‘Moonlight on the water, was there?’
‘Where? When?’ Cam would choose that moment to come into the room. Not that he seemed interested in the answer, already delving into the refrigerator to check out the sandwiches on offer today.
‘Last night,’ Kate told him. ‘The view from the surf club. Romantic?’
Cam looked up at her and grinned.
‘Now I know what your boss means when she talks about small towns.’ He put enough emphasis on the ‘your’ to make Kate look a little uncomfortable. ‘For your information, we’d just completed an errand of mercy, it was late, and we were hungry. It was the surf club or fast food.’
He turned to look at Jo.
‘Was the moon out? Can you remember?’
Jo was so pleased he’d diverted the conversation she smiled at him.
‘Far too interested in my calamari to notice,’ she said, then she turned to Ellie, the nurse who did shifts at the surgery and the hospital, to ask about the babies’ sleep programme.
But she was aware that the community interest she’d foretold when she’d taken Cam on board was already rife, and with a small twinge of sadness accepted there’d be no more dinners at the surf club with him.
Or was she being silly?
She could handle talk, especially talk that had no basis in fact.
Although given the instant lust thing going on, there was probably a teeny, tiny basis …
‘Are you listening?’ Ellie demanded.
‘Of course,’ Jo told her, hoping her mind could rerun Ellie’s explanation for her. ‘You need at least four nights. If we could get Amy in over a weekend—starting Friday and running through to Tuesday—it might be easier for Todd to get help with the milking.’
‘If you left it until the school holidays—another couple of weeks—there might be a high school kid who’d be happy to have the work.’
Obviously Cam had been following the conversation better than she had, that he’d come up with such a sensible suggestion, although—
‘If Kaylin’s sleep avoidance is as bad as Amy suggested, another couple of weeks might be too long to wait,’ Jo told him.
‘What about an in-home arrangement?’ Coming from Cam, this second suggestion was so surprising Jo had to ask.
‘You’ve been in the army, not general practice, what would you know about in-home arrangements?’
He gave her a smug smile—but even smug it tickled her sensitive bits.
‘Three sisters and at last count eight nieces and nephews. One of my sisters had terrible trouble with her second baby and she got someone to come in.’
He turned to Ellie.
‘It sounds as if you’re involved in the programme at the hospital. What exactly do you do?’
Ellie straightened in her chair and Jo realised she wasn’t the only one in the practice who was feeling the effect of the pheromones that had infiltrated the atmosphere with Cam’s arrival.
‘We put the mum to bed in a separate room and one nurse stays up with the baby, handling it when it wakes. We don’t use controlled crying, but use a coaching technique that we’ve found successful. It’s best with babies who’ve started solids three times a day, and usually it works in three nights, though we say four in case we need the extra night.’
Jo thought about it then nodded.
‘Kaylin’s six months old and she’s on solids. In fact, although she’s still being breastfed, I suggested Amy try her on them when she came in about sleep problems earlier.’
She was still thinking about Kaylin when Cam entered the conversation again.
‘If you’re doing this programme at the hospital, would you be willing to do it at their home?’
Cam realised he’d gone too far—taken the extra step when it was Jo who should be making decisions about her staff deployment.
He turned to her, hands up in the air.
‘Sorry, I shouldn’t be making suggestions without consulting you, Jo. You’re Ellie’s employer, not me, but I get carried away.’
Fortunately Jo wasn’t put out, flashing him a cheeky smile before saying, ‘I was wondering when you’d remember that, but it’s an excellent idea. Ellie, if you’d be happy to do it, I’d be happy to pay you for the four nights—and days so you can sleep. What are your hospital shifts like? Could you fit it in some time soon?’
‘Next week,’ Ellie told her. ‘I’d love to give it a go. I don’t have hospital shifts next week because I refuse to work schoolies week. Tom gets contract nurses in, and I’m off duty here as well.’
Cam felt a surge of satisfaction out of all proportion to the small contribution he’d made—a surge that made him think maybe general practice in a smallish town would have a lot of rewards, and in this town he’d have the added attraction of fantastic surf.
If he could persuade Jo to let him stay.
Hmm, maybe not such a good idea, given how aware he was of her. Even sitting in a lunch-room with two other women, his body was conscious of every move Jo made, his mind considering changes in the inflections of her voice. Last night, knowing she was sleeping the other side of a fairly flimsy wall, he’d imagined things an employee should never imagine about his boss, no matter how attractive he found her.
Sleep had eluded him for hours, although that was probably just as well, given the aforementioned flimsy wall. He would have hated to have awakened her with his nightmares.
He tuned back into the conversation in time to hear Jo asking Ellie to phone Amy to make the arrangements, then, as Ellie and Kate left the room, he turned to the woman who’d so disturbed his sleep.
‘Can you afford to be paying Ellie to do the sleep programme? Will you charge the parents of the baby? Are such things covered by government subsidies?’
She turned towards and smiled—second smile in one lunch-break, not that he was counting.
‘Worried I won’t be able to afford your salary?’ she teased, then the smile slid off her face as she added, ‘I’m sure there are government subsidies, if I wanted to research them and then do the paperwork, but I can afford to pay Ellie for her time. If this works, we can find out about possible subsidies for the future, but for now, if we can provide four good nights’ sleep for Amy and Todd, I’m happy to cop the cost. If it succeeds, well, it’s worth more than money to the Bennetts.’
‘Four uninterrupted nights’ sleep,’ Cam said, wondering if he’d ever reach that blissful pinnacle himself. And thinking of that goal, he was less guarded than he usually was. ‘Are there sleep programmes for grown-ups as well as kids?’
She looked
