The Australian's Proposal (Mills & Boon By Request): The Doctor's Marriage Wish / The Playboy Doctor's Proposal / The Nurse He's Been Waiting For

by Meredith Webber

  Harry returned as she tucked a towel around the pair of them. He was carrying one of the bedcovers he’d found earlier, a pillow and a couple of blankets.

  ‘I’m going to put these in the bath, Karen, then I want you and the baby to get in there. We’ll put the mattress over the top to keep you both safe from falling debris. You’ll still be able to breathe and it’s not heavy, so if you feel claustrophobic you can lift it up a bit.’

  Karen and Grace both stared at him, Karen finding her voice first.

  ‘In the bath?’

  Harry, who was making a nest of the blankets and bedcover, nodded.

  ‘It’s an old cast-iron bath—far too heavy to move even in a cyclone. Its high sides will protect you both and support the mattress. I wouldn’t do it but the house has already lost a bit of roof and the walls are moving.’

  Karen stopped arguing, handing the baby to Harry to hold while she stood up and clambered into the bath. Grace helped her, leaning over to make sure she was comfortable. She turned to Harry to take the baby and the look of pain and despair on his face made her breath catch in her lungs.

  ‘I’ll give him to Karen,’ Grace said gently, moving closer so she could take the little bundle. Harry’s eyes lifted from the baby to settle on Grace’s face, but she knew he wasn’t seeing her—wasn’t seeing anything in the present.

  Had there been a baby? she wondered as he stepped forward and leant over, very gently settling the baby in his mother’s arms.

  Then he straightened up and strode out of the room, returning seconds later with a light blanket, which he tucked around the pair of them.

  Karen smiled at him then tucked the baby against her breast, murmuring reassuringly to the little boy, although Grace knew the young woman must be terrified herself.

  ‘Here,’ Grace said, fishing in her pocket for the bottle of water and a couple of health bars. ‘Something to eat and drink while Willie blows over.’

  Karen smiled and took the offerings, setting them down on her stomach, but her attention was all on the baby at her breast.

  With Grace’s help Harry lifted the mattress onto the top of the bath, leaving a little space where Karen’s head was so she could see out.

  ‘Put your hand up and move the mattress so I know you can,’ he said, and Karen moved the mattress first further back then up again so only the tiny space was visible.

  ‘You OK?’ Grace asked, sliding her fingers into the space and touching Karen’s fingers.

  ‘I think so,’ the young woman whispered, her voice choked with fear.

  ‘We’ll just be next door, under Daisy’s bed,’ Harry told her, then he put his arm around Grace’s shoulders and drew her out of the room.

  ‘I hate leaving her like that. Surely we should all be together,’ Grace said, looking back over her shoulder at the mattress-covered bath.

  ‘Better not to be,’ Harry said, and Grace shivered as she worked out the implications of that statement.

  Daisy met them as they entered her bedroom, and handed Grace the cellphone.

  ‘Give it to Karen. And this torch. Tell her about pressing 8 to talk to Harry. It might make her feel less lonely.’

  Grace turned, but Harry stopped her, taking both the cellphone and the torch.

  ‘You help Daisy down onto the floor. If she lies on the mat I can pull her under the bed if we need the extra protection. And turn off your radio. I’m turning mine off as well. There’s nothing anyone can do out there, so we might as well save batteries.’

  He walked away, leaving Grace to put a pillow on the mat, then help the frail old woman down onto the floor.

  ‘Cover Bill so things don’t fall on him,’ she whispered to Grace, and Grace did as she asked, drawing the bedcover over the peaceful face of the man on the bed. Then she sat on the floor and held Mrs Aldrich’s hand while outside the house the world went mad.

  ‘We’re going under the bed,’ Harry announced, returning with the second mattress from the spare bedroom. ‘I’m putting this on top as extra padding.’

  He arranged the mattress so it rested from the bed to the floor, making a makeshift tent, then pulled the mat to slide Mrs Aldrich under the big bed.

  ‘Your turn,’ he said to Grace, who slid beneath the bed, leaving room for Harry between herself and the older woman.

