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There was an empty hook to the left of the window, above the desk, and Ali hung the frame there, right where patients would be able to see it. If he was bothering to unpack, did that mean he was thinking of this as more than a locum position?
When she turned back to Quinn he was still pulling certificates from the box. She looked at the certificates as he stacked them in an ever-increasing pile on the desk. Trauma, underwater and hyperbaric medicine and chemical and biological defence followed his traditional medical qualifications. She had suspected he was over-qualified for the job but she hadn’t realised by how much.
‘You carry these around with you?’ she asked.
‘No.’ Quinn shook his head and grinned at her. ‘They’ve been gathering dust in Julieanne’s attic. The army moves people around so often it’s been easier to store stuff with her,’ he replied, as he picked up the pile of frames and put them on the floor, leaning them against the wall.
Ali wondered where he’d been but before she could ask she was distracted by a photograph of two girls that he was lifting from the box.
‘Are these your daughters?’ she asked as he set the picture on the desk. ‘They’re twins?’
Quinn nodded. The girls were identical from what she could see. With white-blonde hair and Quinn’s extraordinary blue eyes, there was no doubting who their father was, but they were older than she had expected. She knew they were at school but she’d imagined them as only just old enough. Judging from the photo, they’d been at school for a while. ‘You got an early start.’ She’d learned from her mother that Quinn was only thirtytwo. Six years older than she was.
Quinn ran his fingers along the top of the photo frame. ‘They caught us by surprise. They turned nine a few months ago.’
‘What are their names?’
‘Beth and Eliza.’
His voice was soft and Ali could hear the love as he spoke his daughters’ names and her heart ached with loneliness and loss. But she couldn’t stop to dwell on her own feelings right now. She couldn’t afford to be swamped by disappointment. She suppressed those feelings; she’d deal with them another time. She was getting quite adept at that. She knew she needed to address the issue, she couldn’t just continue to ignore it, she knew that wasn’t healthy, but she didn’t have the strength to do anything else. Not yet. So she continued to talk, keeping the focus on Quinn.
‘Pretty names,’ she said. ‘Which one is which?’
Quinn smiled. ‘It’s hard to tell in a photograph unless you know them, but Beth is the extrovert, she’s usually the first one to talk and she’s just cut her hair. Or, more correctly, Eliza has just cut Beth’s hair. Beth said she was tired of people not being able to tell them apart so she convinced Liza to chop it off. Of course, then they had to go to the hairdresser to fix it and Beth now has a bob, I think they call it.’
She looked again at the photograph. Even though they were older than she’d expected, they were still far too young to be going through this nightmare. ‘How are they coping with everything that’s going on?’
‘Better than I am, I think.’ He sounded sad.
‘You probably know more about Julieanne’s condition than is good for you,’ she told him. ‘Sometimes ignorance is bliss.’
‘It’s not Julieanne I’m struggling with. It’s parenting.’
Ali frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I haven’t spent much time with the girls. I was still studying when they were born and then the army has kept me busy, then the divorce. Julieanne has been the constant in the girls’ lives so far and I’m on a pretty steep learning curve.’
‘You didn’t share custody?’
‘I couldn’t. The girls were here, I’ve been in Queensland or overseas.’
‘Peacekeeping missions?’ Ali knew that army medics would have to accompany soldiers on any mission.
‘Some.’
His answer was vague enough to arouse suspicion. ‘War zones?’
Her heart was racing at the thought of Quinn being in danger but he was grinning at her, his blue eyes sparkling as he replied. ‘That’s classified.’
‘What, you could tell me but then you’d have to silence me?’ She found herself smiling in return.
‘Something like that,’ he teased. ‘Let’s just say I’d much rather be here.’
Did he mean in Australia or right here, with her? Ali’s mind was turning in circles, trying to decipher what his smile, his dancing azure eyes and his words all meant.
