A Proposal Worth Waiting For

by Lilian Darcy

Sure enough, he tore himself away at the most impossible moment, just when she’d begun to think that it would be the best thing they could possibly do—make love, give themselves to each other and forget everything else.

  ‘I can’t do this.’ He slumped against the back of the couch and covered his face with his arm.

  ‘I want you to,’ she whispered.

  ‘I’m a mess.’

  ‘This isn’t messy.’

  Silently, he shook his head, still hiding his eyes, and Miranda faced her choices. Let him go, or…

  No, she wasn’t going to let him go tonight. She wasn’t going to let him run from his own nakedness. She wasn’t going to be nice.

  ‘This is not messy,’ she repeated softly. ‘This is right. This is us. Making love. Because we want each other. Because we love each other. Because Josh is safe and we’ve had a terrible night.’

  She didn’t wait for him to answer. And she didn’t care if he couldn’t tell her that he loved her in return. Better to play with the kids on the beach and then say goodbye, rather than not play with them at all. Well, Shakespeare said it better. To have loved and lost…

  She caressed his arm and drew it gently away from his face and down to his side. Then she straddled him on the couch, her knees on either side of his thighs and her body poised over him. She began to kiss him again, bending to find his mouth, anchoring it right where she wanted it with the curve of her palm against his jaw.

  ‘It’s OK,’ she whispered. ‘It really is.’

  Because if they didn’t do this, she wasn’t convinced there was any way…any chance…that they’d find a connection when morning came. He’d be lost to her. He wouldn’t know how much she cared. Words weren’t enough. Words weren’t nearly as powerful and irrevocable as he thought.

  ‘Miranda…’ His voice was edgy, tense.

  ‘That’s not the way to say my name. Say it how you said it before.’ She stroked his neck and ran her fingers through his hair.

  ‘Miranda…’

  ‘That’s better. Getting better.’ She kissed him more deeply, teasing him with her parted lips and the languorous brush of her tongue.

  He groaned and pushed on her shoulders, still fighting her and fighting himself, but the movement turned into a caress. His hands slipped down her body and closed over her breasts, cupping them through her clothing, stroking them until her nipples burned.

  She peeled off her top, unhooked her bra and dropped both garments on the floor. He barely waited. His hands were there ready to brush over her breasts again at once. He wasn’t fighting any more.

  ‘Oh, Nick…’ But she’d claimed victory too soon.

  ‘I can’t.’

  He already was.

  She didn’t listen to his protest but began to unfasten the buttons on his shirt instead, opening it to run her hands over the hard heat of his chest. He groaned again, and she almost thought he was shaking. ‘Miranda…’

  If he was asking her to stop, his body was saying something very different. She felt the upward thrust of his hips against her crotch and then he pulled her against him and her breasts pressed into his chest. ‘OK,’ he whispered. ‘You win.’

  Only now did he take control, twisting so that he could lay her against the couch, her head pillowed against one of the bright cushions that sat against the arm. He kissed the shallow valley between her breasts, then moved his mouth down as he unfastened her shorts and dragged them over her hips and down her legs. Her whole body was throbbing, wanting him.

  He discarded his own clothing and found the protection they needed with the same sinuous speed, and when he came back to bury his face in her neck, his eyes were closed. She lifted her hips and moved them against his body, asking for him, needing him. He gave her what she wanted, and they were locked together until she lost all sense of time and space. Every touch and every movement delivered a message of love, if he wanted to hear it.

  But there was no lazy aftermath like they’d had the past two nights.

  ‘I have to get back to Josh.’ Nick dragged himself away and onto his feet, pacing halfway across the room in a matter of seconds as if needing to put in the most distance he could.

  He found his discarded clothing on the floor and dressed before Miranda had even moved. She struggled to catch up to him, found her underclothing and her shorts but couldn’t find her top until Nick held it out for her.

  ‘I’ll walk you to your cabin first,’ he said. ‘Don’t argue, Miranda, will you?’

  ‘If you don’t want me to.’ She smiled. ‘Although I think I’ve just proved I can put on a pretty good argument if I have to.’

