Bachelor Cure Read online

  ‘I’m the local doctor,’ he told her. ‘Let me see your arm. Let me help.’

  ‘It’s nothing.’

  He ignored her protest. The girl was in no condition to talk coherently, much less think. He watched her face-his eyes asked permission and his hands moved to the top button of her blouse. ‘Can I see?’ Then, as she didn’t object, he undid her soft cotton collar and pulled the cloth away from her shoulder. He whistled soundlessly. No wonder she looked as if she was in pain.

  ‘You’ve dislocated your shoulder.’

  ‘Just leave it.’

  The girl’s words were a pain-filled whisper. Courage was oozing out of her as reaction set in.

  ‘You’re not to be frightened,’ he told her, taking her hands again but so gently he didn’t jar her injured arm. ‘We’re here to help, and there’s nothing to be frightened of. I’m Mike Llewellyn, Bellanor’s only doctor. Behind me is Sergeant Ted Morris and Jacob-the chap who’s burying the pig-is your grandfather’s neighbour. He owns the farm next door. We’ve been searching for your grandfather since he went missing four days ago.’

  ‘But…’ The girl looked as if she was desperately trying to make some sense of what he was saying. She wasn’t succeeding. All she could think of was the pain.

  ‘Explanations can wait,’ Mike said firmly. He took the wrist of her injured arm and carefully lifted it so her arm was in a sling position. ‘I can take you back to the surgery and manipulate this with anaesthetic, but if you trust me then I can probably get your shoulder back into position now. It will hurt, but so will travelling over rough roads to get you to town. I can give you some morphine, but I think the best thing to do is just manipulate it back in fast. Will you try to relax and see what I can do?’

  ‘You…you really are a doctor?’

  ‘I really am a doctor.’ He smiled down at her, his blue eyes gentle and reassuring. He was hauling on his best bedside manner and then some. ‘The sergeant here will tell you. I even have a certificate somewhere to prove it.’

  ‘And…you know how to get this back?’

  ‘I’ve put back dislocated shoulders before.’

  The girl looked up, her eyes doubtful. This wasn’t the normal person’s idea of a doctor. He wasn’t wearing white coat and stethoscope. He wore blue jeans and a rough wool sweater. He had deep black hair that curled in an unruly tangle and needed a cut, and his face was tanned and his eyes were crinkled, as if he spent a lot of time outdoors.

  He wasn’t the least bit doctor-like.

  But he had piercing blue eyes, and a smile on his broad, tanned face that told her she could put herself safely in his hands. It was his very best bedside manner, turned on in force, and it usually worked a treat.

  Now was no exception. The girl sighed and nodded, closed her eyes and forced herself to go limp. She waited, waited for the pain…

  He looked down at her in surprise. Had this happened to her before, then? She looked like she knew what to expect.

  There was no point dragging it out.

  He lifted her wrist, bent her elbow to slightly higher than ninety degrees, then slowly, firmly, rotated her arm down and back-so firmly that the girl gave a sob of agony.

  And then, miraculously, it was over. The shoulder clicked right back into place.

  Silence.

  The girl took two deep breaths. Three. Four. And then she opened her eyes to a pain-free world.

  Her green eyes crinkled into a smile of absolute relief. ‘Thank you.’

  The girl’s words said it all. There was no need for him to check his handiwork. The girl’s breathed words of gratitude and the easing of the agony behind her eyes told him all he needed to know. He smiled down at her, and she smiled right back-and it was some smile!

  ‘Well done.’ He put a hand on her good shoulder. Tessa’s courage was amazing. ‘Brave girl. Don’t move yet. Take your time. There’s no rush.’

  No rush…

  Her smile faded and the girl looked about her in bewilderment, as if seeing where she was for the first time. Doris lay exhausted on the straw. Around the sow, the piglets were starting their first, tentative movements toward her teats.

  Someone had to break the silence, and it was finally the police sergeant who did.

  ‘Now, young lady, suppose you tell us just who-’

  The policeman’s voice was gruff, but Mike put a hand on his arm, shook his head at him and silenced him with a hard look.

  ‘Nope. Questions can wait, Ted. She’s done in. She’s Henry’s granddaughter. That’s all we need to know.’

