‘I don’t do dreams,’ he said roughly. ‘We’ve both been there, Jill. But what we have… Friendship. Respect. Lily. Is it enough to build a marriage?’

‘For Lily’s sake?’

‘Not completely,’ he said. ‘Just a little bit for our sakes.’

‘Because we love Lily,’ Jill whispered. ‘I guess we already have a ruddy great hole in our living room wall.’

‘We might as well make it permanent,’ Charles said. He’d released her hand. ‘What do you say, Jill? For all our sakes…will you marry me?’

‘Charles, if you really mean it…’

‘I really mean it.’

‘Then I’ll marry you,’ she whispered, and despite the enormity of their decision Charles’s eyes creased into laughter.

‘I’m supposed to get down on bended knee.’

‘And I’m supposed to blush and simper.’

‘I guess we make do with what we’ve got.’ He caught her hand again, and before she guessed what he intended he lifted and lightly brushed the back of her hand with a kiss. ‘It makes sense, Jill. There’s no one I’d rather marry.’

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® Romances. She used a different name for each category for a while—if you’re looking for her past romances, search for author Trisha David as well. She’s now had 75 romance 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 what’s important, and discovered the joys of deep baths, romance and chocolate. Preferably all at the same time!

Recent titles by the same author:

WANTED: ROYAL WIFE AND MOTHER*

HIS ISLAND BRIDE

A ROYAL MARRIAGE OF CONVENIENCE*

THEIR LOST AND FOUND FAMILY†

*In Mills & Boon® Romance

†Crocodile Creek

CROCODILE CREEK

A cutting-edge medical centre.

Fully equipped for saving lives and loves!

Crocodile Creek’s state-of-the-art Medical Centre

and Rescue Response Unit is home to a team of

expertly trained medical professionals. These

dedicated men and women face the challenges

of life, love and medicine every day!

In September, gorgeous surgeon Nick Devlin

was reunited with Miranda Carlisle

A PROPOSAL WORTH WAITING FOR

by Lilian Darcy

Then dedicated neurosurgeon Nick Vavunis

swept beautiful physiotherapist Susie off her feet

MARRYING THE MILLIONAIRE DOCTOR

by Alison Roberts

In November sexy Angus Stuart comes face to face

with the wife he thought he’d lost

CHILDREN’S DOCTOR, MEANT-TO-BE WIFE

by Meredith Webber

And this month sees Crocodile Creek

Medical Director Charles Wetherby’s

final bid to make nurse Jill his longed-for bride

A BRIDE AND CHILD WORTH WAITING FOR

by Marion Lennox

A BRIDE AND CHILD WORTH WAITING FOR

BY

MARION LENNOX

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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CHAPTER ONE

‘YOU’LL have to be married or she’s going to someone else.’

Tom’s words were a bombshell, dropped with devastating effect into the quiet of Charles Wetherby’s office. Jill and Charles stared at Lily’s uncle in disbelief and mutual shock.

It was Wendy who filled the silence. Wendy was Lily’s social worker. She’d handled the details when the little girl’s parents had been killed a year ago. There’d been immediate agreement in the aftermath of tragedy. Charles and Jill would care for her.

‘Let’s just recap, shall we?’ Wendy said, buying time in a situation that was threatening to spiral out of control. ‘Tom, the situation until now has seemed more than satisfactory.’

It had. Dr Charles Wetherby, medical director of Crocodile Creek Air Sea Rescue Base, was a distant cousin of Lily’s mother and a friend of Lily’s father. In this remote community relationship meant family. Jill Shaw was the director of nursing at Crocodile Creek, and it had been Jill who Lily had clung to in those first appalling weeks of loss.

‘We’ve loved having her,’ Jill whispered.

They had. Neither Jill nor Charles could bear to think of six-year-old Lily with an unknown foster-family. They’d rearranged their living arrangements, knocking a door between their two apartments, becoming partners so Lily could live with them.

They’d become partners in every sense but one, but that one was what was bothering Tom now. Tom was Lily’s legal guardian. He had six kids by two marriages and he didn’t want his niece, but he’d become increasingly unhappy about her current living arrangements.

‘Charles and Jill have both loved having her,’ Wendy reiterated, taking in Charles’s grim stoicism and Jill’s obvious distress. ‘And it’s great for Lily to stay in Croc Creek. She was born here. She’s friends with the local kids. Her father’s prize bulls are housed locally and Lily still loves them. Crocodile Creek provides continuity of identity, and that’s imperative.’

But it wasn’t an imperative with her uncle.

‘The wife’s been onto me,’ Tom retorted, sounding belligerent. ‘People are asking questions. Why don’t we take her? The wife’s feeling guilty. Not that we want her, but I’m damned if I’ll keep saying she’s fostered. I want her adopted, and the wife says whoever gets her has to be married. We’ve got to be able to say she’s gone to a good home.’

Gone to a good home… Like a stray dog, Charles thought bleakly. Lily wasn’t a stray. She was Lily, a chirrupy imp of a six-year-old who warmed the hearts of everyone around her.

But there were scars. He remembered the crash. The truck had been a write-off. They’d had to cut the cab open to get to the bodies of Lily’s mother and father, and only then had they discovered the little girl, huddled in a knot of terror behind the seats.

‘She needs us,’ he said roughly. ‘Tom, outwardly Lily’s a bundle of mischief, cheerful and bouncy and into everything. But she’s too self-contained for a kid her age, and almost every night she has nightmares.’

‘We’re only just starting to get through to her,’ Jill added urgently, and Charles looked across at his director of nursing and thought the process was going both ways.

Jill, damaged by a brutal marriage, had escaped to Crocodile Creek and was only now beginning to relax. Jill was starting to give her heart to this waif of a little girl.

And Charles…

He’d been a loner for twenty years. It had been no small thing for him to knock a hole in his living-room wall and let Jill and Lily into his life. To give Lily up now…

‘We want her,’ he said, watching Jill, and he knew by Jill’s bleak expression that Jill was expecting the worst.

‘Get married, then,’ Tom snapped.

‘We can’t,’ Jill whispered.

‘Yes, we can,’ Charles said, spinning his wheelchair so he was facing Jill directly. ‘For Lily’s sake…why can’t we?’

It seemed they could. When the shock of the question faded, Wendy was beaming her pleasure, seeing in this a really sensible arrangement that meant she didn’t have to relocate a child she was still worried about.

Tom was satisfied.

‘But do it fast,’ he growled. ‘I want her off our hands real quick. A month’s legal? I’ll give you a month to get it done or she’s gunna be adopted by someone else.’

He bade them a grim goodbye and departed. No, he didn’t want to see Lily before he went. He never did. He might be her uncle but he didn’t care.

‘This is wonderful,’ Wendy said as the door slammed behind him. They were sitting in Charles’s office at the Crocodile Creek medical base. The hospital was wide and long and low, opening out to tropical gardens and the sea beyond. Wendy looked out the big French windows to where Lily was swinging on a tyre hanging from a vast Moreton Bay fig tree. ‘This is fantastic.’

‘It’ll mean she can stay here,’ Charles said, casting an uneasy glance at Jill.

‘It means more than that,’ Wendy said warmly. ‘What Lily needs is commitment.’

‘We are committed,’ Jill said, startled out of her silence, but Wendy shook her head.

‘No. You’re doing the right thing. Neither of you give yourselves. Not really.’

‘What the hell do you mean by that?’ Charles demanded.

‘I mean you two are independent career people. Both of you have been hurt in the past. I’m no mind reader but I can see that. You’ve gone into your individual shells and you’ve figured out how not to get hurt. Both of you are lovely people,’ she said, gathering her notes with an air of bringing the interview to a close. ‘Otherwise I’d never have let Lily stay with you. But both of you need to learn to love. That’s what that little girl really needs. Children sense—’

‘We do love her,’ Jill interrupted hotly.

