His Runaway Nurse by Meredith Webber

Author:Meredith Webber
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2013-07-08T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

SMALL towns! Majella thought, as she, Helen and Sophie fought to keep the crowd around their stall happy. But although everyone who stopped there bought something—well, they really needed an excuse to stop and chat—she knew they were there for only one reason—to see the child they’d once seen in church all grown up.

‘You rescued those little boys—that was brave,’ one woman said, her restless hands pointing to first a soap and then a jar of salve. ‘Of course, I knew your grandfather quite well. Yes, one of those green tubes, too. Will you be coming back to stay?’

‘Are you OK?’ Sophie whispered to her, as Majella turned to the back of the stall to bag the woman’s purchases and sort out some change.

‘I’m fine and we’re making a fortune. At this rate we’ll sell out today and we can all go home tomorrow.’

She’d spoken unthinkingly, or perhaps thinking of her own escape, so Sophie’s wail, ‘And miss the ball?’ brought her back down to earth.

‘Of course not,’ she promised, knowing Sophie had a new dress bought especially for this occasion—the farewell ball on the final evening of the festival—and quite possibly for the young man whose mother practised ayurvedic medicine in another of the stalls.

She turned back to the counter to give her customer her package and change, then moved on to the next one, another person more excited by the gossip that Majella Goldsworth had returned to Parragulla than the rescue of the boys or Helen’s wonderful products.

Used to being just a number in the army, she found the attention trying, while the most frequently asked question—should she do up a list of FAQs and answers on a poster and hang it in front of the stall?—about whether she would return to live in Parragulla, was one she couldn’t answer.

She’d been so excited when she’d seen the house advertised for auction. It had come at a time when she’d decided she had to make a home of her own. Somewhere! The ad had been like a sign—a confirmation that going back to Parragulla was the right move along the path to independence. She’d thought long and hard about it, wondering if she was making too much of a coincidence, but in the end the decision to return had felt right. The idea of turning the house into a happy, joy-filled home and cleansing it of the shadows of the past had begun to burn inside her.

But now she knew the house was beyond her reach, and what with Flynn and lost boys and kisses and Mrs Warren’s burns, she hadn’t had time to think about alternative futures.

‘Man!’ Gracie cried out, in such delighted tones Majella turned towards the playpen.

The little girl was standing up, pointing at an approaching figure.

A figure so familiar the embers of attraction lit last night flared back to life in Majella’s body.

‘Flynn!’ she murmured, but he hadn’t noticed her, all his attention on the small girl who called to him.

‘Man!’ Grace was shouting now and holding up her hands towards Flynn.

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