  ‘You’re the girl who phoned from the US earlier this week?’ the policeman asked.

  ‘Yes. I…I’m Tessa Westcott. I flew in this afternoon, hired a car and came straight here.’

  ‘We don’t need to know any more,’ Mike said firmly, and Tessa’s eyes flew to his face.

  What she saw there seemed to reassure her. Mike’s was a face of strength-strongly boned, with wide mouth, firm chin and lean, sculpted lines. There were traces of fatigue around his deep blue eyes, but his eyes sent strong messages of kindness and caring. He ran a hand up through his dark tousled hair, his eyes smiled at her and the impression of reassurance deepened.

  ‘If Henry Westcott’s your grandfather, how come we’ve never heard of you?’ The barking demand came from behind, and Mike wheeled in sudden anger. It was Jacob, who’d come back into the barn to find a shovel.

  ‘Jacob, lay off. Can’t you see we’ve scared the girl stupid? She’s hurt and she’s frightened and now’s not the time to start a full-scale interrogation.’

  The radio on the police sergeant’s belt crackled into life. The sergeant lifted it and talked briefly and then he sighed.

  ‘I have to go,’ he told them as he replaced it. ‘The Murchisons’ cows have got out again and they’re all over the road near the river bend. If I don’t get down there soon, someone’s going to hit one.’ He looked closely at Tess. ‘I knew that Henry had a grandkid in the US, though, and you sure have his hair. We need to talk, but maybe…’

  ‘Not now,’ Mike told him. ‘Tessa, you’re past talking.’ He stared down at the girl before him, his quick mind figuring out what to do for the best here. ‘Sergeant, could you use the radio to ask the vet to come out here and see Doris? She’ll need antibiotics straight away and I don’t have a clue as to dosage. If Jacob stays here to help, he should be able to treat her. If Tessa doesn’t mind sharing my passenger seat with Strop, I’ll take her into town.’

  Strop… Tess shook her head, confused. ‘I’m staying here,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t blame you.’ The policeman grinned. ‘You wait till you meet Strop. Sharing a passenger seat, indeed…’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with Strop that a good vacuum cleaner can’t fix,’ Mike said with dignity. ‘Strop is my dog, Tess, and he’ll be very pleased to meet you.’ He hesitated as her look of confusion increased. This girl was in no fit state to be making decisions. She could barely hear him, and she certainly wasn’t fit to spend the night alone in a deserted farmhouse. ‘You’ll spend tonight in hospital and let me have a good look at that arm,’ he said firmly. ‘You can come back tomorrow, if you’re up to it.’

  ‘Doc, are you saying I have to stay here?’ Jacob demanded incredulously. ‘Are you saying you expect me to stay with the pig and wait for the vet?’

  ‘After scaring Miss Westcott stupid, it’s the least you can do,’ he said blandly. ‘And I know you, Jacob. You always do the least you can do. Besides, in the last year I’ve made five house calls to your place in the middle of the night for your sick kids, and every one of them could have waited until morning. Call this payment of a debt.’

  Jacob shook his head, confused, and to her amazement Tess felt herself start to smile. She’d blinked at Mike’s curt orders, but she needn’t have worried. Jacob wasn’t the least bit offended. He thought Mike’s words through and then nodded, acknowledging their fairness.

  ‘We need to go now,’ Mike t
old Tess, only the faintest trace of humour behind his deep eyes telling Tess that he was also laughing gently. ‘I have a patient in labour myself. She was in the early stages when I left and she isn’t likely to deliver until morning, but she needs me all the same. OK, Tess?’

  She looked as if she was operating in a daze. Nothing seemed to make sense. ‘I…’ She was forcing herself to focus. ‘I guess.’

  ‘That’s fine, then.’ He smiled down at her. ‘I’m sure Jacob and the vet will take the greatest care of Doris. Bill Rodick, the vet, is very competent, and Jacob’s a fine farmer. So… You can visit Doris tomorrow if she’s up to receiving callers. Now, though… Strop makes a great chaperon. That’s his principal mission in life-to obstruct as many things as possible. So do you trust Strop and me enough to let us drive you to town?’

  Trust him?

