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‘Exactly my reaction,’ she told him, but switched her attention to Carrie as she spoke so she didn’t have to dwell on the blue eyes.
Dwelling on blue eyes was a definite danger—she knew that as certainly as she knew her own name, even if she had no explanation for the knowledge.
‘Tea?’
Her father held up the fresh pot and Emma nodded, taking the chair Marty had pulled closer to the table while she was battling to stay focussed. Carrie was telling her how amazing it had been to meet up with Ned again and, glancing at her father, Emma rather thought he considered it special as well, for he was smiling at the attractive, dark-haired woman as she spoke.
Emma settled back in the comfortable cane chair her father had inherited with the house, and sipped her tea. It was a pleasant, unexpected distraction after a busy day, but seeing her father chatting away to their visitors, she felt again the stab of guilt that the demands of the boys had kept him from the normal social interaction a retired man might expect.
Especially a younger retired man…
Not but what bringing her up had probably stopped any normal social interaction long before she’d had the twins…
She finished her tea and stood up, intending to take her cup to the kitchen, explaining she’d better start on the vegetables for the boys’ tea.
‘Sit down,’ her father said—not quite an order but close. ‘And leave the cup, we can sort it later. I’ve already asked Carrie and Marty to stay for dinner—we’ll have a barbecue. I bought lamb chops and sausages today and you can throw a salad together while I cook.’
‘I’ll give you a hand, Ned. I love a barby,’ Marty said, and as he pushed back his chair and moved away from the table, Emma dared a sneak look at him.
It wasn’t that he was drop-dead handsome or even, to her way of thinking, all that sexy, but something about the man drew her to him.
The lure of the unattainable?
Was it easier to moon over someone totally unsuitable than to go through the ‘getting to know you’ procedure with another man? Was that what was causing her uneasiness over Marty?
Uneasiness?
Yes, uneasiness! She was damned if she was going to call it attraction.
‘Don’t you agree?’
She came out of the fuzz in her head and was wondering just what Carrie had been saying to her when her phone buzzed.
‘Sorry,’ she said to Carrie. One glance told her it was the hospital, and as she stood up and moved a little apart to take the call, she saw Marty walking back around the veranda.
‘Duty calls,’ he said, waving his phone at her.
‘I’m wanted too,’ Emma told him, before heading for the kitchen to tell her father.
* * *
Marty watched her slip away before hurrying down the front steps and out to his car.
Should he wait for her?
Offer to drive her?
It would be no trouble to drop her back later…
He heard her voice and saw her out in the yard now, saying goodbye to the two little boys, thanking Carrie’s girls for playing with them.
‘Are you on duty for the chopper?’ he asked as she came towards him.
‘Seems so,’ she said. ‘Traffic accident on some road I’ve never heard of so I’m glad you’re the pilot, not me.’
She smiled at him and he knew the blip in his heartbeat was something he had to ignore. For all he’d been startled by his reactions to Emma, she wasn’t for him. A woman with children needed commitment…
‘I’ll give you a lift to Base,’ he said, mainly to show the blip and his other reactions they didn’t matter and that he could be in her company without ever thinking of her in a non-platonic way.
Perhaps.
‘The hospital will have sent whatever supplies you’ll need straight to the chopper,’ he added persuasively, although he knew he should be organising things so he saw less of her, not more.
She studied him for a moment—a fleeting moment—then shook her head.
‘I’ll need my car to get home,’ she told him in a voice that suggested it was the end of the conversation.
‘I’ll drive you home, it’s no bother. If we’re in the same car we can pool whatever we’ve been told about this accident and maybe work out how we’re going to tackle it.’
He wasn’t really holding his breath, but when she nodded her agreement, the relief that swept through him suggested he might have been.
‘I was told it was a traffic accident,’ she said, as they pulled away from the house. ‘The driver’s badly injured and is still being cut out of the car.’
She paused, then asked, ‘Wouldn’t an ambulance have been just as quick?’
He glanced towards her, glad she was already mentally attuned to the situation, as he should have been. But, no, he was taking the opportunity to study her.
