Be My Baby

by Fiona Harper

  ‘I can see something!’

  Gaby’s shriek had him into the stern where she was standing in seconds. ‘Over there! Near that big boat!’

  Ben brought the ferry closer.

  Sure enough, bumping against the side of some weekend cruiser, was a small grey dinghy.

  ‘Give me that!’ He snatched the torch out of Gaby’s hands, but she didn’t react, she just leaned over the edge of the boat next to him, straining to see. And then her hands flew to her mouth and she gasped.

  The dinghy was empty.

  ‘No!’ The word came from his mouth without any conscious decision on his part.

  If Heather was in this water, even though she was a fairly strong swimmer for her age, she wouldn’t stand much of a chance. It was cold. The currents were swift. In the dark it would be easy to get disoriented.

  He put his head in his hands and let out a few ragged breaths. His lungs seemed to be squeezing, depriving him of air.

  Gaby’s arms came round him and he buried his head in her hair. ‘I don’t know what to do.’

  Gaby held him tight. ‘It doesn’t mean anything, Luke. It could have come loose on its own. She might not even have been in the boat in the first place.’

  He wished he could believe her. She sounded so sure.

  ‘Look at me.’

  He lifted his head and saw the fierce determination in her eyes. This was why he loved her—her strength, her compassion. For a while he’d thought it had been a mirage, but he’d been right about her all along.

  ‘We’re not giving up,’ she warned him. ‘Heather’s always in a rush. Maybe she didn’t tie it up properly, or even…’ her eyes glazed over ‘…forgot.’

  ‘What? What are you thinking?’

  ‘It might be nothing…but…’

  He almost shook her. ‘Gaby!’

  She jumped. ‘I just remembered that day we went out for a picnic and how the boat almost floated away…’

  A small flicker of hope ignited inside him. ‘You think she got out of the boat and forgot to tie it up?’

  ‘More than that! Think, Luke! She loved that place where she built her camp. Maybe she went back there!’

  Good grief, she could be right.

  ‘Ben!’ he shouted, feeling the blood coursing in his ears. ‘Upstream, as quick as you can! I’ll show you exactly where when we get near.’

  They clung to each other as Ben steered the ferryboat to the spot where they’d had their picnic. They weren’t quite close enough yet. What was taking so long? He shone the torch on the water between boat and beach. He could make it. He jumped out of the boat and floundered a second before he found his feet.

  Gaby watched him wading through the water, her heart cramping with each beat. She grabbed the torch Luke had dropped and took a long look at the water below. Then she hoisted her legs over the side and followed him.

  The shock of the icy cold forced a cry from her lips, but she pushed her legs hard through the water until she caught up with Luke on the beach, who was staring blindly into the shadows.

  ‘Here.’ She thrust the torch at him and he took off with it. Gaby did her best to keep up, but he was darting this way and that and she often found herself walking into an invisible branch as the torch beam danced away.

  ‘I can’t find it!’ he yelled back at her. ‘It all looks so different in the dark.’

  He turned away again and her surroundings melted into the darkness.

  ‘Luke, I can’t—’

  Her shin made contact with something extremely hard and she stumbled. Her arms flew forwards instinctively and skin ripped from her palms as they bore the brunt of the impact. She refused to cry out. It didn’t matter. Finding Heather mattered.

  ‘Gaby?’

  ‘Over here. I tripped over a blasted rock.’

  The torch beam bobbed as he came closer. She tried to wave him on as she picked herself up and tried to brush the grit from her raw skin.

  ‘Luke!’

  ‘Are you hurt?’ He caught up with her, breathless.

  ‘Yes. No. Never mind. Look! This is it! The place we built the camp fire.’

  He swung the torch downwards. ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Yes! This is the rock we sat on. That knobbly bit kept sticking into my bottom. It was really uncomfortable.’

  He ran his hand along the lichen-covered surface. ‘You’re right! That means…’

  Gaby was way ahead of him. She lunged off to the right in the direction of the bush that Heather had claimed as her hidey-hole. Then she froze. They both did.

