Australia: Handsome Heroes: His Secret Love-Child

CHAPTER FIVE

SHE should go to bed. She’d do more harm than good if she approached Cal now, she thought, and CJ needed her. She made her way resolutely across to the doctors’ quarters, avoiding the garden, sure that she’d made the right decision.

CJ wasn’t in bed. Instead, there was a note pinned to his pillow.

Dear Dr Lopez

CJ couldn’t sleep and he seems a bit upset. We’ve got a new puppy at our place. Me and Mr Grubb are in the little blue house over the far side of the hospital and hubby’s just come over to tell me the pup’s making a fuss. So I thought I’d take CJ home. I’m guessing he and the pup might sleep together in our spare bedroom. I asked Dr Wetherby and he reckons you’ll be busy till late and us taking the littlie will give you a chance to sleep late tomorrow—but come over and get him if you want him back tonight. Or telephone and we’ll bring him straight back. I’ll let you know if he frets.

Dora Grubb

So CJ didn’t need her, Gina thought as she stared down at the letter. This was a note written by a competent woman who Charles trusted. CJ would be overjoyed to be asked to sleep with a puppy.

But where did that leave her?

She wanted to hug CJ, she thought bleakly, acknowledging that her ability to hug her small son in times of crisis was a huge gift. But to wake him now, to wake the Grubbs and the puppy as well, just so she could be hugged…

Grow up, she told herself, and tried to feel grown-up.

She glanced at her watch. It was three in the morning. She should shower and slide between the covers and sleep.

She knew she wouldn’t sleep.

Damn, she wanted CJ.

Cal was…Cal was…

Go to bed!

She took a grip—sort of—and walked over to pull the curtains closed. Then she paused.

Cal was down at the water’s edge. The shoreline was two hundred yards from where she was standing but his figure was unmistakable.

He was just…standing.

So what? she demanded of herself. She should leave him be.

But he was Cal. She stared down the beach at his still figure and she felt the same wrenching of her heart that she’d felt all those years before. It was as if this man was a part of her and to walk away from him would be tantamount to taking away a limb.

She’d had to walk away before, she thought dully, for all sorts of reasons. And she’d survived.

But CJ was safely asleep and there was nothing standing between herself and Cal.

Nothing but five years of pain, and a desolate childhood that had destroyed his trust in everyone.

He’d never get over it, she told herself. He was damaged goods. Dangerous.

But still she couldn’t walk away. Not now. There was only so much resolve one woman was capable of, and she’d run right out of it.

She opened her door and she walked down to the beach to meet him.

He sensed rather that saw her approach. What was it about this woman that gave him a sixth sense—that made him feel different, strange, just because she was on the same continent as he was? he wondered. She was walking along the beach to reach him and he braced himself as if expecting to be hit.

She’d hurt him.

No, he’d hurt her, he thought savagely. She’d been pregnant and he hadn’t been there for her.

He would have been there if she’d said…

Liar. He would have run.

‘I’m sorry, Cal,’ she said gently behind him, and he flinched. But he didn’t turn.

‘What do you want?’ It was a low growl. He sounded angry, which was grossly unfair but he was past being fair tonight.

Maybe she sensed it. She sounded softly sympathetic—not responding with her own anger.

‘It’s been a dreadful day, Cal. To have CJ thrown at you, and then copping such deaths…’

‘I couldn’t save her,’ he said savagely into the night. He’d left his shoes back on the dry sand and rolled up his jeans before he’d come down the water’s edge. The water was now washing over his feet, taking out some of the heat but not enough. Still he didn’t turn and Gina came and stood beside him and stared out at the same sea he was seeing. She was wearing jeans and T-shirt and sandals, but she didn’t seem to notice that she was wading into the shallows regardless. Neither did he. ‘I worked so damned hard and I couldn’t save her. Of all the useless…’

‘You can only do so much, Cal. You’re a doctor. Not a magician.’

‘The pressure was too much,’ he said, picking up a ribbon of kelp that had washed against his legs and hurling it into an oncoming breaker. It didn’t go far. He walked further into the waves to retrieve it and then hurled it again. ‘Did you know we actually split her skull, trying to save her?’ he demanded. ‘We drilled a burrhole, but the whole brain was so bruised we realised the pressure was killing her. So we split…’

Gina was beside him—but not too close. They were up to their knees in the surf and the rolling breakers were reaching their thighs. She didn’t touch him. They were standing three feet apart, and she was staring out to sea, and he knew that she was seeing what he was seeing. A dying child.

‘That’s heroic surgery, Cal,’ she said softly. ‘Performed as a last-ditch stand in a hopeless case. But it was hopeless. You can’t blame yourself when something like that doesn’t work. Medicine has limits.’

‘Yeah.’

She took a step closer and laid a hand on his arm. He flinched.

‘Don’t.’

