He headed back out to the veranda. He knew where she’d be. He’d watched her walk up there many times since she’d arrived. There was a tiny grave...
He should let her be. Her time with Emily was not his to share.
But tonight he needed to share. He’d messed with something deeply important. Friendship?
Something more?
She’d made it quite clear she didn’t want more and he didn’t either.
Or did he?
How could he? The last thing he wanted was to hurt her. How could he promise not to?
He should leave her be. He should...
He didn’t. He shrugged on his jacket and took the walking pole he kept beside the door. His leg wasn’t up to climbing the headland without support and he had no intention of becoming Tasha’s patient.
What did he want?
He didn’t know. All he knew was that he was out the door, walking towards the headland with the intention of finding out.
* * *
‘Should I run?’
She’d lost Emily eighteen months ago but she’d spoken to her every day since she’d lost her.
‘You never completely lose a child.’ A midwife had told her that, some time in the dark days as Emily had slipped away. ‘A baby is part of you. You may lose her from your body but she’s carved a space inside you and that space will always be hers.’
She hadn’t believed it then. In those appalling first few months, all she’d felt had been an aching, searing loss that threatened to destroy her. But always at the back of the pain had been the slip of comfort, the remembrance of Emily in her arms, the sweet smell of her, the sensation of tiny fingers curving around hers.
And they’d stayed with her. Even back in England she’d felt them, and she’d known that Emily was still real, still a part of her life. So she’d talked to her, and now, high on the headland in Cray Point’s tiny cemetery where Emily lay buried, her little girl seemed closer than she’d been since she’d lost her.
‘I’m making a mess of things,’ she told her. ‘I came back because Tom needed me and I owed him.’ She took a deep breath. ‘The problem is, I’m scared of how I’m feeling.’
And there it was, out there, the thing she was most afraid of.
Surely she couldn’t. She’d have something deeply wrong with her to fall for another Blake boy.
She made herself think back to those appalling last few weeks with Paul. They’d had plans to go on vacation to Sardinia. After a gruelling two years of dreadful marriage, she’d clung to it with a final despairing hope.
Not only would it be a fabulous vacation, she’d told herself. It would also be a chance to patch up a marriage that was in real trouble.
And start a baby?
But then Paul had burst back into their apartment, beaming with excitement. ‘Change of plans, sweetheart. It’s the chance of a lifetime. There’s an Australian team heading for Everest next month and someone’s dropped out. They’ve offered me the chance and I can’t say no. I know we planned Sardinia but you could come to base camp, do a few easy walks while you wait for me. Tasha, this is amazing...’
‘You’re not experienced enough,’ she’d managed, stunned, and he’d turned angry.
‘I’m fit. I’ve done enough climbing to know the basics. I can do this. I’ll need to head back to Australia to organise visas and the like. I still have the apartment in Melbourne and the team will be leaving from there. You can come with me if you want. Stay in Australia or come to base camp.’ And then, as she’d said nothing, he’d turned away. ‘It doesn’t matter. Support me or not, babe, I don’t care.’
And then had come the phone call late at night, the call where she’d unashamedly stood in the dark and listened as her husband had talked to his lover.
‘She’s not coming to base camp—I knew she wouldn’t. She’ll stay in Melbourne. That means we can spend a few days in Nepal before we go. Yeah, it means we cut acclimatisation short, but you and me, babe... Everest together and the rest. You just need to peel off that husband and get your act together. Yeah, sweetie, love you, too.’
She hadn’t confronted him. She’d been too empty, too sad and shocked. She’d gone to Melbourne with him and helped him pack, all the time thinking this needed to be the last goodbye.
And then the day before he’d left he’d come back to the apartment looking triumphant.
‘It’s all fixed. I’ve been to the IVF place and made a deposit. I know you want a baby, sweetie, so if anything happens to me you can still have your baby. You can go to Sardinia, lie on the beach and dream of me.’
She hadn’t gone to Sardinia and when the call had come to say Paul and his other ‘sweetie’ had perished, the emptiness inside her had hardly grown deeper.
She’d thought she loved him.
‘What do I know about love?’ she asked Emily, and there was no answer.
There were seaside daisies growing around the edges of the cemetery. It was almost dark but the daisies were white and easy to see. She gathered handfuls and piled them around the edges of the little grave, and then sat there, soaking in the silence, trying to make her jumbled thoughts line up.
She was in so much trouble.
She should leave.
She couldn’t leave. She’d promised.
‘I’ll move to Hilda and Rhonda’s house,’ she told Emily. ‘It makes sense. Even if the cats make me sneeze, they can’t be as dangerous as Tom.’
‘I’m not dangerous.’
She jumped and when she came back to earth Tom was right beside her. He’d emerged from the dusk like a shadow. He stood in his dark coat, leaning on his cane, surveying her with concern. ‘Tasha, don’t make this bigger than it is.’
‘I... What?’
‘Me,’ he told her. ‘You sound afraid and I can’t bear it.’
‘I’m not afraid of you.’ Except she was.
