by Nikki Logan
It was only then he noticed the kid was wheezing. Badly.
She wriggled free of her mother’s fussing and looked straight at Reilly with enormous, chocolate-brown eyes. ‘Can I see it?’
Somewhere deep in his gut a vortex cracked open. He knew those eyes. His pulse began to hammer but he managed to keep his voice light even as he towered over the tiny girl. ‘See what?’
The kid looked to Lea and then back at him, her dark brows collapsing inwards. ‘Mum said she needed to see a man about a horse.’ She sucked her lip in between her teeth. ‘I wanted to meet the horse.’ A spasm of coughs interrupted her wheezing.
Lea slipped her fingers around to the girl’s pulse, concern etched on her face. She threw him a desperate look.
He stepped closer then put the brakes on. Not his problem. ‘Is she okay? Does she need a drink of water or something?’
‘Please.’
Reilly was only too happy to get away from the surreal scene for a moment. His thumping head now echoed through his whole body. He let the screen door bang shut behind him, knowing he could see out better than she could see in, and he turned to watch the woman and child framed in the doorway.
Lea was older than when he’d last seen her, but it only showed in the worry lines marking her hazel eyes. The rest of her was still as long and lean as when they’d first met. She loosened the little girl’s shirt, pushed sweaty hair back off her face and then lifted her into her arms. Two tiny sticks slid effortlessly around Lea’s neck, and mother and daughter had a low, private conversation punctuated with soft, loving kisses.
It was so foreign. Yet he couldn’t take his eyes off them.
I came away with something that night. His blood chilled. Not possible. Just not possible.
Five years ago, a frozen inner voice reminded him. Very possible.
Little Molly tilted her head and rested it on her mother’s shoulder, staring straight down the hallway, where he knew she couldn’t see him through the tinted mesh.
He recognised that face. It was in the one photo he had kept of himself as a child.
Oh, God…
A black hole opened up in his gut, and a million possibilities rushed in right behind it. Possibilities he’d thought lost to him for ever. He kept his heart rate under control by pouring two glasses of ice-cold water in the kitchen, and then he shakily tossed one back himself before steeling himself to return. Mother and daughter whipped around as the screen door opened, and he indicated the comfortable cane-seating further along the veranda. She lowered Molly into a chair. It dwarfed her, her little legs stuck straight out in front.
More sticks.
‘Thank you.’ Lea’s voice was as unsteady as the hands that took the water from him. She gently placed the other one out of reach. ‘Molly can’t be near glass.’
Reilly frowned. Lea tipped her own water up to Molly’s bloodless lips. The girl gulped greedily, then Lea drank from the glass herself, visibly mastering her breathing. Max, his house cat, chose that moment to appear and twist himself amongst Lea’s feet. She leapt six inches off the timber floor.
It was not a discussion to have in front of a child, but he had to know—right now. ‘Is she mine, Lea?’
Lea’s head snapped up, her eyes wide, fearful.
‘Kitty!’ Molly’s delighted squeal broke the silence. Reilly snagged Max up off the ground and dumped him unceremoniously in Molly’s chair. The girl fell on him with open arms. Max looked suitably disgusted.
Lea’s mouth opened to protest, but then she snapped it shut.
‘What—she can’t be near cats either?’ Shock was giving way to sarcastic fury.
Lea shot to her feet and spoke to Molly. ‘You play with the kitty, sweetheart.’ She crossed to the far corner of the veranda. Reilly followed.
‘She’s mine, isn’t she?’ He loomed over her intentionally. He wanted the truth from her almost as much as he wanted to smell her. Lea nodded and his chest constricted, bright light exploding behind his eyes. His mind worked furiously.
‘Did you not think I’d care?’ he asked. Lea turned away from him. ‘Did you think I’d tell you to get lost?’
‘I wasn’t looking for a relationship,’ she whispered back over her shoulder. ‘I saw no need for you to know.’
‘No need?’ She winced and he struggled to keep the edge out of his voice. He knew what impact it had on his toughened workmen; Lea was not one of them. ‘I got you pregnant, Lea. I would have stood by you. By Molly.’
