Midwife in a Million

Chapter Two

RORY parked the ambulance outside the front door of the clinic and climbed the steps to the wooden veranda. His boots clunked across the dusty wood as the wind whipped his shirt against his body.

He could remember riding out to one of the station fences in weather like this to shift cattle with his father, a big man then that no horse could throw, with the gusty wind in their faces and the sky a cauldron above their heads. He could remember them eyeing the forks of lightning on the horizon with respect. And he remembered his father telling him to forget about any future with Kate Onslow. That it wasn’t his place. She was out of his league.

His feeling of betrayal that his own father hadn’t thought him good enough for Kate either had remained until his dad had been fired not long after Rory had left, after twenty years of hard work, and his dad’s motive became clearer.

Lyle Onslow had a lot to answer for. The problem was Rory had always loved Kate. Not just because she’d hero-worshipped him since she’d started at the tiny station school but because he could see the flame inside her that her own father had wanted to stamp out.

He understood the insecurities she’d fought against and how she refused to be cold and callous like Lyle Onslow. She’d been a brave but lonely little girl with a real kindness for those less fortunate that never tipped into pity and her father had hated her for it.

It wasn’t healthy or Christian, but Rory hoped Kate’s father suffered a bit before the end. He shoved the bitter thoughts back into the dark place they belonged, along with the guilt that he’d caused his parents’ misfortunes.

No wonder he’d never wanted to come back after Kate’s letter. Kate, who hadn’t needed him for what seemed a lifetime but needed him now.

The lightning flickered and a few drops of rain began to form circular puffs of dust in the road. ‘Lovely weather for ducks,’ he muttered out loud—his mother’s favourite saying and one he hadn’t said for years—to shake off the gloomy thoughts that sat like icy water on his soul.

He pushed open the door and walked down the hall to the clinic.

Rory’s first sight of Kate winded him as if he’d run into one of those shutters banging in the street on the way.

He’d tried to picture this moment so many times on the way but she looked so different from what he’d imagined and a whole lot more distant.

She was dressed in fitted tan trousers that hugged her slim hips and thighs above soft-skinned riding boots. The white buttoned shirt just brushed her trim waist and an elusive curve of full breast peeped from the shifting vee of her neckline and then disappeared, a bit like his breath, as she turned to face him. He lifted his gaze.

Thick dark hair still pulled back in a ponytail, no sign yet of grey, but ten years had added a definition to her beauty—womanly beauty—yet the set of her chin was tougher and steadier and she’d probably reach his chin now so she didn’t look as fragile as he’d remembered.

Lord, she was beautiful.

He’d have liked to have sat somewhere out of sight and just studied her to see the changes and nuances of this Kate he didn’t know. Breathe in the truth that he was here, beside her, and acknowledge she still touched him on a level no other woman had reached. But his training kicked in. There’d be time for that later.

‘Rory,’ she said but she was talking to the wall behind his head, which was a shame because he ached with real hunger for her to look at him. ‘Thank you for offering to help.’ She barely paused for breath, as if to eliminate any possibility of other topics. ‘I’m worried about Lucy and the sooner we leave the better.’

Her voice was calm, unhurried, unlike his heart as he struggled for an equal composure. ‘I’ve fuelled the truck and packed emergency supplies,’ he said. She nodded but still wouldn’t meet his eyes again and suddenly it was impossible to continue until she did. ‘Kate?’

‘What?’

How could she keep talking to the wall?

‘Look at me.’

Finally she did, chin up, her beautiful grey eyes staring straight into his with a guarded challenge that dared him to try and break through her barriers. There was no doubt he’d love to do that. But he knew he had no right to even try.

In that brief moment when she looked at him he saw something behind her eyes, something that hinted about places in her that were even more vulnerable than the delicate young princess he’d left behind, or maybe he was imagining it.

