A Pup to Rescue Their Hearts Page 6

  Like thirteen-year-old Fraser who had been admitted with diabetic ketoacidosis recently and was now learning about the impact a diagnosis of Type One diabetes was going to have on his life. A quiet lad, and the oldest of four children, Fraser had impressed Josh no end by not only taking the news in his stride, coping with being alone in hospital much of the time as his single mother had to be home for his younger siblings but also the way he was insisting on learning to test his blood glucose levels and inject his insulin doses himself.

  As Josh explained to his senior house officer, Fraser wouldn’t be a candidate for an insulin pump until he’d demonstrated how well he could control his blood sugar levels, how consistent his motivation was, how he could manage his diet and whether fluctuations in levels were affecting his schoolwork, sports or day-to-day living. The first priority was to get him stable and well monitored.

  ‘How’s it going, Fraser?’ Josh perched on the end of the bed.

  ‘It’s all good. My level was eight this morning.’

  ‘Have you recorded that in your diary?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When are you due for your insulin?’

  ‘Right about now.’ It wasn’t Fraser who answered the query, however. It was his nurse who came behind the curtains with a stainless-steel kidney dish containing a syringe and alcohol wipe. She had a bright yellow, portable ‘sharps’ container in her other hand. ‘Want to show the doctor how good you are at doing this, Fraser?’

  Seeing Stevie on the ward on a Saturday took Josh by surprise and then he remembered that it was this weekend that Mattie had gone to visit his grandmother. Had Stevie made herself available to cover any gaps in the roster, perhaps? That wasn’t what was his overwhelming reaction to seeing her, mind you. No...that was more like how much of a bonus it was that she was here, working in the same space at the same time as him.

  So nice, in fact, that it was only now that Josh realised just how important his friendship with Stevie had become over the last weeks. How much he...liked her...and trusted her. This was the first time Josh had ever had a friendship with a woman that didn’t include sex and, surprisingly, it had advantages he hadn’t seen coming. Like knowing that it wasn’t going to become something that he needed to walk away from. Like how safe it felt.

  Fraser clearly liked Stevie as well. It was Stevie that he was looking at for approval as he demonstrated and explained a now well-practised routine.

  ‘So I’ve taken off both the caps and I dialled up two units so I can get the air out.’ Fraser held the insulin pen up and squirted a fine stream of liquid into the air. ‘Now I dial up my dose, which is one, and then I can inject it.’

  He pinched his stomach, inserted the tiny needle, counting to six before he removed it. ‘And that’s it. Easy...’ He was looking up at Stevie, whose smile told him exactly how well he’d done. How proud she was of him.

  Just intercepting that look gave Josh a distinct squeeze in his chest that felt like...longing? As if he wanted to be the person that Stevie was proud of?

  Whoa...where the hell had that thought come from?

  Josh cleared his throat. ‘Well done, Fraser. It’s a brave thing to be learning to do by yourself.’

  Fraser nodded slowly. ‘I was scared at first,’ he admitted. ‘But then Stevie told me that was okay to be scared. And that you could only be brave if you did something that you were scared of. Because, if you aren’t scared of it, you don’t have to be brave, do you?’

  For a heartbeat, Josh couldn’t think of anything to say to that. Because he’d glanced up and caught Stevie’s gaze as Fraser had been speaking. Because he could see that she knew exactly what it was like to be facing something that scared you and how hard it could be to deal with it. He’d told her that he thought she was brave having chosen to face life as a single mother. That wasn’t the only thing he’d said, either.

  He’d told her that she was both brave and beautiful...

  And, man...right now she looked more beautiful than any woman he’d ever seen. The highlights of that hair that could catch the light and flicker like firelight and those incredible eyes were there for everybody to see but there was so much more that Josh was aware of. Like her strength and determination. Her ability to defend herself and protect her son. The palpable amount of warmth and care she could offer her patients, like taking the time to have a philosophical discussion with a boy on the brink of adolescence about what it meant to be brave. If someone had told him that when he’d been just a kid, it might have made so many challenges more bearable. It might have made him a much stronger person, in fact.

