few house calls to make but they can wait until after dinner if you’d like to join us.’
‘You…’
‘I know, I’m an overbearing, manipulating toad,’ he said, smiling. ‘I’ve manipulated you into working for us this afternoon and now I’ve manipulated you into a dinner date. But it’s not actually a dinner date in the romantic sense. It’s Mum, Dad, whichever of my siblings are home tonight, Abby, Button and you. It’s hardly candlelit seduction.’
She smiled back, but only just. This was exactly what she didn’t want, being drawn into island life. She wanted to work on her vineyard. She wanted to forget about being a doctor. She wanted…
Nothing. She wanted nothing, nothing and nothing.
‘Why not medicine?’ Ben said softly, watching her face, and she thought almost hysterically that he always had been able to read her thoughts.
‘What…what do you mean?’
‘I mean I did some research when I heard you were back on the island. You’ve got yourself a fine medical degree. And yet…’
‘And yet my husband died of cancer,’ she said flatly, almost defiantly
‘And there was nothing you could do? You blame yourself or your medicine? Is that it?’
‘This is not your business.’
‘But you walked away.’
‘Leave it, Ben. I changed direction. I can’t let the vineyard go to ruin.’
‘We need a doctor here more than we need wine.’
‘And I need wine more than I need medicine. Now, if you don’t mind…I’ll collect Button and go home.’
‘My mum will be hurt if you don’t stop and eat.’
She would be, too.
She’d popped in to see Ailsa when she’d arrived back at the island—of course she had. Ben’s mum had always been lovely to her, drawing her into the family, making her time on the island so much better than if she’d been left with the normally sullen adolescent childminders her parents had usually hired on the mainland.
But she’d explained things to Ailsa.
‘I need time to myself—to come to terms with my husband’s death.’ To come to terms with her husband’s betrayal? His anger? His totally unjustified blame? ‘I’m done with relationships, medicine, pressure. I need to be alone.’
‘Of course you do, dear,’ Ailsa had said, and had hugged her. ‘But don’t stay solitary too long. There’s no better cure than hugs, and hugs are what you’ll get when you come to this house. And if I know our kids and our friends, it won’t only be me who’ll be doing the hugging.’
Nothing had changed, she thought. This island was a time warp, the escape her parents had always treated it as.
She wanted this island but she didn’t want the closeness that went with it. For six months she’d held herself aloof but now…
‘Irish stew and parsley dumplings,’ Ben said, grinning and putting on a nice, seductive face. His left eyebrow rose and he chuckled at her expression. ‘Who needs candlelight and champagne when there’s dumplings?’ He held out his hands. ‘Mum says it’s your favourite.’
She’d remembered. Ailsa had remembered!
‘And the kids are already sorting toys for Button,’ he said, and tugged her toward the door. ‘Come on home, Ginny.’
Home.
She didn’t want to go. Every sense was screaming at her to go back to the vineyard.
But Button was asleep at Ailsa’s. Ailsa had made parsley dumplings.
Ben was holding her hands and smiling at her.
What was a woman to do? A woman seemed to have no choice at all.
‘Fine,’ she said.
‘That doesn’t sound gracious,’ he said, but still he smiled.
She caught herself. She was sounding like a brat.
‘I’m sorry. It’s very generous…’
‘It’s you who’s generous,’ he said gently. ‘If you hadn’t helped I wouldn’t be getting any dinner, and Mum knows that as well as I do. So thank you, Ginny, and don’t feel as if by coming you’re beholden. Or even that you’re somehow putting your feet into quicksand. You can draw back. You can go back to your vineyard and your solitude but not before you’ve eaten some of Mum’s Irish stew.’
There were eight people around Ailsa’s kitchen table, and the kids were asleep on the squishy living-room settee just through the door. The children were still in sight of the table. They were still part of the family.
It had always been thus, Ginny thought. Not only had Ailsa and her long-suffering Doug produced twelve children, but their house expanded to fit all comers. Doug worked on one of the island’s fishing trawlers. He spent long times away at sea and when he was home he seemed content to sit by the fire, puffing an empty pipe.
‘I know you smoke it at sea, but not in the house, not with the children,’ Ailsa had decreed, and Doug didn’t mind. He regarded his brood and Ailsa’s strays with bemused approval and the house was the warmer for his presence.
Eight was a small tableful for these two, but the kids were mostly grown now, setting up their own places. Ben was the third of twelve but only the three youngest were home tonight. Becky, Sam and Hannah were fourteen, fifteen and seventeen respectively, and they greeted Abby with warmth and shoved up to make room for her.
Abby, the nurse who’d worked with her that afternoon, was already there. the nurse had impressed Ginny today, not only with her people skills but with her warmth. She looked at home at the table, as if Ben often had her here.
Abby and Ben? A question started.
Ben was helping his mother ladle dumplings onto plates. Doug hardly said a word—it was up to the kids to do the entertaining, and they did.
‘It’s lovely to see you again,’ seventeen-year-old Hannah said, a bit pink with teenage self-consciousness as she said it. ‘We missed you when you went.’
‘Ginny was Ben’s girlfriend,’ fourteen-year-old Becky told Abby, with no teenage self-consciousness at all. ‘I’m too young to remember but everyone says they were all kissy-kissy. And then Ginny went away and Ben broke his heart.’
‘Becky!’ her family said, almost as one, and she flushed.
‘Well, he did. Maureen said he did.’
Ginny remembered Maureen. Maureen was the oldest of the McMahon tribe, self-assertive and bossy. She’d come to see Ginny on the last night Ginny had been on the island, all those years ago.
‘You could have been kind. Ben’s so upset. You
