Bachelor Cure

‘If Henry Westcott’s your grandfather, how come we’ve never heard of you?’ The barking demand came from behind, and Mike wheeled in sudden anger. It was Jacob, who’d come back into the barn to find a shovel.

‘Jacob, lay off. Can’t you see we’ve scared the girl stupid? She’s hurt and she’s frightened and now’s not the time to start a full-scale interrogation.’

The radio on the police sergeant’s belt crackled into life. The sergeant lifted it and talked briefly and then he sighed.

‘I have to go,’ he told them as he replaced it. ‘The Murchisons’ cows have got out again and they’re all over the road near the river bend. If I don’t get down there soon, someone’s going to hit one.’ He looked closely at Tess. ‘I knew that Henry had a grandkid in the US, though, and you sure have his hair. We need to talk, but maybe…’

‘Not now,’ Mike told him. ‘Tessa, you’re past talking.’ He stared down at the girl before him, his quick mind figuring out what to do for the best here. ‘Sergeant, could you use the radio to ask the vet to come out here and see Doris? She’ll need antibiotics straight away and I don’t have a clue as to dosage. If Jacob stays here to help, he should be able to treat her. If Tessa doesn’t mind sharing my passenger seat with Strop, I’ll take her into town.’

Strop… Tess shook her head, confused. ‘I’m staying here,’ she said.

‘I don’t blame you.’ The policeman grinned. ‘You wait till you meet Strop. Sharing a passenger seat, indeed…’

‘There’s nothing wrong with Strop that a good vacuum cleaner can’t fix,’ Mike said with dignity. ‘Strop is my dog, Tess, and he’ll be very pleased to meet you.’ He hesitated as her look of confusion increased. This girl was in no fit state to be making decisions. She could barely hear him, and she certainly wasn’t fit to spend the night alone in a deserted farmhouse. ‘You’ll spend tonight in hospital and let me have a good look at that arm,’ he said firmly. ‘You can come back tomorrow, if you’re up to it.’

‘Doc, are you saying I have to stay here?’ Jacob demanded incredulously. ‘Are you saying you expect me to stay with the pig and wait for the vet?’

‘After scaring Miss Westcott stupid, it’s the least you can do,’ he said blandly. ‘And I know you, Jacob. You always do the least you can do. Besides, in the last year I’ve made five house calls to your place in the middle of the night for your sick kids, and every one of them could have waited until morning. Call this payment of a debt.’

Jacob shook his head, confused, and to her amazement Tess felt herself start to smile. She’d blinked at Mike’s curt orders, but she needn’t have worried. Jacob wasn’t the least bit offended. He thought Mike’s words through and then nodded, acknowledging their fairness.

‘We need to go now,’ Mike told Tess, only the faintest trace of humour behind his deep eyes telling Tess that he was also laughing gently. ‘I have a patient in labour myself. She was in the early stages when I left and she isn’t likely to deliver until morning, but she needs me all the same. OK, Tess?’

She looked as if she was operating in a daze. Nothing seemed to make sense. ‘I…’ She was forcing herself to focus. ‘I guess.’

‘That’s fine, then.’ He smiled down at her. ‘I’m sure Jacob and the vet will take the greatest care of Doris. Bill Rodick, the vet, is very competent, and Jacob’s a fine farmer. So… You can visit Doris tomorrow if she’s up to receiving callers. Now, though… Strop makes a great chaperon. That’s his principal mission in life—to obstruct as many things as possible. So do you trust Strop and me enough to let us drive you to town?’

Trust him?

Tess looked up, and she gave Mike a shaky smile—and then, before she could realise what he intended, she was swept up into a pair of strong, muscled arms and held close against his rough sweater. She gasped.

‘No. Please… I can walk..’

‘I dare say you can,’ he told her firmly. This girl had enough courage for anything. ‘But it’s dark outside. I know where my car is. I’m sure-footed as a cat and I don’t want you stumbling with that arm, especially if Strop’s abandoned his leather armchair and is back at his old trick of obstructing things. He’s the type of dog burglars fear most because they’re at risk of tripping over him in the dark. So shut up and be carried, Miss Westcott.’

Shut up and be carried…

It seemed there was nothing else to be done—so Tess shut up and was carried.

Mike carried the girl out to his car and tried to figure just what it was about her that made him feel strange.

Like he was on the edge of a precipice.

CHAPTER TWO

THE girl was quite lovely.