Either way, he wouldn’t delve because he wanted to close doors on this trip, not open them. ‘For the next twelve hours I’ll drive, you care for your patient and I’ll get you both to Derby safely.’ Then he’d say his piece and leave. ‘So we’ll talk on the way back.’

She blinked and he could sense the loosening of the tension in the air around her. Sense it with what? How could he sense things like that about a woman he’d not seen since they were both teenagers and yet not be able to sense anything about others more recent? It wasn’t logical.

‘Of course.’ Her glance collided with his for a long, slow moment before she looked at the clock. ‘Thank you, Rory.’

When she turned away, Rory swore he could feel physical pain from that loss of eye contact like tape ripping off his face. There you go. He still had it bad and, to make it worse, he doubted she felt anything. But that was his problem, not hers. He looked through the door to the patient on the bed. They needed to go.

To Kate’s relief, Rory had them ready to leave within minutes and she couldn’t think of anything else she might need to take with her. Except maybe her brain.

The grey matter seemed to have slowed to about one tenth speed since Rory McIver had walked in and Kate found her eyes drawn repeatedly to his easy movements as he settled Lucy in the back with extra pillows. He didn’t look at Kate again, which was good, because Lord knew what expression she had on her face.

Her friend Sophie had come in to man the clinic. ‘Don’t worry if you don’t get back for a couple of days. We’ll be fine.’ Sophie hugged Kate.

A couple of days with Rory? Kate shuddered. She’d never survive.

Sophie was still talking. ‘I’ll ring the housekeeper about your dad while you’re away and drive up to the home station after work if needed. Okay?’ Sophie frowned and Kate knew she could see the worry on her face. ‘Just go.’

Kate nodded again and cast one anguished look at Sophie. Kate was the only midwife. She had to go.

She focused on her patient. Lucy’s blood pressure had settled marginally with the antihypertensives and Kate had packed as many emergency items as she could think of, including what she could for the birth. Kate just prayed she wouldn’t need any of it.

Even better, Rory had spoken to Lucy and her mum and by the time he’d shut the rear door to the truck Lucy was looking more relaxed, which was a good thing. Kate doubted it was all to do with the drugs she’d been loaded with and a lot to do with the handsome man promising to get them through.

As much as Kate dreaded the trip with Rory, she could only be secretly thankful that he’d been here. Otherwise, with Charlie gone, she’d be embarking on this dash with the elderly mechanic due for his own retirement soon. Old Bob would have been little help in a real emergency, with his flaring arthritis and his hearing aid that never worked.

The driver’s door opened and Rory climbed in behind the wheel—all six feet four of him—and Kate had to shake her head at her preposterous predictions this morning. So much for expecting Rory to be unfit from too many late night doughnuts and morose from his work; there was no doubt this guy was still seriously gorgeous, with a wicked twinkle a long way from surly.

Suddenly Kate was glad she had to stay in the back with Lucy because Rory’s broad shoulders seemed to stretch halfway across the seat in the front and no doubt she would have been clinging to the passenger door to avoid brushing against him.

When he turned his head for one last check to see they were settled, his teeth showed white like a damn toothpaste commercial, Kate thought sourly, when he smiled at their patient. He didn’t smile at Kate. ‘You ready for your Kimberley Grand Tour, Lucy?’

The bronzed muscles in his neck tightened and his strong arms corded as he twisted, and Kate couldn’t help the flare in her stomach or the illicit pleasure of just looking for a long slow heartbeat at this man from her past. No wonder she hadn’t been able to forget him.

What she had forgotten was how aware she’d always been of Rory’s presence and now, unfortunately, he’d hardened into a lean and lethal heart-breaker of a man who’d be even harder to forget. She wished he’d never come back.

She sank into her seat, glad of the dimness in the back to hide her momentary weakness, but even there she could pick up the faint teasing scent of some expensive aftershave, something the Rory she’d known would never have owned. The cologne slid insidiously past her defences and unconsciously she leaned forward again to try to identify the notes.

