But he was the protector.
He watched her cook for him and he felt like his worlds were somehow colliding. The impact was smashing something and he wasn’t sure what.
He should get up, insist on helping, force her to sit while he cooked.
Or he should relax while she cooked, be grateful that she was happy and helping him.
Neither felt right.
His background was all around him, the need to stay within himself, to be self-contained, to protect, to not need anyone.
He watched her struggle to get to the refrigerator and it almost killed him to let her cope on her own.
But he had to. She didn’t want him. She didn’t need him. She and Toby would move back to Brisbane and get on with their lives while he went on saving people. Doing what he was good at.
Beth was okay at saving people, too, he conceded. She was skilled, level-headed, practical...and had she really blasted those dragon babies to save the world?
Yes, she had. She was practical.
He wouldn’t be so good at living with a practical partner, he conceded. A partner who resented him stepping in. Caring.
So therefore...
‘Toastie,’ she said, and handed over a plate loaded with buttery, oozy calories. ‘And then bed for me, and maybe for you, too? I know you, Luc Braxton. You’ve been out there saving the world, having quite a day.’
‘While you’ve saved Mystic World.’
‘Not yet I haven’t,’ she said serenely. ‘But I will. Tomorrow or the next day or the day after that. And then...there’s lots more worlds to save and I’ll find some other way to save them than by being a family doctor in Namborra. So don’t you worry about me.’ She fetched her own toastie from the fry-pan, waved it a couple of times until it cooled and then held it like she was proposing a toast. ‘Here’s to a future without threats,’ she said. ‘Here’s to the saviours of Mystic World, and dragon exterminators extraordinaire. And here’s to you, Luc, exterminating all other threats. We make a great team, you know. It’s just...we need to save our worlds separately.’
* * *
But an hour later... It was all very well to say that sort of thing to Luc’s face, Beth conceded. It was quite another to lie in the dark and think it.
Saving the world separately...
Oh, she still loved him.
She should never have slept with him again, she thought bleakly. It’d brought it all back.
‘But it was back already,’ she said into the dark. ‘It never went away.’
‘It has to go away. I have no use for it.’
What?
Love?
Did she still love him?
That was a no-brainer. Of course she did.
She thought of him, playing the game, protecting her back.
‘I could do the same for him,’ she muttered into the dark. ‘We could do the same for each other. Watch each other’s backs. Be in each other’s corners.’
But it wouldn’t be like that. She’d watched him surreptitiously as she’d made their toasties and she’d seen the strain letting her do such a simple task had imposed on him. It’d almost kill him to let her take normal, everyday risks, she thought, and he’d do the same for Toby. He’d wrap them in care, and they’d stifle.
She thought of Harriet with her Pete, Pete who couldn’t bear to care. Pete who needed his Harriet to be perfect or he couldn’t cope.
‘So we have the opposite.’ She buried her face in her pillow. Her leg was aching. She should get up and take painkillers but in a sense the pain in her leg was distracting her from the pain in her heart.
She couldn’t live with him.
She loved him.
She had to leave.
* * *
And in the next room Luc was struggling with demons of his own.
She was going to leave, but how the hell would she cope without him?
Easily.
She had a gammy leg and weak eyesight but neither of those things made her need him. He had no place in her life.
But he wanted her.
So step back, he told himself. Do what he’d done tonight, protect from the rear, let her lead.
Except...did she even want him to do that? He was starting to figure it out. Even tonight when they had been playing...any minute he’d been expecting her to turn on him and tell him to go find his own dragons.
He’d been hunting his own dragons for years now. That was what his job was all about. He’d saved Beth this time. He’d helped her but she no longer needed him so it was back to doing what he always did. Holding himself solitary, unattached, ready to fight whatever needed to be fought and then move on.
But in the next room... Beth and Toby...
They were doing his head in.
He ached for them to need him.
He needed them to need him.
And there was a thought he couldn’t get his head around. He had no way of interpreting it.
All he knew was that Beth was right. Being with her when she didn’t need him would drive him into a place he couldn’t fathom. He had no choice. If he loved her...and he did love her, he knew enough of his head now to accept that fact as irreversible...then he had to let her fly on her own.
He had to let her go.
CHAPTER TEN
BRISBANE WAS BORING.
There were job opportunities—of course there were. She was a qualified doctor with solid experience. Very few employers took the same view of her sight limitations as Maryanne. She was qualified, she wasn’t an obvious loose cannon, therefore she was employable. But her leg still needed work. She was still hobbling, still having trouble carrying Toby.
Maybe she should have stayed at Luc’s for a while longer, accepted his help, accepted the help of the lovely grandmotherly Alice.
Except she had her pride.
And her fear.
