Delivering Secrets

by Fiona McArthur

  And Ellie certainly hadn’t waited to marry. That didn’t sound like a woman that had been coming back to settle in Bell’s River. ‘Are you saying you planned to come back here and meet me as we’d arranged? That you didn’t deliberately change your mind?’ He shook his head in denial that his dreams could have been that close. It wasn’t possible. His mother wouldn’t knowingly have destroyed his happiness.

  He laughed harshly. ‘How can I believe that? Especially if you married a month later?’ His grip tightened.

  ‘Perhaps you should just admit you decided not to come back instead of blaming my mother.’ He stared implacably into her eyes. ‘I never saw you as dishonest.’

  Ellie closed her eyes and he barely heard her whisper, ‘How dare you blame me?’ She opened her eyes and glared at him. ‘I won’t have you call me a liar.’

  Her teeth were gritted. ‘Your mother told me you were married. You can believe me or her. That’s your choice. I’m sorry, but maybe it’s all for the best anyway. Who knows? It’s in the past. I just want you to realise that your mother doesn’t always have the best interests of her sons’ girlfriends in mind.’

  She wriggled out of his grasp and faced him. ‘If I’d come back here I wouldn’t have Josh, and I could never regret him in my life.’ She stepped back a pace. ‘But at this moment I regret you in my life.’

  Luke flinched and then his arms shot out again. ‘Then regret this, too!’

  CHAPTER SIX

  LUKE pulled Ellie against him and clamped her arms against her sides.

  His head lowered and he felt her twist under his hands as she struggled to escape. When his lips captured hers, he wanted to stamp the fact that she should have been his so that she would never forget who hadn’t come back to whom. Suddenly the fight went out of her. His anger disintegrated as she sagged against him, and he softened his mouth. The scent of her, the taste of her, the feel of her body against his—it was all he’d wanted since she’d walked into his surgery and back into his life.

  To Ellie’s disgust, she’d relaxed against him and her anger, and hurt and confusion were lost in a haze of feelings and emotions that welled up from a place she’d thought locked away for ever. When his mouth softened, so did his hands and they swayed together in a cocoon of memories from the past and she never wanted him to let her go. She could feel the sting of tears behind her closed eyelids and her heart felt like it was being squeezed in a vice.

  It could have been seconds or minutes later, she didn’t know, but then he released her, though not completely or she would have fallen. But her life had changed for ever, because the way he made her feel had stayed the same—and she couldn’t deny it.

  ‘Damn you, Luke,’ she said. She had to get out of here. ‘I’m going to get my son.’

  Ellie walked quickly to her car and it seemed to take for ever to open the door, start the car and reverse out of the car park. Luke watched her the whole time and she tried not to look in his direction. When she glanced in the rear-view mirror as she drove out she could see him still standing in the car park with his hands thrust in his pockets as if he were carved of stone.

  Ellie couldn’t believe he’d taken his mother’s word over hers. It hurt. But not as much as that kiss had pierced her soul.

  * * *

  At seven p.m. that evening Luke knocked on Anthea’s door. She didn’t smile and he kissed her gently before following her through to the dining room. The room seemed stuffier than usual to him and he wondered if it had always been like this.

  They both sat at the table and there was silence for a moment before Anthea broke it. ‘I have something to say, Luke.’

  He nodded and she went on, ‘I’m not happy that you’ve hired that woman for the surgery. I want to know if you’ll consider letting her go. I can see there is still some connection between the two of you and I need to feel secure in our relationship for it to work. Would you do that for me?’

  Luke could sympathise with Anthea and it made what he’d come here to say even harder. ‘I’m sorry, Anthea. I won’t fire her. I can’t help my feelings for Ellie but I can’t deny my awareness of her. That’s why I’m here. I don’t believe it’s fair to you to continue our engagement when I still have those feelings for…Ellie. I’m sorry.’

  He heard Anthea’s sudden intake of breath and he shook his head. ‘You deserve more than I can give you. I’m not comfortable with the way Ellie makes me feel.’