No matter what the world expected of him, he would have done that much.
She spun. ‘I got me pregnant, Reilly. There was no need for you to stand by me. I was fine. I made the decision to go ahead with the pregnancy. It didn’t need a team.’
There was something in her tone, like the particular look in a stallion’s eye when he was about to turn. It screamed a warning at him. Suspicion stained his words. ‘I can’t believe it took you five years to find me.’
Her furtive glance told him it hadn’t. Ah. ‘You weren’t going to tell me.’
Her chest heaved. ‘No.’
‘Nice.’ He meant her to hear his mumble.
‘Don’t you judge me, Reilly Martin,’ she snapped furiously. ‘If you cared so much where your DNA ended up, you wouldn’t have distributed it so liberally across the district.’
Slap! Being true didn’t make it any less pleasant to hear. He could have little Mollies scattered across the state.
In theory; he’d loved and left enough women.
Anger boiled up furiously between them. ‘Did you think I was a good catch, Lea?’ He nearly spat the words at her. How stupid had he been to think he had been the reason they’d gone so long and so hard that weekend? To think that she might have felt the same indefinable connection he had, despite running out on him. ‘The heir to a country-western fortune. Had you been tracking the circuit long waiting to bump into me?’
‘I didn’t plan it! I might have made some bad choices five years ago, but that wasn’t one of them.’
‘You didn’t know who I was?’ He let the challenge roll out like giant rolls of straw shoved off the back of a feed truck. Her hesitation gave her away.
Blush-heat raced along her cheekbone. ‘Everyone knew who you were, Reilly. You’d just brought home the rodeo champion’s cup. You were Reilly Martin, king of the Suicide Ride. I practically had to join a queue.’
For what good it had done him. ‘I’m sure the challenge made me all the more attractive.’
Lea’s eyes flamed. ‘You don’t really need much help with that, Reilly. I’m sure you’re not going to tell me I was the first bar-room pick-up you’d ever pulled?’
Self-loathing added its weight to the discussion. ‘Not by a country mile, sweetheart.’
The blush doubled. It intensified the glitter in her eyes, and did unhelpful things to his resolve. He dropped his face from her gaze. ‘I’m not the point of discussion here. You are. Or rather, Molly is.’ He met Lea’s eyes again. ‘You cheated me out of knowing my daughter.’
Damn, that felt weird, coming out of his mouth.
Lea paled and her eyes widened. She struggled against something internal. ‘No one forced you to have sex with me. Fatherhood is a risk you were taking every time you went with any woman.’
‘Particularly a deceitful, immoral one.’
Pain streaked across her face. She sucked it up, took a deep breath. ‘Look, it happens, Reilly. Birth control fails. It’s why they print warnings on the boxes. You could have walked away first that night.’
No. Not if he’d tried.
They glared warily at each other, like a cattle dog and a steer sizing each other up. ‘Why me, Lea—of every man in that pub?’
Her eyes rounded—not the question she was expecting, obviously—but she pushed her shoulders back and answered. ‘You stood out for two reasons. You were—’
‘Male and stupid?’
Her eyes hardened. ‘Attractive but unhappy.’
An
ugly laugh cracked through his lips. ‘Unhappy? I’d just won the champion’s cup, I was surrounded by women and was working my way through a keg of celebratory beer. Why would I be sad?’
If she noticed how he’d remembered so much about that night five years ago, she didn’t comment. Lucky; it would be tough to explain.
She barrelled on, ignoring the question. ‘I’d had…I wasn’t feeling the best that night.’ Something in her expression told him there was a heck of a lot more to that story. ‘And there was something in your eyes that I recognised. Some pain that spoke to me.’
He snorted to cover up how close to the mark she suddenly was. No way was he going there. ‘I’m guessing my inheritance probably spoke to you loudest. Is it speaking to you now?’
She gasped. Her nostrils flared and she tossed her thick hair back. ‘Have I asked you for money?’
‘I’m sure you’re getting round to it.’
‘I’m not here for that.’
