‘The call went to your answering-machine,’ the nurse had told him. ‘I left a message.’
She must have gone out, he’d thought, relieved, and then all his thoughts had gone back to saving one little life.
While his wife and son had died.
So why had he said it? It’s all the family I ever want. He watched Lily stroke Merrylegs’s soft nose, he watched Lily fall under the spell of the tiny colt and he knew that he’d been warning himself.
‘I don’t do relationships,’ he growled, and Lily cast him a look that held amusement.
‘Good, then. Except pretend relationships. They’re my favourite. So what will happen to Merrylegs? Will he be sold?’
‘No.’
‘So this farm …’ she said cautiously. ‘It makes a lot of money?’
He smiled at that, tension defusing. ‘Not so much as you’d notice. We make a bit on the beef cattle.’
‘I’ve seen your beef cattle,’ she said. ‘World’s fattest beasts. I’m betting when they droop with age you move them into cattle nursing homes where they’re pushed round in bath chairs until they die. And I’ve counted six horses I reckon are twenty years old or more. Plus you’ve bred Zelda with Checkers when anyone can see …’
‘That’s practical,’ he told her. ‘Checkers is getting too old to carry me and I’m used to a checkered blaze. It’s like a flag on the antenna of your car how I pick my horse out in a crowd.’
She chuckled. The little colt nudged her chest and she hugged him. Zelda nudged her so she gave Zelda a hug for good measure.
‘What a softie,’ she murmured. ‘You know your reputation around the hospital is cool and grumpy. And solitary.’
‘That’s the way I like it.’
‘You could never be solitary with these guys.’
The sun was setting low in the west. Lily was stroking Zelda while the colt shoved her for his share of attention. The last rays of the sun were glinting on Lily’s hair the soft evening breeze was making it ripple like silken waves.
Zelda was usually wary of strangers. She wasn’t wary of Lily. She wanted to get closer. Touch.
Same with Luke. Maybe he could …
He raised a hand … and let it fall. No.
Talk about something else. Something to break the moment.
He had it. A reality check.
‘I made some phone calls for you this morning,’ he said. ‘I went through university with a solicitor from Adelaide. He’s made enquiries on your behalf.’
She straightened and stared. ‘You … what?’
‘Firstly the money. What your mother did was illegal. The bank wasn’t authorised to transfer your money.’
‘I didn’t ask you—’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘But it seemed … you’re in such trouble.’
‘That’s my business.’
‘But you can reclaim your money.’
‘No,’ she said, suddenly angry. ‘I can’t. Of course I know Mum’s action was illegal but the bank won’t refund money without wanting it back from somewhere. They’ll have Mum arrested for fraud. Do you think I want that?’
‘If she’s stolen—’
‘She’s my mum!’
‘She’s an adult. She’s stolen—’
‘Luke, my mum can’t help herself,’ she said, anger giving way to weariness. ‘She was indulged by doting parents and then by my dad. He adored her. All men adore my mother,’ she conceded. ‘But apart from my father, she never sticks to them. Dad committed suicide when I was twelve, lumbered with a mountain of her debt. He made me promise to look after her and I will. I know she can’t help it. It’s just the way she is.’ She took a deep breath. ‘So, no, I won’t claim, and I won’t have her arrested. I’ll be more careful in future. In a while I’ll go home and sort out the damage. But not … not yet.’
‘You could go home now,’ he said gently.
‘I don’t want to go home.’ She said it with a vehemence that was startling. ‘Mum’s vicar will leave,’ she said, weary again. ‘But not until my mother gets tired of him, which won’t be long. Meanwhile I’m staying as far away as possible.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Yeah.’ She gave him a shame-faced smile. ‘I’m sorry, too. You were trying to do good.’
‘Gerald says he can get you damages.’
‘Damages?’
‘That’s the second thing,’ he said. ‘According to Gerald, you were publicly slapped and dismissed without cause. Assault and public humiliation, with witnesses. The hospital board should pay damages.’
