Single Dad In Her Stocking. Alison Roberts
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you have her number as well, in case you need anything else.’
‘That’s great. Thank you very much. I usually end up in a hotel or something when I’m doing a short locum like this.’
‘We did think of that, but a quick check told us that there was nothing available. For some reason, Cheltenham seems like a very popular destination for the festive season.’
‘No room at the inns, then?’ Emma caught Max’s sideways glance. ‘Quite appropriate, really.’
His smile hadn’t changed at all. Or the way the corners of his eyes crinkled to make his appreciation appear completely genuine. Ten years had given him a few grey hairs and deepened those lines a bit but, if anything, they had just made Max even more attractive.
‘Here we are...’ Max keyed a code into the front door of a very modern building and led the way to an elevator. He pushed a button that wasn’t the top floor.
‘Not the penthouse?’ Emma murmured. ‘You surprise me, Max.’
He shook his head. ‘Was I really that much of a plonker in those days?’
‘Not at all. From what I remember you were a brilliant doctor. You just had a reputation for playing as hard as you worked, I guess.’
‘Those days are over.’ He didn’t sound too happy about that, Emma thought, but he wasn’t about to tell her why. ‘The penthouse here is very nice, I believe,’ he added. ‘But it’s empty most of the time. The guy who owns it is something high up in a bank and has to travel a lot.’
Emma followed him out of the elevator. She watched as he unlocked the door but then her gaze dropped.
‘What’s that?’
‘What?’
‘All that water.’
The carpet outside the door was soaked. As Max lifted his foot, his shoe was dripping. ‘Oh, no...’ He pushed the door open and stepped in. The tiled entranceway to his apartment shimmered like a small lake. ‘Stay there,’ he warned Emma. ‘This doesn’t look good.’
But she followed him in, looking over his shoulder as he checked a bathroom to see whether taps had been left on. There was a bedroom that had water dripping from the bulb in the ceiling light.
‘It’s coming from upstairs,’ Max muttered. ‘A burst pipe, perhaps...’ He sighed. ‘I’ve been staying with my father for the last few days or I might have noticed this happening soon enough to prevent this much damage.’
So that was the family crisis? His father being ill? He certainly didn’t need this complication on top of other worries. Emma felt very sorry for Max but it was very clear that she wasn’t going to be able to stay here. It was the main living room that was the real disaster. Enough water had seeped into the ceiling to make the plasterwork too heavy. Large sections had fallen to cover the couches and a glass-topped coffee table.
To give him credit, Max was very calm as he took control of the situation. ‘I’ll have to call the building manager,’ he said. ‘Give me a minute.’
As soon as he’d made the call, he turned back to Emma. ‘You can’t stay here, obviously,’ he said. ‘We’ll find a hotel nearby—there’ll probably be somewhere we overlooked before. I’ll pay for it.’ He was focused on his phone again. ‘Let’s just see what’s available on one of those comparison sites.’
Emma had taken out her own phone. A minute or two of silence and then they both looked up.
‘Not looking good, is it?’ Emma said. ‘As soon as I put the dates in there’s no availability at all.’
‘There’ll be something.’ Max was obviously trying to sound reassuring. ‘We might have to look a bit further afield, that’s all.’ He hesitated, glancing at his watch. ‘That could take a bit of time but don’t worry, I’m not going to leave you in the lurch. You can come with me for the moment. As I said, the place I’m staying is only twenty minutes away so, even if we can’t find you a suitable hotel room tonight, it won’t be a difficult commute tomorrow morning unless the weather turns nasty.’
‘I’ve got chains,’ she told him. ‘But...this is your father’s house you’re talking about, yes?’ A hotel room would be preferable. Perhaps Emma should just stay in town and keep trying to find something.
‘He’ll be just as concerned as I am that my locum is well looked after,’ Max said. ‘It’s a big house and there’s more than enough room for visitors. It was probably built to cater for a Victorian couple who had twelve children.’ He gestured for Emma to lead the way out of the apartment. ‘They weren’t so worried about global resources in those days.’
He might be making a joke but a glance at his face suggested to Emma that the hypothetical camel’s back might have just been loaded with the last straw.
‘I should keep trying to find a hotel,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t want to intrude. Not if your father is so unwell.’
‘Unwell?’ Max’s eyebrows rose. ‘He’s as fit as a fiddle.’ He looked at his watch again and stifled a groan. ‘Come on, you’ll have to follow me to Upper Barnsley in your car. We don’t have that much time before the children arrive.’
Children?
But hadn’t Max said that he hadn’t personally contributed to the population statistics? Emma was curious but the look of fierce concentration on Max’s face was enough to stop her asking any more questions as they hurried back to the hospital car park. Besides, the mention of children had reminded her of that assumption he’d voiced—that she would have a husband and a tribe of children by now—and there was a sting in that assumption that needed to be dealt with. Back in those days, she had assumed exactly the same thing so it was no wonder he was surprised. She had been more than surprised herself, of course. Having her life derailed like that had been devastating but at least she was well past the toughest time of her life, when working only with children and babies as a specialist paediatrician had proved hard enough to have dimmed the joy and she’d been tempted to change the direction she had chosen for her career. She could cope with children.
As long as she didn’t get too close to them...
Life had a habit of upending plans sometimes and it appeared that it was happening again, Emma decided, as she followed Max out of town and into the pretty countryside of the Cotswolds with its narrow roads and tiny villages full of trees and stone-built cottages. Her most recent plans had already gone more than a little awry, with her accommodation proving uninhabitable. The person she was replacing was unexpectedly someone she had once been more than a little attracted to, even though she would never have gone there, and she was now being whisked away to some unknown but large house by this still very attractive man and there were children involved, which didn’t make any sense at all. Unless Max had acquired an instant family by marrying someone who already had children? Or this house with far too many bedrooms was being run as some kind of foster home or orphanage?
She hadn’t even started her new locum position and they still had several days before Christmas arrived but it seemed like the chaos had already begun. As a few fat flakes of snow drifted gently onto her windscreen, Emma found she was smiling wryly.
Almost grinning a few moments later, in fact.
She had needed a distraction and it would appear that the universe was providing one.
UPPER BARNSLEY WAS bigger than other villages they had driven through, with its high street full of shops, a village green and a market square with a tall Christmas tree as a centrepiece. Moments later, Emma was following Max’s vehicle down a long, tree-lined driveway to stop in front of a house that took her breath away. She was still blinking up at the huge, three-storeyed gabled