Australia: Handsome Heroes

MILLS & BOON

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About the Author

MARION LENNOX is a country girl, born on an Australian dairy farm. She moved on—mostly because the cows just weren’t interested in her stories! Married to a ‘very special doctor’, Marion writes Medical romances, as well as Mills & Boon® Cherish™ novels. (She used a different name for each category for a while—if you’re looking for her past Mills & Boon romances, search for author Trisha David as well.) She’s now had well over ninety novels accepted for publication.

In her non-writing life Marion cares for kids, cats, dogs, chooks and goldfish. She travels, she fights her rampant garden (she’s losing) and her house dust (she’s lost). Having spun in circles for the first part of her life, she’s now stepped back from her ‘other’ career, which was teaching statistics at her local university. Finally she’s reprioritised her life, figured out what’s important, and discovered the joys of deep baths, romance and chocolate. Preferably all at the same time!

CHAPTER ONE

THIS old house had seen it all.

He should find somewhere else to live, Cal decided as he sat on the back veranda and gazed out over the moonlit sea. Living in a house filled with young doctors from every corner of the world could sometimes be a riot, but sometimes it was just plain scary.

Like now. Kirsty-the-Intern and Simon-the-Cardiologist had disappeared into the sunset, protesting personal concerns so serious they needed to break their contracts. They’d left a house agog with gossip, two bereft lovers and a hospital that was desperately understaffed.

Crocodile Creek, Remote Rescue Base, for all of far north Queensland, was notoriously short of doctors at the best of times. Two doctors were away on leave, a third had somersaulted his bike last week and was still in traction, and a fourth—unbelievably—had chickenpox. The two doctors who’d left so hastily hadn’t considered that when they’d started their hot little…personal concern.

Dammit, Cal thought. Damn them. Now there was a bereft and confused Emily, and Mike, whose pride at least would be dented. Both were wonderful medics and fine friends. In such a confined household even Cal would be called on for comfort, and if there was one thing Dr Callum Jamieson disliked above all else, it was getting involved. All Cal wanted from life was to practise his medicine and commune with his beer.

And not think about Gina.

So why was he thinking of Gina now? It had been five years since he’d seen her. She should be forgotten.

She wasn’t.

It was just this emotional stuff that was making him maudlin, he thought savagely. The old bush-nursing hospital that now served as Crocodile Creek’s doctors’ residence seemed to be a constant scene for some sort of emotional drama—and dramas made him think of Gina.

Gina walking away and not looking back.

He had to stop thinking of her! Gina had been his one dumb foray into emotional attachment and he was well out of it.

Maybe he should find Mike and play some pool, he thought. That’d clear his head of unwanted memories, it’d stop him swearing at the sea and maybe it’d help Mike.

But there wasn’t time. He’d have to take another shift tonight. There might be no surgery to perform, but with the current shortage of doctors Cal could be called on to treat anything from hayfever to snake bite.

That meant he couldn’t even have another beer.

Damn Simon. Damn Kirsty, he thought savagely. Their sordid little affair was messing with his life. His friends had loved them and he didn’t want his friends to be unhappy. He wanted the Crocodile Creek doctors’ house to be as it had been until today—a fun-filled house full of life and laughter, a place to base himself without care while he practised the medicine he loved.

The door opened and Emily, of the now non-existent Simon-and-Emily partnership, was standing behind him, pale-faced and tear-stained. Emily was a highly skilled anaesthetist. He and Emily made a great operating team.

Right now Emily looked about sixteen years old.

He didn’t do emotional involvement!

But he moved on the ancient settee to let her sit beside him, and he put an arm around her and he hugged. OK, he didn’t do emotional involvement but Emily was a sweetheart.

‘Simon’s a rat,’ he told her.

‘He’s not.’ She hiccuped on a sob. ‘He’ll come back. He and Kirsty aren’t really—’

‘He and Kirsty are really,’he told her. It wasn’t helping anything if she kept deceiving herself. ‘He really is a rat, and you can’t love a rat. Think about the life they lead down there in the sewers. Gross. Come on, Em. You can do better than that.’

‘Says you,’ she whispered. ‘You lost your lady-rat five years ago, and have you done better since Gina left? I don’t think so.’

‘Hey!’ He was so startled he almost spilled his beer. How did Em know about Gina? Then he gave an inward groan. How could she not? Everyone knew everything in this dratted house. Sometimes he thought they were even privy to his dreams.

‘We’re not talking about me,’ he said, trying to sound neutral. ‘We’re talking about you. You’re the one who needs to recover from a broken heart.’

‘Well, I’m not going to learn from you, then,’ she wailed. ‘Five years, and you’re still not over it. Charles says you’re just as much in love with Gina as you were five years ago, and for me it’s just starting. Oh, Cal, I can’t bear it.’

