BY THE END of a busy Wednesday the following week, Stella was enjoying an erotic daydream of Aaron as she had filled every spare moment since her amazing night his bed.
The door swung open, startling her from the emails she had read and reread at least six times. She looked up from the computer, her heart lurching with predictable arousal and excitement at the sight of Aaron.
One look at his serious expression dissolved her desire, her stomach pinching with trepidation.
‘There’s an emergency on Penwood Hill,’ he said of the local beauty spot popular with hikers. ‘Community First Responders have been called, but I’m going to assist in case they need help.’
Stella stood, adrenaline shoving her body into action. ‘Can I come, too?’
Aaron nodded, his eyes, which carried the glimmer of intimacy, holding hers. ‘I hoped you’d want to. Let’s go.’
In Stella’s mind, a hundred silent communications seemed to pass between them, things they couldn’t voice aloud right now, maybe never.
Do you regret what we did?
Have you thought about me since?
Are you, like me, desperate to do it again?
But now was not the time to have any of those conversations and who knew what Aaron was thinking?
As they exited her consultation room, Aaron reached for her hand. A thrill coursed through her at his simple touch, one that had nothing to do with the adrenaline of attending a medical emergency out in the field. This rush was all about the way Aaron didn’t seem to care who saw them holding hands as he led her through the surgery where staff were finishing up for the day and the last patient lingered, chatting about his arthritic knee.
Stella tried to breathe through the sensation that people were staring, judging her, gossiping. It was likely all in her head. But she didn’t want the locals to think she was making a play for the village’s most eligible man.
Perhaps Aaron had acted unconsciously. She should have eased her hand away—the physical side of their relationship was meant to be over. Except the last time she had felt absolutely comfortable holding a man’s hand—something she didn’t do when she dated casually—was with Harry.
But there was no time to overthink the gesture, or interpret it as the kind of emotional entanglement that she normally avoided. In the utility room at the rear of the practice, Aaron grabbed two high-visibility all-weather jackets from the hooks on the wall and headed out to the car park with Stella in tow.
They climbed into a four-wheel drive emblazoned with the words ‘Abbotsford Medical Centre’, and Aaron punched an address into the vehicle’s GPS.
‘Tell me what we’re dealing with,’ said Stella, focused on the scene they would find as she clicked her seatbelt into place.
‘A day tourist has slipped and fallen running the Penwood Track. Possible tib and fib fracture.’ Aaron navigated the car from the car park behind the surgery and took a left turn in the direction of the neighbouring village of Penwood.
He glanced her way, his calm-under-pressure confidence as reassuring as his open smile. ‘It’s complicated by the fact that his wife, who is thirty-six weeks pregnant, was waiting for him in the car. By all accounts, she tried to help him down the track, but started to have strong contractions.’
‘So a double emergency?’ Stella’s mind raced, running through a plan to triage both patients as soon as they reached the scene.
He nodded, his eyes narrowed with urgency. ‘Don’t worry.’ He reached across the central console and squeezed her hand. ‘We can do this. The car is equipped with everything we might need.’
At Stella’s hesitant nod, he continued. ‘The wife became concerned when he didn’t come back from his run—he’s a fell runner—within his expected time. There’s no mobile reception on the track, so she rushed back to the car to sound the alarm.’
He exhaled a controlled breath, a small smile just for her on his lips. ‘I told you—never a dull moment around here.’
They shared a second’s eye contact that had Stella recalling every touch, every kiss, every cry of their passionate night together.
Face flushed from the erotic memories, she glanced over her shoulder to the well-stocked boot while Aaron focused on the road.
‘Do we have Entonox?’ she asked.
‘Yes. And the community responder is there, but it’s his first week without supervision, poor guy.’
Pulse racing, Stella recognised the route Aaron was taking.
‘You’re not going to follow the road, are you?’ she asked as they bumped over a pothole at speed, flicking up gravel.
‘Yes. This is the quickest route to Penwood.’ He glanced at the GPS, which wouldn’t know the short cut over private land that Stella knew like the back of her hand.
She shook her head. ‘No, don’t go through the village. The fastest way to the start of the Penwood Track is through the Brady farm, you know, Dale Brady’s land.’
‘Are you sure?’ He shot her a searching look before taking a bend in the lane.
‘Absolutely. I used to ride that way all the time on Gertrude. The farm track is wide enough for a four-wheel drive and it cuts off the corner taken via the road. Trust me. It’s quicker.’