He laughed. ‘I can’t believe I’ve been thinking about you and you’ve been under my nose all this time.’
He’d been thinking about her. ‘What do you mean, “all this time”?’
‘The night we met, at the bar,’ he explained, ‘the phone call I got was from my mother-in-law, telling me about Julieanne. I had intended to come back to you, I wanted to come back, but everything else took a back seat. I flew out the next morning, straight down here.’
‘So that’s why you didn’t give your keynote address.’
Quinn nodded.
‘You’ve been here since June?’ Ali asked.
‘I’ve been up and back to Brisbane a few times but I’ve been here for a few weeks now.’
She thought back to all those fleeting glimpses, all those moments when she’d thought she’d caught sight of him. Perhaps it hadn’t been her fanciful imagination. She couldn’t believe he’d been here all that time. Not that it would have made any difference had she known. Despite his intentions, she was sure his priorities would have been elsewhere.
‘If I’d known you were here I would have searched for you,’ he said.
‘Why?’
‘Because I find your presence cathartic.’ He smiled at her and Ali’s insides all but melted.
‘Is that a good thing?’
‘You make me feel calm and I need that right now. I needed it when we met but for other reasons. You make me forget about all the unpleasantness, the stress. I feel as though I can breathe properly when I’m with you.’
That was ironic, Ali thought, considering that when he was near her she almost forgot how to breathe. When he looked at her with his brilliant blue eyes it made her breath catch in her throat, made her feel light-headed and excited, as though the world was full of possibilities. She could get lost in his eyes. They shimmered like pools of clear blue water that tempted her to dive in and never resurface.
‘I’m glad I’m here,’ he repeated, and this time his meaning was clear.
He was perched on the edge of the desk, watching her mouth. Was he waiting for her to speak? Her gaze travelled from his eyes to his mouth. He was almost close enough to kiss. If she dipped her head their lips would meet.
Her breath caught in her throat and her lips parted as she struggled for air. She could imagine losing herself in his eyes, losing herself in his lips. She was glad he was here too and she quite liked the idea of escaping from reality for a while. Of losing herself in Quinn. But now wasn’t the time.
Ali stepped back, away from temptation, and changed the subject.
‘Why didn’t you quit the army and follow your family? You could get work anywhere.’
‘It’s more complicated than that. The army paid for med school, I can’t just quit. There’s a thing called return of service,’ he explained. ‘I have to repay them in time for every year of study they supported me for plus one year. It was that or buy out my service and I couldn’t afford that. I’ve got four months left.’
‘What are you going to do then?’
‘I don’t know.’
Ali had hoped he’d say he was planning on staying here but she knew it would depend on other factors. Julieanne’s condition would be the decider and no one was in control of that.
She took one last look at his mouth. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t take the chance. She wasn’t brave or courageous, certainly not enough to get involved in something that was complicated, potentially messy and tragic. She wasn’t strong enough for both of them.
Fate had brought them together again, even if she didn’t want to believe it, but circumstances would keep them apart no matter how much she wished things were different.
CHAPTER THREE
Julieanne
JULIEANNE WAS EXHAUSTED. It hadn’t been a particularly strenuous day but she found any day that she had to go to appointments stressful. The drive through the hills from Stirling into the city, waiting for the appointment, waiting for results, they all took their toll. She’d had scans today. Scans that showed that, despite the radiotherapy, the tumour continued to grow. She hadn’t been surprised. She could feel things weren’t improving yet a tiny part of her had been hoping she’d been wrong. That was exhausting too, trying to keep positive when she knew things weren’t getting better.
And just because the bad news wasn’t unexpected didn’t make it any easier to hear. She tried not to dwell on the statistics but she knew the odds were not in her favour. Survival rates were pretty well non-existent with this type of tumour, fewer than three per cent of people survived past five years and the average life expectancy, even with treatment, was between seven and nine months. She was approaching five months. But she wasn’t ready to give up yet.