‘Then why are you here? Why now, Lea, five years into my daughter’s life?’ There was that word again. It was going to take some getting used to.
Deep shadows crossed her eyes. ‘Believe me, I wouldn’t be here at all if I had a choice,’ she blazed up at him. ‘We were doing just fine, Molly and me.’
Were? His eyes drifted to the little girl, who had Max in a delighted stranglehold. The cat swished his tail impatiently but knew better than to lash out.
Lea took a deep breath. ‘My daughter’s dying, Reilly.’
Reilly staggered backwards, and his eyes fell on the little piece of innocence tangled around his cat. He’d only discovered her moments ago. Then Lea played a particularly stinking card.
‘Our daughter’s dying,’ she continued, her voice dead and tight. ‘She has aplastic anaemia; it’s a disease of her bone marrow. I’m not a tissue match.’
He turned back to her tortured face, his mind buzzing. ‘You want to know if I’m a match?’
She shook her head. ‘Even if you were, the success of adult-to-child transfer is too low.’
He ran stiff fingers through his hair. ‘I don’t understand. What do you want from me?’
She took a deep breath and locked her hazel eyes onto his. He’d never encountered anything quite as beautiful as the loving determination burning there. For a split second, he wished it burned there for him. When had anyone looked at him like that? Ever?
The silence screamed. And then she spoke.
‘I need you to get me pregnant again so we can save Molly.’
Lea had never seen someone shrink like that right before her eyes. Reilly sagged back against the timber posts enclosing the veranda.
‘Molly’s dying?’
Well, at least he was focussing on the most important part. ‘Gradually.’ Her voice cracked and she swallowed hard. ‘Yes.’
He looked at her. ‘Is she in pain?’
Her heart softened. Very definitely the most important part. Finding he was still capable of the compassion and kindness she remembered was a relief. He hadn’t shown much of it until just then. ‘Not always. But she’s exhausted perpetually, and she bleeds very easily.’ And four-year-olds were prone to tumbling over all the time.
He nodded, digesting. ‘And having a second child will help her—how?’
Lea was prepared for this question. ‘Cord blood. And placenta. The baby wouldn’t be touched at all.’ She threw that in hastily, knowing it was what she’d want to know in his position.
‘Stem cells?’
Lea nodded. His eyes swam with uncertainty. His breath came heavily. Then he pinned her with his gaze. ‘How does it work?’
Lea lightened like helium. Was he considering it? She rushed to answer, knowing this stuff back to front. ‘Cord-blood stem cells can become almost any other type of cell in the body, whatever needs repairing—bone, tissue, muscle. Marrow, in Molly’s case. She can grow healthy marrow. She can make healthy blood.’
‘Don’t they have banks for cord blood now?’
Lea clamped down her frustration. Did he not think she’d thought of those things? Her child’s life had been worth an exploration into every medical possibility. And every moral one. But she held her temper, moderated her breath.
‘The genetic mix of people from regional north-west Australia is too specific—part-indigenous, part-Asian islander, part-European. There’s nothing like that gene mix sitting in cord-blood banks around the world.’
‘What about a cousin or something?’
Another deep breath. Sapphie had already offered her new baby’s cord. Anna’s infertility was none of his business. ‘Not closely related enough. This treatment requires the cells to be from a full sibling.’
He tipped anguished eyes up to her. ‘A second baby could have the same condition.’
Lea shook her head. ‘It’s not genetic.’
He considered that. ‘A baby conceived with an agenda?’
Lea laughed, an ugly, angry sound. ‘Believe it or not, this is the best available chance Molly has. Please, Reilly; I know it’s unconventional, and I know I am probably the last person in the world you would want to help, but I’m not asking for me. I’m asking for that little girl.’ They turned to watch Molly leap off the chair and limp after Max along the veranda. ‘Your little girl.’
Reilly swung an angry gaze back to her. ‘Now that it suits you.’
She deserved that. ‘Any little girl, then. Your body produces billions of cures for Molly in a week. I just need one. Just one, Reilly.’ She grabbed at his shirt, willing to beg if that was what it took. Anything for Molly. ‘To save a child’s life.’