‘Don’t touch you, do you mean?’ she asked. ‘Cal, that’s what you’ve been saying for years. You’re so afraid of people being close.’

‘What do you know about what I’m like now?’

‘Hamish says your friendship with Emily is platonic,’ she murmured softly, and her hand stayed on his arm, whether he willed it or not. ‘He says you’re still driving people away.’

‘I didn’t drive you away.’

‘No?’

‘Gina—’

‘OK, let’s leave it,’ she told him, her voice softening in sympathy. But instead of removing her hand from his arm, she linked her fingers through his and tugged him sideways. Cal had such shadows but he’d earned them the hard way. For him to move past them must be a near-impossible task. ‘Let’s leave the lid on it.’

‘What are…?’ She was tugging him through the shallows. ‘Where—?’

‘Cal, there’s one thing I have learned in the last few years,’ she told him, still tugging so he had no option but to follow. ‘Reinforced by stuff like tonight. And that’s the reality that you can’t spend your life dwelling in the shadows of what’s gone. If you do that, then you might as well finish it off when you lose the ones you love. But I only have one life, Cal. I intend to make the most of it.’

‘So what’s that—?’

‘It means I’m going for a walk in the moonlight,’ she told him, refusing to let him interrupt. ‘CJ’s safe with Mrs Grubb and the new Grubb puppy. This water is delicious. It’s a full moon and it’s low tide. We have miles of beach all to ourselves and there’s no way either of us is going to sleep after today’s events. So let’s walk.’

He stopped. Firm. Planting his feet in the shallows. Holding himself still against the insistent tug of her hand.

‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’

‘I think it’s a splendid idea,’ she told him, sounding exasperated.

‘I don’t want to get close to you, Gina.’

‘You know, I have news for you,’ she told him, linking her arm through his and keeping on tugging. ‘You’re the father of my son. You’re here now. You don’t want to get close? Cal Jamieson, you already are.’

He was walking. Gina started down the beach through the shallows, and Cal let himself be tugged beside her, and as he relaxed and started to walk without being tugged she knew she’d achieved a significant victory.

He’d always taken deaths personally, she thought. It was one of the things she loved about him. Most doctors developed personal detachment from patients, but she’d never seen that in Cal, no matter how hard he fought to find it.

He’d never succeeded in personal detachment. Except in his personal relationships.

Except with her.

But for now he was walking beside her, fighting the way he was feeling about her and about CJ, and at least that meant that he wasn’t internalising Karen’s death, she thought. The hours after such a death were always dreadful. Going over and over things in your mind, wondering what else could you have done, what you’d missed…

She could distract him for a little while, she thought, and if by doing so she could distract herself from…things, great.

Or at least good.

Given the staffing in the hospital, they both knew they couldn’t venture far, so they confined their walk to the end of the cove. But as they reached the headland, Gina decided it was not far enough. So they walked to the opposite headland. Then they turned again—and again. Walking in silence.

So many things unsaid.

‘We’ll wear the beach out,’ Cal told her, breaking the silence on their third turn, and Gina kicked up a spray of water in front of her and smiled.

‘Good. I like my beach a little world-weary. You have no idea how much I miss the beach.’

‘So where are you living?’ It was almost a normal conversation, Gina thought. Excellent.

‘Idaho. Same as when you first knew me, Cal. Some things don’t change.’

‘But you love the beach.’

‘Mmm, but my family and friends are in Idaho. So sure I miss the beach but where I live is a no-brainer.’

‘You always intended to go back?’ he asked, and she felt the normality fade as anger surged again. Deep anger. This water wasn’t cold enough.

‘Strangely enough, I didn’t,’ she told him. ‘Five years ago I came out for a break after Paul left me. Yes, I intended it to be brief, but then I met you. And then I thought about staying permanently.’

‘So you considered deserting your family and friends.’

‘I had hoped,’ she said softly, ‘that in you I might have found both. I was dumb. But I was young, Cal. I’ve learned. So it’s back to Idaho for me.’

‘You must know that I’ll want to see CJ.’

‘I’ll send photographs.’

‘I didn’t mean that.’

‘So what do you mean?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said, exasperated. ‘He’s my kid.’

She thought about that for a minute, trying to figure out a response that didn’t involve anger. ‘Do you think,’ she said softly into the night, ‘that because your mother and your father were your biological parents, they had automatic rights over you?’

‘Not rights,’ he said, in an automatic rejection of an idea he clearly found repugnant, and she grimaced.

‘No. They had obligations, which they didn’t fulfil. But rights…You have to earn rights. If you love your kid then maybe you have the right to hope the kid will love you back. You’re at first base, Cal.’

‘He looks like me,’ Cal said inconsequentially, and his words sent a surge of disquiet through her. Like something was being threatened. Her relationship with CJ?

‘So do you love him?’ she managed to ask, and he seemed startled.