‘Yes, you do,’ Wendy said, smiling. ‘Enough to marry. It’s come as a surprise to me—a joy.’ She stooped to kiss Charles on the forehead and then she hugged Jill. Jill stood rigid, unsure.

‘You’ll figure it out,’ Wendy said. ‘You and Charles and Lily. It’s fantastic. Get yourselves married, learn to expose yourselves to what loving’s all about and then I can rip up Lily’s case file. Oh, and invite me to the wedding. Tom’s not leaving you much time—I guess you’d better start organising bouquets and wedding cake now.’

She left them, skipping down to say goodbye to Lily with a bounce that was astounding for a sixty-year-old, grey-haired social worker.

Jill and Charles were left staring after her.

Not looking at each other.

‘What have you done?’ Jill said finally into the stillness, and the words sounded almost shocking.

‘I guess I’ve just asked you to marry me,’ Charles said.

‘I… We can’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘In a month?’ she whispered, and he nodded. But he was frowning.

‘It’s a problem,’ he agreed. ‘We’ve got so much on.’

They did. Six months ago a tropical cyclone had ripped a swathe of destruction across the entire coastline of Far North Queensland. The damage had been catastrophic, and only now were things starting to get back to normal. Here on the mainland things were reasonably settled, but their base out at Wallaby Island—a remote clinic plus Charles’s pet project, a camp for kids with long-term illnesses or disabilities—had been decimated. With government funding, however, and with the sympathy and enthusiasm of seemingly the entire medical community of Queensland, they had it back together. Better. Bigger. More wonderful. The first kids were arriving this week, and the official opening was on Saturday.

‘I guess it doesn’t take long to get married,’ Charles said cautiously. He wheeled out to the veranda. Jill followed him, unsure what else to do. They stood staring out to sea, lost in their own worlds.

‘I shouldn’t have said it without asking you,’ Charles said at last, and Jill shook her head.

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘You do want Lily.’

‘Of…of course.’

‘And this seems the only way.’

‘I guess.’

‘You are divorced?’ he asked suddenly, and she bit her lip on a wintry little smile.

‘Oh, yes. You think I’d have stayed married…’

‘Jill, if you ever want to marry anyone else…’ Charles spun his chair again. He was as agile with his chair as many men were on their feet. Shot by accident by his brother when he’d been little more than a kid, Charles had never allowed his body to lose its athletic tone. The damage was between L2 and S1, two of the lowest spinal vertebrae, meaning he had solid upper muscular control. He also had some leg function. He could balance on elbow crutches and move forward, albeit with difficulty. He had little foot control, meaning his feet dragged, and his knees refused to respond, but every day saw him work through an exercise regime that was almost intimidating.

Jill was intimidated. Charles had a powerful intellect and a commanding presence. Tall, lithe and prematurely grey, with cool grey eyes that twinkled and a personality that was magnetic, he ran the best medical base in Queensland. He might be in a wheelchair, he might be in his forties, but he was one incredibly sexy man.

And he’d asked her to marry him.

No. He’d said they’d marry. There was a difference.

‘You don’t want to marry me,’ she whispered, and he smiled.

‘Why would I not? You’re a very attractive woman.’

‘Yeah, right.’

‘No, but you are.’

She stared down at her feet. She and Lily had painted their toenails that morning. Crimson-tipped toes peeped out from beneath faded jeans.

She was wearing ancient jeans and a T-shirt with the sleeves ripped out. She’d pulled her thick chestnut hair back into an elastic band. She left her freckles to fend for themselves. Make-up was for kids.

She was thirty-seven years old. The young medics who worked in Crocodile Creek hospital looked fabulous, young, glowing, eager. In comparison Jill felt old. Worn out with life.

‘You know you can trust me in a marriage,’ Charles said gently. ‘It’s in name only. If you hate the idea…’

She turned to face him. Charles. Wise, intelligent, astringent. Funny, sad, intensely private.

How could she think of marrying him?

‘O-of course it w-would be in name only,’ she stammered. ‘I… You know I wouldn’t…’

‘I know you wouldn’t,’ he said, sounding suddenly tired.

‘Tom won’t let Lily stay with us if we don’t marry,’ she said, turning away from him. Fighting for composure. ‘And…and you do want Lily?’

‘You want Lily, too,’ he said. ‘Don’t you?’

She stared out across the garden at Lily, swinging higher and higher. Did she want a daughter?

More than anything else in the world, she thought. Until Lily’s parents had died her life had been…a void.

Her life had been a void since she’d walked out on her marriage. Or maybe it had been a void since she’d married.

‘What the hell did he do to you to make you so fearful?’ Charles demanded suddenly, and Jill shook her head.

‘I’m not fearful.’

‘Not in your work, you’re not. Put bluntly, you’re the best nurse it’s ever been my privilege to work with. But in your private life…’

‘I’m fine.’

‘You’ve kept yourself to yourself ever since you’ve been here.’

‘And you’ve kept yourself to yourself for even longer.’

‘Maybe I have more reason,’ he muttered. ‘Hell, Jill, do you think we can make a marriage work?’

‘I… How different would it be from what it is now?’

‘I guess not much,’ he conceded. ‘I’d need to buy you a ring.’

‘You don’t.’

‘No, that much I do,’ he said. ‘Let’s make this official straight away.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘But things are tight. We’ve got Muriel Mooronwa’s hernia operation in half an hour, and I’ve promised to assist Cal. If things are straightforward we might catch the shops before closing.’ He grimaced. ‘And the paperwork…that’ll take time and I need to go to the island tomorrow.’ He frowned, thinking it through. ‘You know I’ve told Lily I’ll take her with me. Why not rearrange the roster and come with us? We could sort out the details over there.’

‘I can’t,’ she said flatly. ‘Someone senior has to stay here.’

‘I can ask Gina and Cal to stay. Cal’s so much second in command here now he’s practically in charge.’

‘He’s not a nurse. Doctors think they know everything but when it comes to practicalities they’re useless.’

‘You don’t want—’

‘No,’ she said flatly, and would have stepped away but Charles’s hand came out and caught her wrist. Urgent.

‘Jill, this doesn’t have to happen. I’m not marrying you against your will.’

‘Of course not,’ she said dully, and a flash of anger crossed Charles’s face.

‘You’ll have to do better than that,’ he snapped. ‘I want no submissive wife.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘It means I employ you as a director of nursing and I get a competent, bossy, sometimes funny, sometimes emotionally involved woman who keeps my nursing staff happy. It’s that woman I’m asking to marry me—not the echo of what you once had with Kelvin.’

‘I’m over Kelvin.’

‘You’re not,’ he said gently. ‘I know you’re not. I’d like to murder the bottom-feeding low-life. More than anything else, Jill, I’d like to wipe the slate clean so you can start afresh. Find some great guy who can give you a normal life—kids, dancing, loving, the whole box and dice. But I can’t. OK, I can’t have them either. We’re stuck with what life’s thrown at us. But between us we want to give Lily a great home. She makes us both smile, we make her smile, and that counts for everything. It’s a start, Jill. A need to make a kid smile. Is it a basis for a marriage?’

She took a deep breath. She turned and leaned back on the veranda rail so she was looking down at him.

‘I sound appallingly ungrateful,’ she whispered.

‘You don’t. You sound as confused as I am.’

‘You’re burying your dreams.’

‘I don’t do dreams,’ he said roughly. ‘We’ve both been there, Jill. We both know that life slaps you round if you don’t keep a head on your shoulders. But what we have… Friendship. Respect. Lily. Is it enough to build a marriage?’

‘For Lily’s sake?’

‘Not completely,’ he said, and he looked out to where Lily was swinging so high she just about swung over the branch. ‘Just a little bit for our sakes.’

