently and wait patiently. Plus he doesn’t jump up, paw people or lick them too much.’

And Ben could guess exactly why that was part of the assessment. ‘Because elderly people have very frail, thin skin.’

She smiled at him, then. A genuine smile. And Ben was shocked to realise that it made him feel as if the room had just lit up. This wasn’t good. He didn’t want to be attracted to anyone. His life was on an even keel again and he wanted it to stay that way.

He needed to keep his thoughts on his job. ‘All right. I’ll go to the home at lunchtime, as soon as my surgery finishes,’ he promised.

‘Thank you.’

Now she was smiling rather than scowling at him, Toni Butler was seriously pretty. She didn’t wear a ring on her left hand, but that meant nothing; she could still be in a serious relationship with someone without being married. He wasn’t going to ask and start the gossip mill working, either. She was his colleague. End of. And, even if she was single, he’d learned his lesson the hard way. Relationships were just too fragile, too easily broken. Like his heart. He’d only just finished putting himself back together after Karen and Patrick’s betrayal, and he had no intention of setting himself up for a repeat of all that heartache.

* * *

Toni was always a little bit suspicious of people who didn’t like dogs. She didn’t understand that mindset. But she knew she hadn’t really given Ben Mitchell a chance; she’d let herself react to him as if he was like Sean, expecting her to do things his way with no discussion, so she’d been combative with him rather than trying to find common ground, the way she normally would.

Of course not all men were like her ex.

But Ben was as self-assured as Sean had been, something that instinctively made her wary. Plus he was the first man since Sean who’d made her look twice. When he’d smiled back at her in the staff meeting and lost that brooding look, he’d been breathtakingly beautiful—green eyes, dark hair that flopped over his forehead, and an incredibly sensual mouth. He could have rivalled any film star. She really hadn’t expected to be so attracted to him.

But she knew that romantic relationships never worked out for her, so she had no intention of acting on that attraction. A good working relationship was all they needed. End of.

* * *

After his shift, Ben tapped the address of The Beeches into his satnav and headed out to see the patients.

When he introduced himself to Julia, the manager, she said, ‘Ah, yes. You must be the new doctor at the practice. How are you settling in?’

‘Fine, thanks. Nurse Butler said you had a patient who needed to be seen about a possible UTI, and it made sense for me to come and introduce myself because I’ll be seeing you on some of the regular Thursday morning visits,’ he said.

‘Good call. Thank you.’ She smiled at him.

‘I’d also like to say hello to Renée, even though her blood test results aren’t back yet,’ he said.

‘Of course. Toni’s filled you in on all the patients’ histories?’

Yes, but it was useful to go over it again in case he’d missed anything. ‘I’m happy for you to tell me whatever you think I need to know,’ Ben said.

After he’d seen the two patients Toni had been worried about, Ben made time to meet the charge nurse, who was responsible for the drug round, and introduced himself to all the residents who were in the lounge.

‘I agree with you about Renée. We’ll review her medication as soon as her bloods are back and ring you,’ he said to Julia in her office at the end of his visit. ‘And I agree with Toni that we should give Liza a low dose of antibiotics for the next six months to put a stop to the UTIs. I’ll get the prescriptions sorted out so they’ll be ready for collection later this afternoon.’

‘Thank you,’ Julia said. ‘Nice to meet you, Dr Mitchell.’

‘Ben,’ he said with a smile.

Once he’d sorted out the prescriptions and some admin back at the surgery, he headed for the supermarket on the way home to pick up a couple of pints of milk. As he walked into the chiller aisle, he saw Toni putting a bottle of milk into her trolley.

‘Hello,’ he said.

‘Hi.’

No dog, he noticed. But of course dogs weren’t usually allowed in supermarkets, so he stopped himself asking something clueless. Instead, he opted for polite small talk. ‘Doing your weekly grocery shop?’

‘My neighbour’s, actually,’ she said. ‘Shona came off her bike awkwardly three weeks ago and broke her arm.’

‘That’s kind of you to do her shopping.’

Toni shrugged. ‘She’d do the same for me. Great Crowmell is the kind of place where people look out for each other.’ She smiled. ‘Right now she has Archie sprawled all over her lap, enjoying having a fuss made of him.’

