Saving Maddie's Baby

by Marion Lennox

  Actually, there were a few things bringing tears to Maddie’s eyes right now.

  First and foremost was that Kalifa had been a friend and he’d died too soon. If he’d been sensible, stopped smoking, lost weight—if he hadn’t decided to embark on a harebrained scheme to make money out of a patently unsafe gold mine—she wouldn’t be standing here.

  Then there was the sight of Nani, surrounded by her children and her grandchildren. It’d be desperately hard for Nani now, she thought. The elderly woman lived out on Atangi, the biggest of the island group, but her children mostly lived on Wildfire.

  She had no money. Kalifa had given it all to his son after he’d lost his fishing boat. He’d mortgaged their house and Nani would have no hope of redeeming it.

  She’d lost her husband and her home, yet her shoulders were straight, she sang with fierce determination, and Maddie looked at that sad, proud woman and felt tears well again.

  And then there was Josh. Gone.

  He’d left five years ago, she told herself. One visit and here you go, falling in love again.

  Or still loving?

  It’s just hormones, she told herself fiercely. She’d given birth only three days ago. Caroline was on one side of her and Hettie was on the other. They both thought she shouldn’t have come.

  And I shouldn’t if I’m going to sob, she told herself. I will not cry.

  The hymn came to an end. Kalifa’s sons and brothers took up the coffin and carried it out of the chapel into the morning sun. From here it’d be taken to Atangi to be buried in the place of his ancestors.

  Maddie wouldn’t follow. Burial was the islanders’ business. There’d be a wake later on but she wasn’t up to a wake yet.

  She turned away drearily, immeasurably sad for her friend. But life went on, she told herself. She needed to return to her daughter. She needed to get on with living. She turned towards the hospital—and Josh was right in front her.

  Just...there.

  ‘Hi,’ he said, and she couldn’t think of a single thing to say.

  She was facing her husband. No. He was her ex-husband. He wasn’t even the father of her child, she told herself desperately. He was someone who had nothing to do with her.

  But that was a lie. He was someone who held her heart in his hands.

  ‘I thought you were gone,’ she said at last. It was a dumb thing to say but it was all she could think of. But she’d watched his plane take off. He should be in Cairns.

  ‘I had a couple of things I forgot to say,’ he said, and then he fell silent.

  The hearse drove away, towards the harbour where a boat would carry Kalifa, in all honour, out to Atangi. The islanders followed.

  The rest of the mourners drifted off. Maddie stood at the foot of the steps of the little island chapel and felt empty.

  ‘Hey!’ It was Caroline, flanked by Keanu and Hettie and Sam. Her people. ‘Maddie needs to be back in bed,’ Caroline said sternly. ‘Thirty minutes tops, Dr Campbell, or we’ll set Bugsy onto you.’

  ‘See me terrified,’ Josh called back, and Caroline chuckled and linked her arm in Keanu’s and said something that made them all laugh—and then they were gone.

  Her people.

  Her husband?

  ‘What...what did you need to say?’ Maddie asked at last, because the silence was getting to her and, in truth, her legs ached and she wouldn’t mind sitting down. And as if he guessed, Josh took her arm and led her to a wooden seat that looked out over the headland to the sea beyond.

  It really was the most beautiful island. They were facing west, where the sun set. The island’s sunsets were where the island got its name, for Wildfire was what they resembled.

  Had Josh ever seen a Wildfire sunset?

  She was babbling internally. She let herself be propelled to the seat and she tried to empty her mind.

  Josh was still holding her arm. How could she empty her mind when all she could do was...feel?

  ‘Two things,’ he said into the stillness, and her heart seemed to stop.

  ‘Two?’

  ‘The first is that I’m sorry.’ He wasn’t looking at her. He was staring out at the distant sea, reflective, sad, almost as if looking back at those five past years. ‘I’m sorry I left you. I’m sorry I was so weak.’

  ‘You weren’t weak.’ She paused and stared down at her feet, thinking of all the times she’d tried to comfort him, all the times he’d held himself back. The bracing of his shoulders as she’d reached for him. The rigidity of his body, the sheer effort of holding emotion within. ‘You were so strong I couldn’t get near you.’

  ‘But I wasn’t strong enough. That was what I didn’t see. That admitting weakness, admitting need, takes its own form of strength. That sharing is two-way. And that’s the second thing I want to say to you, my Maddie. It’s that I need you.’