She thought about that. Her weariness and anger seemed to fade.
‘The hospital board,’ she said slowly, ‘consists of five judgmental toads. I’m judged a bad lot by association. They only gave me the job because my qualifications beat every other applicant fourfold.’ She considered a bit longer. ‘Damages, eh?’
‘It’d be a statement,’ he said. ‘A line in the sand.’
She considered a bit more. ‘She did have cause,’ she said. ‘Vicar’s wife discovering vicar with Mum.’
‘Was that cause to hit you?’
‘No.’ She grinned, bouncing back. ‘Does it cost to sue?’
‘With the evidence as clear as it is, Gerald said one letter should do it, sent to the board with a promise to copy it to the press if damages aren’t forthcoming. He reckons they’ll be falling over themselves to limit fallout.’
‘Ooh …’
‘Do I have your permission to go ahead?’
She beamed and it was as if the sun had come out. ‘Yes.’
‘And the bank …’
‘No.’ Her humour faded. ‘Mum’s not going to jail on my account.’
‘How long do promises last?’ he said softly. ‘A promise made by a twelve-year-old …’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘It’s ridiculous, but I loved my dad. I do this for him. Thank you for what you’ve done already but I won’t take it further. My mum, my problem.’
He glanced at Zelda and at Merrylegs. Then he looked at Lily, at her expression of acceptance of a load that seemed almost too much to bear. He’d yelled at her, he thought, and he was sorry. ‘Are you sure I can’t organise you a quiet horse tomorrow?’ he asked.
‘Not Glenfiddich?’
‘No.’
‘Because?’
‘I will not watch you take risks.’
‘So don’t watch.’
‘Lily …’
‘Okay, sorry,’ she said, and held up her hands. ‘You’re trying to protect me. Thank you very much, but I don’t need it.’
‘You could enjoy a quieter ride.’
‘I guess I could,’ she said, but then managed a rueful smile. ‘I know, it doesn’t make sense, even to me, but I’d rather not. Not having been on Glenfiddich.’ She took a deep breath. ‘It’s just … Luke, I don’t want to be protected. For now I just want to be me.’
She seemed to wilt a bit after that. The gastro had knocked her, he thought, or maybe it was simply life that had knocked her. A crazy mother and a promise to the father she’d adored … She’d faced it alone since she was twelve.
He bullied her into toast and soup. She sat by the fire and gazed into the flames and he thought he shouldn’t have let her out today. She should have stayed home by the fire. He should have stayed home with her.
I don’t want to be protected …
What else was a man to do?
‘Go to bed,’ he said gently, and she cast him a look he couldn’t understand.
‘I like it by the fire.’
‘You’re exhausted.’
‘Yes, but—
‘But you don’t sleep?’
‘I slept last night.’
‘Gastro would make anyone sleep. Is that why you signed up for night duty?’ he asked. ‘To keep the demons at bay?’
‘I don’t have demons.’
‘I think … living with your mother must be nigh on impossible.’
‘Like having your wi
fe die? And the fear of facing that sort of tragedy again?’
‘I’m not afraid.’
‘I think you are. Wasn’t that what today was all about?’ She rose, a little unsteady on her feet, and he jumped up fast to steady her. He took her shoulders and held on.
He could draw her closer.
He didn’t. He simply held.
A common bond—two nightmares?
It was enough to forge a friendship. This could be touching from mutual sympathy—but it felt much more than that.
The fire crackled in the grate, a sort of warning. That was a dumb thought, but right now anything was acting as a warning.
He should let her go.
He couldn’t.
‘Maybe you could curl up here and watch the flames while you go to sleep,’ he suggested, and the tension around them escalated. Maybe he could stay here, too. The flames … the warmth … this woman.
He knew how this woman could make him feel. She could drive out his demons.
He couldn’t make her safe. He knew she wouldn’t let him.
‘I will go to bed,’ she said, and somehow she managed to step back from him.