Aaron grinned and then winked. ‘Whatever you say. I do trust you. Nothing much changes around this landscape. You probably know the area better than me, as I was more about driving flashy sports cars around Cheltenham than I was about taking a horse or a Land Rover over a farm track in my youth.’
Stella pursed her lips. ‘Oh, I recall. You always seemed to have a different pretty female passenger, too.’
He grinned, the moment of lightness punctuating the adrenaline rush seemingly as welcome to him as it was to Stella. He reached for her hand once more, raising it to his mouth to press a kiss across her knuckles. ‘Thank you for the insider knowledge. I’m glad that you’re here.’
His smile, the touch of his lips to her skin, devastated Stella, who had managed to fool herself that she could move on from their one night, but she’d been sorely deluded. Not that there was time to enjoy the shudders his touch sent through her body, or panic at her realisation that she was in deep trouble where Aaron was concerned.
He was everything she had avoided these past nine years: perfect, a man made just for Stella.
She stared out of the window to stop herself staring at him. Of course he wasn’t perfect. No one was. He had as many issues, as many reasons to avoid a serious relationship as she did. She just couldn’t decide if that gave her solace or left a sour taste in her mouth.
At Stella’s direction, Aaron took a right turn and headed for the Brady farm.
Stella pointed out the dirt road, her stomach now churning with more than adrenaline for the medical scene awaiting them as she replayed their conversation. Aaron was right. In many ways, she too was a local. She’d grown up here, had family here, was a part of local hIstory.
A sharp pain lodged under her ribs. She hadn’t realised how much she was enjoying being back in her old stomping ground. How much she’d missed riding and walking this landscape. She had been forced to become another version of herself in this place, one she didn’t like: gullible, broken, grieving. Her desire to leave Abbotsford and return to London had nothing to do with the place and everything to do with her aversion to being hurt again. But seeing the village, the people, the community through Aaron’s eyes, she realised that the association between place and her past that she’d made was a figment of her imagination. An unhealthy link that kept her bound in fear.
That just wouldn’t do.
Before Stella could ponder this momentous realisation, they arrived at the start of the Penwood Track. The single-lane road flared into a small turning circle, which doubled as a makeshift car park for those wanting to hike the track.
Aaron pulled up behind the first responder’s vehicle, which was parked next to the only other car. A heavily pregnant woman was leaning against the car, one hand braced on the open driver’s side door and the other on the roof of the car.
Aaron had barely engaged the handbrake when Stella flung open the passenger door and ran towards the woman. She was clearly in the middle of a strong contraction, breathing hard through the pain but in a controlled way that told Stella she’d likely laboured before.
Aaron joined them a few seconds later, one medical backpack slung over his shoulder and another which he placed on the ground at Stella’s feet. ‘I’ll go and assist the first responder, who is with the husband. I’ll do a quick triage and then I’ll come back, okay?’
Stella nodded, wishing they could stick together.
Aaron addressed the woman. ‘Don’t worry, Mrs Heath, the ambulance is on its way.’
Then he handed Stella a head torch and took the track at a run, disappearing from sight around the bend.
As the woman’s contraction passed, Stella rested a hand on her arm. ‘My name is Stella, I’m a GP from Abbotsford.’ She ignored how naturally that sentence formed. ‘What’s your first name, Mrs Heath?’
‘Abby,’ the woman said, gripping Stella’s hand with determination bordering on panic.
This wasn’t good. Stella needed to transport Abby somewhere suitable, comfortable and clean. But she had seen that look before during her obstetric post, often when a woman was transitioning into the second stage of labour.
‘Can you walk?’ Stella asked, glancing over her shoulder to where the practice vehicle was parked only five metres away.
Abby shook her head, her hand gripping Stella’s in a vice, her breathing becoming deep and deliberate once more. ‘Need to push,’ she said, scrunching her eyes closed against the pain of another powerful contraction.
Stella soothed the woman through the worst of it, her mind spinning. Her gaze searched the track for Aaron, but of course he hadn’t had enough time to find the husband, let alone return to assist Stella. She had never delivered a baby outside of a hospital before. But nature waited for no one. If baby Heath was on its way, she would have to manage with what they had to hand.
‘Could you move into the back of your car?’
At Abby’s uncertain nod, Stella guided her the couple of steps, opened the rear door of the car and helped lower her into a sitting position on the edge of the back seat.
Stella rummaged in the backpack, finding all of the basics, but if the baby came before the ambulance arrived she would need to be prepared.
