A Month To Marry The Midwife

‘My father,’ he said dryly, ‘is as well as can be expected for a man too old to be surfing.’ He spoke as if his parent were a recalcitrant child and Ellie felt a little spurt of protectiveness for the absent octogenarian. Then she remembered she had to work with this man for the next month. She also remembered Dr Southwell had two children, and his only son was a consultant obstetrician at Brisbane Mothers and Babies. A workaholic, apparently.

Well, she certainly had someone with obstetric experience for a month. It would be just her luck that they wouldn’t have a baby the whole time he was here. Ellie took a breath and plastered on a smile.

First the green frog jumping at her from the door, then the ones croaking outside the window and now the Frog Prince, city-slicker locum who wasn’t almost retired, like locums were supposed to be.

‘Welcome. Perhaps you’d like to sit down.’ She gestured at the only other chair jammed between the storage cupboard and the door frame. She wasn’t really sure his legs would fit if he tried to fold into the space.

He didn’t attempt to sit and it was probably a good choice.

There was still something about his behaviour that was a little...odd. Did he feel they didn’t want him? ‘Dr Southwell, your presence here is very much appreciated.’

It took him a couple of seconds to answer and she used them to centre herself. This was her world. No need to be nervous. ‘We were very relieved when someone accepted the locum position for the month.’

He didn’t look flattered—too flash just to be referred to as ‘someone’, perhaps?

Ellie stepped forward. Bit back the sigh and the grumbles to herself about how much she liked the old ones. ‘Anyway, welcome to Lighthouse Bay. Most people call me Swift, because it’s my name and I move fast. I’m the DON, the midwife, emergency resource person and mediator between the medical staff and the nursing staff.’ She held out her hand. He looked at her blankly. What? Perhaps a sense of humour was too much to hope for.

His expression slowly changed to one of polite query. ‘Do they need mediation?’ He didn’t take her hand and she lowered it slowly. Strange, strange man. Ellie stifled another sigh. Being on the back foot already like this was not a good sign.

‘It was a joke, sorry.’ She didn’t say, ‘J. O. K. E.,’ though she was beginning to think he might need it spelled out for him. She switched to her best professional mode. The experience of fitting in at out-of-the-way little hospitals had dispatched any pretensions she might have had that a matron was anyone but the person who did all the things other people didn’t want to do. It had also taught her to be all things to all people.

Ellie usually enjoyed meeting new staff. It wasn’t something that happened too often at their small hospital until Dr Rodgers had retired.

Lighthouse Bay was a place more suited to farming on the hills and in the ocean, where the inhabitants retreated from society, though there were some very trendy boutique industries popping up. Little coffee plantations. Lavender farms. Online boutiques run by corporate women retreating from the cities looking for a sea change.

Which was where Ellie’s new clientele for Maternity rose from. Women with considered ideas on how and where they wanted to have their babies. But the town’s reliable weekend doctor had needed to move indefinitely for medical treatment and Ellie was trying to hold it all together.

The local farming families and small niche businesses were salt-of-the-earth friendly. She was renovating her tiny one-roomed cottage that perched with two other similar crofts like a flock of seabirds on the cliff overlooking the bay. She’d found the perfect place to forget what a fool she’d been and perfect also for avoiding such a disaster again.

Ellie dreamed of dispensing with the need for doctors at all. But at the moment she needed one supporting GP obstetrician at least to call on for emergencies. Maybe she could pick this guy’s brains for ways to circumvent that.

She glanced at the man in front of her—experience in a suit. But not big on conversation. Still, she was tenacious when there was something she wanted, and she’d drag it out of him. Eventually.

In the scheme of things Lighthouse Bay Maternity needed a shake up and maybe she could use him. He’d be totally abreast of the latest best-practice trends, a leader in safe maternity care. He should be a golden opportunity to sway the sticklers to listen to the mothers instead of the easy fix of sending women away.

But, if he wasn’t going to sit down then she would deal with him outside the confines of her office. She stood and slipped determinedly past him. It was a squeeze and required body contact. She’d just have to deal with it. ‘Would you like a tour?’

* * *

Lemon verbena. He knew the scent because at the last conference he’d presented at, all the wives had been raving about the free hotel amenities and they’d made him smell it. It hadn’t resonated with him then as it did now. Sam Southwell breathed it in and his visceral response set off rampant alarm bells. He was floundering to find his brain. There was something about the way her buttoned-to-the-neck, long-sleeved white shirt had launched a missile straight to the core of him and exploded, and now the scent of her knocked him sideways as she brushed past.

The way her chin lifted and her cool, grey eyes assessed him and found him wanting, giving him the ultimate hands-off warning when he hadn’t even thought about hands on—hadn’t for a long time until now—impressed him. Obviously a woman who made up her own mind. She wasn’t overawed by him in the least and that was a good thing.

