by Unknown
How could he do that? Where did he start? There was no common ground. He’d done all he could, asking her to stay in New York, yet she’d rejected it out of hand.
Maybe if he offered to knock a few walls down, share a bedroom...
Part of him wanted to. Part of him thought waking up next to this amazing woman for the rest of his life would be...
Terrifying. He’d hurt her.
Other people had successful marriages. He’d seen them; of course he had. Couples holding hands in public. Old men and women sitting peacefully at bus stations, their body language testament to a long life together.
He’d never trusted it.
Jake and his mother had learned to act to protect themselves, but he didn’t have it—their ability to contain themselves while preserving an outer shell. That was why Jake had launched himself into his disastrous marriage while Ben knew he could do no such thing.
But he wanted Mary.
She was sleeping just through the door. The woman he wanted...
The fire was dying in the grate. Kath had set it so they’d just had to put a match to it as soon as they’d walked in. There was a small pile of chopped wood on the veranda and a mountain of logs out the back.
That was what he could do for her, he thought, and the idea gave him some peace. He’d spend another day here. He’d chop enough wood to last her through the winter.
Through her pregnancy?
He’d come back, he thought, when the baby arrived.
Before the baby came?
Okay, yes, because she couldn’t have his baby alone.
She wanted to be alone.
There were too many thoughts playing in his head. He lay and watched the dying embers of the fire and thought about courage. He thought about one person’s capacity to hurt another. He thought about independence.
‘I’m better off getting out of her life now,’ he told the darkness. ‘I’ll do what I can, but it has to be from a distance.’
* * *
The phone rang at five minutes past seven. Ben was already out on the veranda, checking out the wood situation.
Mary emerged in her nightie. She still looked pale, he thought. How long did morning sickness last? Had she been ill in the night?
‘You’re still here,’ she said, and she sounded almost surprised.
‘I’m staying for one more day,’ he growled. ‘I’ll leave you with enough wood to keep you going through the pregnancy.’
‘You don’t need—’
‘I do. Grant me that much, Mary.’
She looked at him for a long moment and then nodded. ‘Thank you. But I need to go to work.’
‘Already?’
‘I’m on call, starting today. I took as much leave as I had, at Hideaway and then going to the States. I’m on call as of now and the phone’s been switched through. Ross Scythe lives on the ridge with his wife, Ethel. Ross’s had a fall but he’s refusing to let Ethel call an ambulance. I need to go.’
He looked at her. She looked at her nightie.
She smiled but her smile was a bit wonky. She must still be feeling ill.
‘I’ll get dressed first,’ she conceded.
‘Very professional. And breakfast?’
‘You’re always pushing toast at me. I’ll eat on the run. But, Ben, it means you’ll be here by yourself.’
‘I’m fine by myself.’
‘Of course you are.’ Her face changed, but before he could react she’d headed inside to get ready.
* * *
Only then her car wouldn’t start. Flat battery.
‘I use the district nursing car,’ she said, frustrated. ‘But I need to get down to the hospital to collect it.’
‘We could use jump leads to start it. Do you have jump leads?’
‘No,’ she said crossly, and kicked a tyre in frustration. She looked cute, Ben thought. She was in her district nursing uniform, plain green pants and white blouse with nursing insignia on the breast. Her cropped curls were damp from her shower, framing her face beautifully.
If he lived in Taikohe he’d like a district nurse who looked like this, he thought. The way she looked, she was guaranteed to make a man feel better.
She was still pale.
‘I’ll drive you,’ he said.
She looked worried, glancing at her watch. ‘Thanks, but, Ben, timewise...I should get you to take me into town so I can get the work car, but Ross has been on the floor for half an hour already. His place is only a mile further out. Do you think you could drive me there first?’
* * *
So he drove her to see her patient. He sat in the car while she went inside. Then she called him.
‘I think Ross has just twisted his knee,’ she said. ‘It might be broken but I doubt it, and he has someone coming to talk to him this morning about buying cows. Very important. I’ll organise the ambulance to pick him up and take him down to the hospital for X-rays afterwards but meanwhile could you give me a hand to lift him off the floor?’
‘You’re not lifting anything,’ he said, startled, and she gave him an exasperated stare.
‘Ben, I know what I can and can’t do and that’s why I’m asking you for help now. It’s one of the reasons I came to New York to tell you about the baby. I know when I need to share. Share or not, Ben Logan? Lift.’
* * *
So he helped Mary get the elderly farmer into a fireside chair and followed instructions while Mary got him dressed in respectable, farmer-type clothes.
‘So I can greet this guy looking like I know how to cut a deal. If he thinks I’m a sook he’ll lower his price,’ Ross told them, while his wife looked worried.
‘Heaven help anyone who thinks you’re a sook,’ Mary retorted. ‘Take the painkillers and the ambulance will be here in three hours. If you’re not in X-Ray by lunchtime I’ll be out here to get you, even if it means both of us walking.’
‘You’re a hard woman,’ Ross said, but he was smiling. He glanced at Ben. ‘So you’re her bloke?’