‘Should I go away again?’ he asked. ‘I don’t want to disturb you.’
‘You’re not.’ That was another lie. But he was here and he was Tom and there were things she needed to say.
‘Thank you for doing this,’ she whispered. Because there was no concrete slab over Emily’s grave as there was over most other graves. Instead, there was a rim of sea-tough plants, carefully chosen to create a tiny island of protection from the blast of the sea winds. Within that island were flowers, hellebores at the moment, Christmas roses, flowers that would bloom in mid-winter. And when Tasha had dug down to pull a recalcitrant weed she’d found daffodils bulbs ready to spring to life in late winter, and what looked like tiny ranunculi and anemone bulbs for spring.
Tonight she’d set her daisies at the rim of the grave where there was a space, but she knew instinctively that when she hadn’t been here, that space would have been filled by Tom. He’d been tending her baby’s grave and the thought did something to her heart she couldn’t understand.
Sense or not, she had no defence against Tom’s caring.
And he was caring still. ‘I’m sorry I upset you,’ he said gently. ‘It’s the last thing I intended.’
‘It was me,’ she said. ‘I had no business to turn a professional proposition into something more.’
‘You don’t want it to be more?’
‘No.’
‘I guess that’s good,’ he told her. ‘Because, as you say, I’m a Blake and I didn’t learn relationships.’
‘You do a nice line in caring despite it,’ she told him, carefully focusing her attention on rearranging her daisies. ‘I love you for what you’ve done for us. For what you’ve done for Emily. But what’s between us... It must be because of Emily. We were thrown into a hothouse of emotions. It’s hardly surprising we’re in a place now we don’t recognise.’
‘I guess that’s right.
&n
bsp; He stood back a little, saying nothing more, while she knelt beside Emily’s grave and tried to get her emotions under control.
Let him think it’s all about Emily, she told herself, but she knew it wasn’t.
Finally she stood, brushed herself down and turned to look out at the moonlit sea. There was a long silence, a silence, though, that didn’t feel uncomfortable. It was more...peace.
‘Thank you for sending me the photographs,’ she said at last. ‘I...I’m sorry I couldn’t respond...the way you deserved for sending them but they were important to me. I loved your emails, too. It sort of meant, even though I’d left, I hadn’t abandoned her. She was with a friend.’
‘That’s quite a compliment.’
‘It’s the way I feel. But I couldn’t write back.’
‘I understood.’
‘I know you did,’ she whispered, and then there was more silence.
And then: ‘Would you ever think about another baby?’ Tom asked.
The peace was shattered. It was as if the question had opened a locked door, and the space behind was so flooded with emotion that she almost staggered.
But Tom was beside her. He touched her arm, a simple gesture of friendship, and the chaos settled a little.
‘Don’t answer if you don’t want to,’ he said, but he was probably the one person in the world who deserved an answer.
‘I don’t think I’m brave enough.’
‘But you want...’
‘I don’t think I can want.’
He didn’t reply. His hand still rested on her arm, and the contact helped. They stood side by side, looking out over the sea while she tried to think of where to take this. While she tried to think of where to take her life?
‘So you don’t want to stay here,’ Tom said at last. ‘And you don’t think you can try for another baby? What do you want, Tasha?’
Why did the question seem so huge? Why did it seem so impossible?
‘Medicine’s good,’ she said at last, gripping to the one thing that had stayed constant. ‘I’m needed.’
‘Medicine can’t fill your life.’
‘Does it fill yours?’
‘In a way, yes,’ he said simply. ‘But medicine for me is more than caring for the next person who comes in the door. My medicine’s all about caring for this community. Cray Point took care of me as a kid. It fills something inside me that I can give something back.’ He hesitated and then forged on and she sensed he was warring with himself as to whether to say it or not. But then he said it. He asked it.
‘What fills that void inside you, Tasha Raymond?’
And it was all she could do not to sob. For there was such a gaping wound inside...
She should be used to it. For heaven’s sake, it had been with her all her life. Her parents had practically abandoned her at birth, leaving her with one carer after another. Then—and psychoanalysts would have a field day with this, she thought grimly—she’d fallen for a guy who’d been just like her parents. A man who’d said he loved her and had then betrayed her.
And then there was Emily.
The hole inside her wasn’t diminishing. She couldn’t fill it with work and it seemed to be getting bigger every day.
But she couldn’t fill it here, not with this man, not with this place. And not with another baby?
She’d run out of courage.
‘You would find the courage,’ Tom said gently, and astonishingly it was as if he’d followed her train of thought. ‘Tasha, I’ve cared for mums who’ve lost babies. In ten years of general practice I’ve seen it enough to know how massive that loss is.’
‘Tom...’
‘I’ve also seen it enough to sense that moving on is the hardest thing in the world,’ he kept on. ‘Having another baby seems impossible. But it’s the thought that hurts, not the baby that comes. You know you can’t ever replace Emily—why would you want to?—but the heart expands. There’ll always be a hole where Emily should be, but it can’t stop you living. It can’t stop you searching for joy and accepting joy when you find it.’