He stared at the wall where ‘Swift’ had stood a second ago and used all of his concentration to ram the feelings of sheer confusion and lust back down into the cave he used for later thought, and tried to sound at least present for the conversation. She must be thinking he was an arrogant sod, but his brain was gasping, struggling, stumped by the reaction he was having to her.

She was right. Being jammed in this shoebox of an office wasn’t helping. What an ironic joke that his father had thought this isolated community would help him return to normal when in fact he’d just fallen off a Lighthouse Bay cliff. His stomach lurched.

He turned slowly to face her as she waited, not quite tapping her foot. He began to feel better. Impatience wasn’t a turn-on.

‘Yes. A tour would be excellent,’ he said evenly. She must think he was the most complete idiot but he was working to find headspace to fit it all in. And he could work fast.

The place he could handle. Heck, he could do it in his sleep. He had no idea why he was so het up about it. But this woman? His reaction to her? A damnably different kettle of fish. Disturbing. As in, deeply and diabolically disturbing.

‘How many beds do you have here?’ A sudden picture of Ellie Swift on a bed popped into his head and arrested him. She’d have him arrested, more likely, he thought wryly. He was actually having a breakdown. His dad was right. He did need to learn to breathe.

CHAPTER TWO (#u125cf282-f08f-5861-ac95-4f14e889d016)

SAM HADN’T SLEPT with a woman for years. Not since his wife had died. He hadn’t wanted to and in fact, since he’d used work to bury grief and guilt, with all the extra input, his career had actually taken off. Hence, he hadn’t had the time to think about sex, let alone act on it.

Now his brain had dropped to somewhere past his waistline, a nether region that had been asleep for years and had just inconveniently roared into life like an express train, totally inappropriate and unwelcome. Good grief. He closed his eyes tightly to try and clear the pictures filling his head. He was an adolescent schoolboy again.

‘Are you okay?’ Her voice intruded and he snapped his lids open.

‘Sorry.’ What could he say? He only knew what he couldn’t say. Please don’t look down at my trousers! Instead he managed, ‘I think I need coffee.’

She stopped. Dropped her guard. And as if by magic he felt the midwife morph from her as she switched to nurture mode in an instant. No other profession he knew did it as comprehensively as midwives.

‘You poor thing. Of course. Follow me. We’ll start in the coffee shop. Though Myra isn’t here yet. Didn’t you stop on the way? You probably rushed to get here.’ She shook her head disapprovingly and didn’t wait for an answer but bustled him into a small side room that blossomed out into an empty coffee shop with a huge bay window overlooking the gardens.

She nudged him into a seat. Patted his shoulder. ‘Tea or coffee?’ It had all happened very fast and now his head really was spinning.

‘Coffee—double-shot espresso, hot milk on the side,’ he said automatically, and she stopped and looked at him.

Then she laughed. Her face opened like a sunburst, her eyes sparkled and her beautiful mouth curved with huge amusement. She laughed and snorted, and he was smitten. Just like that. A goner.

She pulled herself together, mouth still twitching. ‘Sorry. Myra could fix that but not me. But I’ll see what I can do.’

Sam stared after her. She was at least twelve feet away now and he gave himself a stern talking-to. Have coffee, and then be normal. He would try. No—he would succeed.

* * *

Poor man. Ellie glanced at the silent, mysterious coffee machine that Myra worked like a maestro and tried to work out how much instant coffee from the jar under the sink, where it had been pushed in disgrace, would equate to a double shot of coffee. She didn’t drink instant coffee. Just the weak, milky ones Myra made for her from the machine under protest. Maybe three teaspoons?

He’d looked so cosmopolitan and handsome as he’d said it—something he said every day. She bit back another snuffle of laughter. Classic. Welcome to Lighthouse Bay. Boy, were they gonna have fun.

She glanced back and decided he wasn’t too worthy of sympathy because it was unfair for a man to have shoulders like that, not to mention a decidedly sinful mouth. And she hadn’t thought about sinful for a while. In fact she couldn’t quite believe she was thinking about it now. She’d thought the whole devastation of the cruelty of men had completely cured her of that foolishness.

She was going to have to spend the next month with this man reappearing on the ward. Day and night if they were both called out. The idea was more unsettling than she’d bargained for and was nothing to do with the way the ward was run.

The jug boiled and she mixed the potent brew. Best not to think of that now. She needed him awake. She scooped up two Anzac biscuits from the jar with a napkin.

‘Here you go.’ Ellie put the black liquid down in front of him and a small glass of hot milk she’d heated in the microwave.

He looked at it. Then at her. She watched fascinated as he poured a little hot milk into the mug with an inch of black coffee at the bottom.

He sipped, threw down the lot and then set it down. No expression. No clues. She was trying really hard not to stare. It must be an acquired taste.

His voice was conversational. ‘Probably the most horrible coffee I’ve ever had.’ He looked up at her. ‘But I do appreciate the effort. I wasn’t thinking.’ He pushed the cup away. Grimaced dramatically. Shook his whole upper body like a dog shedding water. ‘Thank God I brought my machine.’