‘I need to get some more supplies,’ she said to Abby. ‘I have gas and air in the car. I’ll be thirty seconds, okay?’
Abby nodded and Stella rushed to the four-wheel drive and flung open the boot, scooping up an armful of blankets and a cannister of Entonox. She returned to Abby, her training kicking in, using but also mitigating her own flight response.
She could do this, alone if she had to. She could help Abby. She could make a difference here. That was why she had wanted to be a GP.
As she searched the contents of the bag in the light from the torch, part of her wanted to laugh at how she’d once foolishly thought working in Abbotsford would be a dull, uneventful, snooze fest. But that had been her fear talking. Another lie she’d believed to protect herself from being as vulnerable as she had once been when she was eighteen.
‘I need to push,’ said Abby, gripping the driver’s headrest with white-knuckle force.
Stella nodded calmly, managed a smile and saw its immediate effect on Abby’s wild eyes.
She removed the packaging from a plastic mouthpiece. ‘Is this your first baby?’ Stella connected the mouthpiece to the cannister of Entonox.
Abby took the mouthpiece from Stella and began sucking on it as another contraction took hold.
‘Second,’ said Abby when she could next speak. ‘The baby’s coming. I can’t hold on.’
‘Okay. It’s going to be fine.’ Stella pulled on a pair of latex gloves, wishing that she had Aaron’s calming presence but also confident that she had been trained for this.
‘You and I are going to do this together, okay?’ Stella spread a blanket under Abby’s legs and another around her shoulders to ward off the cold the dusk brought. Then she eased Abby’s clothing down, covering her lap with a clean towel.
‘I need to examine you quickly, just to make sure the baby is head first. We’ll wait until the next contraction, and I’ll be as gentle as I can.’
Abby nodded, her nostrils flaring as a fresh contraction started. Stella quickly established that Abby was fully dilated and indeed in full-blown second-stage labour.
‘I can feel your baby’s head, Abby. Everything looks great. Are you having a boy or a girl?’ She changed her gloves.
‘Boy,’ Abby panted.
Then there was the scrunch of gravel and an out-of-breath Aaron arrived. Stella all but sagged with relief.
With an expert eye, he took in the scene and, as Abby’s contraction passed and she stopped pushing, joined them in the small space the open car door allowed.
‘This is Abby and she’s having a baby boy,’ Stella said, grateful that they’d have the benefit of Aaron’s experience and an extra pair of hands.
‘Abby, I’m Dr Bennett. I’ve just examined your husband and he’s going to be absolutely fine. He has broken his leg, but I gave him some pain medication and he’s warm and comfortable and stable. You don’t need to worry about him, okay? He said he loves you and he’s going to be with you as soon as help arrives to carry him down the hill.’
‘The baby isn’t far away,’ Stella informed Aaron. ‘I’ve checked and he’s a cephalic presentation.’
‘Good, well done.’ Aaron reached for a pair of gloves, his stare locking with Stella’s. She saw his own trace of trepidation. Like her, he was probably thinking of all the things that could go wrong with baby Heath’s delivery. Was he also recalling the birth of his own son, the wonderful, much anticipated moment that had rapidly turned to every husband’s worst nightmare?
She wanted to hold him, to match their physical closeness to the emotional connection she could no longer deny existed. She wanted to press her lips to the fine frown lines in the corners of his eyes until she had magically chased away any residue of his pain. Instead she smiled, hoping he could read reassurance and togetherness in her eyes in the same way she saw it beaming from his.
‘We can do this,’ he said, his smile stretching for Stella, and then to Abby said, ‘Everything is going to be fine.’
Stella nodded in agreement and returned all her attention to Abby.
Over the next ten minutes the three of them worked as a team, their mutual trust and respect helping ease baby boy Heath into the world. There were tears from both women as Stella placed the tiny newborn in his mother’s arms for the first time.
When Stella turned her relieved smile on Aaron she saw that he too was misty-eyed.
Then tears turned to delighted laughter as Aaron and Stella hugged awkwardly over the medical paraphernalia littering the ground. Stella clung to him, breathed in his familiar scent, revelled in the masculine strength of his body, her euphoria latching on to Aaron and their growing bond.
When she pulled away to check on Abby and the baby, out of nowhere chills of doubt attacked her body. Aaron had already experienced all of this with Molly. Aaron had Charlie and wasn’t looking for a relationship.