  Tess looked up, and she gave Mike a shaky smile-and then, before she could realise what he intended, she was swept up into a pair of strong, muscled arms and held close against his rough sweater. She gasped.

  ‘No. Please… I can walk…’

  ‘I dare say you can,’ he told her firmly. This girl had enough courage for anything. ‘But it’s dark outside. I know where my car is. I’m sure-footed as a cat and I don’t want you stumbling with that arm, especially if Strop’s abandoned his leather armchair and is back at his old trick of obstructing things. He’s the type of dog burglars fear most because they’re at risk of tripping over him in the dark. So shut up and be carried, Miss Westcott.’

  Shut up and be carried…

  It seemed there was nothing else to be done-so Tess shut up and was carried.

  Mike carried the girl out to his car and tried to figure just what it was about her that made him feel strange.

  Like he was on the edge of a precipice.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE girl was quite lovely.

  The clock on the wall said three o’clock, and Tessa’s hospital bed was bathed in afternoon sunlight. Mike had stuck his head around the door three or four times during the morning but each time Tess was still sleeping soundly. Now she opened her eyes as he entered, blinked twice and tried to smile.

  Tess was in a single hospital ward, small and comfortably furnished, with windows looking out over a garden to rolling pasture beyond. It was cattle country, if she had the energy to look.

  She didn’t. She stared across at Mike as if she was trying to work out just who he was.

  This was a different Mike to the one she’d seen the night before. He’d told her he was a doctor and, after his treatment of her shoulder, Tess had had no grounds for disbelief. But now… In clean clothes, his black curls brushed until they were almost ordered, a white coat over his tailored trousers and a stethoscope swinging from his pocket, he was every inch the medico.

  He still had the bedside manner she remembered from the night before. He stood at the door and smiled, and Tess was forced to smile back.

  And then her gaze dropped in astonishment. A vast liver and white basset-hound was sauntering into her room beside him.

  ‘Awake at last?’ Mike’s lazy smile deepened as he strolled over to her bed, trying not to appreciate her loveliness too much as he did. The fact that the look of her almost took his breath away didn’t make for a placid doctor-patient relationship at all. ‘Welcome to the land of the living, Miss Westcott.’ His eyes were warm and twinkling. ‘How’s the shoulder?’

  ‘It seems fine.’ She kept on staring at Strop. ‘So there really was a dog,’ she said. ‘I thought he was part of my nightmare.’

  ‘What, Strop?’ Mike grinned. ‘He’s no nightmare. He’s solidly grounded in reality. So well grounded, in fact, that if he gets any closer to the ground we’ll have to fit him with wheels.’

  ‘You keep a dog in the hospital?’

  ‘He’s a hospital dog. He has qualifications in toilet training, symptom sharing and sympathy. Just try him.’

  Strop looked up toward the bed. His vast, mournful eyes met Tessa’s, limpid in their melancholy. He gave a faint wag of his tail, but went straight back to being mournful.

  ‘Oh, I can see that.’ Tess chuckled. ‘He’d make any patient feel better immediately. Like they’re not the only ones feeling awful, and they couldn’t possibly be feeling as awful as that!’

  Strop flopped himself wearily down on the bedside mat. Mike shoved him gently aside with his foot-the dog slid under the bed without a protest as if this was what happened all the time-and then Mike turned his attention back to his patient.

  That wasn’t hard to do.

  ‘Enough,’ he said. ‘Strop steals my limelight all the time. Your arm, Miss Westcott. How is it?’

  Tess wriggled it experimentally and winced. ‘I wouldn’t worry about it. It’s bruised but it’s fine. You must have put the humerus right back in or it’d hurt a lot more than this.’

  ‘The humerus…’ Mike’s face stilled. Last night he’d suspected she had obstetric knowledge, and now… ‘You’re a nurse, then?’

  ‘Nope.’ She smiled and it was like a blaze of sunshine. ‘Guess again.’

  ‘A physio? An osteopath?’

  ‘Try doctor.’

  ‘A doctor!’ He stared.

  ‘Females can be,’ she said, still smiling. Her voice was gently teasing. ‘In the States, medicine’s about fifty-fifty. Don’t tell me you still keep women in their place down under.’

