‘Not while Jack’s being so good.’ Abbey smiled sweetly and only she knew the effort her nonchalance cost her. ‘I’m on my thirteenth cow. Why don’t you go in and make us a cup of tea while you wait for me?’
Ryan almost ground his teeth. ‘Abbey, I want to speak to you. Damn it, Abbey, I want to marry you.’
Abbey looked over to Ryan for a long, long moment. Then she sighed, her nonchalance slipping. ‘You know, Ryan, I’m almost sure you don’t.’ She rose, tipped her bucket of milk into the waiting vat and went to bring in another cow.
Ryan waited.
Silence.
Abbey roped her next cow into the bail and sighed.
‘Ryan, this is crazy,’ she told him. ‘Go inside and put the kettle on and I’ll be with you in fifteen minutes.’
And she turned her back on him and started milking her fourteenth cow.
Abbey had full need of those fifteen minutes. Her head was spinning.
She’d managed to keep her voice calm, she told herself proudly, but it had taken a Herculean effort. To keep calm when Ryan had asked a question like that…
‘I want you,’ he’d said.
Well, that much she’d known already. Last night Ryan had wanted Abbey and Abbey had wanted him. Their reaction to each other on the beach had been pure animal longing.
That’s what it was. Lust. Nothing more, she told herself flatly. Nothing.
But Ryan must have thought it more than that. Today he’d sent Felicity away.
Poor Felicity.
Abbey looked over to where Jack was squeezing mud through his fingers. He was totally engrossed in the rich black mire, sliming through onto his bare knees. Abbey had provided him with a whole bucket of mud and it promised to keep him good for another hour or more. He was dressed only in a nappy and he was filthy.
One of the cows who’d already been milked had doubled back to watch the little boy. The cow hung over Jack’s play-pen, her kindly bovine face watching Jack with interest.
Jack reached up and put one grimy finger on her nose-and shouted with laughter at the black splodge on her brown velvety face.
This place-this lifestyle-was about as far from New York as life could possibly get.
But Ryan had just asked her to marry him.
Good grief! Abbey’s overwhelming sensation was shock. Sure, Ryan had kissed her last night. Sure, she was head over heels in love with the man. But… marriage?
Marriage to Ryan was so far out of the realm of possibility that Abbey had never dreamed of it. Or maybe she had dreamed, but in the way someone in New York would fantasise about life in a tropical paradise. A dream. Nothing more.
Marriage to Ryan meant life as a New York consultant’s wife. Life away from here.
No and no and no.
But… marriage to Ryan…
To be with Ryan was all she wanted, Abbey told herself bleakly. Marriage to Ryan was the fitting together of two halves of a whole. But…
No way! There was no way in the wide world she could marry Ryan. She wasn’t just Abbey Wittner any longer. She was Janet’s daughter-in-law and Jack’s mother, and also Sapphire Cove’s doctor. A lone and independent Abbey might marry Ryan and adjust to life at his side on the other side of the world. But Jack’s mum couldn’t. Janet’s daughter-in-law couldn’t. John’s widow, who still had debts to pay, couldn’t.
Sapphire Cove’s only doctor couldn’t
So Abbey blinked back tears of depression-and kept right on milking. Damn Ryan Henry. Why did he have to come back here in the first place?
‘Abbey, you must marry me.’
Abbey was hardly through the kitchen door before Ryan threw his line at her.
Abbey blanched.
Damn. Ryan bit his tongue in disgust as he saw her recoil. This wasn’t Ryan at his persuasive best. He was way out of line here-thrown right off balance. It seemed there was only one thought in his head.
Marriage to Abbey…
After his visit to the turtle eggs he’d gone back to Felicity, to find her pacing his father’s farmhouse.
‘Where the hell have you been?’
When he hadn’t answered she’d supplied the answer for him.
‘You’ve been with that girl, haven’t you?’
‘No, I-’
He’d got no further. Felicity had picked up his lap-top computer-his, mind, not her precious machine-and had hurled it straight at him. It had missed and slammed into the wall.
And had smashed.
