Poppy forced down the butterflies in her stomach and managed a noncommittal nod. But she smiled to herself at a reaction she hadn’t enjoyed in a while. Hormones.
What was that thing about adrenalin she’d learnt? It warmed your skin with increased blood flow and accelerated your heartbeat. This guy must trigger her adrenalin. And he’d know it, too. The thought steadied her. She’d had the impression he hadn’t even liked her. Strangely, she wasn’t tired any more.
Poppy walked beside him the short distance to the road. ‘Why do you want to walk me to my bike?’ She tilted her head up at him, unable to resist. ‘Did you want to hear why some home births are a good thing? How important it is that if these parents come to us in a crisis situation we shouldn’t judge them?’
His face showed it was the last thing he wanted to talk about and she bit her lip to suppress her smile.
‘Judging isn’t helpful when we’re trying to build a reputation as a liberal birthing unit. Obviously home birth isn’t for everyone, but in this case, prior to the sudden foetal distress, her midwife had a healthy mother with good antenatal care and a history of a previous normal vaginal delivery. That’s low risk.’ She slanted a look at him and saw that his eyes were glazing. She’d have one more go.
‘Do you realise that human beings are the only animals who make a nice safe nest to live in then leave it to have their young in a strange place? Don’t you find that bizarre?’
‘Bizarre? No.’ That was too much for him.
Poppy got the feeling she’d suddenly grown another head.
He shook his head in disbelief. ‘To come to a hospital to have your child seems perfectly natural to me—and something any sensible person would do.’ His forehead creased.
‘Look, I came back to check on the baby and I don’t know why I offered to walk you to your bike. Though it’s probably because I don’t like to see women walking alone at night.’
‘Oh, I appreciate that.’ She had no doubt he was wishing he hadn’t, and Poppy tried hard not to let the amusement come through into her voice. She needn’t have worried. He still couldn’t come to terms with women wanting home births.
‘What about infant mortality and morbidity? These people are dangerous.’ He looked down at her walking beside him. ‘No,’ he said again. ‘I don’t find it bizarre and we’ll never agree on home births.’ He smiled to soften the words but his voice was harsh.
Poppy shrugged. ‘Maybe we could talk about it another day?’
‘I don’t think so.’
They both stopped beside her red scooter. He stared at the tiny vehicle and its bottletop-sized wheels.
‘What an embarrassing bike.’
Poppy laughed out loud. And she’d been worried about offending him? ‘Oh very diplomatic, Dr Sheppard. I bet what you drive doesn’t cost less than a soft drink to run every month, and it’s fun. Have you heard of fun?’
He obviously wasn’t used to being paid back and she smiled as he blinked at her tone.
‘I’m sorry, that was rude of me,’ he said. ‘Which reminds me, I left rather quickly without telling you how impressed I was with your resuscitation skills. I thought we worked well together.’
Damn. She’d just decided he was an insufferable prig and he said something nice. She hated that. Now she felt like a louse.
She tried to hide her face by bending down to put the keys in the ignition. She could feel the heat in her cheeks because he’d made her feel self-conscious with his comment.
‘Thank you, Dr Sheppard.’
‘Jake, please.’
‘Jake, then. You’re pretty good yourself at what you do. I’m Poppy.’
He raised his eyebrows.
Poppy sighed. ‘My mother was a sixties flower child and she named her daughters after her favourite flowers. My sister’s name is Jasmine.’
Jake glanced down at her. She was tall for a woman and well rounded. He liked the way her red hair curled and bounced around her face. It was a big improvement on the theatre cap. She looked like a poppy. She had one of those husky, sexy voices that seemed to come out of the most unlikely people.
He watched her face soften when she spoke of her mother, and it made him think of the way she’d looked at the baby outside Theatre. Her face wasn’t beautiful—except when she smiled. Yet she had the kind of face he could watch all day, waiting for the changes. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d enjoyed watching a woman’s reactions so much.
Then she smiled and he realised that had been what he’d been waiting for. She lit up from within and the power of it scrambled his brains again. She could light a dark room with that smile. It made him catch his breath. Like the moment in Theatre when the baby had first cried. He was probably hypoglycaemic. Light-headedness and low blood sugar levels had a lot to answer for. He needed to get away from her.
‘Well, Poppy, you should be safe if I leave you now.’ He went to shake her hand but stopped at the expression on her face. He couldn’t believe it. She looked like she was trying not to laugh. At him. He glared at her. She bit her lip and took the hand he’d let fall. She held it in both of hers and shook it.
‘I’m sorry. Not that I don’t appreciate the thought or your combat skills, Jake, but this is Midcoast.’ She gestured around at the deserted street. ‘Not Sydney or New York.’
The ungrateful minx.
‘You’re laughing at me.’ He couldn’t remember the last time someone hadn’t taken him seriously. Then there had been that crack about fun. He froze. That was a worry. What was he turning into? Then she smiled that smile again.
‘I’m sure you’ll recover.’
She was playing the cheeky minx again, but she intrigued him. Still, he knew better than to lose his usual common sense. He’d always said that women in the health profession didn’t attract him. Women required more than he could give. Look at his marriage before Helen had died.
He was here to do the work he loved. His eyes narrowed. And make someone, somewhere in this small country town pay for his brother’s death, he reminded himself. He couldn’t forget why he’d come here—to find the woman responsible for stealing a month of his brother’s short life.
Someone had to fight against the new wave of alternative remedies that were causing people to turn their backs on real medicine. Maybe she was one of them.
The herbal scent in Poppy’s hair drifted to him and he found himself staring at her. One part of him sneered at her irresponsible stand on home births and the other half was sliding into a whirlpool of attraction that he knew was dangerous. But for the first time in nearly three years he felt alive. Something had shifted or cracked to allow some light in. He didn’t know if it felt good or not, but it was hard to back away.
If he ignored the voice of reason he had listened to for years, he could just cup her chin in his hand and drop a swift kiss on her parted lips. Just one.
Jake
