The Doctor's Unexpected Proposal

Mike was so nice. The best kind of friend anyone could hope to have. She’d known he was an amazing person the first day she’d ever seen him—when he’d arrived back in his home town two years ago, with his gorgeous fiancée on his arm and a job waiting on Crocodile Creek’s rescue helicopter.

When Marcella had abandoned both Crocodile Creek and Mike, Emily had been secretly delighted when he had decided to move into the doctors’ house, and she cherished their friendship even though it still made her feel a little shy.

Friendship was as close as someone like Emily was ever going to get to a man in Mike’s league but here he was, having left a whole group of people he was just as close to in order to look for her. The attention was unnerving enough to make her mouth feel suddenly dry.

‘You didn’t need to do that, Mike. I’d hate to think I was spoiling an opportunity to drown your sorrows.’

She expected a flippant response concerning the number of such opportunities that would be forthcoming, but any trace of amusement faded from Mike’s features, leaving him looking uncharacteristically solemn. Not that it changed his unruly mop of black curls or the wide mouth that turned up at the corners even in repose, but a pair of eyes dark enough to appear black, and which normally danced with mischief, were suddenly serious and the flash of warmth and understanding Emily received was enough to make the stopper explode from the bottled-up tears.

The weight of Mike’s arm settled around Emily’s shoulders as he sat down on the couch beside her. Even in the midst of a wash of misery she was also aware that the size of the couch precluded any distance between them. The hard length of Mike’s thigh was pressed firmly against Emily’s leg. He was a rock. A warm, human rock, and Emily could think of nothing she wanted to do more than cling to it.

‘Sucks, doesn’t it?’

Emily could only nod. And sniff. Embarrassingly loudly.

‘It’s even worse when you have to front up to a party and see happy couples like Cal and Gina and you’re supposed to be celebrating.’ Mike’s hand tightened on Emily’s shoulder with an empathetic squeeze. ‘It’s just as well Simon bloody Kent’s gone. I could quite happily deck him for doing this to you. He’s worse than a rat. He’s an idiot. And a bastard.’

Emily shook her head. ‘If he’d been a real bastard I wouldn’t have been with him for so long. He…he said he was very sorry.’

‘Big of him,’ Mike said scathingly. ‘He was a charming bastard, I’ll grant you that.’ He snorted. ‘Cardiologist, my eye. They’re supposed to fix hearts, aren’t they? Not go around breaking them.’

A sound somewhere between a laugh and sob escaped Emily. It was so comforting to have someone on her side like this. Someone who would defend her worth and assume anyone that left her would be the one missing out.

Maybe karma did exist after all, and this was payback time. Helping Mike pick up the pieces after failed relationships had been what had cemented their friendship over the last eighteen months. Emily decided she’d better make the most of this. It wouldn’t be long before she would feel compelled to return the favour…again.

‘I can’t believe I got it so wrong,’ she sighed. ‘I’m angry as much as anything right now. I should have seen it coming and I didn’t. OK, things haven’t been that great for a while, but whenever I tried to talk about it Simon said he was just a bit stressed by work. And I believed him.’

‘You loved him. Why wouldn’t you believe him?’

‘When I look back at the last few weeks, I just cringe. I made it so easy. I helped him.’

‘You’re a nice person, Em. The nicest person I know.’ The words were like balm to the raw patch on Emily’s heart and she was happy to let Mike’s squeeze pull her a little closer. Close enough to rest her head comfortably on his shoulder. ‘You can’t help helping people. I heard about all the hours you spent with young Lucky when you were officially off duty. You can’t tell me it was just because you didn’t want to be around to see Simon bloody Kent pack his bags and move out. You were determined that baby was going to survive, weren’t you?’

‘It was helping me survive as well,’ Emily admitted. ‘I think any patients of mine would have got a fair bit of extra attention in the last few days.’

Like they had all those years ago, when throwing herself into her career had seemed the only way forward.

‘It’s not just patients that you help, though, is it?’ The deep notes in Mike’s voice rumbled against Emily’s cheek. ‘Look at all the times you’ve let me cry on your shoulder and tried to help.’ He was silent for a few seconds and then sounded thoughtful. ‘Wasn’t it you that set me up with Kirsty? To take my mind off Trudi leaving?’

‘Sorry.’ Emily’s tone was rueful. ‘It seemed like a good idea at the time.’

Actually, it hadn’t seemed like that great an idea. It had just seemed…inevitable. As ordained by fate as the fact that her relationship with Simon had just morphed into an unexciting engagement. The wild desire Emily had had of suggesting herself as a replacement for Trudi was still ridiculous enough to make her blush. And still just as easy to dismiss.

Mike grunted as though in agreement. ‘Getting dumped doesn’t do wonders for your ego, does it?’

‘Trudi didn’t dump you. She cried buckets when her visa ran out.’

‘She didn’t try applying for a new one.’

‘She was going to.’

‘Yeah. Until she met that guy in Switzerland and got married a few days later.’

‘Maybe marriage was what she was looking for.’

‘Obviously.’

‘You were a bit slow off the mark, then.’

‘What?’ Emily could feel Mike stiffen. ‘I didn’t want to marry Trudi.’

‘What about Kirsty?’ Emily sat up and eyed Mike cautiously. ‘Did you want to marry her?’

‘Of course not.’ Mike grinned disarmingly. ‘She did have great legs, though.’

Emily rolled her eyes. Of course she did. So had Trudi. And Marcella. Great legs were just another item on a list that put her on a different planet from the women Mike Poulos chose.

‘So you’re not exactly devastated, then.’

‘I guess not.’ But Mike’s grin had gone. For just a fraction of a second Emily had another glimpse into eyes that weren’t shuttered by humour and realised she was seeing a part of Mike she had never been privy to before.

Maybe something good was going to come out of this whole mess. A bond of comfort in their friendship that was going both ways for the first time.

‘I am upset,’ Mike said slowly. ‘And I’m starting to wonder what the hell’s so wrong with me.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with you,’ Emily assured him. ‘You’re a great guy, Mike. Kirsty’s an idiot.’

‘Yeah.’ A familiar glint reappeared in those dark eyes. ‘She is, isn’t she? She and Simon bloody Kent should be a perfect match.’

‘How did we not see it happening right under our noses?’

‘Because it didn’t. They took off to Brisbane when they found they couldn’t keep their hands off each other.’

‘Did you know what was going on?’

‘I had my suspicions.’

‘When?’

‘The weekend before last. When you told me you were covering a night shift for Simon because he had to rush off to Brisbane.’

‘When his mother mixed up her insulin dose and put herself into a coma. What was so suspicious about that?’

‘Just that Kirsty had rung me ten minutes earlier to say she couldn’t make it back to Crocodile Creek for a day or two because her father was having some sort of crisis with his insulin dosage.’

Emily huffed at the absurdity of it. ‘Why on earth didn’t they have the imagination to come up with different stories?’

‘Because they’re both idiots,’ Mike reminded her promptly.