‘You’ve wasted my time, Ryan Henry,’ she snarled. ‘I ought to sue you. Two damned weeks I’ve spent kicking my heels…’
‘Hey, half that time was spent in Hawaii.’
‘I could have stayed in Hawaii. Do you know how many meetings I’ve missed? All because of you.’
‘Felicity…’
‘Even if you weren’t with that girl, I’m still sick of it,’ she snapped. ‘I’ve been so patient I can’t believe it. I’ve sat here and waited while you ran round after your goddammed father and I haven’t said a word while you operated in this God-forsaken hospital and worried about that girl’s damned cows…
‘And then I rang the hospital, looking for you, and got someone called Ted who sounds like a morgue attendant and he said maybe you’d gone out and killed yourself on the road because it seemed to be in fashion to knock yourself off. And then he changed his mind and said it was more likely you were out making love to Abbey Wittner. And he even said that it was a shame if you weren’t feeling suicidal because he needs a good death to keep up the occupancy rate of his damned morgue…’
She stopped, exasperated, as Ryan’s mouth twitched into a smile. ‘No. Don’t you dare laugh, Ryan. I’ve had enough. Whether you were with her or not, I don’t care. I’m not staying. This whole place is crazy and if I stay one minute longer it’ll infect me.’ She paused for breath.
‘Ryan, there’s an urgent meeting tomorrow afternoon in New York. They’ve just e-mailed me and I must be there.’ She hesitated for a whole ten seconds-and then hauled the diamond from her left hand. ‘I’m going, but I don’t think you want me to take this with me-do you Ryan?’
‘Felicity…’
‘I don’t want to take it,’ she confided, softening a little and pressing it into his hand. ‘Ryan, I decided to marry you because you knew where you were going in life. Now… well, you’re vacillating, and I can’t stand it.’ She reached out and kissed his forehead. ‘Goodbye, Ryan.’ Then she stared down at his smashed computer and it was her turn to smile. ‘And I hope I crashed your hard disk.’
That was the end of Felicity.
And all Ryan could think of as he watched her pack and leave was that now he was free to talk to Abbey.
And now, here was Abbey, standing at the kitchen door in filthy overalls and gum boots and her toddler in her arms dripping mud.
His one thought kept echoing. ‘Abbey, you must marry me.’
Abbey didn’t answer. She simply held Jack out to him, and before he knew it Ryan had a splodge of muddy baby in his arms.
‘You bath him while I take a shower and then I’ll make us both an omelette,’ she said.
‘Abbey…’
‘I refuse to cope with perfectly ridiculous requests on an empty stomach.’
‘was not a perfectly ridiculous request.’
‘Wash my son and then we’ll talk about it.’
Washing Jack was not as easy as it looked. In fact, it took three rinses before the water ran clean. Jack thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience. The only part he didn’t enjoy was getting dressed again. Ryan finally gave up and came out into the kitchen, carrying a naked toddler in one arm and a nappy in the other.
‘OK. You win. I need a mother here.’
Abbey was clean herself. There was a cold shower on the back verandah. She’d thrown herself under it in the hope it might shake some sense into her head, and then hauled on jeans and a T-shirt.
She should be cool. Instead, she was as hot and flustered as sh
e’d ever been in her life.
Keep it light, Abbey told herself. Keep it… keep it away from heartbreak.
‘You mean you can cope with the intricacies of microsurgery but not a piece of flannel?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Wuss!’
It was so hard to keep her voice light.
She had the makings of omelette on the table. Now she took her naked son from Ryan, and pointed to the eggs.
‘OK, if you can’t do nappies you’re on omelette duty.’
Ryan blinked.
‘Hell, Abbey, I can’t cook.’
‘Why not?’
‘I’ve never learned. I have a housekeeper.’
‘A housekeeper? Back in New York?’
‘Well, yes…’
‘And if I married you would I have a housekeeper?’ Abbey asked carefully.
‘I guess… Yeah, of course you would. Mrs O’Hara could look after Jack…’
‘While I went out to work?’