‘Because we love Lily,’ Jill whispered.

‘And because the arrangement suits us.’

‘I guess we already have a ruddy great hole in our living-room wall.’

‘We may as well make it permanent,’ Charles said. He’d released her hand. He put his hands on the arms of his wheelchair as if he meant to push himself to his feet, but Jill took a step away and he obviously thought better of it. ‘What do you say, Jill? For all our sakes…will you marry me?’

‘As long…as long as you don’t expect a real marriage.’

‘Outwardly at least it has to be real. Lily needs to know that we’re marrying and we’re her adoptive parents.’

‘She calls us Jill and Charles,’ Jill said inconsequentially.

‘Wendy says that’s OK.’

‘Yes, but I’d really like her to call me…’ She faltered. ‘But I guess that’s something I can get over. Charles, if you really mean it…’

‘I really mean it.’

‘Then I’ll marry you,’ she whispered, and despite the enormity of their decision Charles’s eyes creased into laughter.

‘I’m supposed to get down on bended knee.’

‘And I’m supposed to blush and simper.’

‘I guess we make do with what we’ve got.’ He caught her hand again and before she guessed what he intended he lifted and lightly brushed the back of her hand with a kiss. ‘It makes sense, Jill. There’s no one I’d rather marry.’

The sound of laughter echoed from the pathway. Across the lawn was the doctors’ house, a residence filled with young doctors from around the world. Doctors came here and gave a year or two’s service to the remote medical base.

Two young women were coming along the path now, in white coats, stethoscopes around their necks.

They were young and carefree and gorgeous.

There was no one Charles would rather marry? Jill doubted that. He was gorgeous, she thought. His disability was nothing.

But it wasn’t nothing in his eyes. It would always stop him giving his heart.

If he couldn’t give his heart, she may as well marry him, she thought. And, hey…

A tiny part of her…just a tiny part…thought marriage to Charles Wetherby might be…well…interesting?

Quite simply, Charles was the sexiest man ever to be stuck in a wheelchair, voted so by every single female medic who ever came here.

‘OK,’ she said, and managed a smile. The smile even felt right.

‘OK, what?’

‘I’ll marry you.’

‘Fine,’ he said, and grinned and let her hand go. ‘Let’s get this hernia organised and go into town and find us a ring.’

‘A ring…’

‘A ruddy great diamond,’ he said. ‘If we’re doing this at all, we’re doing it properly.’

‘Charles, no.’

‘Jill, yes,’ he said, and spun his wheelchair to the end of the veranda where the ramp gave him access to the outside path. Decision made. Time to move on.

‘Let’s tell Lily,’ he said. ‘She needs to approve. But, hell, we only have a month to make this legal. We may as well stop wasting time.’

‘Don’t…don’t tell Lily yet.’ It seemed too fast. Too sudden.

‘Tonight, then, when we tuck her into bed,’ Charles said. ‘But it has to be done. Let’s get a move on.’

CHAPTER TWO

HE NEVER wasted time. Charles Wetherby didn’t know what it was to stand still.

Jill stood beside Cal and handed over instruments as Cal carefully repaired Muriel Mooronwa’s inguinal hernia. It should have been repaired months ago. It had been seriously interfering with her life for over a year, but that Muriel agreed to have the operation at all was a huge achievement.

It was down to Charles, Jill thought. Ten years ago women like Muriel would have become more and more incapacitated, and probably ended up dying needlessly as the hernia strangulated. Muriel, like so many of the population round Crocodile Creek, was an indigenous Australian who’d been raised in a tribal community. She distrusted cities and all they represented. She distrusted white doctors. But Charles had brought these people a medical service second to none.

From the time Charles had been shot, his wealthy farming family had deemed him useless. Their loss had been the greater gain of this entire region. Charles had gone to medical school with a mission, to return here and set up a service other remote communities could only dream of. He’d had the vision to set up a doctors’ residence which attracted medics from all over the world. He talked doctors such as Cal, a top-flight surgeon, and Gina, an American cardiologist, into staying long term. His enthusiasm was infectious. Wherever you went, people were caught up in Charles’s projects.

Like Wallaby Island’s kids’ camp. As soon as his remote air sea rescue service was established Charles had got bored, looking for something else to do. The camp for disabled kids, bringing kids from all over Australia for the holiday of a lifetime, was brilliant in its intent. It brought kids to the tropics to have fun and it provided first-class rehabilitation facilities while that happened.

He acted on impulse, Jill thought as she worked beside him. What sort of impulse had had him asking her to marry him?

‘You’re daydreaming,’ Charles said softly. The main part of the procedure was over now. Cal was stitching, making sure the job was perfect. There was time for his helpers to stand back. Or, in Charles’s case, to wheel back. He had a special stool he used in theatre. He’d devised it himself so he could be on a level with what was going on and swivel and move at need. As director of the entire base it was reasonable to assume he didn’t need to act in a hands-on capacity, but the day Charles stopped working…

It’d kill him, Jill thought. The man was driven.

‘You’re dreaming diamonds?’ Charles said, teasing, and Jill gasped.

‘What…? No!’

‘Diamonds,’ Cal said, eyes widening. ‘Diamonds!’

‘Maybe just one diamond,’ Charles said. ‘Jill, seeing Gina and Cal are our babysitters-in-chief, I figure maybe Cal should be the first to know.’

‘You guys are getting married?’ Cal said incredulously.

‘Only because of Lily,’ Jill said in a rush, and the pleasure in Cal’s eyes faded a little.

‘Why?’

‘If we don’t get married Lily gets adopted by someone else,’ Charles said. ‘We’re sort of used to her being around.’

‘You mean you love her,’ Cal said gently, and the smile returned. ‘You want to tell me how it happened?’

‘Her uncle wants her adopted,’ Charles explained. ‘He’s her legal guardian. He wants a married couple.’ He turned to the tray of surgical instruments and focused on what needed attention.

Nothing needed attention.

‘We can’t let her go,’ Jill said warmly, life returning to her voice. ‘We all love her.’

‘Ofcoursewedo,’ Cal said. Lily was playing with Gina and Cal’s small son, CJ, right now. CJ and Lily were best friends. They were in and out of each other’s houses, they slept over at each other’s places; in fact, sometimes Charles thought Lily regarded Gina and Cal as just as much her parents as he and Jill.

It was a problem, he thought. Oh, it made life easy that Lily transferred her affections to whoever she was with, but Wendy worried that the child’s superficial attachments were the result of trauma.

It didn’t matter, Charles thought. It’d settle.

‘So when’s the date?’ Cal asked, and Charles looked questioningly at Jill.

‘I… We need to do it within a month.’

‘Hey, it’s a magnificent excuse for a party. It’ll be headline news…’

‘Private ceremony,’ Charles said before he thought about it. ‘No fuss.’

‘No fuss,’ Jill agreed, and Charles looked sharply up at her. Kicking himself. He’d done it again. He’d made the decision without consulting her.

‘And no photographs,’ she said. Her voice was flat, inflexionless. No joy there.

Of course not. She’d had the marriage from hell the first time round. Marriage could never be something she approached with joy.

He knew few details of her past, and those he hadn’t gained from Jill. His friend Harry, the Crocodile Creek policeman, had passed on information to Charles when he’d become involved with Jill that he’d thought might be important.

Married absurdly young and with no family support, Harry reported that Jill’s marriage had been a nightmare of abuse. She’d tried to run, but she’d been hauled back, time and time again. Her final attempt to defy her husband had nearly cost her life. Only the fact that there’d been a couple of tourists on the jetty as Jill had staggered from her husband’s fishing boat had saved her life.

