‘There’s smoke coming from the chimney.’
‘That’s good,’ Finn replied. ‘Haze finally got his arse in gear. Should be a little warmer in there tonight.’
Tammy paused by the front door. ‘I’m sorry I snapped back there. I don’t want to be… angry. I just can’t help it.’
Finn nodded. It broke his heart to think that Tammy was angry with him for abandoning her. He wanted to tell Tammy so badly about what Shay had done. About how he had lied to them when they were teenagers. How he had told them that Tammy wasn’t into them.
But he couldn’t. Shay was his brother. And he barely knew the woman standing here before him.
‘Anyway, I’m here to do a job,’ she said. ‘Not wallow in the past.’
Finn paused. ‘I understand.’
The terrible thing was, even though she didn’t want to be with him, he’d drop everything to be with her again. Just for a taste of her lips, for a moment of happiness. He couldn’t just let go, no matter how much it hurt.
‘Look, I promise I won’t bring this up again, but I’d never forgive myself if I didn’t say it. Me and my brother, we’ve never stopped thinking about you. Never stopped… feeling for you.’
She was looking down at the ground, not engaging with his gaze.
‘We thought we’d never see you again,’ he continued, undeterred. ‘So when we did… it just seemed like fate. And I’m sorry if it makes you feel weird, but… that’s why Conor asked you if you were single today. I know we haven’t gone about this in the best way, but… we don’t want to give up on you.’
Tammy was quiet.
‘I’m not saying that you have to agree to… marrying us or anything,’ Finn continued, hoping he was doing the right thing here. ‘Just… give us a chance to prove to your we’re not the arseholes you think we are. Will you give it a try?’
‘I’ll think about it.’
And with that, she was gone. But it didn’t feel bad — in fact, it felt like hope. And despite himself, Finn punched the air.
CHAPTER 5
Ever since she’d arrived at Liberty, time had felt different to Tammy.
Every day felt like it galloped past like a herd of wild horses, but when — at the end of her first working week — she stopped to take stock of everything that had happened, it felt like she’d been there for a whole year.
She couldn’t think back to a time when she’d ever worked harder than this. Even her student days seemed like a summer camp compared to the hectic mash-up of tasks she’d been tackling over the last seven days.
Registering a new doctor’s surgery was a difficult enough job in itself. Especially without being able to go online. As well as getting the internet, Tammy needed lab access as soon as possible so that she could run tests and source other types of medical care for the residents of Liberty. As well as that, she needed basic drugs and medical equipment to be accessible at the center. When she’d managed to grab Haze for five minutes to ask him about the chances of running a drugstore nearby, he’d laughed a stressed-out laugh and dismissed the idea as impossible.
‘For the time being, it’s just not an option,’ he grimaced. ‘Although I’ll add it to the list of a thousand things that need to be organized before this place is up and running.’
Luckily, one of her old college friends worked at the Department of Health and Human Services, so Tammy found a lab to run simple things like blood tests quickly enough.
That’s the first thing she decided to do.
Every single resident of Liberty would have a suite of basic medical checks to check vitamin levels, and look for other obvious markers of disease. Everyone here was pretty young and healthy, so she didn’t expect any surprises from the results, but because she had so few patients, she wanted to give them the best possible care.
Haze’s seemingly limitless credit was footing the bill for these tests, so she thought she might as well take advantage of it.
Tammy booked everyone in for an initial checkup over the course of the week. The appointments were an hour long and went over medical history, as well as allowing Tammy time to take samples for analysis.
A couple of the Littles were squeamish about needles, so Tammy agreed to let their Daddies sit in. This meant that the meetings overran a little, due to the increased chat, and she ended up working late almost every day of the week.
In fact, the only day she didn’t run overtime was Friday, when she’d had the Healy brothers in for their checkup. Well, almost all the Healy brothers. Shay — of course — had failed to show up for his appointment.
‘You don’t need a doctor to diagnose him,’ Conor had said as she examined his knee. ‘He’s suffering from chronic arsehole-itis.’
Tammy had managed to keep the appointments with Conor and Finn professional. Or at least, that would have been how they would have appeared to a bystander. In her head, as she took their blood pressure and listened to their heartbeats, her own body was fizzing and trembling with all the confused feelings she’d been bottling up since that day on the lake.