Yeah, okay, she’d been terrified at how close she was growing to Luc. She was terrified she’d become the woman he wanted her to be, a woman who loved and depended on him.
Depended... Yeah, that was the cut. As soon as the rehab doctors had told her she was free to work on her own, she’d run. She’d had no choice.
She’d flown back to Namborra before she’d come to Brisbane. She and Toby had spent a few days catching up with friends and packing up her apartment.
She’d sort of hoped Maryanne might change her mind but it wasn’t going to happen. Maryanne seemed tired, overwrought and stressed to the limit as she coped with the workload of three doctors, but it had taken only one short conversation for Beth to realise she wasn’t backing down.
‘Yes, I’m stressed but do you think having to watch over your shoulder to make sure you’re not stuffing things up will make things better?’
She’d tried, for what was to be the last time. ‘Maryanne, my sight’s not a problem. Not if you...’
‘That’s just it. Not if I cover for you. It’s not going to happen, Dr Carmichael. If Ron had been able to move faster to get out of the way...if you’d been able to see those pillars crumbling...’
‘You know that’s unfair.’
‘Unfair or not, I’m not about to risk a medical negligence suit on my watch.’
There was nothing more to be said. She’d said her goodbyes and left.
Which left her in her parents’ elegant apartment overlooking the Brisbane river, working on her rehab, playing with Toby, trying to figure what to do with her life.
She didn’t want to be a shift doctor in a city clinic.
She wanted the country. She wanted Luc.
She needed...
No. She wasn’t sure what she needed. All she knew was that she didn’t need Luc enough to run back to him.
She’d brought Mystic Killers with her. Dragon slaying was good for the quiet
times.
When in doubt, kill...
* * *
When in doubt, slay dragons.
Luc had set his own screen up again, and gone out and bought his own gaming console, as Beth’s huge screen had gone back to the rental agency and she’d taken her console with her. He played online with Harriet and Sam.
‘You know, you can still play online with Beth,’ Harriet told him but the idea seemed...
Hard?
Yeah, like watching her limp away hadn’t been the hardest thing he’d ever done in his life.
She didn’t need him. She was out there slaying dragons all by herself and that was the way she wanted it.
He just had to accept it.
* * *
Two weeks. Three weeks. Four.
He was going nuts. He needed catastrophes. Disasters. Anything to make the pain go away.
‘You love her.’ He was sitting on the end of Harriet’s bed—yet again. Harriet seemed almost as morose as he was. Almost? That was crazy all by itself. She had so much more to be miserable about. Her leg was taking its own sweet time to heal, the doctors were unsure if she’d ever regain full strength and on top of that Pete was avoiding her. Toerag. Hell, if Beth needed him like Harriet needed Pete, Luc thought, then...then things would be okay.
He wanted to punch Pete.
He wanted to punch...dragons.
He wanted Beth.
* * *
A month. Time to organise crèche. Time to take a job.
So what if the only jobs available seemed to be working sessional clinics? She could handle that. As long as she didn’t try to work in poor light she was fine, and it wasn’t as if most sessional doctors did house calls.
She found a good crèche for Toby. It wasn’t as friendly as the Namborra childcare but it was the best she could do.
She started working four mornings a week, working on her leg for the rest of the time. And playing with Toby.
Thank heaven for Toby. He kept her sane. He kept her happy.
Almost...
* * *
The call came at three in the morning. The worst ones did, Luc thought as he groped in the dark for the phone. He was used to it, though. He was wide awake, reaching for his clothes as he listened.
‘A crash on the cliffs north of Illawarra.’ Mabel was wasting no words. Like Luc, she’d have been pulled from sleep and the adrenaline would have coursed straight in. ‘An eighteen-wheeler, one of those huge double trucks. The driver’s lost control for some reason. He’s crashed through the barriers and into oncoming traffic. He’s okay but a car’s been pushed down the cliff. It’s hanging by nothing just above the sea. As far as we can tell, there’s a woman and three kids inside, too terrified to move. A couple of locals are trying to abseil down to stabilise the car but there’s fog and wind. Two minutes to get to the chopper, Luc. Minimum crew as you’ll want the chopper for transfer. I’ll send backup after you. Gina’s heading for the roof now. Chopper’s ready. You, Blake, Samantha. Go.’
He went.
* * *
She’d seen ten patients that morning and almost all had been boring.
That wasn’t exactly a kind thing to think, she conceded as she tried to sleep that night, but walk-in clinics tended to attract boring.
If people had something they were really worried about, they tended to take time off work and make an appointment with their family doctor. If something was urgent, then they’d head to their nearest hospital. Beth’s clinic got the rest.
