From Bachelor To Daddy

Although now a slight uneasiness had crept into Emma’s head to replace the argument.

Oh, for heaven’s sake! Sensible inner voice to the rescue. You’re only going to share a meal with a colleague, what the hell is wrong with that?

‘Wow, you live in this place?’ Marty said as they drove up the street towards the big house. ‘I’ve often wondered about it because for years it seemed abandoned, then suddenly it came to life again.’

They pulled up outside the old federation house, with its fresh white paint, wide verandas and dark green roof, and Emma saw it through Marty’s eyes—the front steps climbing up to the veranda, the wide hall with its gleaming polished floorboards leading off it, living and dining rooms off to one side, bedrooms and bathrooms off the other. And at the end of it the kitchen, already the heart of the home.

‘It was Dad’s aunt’s place and she was ill for a long time before she died. Dad grew up in Braxton—a little further up the hill. The four of us, me, Dad and the boys, had been crammed into a tiny flat in Sydney so when this became available we couldn’t move fast enough. I think we’d have come even if I hadn’t been able to get the job. Moved here, and just believed something would eventually come up.’

‘I doubt any country hospital would turn away a doctor—particularly an ED specialist.’

Having heard them arrive, her father had turned on the light over the front steps and was waiting at the top of them.

‘Dad, this is Marty...’ Emma stopped and turned to her companion. ‘Do you know, I’ve no idea of your second name. But my father’s name is Ned, Ned Hamilton.’

Somehow they sorted out the confusion, Marty supplying an unexceptional surname of Graham, and explaining about the food.

After which, as always seemed to happen these days, Dad took charge, bringing out plates, and napkins, cold beer and a bottle of chilled white wine, a couple of wine glasses dangling precariously between the fingers of one hand.

Emma took her wet clothes through to the laundry and glanced in at the sleeping boys before joining the party. Her father was telling Marty that he was kept fairly busy by the boys during the day but was slowly reconnecting with old school friends.

‘The boys will be in kindergarten from the beginning of next term so he’ll get more free time,’ Emma put in, but her father and Marty had discovered an acquaintance in common. One of Marty’s older foster sisters—one of the first children fostered by Hallie and Pop just over forty years ago—had been at school with Ned.

‘Carrie has twins too,’ Marty said to Ned—and just when had he found out her boys were twins? She tried very hard not to refer to them as ‘the twins’ as though they were one entity.

She tuned back into the conversation and found that this unknown woman’s twin daughters were in their final year at high school and very experienced babysitters.

‘In fact,’ Marty said, as Emma poured herself a glass of wine and selected a sandwich, ‘I could check whether they’re already booked for Saturday week. It’s the annual barn dance for the animal shelter just outside town. A barn dance is a bit old hat for teenagers these days so they won’t be going to it, but for you, Ned, it would be a chance to catch up with other old school friends, and I’m sure you’d enjoy it, too, Emma. I’d be happy to take you both. I always go.’

Which certainly wasn’t a date, Emma realised, while her father was agreeing enthusiastically to this plan, and reminiscing about the good times he’d had at the annual event.

‘It’s been going that long?’ Emma asked, and Marty laughed.

‘Your father’s not exactly ancient,’ he reminded her. He glanced at Ned. ‘You’d be, what, mid-fifties?’

‘Spot on,’ her father replied. ‘I took early—well, very early—retirement when Emma needed a bit of help, though for a few years I did a lot of supply teaching, filling in for absent teachers.’

Marty was delving into Hallie’s basket as her father explained, and now produced a paper plate piled with home-made biscuits and another with slices of chocolate cake.

‘Heavens!’ Emma said. ‘There’s enough food here to feed an army.’

‘Or two always hungry little boys who’ll love these leftovers.’ Her father smiled as he spoke.

‘Though, really, Marty should take it,’ Emma suggested.

‘And deny the boys Hallie’s chocolate cake? I think not!’

Laughing blue eyes met hers across the table and for a moment the air caught in her throat, just stuck there, as if she’d forgotten how to breathe.

Of course she could breathe!

In, out, in, out—simple as that.

But it seemed to take forever to get it sorted...

Not that her absence from the conversation was noticed as her father was now exclaiming about Hallie and Pop still being in Wetherby.

‘I met them, you know, quite a few times when I was a member of the surf club, and seeing a bit of Carrie.’

‘Small towns,’ Marty said, smiling again, but this time, thank goodness, at her father. ‘Carrie was one of the first children they took in, she was about twelve at the time so she was their first teenager. My lot—me, Izzy and Stephen, both of whom Emma’s met—and a couple of others were the last. I think all of us being teenagers together finally convinced them they’d done enough.’

‘What didn’t kill them made them stronger,’ her father remarked with a smile.

‘Dad was a high-school teacher so he knows all about teenagers,’ Emma explained, mostly to prove to herself she could speak as well as breathe...

The evening ended with complicated arrangements being made for her father and the boys to meet up with Carrie and her twins, the potential babysitters, and her father walked out to the car with Marty while Emma cleared the table and put everything away.

‘Well, that was fun,’ her father said, wandering back into the kitchen a little later.

The words sent a sharp pang of guilt spearing through Emma.

‘I’m sorry, Dad, I’ve been so selfish, letting you give up your life to help me out, first when Simon died and I lost the baby, and then with the boys. I hadn’t realised quite how selfish I’ve been until tonight.’

Her father put his arms around her.

‘You needed me back then, so where else would I have been? And wasn’t it me who talked you into having the boys, and didn’t I promise to look after them for you?’

He kissed her on the top of her head, adding, ‘And I’ve enjoyed every minute of it, but tonight, meeting Marty, and sitting out there just talking about nothing in particular, has shown me how restricted our lives have become. That was natural when the boys were small and very demanding, and the flat was really no place to be entertaining, but we both need to get out a bit more now, and the barn dance is a splendid idea.’

He was voicing the feeling she’d had back at Izzy and Mac’s place—voicing the fact that their lives had become too constrained, too centred around work and childcare.

She moved a little away from him and kissed his cheek.

‘You’re right,’ she agreed. ‘It’s time for both of us to get out and about. Who knows what’s waiting for us out there in the wild country town of Braxton?’

Her father chuckled and they parted for the night, Emma going quietly into the boys’ room and watching her sons sleep for a few minutes before dropping a kiss on each of their heads and taking herself off to bed.

Where, exhausted as she was, sleep was a long time coming.

Mainly because every time she closed her eyes she saw an image of a pair of laughing blue eyes.

She’d no sooner banished this image—with difficulty—when the barn dance hove into her mind. Though with Dad going too, the gossip mill could hardly slot her into the ranks of one of ‘Marty’s women’.

Could it?

CHAPTER THREE (#uf40a9b66-9634-53c1-a30b-e6ccfb1a6a03)

IT WAS SOMEWHERE during this mental argument that she fell asleep, to be woken by two very excited boys telling her God had brought them a puppy.