But despite her appalling marriage, Jill Shaw was a woman of intelligence and courage. She’d still been young enough to start a new life. Cautiously, and with the encouragement from women she met at the refuge she’d ended up in after she’d been discharged from hospital, she’d applied for a nursing course as far away from the scene of her marriage as she’d been able to. She still feared Kelvin and had changed her name to keep hidden, but she’d moved on. She’d lived on the smell of an oily rag to get what she wanted.

She’d graduated with honours, she’d embraced her profession and when she’d applied to Crocodile Creek—it had to be one of the most remote nursing jobs in Australia—Charles hadn’t believed his luck.

But she wasn’t happy. Normally bossy and acerbic, with a wry sense of humour, the events of the afternoon seemed to have winded her. Was she afraid? Of more than her ex-husband finding her? Hell, she had to know he’d never hurt her. And she’d agreed. She did love Lily, he thought. She wanted this.

He was going to Wallaby Island tomorrow without her. He had to have her smile about this—he had to have her feeling sure before he went.

‘Cal, we’re finished now,’ he said, maybe more roughly than he intended. ‘Do you think you and Gina can hang on to Lily for a few more hours?’

‘Of course,’ Cal said easily. ‘We’re packing to go to Wallaby Island tomorrow. Having Lily will get CJ out of our hair while we organise ourselves.’

‘Fine,’ Charles said. He had his own packing to do but it’d have to wait. ‘Don’t mention what’s happening to Lily—we want to tell her ourselves tonight. But Jill and I are going out to dinner and we need to leave now.’

‘It’s only four now,’ Jill said, startled. ‘What’s the rush?’

‘We need to get changed,’ Charles said. ‘And we need to get into town before the jeweller shuts. I’ve never been engaged before and if we’re going to do this…Jill, let’s do this in style.’

He wouldn’t listen to her objections. She didn’t need a ring. She didn’t need…marriage.

What was she doing?

Jill stood in her bare little bedroom and gazed into her wardrobe with a sense of helplessness. She was going out to dinner with Charles. She should wear clean jeans and a neat white shirt.

‘A dress,’ Charles called from his bedroom, and she winced.

A dress. The outfit she’d bought for the weddings?

It was an occupational hazard, working in Crocodile Creek, she thought ruefully. So many young medics came here to work that romance was inevitable. They’d had, what, eight weddings in the last year? So much so that the locals laughingly referred to the doctors’ house as the Wedding Chapel.

She’d never lived in the doctors’ house. She valued her independence too much.

What was she doing?

She wanted Lily. It was like an ache. From the time she’d held her, the night her parents had been killed, her heart had gone out to the little girl. Even Lily’s fierce independence, the way she held herself just slightly aloof from affection… Jill could understand it and respect it.

‘Dress?’ Charles called again, and she smiled. He was as bossy as she was. But not…autocratic. Never violent. She’d seen him in some pretty stressful situations. There’d been a family feud. His brother had been responsible for his injury, yet his father had vented his fury on Charles. He’d considered his injured son useless.

Charles had never railed against the unfairness of fate. He’d taken his share of a vast inheritance—a share which his father hadn’t legally been able to keep from him—and he’d proceeded to set up this medical base. He’d funnelled his anger and his frustration into good.

He deserved…

A dress.

OK. She tugged her only dress from its hanger—a creamy silk sliver of a frock that hugged her figure, that draped in a cowl collar low around her breasts, no sleeves, a classy garment Gina had bullied her into for Kate and Hamish’s wedding. She slipped it on, and then tugged her hair from its customary elastic band.

Her glossy chestnut curls had once been a source of pride. She brushed them now. They fell to her shoulders. She looked younger this way, she thought as she stared into the mirror. There was no grey in her hair yet.

She was a woman about to choose her engagement ring…

It was nonsense. She shoved her feet into sandals, grabbed her purse and headed for the door.

And stopped and returned to the mirror.

She stared at her reflection for a long moment, then sighed and grabbed a compact and swiped powder over her freckles. She put on lipstick that had been used, what, eight times for eight weddings?

Hers would be the ninth?

‘It’s nonsense,’ she whispered, but as she put the lid back on her lipstick she caught sight of her reflection and paused.

‘Not too bad for thirty-seven,’ she whispered. ‘And you’re going to marry Charles.’

It was a sensible option. But…Charles.

She couldn’t quite suppress a quiver of excitement. He really was…

‘Just Charles,’ she said to herself firmly. ‘Medical director of Croc Creek. Your boss.

‘Your husband?

‘Get real,’ she told her reflection. She stuck her tongue out at herself, grinned and went to meet her fiancé.

He liked it. She emerged from her bedroom and Charles was waiting. His eyes crinkled in the way she loved.

‘Hey,’ he said softly. ‘What’s the occasion? An engagement or something?’

Charles had made an effort, too. He was wearing casual cream trousers and a soft, cream, open-necked shirt. Quality stuff. Clothes that made him look even sexier than he usually did.

He hadn’t lost muscle mass, as many paraplegics did, Jill thought. His injury could almost be classified as cauda equina rather than complete paraplegia—a damage to the nerves at the base of his spine. He pushed himself, standing every day, forcing his legs to retain some strength. It’d be much easier to stay in the wheelchair but that had never been Charles’s way—taking the easy option.

He was great, she thought. The most fantastic boss…

But a husband?

‘Lily’s OK?’ she asked.

‘Settled at Cal and Gina’s.’

Her face clouded. ‘You know, I wish—’

‘That she wasn’t quite as happy to go to strangers,’ he said softly. ‘I know. It’s what Wendy says. Tom’s right in a way. She needs permanence. Even commitment. That’s what we’re doing now. Let’s go buy us an engagement ring.’

The jeweller was obsequious, eager and shocked. He tried to usher them into the door, tugging Charles’s wheelchair sideways in an unnecessary effort to help, and came close to upending him in the process. By the time Charles extricated himself from his unwelcome aid, the man had realised the potential of his customers.

‘Well,’ he said as he tugged out trays of his biggest diamonds. ‘Never did I think I’d have the pleasure of selling an engagement ring to the medical director of Crocodile Creek. And you a Wetherby. I sold an engagement ring to your brother. He runs the farm now, doesn’t he? Such a shame about your accident. Not that you haven’t done very well for yourself. A healthy man could hardly have done more. You’re still a Wetherby, though, sir. Now, your brother purchased a one and a half carat diamond when he got engaged. If you’d warned me… I don’t have anything near that quality at the moment, but if you’d like to choose a style, I can have a selection flown in tomorrow. As big as you like,’ he said expansively. ‘You’re a lucky lady, miss.’

‘Yes,’ Jill said woodenly. The way the jeweller looked at Charles was patronising, she thought. She’d spent enough time with Charles to pick up on the way people talked to him. This guy was doing it wrong. He was talking to Charles but keeping eye contact with her. He was making her know he was being kind to the guy in the wheelchair. And the way Charles had looked when he’d mentioned his brother…

She hated this shop. She hated these ostentatious diamonds. How big was the man saying this diamond should be?

Would Charles like her to have a bigger diamond than his brother’s wife?

‘What would you like, Jill?’ Charles asked gently, and she shook herself out of her anger and tried to make a choice. She had to do this.

‘Any diamond’s fine,’ she said. ‘I guess….however big you want.’

‘However big I want?’

He was quizzing her. He had this ability to figure what she thought almost before she thought it herself. The ability scared her.

Maybe Charles scared her.

‘You don’t really want a diamond, do you?’ he said.

‘If you think—’

‘I don’t think,’ he said with another flash of irritation. ‘It’s you who gets to wear the thing. Some of these rings are really….’

‘Ostentatious?’ she said before she could help herself, and Charles’s face relaxed. He smiled wryly, though the touch of anger remained.

‘I’m right, aren’t I? You hate these as much as I do.’