He looked at Kate. ‘Did you get a chance—’ he frowned at the startled look on her face and hesitated, then went on ‘—to let them know at the homestead you’d be away?’

The slow motion ballet of his mouth as he spoke ridiculously entranced her and, after another of those prolonged thumps from her chest, her hearing finally caught up. She blinked as his words registered. Stupid weakness.

‘Yes.’ That’d been a staccato answer so she softened the one word with a quick explanation in case he thought her unnecessarily terse. ‘I said I’d be at least a day late coming back, if not two. They’ll tell my father.’

She looked away from him and decided then and there that it would be best if she didn’t look directly at the source of her weakness again. Don’t look at Rory.

Her teeth nibbled at dry lips as she pondered her worst fear out loud. ‘That would be as long as we don’t get more rain and end up flooded somewhere along the track for a night.’

The road they were about to hit was known as the last great driving adventure in Australia. It was enough of an adventure just being on it with Rory, let alone if they got caught up in the middle of a flood.

He nodded. ‘It’s a possibility. Let me know if you want me to stop more often so you can check Lucy out. I don’t expect to get much speed up or you’ll both be thrown all over the truck.’

He turned back to face the front. ‘We’ll drive until after the first major crossing…’ he paused as if he was going to say something but then went on as if he’d changed his mind ‘…and stretch our legs.’ He started the engine.

‘Sounds fine.’ But all she could think of was how much she wanted to get going so this agonising exposure to Rory could be over with.

Kate checked Lucy’s stretcher safety belt, forced a smile for her sleepy patient and buckled her own belt. She’d take it one hour at a time and not think about that talk she’d have to have on the way home. But it was hard when she had to decide what and how much to tell him.

Maybe she could leave him in Derby and drive the truck back herself. The idea had merit but, unless Rory had changed more than she expected, he’d be unwilling to send her off on her own.

The wind whipped the scrubby grass and stunted gums at the side of the road as they drove towards the distant ochre ranges and lifted the red dust they stirred into the now grey-black sky behind them.

At least the wind would shift the dust cloud more quickly when the road trains drove past, Kate mused, and, as if conjured, Rory slowed their vehicle and pulled close to the edge of the road to widen the distance between them and an oncoming mammoth truck.

The unsealed road was an important transport access for the huge cattle stations that lay between the infrequent dots of civilisation.

Road trains were three and four trailer cattle trucks that thundered backward and forward across vast distances. These road monsters didn’t have a chance of stopping if you pulled out in front of them.

Even overtaking a road train going in the same direction was difficult because the dust they stirred was so thick that visibility was never clear enough to ensure there wasn’t other traffic heading your way, and the risk far outweighed the advantages.

Kate remembered pulling over and brewing a cuppa instead of following one heading towards Derby in the past. She was thankful this one was travelling in the opposite direction.

This truck sported a huge red bull bar that flashed past Kate’s opposite window and three steel-sided pens filled with tawny cattle rattled after it. She sighed with relief when the dust was blown away by the ever-building wind and they could move on.

An hour and a half of corrugations later, they came to the first of the major rivers they’d have to cross, the Pentecost. There was barely any water over the road, a mere eighteen inches, but that would change as soon as the storm hit. Then they’d be stuck on the other side until it went down.

Kate caught a glimpse of a silver splash from the bank ten metres back from the road and shivered.

Thank goodness the height of water was easy to see because Kate had no desire to watch Rory walk the Pentecost to check the level.

Not that anyone walked across here. The Pentecost was populated with wildlife and a saltwater croc might just decide it fancied a roll with him. The name saltwater crocodile didn’t mean these creatures needed to be near the sea. They were quite happy to eat you a couple of hundred kilometres inland in freshwater. Even with her dread of the ‘talk’, that wasn’t how she wanted to avoid Rory’s company.