  Anthea had herself back under control. She raised her sculptured brows and met his look. ‘Your honesty is one of the reasons I feel safe to align myself with you. Perhaps you’re being hasty? I’m willing to continue our engagement while you sort yourself out. You’re a man…’ Her shoulders lifted in a tiny shrug. ‘She’s attractive in an earthy way and once you thought you loved her. Maybe you’ll find she isn’t everything you thought she was. She’s different to us. I am what you see and I’m here for you when you realise that.’

  Anthea had missed the point. When Ellie had been gone for ten years Luke had decided that a calm and rational marriage would be good for him. But he could never believe that now. And after kissing Ellie today, he knew she wasn’t immune to him. Trying to make Anthea understand was worse than he’d imagined it could be.

  He reached across the table and put his hand over Anthea’s. ‘You’re more than I deserve but I will never be the same man I was a month ago.’ He smiled wryly. ‘Keep the ring. Make it into earrings or a necklace.’ He stood up. ‘I won’t stay to dinner, if you don’t mind. I need to think.’

  Anthea caught his arm and he stopped. ‘I just hope you don’t find yourself more unhappy with this woman than you were before. She’ll probably leave in a few months and then where will you be?’

  Luke looked down at the woman he’d nearly married and knew without a doubt he had done the right thing in breaking their engagement. ‘Exactly where I deserve to be.’ He leaned over and kissed her cheek. ‘Goodbye, Anthea.’

  * * *

  At eight o’clock that night, Ellie’s doorbell rang. It was Luke.

  She’d had a premonition he would come. Ellie could see his silhouette through the glass in the door and he looked tall and solid and she could still feel the pressure of his lips on hers. She didn’t know whether to open the door or pretend to be in bed, though the latter option was hard to make convincing with the lights still on. But cowardice had never been her style.

  He rang the doorbell again and she knew he wasn’t going to go away. At least Josh was asleep. Ellie was glad of that as she opened the door.

  ‘Hello, Luke.’ His face was unsmiling and she sighed. This wasn’t going to be easy. ‘Come through into the sitting room.’

  The room was furnished with an old club lounge that had come with the house and a couple of small round tables that Ellie had found in a thrift shop. Ellie had draped colourful sarongs over the dull fabric of the lounge and a hand-stitched rag rug lay vibrantly on the floor. Several unframed tropical posters adorned the walls. All easy-to-pack stuff that rolled or folded into her car when she moved on. But the overall look was remarkably bright and homely.

  ‘Most of the furniture came with the house.’ She shrugged. ‘I move too often to collect many things. Too like my mother, I guess.’ She was rambling and she clamped her jaw shut to stop the words.

  Luke walked across to stare at a poster of a sandy cove. It looked a lot like the cove at Bell’s River. He was still coming to grips with the concept that there had been a possibility she could have come back to him five years ago. And all the might-have-beens that would have involved.

  ‘I spoke to my mother again and she flatly denies she told you I was married. She said you must have misunderstood.’

  Ellie shrugged. He didn’t believe her so it wasn’t important. ‘Why aren’t I surprised?’ She looked at him. ‘What do you think, Luke?’

  He ran his fingers through his dark hair. ‘You must have misunderstood her. But a lot has happened in your life in the last five years.’
He looked at two photo frames—one with a photo of Josh and one with a fair-haired man. ‘Tell me more about your husband.’

  Ellie sighed. ‘There’s nothing else to tell. Steve was a gentle guy and my best friend. When I told him you were married…’ she took in his lack of expression and shrugged ‘…Steve said it was fate. That we belonged together and that he’d found out he was sick. Acute lymphocytic leukaemia. He was due to start chemotherapy and if he didn’t have children then, he never would. They didn’t give him much hope and he wanted a child more than anything. So we married and Josh was conceived. It was a tragedy Steve never saw Josh. Josh is very like his father and the light of my life.’

  She met Luke’s eyes. ‘I grew to love Steve and losing him was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to experience. I’m not setting myself up for that risk again.’

  She acknowledged to herself that if she fell in love with Luke she’d never survive losing him.