‘I suspect we do need an engagement ring, though,’ she said. ‘If you’re planning on telling everyone we’re engaged.’

‘I am planning on telling everyone we’re engaged.’ He hesitated and then held out his hand to the jeweller. ‘Sorry, Alf,’ he said bluntly. ‘I’ve a lady with simple tastes. I’m thinking it’s one of the reasons I’ve asked her to marry me, so we’ll not go against that. Thank you for your help and good day. Coming, Jill?’

‘We’re not…?’

‘No, we’re not,’ he said forcefully, and propelled his chair out the door before she could argue.

By the time Jill caught him up he was half a block away. She had to run to catch up.

He realised, slowed and spun to face her.

‘Sorry,’ he said, rueful. ‘Telling me the size of my brother’s engagement ring pushed a few buttons I don’t like to have pushed.’

‘I can see that,’ she said cautiously. ‘And the way he treated you…’

‘I don’t care about the way he treated me. I’m used to it. But you… You don’t really want a three-carat diamond ring?’

‘I don’t want any ring.’ She hesitated, looking down at her hands. They were work hands, scrubbed a hundred times a day in her job as a nurse. They were red and a bit wrinkled. The nails were as short as she could cut them.

‘I’d look ridiculous with a diamond.’

‘How about an opal?’ Charles asked, and she hesitated. ‘If you don’t want one, just say so.’

‘I love opals,’ she said cautiously. ‘But—’

‘But nothing. George Meredith’s in town. Have you met him? He’s a local prospector—he spends his time scraping in dirt anywhere from here to Longreach. What he doesn’t know about opals isn’t worth knowing. I know he’s in town because I saw him for a dodgy back this morning. I told him no digging for a week, to stay in town, get himself a decent bed and put his feet up. He’ll be down at the hotel. I also know he has some really decent rock. Let’s go and take a look.’

He had more than decent rock. He had ready-made jewellery.

‘I don’t normally make it up,’ he told them. A big, shy man, quietly spoken but with enormous pride in the stones he produced to show them, he stood back as they fingered his fabulous collection. ‘I sell it on to dealers. But a mate of mine’s done some half-decent work and while the back’s been bad he’s been teaching me to do a bit. These are the ones I’m happiest with. When me back’s a bit better I’m heading to Cairns—I reckon the big tourist places will snap this lot up. Hang on a sec.’

They hung on. George had spread his stones out on the coverlet of his hotel bed for them to see. Now he delved into a battered suitcase and produced a can of aftershave. He glanced suspiciously at his visitors, then grinned as if he’d decided suspicions here were ridiculous, but all the same he turned his back on them so they couldn’t see what he was doing. He twiddled for a bit and then spun back to face them. The aftershave can was open at the base and a small, chamois pouch was lying in his open palm.

He opened it with care, unwrapping individual packages. Laying their contents on a pillow.

Four rings and two pendants. Each one made Jill gasp.

‘They’re black opal,’ George said with satisfaction. ‘You won’t find better stuff than this anywhere in the world. You like them?’

Did she like them? Jill stared down at the cluster of small opals and thought she’d never seen anything lovelier.

She lifted one, drawn to it before all the others. It was the smallest stone, a rough-shaped opal set in a gold ring. The stone was deep, turquoise green, with black in its depths. But there was fire, tiny slivers of red that looked like fissures in the rock, exposing flames deep down. The opal looked as if it had been set in the gold in the ground, wedged there for centuries, washed by oceans, weathered to the thing of beauty it was now.

She’d never seen anything so beautiful.

‘Put it on,’ George prodded, and as she didn’t move Charles lifted it from her, took her ring finger and slid the ring home.

It might have been made for her.

She gazed down at it and blinked. And tried to think of something to say. And blinked again.

‘I think we have a sale,’ Charles said in satisfaction. Both men were smiling at her now, like two avuncular genies.

‘It ought to go on a hand like that,’ George said. ‘You know, that stone… I almost decided to keep it. I couldn’t bear to think of it on some fancy woman’s hand, sitting among half a dozen diamonds and sapphires and the like. If you don’t mind me saying so, ma’am,’ he said, ‘your hands are right for it. Worn a bit. Ready for something as lovely.’

‘Not a bad pitch,’ Charles said appreciatively.

‘I mean it,’ George growled, and from the depth of emotion in his voice Jill knew he did.

But…

‘I can’t,’ she whispered. ‘This is black opal.’ She hadn’t lived in a place such as Crocodile Creek without knowing the value of such a stone. ‘You can’t…’

‘I can,’ Charles said solidly. ‘Jill, why don’t you go down to the bar while George and I talk business?’

‘I—’

‘Go,’ he said, and propelled her firmly out the door.

They went to dinner at the Athina. They were greeted with pleasure and hugs and exclamations of delight before they so much as made it to their table.

Word was all over town.

‘Oh, but it’s beautiful,’ Sophia Poulos said mistily, looking at the ring and sighing her happiness. ‘If you two knew how much we hoped this would happen…’

‘We’re only doing this for Lily,’ Jill said, startled, but Sophia beamed some more.

‘Nonsense. You wear a beautiful ring. You wear a beautiful dress. You are a beautiful woman and Dr Wetherby…he’s a very handsome man, eh? And don’t tell me you haven’t noticed. You’re doing this for Lily? In my eye!’ She gave a snort of derision and headed back to her kitchen. ‘Hey,’ she yelled to her husband. ‘We have lovers on table one. Champagne on the house.’

It was silly. It was embarrassing. It was also kind of fun. But as the meal wore on, as the attention of the restaurant patrons turned away, there was a sudden silence. It stretched out a little too long.

It’s just Charles, Jill told herself, feeling absurdly self-conscious. It’s just my boss.

‘What’s happening tomorrow?’ she asked, and it was the right thing to ask for it slid things back into a work perspective. Here they were comfortable. For the last eight years they’d worked side by side to make their medical service the best.

‘There’s three days’ work happening tomorrow,’ Charles growled. In the project ahead Charles held passion. The kids’ camp on Wallaby Island had been a dream of Charles’s since he’d returned to Crocodile Creek. Jill had been caught up in his enthusiasm and had been as devastated as Charles when the cyclone had wreaked such havoc.

But tragedy could turn to good. With public attention and sympathy focussed on the region, funding had been forthcoming to turn the place into a facility beyond their imagination. Charles was heading there tomorrow to welcome the first kids to the restored and extended camp. It was a wonder he’d found time to talk to the social worker about Lily, Jill thought ruefully, much less take this evening off to wine and dine a fiancée.

And give her a ring.

As they talked about their plans—or, rather, Charles talked and Jill listened—her eyes kept drifting to her ring.

She’d never owned anything so beautiful. Despite what George said, it didn’t look right on her work-worn hand.

But Charles had always known what she was thinking. She had to learn to factor that in. ‘It’s perfect,’ he said gently, interrupting what he was saying to reassure her, and she flushed.

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…’

‘It’s me who should be sorry. This is no night to be talking about work.’

‘We don’t have a lot more in common,’ she said bluntly, and then bit her lip. She hadn’t meant to sound so…tart.

Maybe she was tart. Maybe that was how she always sounded. She’d stop pretences years ago.

One of the reasons she’d relaxed with Charles over the years had been that he seemed to appreciate blunt talking. He asked for her opinion and he got it.

She needed to soften, though, she thought. He wouldn’t want a wife who shot her mouth off.

‘We have Lily in common,’ he reminded her, and she nodded.

Of course. But… ‘I’m not sure why you want her,’ she said cautiously. ‘I know your reaction when her parents died was the same as mine—overwhelming sadness. But you do already have a daughter.’

‘I have Kate,’ he said. ‘A twenty-seven-year-old daughter I’ve only known for the last few months.’

‘You must have loved her mother.’

