The Halliday Family

Can he let go of the past...

...and commit to the future—as a dad?

Paramedic Marty Graham doesn’t do commitment—he knows all too well how damaging family life can be. But single mom Dr. Emma Crawford is different, and she’s looking for a dad for her adorable twin boys... Will one night of sizzling passion change everything for Marty and Emma?

MEREDITH WEBBER lives on the sunny Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia, but takes regular trips west into the Outback, fossicking for gold or opal. These breaks in the beautiful and sometimes cruel red earth country provide her with an escape from the writing desk and a chance for her mind to roam free—not to mention getting some much needed exercise. They also supply the kernels of so many stories that it’s hard for her to stop writing!

Also by Meredith Webber

The Sheikh Doctor’s Bride

The One Man to Heal Her

The Man She Could Never Forget

A Sheikh to Capture Her Heart

The Halliday Family miniseries

A Forever Family for the Army Doc

Engaged to the Doctor Sheikh

A Miracle for the Baby Doctor

From Bachelor to Daddy

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.

From Bachelor to Daddy

Meredith Webber

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-07491-9

FROM BACHELOR TO DADDY

© 2018 Meredith Webber

Published in Great Britain 2018

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

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Version: 2020-03-02

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For the real Xavier and Hamish,

the two latest wee additions to our family.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

EPILOGUE

Extract

CHAPTER ONE

EMMA CRAWFORD LOOKED anxiously out the kitchen window as she added milk to two small bowls of cereal. Above the tree-line she could see smoke growing thicker but the latest news broadcast had assured her that the bushfires raging through the national park on the outskirts of Braxton were still many miles away, and the town itself wasn’t in danger.

Bushfires were the last thing she’d considered when she’d agreed with her father that a return to the town where he’d been born and grown up would be a good thing. Being able to bring up the boys in a country town had seemed like a wonderful idea, but it had been the thought of the spacious old home, recently left to her father by an aged aunt, that had held the most appeal.

Well, that and a kernel of an idea that had been germinating deep inside her...

Forget that for the moment! The move had been practical and that was what was most important.

City living was all very well, but the prices in Sydney had meant the four of them—her father, the two boys and herself—had been crammed into an apartment that had shrunk as the babies turned to toddlers—growing every day.

No, Braxton, with its district hospital willing to offer her a job in its emergency department, the surrounding national park, a beautiful beach an hour’s drive away, and best of all the rambling old house in its magical, neglected gardens just perfect for two adventurous little boys, had been extremely appealing.

And they had bushfires in Sydney, too, she reminded herself, to shake off the feeling of foreboding the smoke had caused.

She deposited the bowls of cereal on the trays of the highchairs and smiled at the angelic faces of her three-year-old twins, Xavier and Hamish. She was off to work and it was her father who’d be cleaning up the mess that two little horrors could achieve with bowls of cereal.

A quick kiss to each of the still clean faces, a reminder to be good for Granddad, a kiss for her father, as ever standing by, and she was gone, her stomach churning slightly at the thought of the day ahead. Although she’d already spent a few days at the hospital, meeting staff and watching how their system operated, this was her first official work day.

‘It’s called plunging right in,’ Sylvie Grant, the triage nurse on duty, told Emma when she arrived. ‘The fire turned back out Endicott way and some of the firefighters were caught. It’s mostly smoke inhalation—their suits keep them well protected these days. This one’s in four.’

Emma took the chart and headed to the fourth curtained cubicle along the far wall, surprised to find the occupant was a woman.

‘Your working hours must be worse than mine, especially at this time of the year,’ she said, when she’d introduced herself.

The woman smiled then shook her head, pointing to her throat.

‘Sore?’ Emma asked as she checked the monitor by the side of the bed. Blood pressure and heart rate good, oxygen saturation normal, though the oxygen tubes in the woman’s nose would be helping there...

‘Let’s look at your throat,’ she said, using a wooden spatula to hold down the tongue so she could visually check what she could see of the pharynx.

‘I can see why it’s painful to speak,’ she told her patient. ‘You’ve had cold water?’

The patient nodded.

‘No difficulty swallowing?’

Another nod.

‘Okay, then I’ll sort out a drink with a mild topical anaesthetic that should dull the pain, but don’t try to talk. The hot air you breathed in obviously reached as far as your larynx so it’s likely your vocal cords are swollen.’