  Unintentionally, the next thought came out loud. ‘So it’s good that you have Anthea.’

  He looked startled, as well he might.

  Luke tilted his head as if trying to work out her thought processes. ‘Anthea and I have broken our engagement as of tonight.’

  Bully for you, Ellie thought. She was too scared of falling in love with Luke to think that was a good thing. ‘I thought the two of you were well suited.’ What about their boring children? a sarcastic voice in her head whispered. She sat down on the lounge and indicated the chair opposite. She didn’t want to get into a discussion about Anthea or why he’d broken up with her. That was too dangerous. ‘Sit down and let’s talk about Belinda.’

  Luke folded himself into the wing chair and crossed his ankles. ‘I have no intention of talking about Belinda when my head is spinning with the ramifications of a phone call you may have made five years ago. I came to talk about us.’

  ‘There is no us.’ She gave him a level look and the strength he’d glimpsed in her as a teenager had matured into that of a formidable woman. Despite her words, he wanted her even more.

  She leaned back in the chair. ‘What do you want, Luke?’

  ‘I want to apologise for this afternoon.’ His lips twisted wryly. ‘I didn’t think there was any caveman in me but perhaps you bring out the worst in me.’

  Ellie’s laugh was bitter. ‘Sure. Blame me for that, too.’

  He shook his head impatiently. ‘I didn’t come here to fight with you. I wanted to see you in your home setting. I wanted a chance to talk to you without a patient waiting or a baby crying.’ He sat forward in his chair and pinned her with his eyes. ‘I also wanted to see if that crazy attraction that I remember from ten years ago is still as strong as it was then. After today I’m not sure that it isn’t.’

  Her gaze slid away from his and her voice held a tinge of exasperation. ‘We’re not children now, Luke.’

  His smile was gentle. ‘I wasn’t a child then.’

  He watched her soften as the memories returned to both of them. ‘I felt like I was older than you,’ she said.

  ‘They say women mature younger than men. But I never forgot you, Ellie.’ He shook his head as if to further deny he’d forgotten her. ‘Why didn’t you just come back and see me, like you’d promised? We could have talked, got to know each other again. It didn’t occur to me you wouldn’t come.’

  She gave a harsh laugh. ‘I was going to. But we’d been so young when we’d made that silly vow. The older and wiser me decided that it would be safer to phone first rather than turn up and accidentally meet your wife or kids or whoever could have been in your life at that time. When your mother told me you were married I believed her because I half expected it to be true.’

  He shook his head again at the picture she painted. ‘I became caught up in work after I finished med school so I was busy enough, but there was never any other woman. My brother Travis had begun to show signs of wanting to break away from home. But my mother was fighting his independence until he just ran away as soon as he finished high school, and it affected my mother badly. Everything went haywire for a while.

  ‘When the time had passed for you to come back, I realised I should have more actively pursued you, but I’d promised to let you achieve your goals without ties. By the time I realised you mightn’t come back, my mother told me that you’d rung to say you weren’t. So instead I just dived back into the work. That’s when I decided to make a clean break and complete some more training in England.’

  Ellie wished she could have been there for him but maybe it was all for the best. The love she’d had with Steve had been warm and companionable and soothing. It hadn’t invaded her personal space. But she had the suspicion that if she ever let her head go with Luke, she’d have no control.

  Their differences would clash and mesh and explode, and if she lost him, like she’d lost Steve, she’d just fade away and die. Then where would Josh be? She couldn’t survive something of that magnitude. Maybe she was a coward after all. She knew her strengths and this was one weakness she wasn’t going to expose herself to. Josh was the most important person in her life.

  ‘We’re both different people to the people we were ten years ago, Luke. Josh and I are happy as we are. I enjoy working with you, let’s leave it at that. I don’t want a man in my life again.’ She could feel the weak tears threatening and stood up to show him out.

  He had no choice but to stand as well but she wished he hadn’t come up so close to her. ‘I don’t believe that. Or that you don’t feel anything for me now.’