  A twig had snapped somewhere in front of them.

  It could be anything. A rabbit or a fox. She looked over her shoulder at Luke. And then there was another sound. A distinctly human-sounding sniff.

  ‘Heather?’

  Luke quickly illuminated the spot she was pointing to and she dived forward and ripped the makeshift ‘door’ off the opening. Even though she was blocking the light, she could make out a familiar form curled into a ball, a large pair of eyes watching her.

  Gaby started to cry as she jammed her shoulders between a couple of branches.

  ‘Oh, sweetheart! We’ve been looking all over for you.’

  ‘Heather!’ Luke almost screamed somewhere behind her.

  Heather didn’t move a muscle. She didn’t even blink. Gaby was about to say something soothing when Luke’s elbow knocked her in the head. There was no way he was going to fit! It was only just big enough for one small girl and the top half of one small woman.

  ‘Luke! There’s no room! You’re going to have to let me back out first!’

  Luke muttered something under his breath, but she felt him step away. She looked back at Heather. The poor girl was shaking like a leaf, even though she had her thick coat on.

  ‘Come on, Heather.’ She held out her hand. Heather shook her head.

  Okay. Not just cold, scared too.

  ‘It’s okay.’ She held out her hand.

  ‘What the heck is taking so long?’ Luke’s voice boomed through the silence.

  Gaby twisted as far as the bush would allow her to. The light of the torch in her eyes almost blinded her. She pushed it upwards so she could see his face. ‘Just give us a second, will you?’

  Luke looked as if he wanted to uproot the bush with his bare hands, but he nodded, his mouth a thin line.

  She turned back to Heather.

  ‘Come on. No one’s cross. We’re just so relieved to have found you.’

  ‘Really?’

  Gaby nodded. Heather’s icy little fingers made contact with hers. Slowly they edged their way out of the camp together. Heather stayed close behind her, using her as a shield.

  ‘Don’t shout at me, Daddy!’ Her voice was thick with tears. ‘I didn’t mean to! But the dinghy floated away and I was stuck…and…and I didn’t know how to get back.’

  Gaby stepped aside and let Luke scoop Heather up into his arms. He hugged her so hard she thought her ribs would crack. Gaby pressed her fingers to her mouth and said a silent thank you as her eyes filled up. She loved this man and this little girl so much. Even if she wasn’t going to be a permanent fixture in their lives, she would have been devastated if anything had happened to either of them.

  Ten minutes later they were back in Ben’s boat heading for home. He’d radioed ahead with the good news and an ambulance was going to be waiting for them at Lower Hadwell to check Heather over. Luke seemed pretty sure there was nothing to worry about, but she guessed nobody was taking any chances.

  She stood up in the cabin with Ben while Luke and Heather sat further down the boat, huddled together under an old blanket. Gaby bit her lip and held on to the side of the boat tightly. She wanted so much to join them, but it was a private moment between father and daughter and she had resigned, remember. From being the nanny and being part of their family.

  ‘Why did you run away, Heather? Where were you going?’ Luke asked gently. Gaby tried not to listen, but it was very hard in
a boat this size.

  Heather looked down into her lap. ‘I thought you and Gaby were going to get married.’

  ‘What gave you that idea?’

  She looked up at him, unimpressed. ‘I’m not a kid, you know. You were both giving each other those looks Gaby says I give Liam.’

  Gaby didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

  ‘I thought we were going to be a proper family.’ Heather’s voice almost faded away entirely. ‘I really wanted Gaby to be my mum. You should have made her stay, Dad.’

  Luke hugged his daughter to him and placed a kiss on top of her head. Then he looked at Gaby. She quickly stared into the distance and tried to make out she wasn’t listening.

  ‘Heather,’ he began. ‘You know when you first came to live with me and all I did was tell you what to do all the time?’

  ‘Yeah, it was a real drag.’

  Gaby squashed a smile.

  ‘You didn’t like it much when I made you do things you didn’t want to do, did you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, it’s kind of the same. Gaby wants to go and I can’t change that even if I want to, Heather.’

