The Australian's Desire (Mills & Boon By Request)

by Marion Lennox, Lilian Darcy, Lilian Darcy

  ‘I wasn’t accustomed to think my own sister was telling lies. I didn’t know what to think or believe or feel. You know what she was like, Luke. She drew us all in.’

  ‘Captivating,’ he said bitterly. ‘She weaves these beautiful, magical webs around her life. You want to be in her world because it looks so sparkling and wonderful. You believe every word she tells you. She casts spells. Wait a minute …’ His face changed, and Janey knew he’d belatedly registered her use of that tell-tale word ‘was’—the past tense.

  ‘She died,’ she told him simply. She swallowed. Luke didn’t need to see her in tears. She’d shed enough of those when she’d first heard the news. ‘A week ago. No, ten days. Oh, hell, nearly two weeks, I’m still in such a fog.’

  She sketched in the medical facts for him, then continued, ‘She was living at Mundarri, it’s a retreat. A commune, some people would call it. And they didn’t realise how ill she was until it was too late. Charles Wetherby knew of the place when I told him. Up in the rainforest. I don’t know if—’

  ‘Yes, spiritual healing, or something. I guess that fits. She’d begun to get heavily involved in that sort of thing in England before she disappeared.’

  ‘Disappeared?’

  ‘Just went off the grid, Janey. Do you think I didn’t try every avenue I could think of to track her down when she took Frankie Jay?’ His whole face blazed, and she could see the way his tightly held fists made his forearms knot with muscle. ‘She did it deliberately, no matter what she might have told you. That would have been when she changed their names, not when she got to the rainforest place, Mundarri. And I wouldn’t be surprised if she changed them more than once. Poor kid, probably doesn’t know what he wants to be called. It wasn’t me. I wanted our marriage. To try and save it, for his sake. I wanted to be a good father. She sabotaged everything.’

  ‘Luke—’

  ‘I don’t use that word lightly, and the only reason I never spoke of it in those terms when I called you from London was that I thought if I sounded too harsh about her you wouldn’t tell me where she was.’

  ‘Why didn’t you try again when you came back to Australia? I didn’t even know you were back in the country until I found your contact details amongst Alice’s things. She must have kept track of you.’

  ‘While making damned sure I couldn’t trace her. I gave up, that was why I didn’t make contact with you or your parents when I got back. Maybe I shouldn’t have given up. But it was killing me. I didn’t get a senior fellowship in the US that I wanted, because of it. I was too distracted, trying to find my wife and child. The fellowship went to someone else, and deservedly so, because I hadn’t been giving a hundred per cent and I couldn’t fake it any more.’

  Luke Bresciano? Unable to fake it?

  Again, she let too much show on her face.

  ‘Yes, you’re right, OK? I did used to fake it sometimes, when we were interns.’

  ‘Sometimes?’

  ‘OK, a lot. Never the actual medicine, but the bedside manner, the confidence, sure! It was a survival strategy. We all had them. Apparently you weren’t impressed with mine.’

  ‘Finish the story, Luke.’

  ‘I came home to Australia instead. I knew my son was at least safe, that Alice loved him. I decided that would have to be enough, the abstract knowing. I’m not the first parent to have lived through losing a child completely when a marriage breaks down—to have a son or daughter or a whole family just vanish out of your life, and your ex to go to incredibly extreme measures to deprive you of any contact. I joined a support group for a while, but some of the bitterness and desperation I saw in those other parents … No. For sheer survival I had to turn my back and start again.’

  ‘Oh, Luke …’ She slumped against the raised upper half of the hospital bed, her energy completely drained. Her hands were actually shaking, cold despite the tropical heat.

  He reached out and covered her clammy fingers with his warm palm. Instinctively, she closed her eyes. The contact felt good, far better than she would have expected. It oriented something in her universe, and she didn’t stop to think if that might be in any way dangerous. Couldn’t stop to think.

  Didn’t have any thought power left.

  ‘This is too exhausting for you,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. We shouldn’t be talking about it now.’

  ‘We had to. How could we have put it off? What would we have said instead?’

  ‘Where is he? Will you let me see him?’

  ‘Let you see him?’ Her eyes flew open, she tried to sit up and saw stars.