‘Um...’
‘Ben’s the guy I pulled out of the water during the cyclone,’ Mary said. ‘He’s the father of my baby.’
And there it was again, his business, out in the open for everyone to inspect.
She had no right...
Except she did have the right, he thought. She was pregnant. He was the father. Why not say it so the district wouldn’t spend the next few months playing guessing games?
‘Oh, my dear,’ Ethel breathed. She fixed Ben with a look that pierced. ‘So you’ll marry her?’
‘It doesn’t work like that these days,’ Mary said, packing her bag with brisk efficiency. ‘They’ve banned shotguns.’
‘I asked her,’ Ben said, thinking if she was going to be honest, he could be, too. ‘She’s refused.’
‘He looks okay to me,’ Ethel said. ‘What’s wrong with him?’
‘Ethel, why did you marry Ross?’ Mary demanded, closing her bag with a loud snap.
‘I can’t remember.’ And then Ethel gave a faint smile and turned her attention to a framed photo on the mantel of a young Ethel and Ross on their wedding day. ‘Okay, I thought he was lovely,’ she conceded. ‘I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him. No one told me how pig-headed he’d be. We went into our wedding in a cloud of soap bubbles.’
‘Do you ever regret it?’ Mary asked bluntly, and Ethel coloured. She looked down at Ross and coloured some more.
‘I guess not,’ she conceded at last. ‘He’s stubborn and he drives me nuts and dints are everywhere in the fairy-tale image, but enough of the soap bubbles remain.’
‘Well, that’s why I’m not marrying,’ Mary told her. ‘I know about the dints, I know about stubborn and I know about independent. My fa
ther turned his back on me and it broke my heart. Loving’s a huge risk and I’m not being offered one single soap bubble to make up for it.’
* * *
‘What did that mean?’ Back in the car they were headed into town so she could get her car and start her day’s work properly.
‘What?’
‘Soap bubbles.’
‘Fantasy,’ she said crisply. ‘Little girl’s dreams. Two hearts become one. Romantic fluff.’
‘Is that what you want from me?’
‘I don’t want anything from you. I told you that. You’ve made me an offer and I’ve refused. I’m taking my dreams elsewhere.’
‘So you’d like romantic fantasy from someone else?’
‘If a hero appears on my horizon maybe I’m available, but he’d have to be something to be worth the risk.’ She said it lightly but he sensed a faint note of longing behind the words. Had he imagined it? Did this fiercely independent woman long for romance with all the trappings?
If he had been Jake, he could have supplied it, he thought.
He wasn’t play-acting. Life was real. Life was for hold ing yourself together so you didn’t hurt anyone else.
He couldn’t supply anything.
* * *
‘Is it okay if I stay tonight?’ he asked as he dropped her off at work.
‘Fine by me,’ she managed, although it wasn’t. The sooner this man got out of her life, the sooner she might find some sort of equilibrium. Maybe.
‘Jake’s on location today. He won’t be back until tomorrow so I’ve set the flight back a day.’
That caught her. ‘You’re seeing Jake only once before you leave? You’ve come halfway round the world to see him for less than a day?’
‘That’s like someone I know coming from half a world away to tell me something she might have told me on the phone.’
He was teasing, but she wasn’t to be deflected. ‘I thought you and Jake were close.’
‘Not close.’ His voice grew crisp. ‘We were dependent on each other when we were kids. We were stupid together. Hopefully we’re past that now.’
‘Right.’ Work was waiting. She knew there’d be a full list of patients. They’d had no one to replace her while she was away and the work would have banked up. She had to go.
But Ben was sitting right next to her.
It didn’t matter, she told herself. He was a loner. He didn’t need her company and she didn’t need his.
But she didn’t want to leave.
‘I’ll bring home fish and chips for dinner,’ she told him.
‘I’ll do dinner.’
‘There’s no catering in Taikohe.’
‘What an insult,’ he said, and grinned. ‘Go to work and leave the domestic stuff to me. I can manage.’
I bet you can, she thought as she headed inside. It nearly killed her not to turn and watch his car disappear. But managing—alone—that was what Ben Logan was all about.
* * *
Work engulfed her. It was after six before she finally finished. Doreen, Taikohe’s medical administrator, dropped her off at the cottage with a cheery offer to pick her up the next day and give her a loan to cover the cost of a new car battery.
She accepted the first offer and refused the second. She had enough funds to cover a battery.
Weariness engulfed her as she climbed from the car and headed for the house, a wash of grey fatigue. She’d been feeling nauseous all day. Now, suddenly, she wanted to sit on the front step, put her head in her hands and sleep.
Because Ben was leaving tomorrow?
Because she was facing having Ben’s baby alone?
The thought of a long pregnancy with no one beside her was suddenly overwhelming.
She wanted her mother.
She wanted...Ben?
‘Because you’re pregnant and your hormones are all over the place,’ she told herself crossly. ‘Get over it. Women have managed on their own for generations. You don’t need a male, especially a money-oriented, risk-taking loner like Ben Logan.’
