Sticks and Stones Read online

  *****

  Dylan watched as Lou smiled at that old bastard who was trying to hide how much her words meant to him. Back at full strength again she lit up the entire cavernous lecture theatre, drawing everyone’s rapt attention. She began rattling off all the others that had helped her that night, including every member of the resus team, surgical team and anaesthetic team that had worked on her. As the applause was dying down and Dylan thought she must have finished he heard his name ringing out in her clear, steady voice.

  ‘And lastly a thank you to someone who saved me in a different way. Who was stubborn enough not to let me recover with strangers, and who cared enough to move back in with his mother for me. Thanks again Bronwen,’ she nodded to his mum who was sitting next to him in the middle of the theatre. ‘And thank you Dylan. So now that I’ve got all the thank yous…um, Dylan…it’s okay, you, um…you don’t have to come down here.’ Lou stared in shock as Dylan walked over the tops of the chairs in the lecture theatre, literally over people’s heads and then sprang down in front of her, snatching the mic out of her hands.

  He took a deep breath, blocked out everyone else in the room and concentrated on just her. ‘Your laugh; your smile; your wit; your smartarse put downs; your compassion; your fierce devotion to those you care about; your courage; your strength; your ability to make me laugh, roll my eyes and want to strangle you all in one go; your generosity; your single-mindedness; your sleep-wear; your stubbornness; the way you’ve always loved me and looked after me, even if I was too twp* to see it; the way you dance like a stripper in a bad Vegas nightclub; the way you strut through life like you’re the leading role in your own personal Romantic Comedy; your hair, your eyes and your…other stuff;’ Dylan eyes dropped down from hers for a second, then back to her face as he smiled sheepishly. ‘Now you had better agree to be my girlfriend after that or “believe me, eternity in the company of Beelzebub and all his hellish instruments of death will be a picnic compared to five minutes with me and this pencil”,’ he finished, producing one he had stored in his pocket earlier.

  Lou stepped forward and put her fingers over his mouth to stop him. She was flushed bright red with embarrassment, but her eyes were shining with what he hoped was happiness. ‘Series three,’ she whispered.

  ‘Episode?’

  ‘Ink and incapability.’

  Dylan dropped the mic, stepped forward and kissed her. To Lou’s horror this sparked off the most enthusiastic round of applause yet, and when she managed to pull away she saw that most everyone was standing as they clapped with a fair few whistles and cheers to boot. As always, Dylan was completely impervious to embarrassment. He high-fived an excited Benji, before lifting Lou in the air and spinning her in a circle to more frantic applause. He even spotted Dr Hudson wiping away a tear in the crowd; seemed the old battleaxe had a heart after-all.

  The only person who didn’t crack a smile was Alun. As the crowd started to disperse Dylan felt a hand grasp his arm in a surprisingly strong grip.

  ‘Don’t fuck this up lad,’ Alun grunted out, and Dylan looked down, taking in Alun’s solemn expression and instantly sobered.

  ‘I won’t,’ he said with conviction. Alun searched his face for a moment and must have been satisfied with what he saw there, because he grunted and nodded his head.

  ‘You’re still a twp bugger mind,’ Alun added, clapping Dylan on the shoulder so hard he almost staggered to the side. Dylan was starting to understand how this guy had managed to floor someone half his age and twice his size.

  ‘I’ll take that as a compliment mate,’ he said, and could have sworn he saw another ghost of a smile on Alun’s lips before he was back to scowling.

  ‘Right,’ Alun barked, drawing everyone’s attention. ‘Now that this cach* is over who’s getting me a ffwcin* drink?’

  Epilogue

  Not too shabby at all

  Dylan stroked Lou’s hair away from her face and smiled. She was lying with her head on his chest and her body flung across his as she tended to do in her sleep, pining him to the bed. As her eyes fluttered open and stared up into his he caught the flash of panic that she always shrugged off or tried to hide when they woke up together like this.

  It had been three months since the lecture theatre. Three months since she’d finally given in and let him prove he loved her. After the emptiness of being without her for so long, having her so completely was almost too good to comprehend. It was all so clear to him now; he’d never worked right without her and until she went away he hadn’t ever had to try. He knew he wasn’t ideal boyfriend material, but he was getting there, and he’d do everything in his power to ensure she never went away again. The flashbacks and dreams he’d had about their one night together were nothing compared to the reality of having her in his bed night after night.

  There were of course teething problems. He’d found that when it came to Lou he had a tendency to be a possessive arsehole, which was tricky when your girlfriend had a tendency to prance around all day in short skirts and sky-high heels, drawing every male’s attention in a five mile radius. He’d actually tried to hide her more sexy shoes and shorter dresses. The trouble was that she had very few shoes that couldn’t also be comfortably used by a burlesque queen, so his thievery had been extensive and fairly obvious. He knew he was being unreasonable, and that he couldn’t just steal a suitcase full of her shoes and hide them in his house without some fallout. So he wasn’t surprised when Lou had gone nuts, throwing her ‘ugly shoes’ at him and demanding he produce the ones he’d stolen.