Gunyamurra. Three hundred miles south. A birth and then…a heartbeat?

No. It was her imagination. There was nothing.

Nothing.

Distressed beyond measure, the girl stared down at the tiny scrap of humanity that should have been her son. Maybe he could have been her son. Given another life.

How could she have hoped this child would live? She was little more than a child herself, so how could she have ever dared to dream? How could she have ever deserved something so wonderful as a baby?

Now what? Living, this child might well have made her life explode into meaning. But now…

It would all go on as before, the girl thought drearily. Somehow.

Her body ached with physical pain and desolate loss. She was weighed down, sinking already back into the thick, grey abyss of the last few months’ despair.

She put out a tentative finger and traced the contours of the lifeless face. Her baby.

She had to leave him. There was no use in her staying, and this quiet place of moss and ferns was as good a place as any to say goodbye.

‘I wish your father could have seen you,’ she whispered, and at the thought of what might have been, the tears finally started to flow.

Tears were useless. She had to get back. The cars were leaving. She’d slip into the back seat of the family car and her parents wouldn’t even question where she’d been. They wouldn’t notice.

Of course they wouldn’t notice. Why would they? Her life was nothing.

Her baby was dead.

‘There’s a baby behind my rock.’

Gina closed her eyes in frustration and tried hard not to snap. CJ’s need for the toilet was turning into a marathon. The coach left the rodeo grounds in ten minutes and if they missed the coach…

They couldn’t miss the coach. Being stranded at Gunyamurra in the heart of Australia’s Outback was the stuff of nightmares.

‘CJ, just do what you need to do and come on out,’ she ordered, trying hard for a voice with inbuilt authority. It didn’t work. Dr Gina Lopez might be a highly qualified cardiologist who worked in a state-of-the-art medical unit back home in the US, but controlling one four-year-old was sometimes beyond her.

CJ was just like his daddy, she thought wearily. Even though those big brown eyes made her heart melt, he was fiercely independent, determined to follow his own road, whatever the cost.

Like now. CJ had taken one look at the portable toilets and dug in his heels.

‘I’m not using them. They’re horrible.’

They were, too, Gina conceded. The Gunyamurra Rodeo had come to an end, the portable toilets had accommodated a couple of hundred beer-swilling patrons and CJ’s criticism was definitely valid.

So she’d directed his small person to where the parking lot turned into bushland. Even then she had problems. Her independent four-year-old required privacy.

‘Someone will see me.’

‘Go behind a rock. No one will see.’

‘OK, but I’m going behind the rock by myself.’

‘Fine.’

And now…

‘There’s a baby behind my rock.’

Right. She loved his imagination but this was no time for dreaming.

‘CJ, please, hurry,’ she told him, with another anxious glance across the parking lot where the coach was almost ready to leave. She was too far away to call out, and she hadn’t told the driver to wait. If they missed the coach…

Stop panicking, she told herself. It’d come this way. If the worst came to the worst, she could step down into its path and stop it. She might irritate the driver but that was the least of her problems.

She should never have come here, she thought wearily. It had been stupid.

But it had seemed necessary.

Back in the States she’d thought maybe, just maybe she could find the courage to face Cal. Maybe she could find the courage to tell him what he eventually had to know.

But now she was even questioning that need. Was it even fair to tell him?

She’d started out with the best of intentions. She’d arrived at Crocodile Creek late last Thursday and she’d left CJ with her landlady so she could go to find him. The house she’d been directed to was the doctors’ quarters—a rambling old house on a bluff overlooking the sea. At dusk it had looked beautiful. The setting should have given her courage.

It hadn’t. By the time she’d reached the house, her heart had been in her boots. Then, when no one had answered her knock, things had become even worse.

She’d walked around the side of the house and there he’d been, on the veranda. Cal. The Cal she remembered from all those years, with all her heart.

But he wasn’t her Cal. Of course he wasn’t. Time had moved on. He hadn’t seen her, and then, just as she had been forcing herself to call his name, a young woman had come out of the house to join him.

Gina had stilled, sinking back into the shadows, and a moment later she had been desperately glad she had. Because Cal had taken the woman into his arms. His face had been in her hair, he had whispered softly, and as Gina had stood there, transfixed, the woman’s arms had come around Cal’s shoulders to embrace him back.

This wasn’t passion, Gina thought as she watched them. Maybe if it had seemed like passion she could still have done what she’d intended. But this was more. It was a coming together of two people who needed each other. There was something about the way they held each other that said their relationship was deep and real. The girl’s face looked pinched and wan. Cal cupped her chin in his hand and he forced her eyes to meet his, and Gina’s heart twisted in a pain so fierce she almost cried out. This girl had found what she never had.

She’d fled. Of course she’d fled. She’d treated Cal so appallingly in the past. Now it seemed that he’d found love. Real love—the sort of love they’d never shared. What right did she have to interfere with him now?