The clock on the wall said three o’clock, and Tessa’s hospital bed was bathed in afternoon sunlight. Mike had stuck his head around the door three or four times during the morning but each time Tess was still sleeping soundly. Now she opened her eyes as he entered, blinked twice and tried to smile.

Tess was in a single hospital ward, small and comfortably furnished, with windows looking out over a garden to rolling pasture beyond. It was cattle country, if she had the energy to look.

She didn’t. She stared across at Mike as if she was trying to work out just who he was.

This was a different Mike to the one she’d seen the night before. He’d told her he was a doctor and, after his treatment of her shoulder, Tess had had no grounds for disbelief. But now… In clean clothes, his black curls brushed until they were almost ordered, a white coat over his tailored trousers and a stethoscope swinging from his pocket, he was every inch the medico.

He still had the bedside manner she remembered from the night before. He stood at the door and smiled, and Tess was forced to smile back.

And then her gaze dropped in astonishment. A vast liver and white basset-hound was sauntering into her room beside him.

‘Awake at last?’ Mike’s lazy smile deepened as he strolled over to her bed, trying not to appreciate her loveliness too much as he did. The fact that the look of her almost took his breath away didn’t make for a placid doctor-patient relationship at all. ‘Welcome to the land of the living, Miss Westcott.’ His eyes were warm and twinkling. ‘How’s the shoulder?’

‘It seems fine.’ She kept on staring at Strop. ‘So there really was a dog,’ she said. ‘I thought he was part of my nightmare.’

‘What, Strop?’ Mike grinned. ‘He’s no nightmare. He’s solidly grounded in reality. So well grounded, in fact, that if he gets any closer to the ground we’ll have to fit him with wheels.’

‘You keep a dog in the hospital?’

‘He’s a hospital dog. He has qualifications in toilet training, symptom sharing and sympathy. Just try him.’

Strop looked up toward the bed. His vast, mournful eyes met Tessa’s, limpid in their melancholy. He gave a faint wag of his tail, but went straight back to being mournful.

‘Oh, I can see that.’ Tess chuckled. ‘He’d make any patient feel better immediately. Like they’re not the only ones feeling awful, and they couldn’t possibly be feeling as awful as that!’

Strop flopped himself wearily down on the bedside mat. Mike shoved him gently aside with his foot—the dog slid under the bed without a protest as if this was what happened all the time—and then Mike turned his attention back to his patient.

That wasn’t hard to do.

‘Enough,’ he said. ‘Strop steals my limelight all the time. Your arm, Miss Westcott. How is it?’

Tess wriggled it experimentally and winced. ‘I wouldn’t worry about it. It’s bruised but it’s fine. You must have put the humerus right back in or it’d hurt a lot more than this.’

‘The humerus…’ Mike’s face stilled. Last night he’d suspected she had obstetric knowledge, and now… ‘You’re a nurse, then?’

‘Nope.’ She smiled and it was like a blaze of sunshine. ‘Guess again.’

‘A physio? An osteopath?’

‘Try doctor.’

‘A doctor!’ He stared.

‘Females can be,’ she said, still smiling. Her voice was gently teasing. ‘In the States, medicine’s about fifty-fifty. Don’t tell me you still keep women in their place down under.’

‘No. But…’ Mike thought back to the crazy red stilettos. He stared down, and there they were, parked neatly side by side under the bed beside Strop. Crimson stilettos. And… A doctor?

‘And doctors are allowed to wear whatever they like,’ she told him, following his gaze and knowing what he was thinking in a flash. ‘There’s no need for us to put on black lace-ups when we graduate—so you can take that slapped-by-a-wet-fish look off your face, Dr Llewellyn. Right now.’

‘No. Right.’ He took a deep breath and managed a smile. ‘You’re a practising doctor, then?’

‘That’s right. I work in Emergency in LA.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Well, that’s put me on my mettle.’ He had himself back in hand now. Almost. ‘Doctors are the worst patients,’ he said, and tried a grin. ‘They’re almost as scary to treat as lawyers.’ He sat on the bed beside her and tried to ignore the weird feel of intimacy his action created. Hell, he sat on all his patients beds! ‘Your shoulder’s really OK?’

Tess moved it cautiously against the pillows and winced again.

‘It’s sore,’ she admitted. ‘But it’s definitely back in position. It’s just bruised.’

‘Can I see?’