  His voice seemed to come from a distance. ‘Your sister didn’t let me, for over five years. Who has legal custody of him now?’

  ‘I do, but it’s temporary.’

  ‘Your parents …?’

  ‘Mum’s not well. Dad’s struggling, taking care of her. Alice’s death has hit them hard. They couldn’t manage a child now. They want me to have him, but—’

  ‘You don’t?’

  ‘Oh, I do, with all my heart, but I thought you should have a say in it, Luke.’ He was still holding her hand. Instinctively, she squeezed it. ‘That you should have him, if you want him. I—I do trust that your heart’s in the right place.’

  He’d never been bad, after all. Just because she hadn’t liked him, just because he’d made her spit chips every time they met, and she had thought him so arrogant and immature … She wouldn’t let personal feelings win out over the objective realities of right and wrong. He’d be a good father, if he wanted to be.

  ‘All the stuff that happened with you and Alice …’ she said, ‘a bad marriage can bring out the worst in people.’

  ‘We were never right for each other. We dazzled each other at first, but I wouldn’t want those stars in my eyes again.’

  ‘Luke, if you want Felixx … Frankie Jay … then he’s yours. He has to be. It’s the right thing. That’s why I came to Crocodile Creek.’

  Approaching the doctors’ house where he’d lived for almost five months, Luke saw the place as if he’d never seen it before.

  Because now, since Sunday night, his child had been here.

  He’d left Janey to rest, knowing there were still a million things to say but that she was too exhausted for either of them to do any more talking at this point. In any case, the urgency to see his son was suddenly shattering.

  It pulled him like a magnet, made him feel ill and dizzy. He couldn’t live a minute longer if he didn’t see his boy. A part of him still believed it would all turn out to be some nightmare mistake and the child wouldn’t be his at all.

  ‘He’s sleeping on a camp stretcher on the floor in Emily’s room,’ Charles had told him a few minutes ago. ‘Has been for the past two nights. I guess you really have been bedding down in the A and E department.’

  ‘Yes. When I’ve slept at all.’

  The whole town was in chaos. With the bus crash and cyclone barging in on their wedding reception three nights ago, Emily and Mike Poulos should have been miles away on their honeymoon by this time but instead they’d stayed to help. They’d had no choice in the matter, and it might be days longer before they could easily be spared and before regular commercial flights resumed.

  The short snatches of time that Emily and her new husband did manage to spend together, they spent over at the Athina Hotel, in a room that was too rain-damaged for real hotel guests, with its sodden carpet ripped up, but quite acceptable to a couple of battle-weary doctors who happened to be newly married and madly in love.

  Which meant that Emily’s room had been available for Max and Frankie Jay.

  I am not calling him by the name Alice used when she stole him away.

  ‘Although I’m not sure what he’d be doing right now,’ Charles had continued. ‘Eating, probably. He’s developed quite an appetite since we got hold of him.’

  And when Luke tiptoed up the steps and into the big communal kitchen with his heart thudding right up in his throat, there he was. His son. Eati
ng an enormous hamburger with everything, half of which—fried egg, beetroot slice, grated carrot, pineapple ring and cheese—was sliding out the sides and back onto the plate.

  Frankie Jay had beetroot juice and burger bun crumbs smeared all over his face, and was tackling with serious attention the issue of how to get the fallen bits of hamburger filling back into his mouth. Via reinserting them into the bun? Or should he take a more direct route?

  Luke simply stood and watched, totally overwhelmed, seeing bits of himself, bits of Alice and Janey and four grandparents and finally just the new, unique being that wasn’t bits of anybody else but was just Frankie Jay. Dark hair, brown eyes, scratches and mosquito bites on his skin, freckles across his nose, wiry little limbs.

  Georgie saw him in the doorway first, and she must already have been briefed by Charles as she raised her eyebrows in a question that said, Shall I let him know you’re here?

  Luke shook his head, wondering if the whole medical community—in fact, the whole town—knew by now that this was his long-lost son, and the owner of that forlorn little shoe. He’d kept to himself a fair bit since coming here. His shattered past would provide fascinating fodder for gossip. The thought stripped him raw, when he didn’t know how any of it was going to work out.