‘Count mopokes to go to sleep?’ he suggested, and she smiled.
‘Or frogs?’
‘You don’t have enough fingers and toes to count frogs.’
She chuckled and the desire to draw her close again was almost irresistible.
She stepped back fast, as if she felt it too.
‘Goodnight,’ she said.
He couldn’t help it. He touched her hand, a feather-like touch, nothing more, but in that touch fire flared. It was contact that burned.
She tucked her hand behind her back. ‘Luke … no.’
‘No,’ he said, and let his own hand fall.
They were pretend lovers. Nothing more.
‘Goodnight,’ she said again, gently, and she walked out of the door, closing it after her.
He stood staring at the closed door. Thinking, How much courage would it take?
Too much.
He wasn’t tired. He headed out again, around the paddocks, following the line of the creek. How many times had he followed this route since Hannah had died?
It was different tonight. He was here because of Lily.
She touched such a chord … A woman keeping a promise at all costs. A woman of honour and intelligence and skill and laughter.
But …
The moment he’d seen her on Glenfiddich’s back, he’d been hit with the knowledge that there was nothing he could do to protect her …
She’d guessed right. She’d known that his fear had been all about Hannah.
He looked over toward his uncle’s house, where a solitary light burned on the veranda.
His uncle had learned the same hard lessons. He was like Luke.
They didn’t do relationships. Not now. Not ever.
CHAPTER SEVEN
LILY woke without the joy of the day before.
She could hear Luke moving downstairs. She heard Tom calling, dogs barking in the distance, and those dratted kookaburras.
Her stomach was cramping again. She’d talked to the doctor at home about the cramps. Tension, he’d said. Avoid stress.
Stress was sharing a house with a guy who was drop-dead gorgeous. Stress was playing pretend lovers with Luke.
She shouldn’t have come. This was a stupid deception, designed to protect a reputation she didn’t have and to add another level to Luke’s armour, but by coming here a layer of her own armour had peeled away.
This farm … these horses …
Luke.
Okay, there was the problem. She was feeling what she had no right to be feeling.
He was feeling it too, she thought, but …
But she’d seen his panic when she’d been on Glenfiddich, and his reaction had scared her. He’d yelled at her through fear. Shadows of a dead wife.
She was being dumb, she thought. This was an overreaction.
It was an overreaction because she was scared.
Because she was falling for Luke?
Maybe falling for anyone would be scary.
Growing up in her mother’s dramatic shadow, she’d never thought of romance. Of falling in love. Drama, emotion were to be avoided at all costs. She knew the devastation they caused and it wasn’t something she wanted.
Her relationship with Charlie had been like a comfortable pair of old socks. They’d been friends at school, they’d fallen into dating and they’d kept dating until suddenly Charlie had woken up one morning and realised he was heading for marriage with the daughter of the town tramp. When he’d cut her adrift she’d been hurt and angry, but she hadn’t been heartbroken. Sometimes when she looked at romantic movies, seen friends marry, she’d felt like that part of her had simply not been formed. She’d been born without it.
Now… What she felt for Luke.
It was as if she knew him at some level she couldn’t possibly understand.
She knew Luke’s story—between Gladys and the Harbour night shift she knew more than she’d ever need to know—but this went deeper than that. She’d instinctively joined the dots. Last night she’d said his fear for her was all about his dead wife and she knew it was. A lonely child, a tragic marriage … A man who walked alone.
He made her feel …
She didn’t know how he made her feel. She felt … She felt …
She felt like she had cramps in her stomach, she decided. She felt like she needed to roll over in bed and put her pillows over her head, which was exactly what she did.
Avoid stress? Ha!
Luke worked with Tom, stringing wires between the fencing posts they’d put in the day before, then going on to rewire fences further along the creek.
All the time he worked he expected her to come.
She didn’t.
‘You two still fighting?’ Tom said at last.
‘We’re not fighting. She’s had gastro. She overdid it yesterday. She should spend the day in bed.’