‘We all did,’ he said ruefully. ‘Maryanne was gorgeous. She was wild and loving and did what she pleased. I wasn’t the only one in love with her. You know that’s what caused the rift in my family? Philip, my brother, shot me by accident, but he put the blame on a mate of mine who also loved Maryanne. The repercussions of that can still be felt today. Anyway, that’s what happened. I was injured and was sent to the city. Apparently Maryanne was in the early stages of pregnancy but didn’t tell anyone. Certainly not me. A rushed marriage to a young man who was little more than a boy, and who was facing a life of paraplegia…that would never be Maryanne’s style.

‘By the time I was well enough to return here she’d disappeared down south. Apparently she had Kate adopted and then proceeded to have a very good life. The first I knew of it was when Kate arrived on the scene just before the cyclone.’

He said it lightly. He said it almost as if it didn’t hurt, but there was enough in those few words to let Jill see underneath. A young man wildly in love, deserted seemingly because of his paraplegia. Knowing later he’d fathered a child, but Maryanne had not deemed it worth telling him. It was more of the same, she thought. More of the treatment meted out by the jeweller.

Charles as a young man would have been gorgeous. She knew enough of his family background to know he was also rich. Maryanne might well have chosen another course altogether if she hadn’t classified the father of her child as something…

Well, it was all conjecture, Jill thought harshly. Charles must have done his own agonising. It wasn’t for her to do his agonising for him.

‘But it does mean you have a daughter,’ she said gently into the silence.

‘I do,’ he said. ‘But I missed out on the whole damned lot. With Lily it’s a bit like being given the chance again.’ He hesitated. ‘OK. Enough. What about you?’

‘Me?’ she said, startled.

‘All I know of your background is from other people,’ he said. ‘Maybe if we’re to be married I ought to know a bit more.’

‘You don’t want to know about Kelvin.’

‘Harry told me he was in jail.’

‘He had a five-year sentence for…for hurting me. I’m still…’

‘Afraid of him?’

‘He used to say he’d kill me if I left him,’ she whispered. ‘He demonstrated it enough for me to believe him.’

‘You think he’s still a threat?’

‘He doesn’t know I’m here. You know that. You know I’ve changed my name. Judy Standford, dumb, bashed wife of a fisherman down south, to Jill Shaw, director of nursing at Croc Creek. But he’ll still be looking.’

‘Surely after so many years…’

‘What Kelvin owns he’ll believe he owns to the end,’ she said bleakly. ‘He’d want me dead rather than see me free.’

‘Why the hell did you marry him?’ he asked savagely.

‘The oldest reason in the world,’ she said. ‘Like you and Maryanne, only maybe without the passion. I was sixteen. A kid. Kelvin was a biker, a mate of my oldest brother, Rick. Rick agreed I could go with them to a music festival. I was way out of my depth and I ended up pregnant. My dad…well, my dad was as violent in his way as Kelvin. Kelvin agreed to marry me and I was terrified enough to do it. Only then I lost the baby. And when I tried to leave… It just…’ She stopped, seeming too distressed to go on.

‘You don’t have to explain to me,’ Charles said gently. ‘But, even after you left, you never thought you’d marry again? You never thought you’d like a child?’

‘Of course I’d like a child,’ she said explosively. ‘I was seven months pregnant when I lost my little girl. I hadn’t realised…until I held Lily…’

‘So Lily’s a second chance for both of us.’ He reached over the table and took her ring hand, folding it between both of his. The warmth and strength of his hold gave her pause.

She’d been close to tears. Close to fury. His hold grounded her, settled her. Made her feel she had roots. But it also left her feeling out of her depth.

‘D-don’t,’ she said, and tugged back.

‘We need to show a bit of affection,’ Charles said wryly. ‘If we’re to pull off a marriage that doesn’t look like a sham.’

‘It doesn’t matter if it is a sham.’

‘You see, I’m thinking that’s where you might be wrong,’ he said. ‘We’ve been given Lily. It’s a huge gift.’

‘We should be home with her now.’

‘She doesn’t need us now,’ Charles said. ‘That’s the problem. Oh, she needs us in that we’re providing security whether she knows it or not. But if we said she was to live with Gina and Cal…’

‘She’d be upset,’ Jill said. She tugged her hand away and stared down into the depths of her ring. ‘Or she’d be more upset,’ she amended. ‘She’s traumatised.’

‘She won’t let the psychologists near.’ Charles sighed. ‘Well, you know the problems as well as I do. Do we tell her tonight that we’re getting married? That she can stay with us for ever?’

‘Cal knows. Gina knows. Sophia Poulos knows. We’d better do it or she’ll be the last in Croc Creek to find out.’

CHAPTER THREE

CHARLES settled the bill and they went out into the balmy night. On another occasion they might have walked here—or wheeled here, Jill corrected herself. Charles never let being in a chair stop him going places. The strength in his arms was colossal and he could push his chair long after those around him were tired from walking.

But there was packing to do tonight and they needed to collect Lily before it got too late. So they’d driven. Or Charles had driven. He was almost as fast getting into the car as a normal driver, opening the door, sliding into the driver seat, clipping his chair closed and swinging it into the rear seat behind him. By the time Jill had adjusted the drapes of her dress they were already moving out onto the road.

He was a normal guy, Jill thought as she tried to focus on the road ahead, and she swallowed. A normal husband. Did he realise what that did to her?

It terrified her.

She’d agreed to this marriage why? Because she loved Lily. Because she couldn’t bear that Lily be further dislocated.

Because Charles was in a wheelchair and would make no demands on her as a wife?

Maybe that had been a factor, she conceded. Up until now Charles’s paraplegia had made this marriage seem…safer? A sexless marriage.

But maybe that was dumb. His injury was so low that maybe…maybe…

Maybe nothing. It didn’t matter, either way. She trusted Charles. It’d be OK.

But she glanced sideways at his profile in the moonlight. The lean, angular features of a strongly boned face. The crinkles around his eyes where years of laughter had left their mark. And pain. He’d never admit it but you didn’t suffer the type of injury he’d endured without pain.

She loved the way his hair crinkled at the roots and then became wavy—just a little. She loved the silver in it. Premature grey was so damned sexy in a male…

Sexy. See, there was the thing. Charles didn’t see himself as sexy so neither should she. She was right to think of his paraplegia as her security. She had to keep thinking of him as disabled, because if she kept thinking of him as sexy this marriage of convenience would never work. She ought to run rather than risk it.

But she was tired of running. She wanted a home. A home, a husband, a daughter.

Charles.

If Kelvin found out, he’d kill them all.

Was she being paranoid? The logical part of her said yes. The part of her that had been controlled by Kelvin said she wasn’t being paranoid at all.

‘What are you thinking?’ he asked, his voice a little strained. Maybe he was finding this as hard as she was.

‘That maybe it’s good for you that you’re going to Wallaby Island tomorrow,’ she said, and for the life of her she couldn’t stop her voice from sounding faintly waspish. ‘This place is going to be awash with gossip, and you and Lily will have escaped.’

‘Just snap their noses off when they ask to see your ring,’ he said. ‘That’ll sort them out.’

‘You think I’m…prickly.’

‘I know you’re prickly.’

‘Charles, why do you want to marry me?’ she burst out. ‘I’m plain and I’m bossy and I’m old.’

‘Now, that,’ Charles said solemnly, ‘is ridiculous.’

‘Is it?’

‘So why do you want to marry me?’ he demanded. ‘I’m in a wheelchair.’

‘That’s just as ridiculous.’

‘You don’t think you want to marry me because I’m in a wheelchair?’

‘Because I feel sorry for you?’ she muttered. ‘Fat chance.’

‘You don’t feel sorry for me?’

‘Anyone feeling sorry for you gets their heads bitten off.’