  Georgie nodded and stayed silent, and they both watched Frankie Jay eating. Only when his plate was cleaned of every last bun crumb and tomato sauce smear and lettuce shred did he look up. As if wondering about dessert. Hadn’t Alice fed him up in the rainforest? No wonder they’d all thought he was only four years old, he was tiny! And, though wiry, he was thin.

  ‘Had enough, Rowdy?’ Georgie said cheerfully.

  Rowdy?

  That’s right. He hadn’t been speaking.

  Why hadn’t he been speaking?

  So they hadn’t known his name, the medical personnel who’d rescued him and checked him and brought him in, and the nickname they’d given him had apparently stuck. Luke found he quite liked it. It took care of the adversarial relationship in his own mind between Felixx and Frankie Jay, and provided a compromise that everyone could live with, at least for the time being.

  Rowdy looked towards the doorway and saw him at last, then nodded slowly in answer to Georgie’s question. He’d had enough to eat was the impression. Well, maybe. Because if the word supper happened to be mentioned a little later on, he wouldn’t say no …

  ‘Hi, Rowdy,’ Luke said to him. He couldn’t believe it was such a quiet moment when there should be trumpets sounding or a huge orchestra reaching a crescendo. In the back of his mind he realised it was no accident that so few people were around. Charles and Georgie had engineered this whole scene by sending everyone else away.

  To protect my child? Or to protect me?

  Both, he decided, and was grateful. It was good of them. Not something he had the right to expect when he’d kept so much to himself since he’d come to Crocodile Creek. Janey wouldn’t believe that the charmer with the major ego from Royal Victoria Hospital could have morphed into such a workaholic loner.

  ‘This is Luke, Rowdy,’ Georgie said. ‘He’s …’ She threw him a panicky look. What did Rowdy know?

  ‘I’m a friend of your Auntie Janey,’ Luke supplied.

  Rowdy smiled. Apparently he liked his Auntie Janey.

  ‘I’ve just been to see her.’ An image flashed into his mind of the way she’d looked against the hospital white of her pillow. Vulnerable yet calm. Lips a little dry. Eyes huge and shadowed. Never anywhere near as beautiful as Alice, but a lot more grounded and with an intelligence she could never hide. ‘She’s still pretty tired, but she’s doing a lot better.’

  Rowdy pressed his lips together and nodded, and you’d have thought from his expression that Janey’s recovery was all down to him, that possibly the entire universe would end if this one kid didn’t breathe in the right way, or wipe his plate clean with the correct licked finger, or something. He had an air of crushing responsibility about him, and the pleasure of the hamburger was apparently already too far in the past to be of any help.

  ‘Hey …’ How did you reach out to a kid who didn’t speak. Why didn’t he speak? How did you create a bond, and trust, and a relationship?

  Luke felt completely at sea. He’d been holding himself back for so long, he just wanted to unleash his emotions right now, on the spot. Crush his child in his arms. Say all these fervent, dramatic words.

  I love you. I would die for you. I have missed you every single day. I taught you to laugh, do you know that? I used to blow raspberries on your tummy when you were three months old, and you used to gurgle and gurgle and laugh and laugh …

  But he knew he couldn’t.

  What the hell should he do instead?

  He turned back to Georgie, helpless and close to tears. ‘I … uh …’

  ‘Hey, shall we head outside for a bit before it gets dark?’ she said cheerfully to Rowdy, who stood up at once. The weight on him seemed a little lighter again, but his silence was just as complete. She told Luke, ‘We had a team clearing up around the pool area yesterday, so the kids would have somewhere to play. The whole town is doing it—creating tiny pieces of order in the chaos. The beach is still a mess, the sand half cut away and covered in debris, and the surf is brown.’

  He grabbed her arm just as she was about to follow Rowdy outside. ‘I don’t know what to do, Georgie.’

  She stopped in her tracks. ‘You mean about the momentous reunion?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Momentous isn’t what he needs, I don’t think.’

  ‘I know it isn’t, but what is there instead? It’s momentous for me, and I’m having a hard time getting past that to what else I could—’

  ‘Just … child care. Fun stuff. Minute by minute. Throw him a ball. Read him a story tonight. We have kids’ books here. Take it slow. We can’t swim yet, unfortunately, because the pool’s still full of debris and muck and chairs.’