  It was Stevie who broke that brief eye contact. She held out the sharps container for Fraser to drop the needle into and then she shared a smile with her patient and Josh could feel the connection between them. The absolute trust. It was no wonder that Ruby was so impressed with her new member of the paediatric nursing staff. He was impressed himself, having no doubt that Stevie’s encouragement and wise words had had a lot to do with how amazingly well Fraser was dealing with a major life change.

  Stevie was dealing with one herself today, wasn’t she? It had taken courage to let Mattie go off on an adventure by himself to visit his grandmother. Perhaps that was why she’d chosen to work today—so that she had some distraction from knowing how far away her son was?

  She was just as focused on one of his last patients to review this morning. Five-year-old Jackson had been treated for hydrocephalus as an infant but the shunt had failed and had been replaced a couple of days ago. Wearing his new, dinosaur, bicycle helmet, the cheerful boy was ready for discharge and a few adventures of his own but Josh took the time to make sure both Jackson’s parents and his junior doctors were fully informed about the recent surgery.

  Somehow, it wasn’t a surprise to find Stevie in the staffroom later that morning with a neurology textbook open in front of her as she sipped her coffee. Ruby was at the sink, rinsing a plastic container, as Josh reached for a mug and poured himself some of the filter coffee that was always available.

  ‘Saw you over at Cheltenham Central Hospital yesterday, when I was visiting a friend,’ Ruby said. ‘That’s a flash new car you’ve got.’

  ‘What?’ Josh had no idea what she was talking about.

  ‘Silvery thing. What is it? A Porsche? Maserati?’

  Josh had to laugh. ‘Are you kidding? You really think that’s my style?’

  ‘It might be a pretty good chick magnet,’ Ruby murmured. She tilted her head towards where Stevie was sitting quietly reading. ‘If, you know, nothing else was working. It’s a bit strange, you being single for so long now. It’s been months...’ She was grinning as she finished drying her container and turned to leave, her voice rising again. ‘Good to see that you’ve had a shave since then, anyway. I don’t hold with that designer stubble—it’s just laziness in my book.’

  Josh shook his head. He still had no idea what Ruby was on about, other than a reference to him and Stevie being more than friends and that wasn’t going to happen, was it? Not that he was about to tell Ruby of their connection away from work. He sat down at the table beside Stevie as Ruby left the staffroom.

  ‘You checking up on what I was telling Jackson’s parents?’

  ‘Of course not.’ The spots of colour on Stevie’s cheeks made Josh wonder how long it was since he’d seen a woman blush. ‘I just wanted to know more. And I couldn’t remember what you’d said about the different sorts of shunts.’

  It wasn’t just that flush of colour on her face that had captured Josh. He could actually sense her intelligence and the hunger for new knowledge. It was going to be a real pleasure to provide that, although, to be honest, it would be a pleasure just to be sitting here, this close to her.

  ‘Jackson’s got a ventriculoperitoneal shunt,’ he told her. ‘It drains the CSF into his abdomen where it’s absorbed into the bloodstream. It’s the type of
shunt that has fewer risks than, say, a ventriculoatrial shunt that drains it into the right atrium of the heart. Anything else you want to know, just ask.’

  ‘I’ll read up on it all properly later.’ Stevie glanced at her watch. ‘I’d better get back to it now. I think Fraser’s mum is bringing his brothers and sister in to see him after lunch so I’ll need to clear the decks fast.’ She reached for a scrap of paper on the table in front of her to mark the chapter in the book but Josh had seen it first.

  ‘What’s this?’

  ‘Just an advertisement I noticed in the paper.’

  ‘It’s a cottage in the next village to mine...’ Josh picked up the ad and looked at it more closely. ‘I saw the sign go up last week. Are you going to have a look at it? Look—there’s an open home this afternoon.’

