His Runaway Nurse

by Meredith Webber

  As well as explaining the terms of the will, he had to give her the letter and the chest.

  Paralysed down his right side by a stroke, two weeks after Majella had disappeared, the old man had never recovered the use of his right hand. Further strokes had left him bedridden for the last years of his life and, knowing the end was near, he’d summoned Flynn one day—not Flynn the doctor, but Flynn the boy who’d worked for him.

  Flynn had watched as he’d painstakingly written Majella’s name on the envelope with his left hand then he’d handed Flynn the envelope and a little chest, indicating through grunts and gestures that he wanted Flynn to find his granddaughter and pass both on to her.

  Flynn had brought them home and put them on the mantelpiece, where they’d waited, like a time-bomb…

  The old man’s death had been well publicised—former race horse owner, famed breeder of working dogs, wealthy property owner—and both the solicitors and Flynn had waited for Majella to come forward, but no one had heard a word, the funeral had gone ahead, the will read and the solicitors’ duties had ended. It had been up to Flynn, as executor, to find her.

  And he’d tried, had hired a private investigator, but had failed to discover a trace of her, although now Flynn knew she’d been in the army, that was more understandable. Where could one be swallowed up more easily than in the armed forces?

  Flynn slid the letter out from beneath the little chest and tapped it against the palm of his hand. Knowing now how the old man had treated Majella, he wondered if the letter would contain more pain.

  Could he not give it to her?

  The sound of an approaching vehicle made him tuck the letter back beneath the chest before walking out to his front veranda to welcome her inside.

  She took the two steps to his veranda in one long stride, then turned to look around her.

  ‘Well, it’s close to the hospital, I suppose,’ Majella said, and he could read her doubt about the little place he’d bought.

  ‘It is that,’ he agreed. ‘And it’s all mine. You have no idea how good it was to have a bathroom to myself after growing up with two sisters.’

  Majella studied him, trying to figure out his mood, or maybe the tone he was setting for the evening.

  A meeting of old friends?

  A business discussion?

  Not a date, that was for sure—his demeanour was far too casual.

  Although, hopefully, she appeared equally at ease, for all that her insides were twisted tighter than a seaman’s knot.

  ‘Come on in.’

  The front door lacked a porch or entry so you stepped straight into the living room. The fire was nice, but the room was so bare of personality Majella turned to study Flynn again. The young Flynn had left his mark wherever he’d gone—to have not marked his house as a home seemed peculiar.

  ‘So, welcome to my home,’ he said, and now the scent of something cooking—something delicious—made it seem more homely.

  Flynn tried to see the place through her eyes, and was disappointed, although when she saw the dining-room table…

  ‘In the army you don’t really have a home,’ she said quietly, and Flynn felt a bruising in his heart at the sadness of the thought.

  But tonight was for practical matters, not bruised hearts.

  ‘Well, you can have one now—Parragulla House is yours, Majella. We’ll sort out the details somehow. Come into the dining room, we’ll discuss it over dinner.’

  He stepped through the divider between the two rooms and bent to light the candles on the dining table.

  Then turned.

  She came towards him, so lithe and lovely it was all he could do not to take her in his arms.

  The house! Sort out the house first, his head reminded him, so, instead of kissing her, he took her elbow and guided her inside.

  ‘How lovely!’

  No way could Majella stop her exclamation of delight, but the beautifully set table—and the candles—conjured up romance, not practicality, and the confused emotions jostling within her made her feel shaky and uncertain.

  Though at least with this furniture and setting, she’d found where Flynn had made his mark.

  He’d excused himself, returning with two bottles of wine, offering her a choice of white or red.

  ‘I’m no connoisseur so you choose,’ she told him, telling herself she’d do no more than sip politely at whatever he poured, because alcohol would only confuse her more.

  He opened the bottle of red and set it on the table, then pulled out a chair and held it for her.

  So formal, so composed, she began to wonder if she’d imagined the kiss they’d shared the previous evening, or if she’d read too much into it.

