Zoe was missing her surfing lesson today.
Zoe had volunteered to miss her surfing lesson, he told himself. It had been her decision to forgo her lesson to take Luke to Sea World.
She was giving up her surfing lesson to make a desolate kid happy.
Consciences should be abolished, he told himself savagely, but his feet turned all by themselves and the next minute he was knocking on Zoe’s door.
He knocked softly, so as not to wake her if she was asleep, but no such luck. She answered, wearing a gorgeous, pink silk nightie, her curls tumbled, her eyes still drowsy with sleep, but when she saw him she lit up and her smile did things to him...
Things that said back off, run—but it was too late. He’d knocked and she was smiling at him, bright with expectation, and he had no choice but to follow through where his inconvenient conscience had led him.
‘You’re missing your surfing lesson today,’ he said, a bit too gruffly. ‘I thought...I’m going surfing now. If you’d like to come...’
‘Could I?’ Her smile lit up her face. ‘Oh, Sam, that’s so kind. Can you wait two minutes? I have toast in the toaster. Do you like home-made marmalade? My mum’s just sent me some.’
So thirty seconds later he was sitting at her kitchen table, scoffing toast and marmalade, while Zoe dressed and chatted and scooted back and forth to eat her own toast while she got ready, and he felt so domestic, so enveloped in something he could hardly describe...
‘So where’s Bonnie?’ she demanded. She finished off the last piece of toast and licked a trace of butter from her fingers and he thought...he thought...
Where’s Bonnie?
‘Still asleep,’ he managed. ‘I took her outside for a few moments so she’s comfortable. She’ll sleep until we get back, then Callie will look after her while we’re at Sea World.’
‘She has so many friends,’ Zoe said, satisfied. ‘Do you want to see the beach gear I’ve organised for when she’s well enough for the beach again?’ Without waiting for an answer, she hauled open a cupboard and produced a foldable trampoline-type pet bed, and six slender prayer flags. They were multicoloured, light and easy to set up and they’d be visible for miles.
‘I know it’s more stuff to carry down the beach,’ Zoe said happily, ‘but Bonnie and I have been practising. She already likes the bed and she knows to stay when you tell her. And see these little hooks? I’ve made a canopy—it doesn’t work when it’s windy but on hot, still days it makes the prayer flags into a shade tent. How cool’s that?’
‘Really cool,’ he said faintly.
‘I’m not interfering, am I?’ she asked anxiously. ‘You don’t have to use them, but I thought...it’ll keep her safe and let you keep doing what you both love.’
It would.
And then he thought...
It’ll keep her safe and let you keep doing what you love...
And with that thought came a blast of longing so powerful he had to close his eyes.
To be able to love this woman...and keep her safe...
‘Right,’ she said. ‘Unless you want more toast, are you ready to go?’
‘I’m ready,’ he said, but he thought, Am I?
* * *
The beach was amazing. There were half a dozen serious surfers far out, but no one else was on the beach and the surf was magic. The waves were low, even rolls that started way out but somehow kept their momentum so they were still rideable almost to the shore.
‘I’ll practise in the shallows. You go out with the big boys,’ Zoe said, and normally Sam would, paddling out to where the surf promised to be magic.
This morning it promised to be magic right in close.
Zoe was improving by the minute. He’d never seen such intensity in a novice surfer. She was wobbling to her feet consistently now, managing to balance for a few short seconds, managing to ride the wave a few feet, feeling its power, and every time she did she whooped with joy. Then as the wave finally shook her free she tumbled in freefall, went under and surfaced spluttering, laughing and desperate for more.
She was starting to shake him off now, trying to cope alone.
‘I can do it. I’m sure I can. Don’t push the board, I can get it. Ohhhh...’
And down she went again, and under, and he reached down and gripped her hands and pulled her up. She surfaced half choking, half convulsed with laughter, and it was all he could do to let go of her hands and obey orders.
To give her space.
