He had Susie to go home to.

For Susie would stay as long as the old man had left, Kirsty thought. Susie had rung her over and over while she’d been in Sydney. She had described the perfection of her daughter. She had described how much better her walking was without the burden of pregnancy. And Kirsty was no sooner back at the castle than she was taken out to be shown Spike.

‘Jake’s been replenishing his IV drip every day,’ Susie told her. ‘He’s been wonderful.’

‘Is he still staying here?’

‘He took the girls home this morning,’ Susie said-with no more than a sideways glance at her sister. ‘He said you and Angus needed to rest and you’ll rest better without the twins and Boris around all the time. Margie has arranged for her sister to help with the housework until we’re all fit again.’

Which would be soon, Kirsty thought, watching her sister cradling her baby daughter, watching her laugh with Angus, boss Angus, boss Kirsty into resting… She’d dreaded the baby’s birth, fearing postnatal depression. Instead, the birth had catapulted Susie to the other side.

‘So Jake will come…when?’

‘He said he’ll come tonight and every night while we still need him,’ Susie told him. ‘For Angus.’

For Angus.

And it was for Angus. Jake arrived that night and he spent half an hour with the earl. He came downstairs and chatted to Kirsty and Susie, and if his eyes were warm and loving as they looked at Kirsty…well, they were warm when they looked at Susie as well, and also as he looked down into Rosie’s cradle and smiled and gave the tiny baby his little finger to hold.

Kirsty walked him to the door afterwards and tried to thank him, but he took her shoulders in his hands and kissed her-lightly on the lips but still far too lightly for her liking-and put her away again.

‘Don’t thank me for loving, Kirsty,’ he told her. ‘It’s all coming together.’

For both of them. She knew it. But it was as if they both needed time now, space to come to terms with what they knew was inevitable. She knew the townsfolk were looking at them, but she didn’t mind. She knew Susie was big with questions but she didn’t mind that either.

One day soon it’d be right but not yet…not yet.

Her job back home was still waiting for her. She made no irrevocable decision, but she did phone Robert and tell him that he should find someone else.

‘It’s a shame,’ Robert said. ‘We’ve always been such good friends.’

Yes, but I’ve found more, she thought, but she didn’t say it. She hardly dared say it herself.

She didn’t think of the future.

As her ribs healed she did a little medicine-she ran a few clinics, she went out to see Mavis and spent quite some time at that lady’s bedside.

Like Susie, Mavis wasn’t asking questions. She was almost totally pain-free now, and her bright, inquisitive mind was working at full capacity-but she made no comment about Kirsty and Jake.

It was time out. It was a time of knowing that happy ever after was just around the corner but not to be rushed…not to be rushed…

And then came Harvest Thanksgiving.

Harvest Thanksgiving in Dolphin Bay was huge. From the moment Kirsty had entered the town she’d known that this was the biggest festival on the calendar. It took the form of a fête, a two-day celebration where fun and laughter and affirmation of life was the order of the day.

It was also Spike’s moment of glory.

The district’s best jams and jellies, most obedient dog, highest sponge-and widest pumpkin-were all on show.

Angus was to open the proceedings.

He fretted for days beforehand. ‘I couldn’t be doing it last year,’ he told them. ‘I had pneumonia. But I’ll be getting there this year if it kills me.’

It almost did. He spent two hours getting into his full Scottish regalia and at the end he had to have a wee lie down. Kirsty went into his bedroom and found him gasping without oxygen.

‘If you think you can open the festival dead, you can think again,’ she told him, hooking up his oxygen tube and swiping his hand away as he tried to protest.

‘The Laird of Loganaich would never have anything as sissy as an oxygen cylinder,’ he told her, and Kirsty gazed around the room, saw a discarded sash and wound the offending cylinder with the Douglas clan.

‘There,’ she said. ‘The Laird of Loganaich would find it impossible to leave his loyal and appropriately clad companion behind.’

‘You’d be as bossy as your sister.’

‘No one’s as bossy as Susie.’

‘Susie’s staying on,’ Angus said in quiet satisfaction. ‘She’s promised. How about you, lass?’

Kirsty fiddled, adjusting the tartan.

‘You’re marking time,’ Angus said softly. ‘Waiting for what?’

‘To be sure,’ she whispered.

‘He’s sure.’

He was. Every day Kirsty saw Jake’s certainty grow. He still didn’t push her. He was simply her friend-the friend who laughed with her, who talked to her of her patients as she grew more enmeshed in this little community, who shared the love and laughter of his little girls…

‘You can’t be keeping him waiting for ever,’ Angus said, and Kirsty nodded, tying the sash with a defiant tug.

