if to emphasise her point, Archie wagged his tail and licked Stacey’s hand and then Scarlett’s foot, making the little girl giggle.
‘I swear you trained him to do that on purpose.’ But Stacey was smiling. ‘Just don’t let Sean the Smug put you off finding happiness with someone else. Not all men are like him.’
‘I know they’re not.’ But she hadn’t managed to pick anyone who felt right before him, either. ‘I’m doing just fine on my own, Stacey. I live in my favourite place in the world, I love my job, and I have my family and friends nearby. I don’t need anything else.’
‘Hint taken, and I’ll stop nagging,’ Stacey said.
For now, Toni thought. She knew her sister’s motives were good, but her life really was just fine as it was. Toni felt very much part of the village where she’d grown up and she had absolutely no regrets about coming here from London. She had a great life; she didn’t need to date someone.
She didn’t need to prove her judgement to herself, either. Of course she knew that not all men were as selfish and demanding as her ex. But if she was honest with herself she knew that the two men she’d dated before him had been just as single-minded and just as selfish as Sean. Sometimes she wondered if she subconsciously picked men who just couldn’t give her love and security so it wouldn’t break her heart when things went wrong. She’d already lost too many people who really mattered at too young an age. Sean had given her an ultimatum: dump her grandmother, or be dumped. That one had been very easy, and she was done with ultimatums.
Single and happy. That was her. And that was the way she intended to stay.
‘Let’s get you back down in your chair, Miss Beautiful,’ she said to her niece, ‘and I’m going to help your mummy cook dinner.’
‘Din-dins,’ Scarlett said, and beamed.
ON TUESDAY MORNING, Ben was in early for the weekly team meeting. ‘I made brownies,’ he said, taking the lid off the tin and putting it in the centre of the table.
‘Thank you. Good choice,’ Ranjit, the head of the practice, said with a smile.
Everyone except Toni took a brownie; Ben sighed inwardly. Obviously he’d annoyed her enough that she was going to ignore his peace offering. Well, he’d had it with women who were snippy. He’d put up with it from Karen—until he’d learned the bitter truth—and he wasn’t going to bend over backwards to please Toni Butler.
Once they’d gone through the morning’s agenda, Ranjit asked, ‘Is there anything that anyone wants to bring up?’
‘Yes—we need someone out at The Beeches today, please,’ Toni said. She looked at Ben. ‘That’s the local nursing home. Forty beds; and they’re set up for patients with dementia. We need to follow up Liza’s UTI and Renée’s lithium levels.’
‘Can you do the follow-up for us, Ben?’ Ranjit asked. ‘It’d be useful for you to meet Julia and her team.’
‘Sure.’ He looked at Toni. ‘Do you do a regular practice visit, Nurse Practitioner Butler?’
‘Toni,’ she said.
Oh. So she was thawing slightly. Good. He wouldn’t go out of his way to make friends with her, but a decent working relationship would be good both for the team and for their patients.
‘Our practice’s regular visit is on Thursdays, though obviously we pop in whenever we’re needed as well.’ Her grey eyes were very clear. ‘I visit The Beeches on my Monday afternoons off with Archie. He’s a therapy dog. I bring him to the surgery with me on Monday morning because I go straight from here to the nursing home.’
‘A therapy dog.’ He hadn’t expected that.
‘No doubt you disapprove of that, too,’ she said.
He blew out a breath. Maybe he’d asked for that, because he’d reacted badly to the dog yesterday. But she’d been snippy with him, too. ‘No. I’ve seen studies showing that having a pet visiting can really help elderly people, especially those in residential care.’
‘Exactly. It helps the residents—even a small observational study by the manager at The Beeches last year showed that a visit from Archie helps with the residents’ moods and helps with their social interaction with the staff as well as each other. It gives the residents something to talk about other than their illness, and even the ones who don’t really hold a conversation any more smile when they see him. The residents all really look forward to Mondays. And obviously it’s done in a supervised environment, we know that none of the residents is allergic or afraid of dogs, and we’re very aware of infection control. There’s a policy at the home as well as here.’
She’d just covered everything he’d brought up yesterday. Clearly what he’d said still rankled. He knew what he needed to do. ‘I apologise,’ he said, ‘for snapping at you yesterday.’
She inclined her head in acknowledgement. ‘But you don’t like dogs.’
Now she’d brought it up... ‘No. Obviously I’d never hurt one, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to spend time with one.’
‘I get that not everyone’s a dog person,’ Toni said. ‘But Archie is a genuinely nice dog. He’s passed a very thorough assessment—he can be stroked and handled by anyone and he’ll take treats gently and wait patiently. Plus he doesn’t jump up, paw people or lick them too much.’
And Ben could guess exactly why that was part of the assessment. ‘Because elderly people have very frail, thin skin.’
She smiled at him, then. A genuine smile. And Ben was shocked to realise that it made him feel as if the room had just lit up. This wasn’t good. He didn’t want to be attracted to anyone. His life was on an even keel again and he wanted it to stay that way.
He needed to keep his thoughts on his job. ‘All right. I’ll go to the home at lunchtime, as soon as my surgery finishes,’ he promised.
‘Thank you.’
Now she was smiling rather than scowling at him, Toni Butler was seriously pretty. She didn’t wear a ring on her left hand, but that meant nothing; she could still be in a serious relationship with someone without being married. He wasn’t going to ask and start the gossip mill working, either. She was his colleague. End of. And, even if she was single, he’d learned his lesson the hard way. Relationships were just too fragile, too easily broken. Like his heart. He’d only just finished putting himself back together after Karen and Patrick’s betrayal, and he had no intention of setting himself up for a repeat of all that heartache.
* * *
Toni was always a little bit suspicious of people who didn’t like dogs. She didn’t understand that mindset. But she knew she hadn’t really given Ben Mitchell a chance; she’d let herself react to him as if he was like Sean, expecting her to do things his way with no discussion, so she’d been combative with him rather than trying to find common ground, the way she normally would.
Of course not all men were like her ex.