‘Then why are you wiring fences?’ Tom asked bluntly. ‘With a woman like that in your bed.’
‘She’s in the guest bed.’
‘More fool you. She’s a good ‘un.’
‘There speaks an authority on all women,’ Luke said. ‘Curmudgeonly old bachelor that you are.’
‘Had a woman once,’ Tom said reflectively, astonishingly. ‘Liseth.’ He sighed. ‘I thought maybe I had a chance, that our family hadn’t stuffed me completely. But with parents like ours you don’t rush into relationships. Anyway, I got drafted; Vietnam War. I was stupid enough to tell her to go out with other guys while I was away. I met her twenty years later, married to a car salesman. I walked into the office and she was there. She told me about her husband and her kids. All very polite. Then at the end when her husband was shifting the car she turned to me and exploded.
‘I would have married you,’ she said. ‘In a heartbeat. Even if we’d only had those two months before you went overseas, it would have been enough.’
‘Tom …’ The vehemence of his uncle’s voice shocked him.
‘Yeah,’ Tom said. ‘I was a fool, like you were a fool with Hannah; but in your case the fool part wasn’t one-sided. So we’ve made mistakes, do we have to keep making them? Enough. All I’m saying, boy, is life’s short and she’s a good ‘un. Now let’s get this wire done. And I want to talk to you about my arm. I damn near dropped the chainsaw on Friday. I reckon I might have tennis elbow.’
‘Chainsaw elbow,’ Luke said, and the old man grinned.
‘You doctors have fancy names for everything.’
‘Hi.’
The men turned and saw Lily at the edge of the clearing.
Uh-oh. How much of the conversation had she heard? Just the end, Luke hoped, though the silence in the bush meant sound travelled.
‘I’m feeling better,’ she said. ‘I wanted to stretch my legs. And, no, Luke, I’m not about to ride another of your horses, even though I
had to duck round Glenfiddich’s paddock so he wouldn’t see me. And I’m not here to interfere. I’ll keep on walking.’
‘Keep walking with Luke,’ Tom growled. ‘He’s done enough for one day.’
‘So must you if you have chainsaw elbow,’ Lily said, teasing a smile from the old man.
‘Nah, I’m fitter than the pair of you,’ he retorted. ‘You head off and do what a young feller and his lady ought to do.’
Luke looked at Lily and Lily looked at Luke, and Luke put down his tools.
What was it that a young feller and his lady ought to do?
They walked slowly back to the house. She was walking a bit gingerly.
‘Your tummy’s okay?’ he asked.
‘Recovering nicely.’ Her tone said not to go there.
‘Rest this afternoon.’
‘You should tell Tom to rest,’ she said. ‘Not that he will when you’re around. He’s lonely.’
‘Tom—lonely!’
‘He’s like you,’ she said softly. ‘He drives people away. I met Patty Haigh up on your north boundary fence when I was walking …’
‘Patty!’ Patty was the cheerful next-door neighbour who cooked and cleaned for Tom. She was the mother of seven sons. She was always ready for a gossip—not that he and Tom gossiped.
‘She worries about Tom,’ Lily said.
‘Tom’s okay.’
‘She doesn’t like him being on his own.’
‘Neither do I,’ he said. ‘That’s why I bought adjoining land.’
‘Why don’t you commute?’ she asked curiously. ‘Patty says you can get to the Harbour in forty minutes from here.’
‘An hour and a half at peak hour.’
‘Since when do doctors travel at peak hour? You can fit your hours around traffic.’
‘Tom doesn’t want me here.’
‘That’s not what Patty says. He needs family.’
‘He doesn’t want family. Neither of us do.’
What did Lily know about Tom? he thought. Lonely? Tom was as fiercely independent as he was. But. Tom’s revelation of moments ago had shaken him.
Regardless, it was nothing to do with Lily.
The chainsaw revved up behind them. He winced. He hated Tom using power tools when he wasn’t here; it was a risk, the price they both paid for independence.
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