She’d gone back to her hotel, cuddled CJ and tried to regroup, but the more she thought about it the more impossible it seemed. How would Cal’s lady react to her appearing on the scene? How could she jeopardise this relationship for him?

She couldn’t. CJ had been born in wedlock. Paul was his father and that was the way it had to stay.

But she’d invested so much. She’d come so far. Surely she couldn’t simply take the next plane home, though that was what she frantically wanted to do.

She’d promised CJ they’d see Australia. She had to make good that promise.

So she’d made herself wait a few days. She’d booked herself and her young son onto a crocodile hunt—a search by moonlight for the great creatures that inhabited the local estuaries. Thy hadn’t found a crocodile but they’d met a real live crocodile hunter and CJ’s wide-eyed enjoyment of his stories had helped ease the ache in her heart. They’d taken a tour out to the Great Barrier Reef and had tried not to be disappointed when the weather had been wild and the water cloudy.

Then she’d heard about the Gunyamurra Rodeo. CJ’s passion was for horses. There’d been a coach going via the rodeo to the airport, and the last day of the rodeo was a short one, so they’d decided to spend their last morning in Australia here.

CJ had loved it, so maybe it hadn’t been a total waste of time, but now the thought of leaving was overwhelmingly appealing. Crocodile Creek was three hundred miles away. She was never going to see Cal again. Their coach was due to leave to take them back to Cairns Airport, and it was over.

All she had to do was get her son from behind his rock.

‘CJ, hurry.’

‘I can’t do anything here,’ he told her with exaggerated patience. ‘There’s a baby.’

‘There’s no baby.’

CJ’s imagination was wonderful, Gina thought ruefully, and at any other time she encouraged it. Her son filled his life with imaginary friends, imaginary animals, rockets, battleships, babies. He saw them everywhere.

Not now. She couldn’t indulge him now.

‘There’s not a baby,’ she snapped again, and, dignity or not, she peered around CJ’s rock.

There was a baby.

For a moment she was too stunned to move. She stood and stared at the place between two rocks—the place where her son was gazing.

This was a birth scene. One fast glance told her that. Someone had lain here and delivered a baby. The grass was crushed and there was blood…

And a baby.

A dead baby?

She moved swiftly, stooping to see, noting his stillness and the dreadful blue tinge of his skin. He was so pale under his waxy birth coating that she thought he must be dead.

She touched him and there was a hint of warmth.

Warmth? Maybe.

He wasn’t breathing.

She fell to her knees and lifted him against her. His tiny body was limp and floppy. Where was his pulse?

Nothing.

Her fingers were in his mouth, trying frantically to clear an airway that was far too small. She turned him over, face down, using her little finger to clear muck from his mouth and then using a fold of her T-shirt to wipe his mouth clear.

Then she pulled him up to her mouth and breathed.

She felt his tiny chest lift.

Yes!

Heartbeat. Come on. There had to be a heartbeat.

Her backpack was where she’d dropped it, and CJ’s wind-cheater was drooping out of the top. She hauled it onto the grass and laid the baby down on its soft surface. It was almost one movement, spreading the windcheater, laying the little one down and starting cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

She knew this so well. Cardiology was her specialty but to practise CPR here, on a baby this small…

She wanted her hospital. She wanted oxygen and suction equipment. She wanted back-up.

She had to find help. Even if she got him breathing, she needed help. Urgently.

CJ was standing, stunned into silence. He was too young to depend on but he was all she had.

‘CJ, run to the side of the parking lot and scream for help,’ she told him between breaths.

Breathe, press, press, press…

‘Why?’ CJ seemed totally bemused, and who could blame him?

Could she take the baby and run for help? She rejected the idea almost before she thought of doing it. How long had the baby been abandoned? How long had he not been breathing? Even if she got him back…Every second without oxygen increased the chance of brain damage.

She needed every ounce of concentration to get air into these little lungs. She breathed again into the baby’s mouth and continued with the rhythmic pumping that must get the heart working. Must!

‘This baby’s really ill,’she told CJ, fighting to get words out as she concentrated on CPR between breaths ‘You have to get someone to come here. Scream like there’s a tiger chasing you.’

‘There’s not a tiger.’

‘Pretend there is.’ She was back to breathing again. Then: ‘Go, CJ. I need your help. You have to scream.’

‘For the baby?’

‘For the baby.’

He considered for a long moment. Then he nodded as if he’d decided that maybe that what his mother was asking wasn’t too crazy. Maybe it even appealed to him. He disappeared around the other side of the rock. There was a moment’s silence—and then a yell.

‘Tiger. Tiger. Tiger. There’s a tiger and a baby. Help!’

It was a great yell. It was the best. He’d put his heart into it, and it sounded for all the world like a tiger was about to pounce, and a baby, too. But the end of his yell was drowned out.