‘Sure.’ There was no reason why he shouldn’t. There was no reason why she should blush either as he loosened her hospital gown and gently examined the shoulder and the bruising of her arm. He was just a doctor, after all…

His fingers were gentle and sure, and his eyes watched her face as he carefully tested the injured arm. ‘Do you have full movement?’

‘I can wiggle everything,’ she told him. ‘But I don’t want to.’

He smiled. ‘I don’t blame you. In a day or two it’ll look really spectacular.’ He ran his hands over the bruised arm, trying to block out his thoughts of Tessa the woman and turn them back to Tessa the patient. Usually he had no problem with differentiating work from personalities, but Tessa was something else! And her blush didn’t help at all.

‘You may not want to wiggle, but you’ll live,’ he pronounced finally. He pulled the sheet back to cover her and tucked her in.

It was a caring gesture that he made every day of his working life but suddenly the gesture was far, far different. Intimate. He stood looking down at the girl in the bed, struggling to maintain his lazy smile.

‘You might even feel like living after your sleep,’ he said finally, shoving away the strange sensations he was feeling and striving hard to sound normal. His smile deepened. ‘Fifteen hours’ straight sleep isn’t bad.’

‘I don’t think I’ve slept since I knew Grandpa was missing,’ she admitted. She grimaced. ‘And to sleep fifteen hours now, when I should be out searching for Grandpa…’

‘There’s no need for you to be out searching, Tess. The police and the locals are all looking as hard as they can, and they’re being thorough.’

‘I know the farm, though. I know the places he loved to go.’

‘But—’

‘But what?’ She glared up at him. ‘What? Why do you sound like that?’

‘Like what?’

‘Like you’re trying to scotch any ideas I might have of where he might be.’

He sighed. This was hard. Bloody hard. But, then, telling families the worst was something he’d had to face many times.

‘Tess, your grandfather has mitral valve disease and atrial fibrillation,’ he said softly. ‘He’s been missing for over four days now. It’s my guess… Well, that farm of his is as rugged as any around here. There’re plenty of places a body could lie for months and not be found. Your grandfather is eighty-three years old. If he went out and had a heart attack…well, my guess is that’s exactly what’s happened. His truck’s still at the house. He had his goats tethered and Doris due to deliver. If he was going away, he’d have organised people to care for them.’

‘I know that,’ Tess said. She stared up, and any trace of her gorgeous smile had completely disappeared. Her distress was obvious. ‘But… I didn’t know he had heart disease.’

‘Have you been in contact with him recently?’ he asked. ‘I was under the impression he had no contact with his family.’

‘He and my dad didn’t get along,’ she said bleakly. She was obviously still taking the heart disease bit on board and was thinking it through as she talked. She turned and stared out the window, fighting to get her face back in order, and it was as if she was talking to herself. ‘Dad and Grandpa fought. Dad went to the States when he was twenty. He met my mom there and he stayed. He died when I was sixteen, without ever coming back here.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘No. Don’t be. My family history has nothing to do with you.’ She sighed again and shrugged, turning back to face him. ‘Dad was always against me coming back, but he was pig-headed and…well, he was stubborn enough to make me wonder whether the disagreement had all been one way. So when Dad died…Mom said I should know my background so she sent me out to stay. I spent a summer vacation here with Grandpa. I stayed here for three months, just after high school.’

Three months. When Tess was sixteen…

He must have been away at medical school then, he thought. Otherwise he’d surely remember this girl.

‘Since then we’ve kept in touch,’ Tess said. ‘I write often, so does he, and now I ring him every Saturday. We seem to be getting closer the older he’s getting. It’s like he’s finally acknowledging he needs family. Anyway, when I didn’t get an answer this week, no matter how many times I rang, I contacted the police and was told he was missing. So I came.’

So she came. She came halfway across the world to check on her grandfather. That was some commitment.

‘But…I didn’t know he had heart disease,’ she said slowly. ‘You would have thought he’d tell me. How bad is it?’

‘I guess he hasn’t wanted to worry you. He’s been taking digoxin and is fairly much under control, but if he was over-exerting himself with no tablets, and if he got too far away from the house…’ He hesitated but there was no way to gloss over the truth or make it any easier. ‘His pulse rate’s been up around a hundred and twenty or so, and without digoxin or even aspirin…’

He didn’t continue. He didn’t need to.