  She’d stormed out and Dylan had been terrified that he’d managed to screw things up already. But after she had ignored his calls and texts for a day and calmed down, she came back over to his house, sat him down and they compromised. She wouldn’t wear next to nothing in the house when people came over (Lou’s cooked breakfasts were the stuff of legend, and usually drew a pretty good crowd on Saturday or Sunday mornings), but her daywear would stay the same. The compromise didn’t quite work out the way he wanted as her idea of ‘covering up’ was to put a ridiculously short silk dressing gown over her insanely small pyjamas. And the way that Ash’s, Tom’s, Rob’s and even bloody Miles’ eyes followed her around the kitchen as she made breakfast, from their carefully selected vantage point of at the breakfast bar, suggested to Dylan that the clingy silk, which rode up frequently, and generally exposed more than it hid, was compounding the problem. But he bit his lip. Lou was his at the end of the day. He’d known how she was before they got together and the last thing he wanted to do was stifle her irrepressible personality. So what if some other guys got a bit of a show once in a while, or got hot under the collar over her in a few meetings here and there? He was the one she came home to, and he was the one she slept with at night.

  The other thing they argued about was money. She had a lot of money. In fact, she had a shitload of money. Despite practically building a hospital in Africa she had barely made a dent in her trust fund. Dylan was a traditional type of guy. He didn’t want her to pay when they went out or buy him drinks, and he went berserk when she tried to replace his ancient Ford Focus for him. This time he sat her down and told her how it made him feel and they reached another compromise. This compromise seemed to involve her easing off on what she bought him, but as Christmas rolled around he wasn’t surprised when she bought his sister a complete remodeling of her salon and his delighted mum a new blinking bathroom and a hot tub for their garden, making them the envy of all the neighbours in the village. But he let that slide as well. He knew how much the love of his family meant to her, especially now with Jimbo still away and her mother not speaking to her. Although her dad had surprised them all by visiting her without the evil bitch in tow, a previously unheard of event according to Lou. Dylan still resented him for not protecting Lou throughout her childhood but was careful what he said as it was obvious that her dad’s visits meant a lot to Lou.

  ‘Hey,’ she said, the fear in her eyes, which he hated so much, but
which he knew he was responsible for, slowly receding.

  She still had bad dreams about the stabbing, but he knew that far more frequently she had nightmares that she would wake up with him, and he would do what he did that first morning and reject her. The very idea was ridiculous, and that he could have been so unconsciously cruel as to cause that type of insecurity in this beautiful woman was almost too much to bear. He knew what he had to do and say to chase those demons away, but today he had something else he hoped would replace that memory.

  That’s why he had chosen this moment to do it. He leaned away from her and almost swore when he felt her body tense next to him. Jerking open the drawer to his side table he grabbed the small box out and turned to Lou, tucking her back into the crook of his arm.

  ‘I love you Louise Sands,’ he said softly, the same words he had repeated every morning for three months. He flipped open the small box and took the ring out from inside. Her left hand was lying against his chest, so he lifted it slightly and pushed the ring onto her ring finger. Lou froze for a moment and then held her left hand out in front of her face, blinking rapidly.

  ‘I’m sorry it’s not a diamond or anything…I mean I thought…well you’ve already got your fair share of diamonds and I…Oh God, I’ve ballsed up again haven’t I?’

  Lou was still just staring at her outstretched hand, her body completely frozen as she continued to blink rapidly. It was a simple platinum band, but, instead of a diamond, a pink and white shell was resting in the setting. Suddenly her face crumpled and she fell forward into his chest, bursting into noisy tears.

  ‘You hate it don’t you? I can get you another one. Just let me – ‘

  ‘I bloody love it you big idiot,’ Lou shouted through her tears, punching him in the chest for good measure.

  ‘Oh…right…um, why are you crying then?’

  ‘I’m happy, okay?’ she shouted at him again, still sobbing and he looked up at the ceiling, seeking patience from overemotional women.

  ‘So you will then?’

  ‘What?’

  Crikey, she was making this painful. ‘Bloody marry me.’

  ‘Of course I’ll bloody marry you!’ she choked out but managed to stem her tears long enough to give his bemused face a watery smile, and then an equally watery kiss.

  ‘High maintenance,’ he muttered under his breath as he hugged her to him, letting her tears soak into his chest. She snorted, prodding his side in one of his weak spots she knew so well.

  ‘Argh! Woman, you realize I’ve just proposed to you, right? You probably shouldn’t assault the future father of your babies seconds after agreeing to marry him.’

  He felt Lou smile against his chest at the mention of babies, and a second later she had propped herself up to look into his eyes.

  ‘I love you,’ she said softly.

  ‘Love you too, even if you are a pain in arse.’

  Lou just smiled even brighter at his insult, and then settled back down with her head on his chest.