The dog. She was very much a dog person, and he really wasn’t. ‘Uh-huh.’

She bit her lip. ‘You and I rather got off on the wrong foot yesterday. Look, if you’re not busy this evening, why don’t you come over for dinner? I’m a reasonable cook.’

Awareness flickered through him, and he stifled it. She wasn’t asking him to dinner because she was attracted to him. She was asking him because she was trying to get their professional relationship onto an even keel. Which would be a good thing, and he’d accept purely on that basis. Because he really wasn’t interested in starting a relationship with anyone. Karen had hurt him deeply. He wasn’t letting anyone that close again, even if Toni was as nice as she seemed. ‘Thanks. Dinner would be great,’ he said.

‘You’re welcome to bring your partner, too, and any children,’ she said. ‘Just let me know how many I’m cooking for.’

Partner and children. Not any more. It had left a huge hole in his life that he tried to fill with work and studying. It hadn’t worked, which was why he had moved here, hoping that a fresh start would help. He pushed the thought away. ‘Just me.’

‘It’s just me and Archie at my place.’

So she was single, too—and clearly not in the market for a relationship. He was glad that they’d cleared that up. Established boundaries. ‘OK. Can I bring pudding?’ Then he remembered her refusal of his brownies. ‘Um—that is, do you eat pudding?’

She grimaced. ‘Ah. You must’ve noticed I didn’t take one of your brownies this morning. Sorry, it wasn’t anything personal.’ She gave him a rueful smile. ‘My sister says I’m weird, because I’m about the only person in the world who doesn’t actually like chocolate cake.’

Funny how that made him feel so much better to discover that she hadn’t been snippy with him; she just didn’t like brownies. ‘Noted. And I’ll make blondies, next time,’ he said.

‘Thank you. And yes, please to pudding.’

‘As long as it’s not chocolate,’ he confirmed.

‘Absolutely. Is there anything you’re allergic to or don’t eat?’

‘Allergies? Spoken like a true medic.’ He couldn’t help smiling back at her. ‘No allergies, and I eat anything.’

‘Good. I’ll see you tonight then. About seven?’

‘I’ll be there.’

She gave him her address. ‘It’s on the edge of town, but there’s plenty of parking in my road.’

‘You’re not that far from me. A walk will do me good,’ he said. ‘See you at seven.’

* * *

Sean had always said she was too impulsive.

Maybe he had a point, Toni thought as she finished buying Shona’s groceries. But she was going to have to work with Ben Mitchell. It made sense to make sure their working relationship was a good one, for their patients’ sake. But she was feeling ever so slightly guilty about being judgemental towards him yesterday. OK, so he’d annoyed her with his attitude towards Archie; but she could almost hear her grandmother saying softly, ‘Walk a mile in someone else’s shoes before you judge them.’

She hadn’t done that at all.

So the very least she could do was to cook dinner for the man and help him settle into the community.

She bought ingredients for dinner, dropped off Shona’s groceries and put them away for her, and took Archie out for a run before making a start on dinner.

At precisely seven o’clock, her doorbell rang.

Ben stood there with an armful of gifts. ‘I bought a lemon tart and raspberries for pudding. I hope that’s OK.’

‘Perfect, thank you—I’m baking salmon with pesto, so the lemon will pick up the basil,’ she said with a smile.

‘I forgot to ask if you prefer red or white wine, so I’ve played it safe.’ He handed her a bottle of wine.

‘Lovely. New Zealand Sauvignon blanc is my favourite,’ she said.

‘And—well, I was brought up to take flowers if someone invites you to dinner,’ he said.

‘Thank you. They’re beautiful,’ she said, accepting the sunflowers. ‘Come through to the kitchen and I’ll pop them in water and sort out a drink.’

‘Thanks.’

‘I should warn you that Archie’s in the kitchen. But if you’d prefer me to put him in the garden while you’re here, I will.’

* * *

Toni was clearly trying to make an effort to accommodate him, Ben thought. So maybe he needed to do the same. ‘It’s fine. Though I didn’t grow up around dogs and I don’t have a clue how to behave around them, so you’ll have to give me some pointers.’

