stopped being flippant and winced.
‘Um…no.’
‘How did I guess that? I’ll take it.’
‘But you have more house calls.’
‘The girls will already be asleep,’ he muttered. ‘I may as well stay.’
‘Your wife goes to bed early?’ Kirsty asked, and he looked at her as if she was stupid. Which, seeing she was hugging a coffee-maker, might well be a reasonable assumption.
‘Forget it,’ he said. ‘You. Toast. Me. Omelette.’ And he grinned down at the hopeful Boris. ‘And you—sit!’
‘Fair delineation.’
‘Speaking of delineation—you don’t want a medical partnership, do you?’ he asked, without much hope and from the depths of the refrigerator.
‘You don’t even know me,’ she said, startled.
‘I know you enough to offer you a job.’
‘You can’t be so desperate you’d offer a strange American a medical partnership.’
‘I’m always desperate.’ Backing out from the fridge with supplies, he separated eggs and started whisking the whites as if they’d offended him.
Kirsty cast him a sideways glance—and decided his silence was wise. She’d be silent, too. She started making toast.
For a while the silence continued, but there was obviously thinking going on under the silence. Kirsty was practically exploding with questions but Jake exploded first.
‘Where are you expecting Susie to have her baby?’ he asked at last, and his voice held so much anger that she blinked. He’d moved on from offering partnerships, then. He was back to thinking she was a dodo.
‘Sydney,’ she told him. ‘We’ve booked her into Sydney Central.’
‘You mean you’ve thought it through.’
‘I’m not dumb.’
‘You’ve towed a wounded, damaged, pregnant, anorexic woman halfway round the world—’
‘I told you. I had no choice. She was dying while I watched. Susie’s my twin and I love her and I wasn’t going to let that happen.’
‘So what did you hope to achieve here?’
‘Susie loved Rory so much. I thought she might just find echoes. And maybe she will yet,’ she added a trifle defiantly, flipping the toast onto a plate. ‘Angus’s smile…when he smiles, it’s Rory’s smile.’
‘He was very fond of Rory,’ Jake said, relenting a little.
Maybe he’d been afraid she’d intended dumping Susie’s pregnancy on him, she thought, and if she were a medical practitioner in such a place, maybe she’d be angry, too.
‘That’s what I’m hoping,’ she said. ‘You know, this castle is just the sort of crazy extravagant thing Rory might have built. Tell me about it.’
‘It saved this district’s soul,’ Jake told her and she paused in mid-toast-buttering.
‘Pardon?’
‘This is a fishing town,’ he said, flipping the omelette then moving in to remove her toast crusts with meticulous care. Boris moved in to take care of the waste. ‘The town was dependent on ’couta. Fish,’ he told her when she looked mystified. ‘Nearly all the boats were designed to catch barracouta, but forty years ago the ’couta disappeared, almost overnight. The locals say there was some sort of sea-worm that decimated them. Anyway, the boats all had to be refitted to make them suitable for deeper sea fishing but, of course, no one had savings. The locals were desperate—half the town was living on welfare. Then along came Angus, Earl of Loganaich, and his eccentric, wonderful wife. They took one look at the place and decided to build their castle. The locals called it a crazy whim, but now, after knowing Angus for so long, I’d say it’s far more likely he knew the only way to save the town was to give the locals a couple of years’ steady income while they worked on their boats part time and regrouped.’
‘You think that’s what happened?’
‘Who knows? But the locals won’t have a word said against him. No one laughs at this castle. Do you think this’ll do?’
She looked down at his plate. He’d cut two pieces of toast into perfectly formed triangles, without crusts. He’d flipped his perfect omelette into the centre.
‘Whoops,’ he said, and crossed to the back door. Seconds later he was back with one tiny sprig of parsley. It looked wonderful.
The man wasn’t a doctor. He was a magician.
‘Stay here,’ he ordered. ‘I need to feed my patient. You reckon she’ll eat it?’
‘I…um, I reckon,’ she whispered. Her stomach rumbled.
‘The rest is for you,’ he told her, motioning to the remaining eggs. ‘I’d do it for you, but I really am busy.’
‘Sure,’ she said, but he was already gone, striding toward the bedroom where Susie lay, not wanting to eat.
I’d eat, Kirsty thought, dazed. If Jake was standing over me having cooked me a meal…
How could she help but eat?
CHAPTER THREE
‘HE’S gorgeous.’
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