‘So you’re scared of me.’

‘I’m not,’ she said, and then decided to be honest. ‘Or not very much.’

‘So let me get this straight,’ he said slowly. ‘You’re thinking you’re plain and bossy and old, you’re scared of me but you’ve decided to marry me anyway.’

‘It does sound dumb,’ she admitted.

‘Yeah,’ he agreed. ‘With all the romance in the air around Croc Creek, the place practically sizzles.’

‘It’s just as well it doesn’t sizzle near us, then.’

‘Not even a bit?’

‘Of course not. I mean, look at us. We’ve discussed this sensibly. We’ve bought an engagement ring. We haven’t even kissed.’

‘I kissed your hand.’

‘You did,’ she said. ‘Um…yeah. Very nice it was, too.’

‘You want to be kissed?’

‘No!’

‘We ought to,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘I mean…we do intend to make a marriage out of it. We could just try.’

‘Charles, don’t.’

‘Because you’re plain and old and bossy?’

‘No, because…’

‘Because I’m in a wheelchair?’

‘No!’

‘Then why?’ he demanded, and there was suddenly frustration in his voice. ‘Why the hell not?’

‘Because we don’t…’

‘Deserve it?’ He glanced over at her. She was staring straight into the night, trying to figure out what to say. What to do. She was fingering her engagement ring like it was burning.

‘Jill, don’t look like that.’

‘Like what?’

‘Hell,’ he said again, and before she knew what he intended he’d steered the car onto the verge. They were at the foot of the bridge beside Crocodile Creek. There was a sloping sandbank running down to the water.

In other circumstances a romantic couple might get out and wander down to the water’s edge to admire the moonbeams glimmering over the water’s dark surface.

Yeah, in other circumstances a couple might get taken by a crocodile. Getting out here was for fools.

Stopping here was for fools.

‘Jill, I’m not marrying any woman who’s afraid of me,’ Charles said steadily into the darkness.

‘I’m not…’

‘Look at me and say it.’

She turned and looked at him. He gazed steadily back, serious, questioning.

She knew this man. She’d worked with him for years. He was the best doctor in Crocodile Creek.

He loved Lily. He was doing this to give her a daughter.

‘I’m not afraid of you,’ she said, and it was true. She trusted him. She knew it at every logical level. It was only the thought of marriage that had her terrified.

But this was Charles. Charles!

‘It’ll be OK,’ Charles said softly, and he caught her hands and tugged her toward him. ‘Jill, I don’t think you’re plain or bossy or old.’ Then he smiled, that crinkly, crooked smile that transformed his face. The smile she loved. ‘OK, maybe bossy,’ he conceded. ‘But bossy’s good for a director of nursing. Maybe bossy’s even good for a mum, and that’s what you’re going to be. It’ll be fine. It might even be fantastic. Let’s give it our best shot, eh?’

And he tugged her close—and he kissed her.

She hadn’t been kissed for how long?

Years and years and years. Her kissing skills had lain dormant, forgotten. Buried.

But not dead.

She’d last kissed with passion when she’d been a teenager. She’d forgotten…or she’d never known…

Strong, warm hands holding her face, centring her so he could find her mouth. Lips meeting lips. Warmth meeting warmth.

Not warmth. Fire.

That was what it felt like. A rush of heat so intense that it sent shock waves jolting through her body. She felt her lips open, she felt his mouth merge with hers…

It was like moving into another dimension.

Her hands lifted involuntarily, her fingers raking his hair, firming their link. Not that there was a need for such firming. She couldn’t back away from this.

This magic.

It was a feeling so intense it seemed she was almost out of her body. Transformed into something she’d never been, or if she had she’d long forgotten. A girl, a woman who could melt with pure desire.

For just a moment she let herself fall. She let herself be swept away, feeling how she could feel if she were a girl again and life was before her and she didn’t know what happened to women who surrendered control.

Kelvin had called her an ugly cow—over and over until she’d believed it totally. But maybe…just maybe he was wrong.

This was delicious, delectable, dangerous… Seductive in its sweetness. Overwhelming in its demands. For he wasn’t just kissing her; he was asking questions she had no hope of answering; he was taking her places she had never been and had no intention of going.

But she was going there.

No. She was Jill Shaw, solidly grounded nursing director of Crocodile Creek hospital. She recalled it with a tiny gasp of shock. Her hands shoved between Charles’s chest and her breasts and she pushed back.

He released her immediately, leaning back so he could see her in the moonlight. He looked as surprised as she did, she thought shakily. As out of his element. The great Charles Wetherby, shocked.

‘I don’t think…’ She tried and then had to try again for her voice came out a squeak. ‘I don’t think this is a good idea.’

‘Kissing?’

‘Anything,’ she managed. She was still squeaking. Oh, for heaven’s sake… She was a mature woman. It had just been a kiss.

Yes, but what a kiss. If a kiss could wipe a woman’s logic away as this one had… If a kiss could make her feel beautiful…

She wasn’t beautiful. She had to get her bearings. She had to be sensible.

‘We don’t want anything to happen?’ Charles queried, and she bit her lip.

‘Certainly not.’

‘Any particular reason?’

‘We’re too old.’

‘Hey! Speak for yourself.’

‘I didn’t mean…’ She swallowed. ‘Charles, maybe I need to say… I just don’t want…’ Another swallow. Another attempt. ‘I’m not going to be what you might call a jealous wife. I don’t know what you do now…’

‘For sex, you mean?’ he asked, and affront had given way to bemusement.

‘I don’t need to know,’ she said hurriedly. ‘I mean… I don’t even know…’

‘If I can?’ he said, still bemused. ‘I can.’ Damn him, he was enjoying her discomfiture.

‘That’s…that’s good. I guess. So if you want to…’

‘If I want to then you’ll permit it? But not with you?’

‘Just because you kissed me doesn’t mean I’m expecting…’

‘What if I want to?’

‘You don’t want to,’ she said flatly. ‘Or, at least, I don’t. Look, it was a very romantic evening, for which I thank you. I love my ring.’ She glanced down at it, a moonbeam caught it at just the right angle and she saw fire. ‘I really love my ring. But what we’re doing is practical.’

‘You don’t find me—’

‘Don’t ask,’ she snapped. ‘It’s ludicrous.’

‘Of course it’s ludicrous,’ he said, and the trace of laughter died from his voice as if it had never been.

What…? Oh, God. ‘I didn’t mean that,’ she whispered, mortified.

‘Of course you didn’t.’ He turned back to the wheel and flicked the engine into life. ‘Don’t worry. I won’t touch you again. It’s time we were home.’

‘Charles…’

‘It’s OK,’ he said wearily. ‘As you say, we’re too old. Let’s go and pick up Lily and tell her she has two very respectable prospective parents.’

Jill shrank back into the passenger seat and felt about six inches tall. She’d never meant to infer she found Charles’s disability offensive. Or even a bar to…well, to anything.

It was just that she didn’t want anything. She didn’t want contact at all.

She surely didn’t want to risk those sensations coursing through her that threatened to undermine the control she’d fought like a wildcat to regain after her marriage. She never wanted to be exposed again.

She should apologise to Charles. His face was set and grim, and she could lighten it. She could make him smile.

But…but…

Did she want him to smile? Not when they were alone, she thought frantically. Not when she was dressed like this, when she was wearing his ring. Not when his smile made her feel vulnerable and exposed and terrified.

No. Better to sit here, rigid, on the far side of the car, to school her expression into passive nothingness.

Like a cold fish.

She’d heard one of the younger nurses call her that once, and she’d thought, Good. That was how she wanted to be thought of. Emotional nothingness.

But she had a daughter. Or she’d have a daughter once this marriage took place. How could she be a cold fish with a daughter?