  ‘I’m not playing games.’ His mouth looked tight and tired, and so did his eyes.

  ‘I know that.’ She wanted to reach up and touch his face, smooth the tension away, but sensed that he wouldn’t let her. He’d already begun to push her away and, even though she’d expected it, the speed of it and the reality of it still hurt.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You don’t need to thank me, Nick.’

  But he said it again when they reached the steps up to her veranda. ‘Thank you, Miranda.’

  He squeezed her hands but didn’t kiss her, and she went inside not knowing if he’d ever let her get close to him again. Anna would probably arrive on the weekend. Was Anna important? Whether she was or she wasn’t, Nick would be going home. Miranda would be Josh’s doctor again, and it would be so easy for Nick to run away from anything more than that, if he wanted to. She watched him from the cabin window as he walked across to the medical centre, his height and strength doing nothing to take away from the solitary appearance of his figure receding into the darkness.

  ‘I’m not going to let him push me away this time,’ she vowed out loud. ‘Whatever it takes, I’m not.’

  Josh looked so much better when Miranda went in to see him at seven in the morning, you would never have known how ill he’d been ten hours earlier. He wanted breakfast, and when it arrived from the camp kitchen on a tray, with lids covering the dishes, he lifted the lids and greeted each item as if it were a birthday gift.

  ‘Strawberry yoghurt! Eggs and bacon and hash browns! Banana muffin!’ He ate it all, then wanted to know, ‘When am I going back to my cabin?’

  ‘Sweetheart, not yet,’ Miranda had to say. His chest didn’t yet sound as clear as she wanted it to be, and she knew how hard it would be for Josh to stay quiet once he was back in the company of the other children. ‘Maybe this afternoon, but I’ll still want to keep a close eye on you.’

  ‘Oh, I always have a close eye on me,’ Josh said. ‘Mummy keeps very close eyes.’ Was that a sigh?

  ‘I bet she does,’ Miranda said neutrally. ‘She loves you very much.’

  Where was Nick?

  Josh must have read her mind. ‘Dad’s gone to get breakfast.’

  ‘Oh, OK.’

  She wanted to see him, wanted eye contact, wanted to know what kind of a fight she was facing today, what kind of a future she had to prepare for. The promise she’d made to herself in the early hours of the morning seemed glib now. Sometimes one person’s determination wasn’t enough.

  ‘It takes two,’ she said under her breath, and in the bright light of day, after too little sleep, she didn’t know if there were two people who really wanted this.

  ‘Nick!’ Anna reached him on the phone as he sat in the camp dining hall, gulping down his breakfast so he could get back to Josh.

  ‘What’s happening, Anna?’

  ‘I’m flying up today.’

  ‘Today?’

  ‘Louise and Bron are here.’ Anna’s sisters. Anna herself was the middle one of the three. ‘Both of them.’ She gave a laugh, sounding a little bemused about it. ‘They flew down from Sydney on Wednesday afternoon, and they’re going to look after Mum for ten days. I’m a bit…’The sentence trailed off. Anna didn’t seem to know how she felt about her sisters being there.

  ‘I wasn’t expecting you until the weekend. Sunday.’
<
br />   ‘So, yippee,’ she drawled, ‘you’re off the hook two days early.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant, damn it, and you know it.’

  ‘You would have known my plans sooner if you’d returned my calls. I was getting frantic last night. I could have killed you.’

  ‘And you could have called sooner. I was waiting half the day.’

  ‘I—I know. I’m sorry about that. How is Josh? Is he fine? Is he still having a good time? Is he eating right? I—It feels weird being this out of touch. Having to ask these questions. Not seeing him. Like vertigo.’

  And, of course, he had to tell her, no point in trying to hedge or soften it. Even knowing this, he said the words with slow reluctance. ‘He had a pretty major attack last night.’

  ‘Pretty major? What does that mean?’

  Her slight air of bewilderment—vertigo, she’d just called it—disappeared. She was instantly on the alert, ready to judge him and find him wanting. He could feel the sizzle of her sudden anger down the phone like electricity, and in an odd way it put both of them on more solid ground.

  Because it was so familiar.

  And because he knew, now, what he wanted instead.

