A Forever Family For The Army Doc. Meredith Webber

stretching out to the horizon, blue and green in places, fringed with white where the surf curled before rolling up the beach.

      Off the next headland he could see surfers sitting on their boards, waiting for the next good wave, and beyond that what must be the outskirts of the town.

      Wetherby!

CHAPTER TWO

      THE KITCHEN TABLE at the Halliday house could have seated twenty people quite comfortably, but Izzy and her sister Lila were under orders to set it for eight.

      ‘I thought it was just us—how did we get to eight?’ Izzy asked, as she obediently laid placemats while Lila added cutlery.

      ‘Uncle Marty’s coming and he’ll probably have a new girlfriend,’ Nikki, who was arranging a bowl of flowers for the centre of the table, volunteered.

      ‘But that’s you and me, two, and Lila, Hallie and Pop, five, then Marty and presumably his latest flirt, that’s seven.’

      ‘Plus the new doctor from the hospital. As chairman of the hospital board it seemed only right I get to know him,’ the woman her foster children all called Hallie explained.

      ‘She’s matchmaking again,’ Lila whispered to Izzy.

      ‘Hopefully for you, not me,’ Izzy retorted.

      ‘But Lila doesn’t live here,’ Nikki pointed out. ‘And, anyway, Mum, he might be The One.’

      Izzy groaned. Thirteen-year-olds—nearly thirteen-year-olds—shouldn’t be acting as marriage managers for their mothers!

      ‘Now, don’t start that again. I am perfectly happy with my single state, besides which he’s the new doc and I’ll be working with him, and while some people seem to manage to combine their work and social lives, it’s always been a disaster for me.’

      ‘It was only a disaster once,’ Hallie reminded her, ‘and that was probably my fault. He seemed like such a nice man when the board interviewed him. How was I to know he had two ex-wives he didn’t happen to mention?’

      ‘Two ex-wives and a jealous lover who damned near shot our Izzy.’

      They all turned towards the back door and chorused Marty’s name as he spoke. Nikki was first into his arms for a hug.

      But Izzy hung back, shuddering at the memory of that ill-fated relationship, only looking up when Marty added, ‘Okay, I’m home and it’s great to see you all but just stand back, girls, because I found this bloke out in the garden, looking a little lost, and apparently he’s come for dinner. Hallie’s latest stray, I’d say, the new doc in town. Says his name’s Mac.’

      Izzy could feel her face heating while her body went stiff with shock. A long drawn out no-o-o-o was screaming somewhere inside her, while her hitherto reliable heart was beating out a little tattoo that had more to do with how the stranger looked than who he was.

      Clean-shaven, with his long shaggy hair trimmed and slicked neatly back, his blue eyes framed by dark arched brows, he was possibly the most attractive man she’d ever seen.

      Any woman’s body would react to him, she told herself, glancing at Lila to see if she was similarly struck.

      But, no, her beautiful, dark-haired, doe-eyed sister was shaking hands with the man called Mac and asking where he’d come from, where he’d trained, doctor-to-doctor questions.

      Not that Mac had time to answer them, for Hallie had taken charge and was introducing him to the family.

      ‘Marty you’ve met—he doesn’t live here, just arrives from time to time, though usually not alone...’

      Hallie frowned and looked around as if realising for the first time that Marty hadn’t brought a woman.

      ‘I took Cindy straight upstairs,’ he explained. ‘She wanted a shower before dinner, then I went out to see Pop in the shed and met Mac on the way back.’

      ‘Ah,’ Hallie said, nodding as if the world was now back in its rightful place. ‘So, Mac—you do like to be called Mac, don’t you? Isn’t that what you said at the interview?’

      The poor bewildered man nodded, and before Hallie could go off on another tangent—something they were all only too used to—Marty stepped in.

      ‘Mac, the smallest of the women in the room is Nikki, and the redhead cowering in the corner is her mother, Izzy. It’s not your fault that the last hospital director had a mad ex-lover who tried to shoot Izzy.’

      Marty waved his arm.

      ‘Come on over, Iz, and say hello to your new boss.’

      ‘We’ve already met,’ Izzy said bluntly, her anger at Marty for singling her out overcoming all her weird reactions to Mac.

      ‘And I’m Lila.’

      Bless her! She’d read the tension in the room, had probably felt it emanating in waves from Izzy, and had stepped in to defuse things.

      Now she was doing doctor talk again with the newcomer, smoothing over the earlier awkwardness and giving Izzy time to recover.

      * * *

      Mac tried to make sense of the place and people around him. He’d been directed to walk up the hill from the hospital and the only place on the hill was a big, old, stone-built building that looked as if it could house the hospital as well as all the staff.

      He’d walked around it, wondering if the chairman of the hospital board might have a real house hidden somewhere behind it, and had ended up in a huge vegetable garden.

      The man called Marty had rescued him, leading him into the old building through a cave-like back entrance and directly into a kitchen where, amidst what seemed like a dozen chattering women, stood his sprite. She had clothes on now, stretch jeans that hugged her legs and lower body and a diminutive top that showed a flash of golden skin at her waist when she moved.

      Mrs Halliday he recognised, and the young girl with long golden-brown hair—okay, that was the daughter—while the real beauty of the room, the exotic dark-haired, black-eyed Lila, was finding it hard to hold his attention so his replies to her questions were vague and disjointed.

      The sprite rescued him.

      ‘This is the man I was telling you about,’ she said to the room at large. ‘The man who helped me with the porpoise.’

      After which she finally turned her attention to him.

      ‘Sorry about the chaos here tonight, Mac, but with—’

      ‘With your sister up from Sydney, and your brother might be home...yes, I know,’ he teased.

      He saw the colour rise in her cheeks, but the flash of fire in her eyes suggested anger rather than embarrassment.

      Bloody man! Izzy muttered inwardly. Now the whole family was looking at her.

      Waiting for her famous temper to flare up?

      No way! She would not react to this man’s teasing. Bad enough her body was reacting to his presence, sending messages along her nerves and excitement through her blood. If this kept up she’d have to leave—town, that is—given that a distracted nurse was no help to anyone.

      But Nikki—school...

      Pop saved her from total, and quite ridiculous, panic by appearing through the kitchen door with a long, and remarkably dangerous-looking spear in his hand.

      It stopped both the conversation and the sizzle in her blood.

      ‘This’s the best I can do, Nik,’ he said, passing the lethal weapon to Izzy’s daughter. ‘I don’t know if the aboriginals in this area made ceremonial markings on their spears but old Dan at the caravan park will know. You can ask him, and he’ll show you what it needs.’

      ‘Put