  Stevie was taking her mug back to the sink. ‘Maybe. I doubt that it’s in my price range, though. An eighteenth-century Cotswold cottage with flagstone floors and a walled garden? It’ll be worth a fortune.’

  ‘Not necessarily. It obviously needs rethatching and probably even more work inside. Could be a bargain.’

  Stevie took the clipping from his hand and closed the textbook around it, as if to finish the conversation, but Josh had seen the flash of something like hope in her eyes. This was her dream, to have a cottage like that, wasn’t it? The force of the desire that she could achieve that dream was something else that took Josh by surprise.

  ‘I could come with you,’ he offered. ‘I know a bit about renovating cottages like that. What time do you finish work?’

  ‘Three o’clock.’

  ‘That would give us just enough time to get there. You don’t have to rush home, do you? With Mattie being away?’

  She was surprised that he’d remembered. Josh could see that the surprise was about to morph into doubt, which would end up with her probably going home alone to fret about Mattie so he tried to sound as if it was already a done deal.

  ‘I’ll be outside the front door at three p.m. Black Jeep, rather old and not very flash, despite what Ruby thinks. You can follow me to the village.’ He drained his coffee and stood up. ‘You’ll be doing me a favour, actually. I’d love an excuse to go and have a look myself. That era of cottages is a bit of a passion of mine.’

  * * *

  It didn’t matter that the thatch was covered in moss and so rotten in places the entire roof sagged a bit in the middle. Or that plastered interior walls were crumbling here and there, windows were broken, the kitchen was not much more than an ancient cooktop and a sink with a dripping tap and the small, walled garden hadn’t been touched for years.

  Stevie could see past all that. Already, in her mind’s eye, she was sitting in front of a fire, looking up at restored, exposed beams with the smell of something delicious that was cooking slowly in an Aga that filled up a whole wall of the kitchen. She stood there for so long, for one last look, that the agent picked up his sign and gave them a wave before driving off.

  Josh didn’t seem to mind standing out here in the cold.

  ‘You’re in love with it, aren’t you?’

  Yes, Stevie could absolutely feel that deliciously intense combination of excitement and anticipation and...the hope that came with falling in love. She let her breath out in a happy sigh. ‘It’s perfect.’

  Josh laughed. ‘Dunno about that. But it could be really nice. And, despite how bad that thatch looks, it seems weathertight for the moment so you wouldn’t have a huge, urgent expense.’

  ‘Mmm...’ Stevie took a final glance over her shoulder. ‘Did you see that fireplace?’

  ‘An inglenook. I’ve got one of those. I’ve put a log burner into the space, which is really practical and looks great. Hey... I’m only five minutes down the road. Come and have a look. It might give you some ideas for your place.’

  It was Stevie’s turn to laugh. Her place? In her dreams.

  But dreams were important, she thought as she followed Josh towards where they’d parked their cars down the street. Dreams were soul food. It was why she collected the pictures of gorgeous cottages—so that she could have a little bit of time to escape reality and dream of a future that was everything she could ever want. It was a bit like buying a lotto ticket. Or reading a romance story that had the perfect, happy ending. You knew that it happened to the lucky ones in real life so it wasn’t just a fantasy to believe that it could happen to you, and for a few minutes while you indulged in that dream it was happening.

  What better time to escape reality and dip into a dream just a bit further? If she went home now, she’d probably start worrying about Mattie. Her mother was taking great care of him but he’d gone off to see one of his old school friends this afternoon and he was having tea with his mate’s family. She wouldn’t even get a text message to reassure her for hours yet.

  Had Josh known that? Was that why he had encouraged her to come out to this village to view a property she was unlikely to be able to afford? Why he was offering to give her even more ideas to play with? Her questioning glance was probably quite sharp, which might have been why Josh’s eyebrows rose instantly, but then he smiled and Stevie knew that he knew exactly what she’d been thinking. And that she wasn’t wrong. He wanted her to dream. To escape. And he was quite happy to go along with it. To be a part of her fantasy, even...

