St Piran's: The Fireman and Nurse Loveday Read Online Free Page A

next thing Tom knew, he was sitting at the table with a mug of coffee in front of him and Flora was pottering round the kitchen.
    The kindness of a stranger. Tom was used to women offering to cook him things—it was a standing joke at the fire station that, almost every day, someone dropped by with a tin of home-made cookies or cakes or muffins for Tom. Old ladies whose cats he’d rescued, young mums whose toddlers he’d got out of a locked bathroom—and even the hard-nosed local reporter had seen him in action, rescuing someone from a burning building, and had joined what his crew-mates teasingly called the Tom Nicholson Fan Club, turning up with a batch of cookies for him on more than one occasion.
    Even though he’d explained gently that he was simply doing his job, he could hardly be rude enough to turn away things that people had spent time making personally for him. So he accepted them with a smile on behalf of the fire crew, wrote thank-you notes—again on behalf of the entire fire crew—and secretly rather enjoyed them making a fuss over him.
    But Flora Loveday was different.
    There was something about her—a kind of inner peace and strength that drew him. Here, on her home ground, she glowed. He’d been too frantic with worry about Joey to notice properly earlier, but she was beautiful. Soft, gentle brown eyes; her hair, too, was soft, all ruffled and curly and cute. And the warmth she exuded made him want to hold her close, feel some of that warmth seeping into him and taking the chill of the fear away…
    And then he realised what he was thinking and slammed the brakes on. Yes, he found her attractive—dangerously so—but he couldn’t act on it. In his job, it wasn’t fair to have a serious relationship with someone. He worked crazy hours and did dangerous things; he’d seen too many friends die andleave families behind. And there was Joey to consider, too. He’d had too many changes in his young life, just recently. The last thing he needed was his uncle being distracted by a new girlfriend.
    But Tom also knew that he could do with a friend. Flora was the first person who’d seemed to understand or who had managed to start to reach Joey. And he really, really needed help reaching his nephew.
    ‘So what have you and Joey been up to?’ he asked.
    ‘I took him to see the chickens.’
    ‘Chickens?’ He hadn’t expected that.
    She went pink again. ‘My dad started Loveday Eggs.’
    He’d seen their boxes in the shops. ‘So you have chickens here?’
    She nodded. ‘The hens are free range, so we went and collected some eggs. And then we made some brownies.’ She smiled. ‘There are some left. But not that many.’ She placed a bowl of pasta in front of him.
    ‘This smells amazing. Thank you.’ He took a mouthful. ‘Wow. And it tastes even better than it smells.’
    ‘It’s only boring old spaghetti and sauce.’ She looked away.
    ‘It’s wonderful.’ He ate the lot and accepted a second bowl. And then he grimaced. ‘Sorry. I’ve just been horribly greedy.’
    ‘You’ve just spent hours sorting out a fire. You must’ve been starving.’
    ‘I was,’ he admitted. And then he accepted her offer of helping himself to the brownies. ‘Wow. These are seriously good. And you made them with Joey?’
    She fished her mobile phone out of her handbag, fiddled with it and then handed it to him. There was a picture of Joey, wearing a tea-towel as a makeshift apron, stirring thechocolatey mixture in a big bowl—and there was almost as much chocolate round his face.
    And he looked happy.
    Tom couldn’t speak for a moment. Then he gulped in a breath. ‘I didn’t know Joey liked cooking.’
    ‘Most kids love messy stuff,’ she explained, her colour deepening. ‘And cooking’s better still because they get to eat what they make.’
    In one afternoon, she seemed to have got far closer to his nephew than he’d managed in a month. And he knew he needed help. Flora might be the one to help him