  But then her body brushed against his as she took her seat, and she heard his sharp intake of air, and a half-swallowed curse.

  ‘Flynn?’

  She sat, but turned to look up at him, and saw desire leaping in his eyes, partnered by restraint in the clenched muscles in his jaw.

  ‘Business—it’s business tonight, Majella,’ he muttered at her. He went out to the kitchen and returned a few minutes later, setting down a plate in front of her—a good hearty country meal, some kind of casserole chock full of vegetables, served with mashed potatoes, peas and carrots.

  ‘Meat and three veg! You’ve done well,’ she said, deciding she had to pretend to be as unaffected by the kiss as he was. ‘Do you enjoy cooking?’

  He smiled. ‘Not to the extent of watching cooking shows on TV, but during seven years at university, I’d have died of starvation if I hadn’t learned some basic skills. And with doctoring, I’ve found anything I can cook in the oven is best, as it can stay there through long delays and only gets better with extra cooking.’

  ‘Life in the army meant I didn’t have to learn to cook,’ she told him, ‘so my culinary skills began with strained vegetables, which I learned for Grace, and now I’ve progressed to grilling a small lamb chop or poaching a chicken breast.’

  She tucked into the meal, pronounced it delicious, then surreptitiously watched Flynn eat. She knew she shouldn’t be feeling delight in such innocent voyeurism, yet she was fascinated by the economic movement of his hands and by the way his lips moved and how a muscle bunched in his jaw as he chewed.

  ‘I don’t suppose I ever saw you eat.’

  The words were out before she could stop them, and he looked up, startled, as well he might be.

  She waved her hand, as if to wipe out the foolish sentence, but his blue eyes still questioned the remark.

  ‘It was a strange friendship—ours,’ she added, hoping he’d understand the path her mind had taken.

  Pleased when he smiled.

  ‘It was,’ he agreed, ‘which is where we can begin.’

  He set down his knife and fork and pushed his plate, not quite cleaned up, away from him.

  ‘When the old man died, I hired a private investigator to find you, but he had no luck, then when it was time to advertise the house for the auction I wondered if perhaps you might come back, if only for a look.’

  Flynn watched her closely as he spoke, but her face, though pale, revealed nothing of what she might be thinking.

  ‘I changed my name—that’s why your man didn’t find me,’ she said quietly. ‘Thinking Grandfather might send someone to look for me, I changed it straight away—that first night.’

  She offered a half-smile so pathetic Flynn felt the bruising in his heart again.

  ‘Tell me where you went,’ he prompted, needing to know—needing reassurance she’d been all right, although it was now so long ago. ‘What happened? All of it, not bits and pieces.’

  A better smile this time.

  ‘Maybe not all,’ she said, then took a deep breath and began.

  ‘When I left Parragulla, I hitched for a while, then the car I was in—I only got in with families—hit a koala and the father, who was driving, said it would be dead, but I’d seen the signs for the rescue service as Bill drove me back and
forth to school and for some reason I’d memorised the number. I thought we should ring someone, so I told them I was only going to the next village and got out, found a public phone and rang the number. Didn’t I already tell you this? Anyway, Helen answered. I explained I had no transport but was going to walk back to where we’d hit the animal and she came to collect it, and collected me as well, and that’s what happened.’

  ‘Did the koala survive?’ Flynn asked, while inside he was thanking whatever guardian angel Majella had for taking care of her that night—and thereafter?—in the best possible way.

  Majella shook her head. ‘I’ve found out since that koala’s are hard to save,’ she said. ‘They’ve got such bulky bodies they can’t move fast enough to get out of the way of cars, and the slightest of bumps seems to knock them out for hours. It’s a bit like humans with brain injuries being in a coma—you don’t know until they come out of it whether they’ll have brain damage or not.’

  ‘And if they do—the koalas?’ Flynn asked, as his fascination with this new subject diverted him from the main issue of the tale.