‘Tom, I can’t...’
‘I know,’ he said simply, and he touched her cheek, lightly, the faintest of brushes. ‘But if you ever feel you can and you need help to find the courage...Tasha, I accept that you can’t stay here. I accept we have a relationship that causes you pain. But I’ll always be here for you, Tasha. In the background. Egging you on every way I know how.’
‘Th-thank you.’
‘Think nothing of it,’ he said, striving for lightness. He managed a smile. ‘I can’t do families myself but, wow, I’m good at giving advice. But now... Time to go home?’
And there was nothing else to say. She nodded mutely and turned towards the path.
Tom fell in beside her. His words kept echoing in her head. She needed space to think about them. She needed space to think about what she was feeling.
About a baby?
About Tom.
They walked on in silence. She hardly needed to slow her steps to pace his now. With his cane he was almost as sure as she was on the rough path. He was improving so fast.
Maybe she wouldn’t need to stay for six weeks.
The thought was suddenly a desolate one.
But even as she thought it, his weak leg struck a tree root and he stumbled. Not enough to fall but enough for her to instinctively reach out and catch his hand. And hold.
He swore. She knew he hated showing weakness, hated being dependent—but he didn’t pull away. His fingers linked through hers with a strength and warmth that made her feel...like she had no business feeling.
Maybe he did need her.
But the Blake men didn’t need, and he was a Blake.
Stop it, she told herself. Stop categorising him. He’s just Tom.
Just Tom? That was a thought that almost made her laugh. He was so much more than just Tom.
His hand still linked to hers and it felt right. It felt good.
She found herself thinking of the pseudo water-polo games they played, where they teamed against Liselle. Where their gazes stayed almost constantly locked as they fought for a strategy to get the ball through. She loved those games. She’d hated missing this afternoon.
It was fun, but it was more than that. She and Tom were working as a team. They had no hope of scoring a goal by themselves.
Tom was better in the water than she was, stronger, more agile, a better swimmer when he wanted to move fast, but he was handicapped with a weak arm and leg.
He needed her.
On her own she had neither the ability nor the strength to get the ball through the goal net. She needed Tom.
Why did that mesh with the feeling of his hand holding hers?
Why was that thought such a tantalising siren song? To need. To be needed.
‘Friends,’ Tom said softly as they reached the final rise before the house.
And she thought, Yes. To lose his friendship would break her heart.
But then...friends?
She wanted more.
No. It was her body that wanted more. Her head said it was ridiculous, that she needed no one, that she’d been solitary forever and it was far, far safer that way.
She’d learned life’s lessons the hard way, and she had no choice but to accept them.
CHAPTER SEVEN
BY THE TIME they reached the house she almost had herself under control again. Tom unlatched the gate and he had to release her hand while he did. It was the natural time to let go. Friends would have let go then. He no longer needed her support.
He hadn’t been holding her hand for support, though, a little voice whispered. Men and women didn’t hold hands unless...
Stop it, her head commanded. There’s no point think
ing like this.
‘I have steak for dinner,’ Tom said, sounding proud of the concept.
And she thought of the table set on the veranda with the candles and the flowers and she mentally closed down.
‘Can you freeze one?’ she asked. ‘I’m not hungry.’
‘You don’t want my steak? I was hoping to show off my prowess?’
‘You have prowess?’ He’d sounded wounded. Prowess?
‘Hilda’s filled my freezer with enough casseroles to keep me going until Armageddon so it’s really hard to show off my splinter skills.’
‘Your splinter skills being steak.’
‘And salad. Until you’ve seen me toss a salad you haven’t lived.’
And despite herself she chuckled, but then she thought of the candles and the flowers and her laughter faded.
‘Not a good idea, Tom.’
‘Not?’ They were taking off their jackets in the hallway. He flicked on the hall lights and they lit the veranda as well. She glanced at the table she’d seen earlier.
The candles were gone. So were the flowers. The beautiful table setting had disappeared.
He followed her gaze.
‘I’m not trying to add you to my list of serial women,’ he told her, and she choked.
‘Honestly, Tom, to admit you have such a thing...’
‘Well, I do,’ he said honestly. ‘There are some lovely women in this town. I enjoy their company and they seem to enjoy mine. Take Susie. She’s just been through a messy divorce. She has two teenage children who run her ragged. She hardly has any time for Susie but for a while she came here, dressed to the nines, ready for a night out. I put an effort into making dinner great and we enjoyed our nights.’
‘Your whole nights,’ she said before she could stop herself, and he grinned.
‘Tasha, I’m no virgin,’ he told her. ‘But I’ve always been honest. No strings. I’m good at figuring how far we can take things before anyone gets hurt.’
‘You’re sure of that? How do you know Susie isn’t secretly nursing a broken heart?’
‘Hey, Susie called it quits, I didn’t. She’s in love with her geek.’
‘So no one’s ever broken their heart over you?’
Falling for Her Wounded Hero Page 9