Rory slowed the truck for the descent into the river bed, changed into low range and then chugged into washed gravel to crawl though the wide expanse of water. Once across, they steadily climbed out the other side until back on the road and trails of water followed them as the truck shed the water they’d collected.

She looked up front through the windshield to where they’d stop. Her stomach dropped. Not here!

Ten years ago, Rory and Kate had set up a picnic at sunset out here to enjoy the glory of the Pentecost River and the distant ranges. That night before Rory left he’d wanted a place that wasn’t her father’s land and this was where they’d come. A point on the triangle of vast distances people thought nothing of travelling.

The memory was etched indelibly and Kate felt the soft whoosh of time as she remembered. That sunset had been as deeply coloured as a ripe peach with the magnificent sandstone escarpment of the Cockburn Range in the distance. She blushed red-ripe herself at that memory because that evening she’d set out to seduce the diffident Rory and they’d both got more than they’d bargained for.

That was their round-bellied boab up ahead. She just hoped Rory would have more delicacy than to pull in there.

The truck slowed and turned off the road into the lay-by. She glanced around for an alternative. Trouble was, theirs was the only decent sized parking area clear of the road and their boab was part of it. She sighed.

Grow up, she admonished herself. She needed to check Lucy’s blood pressure and her baby’s heart rate but the memories of this place all those years ago crowded her mind as she waited for Rory to open the door.

Kate remembered the night before Rory left ten years ago and unfortunately it was as clear as yesterday.

‘So you are leaving?’ Kate couldn’t believe it. Rory gone? What would she do without Rory? He stood tall and lean and somehow distant, as if he had to be aloof to say what he needed. This wasn’t her Rory.

Safe in his arms was the one place she felt loved for herself. He was the one person who understood how lonely she’d been since her mother had died, the person who could make her laugh at life and made her complete.

‘I’m leaving tomorrow morning. With the cattle on the road train,’ he said and the words fell like stones against her ears. How would she bear it? How could he?

He went on, ‘I can start my paramedic degree in two weeks. I have that. When I asked to marry you we both knew he’d fire me.’

He paused and looked away from her and she knew it was to hide his shame. He had nothing to be ashamed of. Kate wanted to hug the memories away from him. She knew what had happened. She’d overheard her father flay the pride from Rory as if he was a criminal.

She’d tried not to listen to the threats and abuse but if her father had thought she would think less of Rory from that exhibition then he was wrong. She was ashamed that she had Lyle Onslow’s blood in her own veins.

‘I’m sorry for my father, Rory.’

His eyes stared at the distant hills with a determination she’d never seen before. ‘It doesn’t matter.’He reached into his pocket. ‘I have something for you.’ He snapped open the box. ‘Will you wear this until I come back?’ he said, and pulled the ring free. She recognised it as a tiny pink diamond from the mines behind Jabiru—a token she had no idea how he’d managed to pay for—and slid it on her finger, where it sat, winking prettily at both of them. No matter that her father had refused permission.

She looked at the ring—Rory’s ring—it could have been the largest diamond in the world and it wouldn’t have been any more precious, but most of all she wanted to comfort Rory. Apologise for her father, show him how much she loved him. All she could do was pull Rory’s face down to hers and kiss him. They were alone under the vastness that would soon turn to night. Their last night together.

‘I want to marry you. I do,’ she said. For the first time she dared to gently ease the tip of her tongue into his mouth, awkwardly but with all her heart and soul in that one timid adventure, and suddenly they had entered a whole new dimension that sent spears of heat flicking from her through to Rory.

He groaned and kissed her back, answering her challenge, each emboldened by the other, enticed by the danger until both were mindless with the desperation his leaving had ignited between them.

She needed to feel his skin, hear his heart and she fumbled open his shirt and slid her hands against his solid warmth, up and down, not really sure what she should do but needing to feel and mould the hard planes of his chest—a chest she wouldn’t have near to lean on if he went.

