She looked…fabulous, he thought, so suddenly that he felt a jab of what might even be described as heart pain. Or heart panic?
Two deep breaths. Professional. She was a patient. Nothing more.
He’d been over the idea of heart pain a long time ago.
‘Hey, welcome to the world of up,’ he said, and managed a smile he hoped was detached and clinically appropriate. ‘I hope you’re not weight bearing on that foot.’
‘I have two great crutches,’ she said, and smiled. ‘One called Nathan and one called Martin.’
‘Great job, boys,’ he said, and nodded, and both little boys flushed with pleasure. Which gave him another jolt. It was hard to get these kids to smile.
Dammit, why had he forgotten the buns?
‘Are they ready yet?’ Martin asked, almost as the thought entered his head.
‘Easter buns are for this afternoon,’ he said, and he knew he sounded desperate.
‘You said we could have them for breakfast,’ Nathan said. ‘The kids at school say they eat buns on Good Friday morning.’
‘I’ve been eating them all week,’ Erin chipped in, and he cast her a look that he hoped put her right back in her place. Talk about helpful…Not.
‘Dom says Easter buns are for Easter and not before,’ Martin told her. ‘Like Easter eggs. He says if the bunny sees us eat an egg before Sunday he’ll know he doesn’t have to deliver eggs to our place.’
‘So if he sees you eat a bun before this morning you won’t get any?’ Erin ventured, eyeing Dom with caution. ‘Your dad’s a stickler for rules, then.’
‘Rules are good,’ Martin said, though he sounded doubtful.
‘They are good,’ Erin agreed. ‘As long as there aren’t interruptions, like dogs having puppies and ladies crashing their car to take a man’s mind off his baking.’
‘Actually, the buns flopped before…’ Dom started, but Erin shook her head.
‘One good deed deserves another,’ she said, smiling at him from the doorway with a smile that said she knew exactly how disconcerted he was. ‘You’re starting another batch now?’
‘I started an hour ago but the instructions say it takes five hours.’
‘At least,’ she said. ‘So your buns will have to be Buns Batch Two.’
‘Pardon?’
‘Do you have self-raising flour?’
‘Um…yes.’
‘Butter?’
‘Yes.’
‘And dried fruit, of course?’
‘Yes. Look, you can’t-’
‘Do very much at all,’ she agreed cheerfully. ‘Marilyn and her puppies are asleep. There’s no job for me there. I’m just hanging around at a loose end in my very fetching sarong. But my foot does hurt. So what say you give me a chair and a bowl and all the ingredients I listed-oh, and milk. I need milk. And turn your oven to as hot as you can make it. In twenty minutes I guarantee you’ll have hot cross buns for breakfast.’
They did. True to her word, twenty minutes later they were wrapping themselves round absolutely delicious hot cross buns.
Or, to be more specific, hot cross scones, Dom conceded as he lathered butter onto his third. But who was nit-picking? He surely wasn’t. Neither were the boys. As per Erin’s instructions, they’d helped rub butter into the flour and helped her cut scones from the dough. They’d painted on glaze to make crosses, using sugar and egg white. They’d stood with their noses practically pressed against the glass oven door as the scones…buns!…rose in truly spectacular fashion. And now they were lining up for their third as well.
As was Erin. She was eating like she hadn’t eaten for a week. He thought back to the retching of the night before. She was running on empty. He should have given her something…
‘I wouldn’t have been able to eat even if you’d offered,’ she said, and his gaze jerked to meets hers.
‘How did you know I was going to say-?’
‘I could see it,’ she said, wiping a daub of melted butter from her chin. ‘You had that look my intern gets when he forgets to take some really minor part of a patient history. Like how many legs my patient has.’
‘Like…’
‘I came on duty one morning a few weeks back,’ she continued, placidly reaching for another scone. ‘According to my intern’s notes, a patient who’d come in during the night was suffering from tingling in his legs. That was all it said. The nurses had set a cradle from his hips down so I couldn’t see. I chatted to the patient for a couple of minutes, then asked if he could wriggle his toes.’
‘And?’ She had him fascinated.
‘And he’d lost both legs in a motorbike accident twenty years ago,’ she said, glowering, obviously remembering a Very Embarrassing Moment. ‘He’d come in because he was getting weird tingling in his stumps and a bit of left-sided numbness. It transpired he’d had too much to drink, gone to sleep on a hard floor, then woken and panicked. I figured it out, but not before the students who were following me on my rounds did the world’s biggest snigger.’
‘So the look I had on my face just then…’
‘Yep. It was like my intern looked when I came out of the ward and asked why a small matter like lack of legs wasn’t in the patient notes. Last night all you did was not offer me a three-course meal when I was still queasy. So you can stop beating yourself up and pass me the jam.’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said faintly. ‘These are great s…buns.’
‘They are, aren’t they?’ she said smugly. ‘I taught myself from the Australian Countrywomen’s Association Cookbook, circa 1978.’
‘Your mother didn’t teach you?’
‘No,’ she said shortly, and a shadow crossed her face.
‘Um…your mother…’ he started.
‘What about my mother?’
‘Will she have hot cross buns waiting for your arrival?’
‘Probably. Designer buns, though,’ she said. ‘She’ll have ordered them from the most exclusive and expensive baker in Melbourne. She’ll have unsalted butter imported from Denmark. If she wasn’t staying at Charles’s parents’ place she’d be serving them on china that cost more than my weekly salary per piece, but Marjory will be making up for that. Marjory has exquisite porcelain all her own.’
‘Marjory?’
‘Charles’s mother,’ she said, and bit into her scone with a savagery that made him blink.
‘Um…’
‘Don’t ask,’ she said. ‘I love them but they drive me nuts. In a while I’ll phone and ask them to come and get me.’ She looked down at her sarong and winced. ‘I’m not sure what they’ll think of my fashion sense. What do you think, boys?’
The little boys had been staring at her like she had two heads. They were totally entranced.
‘It’s very…nice,’ Martin tried.
‘My mum wore a blanket sometimes,’ Nathan offered.
‘Your mum…’
‘I’ve washed your clothes,’ Dom said, thinking maybe now was a good time to deflect the conversation. ‘I put them in the washer last night-they’re in the drier now. I’d expect you’ll have decent clothes in about half an hour.’
‘I think I ripped them.’
‘You may have,’ he agreed. ‘Did you have any more? In the car?’
‘Of course.’
‘I let the police know about the crash last night. If the local cop doesn’t arrive with your gear, we’ll go and get it.’
‘Did you really crash your car?’ Martin asked.
‘I did.’ Then, seeing the boys’ desire for gory detail, she relented. ‘Marilyn, the dog, was in the middle of the road. I swerved to avoid hitting her. My car went off the road and rolled all the way down to the river.
‘Rolled…’ Nathan breathed.
‘Rolled,’ she agreed. ‘Over and over. It was lucky I was wearing a seat belt or I’d have been squashed.’
‘You must have been scared,’ Martin said.
‘I was.’ She nodded, looking satisfactorily ghoulish. ‘I could have been deader than a duck.’ Her dark eyes twinkled. ‘If it was a dead duck, that is.’
But Martin wasn’t to be deflected. He was off in his own horror story. ‘You might have rolled into the river and drowned,’ he said, and frowned. ‘I think my dad drowned. My aunty said he drowned himself in booze.’