‘Hey…’

She kicked up a huge spray of water before her, so high it came back down over their heads. Enough. This conversation was way too deep and she didn’t know where it was going, and she wasn’t sure how she could handle it wherever it went. And she was so tired. She kicked again and then suddenly on impulse she dropped Cal’s hand and waded further out into the sea. Her clothes were already wet. They were disgusting anyway after this night, so a little more salt water wasn’t going to hurt them. The moon was so full that she could see under the surface of the shallow water and…and what the heck.

Walking forward to the first breaker, she simply knelt down and let the water wash right over her.

It felt excellent. Her anger, her uncertainty, the way she was feeling about Cal…the way her hand had felt as if it was abandoning something precious when she’d released Cal’s. The waves had the power to soothe it all.

This had been some day. The trauma of the baby, and then the accident, and Cal as well. It was simply, suddenly overwhelming. Now her brain seemed to have shut down as her body soaked in the cool wash of the foam. She knelt and let wave after wave wash over her and she just didn’t care.

She didn’t know where to go from here.

She wasn’t sure how long she knelt there, how long was it before she surfaced to the awareness that Cal was still with her. He was kneeling behind her. A wave washed her backwards and his hands seized her waist so that she wasn’t washed under.

Maybe he’d sensed that she’d reached a limit where it was no longer possible to support herself, she thought dully in the tiny part of her mind that was still capable of thought.

Or maybe he needed contact, too?

It didn’t matter. It couldn’t matter, for there was no space in her tired mind to make any sense of anything. She was grateful that he was here and she leaned back into him but still her focus was on the water, on the wash of cool, on this minute.

‘The sea’s great,’ Cal murmured during a break in the waves, and she thought about answering but another wave washed up against her and she had to concentrate on getting her breath back. She spluttered a bit and thought, Well, that served her right for trying to think of something clever to say. Of anything to say.

‘Where do you go in Idaho when you feel like this?’ he asked some time later, and that was a reasonable question to ask, she decided. There was no danger down that road.

‘I drive,’ she told him. ‘The night Paul died I got in the car and I drove and drove. A friend took CJ home with her for the night and I think I drove five hundred miles before I stopped.’

‘I wish I’d known.’

‘Do you?’ she asked. She tried to shrug but his hold on her waist tightened.

‘Believe it or not, yes, I do,’ he said softly.

‘Your friend Hamish said you were really good at picking up the pieces,’ she murmured. ‘He also said you didn’t know what to do with them after you’ve picked them up.’

‘He’s got me tagged.’ But he didn’t sound angry. He sounded defeated.

‘I guess he’s a friend.’

A wave or two more washed over them and they had to wait for a bit before they could talk again. But she was feeling the tension in him and it wasn’t going away.

‘Does Hamish being my friend give him permission to talk about me?’ he asked at last.

She thought, No, this wasn’t about Hamish. But she answered him all the same.

‘It gives him permission to worry about you. Like with kids, commitment gives rights.’

‘Hell, Gina…’

‘Just leave it, Cal,’ she said wearily. She tried to pull away but another wave, bigger than usual, propelled her harder against him. His arm tightened even further.

‘I don’t think I can,’ he said unsteadily.

‘We need to go back to the hospital.’

‘We have unfinished business.’

‘I can’t think what.’ She tried to sound cross—but it didn’t come off.

‘Gina…’ Things had changed suddenly. The feel of his hands. The feel of his body…

Once she and Cal had been lovers and suddenly the feel of his hands touching her had brought it all flooding back. The way she’d once felt about this man.

The way she still did.

Cal. He was her Cal. She’d fallen desperately in love with him five years ago. She’d spent five years trying to forget how he felt but now all he had to do was be here, touch her, and it was as if those feelings had started yesterday.

No. Not yesterday. Now.

And he could feel it, too. She half turned and he was looking down at her in the moonlight, the expression on his face something akin to amazement.

What was between them wasn’t one-sided. It was a real and tangible bond, and five years hadn’t weakened it one bit.

‘Cal, don’t,’ she whispered, but it was a shaken whisper.

‘How can I not?’

She should have struggled.

Of course she should have struggled. She didn’t want this man to kiss her.

She mustn’t let him kiss her. To rekindle what had once been…

But she was so tired. The part of her brain that was used for logic had simply switched off, stopped with its working out of what she should do, what was wise, what the best path was to the future.

All she knew was that Cal’s closeness, the feel of his hands on her body, the sensation of his mouth lowering onto hers, was transporting her into another space.

Another time?

Five years ago.

She knew this man. She’d fallen in love with Cal Jamieson the first time he’d smiled at her. She’d told herself it was crazy, that love at first sight was ridiculous, that she wasn’t even divorced yet—but it had made no difference at all.

This was her man. Her home. He was the Adam to her Eve, the other half of her whole, her completeness.

Six, seven years ago Paul had walked away from their marriage because he’d sensed that there had been something more. She’d been devastated. She hadn’t understood.