As Emily should be doing.
With a heartfelt sigh, Emily sank onto a small couch that was positioned under a window on the other side of the room from the desk and bank of telecommunication equipment. Just a few minutes, she promised herself. Time to get her head together. A private moment to get rid of a few more of those stupid tears.
The sound of footsteps in the corridor forced the stopper back into that particular bottle, however. Emily blinked hard and warned her lip muscles that they would need to try and produce a cheerful smile for whoever was returning to the radio room. But they did not co-operate. They even went slack with surprise when a familiar, large figure appeared in the doorway.
‘Why aren’t you at the party?’
‘I came to find out why you weren’t at the party.’
Emily found a smile, albeit a rather wan attempt. She could feel her exhaustion ebbing away as it always did when she was in Mike’s company. Mike could stand beside any patient with a slow heartbeat, she thought with amusement, as a cure—providing the patient was female, of course. Especially when he smiled like that.
Emily dropped her gaze. ‘I’m just not in a very party mood, I guess.’
‘Neither am I.’
Emily’s smile gathered a few more watts. ‘Oh, right. Michael Poulos not in the mood for a party.’ She glanced towards the glowing lights on the radio equipment. ‘Funny, I haven’t heard any reports about them.’
Mike stepped into the room properly. ‘Reports about what?’
‘Those flying pigs.’
‘Ah.’ Mike grinned as he took another couple of steps. ‘OK, I did go to the party. I thought it might be a good way to drown my sorrows.’
‘Mmm.’ The sound was sympathetic. It was, after all, entirely possible that Mike was feeling just as bad as she was. Unlikely, but possible. He had exactly the same reason to feel bad, didn’t he?
‘But I left as soon as I saw you weren’t there,’ Mike continued. ‘We took a vote and decided you’d be in the nursery, cooing over Lucky.’
‘I never coo. It would be unprofessional.’
Mike ignored the protest. ‘Grace told me you’d just gone. She also told me she didn’t think you were feeling up to partying. So I came looking for you.’
‘Oh.’ Emily fought to hold that bottle stopper in place.
Mike was so nice. The best kind of friend anyone could hope to have. She’d known he was an amazing person the first day she’d ever seen him—when he’d arrived back in his home town two years ago, with his gorgeous fiancée on his arm and a job waiting on Crocodile Creek’s rescue helicopter.
When Marcella had abandoned both Crocodile Creek and Mike, Emily had been secretly delighted when he had decided to move into the doctors’ house, and she cherished their friendship even though it still made her feel a little shy.
Friendship was as close as someone like Emily was ever going to get to a man in Mike’s league but here he was, having left a whole group of people he was just as close to in order to look for her. The attention was unnerving enough to make her mouth feel suddenly dry.
‘You didn’t need to do that, Mike. I’d hate to think I was spoiling an opportunity to drown your sorrows.’
She expected a flippant response concerning the number of such opportunities that would be forthcoming, but any trace of amusement faded from Mike’s features, leaving him looking uncharacteristically solemn. Not that it changed his unruly mop of black curls or the wide mouth that turned up at the corners even in repose, but a pair of eyes dark enough to appear black, and which normally danced with mischief, were suddenly serious and the flash of warmth and understanding Emily received was enough to make the stopper explode from the bottled-up tears.
The weight of Mike’s arm settled around Emily’s shoulders as he sat down on the couch beside her. Even in the midst of a wash of misery she was also aware that the size of the couch precluded any distance between them. The hard length of Mike’s thigh was pressed firmly against Emily’s leg. He was a rock. A warm, human rock, and Emily could think of nothing she wanted to do more than cling to it.
‘Sucks, doesn’t it?’
Emily could only nod. And sniff. Embarrassingly loudly.
‘It’s even worse when you have to front up to a party and see happy couples like Cal and Gina and you’re supposed to be celebrating.’ Mike’s hand tightened on Emily’s shoulder with an empathetic squeeze. ‘It’s just as well Simon bloody Kent’s gone. I could quite happily deck him for doing this to you. He’s worse than a rat. He’s an idiot. And a bastard.’
Emily shook her head. ‘If he’d been a real bastard I wouldn’t have been with him for so long. He…he said he was very sorry.’
‘Big of him,’ Mike said scathingly. ‘He was a charming bastard, I’ll grant you that.’ He snorted. ‘Cardiologist, my eye. They’re supposed to fix hearts, aren’t they? Not go around breaking them.’
A sound somewhere between a laugh and sob escaped Emily. It was so comforting to have someone on her side like this. Someone who would defend her worth and assume anyone that left her would be the one missing out.
Maybe karma did exist after all, and this was payback time. Helping Mike pick up the pieces after failed relationships had been what had cemented their friendship over the last eighteen months. Emily decided she’d better make the most of this. It wouldn’t be long before she would feel compelled to return the favour…again.
‘I can’t believe I got it so wrong,’ she sighed. ‘I’m angry as much as anything right now. I should have seen it coming and I didn’t. OK, things haven’t been that great for a while, but whenever I tried to talk about it Simon said he was just a bit stressed by work. And I believed him.’
‘You loved him. Why wouldn’t you believe him?’
‘When I look back at the last few weeks, I just cringe. I made it so easy. I helped him.’
‘You’re a nice person, Em. The nicest person I know.’ The words were like balm to the raw patch on Emily’s heart and she was happy to let Mike’s squeeze pull her a little closer. Close enough to rest her head comfortably on his shoulder. ‘You can’t help helping people. I heard about all the hours you spent with young Lucky when you were officially off duty. You can’t tell me it was just because you didn’t want to be around to see Simon bloody Kent pack his bags and move out. You were determined that baby was going to survive, weren’t you?’
‘It was helping me survive as well,’ Emily admitted. ‘I think any patients of mine would have got a fair bit of extra attention in the last few days.’
Like they had all those years ago, when throwing herself into her career had seemed the only way forward.
‘It’s not just patients that you help, though, is it?’ The deep notes in Mike’s voice rumbled against Emily’s cheek. ‘Look at all the times you’ve let me cry on your shoulder and tried to help.’ He was silent for a few seconds and then sounded thoughtful. ‘Wasn’t it you that set me up with Kirsty? To take my mind off Trudi leaving?’
‘Sorry.’ Emily’s tone was rueful. ‘It seemed like a good idea at the time.’
Actually, it hadn’t seemed like that great an idea. It had just seemed…inevitable. As ordained by fate as the fact that her relationship with Simon had just morphed into an unexciting engagement. The wild desire Emily had had of suggesting herself as a replacement for Trudi was still ridiculous enough to make her blush. And still just as easy to dismiss.
Mike