  And he’d certainly tried every sneaky trick in the book to stop her. Why was that, anyway? She’d been so busy reacting to the fact she felt pushed around that she hadn’t asked herself that question. If Lucy had been the be-all and end-all, and Gaby was a pale imitation, why did he want her to stay?

  Perhaps, he thought she was close enough to second best. Once upon a time she’d have settled for that, but now she needed more. She needed to be wanted for who she was, not for what she could be if someone pushed hard enough.

  ‘You could have tried harder,’ Heather piped up.

  ‘No, Heather. It doesn’t work like that. If Gaby needs to go and get another job somewhere else, then we need to let her. It’s not up to us. It’s her choice.’

  Gaby frowned. Big words from the man who’d hidden her keys earlier on. She turned away and looked up at the sky. It was one of those magical starry nights. Thank goodness the magic had worked and Heather was safe.

  ‘Pretty, isn’t it?’

  She’d almost forgotten Ben was standing next to her, he’d been so quiet.

  ‘Yes, it is. I wonder how they get so pretty.’

  Ben snorted and she was suddenly reminded of their first meeting.

  ‘They don’t do anything, do they?’ he said, slowing the engine as they neared the pontoons at Lower Hadwell. ‘They don’t try to be beautiful. They just are what they are.’

  Gaby woke early the next morning, despite the late hour she’d crawled into bed. She focused on the cream walls of the Old Boathouse guest room. She could almost imagine that the past twenty-four hours had been a dream and that she was going to walk into the kitchen and start making breakfast as usual. But last night had been anything but usual.

  Thank goodness the paramedics had declared Heather shaken but otherwise fine and had been happy to let her go home with a doctor in residence.

  Gaby threw the duvet back and stood up. The plan had been to sling on what she’d worn yesterday. She went over to the radiator where she’d hung her jeans. Wet and muddy. Yuck.

  She threw her fleece over her head, stuffed her feet in her shoes and decided to run out to the car and pull something clean from her case. She crept out on to the landing, only to meet Luke emerging from his room, fully dressed.

  ‘Like the outfit,’ he said, looking her up and down.

  She blushed and hoped the fleece was long enough to hide her knickers. The clear look of male appreciation on Luke’s face only increased her fear that it was a couple of inches shy.

  ‘I’m going to the car…to get something dry.’

  Luke just smiled and her silly heart went all giggly and batted its eyelashes.

  ‘I wanted to thank you, Gaby—for coming back to help. We might not have found her if it weren’t for you.’

  He took hold of her hands and goosebumps broke out on her bare legs.

  Oh, you bad girl! You want him to kiss you.

  And, even as she told herself what a daft idea it was, they seemed to lean closer together. She closed her eyes and waited for the soft touch of his lips upon hers.

  It never came.

  She opened her eyes again. He was looking at her as if he wanted to kiss her and, just as she thought he was going to follow through, he let go of her hands and backed away.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said again simply.

  ‘It was nothing. I couldn’t stand by when Heather was in trouble, could I? What would you have done if you’d lost your daughter as well as your wife?’ She was babbling. ‘I mean, you were devastated when Lucy died. How would you have coped without the one thing you had left of her?’

  Luke tipped his head to one side and lines appeared on his forehead. ‘I was sad when Lucy died, yes. Devastated for Heather. No one should have to go through that. But I’d already lost her. Our marriage was on the rocks, Gaby.’

  ‘How awful!’

  ‘Not really. Once I got over the shock, it was actually quite a relief.’

  She blinked.

  ‘We should never have got married in the first place. I can’t regret it entirely, though. I got a wonderful daughter out of it.’

  Lucy? Not perfect? Things weren’t making sense.

  ‘But I thought…I’d better get my things from the car.’ She scurried down the stairs, refusing to look at him. Once she was fully dressed she’d feel less disoriented.