  ‘We have to put them down. A koala with brain damage that causes lack of co-ordination can’t climb a tree, or if he does he’ll probably fall out again.’

  Flynn shook his head. Majella spoke so matter-of-factly, as if this was a perfectly normal conversation, yet to him it seemed bizarre to be discussing koalas with brain damage falling out of trees.

  Especially in the context of the evening.

  ‘You said you changed your name. Did you do it then? Give Helen a false name?’

  To his surprise, Majella bent her head and suddenly became very interested in chasing a few remaining peas around her plate. A nod was all he got by way of answer, but after a few seconds she raised her head and said, ‘I changed it legally, by deed poll later, so it didn’t seem so much of a lie.’

  ‘But you kept Majella? Helen calls you that.’

  She looked up at him, eyes defiant.

  ‘That name was my mother’s choice. It’s just about the only thing Grandfather ever told me about her—that she’d given me what he called a stupid name. Of course I kept it.’

  Flynn nodded his understanding, although his heart was hurting once again. Then, to divert his thoughts from pain, he went back a step.

  ‘Changed your name to what?’

  ‘Just changed it.’ She shrugged and, as she searched for something else to attend to now all the peas were gone, he was certain she was hiding something.

  ‘What did you change it to?’ he persisted, puzzled that a name change should be disturbing her.

  ‘Sinclair!’ she muttered, then she looked up and glared at him. ‘It was the first name that popped into my head.’

  The words were so defensive Flynn had to laugh, but inside a rush of warmth suggested he found some special meaning in her choice.

  ‘So now you know it all,’ she said, as though this explanation of the night she’d fled encompassed the whole gamut of the missing years.

  Not that he wanted to know about her marriage…

  ‘Right up to now,’ she added, ‘when I came to Parragulla to buy the house.’

  ‘Why?’

  She frowned at him, dark brows drawing together over eyes that seemed pale as water in the candlelight.

  ‘Why buy the house?’

  He nodded. ‘It seems strange that you’d want to buy it when you’d been so unhappy there.’

  ‘But I told you,’ Majella protested. ‘It wasn’t the house’s fault I was unhappy. And there was something else—something you’ll probably think is stupid—something I haven’t even admitted fully to myself, let alone to Helen or anyone else. But since I had Grace—since I became a mother—I can’t stop thinking about my own mother. I know so little about her, Flynn.’

  Flynn heard her words and felt the sadness of them deep within his gut.

  ‘Did my grandfather ever talk to you about my mother? Do you know anything about her? Did your mother ever tell you anything? Would she have known my mother?’

  Flynn searched his mind. For sure, the old man had never spoken of his daughter, but had his mother ever talked of her?

  He shook his head, unable to find a single memory.

  ‘I doubt anyone in town knew any more of her than they did of you,’ he said, coming to squat beside Majella’s chair so he could touch her knee and be close should she need his support. ‘As far as I know, like you, she went to boarding school, coming home only in the long holidays. Old Bill always said she rode well so I guess the old man encouraged her to ride the way he did with you, but I imagine the only time anyone in town saw her was at church.’

  ‘Then I was wrong,’ Majella whispered. ‘I always thought she must have been so happy, growing up at Parragulla House with a mother and a father—a real family—and I imagined that when her mother died Grandfather was so unhappy he made her unhappy as well and that’s why she ran away.’

  ‘But her mother died in childbirth. You must have known that, surely,’ Flynn said, some memories returning, though how he knew this he couldn’t have said.

  The sudden paling of Majella’s cheeks told him she hadn’t known and he stared at her, seeing the freckles darken on her skin, seeing the fragile beauty of this woman as she fought to keep her composure in this traumatic situation.

  She won whatever inner battle she was fighting, and shrugged her shoulders, offering him a wry smile.

  ‘So much for dreams, huh?’ she said, then turned practical.

  ‘Old Bill—is he still alive?’

  Flynn shook his head.