She lay on her bed, listening to the sounds of the twins in the bath. They’d had netball practice and a late dinner, neither of which Julieanne had had the energy for. There was so much she was missing out on and this was just the beginning. She hated the thought that she was going to miss out on the rest of their lives.
She was grateful to her mother and to Quinn for stepping in to help. She didn’t know how she would manage without them both but then Quinn had always tried to do the right thing. He was the type of man who took his responsibilities seriously.
Sometimes she wondered why she couldn’t have been happy with Quinn. Why she’d had to go looking for some excitement. What was wrong with her that she couldn’t be satisfied with a man who wasn’t only attractive but also intelligent and kind and decent?
But he hadn’t often been around.
Julieanne knew she’d embarked on the extramarital affairs as a cry for attention. She’d felt weighed down by the responsibility of motherhood, she’d felt as though she’d lost her identity. Quinn had been busy, he had been studying and fulfilling his defence force training commitments, but she hadn’t been able to see that he’d been suffering with the same feelings of pressure. She’d only seen that he’d got to escape from the constant, unending world of crying, sleepless babies who had forever needed changing and feeding. She knew now that her expectations of him had been unrealistic. He had been trying to finish his degree and at the same time keep a roof over his family’s heads. She knew a lot of other men would have never taken on the responsibility in the first place yet at the time she’d been so caught up with her own needs that she hadn’t stopped to consider Quinn.
When he hadn’t even noticed the first affair she’d embarked on another and another. It had given her a chance to feel like a woman again instead of just a mother. She hadn’t pretended she’d felt like a wife. A wife wouldn’t have behaved the way she had. She’d known she was playing with fire but she hadn’t been able to stop. She’d got bolder as she’d waited for him to notice. Waited for him to beg her to stop. Waited for him to tell her he loved her and that her affairs were breaking his heart.
But those words had never come.
She waited and waited but it was a long time before he found out. They were living in army accommodation where there wasn’t a lot of privacy, people saw things, people talked, and eventually someone told Quinn. But even then he didn’t profess his love. He just asked her what she planned to do. He didn’t throw it in her face that he was working and studying hard to provide for them and this was her way of thanking him. He didn’t accuse her of childish or selfish behaviour or of any of the things that he could have accused her of. Should have accused her of. She knew she’d behaved badly but she wondered now if he’d seen it as a way to get out of his commitment. Not to the children but to her. Would their relationship even have lasted if she hadn’t fallen pregnant? Was an unplanned pregnancy the only reason their relationship had lasted as long as it had?
The whine of the hairdryer interrupted her thoughts, the high-pitched noise competing for room in her brain. She had noticed she was having increasing trouble concentrating and any extraneous noise only compounded the problem.
She blocked out the noise as she asked herself a question she’d asked countless times before but had never been able to answer. Had she destroyed their relationship or would it have eventually run its course anyway?
She knew the answer was most probably yes. They’d been young. Too young. And naïve. She suspected it would have run its course but she would never know for certain.
Whatever the answer, she still couldn’t believe she’d behaved so appallingly. She’d treated Quinn so badly and yet here he was, back beside her, offering his help and support. Even if he wasn’t offering his love, he was doing more than she deserved. But she knew he was doing it for his children.
He may not have always been there for them but he was here now and she needed to prepare him for what would come next. She needed to prepare all of them. This was going to be her last gift, her attempt to right all the wrongs she’d done to Quinn. To make amends. Her last chance to try to leave them all in a good place.
Someone switched the hairdryer off and the irritating whine was replaced by the sound of her daughters’ giggles. They skipped into her room, decked out in pink pyjamas, their cheeks still flushed from the heat of the bath, her blonde hair, Quinn’s brilliant blue eyes. Julieanne felt her spirits lift. She and Quinn may have been a mistake but she had no regrets. That mistake had given them these two gorgeous girls and despite her early struggles she loved her daughters. She knew they were the best things that had ever happened to her and she needed to do her best by them now.