‘Abbey, I don’t know about registration in the States,’ Ryan admitted. ‘It’s been easier for me here because I have Australian citizenship. I’ll have to look into whether you need to retrain or not. Registration could take some time.’ He spread his hands. ‘But, hell, Abbey, you’ve worked so hard all your life… Why don’t you marry me and let me take care of you for a while?’
‘I wouldn’t know how to,’ Abbey confessed. ‘Ryan, just hold on here.’ She hugged her small naked son against her, as if he gave her strength. ‘This morning you were engaged to Felicity. Right?’
‘Right, but-’
‘But you’re not engaged to her now?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because we don’t love one another.’ Ryan wanted to lunge over and take Abbey in his arms. Make her feel like he was feeling. Desperate to have her close. But it was a bit hard to lunge at a woman with a naked baby hugged to her breast.
Abbey closed her eyes. ‘You decided that today, then? That you don’t love Felicity? Just like that?’
‘Abbey, Felicity and I have never loved each other,’ Ryan said slowly, pushing back the urge to lunge. ‘Admired and respected each other-yes. Thought we were compatible-yes. I thought I’d be proud to call Felicity my wife and she felt the same about me. But marriage to each other was something that suited us. It would have made no demands on our lifestyles. It would have fitted in.’
‘And now…’
‘I’ve discovered that it’s not enough,’ Ryan said simply. ’I want you.’
‘I see.’
Silence.
Abbey turned away to a couch by the stove, bent over and started putting a nappy on her son. Ryan watched in silence as Jack submitted to his nappy with no trouble at all.
Finally respectable, Jack was set on his feet to toddle out to the verandah. The sun was setting in the west over the mountains. The hens were starting to roost and Jack headed off toward the henhouses to watch his friends put themselves to bed.
As if Ryan wasn’t there, Abbey wandered out to watch, her idea of cooking omelettes forgotten. Ryan followed.
‘Marriage…’ Abbey whispered. She put her hands on the weathered verandah rail and looked out over her run-down farm. ‘You really want to marry me?’
‘I do.’ Ryan came up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders. Touching her felt so good. So right. He wanted to swing her around and pull her into his arms but he knew instinctively that she would resist. She wasn’t ready.
Her body was tense beneath his hands.
‘Ryan, you don’t want to stay here,’ she whispered.
‘No. Of course not.’ Ryan’s grip tightened. ‘My work’s important. Hell, Abbey, I make more in a week in New York than I think you make in a year. We can both be comfortable on my income. Jack can go to any school he wants. He can have everything. We can have more children… ’ He did turn her then so she was facing him against the setting sun.
‘Abbey, I love you,’ he said softly, and he tilted her chin so she was forced to look up at him. ‘I think I always have. I didn’t want to leave when I was fifteen, and I should have come back before this. I never realised I’d left something so precious behind.’
‘And now you’ve realised you’ll pick it up and take it away… take me back to New York?’
‘If you’ll come.’ He stooped to kiss her but Abbey pulled back, her eyes searching his in the soft twilight.
‘Ryan, no…’ She fended him off, pushing him away with her hands, and the feel of his heartbeat under her palms made her want to cry. What she had to say was so hard.
That she wasn’t just Abbey. She was Jack’s mum. Janet’s daughter-in-law. Sapphire Cove’s doctor.
‘Ryan, what you said about you and Felicity, fitting into each other’s lifestyles-it may not be the most important thing about a marriage but it’s important, all the same.’
‘You’d fit.’ He took her waist and pulled her into his arms but she still resisted. ‘Believe me, Abbey, you’d fit.’
‘Maybe,’ she whispered. ‘Maybe I’d fit into your lifestyle. But maybe I wouldn’t be happy, fitting into your lifestyle. And I can’t see you fitting into mine.’
‘Abbey…’ Ryan looked down into her troubled eyes. ‘Hell, sweetheart…’ He lifted a hand from her waist and gestured around him. ‘You can’t live like this for the rest of your life. In debt, and up to your ears in work.’
‘No. But I can’t live like you want me to either,’ she said sadly. ‘In wealth and up to my ears in idleness.’
‘Abbey, I want to look after you.’
