And…dangerous?
But he didn’t seem to feel it. ‘I’ve come to a decision. What you need, Dr Mainwaring,’ he told her with all due solemnity, ‘is a paddle in the surf. And I’m just the person to give it to you. Take your sandals off.’
‘Yes, sir.’ She was bemused but game.
‘And I’ll take my shoes and socks off.’ He grinned and bent down to do just that. ‘Mind, this is no small concession. It’s not every woman I’d take my shoes and socks off for.’
‘You know, I guessed that?’
He looked up at her and his smile widened.
‘Of course you did,’ he told her. ‘We’re partners, after all. And a woman needs to know a lot about her partner. Even if it is only a partnership for a month.’
CHAPTER THREE
THE paddle was a long one-strolling about half a mile away from the town, walking through the small breakers at the edge of the surf. Magically, Em’s beeper stayed silent. It was as if the town had thrown its worst at her over the past twenty-four hours, and knew its doctor was close to breaking point. She needed this break more desperately than she even guessed herself.
The moon was completely up now. They should go home. Em should go to bed.
‘But Anna never has the children in bed until nine,’ Jonas told her. ‘It’s no use turning up there to talk to her before that. She simply won’t listen. And paddling does the soul just as much good as sleeping.’
So they walked. Rather to Em’s regret, her hand was released, and they walked side by side, as two friends might have.
Two good friends.
It had to be good friends, she thought, because their silences weren’t uneasy. They fell into step and splashed through the shallows in unison, and the sensation was like a balm to Em’s troubled mind. She could feel the tension easing out of her, disappearing into the coolness of the surf and washing out to sea.
This was…special.
Em didn’t speak, but she soaked it all in-the night, the lovely feel of surf between her toes and the moonlight. And somewhere in that walk her feeling of desperation, of absolute weariness and of isolation, all fell away, and she knew that tonight, babies and emergencies permitting, she’d sleep like a child.
Jonas had granted this to her, she thought, and for that she was incredibly grateful. She still wasn’t sure how it had happened, but when the headland met the sea in a rocky outcrop and paddling became impossible, she turned to him impulsively.
‘Thank you,’ she said.
‘For what? For taking a beautiful woman for a walk along the beach?’ He smiled down at her. ‘It’s been my absolute pleasure.’
A beautiful woman…
How long since anyone had called her that? Em thought. Grandpa had, and so had Charlie, but they’d called her beautiful since she was three years old. Back at medical school she’d had a couple of boyfriends, but since moving to Bay Beach… There simply hadn’t been time for boyfriends.
No time to be called beautiful?
She grinned wryly at the thought. I should stick that in my diary, she decided, because the thought, silly though it was, was still delicious. Allow time to be described as beautiful.
‘What’s funny?’
Em smiled up at him, and then resolutely turned her face back along the beach to where Jonas had parked his car. He was driving her tonight, and that in itself was novel. ‘Nothing. It’s time for us to go and see Anna.’
He fell into step beside her. His trousers were wet to the knees-he’d rolled them up but they’d been splashed anyway and it was too warm a night to care about a spot of wetness, and the surf felt great. Em’s dress was soaked almost to the thighs but, like Jonas, she didn’t care. She was feeling so light-headed she could almost float.
It was weariness, she told herself. Or reaction to Charlie’s death. Or…something!
‘You won’t tell me the joke?’ he demanded.
‘Nope.’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s none of your business.’
‘Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong,’ he said, and before she knew what he was about his hand caught hers again and swung. ‘Because I just succeeded, and I want to know how to do it again.’
‘Succeeded?’
‘In making you smile.’ He twinkled down at her. ‘When I first saw you, I thought, I bet that woman has the most magical smile-and she has. Now there’s only one thing more I want to know.’
It was impossible not to ask the obvious. ‘Which is what?’
‘What your hair looks like unbraided,’ he threw back at her, and she gasped and lifted her spare hand defensively to the hair in question.
‘You’ll wait a while for that.’
‘Why?’ Jonas sounded curious-nothing more. Still his hand held hers and it felt good. It felt…right.
‘Because, apart from when I wash it, my hair’s unbraided for about five minutes a day,’ she said with asperity. ‘I rebraid it every night before I go to bed, so it’s ready for emergencies.’
‘You mean…’ he said slowly, looking at her out of the corner of his eye with a look she didn’t quite understand. Or didn’t quite trust. ‘You mean, if I was on call for you, so you wouldn’t be at risk of an emergency call, then you’d sleep with your hair unbraided?’
This was a ridiculous question. But he was waiting for an answer. Em kicked up a spray of water before her-for heaven’s sake, she was acting as young and as carefree as a schoolgirl on her first date-and she tilted her chin and told him.
‘I might.’
‘But it’s not definite.’ He sounded so disappointed that she almost chuckled out loud.
‘I probably would,’ she said, just to placate him. Or just to make him smile.
And she succeeded. ‘That’d make me feel so much better,’ he told her. ‘If I get called out to someone’s ingrown toenail, and I’m whittling away at rotten nail at three in the morning and smelling some farmer’s stinking feet, it’d make me feel a whole heap better knowing that my partner was sleeping at home with her hair splayed out all over the pillow…’
‘And with her dog beside her and her door firmly locked!’ She said it as a reaction, like she was slamming her hand on the lock right now!
‘Really?’ He sounded shocked at the thought of such distrust, and Em could contain herself no longer. Her laughter rang out over the waves. This man was ridiculous. Deliciously ridiculous, but ridiculous all the same.
‘Yes, Dr Lunn, with my door locked,’ she told him. ‘Do you think I’m naïve or something?’
In answer, the hold on her hand tightened even further.
‘You wouldn’t have to lock the door,’ he said virtuously. ‘Because I’d be out chopping up toenails.’ And then his voice flattened. ‘And, no, Dr Mainwaring,’ he told her, and his voice was suddenly deadly serious, ‘I think you’re all sorts of things. But I definitely don’t think you’re naïve.’
He’d caught her right off her guard. She wasn’t ready for seriousness. ‘Jonas…’
‘Emily…’ He matched her tone of uncertainty exactly, and it was all she could do not to laugh again.
‘You’re impossible! Jonas, we need to see Anna.’
‘So we do.’ He sighed. ‘So we do. But we can come back here another night. No?’
‘Maybe.’
‘What sort of answer is that?’ Once more his voice had changed and now he sounded indignant. It was impossible not to laugh.
‘It’s a safe answer,’ she told him, and then because suddenly she didn’t feel safe in the least-she felt very, very exposed-she hauled her hand from his and started to run. ‘I’ll beat you to the car, Jonas Lunn,’ she called.
She ran.