More reconciled than ever that they were right to give their fling a one-night limit, she shakily packed away the equipment, avoiding glancing at Aaron.
In the next few minutes two ambulances arrived, each unloading a stretcher. Stella shoved away her conflicting emotions—fear that she’d begun to feel closer to Aaron than was wise, and relief that she’d held something back—and helped the paramedics to load Abby and the baby into the back of the ambulance. Once connected to an oxygen saturation monitor, the baby was deemed fine and healthy.
Mr Heath was carried down the hill and placed in the second ambulance, but not before more tears all round as he was introduced to his tiny son.
The minute both ambulances headed back towards Cheltenham, Stella’s arms sagged to her sides, the adrenaline that had served her well draining away to nothing. It wasn’t until she was seated once more in the passenger seat of the practice four-wheel drive that the tremors began.
‘That was incredible,’ she said, the memory of the tiny, precious newborn’s weight in her arms still fresh.
She glanced at his profile, searching for the impossible, for something she feared and craved simultaneously: that his feelings resembled hers.
All she saw were shadows.
‘Thank you.’ Her voice broke and her eyes burned, her jumbled emotions expanding.
Had Aaron experienced the wonder she saw on the Heaths’ faces when he’d first held Charlie? How quickly had that wonder turned to horror for his wife, and how could he ever get over such a monumental loss?
‘What for?’ Aaron gripped her hand across the centre console and squeezed. ‘You and Abby did all of the work. I’m so proud of you.’
His eyes were haunted. Stella knew him well enough to see his flicker of pain, and she couldn’t help the urge to offer comfort, to gently probe and ensure the delivery hadn’t brought back bittersweet memories of Charlie’s birth and the subsequent trauma of Molly’s death.
‘Can you pull over?’ Stella managed to choke out.
He did so without question, perhaps sensing the unforeseen seismic shift happening inside Stella. Her head labelled it an anticlimax, but her heart perceived a sledgehammer blow of realisation.
Her self-preservation refused to label her feelings. But watching the love and connection of the Heath family and feeling the profound connection to Aaron that went way beyond physical attraction, she knew that she wanted that for herself one day. A partner so in sync with her that they could communicate with their eyes and their smiles alone. A baby that she made with the love of her life. All these years she had told herself that she had the life she wanted, but it had all been lies. She’d been hiding, pretending that she was complete so she could armour her heart.
But sharing that experience with Aaron made her aware just how much she was short-changing herself in life, denying herself its most wondrous experiences: deep love, sharing her life with someone, creating a family of their own with that person.
Aaron turned off the engine and the car filled with silence.
She unclipped her seatbelt and turned to face him, almost deaf from the thundering of her heart. ‘Are...are you okay?’
The sadness in his expression as he registered the unspoken question behind her question tore through her chest.
She asked it anyway, because she wanted to be there for him. ‘Did it bring back memories...of Charlie’s birth?’
He swallowed, his gaze shifting. ‘A little. I’m just so relieved that they were both okay.’ He stared out through the windscreen. Darkness had descended, giving the impression that they were wrapped in their own warm, safe cocoon.
But she couldn’t trust impressions.
She ached for Aaron’s loss, but at the same time crumpled a little for herself. The irony of her perfect man being in love with someone else, someone ethereal and intangible, someone Stella could never rival, roared in her head, a feral scream of the danger of letting down her guard.
As Aaron stayed silent, Stella switched subjects.
‘I want to thank you for everything,’ she said, a lump of longing in her throat. ‘For bringing me along today. For inviting me to your practice in the first place.’ She looked at her hands in her lap. ‘I never said thank you for taking me on, even when I disparaged your home, your workplace, your life. But I appreciate everything you’ve done for me. I appreciate all the opportunities you’ve given me.’
I appreciate you.
Too close to tears, she couldn’t bring herself to utter the last sentiment aloud. She might hurl herself into his arms in search of the heady rush and rightness she knew that she would find there.
‘You’re welcome.’ He tilted his head and seemed to see into her soul. ‘Thank you for suggesting that short cut and for being your wonderful self back there.’ He brushed some hair back from her face. His pupils were wide, swallowing the blue she loved. ‘Inviting you here was one of my smarter moves.’
‘I’m glad that you did.’
‘It’s rewarding, isn’t it? Making a difference.’ He cupped her cheek, soothing some of the turmoil she carried. ‘That’s what I love about this job.’