  Harry eased himself into the small space, wondering what on earth he was doing there when he could be in a nice safe police station or civic centre hall.

  That it had to do with Grace he had no doubt, but he couldn’t think about it right now. Right now he had to get these women—and the baby—through the cyclone.

  He put his arm protectively around Daisy, but she shrugged him off.

  ‘For shame, Harry Blake, and with Bill in the room. If you want to cuddle someone, cuddle Grace. She looks as if she could do with an arm around her, and you certainly need a bit of loving.’

  Mrs Aldrich’s voice was loud enough for Harry to hear above the roar of the approaching force, but would Grace have heard?

  And if she had and he didn’t put his arm around her, would she think—?

  He had no idea what she’d think. Somehow this wild, erratic force of nature had blown the two of them into totally new territory.

  Territory where he did need a bit of loving?

  Surely not.

  But just in case Grace had heard—or maybe just in case he did need loving—he turned so he could put his arm around Grace, and when she didn’t object he drew her closer, tucking her body against his and once again feeling her curls feathering the skin beneath his chin.

  ‘Cuddling me, Harry?’ she said, her light, teasing voice defeating the noise outside because her lips were so close to his ear. ‘Aren’t you afraid? I mean, if a shuffling dance provoked the deadly physical attraction, what might a cyclone cuddle do?’

  She was making fun of him, but still it hurt, and somehow, because this was Grace and maybe because Bill and Daisy had loved one another for seventy years or maybe even because within minutes they could all be dead, he started telling her.

  ‘We’d known each other for ever, Nikki and I, our parents friends enough for me to call hers Aunt and Uncle. She left town to go to university in Townsville while I went to Brisbane for my training. Then, about three and a half years ago, her parents were killed in a car accident. She came home to see to everything, I helped her—well, my parents arranged everything for her, but I was there for comfort.’

  Grace felt his arms tighten around her, and kept as still as she could. She wasn’t sure if she really wanted to hear about him loving Nikki, but listening to Harry was definitely better than listening to the raging fury of the cyclone and wondering if any of them would survive.

  And maybe he needed the catharsis …

  ‘Comfort is physical, as you know, and suddenly we both felt the attraction that being close had stirred. Wild attraction, heightened most probably on Nikki’s side by grief.’

  He paused then added in an undertone, ‘I didn’t have that excuse.

  ‘We thought it love, Grace, and married, caught in a whirl of physical delight that left no room for plans or practicality, then, as suddenly as it had come, it seemed to leave. Not the physical attraction—that was always there—but when we weren’t in bed there was—I can only describe it as an emptiness. Nikki was still grieving for her parents and she also missed her job, while I spent more time than was necessary at mine.’

  Grace turned in his arms so she could hold him. She told herself it was because the noise of the cyclone was as loud as an express train roaring through a tunnel, but really it was so she could rub her hands across his back, offering silent sympathy he might or might not want.

  Her heart ached for him—for the pain she heard in his voice and in the silence that now lay between them. But she couldn’t prompt him, knowing he had to get through this story his own way.

  ‘We didn’t talk about it—in fact, I didn’t know if Nikki felt it—but I was gutted, Grace, to th
ink I’d mucked up so badly. Then I thought about it—really thought about it—and decided it would all be OK—that we could work it out. We’d always loved each other as friends, so surely that would remain as a solid foundation, and we had compatibility, so that had to count in building a future …’

  He paused again and she felt his chest fill with air then empty on a sigh. She tightened her arms around him, offering the only comfort available.

  ‘Eventually she told me she’d been offered a new television job in Brisbane. She’d been with the same station in Townsville but this was a promotion. Would I transfer to the city to be with her?’

  Somewhere outside a tortured screeching noise suggested a roof was being torn apart. Mrs Aldrich’s roof?

  Grace snuggled closer, fear moving her this time.

  ‘Go on,’ she prompted, knowing Harry’s story was probably the only thing holding at bay the terror that was coiled within her.