  ‘No. But…’ Mike thought back to the crazy red stilettos. He stared down, and there they were, parked neatly side by side under the bed beside Strop. Crimson stilettos. And… A doctor?

  ‘And doctors are allowed to wear whatever they like,’ she told him, following his gaze and knowing what he was thinking in a flash. ‘There’s no need for us to put on black lace-ups when we graduate-so you can take that slapped-by-a-wet-fish look off your face, Dr Llewellyn. Right now.’

  ‘No. Right.’ He took a deep breath and managed a smile. ‘You’re a practising doctor, then?’

  ‘That’s right. I work in Emergency in LA.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Well, that’s put me on my mettle.’ He had himself back in hand now. Almost. ‘Doctors are the worst patients,’ he said, and tried a grin. ‘They’re almost as scary to treat as lawyers.’ He sat on the bed beside her and tried to ignore the weird feel of intimacy his action created. Hell, he sat on all his patients beds! ‘Your shoulder’s really OK?’

  Tess moved it cautiously against the pillows and winced again.

  ‘It’s sore,’ she admitted. ‘But it’s definitely back in position. It’s just bruised.’

  ‘Can I see?’

  ‘Sure.’ There was no reason why he shouldn’t. There was no reason why she should blush either as he loosened her hospital gown and gently examined the shoulder and the bruising of her arm. He was just a doctor, after all…

  His fingers were gentle and sure, and his eyes watched her face as he carefully tested the injured arm. ‘Do you have full movement?’

  ‘I can wiggle everything,’ she told him. ‘But I don’t want to.’

  He smiled. ‘I don’t blame you. In a day or two it’ll look really spectacular.’ He ran his hands over the bruised arm, trying to block out his thoughts of Tessa the woman and turn them back to Tessa the patient. Usually he had no problem with differentiating work from personalities, but Tessa was something else! And her blush didn’t help at all.

  ‘You may not want to wiggle, but you’ll live,’ he pronounced finally. He pulled the sheet back to cover her and tucked her in.

  It was a caring gesture that he made every day of his working life but suddenly the gesture was far, far different. Intimate. He stood looking down at the girl in the bed, struggling to maintain his lazy smile.

  ‘You might even feel like living after your sleep,’ he said finally, shoving away the strange sensations he was feeling and striving hard to sound normal. His smile deepened. ‘Fifteen hours’ straight sleep isn’t bad.’


  ‘I don’t think I’ve slept since I knew Grandpa was missing,’ she admitted. She grimaced. ‘And to sleep fifteen hours now, when I should be out searching for Grandpa…’

  ‘There’s no need for you to be out searching, Tess. The police and the locals are all looking as hard as they can, and they’re being thorough.’

  ‘I know the farm, though. I know the places he loved to go.’

  ‘But-’

  ‘But what?’ She glared up at him. ‘What? Why do you sound like that?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like you’re trying to scotch any ideas I might have of where he might be.’

  He sighed. This was hard. Bloody hard. But, then, telling families the worst was something he’d had to face many times.

  ‘Tess, your grandfather has mitral valve disease and atrial fibrillation,’ he said softly. ‘He’s been missing for over four days now. It’s my guess… Well, that farm of his is as rugged as any around here. There’re plenty of places a body could lie for months and not be found. Your grandfather is eighty-three years old. If he went out and had a heart attack…well, my guess is that’s exactly what’s happened. His truck’s still at the house. He had his goats tethered and Doris due to deliver. If he was going away, he’d have organised people to care for them.’

  ‘I know that,’ Tess said. She stared up, and any trace of her gorgeous smile had completely disappeared. Her distress was obvious. ‘But… I didn’t know he had heart disease.’

  ‘Have you been in contact with him recently?’ he asked. ‘I was under the impression he had no contact with his family.’

  ‘He and my dad didn’t get along,’ she said bleakly. She was obviously still taking the heart disease bit on board and was thinking it through as she talked. She turned and stared out the window, fighting to get her face back in order, and it was as if she was talking to herself. ‘Dad and Grandpa fought. Dad went to the States when he was twenty. He met my mom there and he stayed. He died when I was sixteen, without ever coming back here.’