  ‘How the hell could that happen with Miranda around? A pretty major attack?’ She swore. ‘How major? When? What did you do, Nick?’

  ‘Took him to the medical centre.’ There! At the hint of a suggestion that it might be his fault, he’d immediately distanced himself, withdrawn, given her the bare minimum.

  ‘You know that’s not what I mean!’ Her voice rose higher. ‘Why won’t you ever give me the details?’

  Because anything I say you turn around and use as a weapon, so I use weapons of my own—silence and withdrawal.

  He wouldn’t have said it, even though he’d started to understand it so much better, but she didn’t wait for his answer anyway.

  ‘How could you let it happen, Nick? You know his triggers, you know how fast it can get serious if he has a major exposure.’ Her tone changed again, turning wooden and cold. ‘You weren’t even there, were you?’

  ‘Look, wouldn’t you rather hear how he is now than how it happened in the first place?’

  She gave a shocked moan. ‘How he is now? You mean—?’

  ‘He’s fine,’ he cut in quickly, not really wanting to punish her to that extent. ‘He had a good night, and he’s hungry. He accidentally breathed in some fine ash from someone’s campfire. He was stirring it up with a stick and it was still warm and just flew up into his face.’

  She made another sound.

  ‘Miranda was brilliant, and so were the medical centre staff.’ He didn’t tell her how scared he’d been, couldn’t control the way his voice softened as he spoke Miranda’s name.

  ‘So he’s with you? Are you in your cabin? Dr. Carlisle’s always good, Nick, you sound as if it’s something miraculous. Josh adores her. I wouldn’t have let him go up there if she hadn’t been going. Can I speak to him?’

  ‘He’s still at the medical centre. It’s a small hospital, really, they have good equipment on hand. Brand-new, after the cyclone.’

  ‘And you’re there with him, right?’ she asked, an ominous note building again in her voice as she readied herself for raising her righteous anger by several notches. ‘Nick, even though Dr Carlisle is brilliant, she can’t give him the same attention as a parent.’

  ‘She would. Always.’

  ‘Always?’

  ‘She would.’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, I cannot believe this.’ She stopped suddenly, and sighed. ‘OK. OK. Just tell me you’re with him, that’s all!’

  Nick felt the familiar stubbornness overtaking his best intentions and didn’t answer her challenge. ‘When does your flight get in?’

  ‘Early afternoon, but I want to speak to Josh.’

  ‘What time? I can meet you at the airport.’

  ‘I want…to speak…to Josh!’ she articulated with cold precision. ‘For a man who claims to love his son—’ She broke off suddenly, and he thought he heard her sisters’ voices in the background, sounding impatient. ‘I—I—Just a minute, Nick,’ she said in a different tone, then put her hand over the phone so her words to Louise and Bron were muffled. ‘OK, OK,’ he faintly heard. ‘I do see. Yes, I can hear it. I’m not perfect. I can’t work miracles on myself. Give me a chance.’ The phone clattered and he heard, crisp and clear, ‘Sorry, Nick.’

  ‘Don’t worry. Josh and I will phone you back,’ he told her, and cut the connection because he wasn’t confident of his own ability to stay civilised and in control of himself if they kept talking.

  Enough with breakfast.

  His appetite had gone.

  Miranda would probably have come to see Josh at the medical centre by now, and he felt his pulse leap at the thought of seeing her. What time had it been when he’d said goodbye to her at her cabin steps? Three-thirty in the morning? Less than four hours ago, but it felt like a lot longer.

  He wanted to hold her in his arms, promise her the world, protect her and laugh with her and slake his doubts with their two bodies moving together. He wanted to tell her about Anna’s phone call, about the repertoire of too-familiar accusations, about the tangled layers of mistrust and miscommunication, and that odd note of bewilderment that had crept into Anna’s voice a couple of times. He wanted to hear Miranda promise him something different—faith in each other, shared understanding that happened with words and without them.

  But then as he came up the ramp to the medical centre, he saw her through the side window, laughing at something Grace had just said. Miranda tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, and her nose wrinkled when she smiled. To a stranger’s eye, from this distance, she could have been little older than seventeen with her lithe build and bobbing ponytail and innocent face, free of make-up.