He started riding the small waves as well, and a couple of times she caught the same wave and they rose together. Her whoop when they managed it could be heard from one end of the beach to the other. One of the surfers from far out rode a wave all the way in, obviously intending to pack up and leave, but he stopped to watch Zoe for a while and the look he cast Sam left Sam in no doubt as to the guy’s jealousy.
‘She almost makes me want to turn teacher,’ the guy shouted to him as he headed past. ‘If nippers were all like this, I’d have stayed in the baby class.’
He gave Sam a good-natured grin, watched a bit more as Zoe wobbled gamely to the shore and then left them.
Sam felt pretty much unbearably smug.
‘I must be doing well,’ Zoe declared, dragging her board out to the next wave. ‘Even my instructor’s grinning.’
‘You have a long way to go,’ Sam said, and Zoe’s grin matched his.
‘I know I have, and you have no idea how good that feels.’
He thought of the kidney transplant.
He watched her some more and he thought this woman had lived in the shadow of an early death since childhood. Now she had a future and she was embracing it with everything she had.
And Sam...the future...
For some reason, here, now, the loneliness and desolation and self-blame he’d felt since Emily had died were somehow slipping away.
Zoe had had her life restored to her and was making use of it. She was giving him a lesson in living.
As a cardiologist he saw patients on the cusp of death every day, he thought, but he’d never learned this lesson from them.
Zoe was...different.
Zoe was Zoe.
* * *
They showered and dressed in the amenity block above the beach and then had a very satisfactory second breakfast—egg and bacon burgers from the burger cart above the beach, eaten while fending off a hundred odd seagulls waiting for every crumb.
The sun was warm on their faces. The day was still ahead of them. Zoe was breaking bits off her hamburger bun, trying to aim crumbs directly at a gull with a missing leg. She worked at it, worked at it, worked at it—and finally her crust landed exactly where she wanted. Her one-legged gull grabbed it and flew off—and lowered its ‘missing leg’ as it flew.
‘What a con.’ Zoe burst out laughing. ‘Of all the actors...’
He looked at her and he wanted...
He wanted.
‘So what do you want to do next?’ Zoe asked.
‘Go and collect Luke?’ he said cautiously, and she grinned.
‘That’s not what I mean. I mean...’ She gestured to the sea, to the gulls, to the surfers way out. ‘This is one of my dreams. I have so many I doubt I’ll cram them all in.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like going to Nepal. Like learning how to make mango ice cream. Like learning how to jive. I spent so many years not permitted to do anything that my list’s a mile long. Even mango ice cream... My mother was paranoid about tropical fruit after I copped an infection from eating paw paw. My restrictions were weird, so my list’s enormous. What’s number one on yours?’
Sitting here, he thought. Eating hamburgers with you.
What else? When he thought about it there wasn’t much else. Since Emily’s death he’d pr
etty much concentrated on taking one step after the next.
He’d had lists, he thought. It was as if he was the opposite of Zoe. After Emily’s death, his dreams had pretty much ended.
‘Save a few more kids,’ he said, and she nodded.
‘I’ll drink to that,’ she said, and raised her juice. ‘But there must be more. Would you like to...I don’t know...learn to propagate man-eating plants? Did you know the Nepthenthes rajah can already trap small mammals? I reckon if you tried hard enough you could grow one big enough to trap a tax inspector. I can’t fit that into my life plan right now but you could fit it into yours. You might want to be careful of Bonnie, though.’
‘Why would I breed carnivorous plants?’ he asked.
‘Because you’ve never done it before. Isn’t that a good enough reason? Or you could learn to knit hot-water-bottle covers. That’d sit well as an alternate hobby when the surf’s lousy.’
‘When the surf’s lousy I do more work.’
‘Because you can’t forget Emily’s death unless you’re either surfing or working?’ she ventured.
He stilled. No one had ever been so blunt—but Zoe wasn’t even looking repentant.
