HUGO HAD SLEPT for three hours or maybe a bit less before a squeal broke the stillness of dawn.
Polly had tied a balloon to the end of Ruby’s bed, with a red ribbon stretching across the floor and out of the open window. Ruby had obviously found the ribbon.
There was another squeal, longer than the first, and then a yell of pure joy.
‘Uncle Hugo! Polly! Hamster! Everyone! Santa’s been and he’s left a … a pool! There’s sand and umbrellas and it’s just like the beach. And there’s presents piled up beside it and ohhhhhh …’
They heard a thud as she jumped out of her window and then hysterical barking as Hamster discovered the enormous intruder in his yard.
‘I’d better sneak back to my bedroom before she finds me,’ Polly murmured, laughing, and he rolled over and smiled down into her dancing eyes.
‘Why would she come and find you when she has a beach?’
‘Uncle Hugo!’ The yell from outside was imperative. ‘Come and see!’
He had to come and see. He had no choice, he thought, as he hauled on his pants and headed for the door, giving Polly time to work out a decorous strategy for her appearance.
He had no choice at all, he thought, as he walked through the front door and was hit by the world’s biggest hug from the world’s most excited seven-year-old.
‘How wonderful!’ He emerged from the hug to find that somehow Polly had made it back to her bedroom and was leaning out of her window, smiling and smiling as she called to them both, ‘Happy Christmas, Hugo. Happy Christmas, Ruby. Yay for Santa.’
He had no choice at all, Hugo thought as Ruby dragged him forward to inspect every aspect of this amazing transformation of his yard.
He hadn’t had a choice twelve months ago and he didn’t have a choice now.
And the strange thing was, no choice at all seemed wonderful.
Polly lay on her sunbed beside the swimming pool and thought about dozing but the world was too big, too wonderful, too full of magic.
Around her was the litter of Christmas. Ruby had woken to little-girl magic, to gifts she loved, to excitement, to fun. She was now asleep on a daybed, cuddled between Olivia and Hamster. Charles was asleep on the next bed.
Weird, wonderful, somehow fitting together …
Family.
She wouldn’t run again, Polly decided. She didn’t need to.
For Hugo was coming towards her, striding up the slope from the hospital. He’d gone across to check Bert Blyth for chest pain. It’d be indigestion, Polly thought. Hospitals the world over would be filling with indigestion after Christmas dinner.
‘All clear?’ she asked as he reached her. She stretched languorously, deliciously, and he sat down beside her and tugged her into his arms.
‘All done.’ He kissed her nose. ‘If you stay out in the sun you’ll get more freckles.’
‘I have cream on.’
‘I’m not complaining. I like freckles. Polly, I don’t have a gift for you.’ He hesitated and then kissed her again, more deeply this time. And when he put her away his smile had faded.
‘It’s okay,’ she told him. ‘I don’t have a gift for you either.’
‘We could take a raincheck until the roads are open. We could buy each other socks. Socks are good.’
‘I don’t have a lot of time for socks.’
‘Really?’ He was holding her shoulders, looking down into her eyes. ‘Then I have another suggestion.’
‘Wh … What?’
‘What about a partnership?’
Her eyes never left his face. ‘A partnership?’
‘Polly, you know the partnership I’m thinking of,’ he said, and he smiled, his best doctor-reassuring-patient smile. And it worked a treat. She loved that smile.
‘But I know that’s too soon,’ he told her. ‘So I thought … what’s not too soon is a professional partnership. Wombat Valley has only one doctor and that leaves me on call twenty-four seven. That’s more than enough to keep me busy. The Valley could easily cope with a doctor and a half.’
‘A half,’ she said dubiously. ‘So you’re offering …’
‘Three-quarters.’ He was smiling again but there was anxiety in his smile. He wasn’t sure, she thought, but then, neither was she. ‘Three-quarters each,’ he said softly. ‘A medical practice where we have time to care for our patients but we also have time to care for ourselves.’
‘If this is about my diabetes …’
‘It’s nothing to do with your diabetes. It’s everything to do with Ruby and Hamster and swimming and enjoying the Valley and making origami frogs and maybe even, in time, making a baby or two …’
‘A … what?’
‘Given time,’ he said hastily. ‘If things work out. I don’t want to propel things too fast.’
‘Babies! That’s propelling like anything.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said hastily, but he kissed her again, lightly at first and then more deeply, making a liar of himself in the process. ‘No propelling,’ he repeated as the kiss came to a reluctant end. ‘A professional partnership first and then, if things go well … maybe more?’
‘Wow,’ she breathed. ‘Just … wow.’
‘What do you think?’
What did she think? ‘If we’re not propelling … I’d need somewhere to live.’
‘So you would. There are a few Valley folk who could be persuaded to take in a boarder. Or,’ he suggested, even more tentatively, ‘we might be able to split this house. We could put a brick wall or six between us.’
‘It wouldn’t work.’
‘No?’
‘Not now I’ve seen you in boxers.’ And without boxers, she thought, and she felt her face colour. She looked up at him and she couldn’t help but blush, but she managed to smile and he smiled back.
She loved him so much. How could she love someone so fast?
How could she not?
‘So you think it’s too soon?’ he asked.
Define too soon, she thought. Too soon to love this kind, gentle man who’d given up his world for his little niece? This skilled and caring surgeon who had the capacity to twist her heart?
This gorgeous, sexy man who had the capacity to make her toes curl just by smiling?
Too soon?
She forced herself to look away, around at her parents, at Ruby, at Hamster, then at the little hospital and the valley surrounding them.
Too soon?
‘It’s Christmas,’ she whispered. ‘Christmas is magic. Christmas is when you wave a wand and start again, a new beginning, the start of the rest of your life.’
‘Isn’t that New Year?’
‘Maybe it is,’ she said as the last lingering doubts dissipated to nothing. She tugged him back into her arms and felt him fold her to him. If home was where the heart was, then home was here. ‘So we have New Year to come.’
‘What could possibly happen in the New Year that could be better than right now?’ he murmured into her hair, and she smiled and smiled.
‘Well,’ she whispered, ‘if we sign for a professional partnership on Christmas Day, what’s to stop another type of partnership occurring in the New Year?’
And it did.