Heinz had come tearing around from the back of the house to greet her. The sound of wood-chopping was echoing over the yard. Ben.
For some reason she didn’t want to face him.
Wimp. He’d be gone tomorrow. She could do this.
She rounded the corner of the house to find a mountain of chopped wood stacked against the shed. Ben had his back to her, and the sight made her forget about weariness, forget about nausea. He was wearing boots and jeans and nothing else.
A sheen of sweat covered his skin. The sun was low in the sky, glinting on his broad, muscled back. His hair was ruffled and his boots were grubby.
He had a tattoo. She hadn’t noticed it before but a Chinese symbol was etched beneath his armpit.
She had an almost irresistible urge to walk forward and touch it. Somehow she didn’t, but it was close.
He looked a world away from the self-contained financier she knew he was. For just a moment she let herself imagine how it could be if he was here, always. A man to come home to.
Like ‘the little wife.’ A man, ready with his slippers and pipe.
She smiled but the smile was self-mocking.
But still she looked, soaking in the sound and sight of him. This would have to last her forever.
Finally, Heinz, obviously impatient that she wasn’t joining him with his new best friend, rushed back to her and barked, and Ben turned and saw her.
He smiled, and with that smile she knew she was in real trouble. This man did things to her heart that she didn’t know how to handle.
He was the father of her baby and she loved it that she’d have a part of him forever. But she wanted more.
So go back to New York with him. Accept his offer.
But that was the way of isolation, and she was sensible enough to know it. Romantic fantasy had to be weighed against reality.
Reality was here, now, where Ben was smiling at her.
‘This’ll keep me going for the millennium,’ she managed, motioning to the wood. ‘Thank you.’
‘It’s the least I could do. I’ve also bought you a new battery.’
‘I... Thank you. How much—?’
‘Don’t be daft. Oh, and I got you a refund on your return fare. I had my secretary cancel your return booking before we left so you’ll get a refund.’
Whoa...
‘And I’ll transfer a set amount to your bank account each month,’ he said. He hadn’t moved; he was standing amid chopped wood, naked from the waist up, holding his axe, discussing money like it was nothing. ‘As the mother of my baby, outside work should be optional.’
‘No!’
He didn’t answer. One eyebrow hiked, as he stood and waited for her to explain.
As the mother of my baby, outside work should be optional...
What was there in that to make her cringe? What was there to make her back away?
‘Work isn’t optional,’ she told him, and she knew as she said it that she was speaking the truth. Money or not. ‘I need...to be needed.’
‘Our baby will need you.’
‘It’s not enough.’
‘Mary...’
‘You don’t get it,’ she said. ‘You can’t. I know that. But thank you for your offer; it’s wonderful and generous and I should say yes. But I can’t. If you’ll set up a trust fund so I can use it for our baby’s expenses, education, that sort of thing, I’d appreciate it enormously.’
She summoned a grin, and heaven only knew the strength it took. ‘I might even use it to buy a fancy pram. But you’ll be paying for your child, Ben, not for me. You and I came together in a storm but that’s all it was. A storm. A flash of blood to the head and that was it.’
/> ‘You know there’s more to it than that.’
‘I might know it,’ she said. ‘But that doesn’t mean I intend being Ben Logan’s kept woman, wife or not. Your money’s between you and our child.’ She paused and looked at his wood pile. It was...astonishing. ‘But thank you for the wood.’ She hesitated, searching for distraction. ‘Um...what’s the tattoo?’
‘It’s the symbol for twins,’ he told her. ‘Jake has one, too. Joined at the breastbone.’
‘Are you, though?’ She found the idea strangely troubling. This man was so alone. He was standing in the setting sun, facing her, solitary, tough and isolated. For some reason his isolation was doing something to her heart.
There was nothing she could do about it, though. But maybe Jake... ‘How often do you see him?’ she asked.
‘Often enough,’ he said, and there was that in his face that told her not to go there.
But she did. Of course she did.
‘Ben, this tension between you? Can I help fix it?’
‘It’s nothing I can’t handle.’ He slammed his axe into the log he’d been chopping and she knew there was no way he’d share.
This man never shared. Not emotionally. She’d figured that about him now.
Ben Logan, solitary man.
Beautiful man.
‘There’s lasagne in the oven,’ he told her, and she forced herself to stop looking at his body, stop worrying about the unknown Jake, stop feeling sorry for Ben who stood alone because he’d made that choice.
‘Kath brought it over?’
‘I made it myself!’
‘You’re kidding me.’
‘You don’t go straight from rookie to commando in the army,’ he said, and somehow his smile reappeared. ‘I was appalled to learn there were halfway steps. I was assigned six months’ mess duty when I first enlisted. I can now feed battalions.’
‘So how much lasagne are we talking?’ she asked cautiously, and he grinned.
‘Maybe not enough to feed a battalion but I have filled the freezer. I do a mean chicken pie, too. I’ve made you six.’
‘Wow.’ She was trying desperately to sound flippant. Inside she was choking. ‘Thank...thank you. You want to come and eat? I seem to have enough wood for a battalion as well.’