Tessa’s heart wrenched within her, and he saw the pain. His hand came up to touch her lightly on her cheek.

‘Don’t, Tess,’ he said softly. ‘I’m hoping that your grandfather’s heart just quietly gave out and the end was fast. That’s what he would have wanted, to die in the bush he loved.’

‘Yes, but…’

But… But they didn’t know. They didn’t know he had died quickly. The alternative was unspoken between them—the thought of the old man lying helpless in the bush and dying a slow and lingering death.

‘Sergeant Morris and a heap of the locals have scoured the farm,’ he told her. ‘I’ve been out there, too. We’ve been everywhere we can think of and we’ve found nothing. We’ve called, Tess. If your grandfather was alive then he could have called back. He could be somewhere we’ve overlooked, but surely he’d be within earshot.’

‘Not if he’s had a stroke. Not if he can’t make his voice work.’ Her voice broke off and she choked in distress. ‘Mike, I need to look. I need to search myself. There are places… One special place…’

‘Yeah? Is this somewhere the police would have found?’

She shook her head. ‘I thought of it all the way here. Grandpa showed it to me when I was here as a teenager, and he talked as if it was a really special privilege for me to know about it. It was his secret. It’s a cave…’

‘In the hills?’

‘Yes. I remember it as being just past the boundary of the farm, where the hills start turning rugged. I can’t remember much more. In fact, I can’t even remember which direction it was. There was no way I could tell the police about it on the phone. And when I got to the farm last night I thought how stupid it was to come all this way on a hunch. Things have changed and my memory’s playing tricks on me. Maybe…maybe I can never find it or maybe it’s accessible now and someone’s already looked. But that’s why I came. I want to check. Just as my own contribution to the search.’

She sighed and turned to stare sadly out the window. ‘I know my dad and Grandpa disagreed, but Grandpa sort of saw things in the same way I do.’ Then she managed a fleeting grin as she turned back to face him. ‘Me and my dad fought, too.’

‘Don’t tell me. Your dad had red hair as well?’

‘And a temper to match. My dad could say some pretty unforgivable things. And Grandpa was…is…a redhead, too.’

‘I see.’ But he didn’t see at all. He stared down at this amazing woman in confusion. She’d come from the other side of the world to search for a grandfather who was probably dead. She had a good job in the States. Had it been OK—just to walk away?

‘Hey, my mom’s behind me in this,’ Tess said quickly. ‘She always felt bad about my dad never coming home. She’s paid half my airfare.’

‘Bully for your mom.’ He hesitated, thinking things through, and he raked his fingers thought his thick hair in thought. Tess had come so far, and she needed to conduct her own personal search, but he hated the thought of her scouring that bushland alone. The locals reckoned they’d searched every inch of the farm. Tess would be on her own now.

For her to be alone was unthinkable! And even if she found her grandfather alone…well, that was more unthinkable.

Finally he nodded, flicking through his mental diary at speed. OK. He and Strop could do it.

‘Tess, I need to do a couple of hours’ work right now,’ he told her. ‘Have a meal and rest for a bit. Ted’s brought your car in. It’s parked in the hospital car park and your gear’s being brought inside as soon as the orderly has a spare minute. So get yourself into some sensible clothes.’ He eyed the stilettoes with caution. ‘And some sensible shoes. I’ll be back in two hours, and after that I’ll come out to the farm with you.’

‘You don’t have to come with me,’ she started, but he stopped her with an upraised hand.

He had work piled a mountain high in front of him, and he was dead tired—the labour he’d looked after last night had been long and difficult and he’d managed all of two hours’ sleep—but the thought of Tess searching by herself for what he feared she’d find was unbearable.

‘I want to, Tess,’ he told her. ‘So let me.’

He clicked his fingers. Strop heaved one end up after the other and lumbered to his side, and they left.

Which was just as well. If he’d stayed in that room for one minute longer, with that look on her face—half scared, half forlorn and as courageous as hell—he would have gathered her in his arms and hugged her.

And where was the professional detachment in that?

‘I should have refused his offer of help,’ Tess told Bill Fetson two minutes later. The hospital’s charge nurse had come to check on her and had found her pacing in front of the window. ‘Mike was up half the night with me and Doris, and didn’t he say he had a baby to deliver after he brought me in? What’s he doing, offering to spend hours tonight searching for someone he’s sure is dead?’

‘He cares about your grandfather.’