‘Sorry,’ she said, still sounding upbeat. ‘It’s just...I’ve learned the hard way to say it like it is. I’ve spent half my life with people tiptoeing round the fact that I might die, so I guess I’m over the niceties. I still might die,’ she said, looking surfwards again with satisfaction. ‘But I plan to go down doing something on my list.’
‘You’re planning on dying surfing?’ He could hardly say it.
‘Are you kidding?’ She was scornful. ‘Surfing’s right at the top of my list. I’m talking about getting way down the bottom. The way I see it, I have years of following dreams. Seventy years if I’m lucky. But you...how can you only have two things?’
‘It’s the way I like it.’
‘Is it?’ She rose and tossed the last of her hamburger crumbs to the frenzied mob. ‘It seems to me...’ She stopped then and seemed to collect herself. ‘No. Sorry. It’s none of my business. It’s just, I’ve shaken off all my shackles right now and I’m so happy I’d like to see the rest of the world shake theirs off, too.’
‘I don’t have shackles.’
‘Don’t you?’ she asked, suddenly gentling. ‘I think you do but, as I said, it’s none of my business. Now, let’s go and get Luke.’
* * *
They headed back to the Jeep, and as he drove Zoe fell silent. Sam was free to think.
Did he have shackles, self-imposed or not?
If he did then he liked them, he thought. He’d imposed them himself. They weren’t shackles so much as a set of rules to keep his world steady.
He wasn’t a man to follow his dreams. He’d achieved what he wanted to achieve and nothing else mattered.
Nothing else was permitted to matter.
Bonnie mattered. That moment when he’d thought she’d died... It hadn’t been as bad as seeing the wave hurl Emily to the sandbank but it was still bad.
He didn’t want to go there again, and if shackles stopped it happening then that was the way he liked it.
He cast a sideways glance at the girl sitting beside him.
Shackles. He needed them, he thought, to keep himself isolated. Isolation was his plan for the future and he didn’t intend to deviate.
Shackles?
How strong could he make them?
* * *
They collected a very excited Luke and from there there was little time for introspection, or if there was, Zoe and Luke weren’t interested.
Sea World. Fishes, dolphins, manta rays and penguins. Rides, rides and more rides. Luke turned into a little boy again, whooping, being loud as Sam suspected he hadn’t been loud for a long time, pleading with them to go on the wildest, splashiest ride and crowing in delight when his grown-ups got satisfactorily wet.
Luke and Zoe fed the manta rays, boggled that such huge flappy creatures could have faces that they decreed were almost adorable. They checked out the penguins and practised their waddles and giggled. They stood waist deep in the dolphin pool, and Luke patted the belly of a dolphin called Nudge, who’d been stranded as a baby at sea and had figured by now that humans were trusted friends.
Luke stroked and stroked and maybe the dolphin—or Nudge’s handler, who was empathetic and kind—realised this was what Luke needed most in the world, for there was no hurry. Luke was allowed to be a child again for as long as he wanted to be. Zoe stroked too, but mostly she watched Luke, her eyes suspiciously misty.
And despite the vows he’d just reaffirmed for himself, Sam watched Zoe putting herself out there to make sure Luke had the time of his life. He watched her taking every ounce of enjoyment she could wring from the day as well.
He thought...
He had to stop thinking.
‘But we still need a Ferris-wheel ride,’ Zoe decreed, as Sam checked his watch and finally decided it was almost time to get Luke back to his grandma.
‘Do you know where a Ferris wheel is?’ A middle-aged woman and her husband had been standing beside them, dolphin watching. Sam had noticed this pair throughout the day and had become a bit concerned. The woman was determined to go on every ride, but her husband had been wheezing along behind her, looking exhausted.
‘We’ve both got flu,’ the woman had said when Sam had helped the guy from the last ride, and she’d coughed to prove it. ‘But we’re from Perth and this our last day here. I want to do everything. But like you, young lady,’ she said now, ‘I want a Ferris wheel.’