  Grace was laughing, too. The two women looked oddly similar for a moment, although their colouring was not in the least alike. Still, there was something—in the way they laughed, in their sensible approach. They were both the kind of woman that would be a man’s best friend, as well as his lover, and who gave too much sometimes.

  Nick wanted Miranda with his whole heart and his whole soul at that moment, but the understanding soured as soon as it formed.

  With all his baggage, with all his blocks, why on earth would she want to be a part of his life?

  CHAPTER TEN

  THERE was a buzz of anticipation in the air on Wallaby Island as the camp and medical centre’s official re-opening approached.

  With memories of last night and Nick uppermost in her mind, Miranda felt it but couldn’t fully share in it. Underlying her outward focus, there were questions that wouldn’t go away and couldn’t be answered, and she could only hope that her preoccupation didn’t show.

  All of her exchanges with him so far today had been superficial ones, or else very Josh-focused, and Nick’s body language could be translated into words of one syllable. Stay clear. Don’t try to get close. Beyond the body language, she had the definite impression there were things he wasn’t saying.

  And she’d made a decision. No matter what happened in the future, she knew she couldn’t continue as Josh’s doctor. Her personal feelings were too deeply involved. Anna—and Nick—would have to find someone else to oversee their son’s care.

  Tonight, the kids were having a disco as part of the festivities connected with the official opening of the new medical centre and rebuilt camp, and some of tomorrow’s invited guests were expected to fly in today.

  ‘Including Stella’s dad,’ Susie said to Miranda, at the medical centre after lunch. ‘She’s hoping he won’t show up until tomorrow, because she’s so desperate to get dressed up for tonight and she thinks he’ll say no.’

  ‘Will he?’ She’d just finished the paperwork relating to Josh’s admission and discharge, and hoped to head out of there soon. To the beach, with a book? Or would she drop in on Nick and Josh?

  Susie made a face. ‘I’ll be st
uck in the middle of it all, if he does put his big authoritarian foot down. Stella’s roped me in as her stylist!’

  ‘Woo-hoo!’

  ‘Ooh, yes, I’d be looking forward to it, if her dad didn’t sound so scary. I’m going to make her look gorgeous, and everyone will see how pretty she can be, including a certain fourteen-year-old surfer type. But listen, the reason I’m here…I’ve just done a routine physio session with Jack Havens. His chest is sounding very thick, and he feels to me as if he’s running a mild temp, says he isn’t feeling well. I think you should take a look at him.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘In the boys’ dorm, lying down. He didn’t want to go on the rainforest buggy ride.’

  ‘There’s a few of them not going, then.’

  Miranda had given Nick the go-ahead to take Josh home to their cabin half an hour ago, but she’d also given orders that they weren’t to stray too far. She wanted them back for a check-up late that afternoon, and sooner if Josh had any breathing problems at all. If this had been a big city hospital and a normal working week, she would have kept him under medical supervision, but with Nick’s cabin so close to the medical centre and having him able to give his full focus to Josh, a continuing hospital stay seemed like overkill.

  ‘Well, it’s always a risk with kids like these, isn’t it?’ Susie was saying. ‘They’re magnets for every bug going around.’

  ‘I’ll take a look at him in the dorm—no sense bringing him here if he’s comfortable.’ Jack was twelve, and had come to the island without his parents. So far, he seemed to be enjoying his independence, and it would be a pity if his camp experience was spoiled by illness.

  ‘Charles’s Lily is still sick,’ Susie said, ticking off names on her fingers. ‘Robbie Henderson, one of the cerebral palsy kids from Benita’s group. Ming Tan sounded a bit snuffly at breakfast.’

  Miranda felt a faint prickle of unease, but let it go. ‘If my lot all come down with respiratory complaints, we’ll deal with it. Beth says they can get extra staff rostered out here if they need to. I’ve had the Allandale parents and Josh’s mum expressing vocal doubts about the calibre of the doctors in a place like this, so far from the city, but from what I’ve seen so far, I have to say I don’t think they have anything to worry about.’