She could feel the shudder in his body as he sucked in the air he needed for control, groaned with what she did to him, and she rested her hand over his heart and soaked in the pounding of his life force.

That was when she realised she had power. She could move him and make him lose a little of that tightly leashed control he’d always had. Push him to the edge and maybe he’d take her with him over to a place they’d always pulled back from.

He tried to put her away from him but she wouldn’t let him, flung herself back against him, pulling his hands up to caress her in return. Then it changed; she wasn’t the one in charge.

Suddenly she was in his arms, carried to the blanket she’d set up for their picnic, laid gently on the grass and he was beside her.

‘Are you sure?’ His whisper over her ear.

‘Yes.’ No second thought. ‘Kiss me.’

Then they were unbuttoning, discovering the places they’d left secret, venturing with her murmurs of pleasure and encouragement to seal their pact once they’d fumbled with their inexpert attempt at protection.

Kate realised she had her hand on her throat and the pulse beneath her fingers rushed with memories. The truck had stopped and she dragged her thoughts back to the present with a shiver.

They’d be gone from here soon and so would the memories that clung to her in this place like entangling cobwebs. She’d only need a minute or two to check Lucy and hear what she couldn’t as they rattled over the corrugations.

Still sleepy, Lucy stirred and opened her eyes. ‘Where are we?’

Kate laid her hand on her arm. ‘It’s okay. Pentecost River. How’re you feeling?’

Lucy blinked like an owl. ‘I can hardly keep my eyes open.’

‘It’s the drugs for your blood pressure. Just doze as you can. I need to listen to your baby and check your observations while we’re stopped.’

Lucy nodded sleepily and Kate slipped her stethoscope into her ears to listen for Lucy’s blood pressure. All the while she was aware that Rory was walking around the truck towards the rear doors and any minute now she’d have to face him. That wasn’t going to be as easy as it should be with those intimate memories so vivid in her mind.

Lucy slipped back under her sheet when Kate had finished.

Rory arrived, opened the back doors and waited to hear the verdict. ‘Lucy okay?’ His bulk blocked some of the light that spilled in with the open air and Kate was glad of the dimness because the heat had rushed into her cheeks and, uncomfortably, into other places too.

She licked dry lips. ‘Better. Blood pressure’s one forty on ninety. Much improved. I’m happy if it’s still sitting at ninety diastolic.’Kate eased her cramped knee and sighed. She’d have to get out and stretch. It was crazy not to walk around the vehicle to move her legs for a minute before they set off again. She just hoped he’d move and she wouldn’t have to squeeze past him.

As if he read her mind, he stepped away and, once out, it was hard to stifle the urge to catch a glimpse and see if their initials were still engraved on that tree.

She looked away to the river and realised Rory had moved up beside her, not touching but watching her. That was the worst thing. He didn’t have to touch her—she could feel his aura and there was nothing she could do about the tide of heat that again ran up her neck. Or the aching desire to just lift her hand and rest it on his cheek. Where had everything gone so wrong between them?

‘Our initials are still there, on the tree,’ he said.

Kate’s heart thumped at him reading her so easily. She was twenty-six, for goodness’ sake, too old to be self-conscious about adolescent romanticisms. It would be horribly awkward if he saw how weak she was.

She stepped past and thankfully her breathing became easier. Away from him.

Rory didn’t know what to say. The memories were there for him, bombarded him here, and he hated the way she threw an offhand glance at the tree. As if it meant nothing.

‘We were vandals,’ she said, and he winced at the unexpected pain her comment caused. ‘You’d get fined for that nowadays.’

She was so cold, Rory thought, and more like her father than he’d ever thought.

She pointed to the river, no doubt to change the subject. ‘I stitched up a traveller two weeks ago from down there.’ They both looked. ‘The croc only nicked his fingers when he bent down to fill his water bottle.’

Rory whistled through his teeth. ‘Now that’s one lucky man.’