  ‘He died before your grandfather.’

  ‘So there’s no one who knew her I can ask.’ She sighed. ‘I kind of suspected that, but I couldn’t help feeling if I was living in the house I’d be close to her.’

  She tried a smile that failed completely, but as Flynn watched she straightened her shoulders, and took a deep breath.

  ‘And the dog runs would have been ideal for the animals,’ she said, as if the deviation into sentimentality had never happened.

  She met his gaze.

  ‘I’m committed to the rescue service, Flynn,’ she said, and he could hear the sincerity in the words. ‘Not only because it virtually rescued me, but because I’m good with animals. I discovered that when I was living with Helen—I’ve got an affinity with them. I’d have studied vet science if I’d been able to afford it, but even when I went into the army I always knew eventually I’d do something with animals.’

  ‘And you can’t live with Helen and do that? Isn’t it what she does?’

  ‘Now she’s started the other business, she’s cutting back on volunteer work. And with the business growing, she needs more room—a proper lab which could be set up in the room we use for operating. But that’s not the point, I need something of my own—I need to prove to myself that I can stand alone and make a life for me and Grace.’

  How could she go it alone—fend for herself and her child—when her life had been so proscribed, first by her grandfather, then by the Sherwoods, and finally within the army? Flynn thought, as protective feelings he was sure he’d lost when his two sisters had left home rose up within him once again.

  ‘OK,’ he said, although he couldn’t really understand her determination. ‘But you don’t have to buy the house. It should be yours, Majella. It and all the money.’

  ‘Money?’

  She echoed the word so faintly he stared at her in disbelief.

  ‘You must have known your grandfather had money—a lot of money.’

  Majella frowned as she considered Flynn’s words.

  ‘I didn’t ever think about it,’ she said, shaking her head in wonder that she hadn’t ever considered her grandfather’s financial situation. ‘I know boarding schools cost money, and he always insisted the housekeepers bought me good-quality clothes, but…’

  She shrugged, unable to explain why she’d never given it a thought.

  ‘Well, he did
have money,’ Flynn said.

  ‘And?’

  ‘It’s also yours—well, some of it is.’

  ‘Or it would have been if I was married,’ Majella said tiredly. ‘If poor Jeff hadn’t been so foolish as to get himself killed in a flaming helicopter crash.’

  ‘Oh, Majella!’

  Flynn stood up and put his arm around her, holding her as he had sometimes in the past—Flynn the supportive friend.

  He felt her tremble beneath his encircling arm, and wondered if she was weeping as she pressed her head into his shoulder.

  Helicopter crash? Three years ago? And suddenly he remembered the news reports—Australian medical personnel on their way to help, the helicopter crashing, killing all but one or two on board…

  Killing Majella’s husband…?

  ‘I know words are inadequate, but I’m so sorry,’ he whispered, brushing his hand across her hair, teasing his fingers into its thickness, feeling the silky strands against his skin.

  She leant against him and he felt the tension seeping out of her body, then she straightened, touched his face and smiled.

  ‘I am over it, you know, although you never forget. There are things you can’t forget. I would have been with him, you see, if I hadn’t been on maternity leave. Grace was born the same day. I lost Jeff and gained a daughter all at once, and having Grace, having a helpless infant to take care of, got me through for months, then I went back to work, like getting back on a horse after a fall, I suppose. But after the trip to Asia I realised I didn’t want Grace growing up as an army brat, with me away for months on end, and the two of us always on the move. What I wanted for Grace was a home…’

  A real home…

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  HE WRAPPED his arms around her, gently this time, responding to the sympathy he felt for her, not the attraction. She nestled against him, moving so both of them were standing, arms around each other, giving and receiving comfort, although she wasn’t to know how much her story had hurt him—how much he needed the comfort.

  The heat came later, surprising Flynn with it’s sudden reappearance, and though the kisses he pressed on her lips were still gentle, it was getting harder to hide the reaction of his body.