She watched the anguish turn to anger. Disgust leached out at her and he pulled away from her. ‘Let me see if I understand this—you tricked me out of one child, and now you’re trying to emotionally blackmail me into fathering another one?’
‘No. This is not blackmail.’
‘Really? “Give me a child or this one dies”—what would you call it?’
She sucked in a wounded breath. ‘The last act of a desperate woman! I didn’t have to tell you, Reilly. I could have just arranged to bump into you somewhere, sweet-talked you into a repeat performance for old time’s sake.’
He snorted. ‘You overestimate your charms, Lea.’
She knew she deserved the pain that lanced through her. Her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘I wanted to be honest this time. I couldn’t do it that way again.’
‘Why not? You applied yourself so diligently to the task last time. Or have you forgotten?’
Never. He’d been so gentle that night, as she had fallen apart from grief in his arms, grief from losing the father she’d never been able to love. Grief enough to make her do something entirely out of character while the rest of her family had been off burying him.
She might have shoved it far down into her subconscious, but no; she’d never forgotten that afternoon. ‘I’ve lived with that decision for five years, knowing it was the wrong thing to do. Knowing I should have told you.’
‘You didn’t exactly rush to rectify it.’
She dropped her eyes and cleared her thick throat. ‘I was ashamed. I thought…’
‘What?’
She looked over at her baby. ‘Maybe Molly is sick because of me. Because of the lie I told, every day I didn’t tell you about her.’
All the anger drained from his handsome face. ‘You don’t seriously believe that?’
‘I believe in a whole bunch of things I never used to.’ She dragged her eyes up to his and hated herself for the tears that started to fill them. ‘But this is my price to pay, not Molly’s. She’s barely started on life.’
Indecision skittered across his face, and something else: a deep sadness. ‘There must be some other way to help her.’
As if she hadn’t exhausted every possible alternative before debasing herself before the man she never thought she’d see again. Before exposing her shame. ‘Do you think I’d be here now if there was any other possible way?’
His bitter laugh physically hurt. ‘I know you wouldn’t.’
But he hadn’t had her escorted from the premises. Maybe there was hope yet. He cast his focus out over his vast property, hid his thoughts. Then his eyes returned, a fork of brown hair falling into his eyes as he shook his head. ‘To make a child just to save a child…’
‘What—seems wrong to you? You’ve been a father for three minutes, Reilly. I’ve lived with that little girl for five years. Carried her, then held her for over four years. Nothing is too great an ask.’
‘But a baby…’
‘I would love this child just as much as Molly. And she’d adore a brother or a sister to grow up with.’ Instead of having to create imaginary ones.
‘It just seems…’ He looked over at Molly.
Lea grabbed his sleeve desperately. ‘They throw them away, Reilly. They toss twenty millilitres of precious, life-saving stem cells into an incinerator once the baby is born and the cord is clamped—the cells that could save Molly. How is that right?’
His brown eyes smouldered like coals as he considered her. It pained her to see disgust in eyes so like her daughter’s.
After an age, he spoke. ‘I’m sorry Lea. I can’t help you.’
She staggered back, speechless. She’d been prepared for a humiliating, difficult battle, but in her wildest imaginings she’d never thought he’d simply say no. Not the man she remembered. The man whose eyes had plagued her dreams for two years until she’d finally banished him.
‘You won’t help?’ His lashes dropped. Lea gripped his shirt-front with both hands. ‘You don’t have to do a thing. You’ll never even see us again. There’s no expense, no obligation, I promise. Just the…’ She couldn’t bring herself to say ‘conception.’ ‘We’ve done it before. Please, Reilly. Please.’
‘Lea.’ He took her icy hands in his and backed her to the side of the house. ‘You barely know me, so I’ll forgive your assumption that I would willingly impregnate you with a spare-parts baby and then walk away from any child of mine. But you aren’t hearing me.’
His jaw was rigid. ‘I can’t help you, Lea. I can’t give you a sibling for Molly.’ He twisted her clenched fingers away from his body. ‘You’ll have to find another way.’