Free The Doctor's Proposal by Marion Lennox Page B

started he wanted to get it over with fast. ‘I became a surgeon, she was a radiologist, and I’m not even sure why we married now. I’m guessing we were too busy with our careers to look at anyone else. We were both hugely ambitious—fast movers in the career stakes—and our eventual marriage seemed more an excuse for a party than anything else. A party where we asked the right people. But suddenly Laurel was pregnant.’
    â€˜Not planned?’ she queried gently, and he winced.
    â€˜Of course not planned. As far as Laurel was concerned, it was a disaster. She only agreed to continue the pregnancy on the understanding that we’d use childcare from day one.’ He hesitated. ‘And maybe I agreed with her. I was an only child with no concept of babies. But then…then Alice and Penelope were born.’
    â€˜And became people,’ she said gently.
    He looked surprised, as if he hadn’t expected such understanding. ‘I fell for them,’ he conceded. ‘My girls. But the reality of life with twins appalled Laurel. She hated everything about our new life, and she hated what the twins were doing to me. She issued an ultimatum—that we get a live-in nanny or she’d leave. That I return to the life we had pre-kids. So I was forced to choose. Laurel or the twins. But, of course, she knew my response even before she ever issued the ultimatum. The girls are just…too important to abandon to someone else’s full-time care. So that was the end of our marriage. Laurel took off overseas with a neurosurgeon when the twins were six months old and she hasn’t been back. So much for marriage.’
    Ouch. That almost deserved being up there with other life lessons, Kirsty thought. All the reasons why it was dumb to get involved.
    â€˜So what did you do?’ she probed gently.
    â€˜I moved to the country,’ he said, almost defiantly. ‘My career in Sydney was high-powered. I knew I’d see little of the twins if I stayed there and I had some romantic notion that life as a country doctor would leave me heaps of time with the kids. Pull a few hayseeds from ears, admire the cows, play with my babies…’
    â€˜It hasn’t worked out quite like that, huh?’
    â€˜Well, no. But the problem is that I love it. The people are great. Alice and Penelope are loved by the whole community. They might not have as much of me as I’d hoped, but they have huge compensations.’
    â€˜And you? Do you have compensations?’
    â€˜Now we’re getting too personal,’ he said, stiffening as if she’d suddenly propositioned him. ‘I don’t do personal. The only reason I’m telling you this is because of Margie Boyce. As I said, Margie’s a housekeeper-cum-nurse. She also acts as my babysitter. She’s married to Ben, who was a gardener here before his arthritis got bad. Ben and Angus are old friends. What I’ve suggested to Angus in the past is that he has Margie and Ben stay with him, but of course he won’t agree. He knows Margie looks after my girls so I’d need to find someone else, and the thought of Margie fussing over him when he wants to die is unbearable. But now…’ Jake looked thoughtfully over to the two heads discussing pumpkins. ‘If we tell Angus that a condition of Susie staying here is that Margie comes out to care for her during the day…bringing the girls with him… He may well agree.’
    She thought that through. It sounded OK. ‘That’d leave me doing nothing,’ she said slowly.
    â€˜That’d leave you working with me,’ he said bluntly, and gave her a sheepish smile. ‘I’ve nobly worked it all out to stop you being bored.’
    She tried to look indignant—and failed. She needed to be honest, she decided. She’d been kicking her heels in Sydney for the last month, waiting to see whether Susie went into premature labour,