  Something twisted deep in her heart right then. A combination of everything she knew about Josh Stanmore, mixed with the poignant feeling that someone cared that much about how she was feeling and, on top of that—like the most delicious icing on a cake—was the renewed awareness of just how gorgeous this man was, with those warm, dark eyes and that, oh, so contagious smile.

  It was creeping up on her and she hadn’t seen it coming so it hit her with enough force to steal her breath before she’d even finished taking it.

  It wasn’t just that cottage that Stevie was falling in love with, was it? However intense those feelings were for that ancient cottage, they paled in comparison to what she was feeling at this moment. And yet this man had never kissed her. Never even looked as though he wanted to kiss her so where on earth had this wash of overwhelming emotion sprung from?

  Perhaps it could be traced back to the relief she’d seen in his eyes when he’d saved the life of that little girl who’d come very close to choking to death. Or maybe it was the way he often made her feel so proud of her own work?

  Was it the respect he’d shown when he’d made sure they were in the private space of the rooftop garden before talking about anything personal? Or was it because he’d won the trust of her son and herself and become such a special part of their lives?

  Or maybe this had been enough on its own—that he was prepared to step into her dream and make it far more real than it could have ever been otherwise. Yeah... Stevie’s steps slowed as they reached their vehicles. She could love someone just for that.

  Mix that warm, fuzzy appreciation with the sheer masculine attraction this man exuded and the combination was a sexual timebomb. One that she could simply not allow to explode. But one that she didn’t seem to have quite enough willpower to walk away from, either. Not that that was necessarily a problem, a small voice whispered in the back of her mind, because this extraordinary awareness was one-sided, wasn’t it?

  She should still go home, though. To her home, not his. Stevie opened her mouth to thank Josh for the offer and excuse herself but something quite different came out. ‘I’d love to see your cottage,’ she told him. ‘I’ll follow you again, shall I?’

  * * *

  Stevie was laughing again and it made Josh’s grin widen even though he knew she was laughing at him. Or maybe she was just enjoying the exuberant welcome she was getting from Lucky as she stooped to pet the little terrier as he shot outside the moment the front door was opened.

  But she was shaking her head as she straightened. ‘You’re really calling this a cottage?’<
br />
  ‘There’s its name, right there, beside the door. “Weeping Elm Cottage”. Named after that tree that takes up most of the front garden. It’s a good thing there’s a bit of a meadow out the back or there’d be no room for Lucky to have a run around. He’s almost lost his limp now.’

  ‘It’s not a cottage. It’s a mansion.’

  ‘You haven’t seen the estates that are tucked away in the forests around here. This is just a slightly bigger version of your cottage. Four bedrooms instead of two, that’s all.’ Josh held the door open for her. ‘Come on in.’

  He couldn’t wait to see her face when he showed her his home. He wanted to see that spark of interest in her eyes that was intense enough to be more like passion as it lit up her whole face. It was intriguing to see it in something that had nothing to do with work. Or Mattie. What else did Stevie Hawksbury feel passionate about other than very old houses? What else could make her laugh because he would really love to hear that again.

  His front door opened directly into his living room, with its whitewashed walls, rough-hewn beams, window seats beneath the multipaned windows, wide elm floorboards and the eye-catching centrepiece of a dramatic, stone-built inglenook fireplace. Lucky trotted ahead of them as if, he, too, was excited about showing Stevie their home.

  Stevie’s face didn’t just light up, she looked almost overwhelmed, standing very still—her eyes wide and her lips slightly parted—turning her head very slowly to take it all in. Josh couldn’t take his eyes off her face. Especially that wayward, tight curl that had fallen across her forehead to almost tangle itself in her eyelashes. And the unconscious drift of her lips that made it look as though she was about to be kissed.