‘I know.’

‘So what’s holding you back?’

‘It’s like…I’ve been so self-contained for so long,’ she whispered. ‘But now I’m happy.’

‘You’d be fearful that if you take the next step you’ll compromise what you already have?’

‘My mother’s death tore my family apart,’ she told him. ‘My parents were in love, but after Mom died, Dad just…stopped. And Susie-she gave herself completely, and when Rory died she came close to dying as well.’

‘So you’ll not go that last step.’

‘I…I will.’ She knew she must. She loved Jake so much. But this last step…

‘It’s a hard hurdle,’ Angus told her, between deep breaths that replenished his oxygen-starved lungs. ‘But it’s part of life, lass. You love and risk losing, or you don’t love at all and then you’ve lost already. Deirdre and I had the best fun. Here I am left with just a bunch of plastic chandeliers and old Queen Vic in the bathroom-but I wouldn’t be having it any other way. I had forty glorious years of my lovely Deidre, and here I am falling in love all over again with a wee mite called Rose who’s twisted around my heart like…’

He paused as the sound of a horn sounded from the forecourt and wiped a surreptitious tear from his wrinkled cheek. ‘Enough. I’ll be getting maudlin. But don’t you be risking things by waiting too long, lass.’

No. She wouldn’t.

All she had to do was say yes, she thought as she drove her cargo of Angus and Susie and Rosie in her baby seat-and Spike in a trailer in the rear-to the fair.

Jake was already there. Alice and Penelope whooped up to them the minute they arrived, big with all the news of girls who’d been deprived of their favourite people for a whole two days.

They talked, Jake chatted and joked with Angus and Susie, but all the time Kirsty knew Jake was watching her.

No, she thought. It was different. He wasn’t watching her. He was just…with her.

She had to take this leap. She loved him. All she had to do was say yes.

But she stood apart a little. Part of this extended family but not quite taking this final step. Not quite.

Angus played his part in style. That choked her up. The bagpipes started, reaching a crescendo of drums and music that could have come straight from a grey Scottish gloaming. And then there was Angus’s speech, full of wry humour, pulling in each and every one of the people present.

He truly was the laird, Kirsty thought, her eyes misting with love for the old man. His speech was hardly marred by his need for oxygen and the cylinder was inconspicuous behind him.

How long did he have?

Pulmonary fibrosis was a killer. Soon…soon.

Not now. She glanced up and Jake’s eyes were on her. She met his look full on.

Soon.

The pumpkin judging was early on the agenda. At the appointed hour Kirsty and Jake brought the trailer round and hauled in a few hands to help tug Spike onto the judging dais.

There were yells of appreciation.

‘He has to win,’ Kirsty said.

‘Thanks to Dr McMahon and her magic medication,’ Jake said, grinning.

‘Is an IV line illegal in pumpkin circles? Like doping in sport?’

‘We cut the stalk away,’ Jake said. ‘The evidence is rotting in Angus’s compost patch. And I doubt they’ve invented a urine test for pumpkins.’

And then there was another cry of awe and they turned-to see another pumpkin being hauled across the judging area.

A huge pumpkin. Vast!

Bigger than Spike?

‘Whose…?’ Kirsty breathed, and a head bobbed up from behind the pumpkin and beamed.

Ben Boyce.

‘Hi,’ he said, and he looked at Angus and his beam darned near split his face.

‘You-you…’ For a moment Kirsty thought Angus was heading for apoplexy. She moved toward him, but Angus’s face was recovering his colour, turning the healthy red of true indignation. ‘You traitor!’

‘Why traitor?’ Ben said-all innocence. ‘I grew my pumpkin in my back yard and you grew yours in yours. What’s the harm in that?’

‘You helped with my pumpkin!’

‘So I did,’ Ben said. His wife was firmly tucked by his side and he was walking with a step that was almost sprightly, totally at odds with the gnarled appearance of his arthritis-affected bones. ‘It wouldn’t have been sporting not to have helped.’ He beamed again as his pumpkin was hoisted onto the scales. ‘Her name’s Fatso, by the way,’ he told them. ‘And she’s a better doer than Spike. Thirstier.’

Angus gasped. ‘You don’t meant to tell me you used IV lines.’

‘Of course we did,’ Ben said. ‘When you started using them I got some medical advice. We watched Doc McMahon do yours and my Maggie’s a nurse. We owe you a vote of thanks, Doc,’ he told Kirsty, who choked.