  ‘I’ll clean it out tomorrow,’ Luke said. It was a resolution and a promise. He knew he hadn’t made himself a full part of the Croc Creek medical community in the months he’d been there. This felt like something he could grab hold of, something concrete that he could do. For Rowdy. For his fellow doctors. For himself.

  ‘Big job.’ Georgie sounded sceptical. ‘It’s pretty gungy.’

  ‘I want to.’

  ‘I’d better dust off a bikini, then.’ She grinned, then disappeared onto the veranda for a moment and brought out a big red ball. ‘Here. Catch.’

  With Georgie effortlessly starting the game, Rowdy was soon involved, throwing back and forth to Luke. He smiled, ran to retrieve dropped catches, followed instructions, once even laughed. But he said not a word, and that was hard. The game fizzled out after about ten minutes, and Georgie’s pager went off.

  ‘Rats! If this is that bloody Henderson baby, deciding to be born …’

  Yep, apparently it was.

  ‘I’ll have to go, guys …’

  ‘Where is everybody anyway?’ Luke asked. It was getting dark now.

  ‘At Christina and Joe’s, having been told to eat their hamburgers somewhat faster than Rowdy did, and then we hustled them off. We thought—’

  ‘I know what you thought. And thanks.’ He dropped his voice. ‘But it leaves us in a bit of a hole at this point, because … Would he stay with me, on our own?’

  ‘You’re a friend of Auntie Janey’s. Does he trust …?’

  ‘He doesn’t know her that well either, but you saw his face when I said I was her friend. She counts for something, in his mind.’

  ‘I’ll get Alistair and Max to come back. You won’t be on your own for long. He can get into his pyjamas and brush his teeth and there’s a bookshelf in my room with those kids’ books. I’m getting the impression he likes anything about trains.’

  Rowdy had disappeared while they’d been talking.

  They found him inside a few minutes later, in Emily’s room, crouched by his camp stretcher and wolfing
chocolate.

  ‘Oh, sweetheart! You could have told us if you were still hungry!’ Georgie said, stricken by the sight. He ate like a stray animal, as if he didn’t know where his next meal was coming from. ‘There’s plenty more to eat in the kitchen.’

  Rowdy looked scared and frozen, like a rabbit caught in the headlights of a car.

  ‘Told us?’ Luke said quietly.

  ‘I treat him as if he talks, in the hope that soon he actually will,’ she answered, even more quietly. ‘We’ve taken a good look at him. There’s nothing physiologically wrong. And he communicates. Doesn’t usually initiate much, but nods or shakes his head, points.’

  ‘He’s so thin.’

  ‘They have a vegan diet at Mundarri.’

  Luke swore. ‘It’s hard enough for an adult to get a balanced intake that way, let alone a child. From the look of him, I’d say they didn’t do enough.’

  ‘Here, we’re letting him eat what he wants so far. Don’t want to turn him into a junk-food addict, but his protein and calcium and iron intake could certainly use a boost, and a bit of fat. For this week, chocolate is a health food.’ She took a closer look. ‘At least … Hmm, not sure about this chocolate.’ She said to Rowdy, ‘Where did you get it, sweetheart?’

  Luke followed her deeper into the room, and they both bent down to Rowdy, who instinctively hid the chocolate in his hands.

  ‘Show me?’ Luke said gently.

  He opened his son’s fingers, to find the last couple of battered-looking, dirt-encrusted squares, then picked up the piece of torn wrapper he saw on the floor. It was soaking wet, as was the plastic bag it had apparently been stored in. He also found grit and clay and chocolate crumbs.

  ‘Oh, shoot!’ Georgie said. ‘This is from Saturday night. The supplies Charles packed for us. We left it with Rowdy and Max, Alistair and me, when we had to wait out the worst of the storm. It’s been through a cyclone, down a mineshaft and up in a chopper. Where have you been keeping this, Rowdy? Hidden here under the bed? You didn’t have to do that! This is all dirty and gritty from the mineshaft, we should have thrown it away. You can tell us when you’re hungry, OK, lovey. I know, you don’t like talking, but you can rub your tummy or point to the fridge. Eating isn’t something we need to do in secret, my sweetheart! Never, never!’