  ‘I said I would, wanting so much to make it work, although all my life all I’d ever wanted was to be a policeman here where I belonged. We made arrangements, looked at housing on the internet, then she went to Townsville to see her old boss.’

  The story stopped, and with it the noise.

  ‘It’s over?’ Grace whispered, then heard how loud her voice sounded in the silence and realised she hadn’t whispered at all.

  ‘It’s the eye passing over,’ Harry told her as he slid out from under the bed and cautiously lifted the mattress aside. ‘You two stay right where you are. I’ll check on Karen and the baby and be straight back.’

  Grace reached out to stop him, but it was too late, so she had to wait, fearful for his safety, having heard enough of cyclones to know that the eye was only the calm before the storm returned, only this time the wind would blow the other way.

  ‘Both sound asleep, would you believe,’ Harry reported as the howling, roaring noise drew close again. ‘I guess having a baby and being born are both tiring experiences.’

  He slid beneath the bed, lying between the two women, reporting to Mrs Aldrich that her kitchen roof had gone and a part of the bathroom wall had been damaged, but generally things looked OK. Radio calls to the station had assured him everything was OK there and at the civic centre.

  ‘It’s the second blow, once everything is loosened, that knocks houses about,’ Mrs Aldrich told him, as they all squiggled around to relieve cramped muscles and tired bones. ‘Will you go on talking, Harry?’ she added. ‘I can’t hear the words but I like to hear your voice—it’s very soothing and it makes the cyclone noise easier to bear.’

  Horrified that Daisy had even heard his voice, Harry hesitated, but the cyclone was roaring again, and Grace had snuggled close, so it was easy to finish the tale he’d carried inside him for so long, locked away but probably festering because it hadn’t ever been told.

  He tucked Grace closer, held her tightly, and blurted out the words.

  ‘She went to Townsville to have an abortion.’

  There, it was said.

  For the first time he’d actually told someone about the almost routine operation that had led to the discovery of Nikki’s inoperable cancer.

  He felt Grace stiffen, then her hand crept up to touch his face, cupping his cheek in her palm.

  ‘No wonder seeing that new baby hurt you,’ she whispered, her voice choked with tears.

  He shook his head although he knew neither woman would see the gesture, frustrated at this situation. What was he thinking, lying under a bed—a bed with a dead body in it—in a category five cyclone, playing out his past like a series of episodes in a soap opera?

  Fortunately—for his sanity—at that moment the roar grew louder and above the wild fury of the wind they heard the scream of metal sheets being torn from their anchors, nails screeching in protest as the rest of Daisy’s roof peeled away.

  ‘The weight of rain could bring the ceiling down so we stay here until we know the wind has eased,’ Harry warned the two women, reaching out and drawing both of them closer, knowing they all needed human contact at the moment. ‘Now Willie’s crossed the coast, he’ll lose his power.’

  But what had that power done as it passed over the town? What havoc had it caused?

  Anxiety tightened all the sinews in his body—anxiety for all the townsfolk but most of all for two small children out there on the mountain.

  Had Georgie and Alistair reached them in time?

  Were all four safe?

  Max watched the light creep into the blackness of the hole in which they huddled, turning the dark shadows that had frightened him in the night into harmless posts and odds and ends of timber.

  The kid was sleeping, curled up in a puddle of muddy-looking water, Scruffy in his arms. The kid had needed Scruffy, not because he’d said anything but because the way his face had looked when Max had heard Georgie calling to them and he’d answered her.

  Instead of being happy they’d been found, the kid had started crying. Not bawling loudly, like CJ sometimes did when he was hurt, but silent crying, the light from the torch Mum was shining on them picking out the tears running down his face.

  Max had thought at first he was crying because Mum had said she couldn’t get them out straight away because it was too dangerous and that they’d have to wait until the cyclone stopped blowing trees over. But the kid had kept crying even after Mum had thrown down her leather jacket and some chocolate bars, and Max had figured out he was crying because his Mum wasn’t there.

  So Max gave him Scruffy to hold because earlier, when Max had had a little cry because Mum wasn’t there, holding Scruffy had made him feel really, really brave.