‘Yeah, well, I’m not ten years old now, Ryan Henry,’ she snapped, and suddenly hauled herself back from him. He was being obtuse here. Thick! ‘I’m twenty-eight years old and I’m a doctor and… I know it sounds pious, Ryan, but here people need me. Jack needs me. Janet and Sam need me. Sapphire Cove needs me. I’m not going to walk away. And I think… ’
She took a deep breath and desolation welled up all around her. ‘I think Jack needs to grow up here. His grandma’s here. There are people here who loved his daddy. If I took him away it’d be like cutting him off from his father’s memory for ever. And I can’t do that.’
‘Abbey…’
‘Please, Ryan…’ Her voice was desolate. ‘Don’t. All I want to do is come with you.’ She looked up at him, her eyes bright with tears. ‘I love you, Ryan Henry,’ she admitted. ‘I want you more than anything in the world. But… but, Ryan, I’ve only just found my turtle. I have to stay.’
He did lunge then. The sight of her… small and defenceless and desolate, standing there in her bare feet on floorboards that threatened to rot away underneath her. To leave her…
Before she could protest he gathered her into his arms and he held her close, moulding her body to his. He kissed the top of her head and she buried her face in his chest to stop him kissing her anywhere else.
‘Ryan, don’t… Please… ’
‘Abbey, I must. This is nonsense. We can take Janet with us. You’ll have Janet and Jack. And we’ll come back. I promise. We’ll return for a month every year so Jack can learn to love this place and I can spend time with my father.’
Ryan’s hands caressed the small of her back and he pressed her to him with such tenderness that Abbey almost said yes.
It would be so easy. All her problems solved by uttering one word.
She couldn’t say it.
She stood with her face pressed against the soft fabric of Ryan’s shirt and she felt his heart beating against hers. This was her home. This was right.
But nothing else was.
New York. Housekeepers. Luxury.
The little hospital here would close without a permanent doctor. Sam would break his heart. Janet would refuse to come and would be alone.
And Jack would have to wear shoes and not play in mud, and when he grew up a little he wouldn’t be able to search for turtles.
Turtles.
In a little wh
ile the turtles, buried safe under the sand, would hatch and make their way down to the sea. Abbey knew that the whole town would turn out to watch. She’d take Jack to see and then, maybe then, the hard work and the poverty would be paid for.
Ryan said he earned more in a week than she did in a year. Maybe. But her payment was something you couldn’t measure in dollars.
Living in Sapphire Cove was a heritage for her son. Living here was companionship for Sam’s and Janet’s old age.
And it was turtles.
‘I can’t marry you, Ryan Henry,’ Abbey said sadly, and her voice was so muffled against his chest that he had to bend his head to hear. ‘I can’t marry you because you don’t have turtles in New York.’
And it was a measure of Ryan’s love for her that he knew exactly what she meant
And he knew he couldn’t make her change her mind.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
‘YOU love him.’
Janet was standing beside her bed, leaning heavily on her walking-frame. A week post-op, she was recovering brilliantly. Janet thought rehabilitation hospitals were for wimps-definitely not for the likes of Janet Wittner-so rehabilitation had to come to her. Ryan had organised a walking race-two waist-high bars about five yards long and a couple of feet apart-to be installed in the hospital corridor for her to practise her walking.
Abbey intended to supervise her practice. Now Janet took three halting steps towards her race, supported with her walking frame, and then she paused and turned back to where Abbey was standing by her bed.
Janet’s eyes were troubled.
‘Don’t think I can’t see what’s eating you, girl,’ she said gently. ‘Every day you’ve been coming here the shadows under your eyes have been growing. With that nice Dr Pryor helping out at the hospital and Ryan Henry putting his oar in as well, you’re more rested than you’ve been for years. But still the shadows… ’
‘I’ve been worried about you,’ Abbey told her, a touch of defiance in her voice, and Janet snorted.
‘Pull the other leg, Abbey. The new hip your Ryan’s given me is working almost as well as the old one already. In a couple of weeks I’ll be as good as new. Better.’ And then Janet frowned. ‘You’re not worried about me in other ways, I hope? You’re not worried about me being on my own if you marry your Ryan?’
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