‘There’s one on the beach,’ Luke volunteered. ‘There’s one really big one but it’s ages away and the carriages are all closed in. This one’s part of a circus and it’s open and looks awesome.’
He must have seen it as his parents drove back and forth to the hospital, Sam thought. A Ferris wheel would seem magic for a kid whose family was solely concerned with keeping his big brother alive.
‘Let’s go, then,’ Zoe declared. ‘And then our day has to end.’
‘Rats,’ Luke said, and Sam thought that was his sentiment exactly.
CHAPTER SIX
THEY DROVE TO the Ferris wheel, and Reg and Marjory, their new friends from Perth, came along as well.
‘It’ll be a lovely way to finish our holiday,’ Marjory said, still coughing. ‘Riding up and down, looking out over the mountains and the sea. Won’t it, Reg?’
‘I guess,’ Reg said, but Sam looked at him, looked at his colour and stepped in.
‘I reckon you’d be better sitting it out, mate,’ he told him. ‘You look exhausted.’
‘He’s not exhausted,’ Marjory said, indignant. ‘It’s our last excitement. Your little boy looks tired, too, and he’s not giving up.’
Luke did look tired. He’d pushed himself past his limit. Sam and Zoe had had to split up, doing every second ride to keep up with him, but the difference between Luke and Reg was that Luke looked gloriously happy. Reg just looked spent.
But then Sam got distracted. ‘Luke’s not our little boy,’ Zoe was telling Marjory, and Sam heard an unmistakeable note of regret in her voice.
Whoa. Regret?
Family. Was that on her list?
He looked down at Luke and saw he’d tucked his hand into Zoe’s. He was a tired kid at the end of a very long day. He’d go home to his grandma and be faced with all the tensions he’d been facing for months, but for now he was one happy little boy. Zoe was holding him and it felt...it felt...
Okay, it felt like family.
And the faint, insidious questioning became louder.
‘Tickets,’ Zoe said, and he blinked and realised he was staring at nothing. Reg and Marjory were already lining up to get into their gondola and he hadn’t even bought tic
kets yet.
‘Earth to Sam,’ Zoe said, and he hauled himself together and they went and bought tickets for one last ride.
* * *
It was the end of a glorious day and it was surely okay for a girl to dream.
Zoe had come to the Gold Coast to escape caring. She loved her family to bits, she’d even loved Dean, but they were like the wetsuits Sam wore, keeping the cold at bay but too tight for comfort. She’d been in a cocoon of protection ever since she’d become ill and it was time now to shake it off. In the end she’d had no qualms telling Dean it was over, because she’d realised that all Dean saw in her was someone he could protect. Surely he could use some excitement too, she’d thought, for that was what she wanted. Sizzle.
Sizzle was here, now. The way she was feeling...
She had no business sizzling, she told herself. She had no business sitting on the opposite side of the gondola, looking at Sam Webster, thinking he made her toes curl. Thinking she might even be making his toes curl.
Or was she? Was it her imagination? Wishful thinking?
It wasn’t. The way he’d been looking at her all day...the way he’d reacted when her body had touched his...
She needed to take a cold shower, she told herself. Surely it was her imagination. She needed to calm down.
But she didn’t want to calm down. She’d left Adelaide looking for sizzle, and sizzle was right in front of her. And if he was interested...
She’d be really interested right back, she decided. She felt a warm, zippy tingle from her toes to her ears and back again, and she wiggled in her safety harness and hugged Luke because a girl had to hug someone and it was far safer to hug Luke than it was to launch herself across the gondola at the man looking at her with hunger...
She was sure it was hunger.
Life was pretty exciting, she decided. This was a truly excellent place to be. The sea and the mountains looked almost dreamlike, the man on the opposite seat looked even more dreamlike—and Zoe Payne thought she might, she just might let herself think about falling in love.
* * *
It was a terrifying prospect, but Sam Webster, paediatric cardiologist, surfer, all-round loner, might just not be able to keep those shackles in place.
Gold Coast Angels: A Doctor's Redemption Page 9