She explained what she needed to the nurse, wrote it up on the chart with instructions for it to be given four-hourly and was talking to the patient via questions and nods when Sylvie came in.

And the day became just another day in an emergency department—a child with an ear infection, a woman with chest pains that turned out, after an ECG and blood tests, to be a torn pectoral muscle, a child from the school who’d fallen off a swing and gashed his forehead—stitches and possible concussion so she’d keep him in for observation—an elderly man with angina...

Until, at about two in the afternoon when, as often happened in an emergency department, the place emptied out and one of the nurses suggested they all take a break.

Well, all but Sylvie, and a nurse who’d come on duty for the swing shift.

Emma said goodbye to the firefighter, whose husband had arrived to take her home, and made her way to the small room they all used for breaks, coming in as Joss, one of the nurses she’d met the previous day and also on swing shift, bounced in through another door.

‘Hot goss!’ Joss announced, grabbing the attention of the three women already in the room, while Emma fixed herself a cup of tea and pulled a packet of sandwiches from the small fridge, pausing to listen to the tale.

‘I had dinner last night at the top pub so had a front-row seat to the drama. You know that librarian from the school Marty’s been seeing?’

All faces turned expectantly towards her, heads nodding.

‘Well, they’re sitting at the bar, obviously having words, and then she stood up, slapped his face, and stormed out.’

‘Another one bites the dust,’ Angie, the department secretary, said. ‘Wonder who’ll be next.’

They all turned to look at Emma, who had settled into one of the not-very-comfortable chairs and was enjoying her sandwich—especially as she wasn’t expected to share it with two small boys.

Joss shook her head.

‘No way! You know he stays away from hospital staff, besides which Emma’s small and dark, and Marty’s preference is for tall blondes.’

‘I’m not a tall blonde and I went out with him for a while.’ This from a complacently pregnant red-haired woman Emma hadn’t seen before.

‘That’s Helen,’ Angie told her. ‘She’s on the swing shift too, but comes in early to eat our sandwiches because she’s always hungry.’

‘Not true,’ Helen said, although she was eating a sandwich. ‘It’s just that Pete can drop me off so I don’t have to drive, and as for Marty, everyone who goes out with him knows the score. He’s quite open about not wanting a permanent relationship and if you look around the town most of the women he’s been out with are still friends with him. In fact, it was Marty who introduced me to Pete.’

Emma, although curious about this Marty—maybe he was a GP who did visits at the hospital—turned to Helen, asking when the baby was due.

‘Another three months and I’m already so uncomfortable I wonder why I thought it was a good idea.’

She paused, then added, ‘You’ve got twins, is that right?’

‘Small town,’ Joss explained when Emma looked surprised, but she smiled and agreed she did indeed have twins.

‘Three years old, and wild little hooligans already. I’m just lucky I’ve got my father to help with them.’

‘He minds them while you’re at work?’ Helen sounded slightly incredulous as she asked the question, but Emma just nodded.

‘Even does night duty when I’m on night shifts,’ she said.

She didn’t add that it had been her dad’s idea she have the children—well, a child it had been at that time, having two had been a surprise.

Dad had taken very early retirement when she’d all but fallen to pieces—well, had fallen to pieces—after Simon had died, moving in with her and becoming, once again, a carer to her—a role he’d first taken on when she’d been four and her mother had walked out on the pair of them.

A pang of guilt—one she knew only too well—shafted through her. Dad really should have a life of his own...

Perhaps here...

Soon...

But the conversation was continuing around her and she tuned back into it to find the women discussing unmarried men around town who might suit her.

She shouldn’t have been surprised. The remark earlier about her being a possible candidate for the unknown Marty’s new woman told her they already knew she was a single mother—single being the operative word.

Small town, indeed.

But before she could protest that she didn’t want to go out with anyone, the chat swerved off to the fire. Joss lived out of town on a cattle property and although they were always prepared, she thought this time they’d be safe. She was explaining how they kept the paddocks close to the house free of trees or tall grass when Sylvie came to the door.

‘Emma, you’re needed on the chopper. It’ll put down here to collect you. You have about ten minutes. You know where the landing pad is?’

