Her face brightened. ‘You’re not angry?’
‘For dragging me away from my dinner to administer first aid?’ He shook his head and changed gear. ‘No. But I’m not so sure about the dog. You might still live to regret that bit.’
Was he teasing her? ‘We couldn’t just leave him, Mac.’
‘Correction,’ he drawled softly, ‘you couldn’t just leave him. But you couldn’t leave anything, could you, Louisa? Not if it was in trouble. Josh said you were a fixer and now I see what he means.’
She frowned. ‘If you’re trying to convince me that you would have dumped that dog in some rotten home, I don’t believe you. You put on this tough, macho, independent act, but underneath you’re a big softie.’
‘Louisa—’
‘I saw you with Vera,’ she said breathlessly. ‘You cared about her.’
‘I never said I didn’t care about the patients,’ he said evenly, ‘just that I wasn’t prepared to take on all of their problems outside the hospital. And I stand by that. We can only do so much, Louisa.’
‘I know, and I do find that hard. I hated leaving Alice in the house on her own tonight,’ Louisa muttered, and Mac sighed.
‘At least you didn’t ask her to move in with us. Thank you for that.’
Louisa peeped at him guiltily. ‘I almost did.’
‘I know.’ His hands tightened on the wheel. ‘And I’m relieved you managed to contain yourself for once or Hopeful might have been jealous. Vera will be all right. People are tougher than they look.’
Louisa glanced at him, taking in his strong profile, the hard lines of his cheeks and jaw. He was all man. ‘They’ve never been separated, you know. They do everything together.’
Mac gritted his teeth. ‘You cannot take on everyone’s problems! You can’t rescue everyone, Louisa. You’re interfering again.’
‘Interfering is the one thing I do really well,’ she said simply. ‘It’s my talent.’
‘People sing or play the piano,’ Mac said dryly. ‘That’s talent. Meddling in people’s lives is something else, although in this instance I admit your interfering nature paid off. If you hadn’t made a friend of Alice and given her the number, she wouldn’t have called the house and then goodness knows what state poor Vera would have been in by the time the ambulance arrived.’
‘You see?’ Louisa’s tone was triumphant. ‘You pretend you don’t care about your patients as people, but you do.’
She knew he cared. She’d seen it in his eyes and in the way he’d been so gentle with Vera.
‘I care, Louisa. Just don’t invite Alice to live with us,’ Mac warned, drawing up outside the house and switching off the engine. ‘That dog is enough.’
They walked into the house to discover that ‘that dog’ had emptied the remains of the casserole onto the kitchen floor and eaten it.
‘Oh, my goodness...’ Louisa gasped as she surveyed the upturned casserole on the kitchen floor. ‘He must have knocked it off the table.’
‘Now we know why he was abandoned,’ Mac muttered, and Louisa threw him a reproachful look.
‘He’ll be fine when he’s trained.’
Hopeful chose that particular moment to charge into the kitchen, stumbling over his giant paws as he rushed to greet Louisa. He launched himself into space, tail wagging, and knocked her flat on her back.
‘Ow.’
‘Louisa.’ Mac’s tone was patient as he jabbed long fingers through his dark hair and watched with something between amusement and exasperation. ‘That dog has a brain the size of a pea. You will never be able to train him. Personally I would have named him Clueless.’
Laughing helplessly, Louisa gave Hopeful a push and struggled upright, her dark hair tumbling over her eyes. She brushed it away and reached out to retrieve the empty casserole dish from the floor. ‘At least he enjoyed it. He’s eaten the lot.’ She couldn’t stop laughing and Mac rolled his eyes.
‘I’m so pleased.’
She struggled to her feet, dumped the dish in the sink and turned on the taps. ‘Isn’t he funny?’
‘Hilarious.’ Mac dropped onto the nearest chair and closed his eyes. ‘I’m knackered. My life used to be calm and ordered. Then you arrived.’