  Max pushed the leather jacket over the sleeping kid and waited for more light to come.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  IT WAS another hour before the noise abated sufficiently for Harry to slide out from under the bed. The roof had indeed gone and the ceiling had collapsed in the far corner of the room, pouring water onto the floor, but thankfully the rest of the room was, for the moment, dry.

  Grace joined him, staring about her at the devastation, then heading for the door.

  ‘Don’t go,’ he said, catching her hand. ‘You stay here with Daisy while I check out what’s solid and what isn’t.’

  She turned, anxious eyes scanning his face in the murky dawn light.

  ‘Be careful,’ she said, touching her hand to his cheek, so many things unspoken in the gesture that Harry felt a hitch in his breathing.

  The house was a mess. One of the bathroom walls had collapsed across the bath, so Harry had to toss boards and beams aside to get to the mattress-covered bath. Fortunately the ceiling had held so the room was relatively dry. He could hear Karen and the baby both crying, Karen hysterical when he lifted the mattress.

  ‘Come on, I’ll help you out. You can shelter in the bedroom with Daisy until it’s safe enough to drive you to the hospital.’

  ‘With Daisy and dead Bill? I can’t do that. I can’t take my baby into the room with a dead person.’

  Harry sighed but he kind of understood. There’d been ghosts beneath that bed with him.

  ‘All right, but I’ll have to put the mattress back on top of you.’

  ‘That’s OK,’ Karen said, stifling her sobs and settling back down in her nest of blankets. ‘Now it’s getting lighter and I know you’re not all dead and that noise has stopped, it’s not nearly as scary.’

  He replaced the mattress—if the ceiling did come down he didn’t want wet plasterboard smothering the pair of them—then did a recce through the rest of the house. To his surprise, the dining room, a square room to one side of the kitchen, was apparently unscathed, and from the kitchen he could see that the roof in that area remained intact.

  Once they had tarpaulins over the rest of it, Daisy might be able to move back into her home as soon as services like electricity, sewerage and water were restored, although that could be weeks away.

  Sure his charges were safe, he ducked into the dining r
oom, sat down on a chair and pulled out his cellphone. Time to check on the damage in the rest of the town.

  Unbelievable damage from all accounts, the policeman on duty at the station told him, but no reports of casualties. Harry breathed a sigh of relief.

  ‘Just let me sort out a few problems here,’ he said, ‘and then I’ll do a run through town to see what’s what. Expect me back at base in about an hour. In the meantime I’ll be on air on the radio or you can get me on the cellphone.’

  He rang the hospital. No word from Georgie but they’d despatch an ambulance to pick up Karen, the baby and Daisy Aldrich. They’d also contact the funeral home to send a car for Bill.

  Grace was standing in the doorway as he ended the call.

  ‘Did she have the abortion because of her career?’ she asked, and the question was so unexpected he answered without thinking.

  Answered honestly.

  ‘No,’ he said bleakly, remembering the terrible day he’d stared in disbelief at Nikki while she’d told him this—and then, disbelief turning to denial, added that she was dying of cancer. ‘At least, she said not, but it might have had something to do with it. She said she had it because we didn’t love each other. She said she knew that almost as soon as we were married—knew it was just lust between us, lust and her grief, and that I was there. She said she didn’t want to bring a baby into that situation because without love we’d probably split up.’

  Grace came closer and put her arms around him, holding him tightly.

  ‘Then she told me about the cancer—that when she had the operation they found inoperable cancer.’

  ‘She was dying of cancer?’

  Harry nodded.

  ‘Which made my anger at her—my fury that she’d gone ahead and aborted my child without discussing it with me—totally absurd. The baby wouldn’t have lived anyway, but that fact couldn’t penetrate the anger. I said things then that should never have been said—hard, hot, angry things, and through all that followed—her time at home and then in hospital—that was the guilt I had to carry. To have reacted with anger towards Nikki who’d been my friend for ever, to have hurt her at any time, let alone when she was dying …’