Emma nodded confidently in answer to Sylvie’s question but inside she felt a little nervous. Although, as an emergency department doctor in a small town, she knew she’d be on call for the search and rescue helicopter, and she’d been shown over it by one of the paramedics, she hadn’t had much time to take it all in.

By which she really meant she’d refused to think about it. She’d done the training originally to help her overcome her fear of heights, and although she knew most rescue crews got an adrenaline rush at the thought of a mission, her rush was more one of trepidation than anticipation. Yes, she could do her job and do it well, but no amount of training or practice would ever stop the butterflies in her stomach as she waited to hang in mid-air, suspended from a winch.

‘—party of older children with special needs from the unit at the high school,’ Sylvie was explaining as they left the room together. ‘They were walking the coastal path, just this end of it. Apparently, the wind turned suddenly and the fire came towards them, so you can imagine the panic. We know one child with asthma is having breathing difficulties. No idea about the others but they’re stuck where they are and will have to be evacuated.’

Beach rescue, no winch!

Her tension eased immediately...

Even inside the hospital Emma could hear the helicopter’s approach and hurried to collect the black bag that held all the drugs she could possibly need. But she checked it anyway, relieved to see a spacer for an asthma inhaler, a mask for more efficient delivery of the drug, and hydrocortisone in case the child was badly affected.

Outside, she waited by the building until the bright red and yellow aircraft touched down lightly. Then, ducking her head against the downdraught from the rotors, she ran towards it.

The side door slid open and an unidentifiable male in flight suit and helmet reached out a hand to haul her aboard. She’d barely had time to register a pair of very blue eyes before she was given a not-so-gentle nudge and told to take the seat up front.

She clambered into the seat wondering where the air crew were, but there was no time to ask as the man was already back behind the controls, handing her a helmet with a curt ‘Put it on so we can talk’, before lifting the aircraft smoothly into the air.

Emma strapped herself in, settled the bag at her feet and pulled on the helmet with its communication device.

‘I’m Marty,’ her pilot said, reaching out a hand for her to shake. ‘And I believe you’re Emma. Stephen told me to look out for you.’

‘Stephen?’ She had turned towards him and shaken his hand—good firm handshake—but wasn’t able to take in much of the man called Marty. Unfortunately, checking him out had diverted her from working out who Stephen might be.

‘Stephen Ransome—he was up a couple of months ago to introduce the family to Fran. He’s my foster brother. You know he got married?’

Steve Ransome was this man’s foster brother? Why? How? Not questions she could ask a stranger so she grasped his last bit of information.

‘No, I didn’t know, but I’m so pleased. He’s a wonderful guy and deserves the best.’

‘He is indeed,’ Marty agreed, and Emma turned to look at him—or at what she could see of him in his flight suit and helmet.

Tanned skin, blue eyes, straight nose, and lips that seemed to be on the verge of smiling all the time.

So, this was Marty, subject of the hot gossip and, apparently, the local lover-boy!

Foster brother of Steve, who ran an IVF clinic in Sydney and had been her specialist when she’d decided to use Simon’s frozen sperm to conceive the boys.

Simon...

Just for an instant she allowed herself to remember, felt the familiar stab of pain, and quickly shut the lid on that precious box of memories.

She was moving on—hadn’t that been another reason for the shift to Braxton?

Marty was saying something, pointing out the path of the fire, visible in patches where the smoke had blown away.

She glanced out the window as he manoeuvred the controls to give them both a better view, then straightened up the chopper, intent on reaching their destination.

Marty, the man who didn’t do commitment and was open about it...

As she mentally crossed him off her list—not that she had a list as yet—she wondered why he’d be so commitment-shy.

His growing up in a foster family might be a clue.

Had he been born in a disruptive, and possibly abusive, family situation?

That last could make sense...

But he was talking again and she had to concentrate on what he was saying, not on who he was or why he wasn’t into commitment, although that last bit of info was absolutely none of her business.

‘There’s a coastal path that runs for miles along most of the coast in this area, and people can do long walks, camping on the way, or short walks,’ he explained. ‘The school mini-bus dropped these kids about five miles up the track—there’s a picnic area that’s accessible by road—and the idea was they’d walk back to Wetherby and be picked up there. It’s a yearly tradition at the school, and the kids love it. Unfortunately, the wind spun around from northeast to northwest and the fire jumped the highway and raced through the scrub towards the path.’