He knew he’d done the right thing by the way she smiled at him—the real full wattage instead of the polite and more subdued version, and it lit up her eyes, too; it made his heart miss a beat.

‘Thank you. Come and say hello.’ She ushered him into the kitchen, where Archie sat in his basket, wagging his tail and clearly desperate to bounce over and greet their visitor, but at a signal from Toni he stayed exactly where he was.

‘He’s very well trained,’ Ben commented.

‘He is,’ she agreed. ‘And he’ll stay there until I tell him he can come and say hello to you. If you feel uncomfortable, just let me know. Springers are usually pretty bouncy and exuberant—and Archie is definitely springy when he gets the chance—but they’re also very kind, biddable dogs who just love to be with people.’ She looked at him. ‘If you hold your hand out to him, he’ll sniff you, and then you can stroke the top of his head. As a therapy dog, he’s used to elderly people with thin skin, and being around very young children who might be nervous or unpredictable. So he’s very, very gentle.’

‘You work with children as well?’ Ben asked, surprised.

‘I go into the school on Wednesday mornings,’ she said. ‘We’re there to help the reluctant readers, the ones who are too nervous to read out loud in front of the class. They come and read to Archie.’ She grinned. ‘The head teacher thought it was a completely bonkers idea at first, when I suggested it.’

Yup. He thought it was bonkers, too. But the passion in her eyes as she talked about her work drew him.

‘But we’ve seen the shyest and most hesitant little ones really grow in confidence since they’ve been reading to Archie. They all improved their reading ages by several months in the first six weeks alone.’ She smiled. ‘As a reward for good behaviour, two of the children get to sort out his water bowl and mat. They love doing that, so it’s a really strong motivator.’

‘Reading to dogs.’ He shook his head in amazement. ‘I had no idea that was even a thing.’

‘There are quite a few schemes with therapy dogs,’ she said. ‘Archie loves it, and so do the kids. If he falls asleep, I tell them it’s not because he’s bored—it’s like when someone reads them a bedtime story and they go all relaxed and sleepy.’

Ben was beginning to see what made Toni Butler tick. His patients and his colleagues had all sung her praises; now he could see why.

‘OK.’ He took a deep breath. ‘I’ll stroke him.’

‘Stay, Archie,’ she said softly.

The dog stayed where he was and let Ben stroke the top of his head. Exactly what Toni had promised: Archie was a sweet, kind, biddable dog with soft, soft fur and big, soulful amber eyes.

‘Studies show,’ she said, ‘that blood pressure goes down when someone pets a dog. And in times of stress dog-owners experience less cardiovascular reactivity.’ She looked rueful. ‘Though I’m guessing if you’re not a dog person...’

‘It’s probably still the same,’ he said.

‘Dinner is in five minutes. Would you like a glass of wine?’

‘That’d be lovely,’ he said.

Her kitchen was very neat and tidy; and there were photographs held to the door of her fridge with magnets, of herself and Archie with various groups of people, all smiling. It was clear that she led a full and happy life.

Dinner was scrumptious: salmon baked with pesto, new potatoes, asparagus, baby carrots and roasted courgettes. Karen hadn’t been keen on cooking; and Ben hadn’t bothered much since his marriage had broken up because cooking for one was so lonely. He’d almost forgotten what it was like to share a meal with someone, except when his parents and his sister had invited him over and then tried to matchmake because they wanted him to be happy again.

But this was his new beginning. He and Toni could be friends as well as colleagues. He damped down the burgeoning thought that maybe she could be more.

‘This is really lovely,’ he said.

‘And—apart from the salmon, obviously, and the pine nuts in the pesto—everything is homegrown. I love June because the garden’s just brilliant.’

‘You’re a gardener?’ He hadn’t expected that.

‘Not as good as my grandmother was. But that’s why I moved here rather than to one of the fisherman’s cottages near the harbour—it means I have a garden for Archie, and I’ve got space for a small vegetable patch. I got my brother-in-law to haul some railway sleepers for me to make raised beds.’

‘So have you been here for very long?’