‘Keeping ourselves only unto ourselves except for when we’re with Lily,’ Charles said.

‘You understand,’ she whispered, humbled.

‘We’re birds of a feather,’ he said.

‘Charles, I am sorry.’

‘Don’t be sorry,’ he said. ‘It was me who kissed you. I was overstepping the boundaries. It won’t happen again.’

Lily was asleep when they arrived at Cal and Gina’s. Cal heard the car and brought her out to them. She was slight for her age, a wiry, freckled imp with a tangle of brown-gold curls and a smattering of freckles, just like Jill’s. She woke as Jill buckled her into her car seat but she made no demur. She was accustomed to this. Even when her parents had been alive, their love affair with rodeos meant she was very adaptable.

‘Goodnight, sleepyhead,’ Cal said, ruffling her tousled curls before he stepped back from the car. Then he smiled at Jill. He lifted her ring hand and whistled.

‘Congratulations.’ He hugged her and kissed her on the cheek. Jill found herself flushing.

‘It’s nothing.’

‘It’s fabulous,’ he said. He looked into the car at Charles and grinned. ‘Congratulations to you, too.’

‘Thanks,’ Charles said. ‘But we’re only doing it for Lily.’

‘Right,’ Cal said, sounding dubious. He looked back into the car at their sleepy little daughter. She was wearing her favourite pink pyjamas with blue moons and stars, her curls were tied up—or they had been tied up—with a huge, silver bow and there was a smudge of green paint on her nose.

‘We did give her a bath,’ he said ruefully. ‘With CJ. And Gina did her hair.’

‘I’ll give her another one before she leaves tomorrow,’ Jill said.

‘You’re not coming across to the island for the opening?’

‘I’m in charge here.’

‘Alistair can take over. You know he’d like—’

‘I’m in charge here,’ she said flatly.

‘But you’re telling Lily tonight, right?’

‘Telling me what?’ Lily asked sleepily.

‘What we’ve been doing tonight,’ Charles said bluntly from inside the car. ‘Come on, Jill. I need to go back to the hospital before I go to bed. I have two patients I want to see tonight and there’s packing to do afterwards. We need to move.’

So move they did. They took Lily home and tucked her in as they’d done a score of times before this night and Jill thought, Where do we start?

Lily started for them. She snuggled into her little bed, checked that her toys—two teddies, one giraffe, a bull like her favourite real bull, Oscar, one duck and a doll with no hair—were all lined up in their appropriate places. Then she said, ‘It’s a really pretty ring. Did Charles give it to you?’

‘Yes,’ Jill said, and felt helpless.

‘Why?’

‘We’ve decided to get married,’ Charles said. ‘You know your uncle came today? He says he wants you to live with a real mother and father. For some reason your Uncle Tom thinks that we can only be a real mother and father if we’re married. Jill and I want to look after you until you’re old enough to take care of yourself. So we’ve decided to get married so your Uncle Tom will let us keep you.’

She regarded them both, her eyes wide and interested.

‘So you’ll look after me all the time?’

‘Yes,’ Jill said firmly. ‘If it’s OK with you we’ll sign papers that say no one can take you away from us.’ She took a deep breath. ‘And, Lily…if you wanted to call us…well, maybe you wouldn’t want to call us Mum and Dad. Your mum and dad were your special, real parents. But if you feel you’ll like to maybe call us something like Mama and Papa…’

‘Your names are Jill and Charles,’ Lily said flatly.

‘That’s right,’ Charles said, and he flicked a strand of Lily’s hair back behind her ear. ‘We’re Jill and Charles, or whatever you want to call us. And you’re Lily. But we’re family from now on. Right?’

‘OK,’ Lily said obligingly, and hugged her teddies and closed her eyes. ‘Goodnight.’

And that was that. A mammoth, life-changing decision converted to a few simple sentences. They returned to Jill’s living room and Jill felt deflated.

The door from her living room led through to Charles’s living room. This was what they did every night. They said goodnight to Lily. Charles wheeled through to his apartment. He closed the door behind him.

Contact over.

‘You know, we could knock this whole wall out,’ Charles said thoughtfully, and she stared at him.

‘What?’

‘This used to be an old homestead before the hospital was built. It was too big for me so I cut it into two apartments. But this room… It was the original sitting room. It had huge French windows looking over the cove. I had to sacrifice the windows to convert it into two rooms. We’ve knocked a door through. Why not go the whole hog, knock the entire wall down and put the windows back in? You know we almost always have the televisions on the same channel. Or we could have stereo televisions. Or,’ he said, warming to his theme with typical male enthusiasm, ‘one really big television.’

‘I might have known,’ she said tightly. ‘Boys with technology. Is this the entire motivation behind the proposal?’

‘Hey, you get an opal,’ he said, aggrieved. ‘I reckon I ought to get a big screen. How big do you think, if we make it one room?’ He hesitated. ‘A family room,’ he said cautiously. ‘Where we can be a family.’

‘But I need my privacy.’

His smile died. ‘I’m not talking combining bedrooms, Jill.’

‘No,’ she said, and faltered.

‘So marriage doesn’t mean watching telly together. It doesn’t mean family?’

How to explain that that was dangerous in itself? Closeness? Familiarity? She didn’t do it.

As it was, it sometimes felt too close. Lily popped back and forth between the apartments. She slept in her bedroom on Jill’s side, but if Jill was caught up at the hospital Charles would check on her. Jill would occasionally get home and discover Charles on her side of the beige door.

It shouldn’t matter. But she’d spent so long building her defences that to breach them now…

Kelvin was there. He was still in her head. A shadow, waiting to crash down on her. She should see a therapist, she thought dully, but then a therapist would tell her she was imagining her terror, and she knew she wasn’t.

She was risking enough with this marriage. If she could just keep it…nothing, maybe the sky wouldn’t fall on her head.

‘OK, we won’t knock down the wall,’ Charles said wearily. ‘We go on as before.’

‘Maybe I could buy you a bigger television,’ she said, striving for lightness.

‘I guess I can make that decision on my own,’ he said flatly. ‘I need to get over to the hospital.’ He hesitated. ‘Jill, I’m intending to be on the island for two weeks. I’ve agreed to take Lily and she’s looking forward to it. But Cal’s right. You could come over. Come to the opening ceremony at least.’

The opening… Half the press in the country would be converging on the island. Photographers. Media. No and no and no.

‘I said I’d take over here.’

‘We can cover you. Hell, Jill, you can organise the roster for you to be gone. You’ve done half the planning for the new rehabilitation centre anyway. You’ve cut all the red tape. You’ve negotiated with the Health Commission. It’s your baby.’

Should she explain it was because she was still afraid of Kelvin? After eight years? He’d say it was crazy.

It was crazy.

‘It’s your dream, Charles,’ she said at last.

‘We’re allowed to share dreams,’ he snapped, and she blinked at the anger in his voice.

‘I… Yes,’ she whispered. ‘But there’s no need for me to be there.’

‘You can stay in the damned resort if you want,’ he snapped. ‘It’s on the far side of the island from my bungalow.’

‘That’s dumb.’

‘It is dumb, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘But it’s what you seem to want. Jill, I’m not going to pressure you, but if you act like I’m an ogre…’

‘You kissed me.’

‘So what?’ he said explosively. ‘You’re an attractive woman, you’ve just agreed to marry me and I kissed you. Obviously it was a mistake. I’ve agreed it won’t happen again. But Lily needs a mother and a father. As far as I can see it, that’s not going to happen if we live on separate planets.’

‘Charles—’

‘Just work it out,’ he said wearily. ‘Figure out the rules and let me know what they are. Meanwhile I have patients to check. Go to bed. I’ll see you in the morning before I leave.’

He spun his chair and pushed it through the dividing door, back into his side of the house.

He closed the door behind him.

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