‘Poor kids, they must have been terrified,’ Emma said. ‘Do we know how many there are?’

‘Two teachers, a teacher’s aide, and sixteen children,’ Marty said grimly. ‘Hence no aircrew. We stripped everything not needed from the chopper because we’ll only have two chances to lift them all off the little beach they ran to. Once the tide comes in, that’s it, and not knowing the age or size of the kids makes calculations for lift-off weight difficult.’

Emma nodded. She’d learned all about lift-off weight during the training she’d undertaken in Sydney, necessary training as the rescue helicopter at Braxton relied on emergency department doctors on flights when one might be needed.

They were over the fire by now, seeing the red line of flame still advancing inexorably towards the ocean, while behind it lay the black, smouldering bushland.

Two rocky headlands parted to give a glimpse of a small beach and as they dropped lower she saw the group, huddled among the rocks on the southern end, their hands held protectively over their bent heads as the down-thrust from the rotors whipped up the sand.

‘Good kids, did what they were told,’ Marty muttered, more to himself than to Emma.

They touched down, the engine noise ceased, and before she could unstrap herself, Marty was already over the back, opening the doors and leaping down onto the sand.

He turned to grab Emma’s bag then held up a hand to help her down. An impersonal hand, professional, so why didn’t she take it? Jumping lightly to the sand as if she hadn’t noticed it...

‘I’m a trained paramedic so if you need me just yell,’ he was saying as she landed beside him. ‘I’m going to juggle weights in the hope we can get everyone off in two lifts.’

He paused and looked her up and down.

‘You’d be, what—sixty kilos?’

‘Thereabouts,’ she told him over her shoulder, hurrying towards the approaching children. One of the adults—probably a teacher—was helping a young, and very pale, girl across the beach.

‘Let’s sit you down and make you comfortable,’ Emma said to the child, noting at the same time a slight cyanosis of the lips and the movement of the girl’s stomach as she used those muscles to drag air into her congested lungs.

‘I’m Emma, and you’re...?’

‘Gracie,’ the girl managed.

‘She’s had asthma since she was small but this is the first time we’ve seen her like this,’ the woman Emma had taken for a teacher put in.

‘Do you have your puffer with you?’ Emma asked, and was pleased when Gracie produced a puffer from a pocket of her skirt.

‘Good girl. You’ve had some?’

Gracie nodded, while the teacher expanded on the nod.

‘She’s had several puffs but they don’t seem to be helping.’

‘That’s okay,’ Emma said calmly to Gracie. ‘I’ve brought a spacer with me, and you’ll get more of the medicine inside you with the spacer. Have you used one before?’

Another nod as Emma fitted the puffer to the spacer and inserted a dose, then found a mask she could attach to the spacer so the girl could breathe more easily.

‘Just slow down, take a deep breath and hold it, then we’ll do a few more.’ Probably best not to mention twelve at this stage. ‘See how you go.’

The girl obeyed but while it was obvious that the attack had lessened in severity, she was still distressed.

Marty had appeared with the oxygen cylinder and a clip and tiny monitor that would show the oxygen saturation in the blood. He joked as he clipped it on the girl’s finger, and nodded to Emma when the reading was an acceptable ninety-four percent.

The oxygen cylinder wouldn’t be needed yet.

Emma drew the teacher aside and explained what had to be done to fill the spacer and deliver the drug.

‘Are you happy to do that on the way to the hospital?’ she asked, and the teacher nodded.

‘I do it all the time,’ she said. ‘My second youngest is asthmatic. We just didn’t think to carry a spacer with us.’

Which left Emma to fill in the chart with what she’d done, dosage given, and the time. The flight from the hospital had only taken fifteen minutes so the child would be back in the emergency department before there was any need to consider further treatment, and she knew from her briefing that another doctor would have been called in to cover for her.

Marty had done a rough estimate of the weight of his possible passengers and had begun loading them into the helicopter. To the west the smoke grew thicker and the fire burning on the headland to the south told them they were completely cut off.

He looked at the tide, encroaching on the dry sand where he’d landed. He had to move now if he wanted to get back here before the tide was too high.

‘I’m taking the sick child and the teacher with her,’ he said to the new doctor, wondering how she’d cope being left on the beach surrounded by fire on her first day at work.