‘What’s so funny?’ she asked.
‘Granny was teaching Dad how to wash our hair.’
‘How did he go?’
‘He didn’t use enough shampoo.’
‘He said it’s ’cos he hardly has to use any ’cos his hair is so short.’
‘Your hair looks pretty to me.’ Their hair fell in glossy, healthy sheaths to their shoulders, Eliza’s still longer than Beth’s. ‘Did he get all the knots out?’
‘Granny did.’
‘Can you brush it for us?’
‘Sure. I’ll do yours first, Liza, then you can swap with Beth.’
Quinn stuck his head around the door and as Julieanne looked into his blue eyes she wished again that she hadn’t messed things up. ‘Are you okay?’ he asked.
Julieanne nodded. This was a relaxing activity. A good one to do as they wound down for bed.
‘I’ll just go and clear up the dinner dishes and then I’ll read to the girls,’ Quinn said.
‘What’s Mum doing?’ Julieanne asked him.
‘Ironing the girls’ school shirts.’
Between them they were doing all the things she used to do. Routine things that she had done, day in, day out. She’d once wished, on some days, that she’d had someone to share that load, someone to do those neverend-ing tasks, but now she wished she had the energy and the attention span to do the ironing or to stand at the kitchen sink.
She brushed her daughters’ hair as she listened to their chatter. They didn’t need much input from her, they were content with each other’s company and Beth, in particular, didn’t look for her input. Julieanne was happy to sit and listen. Happy just to be part of their lives.
‘Who’s ready for a story?’ Quinn was back.
‘Would you mind reading it in here?’ Julieanne asked. ‘The girls can lie with me and listen.’ She wasn’t ready for the girls to leave her yet. She was feeling melancholy.
Quinn nodded. There was an antique wing chair in the corner of the room and he folded himself into it and draped one leg over the arm. Julieanne tried to ignore how out of place he looked in her room. She had redecorated earlier in the year and while it wasn’t frilly or fussy it was very feminine with a lot of accents of her favourite colour, pink. Quinn looked far too rugged and large for the dainty chair and the fabrics of his surroundings.
Julieanne closed her eyes as he started to read. She had one twin on each side of her, their warm bodies pressed up against her. She could breathe in their clean, apple scent from the soap and shampoo.
‘Can we sleep here with Mummy?’ Beth asked as Quinn finished the second chapter.
‘Please, Daddy, you can sleep on the couch,’ Eliza added.
Julieanne was still amazed at how the girls had never really noticed that their parents were divorced. She could only suppose that because Quinn had spent so little time in the country over the past two years they were more used to him being absent than present, so divorced or away was really no different. And because he went to bed after them and got up before them, they didn’t notice that he slept in the study.
Quinn nodded as he stood and picked up the cashmere blanket that was draped over the back of the wing chair. He spread the rug over the girls and Julieanne. ‘I’ll carry you to your beds later, though, okay,’ he told them, ‘so that you don’t disturb Mum with your wriggling.’
Julieanne stirred when Quinn returned and lifted the blanket off the sleeping trio. She opened her eyes and watched as he scooped Eliza off the bed. She looked as light as a feather in his arms. Eliza turned her face into Quinn’s chest, tucking herself against him. He kissed her forehead as she snuggled against him. She was the more affectionate of the girls, the one who needed more physical attention. The one who was most like Julieanne.
There was more of Quinn in Beth. She had the same determination, the same courage of her convictions. Once she made a decision she very rarely changed her mind. She was loyal but she didn’t need constant reassurance. She was more likely to give it to others.
Julieanne hoped that when the time came, when the girls were without her, Beth would get comfort. She would need it as, despite her independent nature, she was only nine. Eliza would be fine, she would seek solace and love and reassurance, but it wasn’t in Beth’s nature. Julieanne would have to remember to tell Quinn to watch out for her.
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