  I need you.

  The words hung in the warm morning air.

  Need.

  He’d never said such a thing. Their relationship had been based on their love and her need. It hadn’t been enough.

  ‘How can you need me?’ she whispered, hardly daring to breathe, and still he stared out to sea. His hands were clenched, as if things were breaking inside him, as if he was deliberately taking apart something he’d built over a lifetime.

  ‘Because I’ll shatter if you don’t take me back,’ he said, and then he shook his head. ‘No. That’s blackmail and there’s no place for that here. I’ll keep on going. I’ll stay doing what I’m doing. But, Maddie, something inside me has changed. It’s melted. When we were down the mine, when we’d delivered your daughter, when I thought we might die together, Maddie, I wanted to be held. I wanted to admit to you how scared I was. I was terrified for all of us. I was terrified of losing you, yet I couldn’t admit it. And then...’

  ‘Then?’ How hard was it to whisper?

  ‘Then we were safe and things were as they’d been before. I knew life could go on. I knew you didn’t need me. But then I saw Nani come to visit you. She was bereft but she still came, to say to you that she knew you’d done your best, that there was no blame. And I thought, how strong was that? It’s the kind of thing I might try—I have tried. When I’m hurt I try to make those around me feel better. It’s what’s been instilled in me since birth and I don’t know any other way.’

  ‘So what’s different now?’

  ‘I watched you,’ he said simply. ‘I watched you admit that you needed her. That you needed this island. Giving and taking. And all you’ve said to me... Everything over the years... It was like that moment coalesced it all. Maybe if I could have gone straight back to work, straight back into needed mode, I wouldn’t have had time to sort it out, but Beth made me lie on the stretcher in the plane and I stared up at nothing and that moment kept coming back. And I thought...how selfish was I? To not let you care.’

  ‘Josh...’

  ‘I do need you, Maddie,’ he told her, simply now and humbly. ‘I’ve always needed you. I just didn’t know how. Mikey’s death shattered me and all I knew was to try and comfort you. I didn’t see that sharing the hurt could have helped heal us both. And then, when Holly died so soon after, I was a mess and I kept thinking I couldn’t lay that hurt on you. So stupidly, selfishly I stepped away. I told myself it was protecting you, but all the time it was about protecting my armour. I thought I’d shatter if I admitted need. But, Maddie, I do need. If anything happened to you now, I’d fall apart. If anything happened to Lea...’

  And his voice broke.

  Enough. She took him into her arms and pulled him to her. And he came. After all these years she felt him melt into her, merge, warmth against warmth. She felt him hold, not in passion but in need.

  To take comfort.

  To love.

  How long they sat there she coul
dn’t say. Up at the house Caroline would be caring for Lea, but she’d fed her just before the funeral. For now time didn’t matter. It couldn’t be allowed to matter.

  All that mattered was that she was holding the man she loved.

  ‘I wouldn’t mind a kiss.’

  She wasn’t sure when she said it, or even why she said it, but suddenly it was needful. Comfort was all very well, she thought, but if she was getting her Josh back... Well, she wanted her Josh back. Bravado and all. Hero, except in the most dire of circumstances. Her knight in shining armour—but with the ability to take off his armour and leave it in the hall cupboard.

  But then she was no longer thinking. There was no room for thinking because she was being soundly, ruthlessly kissed. She was in Josh’s arms and there was nowhere else in the world she would have rather been.

  She was with her Josh. He needed her.

  She had her baby. She had her Josh.

  She had her family.

  * * *

  Afterwards, when there was room for words again, when the world had somehow righted itself on this new and wonderful axis, she did check the hall cupboard. It took some doing but Josh had been gone for five long years and she wasn’t about to let him back into her world on a promise. The sensible side of her—the part that had learned to distrust and could never completely be ignored—wanted to know just what terms that armour would be let out.

  ‘So...’ she managed, breathlessly because that kiss had taken energy and she didn’t have much energy spare at the moment. ‘So how could we work this? Because...Josh, you know that I love you but...’

  ‘But my proposition about a house close to my work didn’t make you happy?’

  ‘You make me happy,’ she said simply. ‘But, Josh...’

  ‘You love this island,’ he said, cupping her face and kissing her again, lightly this time, tenderly, as if he had all the time in the world, and kissing her was almost as natural as breathing. ‘I can see that. And you love this community and this community needs you. And you love your mum. Your mum needs you and you need your mum. And of course there’s Lea, who we both love...’