  ‘Do you really think I’m high maintenance?’ she asked.

  ‘Um…yes.’ Just as she was about to prod him again he caught her hand. ‘But you wouldn’t be nearly so much fun if you weren’t, and anyway I think I’m up to the job of keeping you regularly serviced for the foreseeable future.’ Lou rolled her eyes.

  ‘You’re such a romantic.’

  As proposals went Dylan knew he hadn’t exactly chosen the most exciting setting or the most flowery words, but he had done what he set out to accomplish; the next morning when Lou’s eyes blinked open the fear he’d seen there for the last few weeks was replaced by contentment…with an edge of irritation when she heard the loud banging emanating from the kitchen; his mum was yet to give up her key.

  *****

  Alun’s niece watched the beautiful blonde lean heavily into the handsome dark-haired man, as her uncle’s casket was lowered into the ground. It was unusual nowadays to choose burial rather than a cremation, but Uncle Alun had selected this plot over thirty years ago. Planning for his death was one of his favourite past times. She often got the impression he was just waiting it out, biding his time until the axe finally fell.

  As she looked around the churchyard, she was again shocked by the sheer number of people. Angharad had always had a soft spot for her Uncle. Given that he was miserable, drunken old codger most of the time, her affection for him was a mystery to the rest of their family, who tended to steer well clear. In fact, Angharad could see very little of Uncle Alun’s extended family in the cemetery. No, the throngs of people gathered around the graveside were here to pay their respects to the man who saved the beautiful blonde.

  Angharad had seen some of them before when they were visiting her uncle. She doubted that Alun had ever had such a busy social calendar in his life as he had over the last few years. He would grumble and grouse about the ‘uffar gwirions*’ that kept badgering him, but she knew better. She saw the small smile he tried to hide when the doorbell went, the light in his eyes and his renewed energy after a visitor would leave, or after he returned from his so called ‘kidnappings’ to their houses or sometimes the local pub (she knew they had offered to take him further afield, but when asked what he wanted to do he would invariably bark ‘pub’ and scowl furiously at any other suggestions).

  Movement caught her eye from the other side of the grave, and she watched as one of Alun’s most frequent visitors stepped forward and dropped Alun’s wooden stick in with the casket. The boy was tall for an eleven-year-old, his blonde hair shining in the sun and a cheeky expression on his face. When his mother pulled him back from the edge, scowling at him, he just shrugged, and Angharad could just about hear him say, ‘He needs it mum. What if someone pisses him off up there?’

  Angharad stifled her laughter with some effort; no wonder Alun had liked the boy so much. The beautiful dark-haired man who had his arm around the blonde was not so successful in tamping down his amusement, unashamedly letting out a loud bark of laughter and earning an annoyed look from the vicar.

  ‘Luce, don’t be a wuss,’ she heard the blonde boy say to a sniffling pretty dark-haired girl beside him. Despite his exasperated tone, the boy put his arm around her and drew her in for a hug, causing both sets of parents behind them to smile at each other. Movement caught Angharad’s eye across the yard, and she watched as three miniature versions of the beautiful blonde and the handsome dark-haired man darted around the gravestones, playing hide and seek.

  As she looked up, the beautiful blonde woman across from her caught her eye and gave her a warm smile. Maybe Angharad’s family was right, and Alun was just a miserable old bastard. But, even if the only thing he ever really accomplished in his life was saving the beautiful woman opposite her, Angharad didn’t think that was too shabby as lifetime achievements went. Not too shabby at all.

  The End

  Thank you so much for reading ‘Sticks and Stones’. If you have a moment please leave a review; they are so unbelievably important for the success of the book and really appreciated.

  To view Tom and Frankie’s story on Amazon please click below:

  http://www.amazon.co.uk/Broken-Heart-Syndrome-Susie-Tate-ebook/dp/B00JHR3YQE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1416073770&sr=8-1&keywords=Broken+heart+syndrome

  Watch out for Katie and Sam’s story, coming soon.

  Glossary

  Ast – bitch

  Cach – shit

  Cariad – darling, sweetheart

  Cau dy ffwcin ceg – shut your fucking mouth

  Coeliwr – someone who plays with themselves

  Cwtch – cuddle, hug

  Ffwcin – fucking

  Sguthan – stupid woman

  Sltwens – sluts

  Twp – stupid, simple-minded

  Twpsyn – idiot

  Uffar gwirions – silly bastards

  About The Author

  Susie Tate is a general practitioner and when she’s not working she’s looking after her four yummy boys under five (okay well one
is actually over thirty-five but it’s the mental age that counts!).

  Maybe it’s a bit strange for a doctor to be writing novels, but she thought she could use her experience to write what she hopes are funny, occasionally bittersweet stories and give people a behind the scenes look at hospital medicine.

  Please click on any of the links below to connect with Susie online. She really appreciates any feedback on her writing and would love to hear from anyone who has taken the time to read her books.

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  http://www.susietate.com/

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