  She edged away from him towards the door. ‘Despite what I said today, I’ll always have a warm place in my heart for the memories of a teenage love, but that window of opportunity has closed and I don’t want to go there any more. I could never be your homebody-doctor’s wife, serving on hospital committees and growing old in Bell’s River as a respectable citizen. And that’s what you want, Luke. I was never that.’

  ‘I disagree. You could be yourself and everyone would love you. I’m not giving up Ellie.’ His voice wasn’t loud but the conviction in it terrified her. He glanced around the room and then back at her waiting to show him out. ‘I’m sorry I came unannounced. Despite everything, it is good to see you, Ellie.’

  She could feel the tears behind her eyes and she turned away to open the front door. ‘It’s good to see you, too, Luke.’

  He kissed her gently on the lips and they both leaned together before she pulled away. ‘Please, go, Luke.’

  He took a step towards the door and then reached back and took her hands in his. ‘Give us a chance, Ellie.’

  She couldn’t do it. ‘I need to think about this,’ she whispered. She held her breath and his lashes came over his eyes and Ellie couldn’t tell what he was thinking.

  His hands tightened painfully for a moment on hers and then he let her fingers slip slowly through his until he wasn’t touching her at all. Ellie felt strangely bereft but she couldn’t say yes to him when she was so frightened.

  ‘How much time—this time?’ His voice was dangerously quiet and Ellie swallowed the tears in her throat.

  She said the first thing that came into her head. ‘Give me until after Belinda’s baby is born.’

  When he said ‘Why then?’, she realised she couldn’t say it was to protect Belinda from his mother. ‘Because I like Belinda.’ Ellie left it at that.

  He nodded and stood up. ‘Within twenty-four hours of my niece or nephew’s birth.’

  This time he did leave and she closed the door after him before he even reached the front gate. She leant her back against it. She’d lied. The magic hadn’t changed—just her own willingness to take a risk.

  * * *

  Tuesday was busy again. Mavis Donahue came in. It was her due date but labour hadn’t started.

  ‘Haven’t you got any hints about getting this labour to start, Ellie?’ Mavis sat ponderously in the chair and her cheeks were rosy with the exertion.

  Ellie smiled at her. ‘Only the usual. Good old-f
ashioned hanky-panky?’

  Mavis sighed.

  ‘I’m sick of it and my husband is exhausted.’

  Ellie let out a peal of laughter and Mavis grinned with her as Ellie sat down beside her.

  ‘What about nipple stimulation?’ Ellie grazed the front of her own shirt as she made a show of brushing her nipples with her fingertips.

  ‘Like I’m going to spend the whole day playing with myself and feeling like a kinky idiot.’ Mavis sighed glumly. ‘So how often are you supposed to do whatever you do anyway?’

  Ellie bit back her smile. ‘OK. I’ll explain it a little more. Stimulation of your nipples causes release of the hormone that makes your uterus contract. So if you were to twiddle your nipples every couple of hours, or even more frequently, for a couple of minutes, the extra hormone released can cause your uterus to contract—more frequently if you are niggling around—or to start contracting if you haven’t had any yet.

  ‘Pregnant ladies go to the toilet frequently, so I’d suggest a couple of minutes of twiddling every time you sit on the toilet. That has the added advantage of no one seeing you and you don’t feel so self-conscious.’

  Mavis nodded unenthusiastically. ‘What about castor oil? I heard that can send you into labour.’

  ‘Can do sometimes,’ Ellie said judiciously, ‘but it’s not very pleasant. There is a case for stimulation of the same nerve that controls your bowel movements and stimulation of your uterus. But, personally speaking, diarrhoea in labour is the pits.’

  Ellie smiled. ‘I’ve heard people say Chinese food can send you into labour. I don’t believe it—but it’s always nice to not have to cook.’

  ‘I want something that would really work,’ Mavis said. ‘What about that gel they talk about for inducing labour?’

  Ellie shook her head. ‘You’re not a preferred candidate with a history of a previous Caesarean. Rarely, the gel can make your uterus over-stimulated and Luke may not want to take that risk with a scarred uterus. You want my advice?’ Mavis nodded. ‘Go for a walk.’