  ‘You don’t...you don’t mind that I used a sperm donor?’

  ‘If I ever meet him I’ll give him half my kingdom,’ Josh said simply. ‘He’s given me a daughter—if you’ll let me share.’

  ‘Oh, Josh.’ She could feel the tears. It was weakness, she thought desperately. She hated tears, but Josh smiled and kissed them away and she thought maybe she didn’t hate them so much.

  ‘Proposition,’ he said simply. ‘I’ve been talking to Keanu.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Yesterday. When you were faffing about, learning how to feed your daughter. When he was faffing about, worrying about clots on my leg. He talked to me about these islands. He talked about how desperate the islanders are for a full medical service. Apparently the Lockhart money has run dry for the mine, but there’s still Australian government funding for doctors—if you can get doctors to come here. They work on a doctors-per-head-of-population ratio, which means the islands are short by at least two, possibly three doctors. So I thought, if it’s okay with you, I could come here. This is really tentative—I need to talk to Keanu and Sam—but it seems to me that a couple of doctors settled out on Atangi could work well. I could be part of the emergency on-call roster from there. It’s only three minutes by chopper to pick me up. We could run a permanent clinic. We could build ourselves a great house overlooking the sea—’

  ‘Josh...’

  ‘We could be happy there,’ he said, urgently now. ‘I know we could. Sure, we’d be two doctors dependent on each other for backup, but...’ He shrugged his shoulders and gave a rueful smile. ‘I guess that’s what you already know and I’m finding out. We could depend on each other. I’d need you, my Maddie, and you’d need me.’

  ‘Josh.’ Dammit, her eyes were brimming again. It sounded wonderful—it sounded brilliant—but there were still things...complications...

  Love.

  ‘Josh, I need to stay flying in and flying out.’ It nearly killed her to say it but she had to. ‘Or...or leave the islands and live in Cairns. It might need to be in your house near your work. Because Mum...’

  ‘Your mum needs you.’

  ‘I need my mum.’ She said it simply. It was two-way, this loving business, and he had to see it. ‘I can’t walk away.’

  ‘I would never ask you to.’ Once more he kissed her. ‘It’s a whole, complex web. I need you, you need your mum, I need you to be happy and you can’t be happy without your mum. But there are needs and needs. There’s another thought, as well. Your friend, Nani, loves Atangi and wants to live there, only of course she and Kalifa mortgaged their house to try and get her son out of debt. She loves you. This is early days, there’s so much to sort out, but I thought, if we build big with a housekeeper’s apartment, maybe we could bring your mother here. And Nani could be our housekeeper-carer. It’d mean your mother would be near Lea as she grows up. You’d have company if I’m called away. Maybe...maybe we could all be happy?’

  And that pretty much took her breath away. She sat, astounded, as what he was proposing sank in.

  A house on Atangi. No, a home. Her daughter, her mother, Bugsy, Nani...

  Her husband.

  Maybe even...

  ‘Two or three?’ Josh said, and grinned because he knew what she was thinking—he’d always known what she was thinking. ‘We wouldn’t want to be lonely. And maybe another pup to keep Bugsy company. After all, he saved your life—he deserves his own happy ending.’

  ‘You’d do all that for me?’ she whispered, and he cupped her face in his hands and his gaze met hers. He was loving her with his eyes.

  ‘No,’ he said softly. ‘I’d do all that for me. I’d do it because I need it. I need you. I need family. Yes, I need to be needed, but I can be, and it will be two-way. I promise you, Maddie, love. If you’ll marry me again I swear that I’ll need you for as long as we both shall live.’

  And what was a woman to say to that? There was only one answer and it was a soundless one.

  She drew him to her and she kissed him, tenderly this time, lovingly, an affirmation of everything in her heart.

  The armour was melting, she thought. Wherever he’d stowed it, she could feel it disappearing.

  He had no need of armour.

  Her heart was beating in sync with his. She loved and she loved and she loved.

  Soon her daughter would need feeding. Their daughter.

  They’d walk back to the house together, and they’d walk slowly because both of them hurt.

  They’d hold each other up, she thought as he helped her to her feet.

  They needed each other, and together it didn’t hurt at all.

  * * * * *

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  ISBN-13: 9781488009501

  Saving Maddie’s Baby

  Copyright © 2016 by Marion Lennox

  All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

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