Page 138 of A Country Practice Christmas
Who did this to you?The words were on the tip of his tongue, but he didn’t voice them. Couldn’t.
‘Get your shoes on,’ he said instead. ‘We’re leaving early. I’ll drive and we’ll get breakfast on the way in at the Rush Creek Christmas Pancake sign-on.’ They’d stuck their rosters up beside each other on the fridge and today was a rare one where their shifts actually lined up.
Piper tilted her head and her eyes raked over his body. ‘If you’re going in that then I’m afraid I’m a little overdressed.’
He looked down, realising he was dressed in his sleep shorts. Only dressed in his sleep shorts. He growled and turned to go to his room before his body gave away exactly how much he liked Piper’s gaze on him.
Dressed in paramedic coveralls, Emmett pulled his ute into the last free park on the main street of Rush Creek. Piper was in the passenger seat, her head out the window as she stared up at the Christmas decorations.
‘This is gorgeous,’ she said as he opened her door. ‘Look at those giant bells!’
He spared a glance to the oversized bells hanging from the eaves beneath the hotel’s balcony. Tinsel was wrapped around every post up the street, alternating in colours. Giant bows or wreaths were on every door and each shop window held a different festive scene. A Nativity scene had been set up in the grass at the foot of the clock tower and in the next roundabout along, reindeer grazed, waiting for Mr Claus to gather them. Brightly coloured monster baubles hung in the big fig trees along the street and Emmett knew that come nightfall, the lights that were strung in the leaves and wrapped around the tree trunks would be spectacular. He wanted to show Piper that too.
‘I told you, no one does Christmas like Rush Creek, and this is just the beginning.’ He shut the car door behind her, not caring that the window was still down.
‘It’s definitely something.’
They took off on foot for the community hall that sat at the end of the street. Disappointment lanced through Emmett when comments on the decorations ceased and Piper’s attention turned to where they were going. Whenever he’d had Christmas at the Hendrix home, the house had been dressed up to the nines, a different theme every year, and Emmett knew that Piper was responsible for it. He’d thought she’d be gushing over the street, hoped she’d be too busy looking around and taking it all in so he’d have to guide her towards the hall. If she was impressed, as he’d expected her to be, then she was holding back from showing it.
The smell of pancakes reached their noses as they arrived at the hall, set halfway down a large sloping block. The building itself was rectangular with a large concrete patio to the side, where hot plates had been set up and a line was forming.
‘Is this where the Christmas Eve carols are held?’ Piper asked as they joined the end of the long line.
Emmett nodded. ‘The concrete area turns into the outdoor stage as long as the weather’s good and everyone brings picnic rugs and camping chairs to sit on the grassy hill. They have a sausage sizzle, face painting and other activities on the footpath up on top of the slope.’
He was pointing as he was explaining and Piper followed along.
‘I’ll finish at like six in the morning that day before I’m back on nights on Christmas Day, so I might come down for it.’
‘You might come down for it?’ He gaped at her. ‘I thought I was the one on par with the Grinch. Has your love for Christmas diminished in your old age?’
‘If I’m old, what does that make you?’ she said snarkily.
‘Definitely over the hill.’
She let a light laugh loose and he grinned. The line moved up by a few steps.
‘I just want a quiet Christmas this year.’
‘I didn’t even know you knew that term,’ he scoffed before lightly gripping her shoulders and turning her to face him. ‘What’s going on?’
Taking another step forward, she shrugged off his hands. ‘It’s nothing. There was some stuff going on at the hospital that my ex, Heath, got caught up in. I broke it off and needed to put some distance between us.’
‘Two thousand kilometres of distance was needed?’ The dial on Emmett’s trouble radar flew to the red zone and he worked hard at keeping his sudden need to wrap her up in bubble wrap off his face. She was finally talking to him, even if she was keeping it surface level. Whatever Heath had done, it was enough to drive Piper to another state, so it couldn’t have been anything small. Emmett forced his fingers to unfurl.
‘Like I’ve already told you, a change of scenery was appealing.’
Before Emmett could answer, they’d reached the front of the line.
‘Hello, Emmett, so good of you to find time to come down. And I don’t believe I’ve met your friend.’ Gloria Briggs beamed at them from the other side of a folding table, fresh pancakes on the plates lined up along it.
‘Good morning, Gloria, as if I’d miss this. You’d never let me hear the end of it.’
‘You’ve got that right.’
Emmett turned to Piper. ‘This is Piper Hendrix, one of the new nurses at the hospital and a family friend of mine from our hometown of Euronga. Piper, this is Gloria Briggs, the wonderful wife of Rush Creek’s mayor and the brains behind the Christmas Eve Bonanza.’
Gloria’s cheeks turned pink as her smile grew impossibly wider. ‘It’s a whole town effort and one I hope you’ll be part of, Piper. Lovely to meet you, sweetie.’