‘At this cottage, for two years. But I grew up in Great Crowmell,’ she said. ‘My parents died in a car crash when I was twelve and my sister Stacey was fourteen, and Gran swept us up and brought us to live with her. Before that, we used to stay with her every summer. We’d spend whole days on the beach and thought we were in paradise. We lived in London, and that tiny bit of sand you get on the banks of the Thames every so often just wasn’t enough for us. We loved it here, where the sand went on for miles.’

‘You grew up in London?’ He looked at her in surprise.

‘In Highgate, when my parents were still alive. Then, when I trained as a nurse, I lived in Victoria and worked in the emergency department of the London Victoria hospital.’

‘So you went back to the bright lights?’

‘Something like that.’

‘So what made you come back?’ He knew the question was intrusive as soon as it was out of his mouth, because she flinched. ‘Sorry. You don’t have to answer that.’ And then maybe she wouldn’t ask him why he’d moved, either.

‘No, it’s fine. I came back because Gran became ill.’ She looked at him. ‘She had dementia. Stacey went to college here and stayed after she finished—she’s a dressmaker—but it wasn’t fair to leave all the looking-after to her, so I came back to support them both. I found a job at the practice, and I moved in with Gran so she didn’t have to go into residential care for a few more months.’ She shrugged. ‘Gran didn’t hesitate when we needed her, and we didn’t hesitate when she needed us. I just wish she’d been here to meet Scarlett—my niece. She’s fourteen months old.’

Now Ben understood why Toni’s life had undergone such a sea change, why she’d switched from working in a big London hospital to this small general practice in the country. ‘You never wanted to go back to London after your grandmother died?’

She shook her head. ‘I love the pace of emergency medicine and knowing that you can make such a huge difference to people’s lives, and I always thought I’d go back to it after Gran died. But then I discovered that actually I like working in the practice more than I do at a hospital. It’s cradle to grave medicine. You know your patients, you can watch the little ones grow up and blossom, and because you know their family history you’ve got a lot more chance of working out what your patient feels too awkward to tell you in a consultation. Plus my family is here—and I really missed Stacey when I was in London.’

There was a slight shadow in her eyes; or maybe he’d misread it, because it was gone again within an instant. He had a feeling that there was another reason why she hadn’t gone back to London after her grandmother’s death, but he wasn’t going to pry. It was none of his business. Plus asking her would leave himself open to questions, and he didn’t want to talk about Karen and Patrick.

‘That’s why I chose to be a GP rather work in a hospital,’ Ben said. ‘I like working in a community.’

‘Where were you before here?’ she asked.

‘London. Chalk Farm. We lived not far from Primrose Hill, so I was lucky enough to be able to do my morning run in the park there—the view of the city is amazing.’

‘It sounds as if you miss it.’

‘I do.’ But he didn’t miss the misery that had dragged through the last few months of his marriage, or the two years of loneliness since. He’d put it down to pregnancy hormones and he’d tried his best to be supportive and understanding. And then, just before the twenty-week scan, Karen had dropped the final bombshell; and he’d realised that the reason they hadn’t been getting on was nothing to do with hormones and everything to do with guilt...

‘There are good places to run, here. And if it’s low tide you really can’t beat running by the edge of the sea. If you’re lucky, you might even see some seals,’ she said. ‘Why did you move here from London?’

The question he’d dreaded: though it was the obvious one and he should’ve found an anodyne answer for it by now. Except there wasn’t one.

Because my wife fell in love with my best friend and broke my heart along with our marriage. Not that he wanted to discuss that. It had taken him nearly two years to get past it, and he didn’t want to dwell on it now.

‘Do you have family in the area?’ she asked.

‘No. Sometimes you just need a change,’ he said. ‘This seemed like a nice place to live.’

And the best way to distract Toni from asking anything else, he thought, would be to switch the conversation back to her dog. ‘So what made you decide to train Archie as a therapy dog?’

‘When Gran went into the nursing home, one of the other residents used to be visited by her dog, and seeing the dog always made Gran’s day brighter. After she went into the home, I got Archie to keep me company. The manager at the care home suggested training him as a therapy dog and bringing him to The Beeches. I looked into it, and I think we both enjoy it.’