The coach they’d come in was huge, a two-level touring affair. It had a massive air-conditioning unit, and even when idling it was noisy. Now, as it started to move and went through its ponderous gear changes, it was truly deafening.

Gina heard just one of CJ’s yells before the sound of the coach took over. The second and third yells were drowned out as the coach turned out of the parking lot, growing louder and louder until nothing could be heard at all.

Gina made to stand—she made to get herself out in front of the coach to stop it—but then there was a tiny choking sound from the baby. Her eyes flew back to him. Was she imagining it?

No.

If he was choking…His airway must still be slightly blocked. She had to get his trachea clear.

Once more she lifted the baby and turned him face down, and her fingers searched his mouth. The coach was forgotten. She desperately needed equipment. There might well be liquor or meconium stuck in his throat or on his vocal cords. How to clear his tiny airway without tracheal suction?

She shook him, carefully, carefully, supporting his neck as if it were the most precious thing in the world.

He choked again.

Something dislodged—a fragment of gunk—and she had it clear in an instant.

She turned him back over and breathed for him again.

This time his chest rose higher.

It fell.

It rose—all by itself.

Again.

Again.

She was breathing with him, willing him to breathe with her. And he was. Wonderfully—magically—he was.

She wiped his mouth again, using her T-shirt, and then searched her bag for a facecloth. She was cradling him against her now. She had to get him warm. Once she had him breathing, heat loss was his biggest enemy.

At least the outside air was warm.

She had to get help.

The coach was gone.

As if on cue, CJ appeared back from his tiger yelling. ‘I think they heard me,’ he told her, uncertain whether to be proud or not. His expression said he was definitely uncertain about the baby his mother was paying such attention to. ‘One of the ladies on the coach waved to me as it went past.’

Fantastic. She could hear it in the distance, rumbling down the unmade road, starting its long trip to Cairns.

To the airport. To America. Home.

She couldn’t think of that now. All that mattered was this tiny baby. His breathing was becoming less laboured, she thought, or was it wishful thinking? She wanted oxygen so badly.

She didn’t have it. She had to concentrate on the things she could do.

Swiftly she checked the baby’s umbilical cord. It looked as if it had been ripped from the placenta. Now that his heart was beating strongly, the cord was starting to ooze.

How long had the cord been cut? she asked herself, a bit confused. Obstetrics wasn’t her strong point, but surely the cord shouldn’t still be bleeding?

How much blood had he lost?

Where was the nearest hospital to Gunyamurra?

She couldn’t depend on a hospital. She was all this baby had.

She tugged the drawstring from her backpack and tied the umbilicus with care, then hauled the backpack wide and found her own windcheater—a soft, old garment that she loved. It’d do as a blanket.

Once again she checked his breathing, scarcely allowing herself to hope that this frail little scrap of humanity might survive.

But as if he’d read her mind and was determined to prove her wrong, he opened his eyes.

And even CJ was caught.

‘It’s a real baby,’ CJ breathed, awed at this transformation from what must have seemed a lifeless body to a living thing, and Gina could only gaze down at the baby in her arms and agree.

More. There were no words for this moment. For this miracle. She was suddenly holding a little person in her arms. A baby boy. A child who’d one day grow to be a man, because CJ had found him and her lifesaving techniques had blessedly worked.

How could missing a coach possibly compare to this? How could being stuck in this outlandish place possibly matter?

He was so tiny. Four, maybe five pounds? Premature? He had to be. His fingernails had scarcely started to form and he was so small.

His lips were still tinged with blue. Cyanosis? The tips of his fingers were still blue as well, and she started to worry all over again. As he’d started to breathe, his little body had suffused with colour, but now…

She checked his fingers and toes with care, trying not to expose him any more than she had to. It was a hot day, so the wind was warm against the baby’s skin. How long had he been exposed?

Maybe the warm wind had helped save his life.

But there were still those worrying traces of cyanosis. His heart wasn’t working at a hundred per cent.

It wasn’t his breathing, she thought. He was gazing up, wide-eyed, as if wondering where on earth he was, and his breathing seemed to be settling.

So why the skin blueness?

She wanted medical back-up. She wanted it now.

‘How will we get home?’ CJ asked, and she held the baby close and tried to make herself think.

‘We need to find someone to help us.’

‘Everyone’s gone,’ CJ said.

‘Surely not everyone.’

But maybe everyone had. Gina’s heart sank. The rodeo itself had finished almost an hour ago. A group of country and western musicians from down on the coast had booked the coach to transport their gear. They’d played at the closing ceremony, then organised the coach to stay longer, giving them time to pack up.

The timing meant that the crowd had dispersed. The rodeo had taken place miles from the nearest settlement—which itself wasn’t much of a settlement. There’d been mobile food vans and a mobile pub, but they’d gone almost before the last event.