‘I guess…’

Her voice sounded totally confused, Bill thought, as though there was something about Mike she didn’t understand in the least. Well, maybe that was understandable. Mike was a fabulous-looking doctor, with a smile that could turn any girl’s head, a dog that was just plain crazy and a presence that played havoc with Bill’s nursing staff.

But this girl was different. Bill watched the emotion playing over her face and strange ideas started forming in the back of his mind. Well, well, well…

‘Would you like a tour of the hospital?’ he asked mildly—innocently. He was busy, but something told him it might be important to get to know this girl…

Tess showered and dressed, then explored the little hospital. It had fifteen beds, eight of them nursing beds and seven acute. It was a tiny bush nursing hospital, efficient, scrupulously clean and obviously beautifully run. It was almost new, and the man who introduced himself as Charge Nurse showed Tess around with pleasure.

‘It’s all thanks to Dr Mike,’ Bill Fetson said with obvious pride, as he showed Tess though a tiny operating theatre with facilities that her made blink. These facilities would be more in place in a big city teaching hospital. ‘Mike fought the politicians every legal way—and a few illegal too, I’ll bet—to get this place, and he practically bullied the community into fundraising. Now we have this hospital, though, well, there’s no way we’re losing it. The valley’s never had a medical service like this.’

‘How long’s he been here?’ Tess asked.

‘Three years, but in a sense he’s been here much longer. Mike’s a valley kid and he started fighting for this before he even finished his medical training.’

‘And…’ There were so many things she didn’t understand here. ‘He’s always had Strop?’

Bill grinned. ‘Strop was an accident. Mike drives an Aston Martin—the sleekest car in the valley. The salesman brought it up here for a test drive and drove it too fast, putting it through its paces. Strop was lumbering across a road on a blind bend and the salesman couldn’t stop. Mike felt dreadful, and then the woman who owned him said he was a stupid dog anyway and seeing Mike had hit him then Mike could put him down. As you know, the Aston Martin only has two seats. The salesman drove to the vet’s with Mike carrying Strop, and by the time they reached the vet’s there was no way he was being put down. So in one afternoon Mike got the sleekest car and the dopiest dog in Christendom.’

‘You’re kidding.’

‘No way. And, believe it or not, he is a great dog.’ Bill’s grin deepened. ‘The patients love him and all the valley knows now that if Mike pays a house call then so does Strop.’ He paused, and his smile faded. ‘But what about you? I gather you’re practically a valley girl yourself. I’m not local myself, but Mike says you’re Henry Westcott’s granddaughter. And he also says you’re a doctor…’

His eyes asked all sorts of questions, but he didn’t voice them. Not yet.

Finally, his tour at an end, Bill showed her into a gleaming little kitchen, introduced her to Mrs Thompson, the hospital cook, and left her to be fed. A meal was no trouble, Tess was assured. No trouble at all.

She certainly needed it. Tess ate Mrs Thompson’s meat pie with potato chips and lashings of salad. She washed everything down with two huge tumblers of milk and she hardly felt the meal touch sides. Thinking back, she couldn’t remember when she’d last had a meal. Maybe she’d fiddled with something on the plane, but how long ago was that? Too long, her stomach said.

Replete for the moment, Tess tentatively broached the idea of she and Mike taking food out to the farm with them. With the size of this hospital, a sole doctor must be run off his legs, and she was starting to feel really guilty about dragging him away.

She needn’t have worried about the reaction of the cook. Mrs Thompson practically beamed.

‘That’s a really good idea,’ the middle-aged lady told her, hauling a picnic basket out of a top cupboard. ‘Doc Llewellyn hardly stops to eat, and he’ll miss dinner entirely if you don’t bully him into it. Either that or he’ll eat six pieces of toast and three eggs at midnight, which is his usual way. No, dear. I’ll pack you a meal fit to feed six of you, including dog food for that misbegotten hound of his, if you promise to see he eats it.’

‘He works too hard?’ Tess asked cautiously, and the woman nodded with vigour.

‘Driven—that’s what our Dr Mike is,’ she said. ‘There’s demons driving him, that one. He’ll end up in an early grave, mark my words.’ Then her look softened. ‘But you’ve more to be worrying over than our Dr Mike. Oh, child, I’m so sorry about your grandfather. I just hope…’ She sniffed vigorously. ‘I just hope the end was quick!’

‘Thank you,’ Tess said weakly. She didn’t know what else to say.