his heart swell when he saw the concern in her beautiful eyes. It had been a long time since anyone had looked at him that way, he thought wistfully. He realised that he needed to terminate the conversation before he got in way too deep for his own good. Once he left The Beeches that would be the last he saw of Helen Daniels so there was no point wallowing in all that wonderful sympathy.
‘Unfortunately, Tessa was involved in a road accident and subsequently died of her injuries. She was living with some guy in Miami at the time, and after she died he decided that he didn’t want to be responsible for Kristy.’ He shrugged, trying to damp down the anger he felt whenever he thought about what had happened. ‘He took off one day and left Kristy in the apartment. Fortunately, a neighbour heard her crying and called the police, but from what they could gather she’d been on her own for almost a week by then.’
‘But that’s awful!’ Helen exclaimed. ‘How could anyone just abandon a young child?’
‘I’ve no idea. Anyway, once the authorities discovered that Tessa was dead, they put Kristy into care. It was only when the police finally tracked down the guy Tessa had been living with that my name cropped up. Tessa had told him I was Kristy’s father, so the lawyer who was working on the case got in touch with me. I flew out to Miami the following day and was granted custody of her.’
‘It must have been a huge shock for you, though.’
‘It was.’ He smiled wryly. ‘I’d never thought about having a family and all of a sudden I had a six-year-old daughter I had never even known existed.’
‘You could have had her adopted,’ she said, her eyes locked to his face in a way that would have bothered him if it hadn’t been for what she’d said. The fact that she believed him capable of giving up his own child made him see just how low an opinion she had of him, and it hurt to realise that, hurt far more than it should have done, bearing in mind that he barely knew her.
‘Kristy is my child and I would never put her up for adoption,’ he stated in a voice like steel. ‘I’ve enough to feel guilty about without adding that into the equation.’
‘But you didn’t even know that you had a daughter!’ she protested.
‘No, I didn’t know about her, but that isn’t an excuse for what’s gone on. The poor child has suffered enough heartache in her young life and I intend to do everything I can to make up for it.’
He looked straight into her eyes, wanting to convince her yet unsure why it mattered so much. ‘I’m going to do my best to be the perfect father to her, and if that means giving up my career and moving home then that’s what I shall do. The only person who matters now is Kristy and there is nothing I won’t do to make her happy!’
‘THERE’S a staff meeting today at twelve. It will be a bit of rush to fit it in before we do the house calls but we find it helpful to get together a couple of times a week to discuss any problems we have.’
Helen summoned a smile, wishing she didn’t feel so on edge whenever she had to speak to Lewis. After all, it had been her decision to offer him the job so it wasn’t as though she hadn’t had any choice in the matter. Would she have taken him on if he hadn’t told her about his daughter, though? she wondered all of a sudden.
She’d already decided that she wasn’t going to offer him the job when he’d told her about Kristy, and it had been that which had made her reconsider. The thought of what the child had been through had had a huge bearing on her decision, although it hadn’t been the only reason she’d changed her mind. It had been Lewis’s determination to do all he could for the little girl which had been the deciding factor, and it was unsettling to know that he had that much power over her. It wasn’t surprising that she felt so nervous around him in the circumstances.
‘Fine by me. There’s a couple of queries I’d like to raise.’
He smiled ruefully and Helen’s heart performed the strangest manoeuvre—something between a leap and a hiccup. She had to make a determined effort to concentrate as he continued in the same wry tone.
‘My lack of experience in some areas of general practice work is starting to show so I’m hoping the rest of the team can give me a few pointers.’
‘That’s what we’re here for,’ she agreed briskly, deciding that enough was enough. She made her way to the door, pausing reluctantly when he spoke again. She would have preferred to make her escape rather than risk a few more seconds in his company.
‘I forgot to ask whose car we’re going in this afternoon to do the home visits. I don’t mind driving if you feel like a break.’
‘We’ll go in mine,’ she said shortly. It was irritating to have these ideas flashing into her head all the time. She’d worked with Ian for over twelve years and not once had she experienced even a hint of the awareness around him which she felt around Lewis.
The thought was less comforting that it should have been and she hurried on. ‘We need to visit one of the local farms today and your car really isn’t suitable.’
‘Hmm. A sports car isn’t the ideal vehicle to get around the area, is it?’
He sighed as he tossed his pen onto the desk and stretched his arms above his head. Helen looked away when muscles began to ripple beneath his shirt. She was trying to defuse the tension, not add to it!
‘I’m going to have to bite the bullet and change my car, I suppose.’ He heaved another sigh then dropped his hands onto the desk in a gesture that smacked of defeat.
‘Obviously a major sacrifice,’ she said tartly, because it seemed safer not to sympathise with him as she would have done with any other member of the staff.
‘Oh, I’m not worried for myself. A car is a car, so far as I’m concerned, but Kristy loves it. The only time I’ve heard her laugh, in fact, was when I took her to the seaside in the summer and we put the top down. I think it reminded her of drives with her mother. Tessa was driving a convertible when she was killed.’
Helen immediately felt guilty. It had been wrong of her to try and offset the effect he had on her by thinking badly of him. ‘How is Kristy settling in?’ she asked, because there was no way that she could apologise for being so sharp with him. It would only make him wonder why she’d spoken to him in that fashion in the first place, and that was the last thing she needed.
‘So far, so good.’ He crossed his fingers. ‘She seems to like her new school well enough and the fact that there’s an after-school club has been a real bonus. I’ve not had to find a child-minder to look after her until I get home from work. However, what really swung it was the house. The place we’re renting backs onto a farm and there’s a horse in the paddock. Kristy spends all her spare time standing by the fence, stroking it!’
Helen laughed. ‘A lot of little girls are mad about horses. I know I was at her age. Maybe you should think about booking some riding lessons for her.’
‘Actually, I have it on my list of things to do. Unfortunately, it’s a very long list and I haven’t got round to it yet.’ He tipped back his chair and smiled at her. Helen’s heart performed another interesting manoeuvre, a kind of double somersault this time.
‘I can imagine,’ she said as