  After breakfast Gaby took a walk on the beach to try and get things straight in her head. It seemed that Luke and Lucy’s marriage hadn’t been the grand passion she’d imagined it to be. So why had she spent the last few weeks killing herself trying to fill Lucy’s shoes? Now she looked at her behaviour it seemed to make no sense. Only that she’d felt she wasn’t good enough for Luke.

  It had been that same cold feeling in the pit of her stomach that she’d had throughout her marriage. She was so scared of losing Luke she’d have done anything to keep him. Including shaping herself into the image of his perfect woman. Only it had turned out that the image she’d used as her template hadn’t been so perfect after all.

  All those years she’d made herself into what David had wanted her to be and it had been a disaster. It had only pushed him further away and killed her spirit.

  She came to a halt and sat on a large branch that had fallen from one of the trees overhanging the water line. The bark was gone and the wood underneath had been washed smooth by the tide.

  All this time she had been trying to avoid making the same mess of her relationship with Luke that she’d made of her marriage. Only she hadn’t avoided her mistakes, she’d repeated them.

  All that stuff she’d recited to herself about needing to be free to make her own decisions had been stuffed in the cupboard gathering cobwebs as soon as love had come into the equation. She’d set about transforming herself without even bothering to find out what Luke really wanted.

  And if his behaviour during the last few days was anything to go by, he wanted her, the unvarnished Gaby. Messy hair and all. She gasped and covered her mouth with her hand.

  Oh, you stupid, stupid woman! All that time you spent trying to draw him to you, you were pushing him away.

  How had she missed it? She almost wanted to laugh, it was so ridiculous.

  A warm glow of hope began to tickle her tummy. Perhaps it wasn’t too late. Perhaps they could have a happy ending after all. It all depended on what Luke wanted. One problem though: she was too terrified to ask.

  Luke watched Gaby walk back up the beach and up to the kitchen door. He felt sick. What if he never saw her again? He wanted to run to her, pull her into his arms and convince her to stay using all the dirty tricks he could think of.

  Only he didn’t. He started clearing the breakfast dishes.

  He had to respect her decision. Just like he’d learned how to give Heather her freedom, he had to give Gaby hers. He’d already squeezed
one woman so hard in an effort to hang on to her that she’d popped out of his grasp and into the arms of another.

  He felt the diamond ring in the back pocket of his jeans. He’d found the box while he’d been hunting for matching socks this morning and he’d taken the ring out and put it in his pocket. A good luck charm. It would always be waiting for her, whenever she wanted to claim it.

  Gaby entered the kitchen and he pulled his hand out of his pocket. She looked as if she were trying to work out what he was thinking and he quickly relaxed his face into a neutral expression.

  ‘Well, this is it, then. Time to go.’

  ‘Yes.’ Good. Keep it plain and simple, non-committal.

  She scuffed the floor with the tip of her trainer. ‘I could stay a bit longer, you know.’ She glanced up at him through her lashes, then went back to examining her shoe. ‘If you and Heather need a familiar face, after the shock you’ve both had…’

  ‘Heather and I will manage, Gaby. And Teresa will be here on Monday. You just do what you’ve got to do.’

  A wave of irritation passed over her features. ‘All right, then. I’ll just get my coat.’

  He followed her out into the hallway, where she took an inordinately long time stuffing her arms into the sleeves of her jacket and doing up every last button. Then she walked across to him and stood directly in front of him, her eyes large and searching.

  ‘Goodbye, Luke.’

  ‘Goodbye, Gaby.’

  She stood on tiptoe and placed a feather-light kiss on his lips. Good grief, she wasn’t making this easy! Just as she was pulling back, she seemed to have second thoughts and went in for another kiss, deeper, sweeter.

  This was torture! He loved this woman—so much the words were ringing round his head and it was all he could do not to shout them out. But he couldn’t say it. It would just put pressure on her.

  Instead he put every ounce of the feeling into his kiss, but even then he let her take the lead. He wasn’t going to make the same mistake as last time. When her hands came up round his neck, he jammed his own into his pockets. And when she finally broke it off, he did nothing to stop her.