She nodded, frozen by her needs. It had been years since she’d felt a true part of this community. Aaron’s patience and persistence had shown her that she could be herself, no matter where she was and be valued, be a part of something bigger than herself. That she mattered, despite the memories tangled up with this place.
And now, for the first time in years, she wanted that in her personal life as well as professionally.
They stared at each other for a handful of heartbeats.
His eyes swooped to her mouth. Tension resonated from him; he was holding back, perhaps both words and actions.
Before she could question the impulse, Stella scrambled into his lap, her knees astride his thighs, and threw her arms around his neck. She couldn’t deny her feelings, which hadn’t lessened despite their one night as lovers.
She craved him more than ever.
Aaron’s hand settled warm and comforting in the middle of her back, his stare dark, vulnerable.
Tired of restraint, she pressed her mouth to his in a cathartic surrender. He returned her kiss with a groan of release, as if he too had held back for too long.
They had broken the rules, which, for Stella, somehow sweetened the addictive kisses.
Aaron’s hand curled around the back of her neck, holding her mouth in place as she tangled her fingers into his hair, tilted his head back against the headrest. He gripped her waist, fisting her skirt as she rode his lap. His hardness pressed between her legs as he tilted his hips.
Would anything extinguish this fire scorching her alive?
‘What are we doing?’ he asked as she let him up for air, even as his fingers slid under the hem of her sweater to the naked skin of her back, restlessly flexing, stroking, exploring.
‘I don’t know.’ She feathered kisses over the side of his neck so the warm scent of his body filled her nostrils from inside his collar. She couldn’t make her lips leave his skin. ‘Perhaps it’s just the adrenaline.’
She gripped his face and stared into his eyes. ‘I want you.’ Over and over until she’d burned him out of her system.
He searched her stare, his eyes transparent, showing her the same needs that paralysed her. ‘Me too. Ever since I woke up on Saturday morning to find you gone. I couldn’t wait for the start of a new week just to see you.’
His words were beyond worrisome to the part of herself she still needed to protect, but she became distracted by pleasure as his hands skated her sides, cupped her breasts, zapping her nervous system with sparks that felt way too good to be wrong.
‘This is bad,’ she said as he released her from another soul-searing kiss.
‘I know.’ He shifted under her, his lips stretching into that sexy smile she’d come to adore. ‘Which is probably why it feels so fantastic.’
She writhed in his lap, torturing them both with the friction. ‘Like a compulsion. But one night was supposed to be enough.’
Perhaps her addiction, her weakness for him, was amplified because she couldn’t walk away yet. Nothing else had changed. Her one relationship had ended in enough desolation to keep her single for nine years, and Aaron was still in love with his wife and devoted only to his son.
He smiled, the playful delight in his eyes lightening the mood. ‘So I’m a compulsion now? That’s a big step up from a crush.’
Stella rolled her eyes, laughter bubbling up from her chest.
Then he sobered, pressed his forehead to hers and exhaled his frustration. ‘I have to go—I need to pick up Charlie.’
As if doused in icy water, Stella pulled away. She’d become so carried away by her feelings for him, feelings that she’d vowed she could keep in check, that she’d forgotten his personal obligations.
‘Of course.’ Mortified, she shifted her weight from his thighs, preparing to retake the passenger seat.
‘Wait.’ He gripped her hips, stared up at her in heartfelt appeal. ‘Can we see each other again? Outside of work?’ He smiled, cajoling, his eyes vulnerable and hopeful, and Stella wanted to give him anything. Everything.
She swallowed hard, her throat tight with the ache to say yes. But, as he’d just reminded her, Aaron and Charlie were a father-and-son team.
No, Aaron wasn’t Harry and Stella was no longer trusting and guileless. But normally, by this stage in a relationship—where things moved from casual towards expectant, attached, romantic—she made her excuses and called it a day.
Before she could become emotionally invested.
Perhaps it was already too late.
‘Don’t you have Charlie to think about?’ She needed to remind herself that Aaron was a package deal, that he would always put Charlie first, and that was a good thing. Given that she had just proved that Aaron alone was temptation enough, there was no way she could risk interacting with Charlie, who, as his father’s son, was no doubt equally enchanting. Not if she hoped to keep herself distant enough so she could walk away when the time came.
He nodded, his lips pressed into a flat line. ‘Yes.’ Regret and realisation that she was right dawned in his eyes.
She reluctantly slid into the passenger seat. ‘Let’s go back to Abbotsford. It’s been a long day.’
He nodded, started the car without comment and drove the four miles in silence. After all, what else was there to say?