Today Beth had handled five requests for certificates from office workers who’d had to take time off work because of minor ailments. A teenager wanting birth control who didn’t want to face the same family doctor her mum used. A construction worker with an annoying rash—wearing polyester while digging in the heat wasn’t the wisest move. A young mum who’d popped in on impulse because her baby was having trouble feeding. The last had at least had been rewarding as Beth had recognised underlying postnatal depression, though the head of the clinic had been less than impressed when he’d seen Beth’s timesheet for the consultation.
There’d also been two hopefuls who’d seen a new name on the medical list and thought they’d try her as an easy mark for drugs.
It wasn’t exactly satisfying medicine.
At least she’d picked the postnatal depression, she told herself. Left untreated it could have led to disaster, so she had done some good. But this couldn’t sustain her long term. She wanted to be a family doctor, someone people chose when they had real problems. She wanted to be a doctor who saw mothers through pregnancies and picked postnatal depression before it did real damage.
‘You’re lucky to have any job right now,’ she said into the dark, and she knew she was. She’d fought desperately hard to qualify as a doctor. And, yes, her time at Namborra had been fantastic but she’d been lucky.
‘You make your own luck,’ she muttered, and wondered how on earth she was going to make her own luck now.
‘So one step at a time,’ she told herself. ‘Get your leg better.’
And stop thinking about Luc?
Where was he now?
‘Out caring for the world,’ she said out loud. ‘Out setting the world to rights.’
‘I could help him.’
‘As if he’d ever let you... Get real.’
* * *
The car had been hit head on, and then propelled mercilessly over the cliff, the force of the truck smashing it through the metal barricade to plunge almost thirty feet down the cliff.
It hung, seemingly by a wing and a prayer, ten feet above the waves.
The cliff was almost concave, the rock face scooping inward then out to form a slight ledge. The ledge had caught the car—just. It was wedged precariously, its front fender on the ledge, the rest of it seemingly a crumpled wreck.
By the time the chopper landed on the clifftop, the local coastguard boat was in view, beavering through rough seas, heading for the base of the cliff, but the rocks underneath would allow no approach by sea. The night was windy and wild. Gina was having trouble even steadying the chopper to land.
The coastguard’s searchlights lit the scene like day as they did their initial assessment but there was no way a boat could get near.
An ambulance was parked on the clifftop, and a couple of paramedics caring for someone they assumed was the truck driver. Minor lacerations and shock, they’d been told. There was also a fire engine, plus about six other cars. There were guys on the cliff face dressed in hard hats, with ropes looped around their shoulders. Local abseilers called on to help? They weren’t going over, though. Amateurs?
This wasn’t the scene for amateurs, Luc thought, and thanked God they’d had the sense to wait. The look of that cliff... If they’d tried to get down there they might well become further casualties.
There was a moment’s silence between those in the chopper as they all stared down at the car. The ledge it was on was so narrow. They could almost see it teetering. ‘How many did Mabel say?’ Blake asked at last, and his voice was almost a whisper through the headphones. They’d pull themselves together before they landed, but right now the initial reaction from all of them was horror.
‘Woman and three kids,’ Luc said. His headset was connected to base. ‘Mabel’s just radioed in what we know. The driver’s a Tess McKnight, thirty-four. Kids are Zoe, eight, Tom, six, and Robbie, three.’
‘What the hell were they doing out here at this time of night?’ Blake muttered.
And Luc knew that, too. ‘Anniversary party in Sydney. Driving home late. Husband’s following behind, driving Gran and Grandpa and Aunty. He’s on the cliff.’
That led to further silence. Scenes like this were appalling but the addition of family watching on...it added tension to tension. The team would need to turn off distress, turn off emotion if the
y were to have any hope of rescuing anyone.
‘Mabel says the firies have called in cranes,’ Luc said into the headphones. ‘Two, due here any minute. If we can get cables to the car we’ll have something to attach them to. She’s telling me the boys with ropes are part of a local abseiling group but the cliffs here are sandstone and they don’t like their chances.’
‘Right.’ A moment’s further thought while Blake assessed and came to a decision. ‘Sam, you’re up top,’ Blake told her. ‘I know you have the skills but you don’t have the experience. Luc, you and I head down. Cables, hooks...take thin lines and Sam’ll guide down what we need when we reach the car.’ The chopper was settling now. They could no longer see the car dangling over the ocean, but the vision was seared into the minds of them all. ‘Luc, sandstone cliffs are renowned for nasty surprises. You feel unsafe, you’re out of there.’
‘Leaving it to you? I don’t think so.’
‘Same goes for me,’ Blake said grimly. ‘By the look of that car they might already all be dead and I want no more bodies on my watch. Harriet’s proof of what these cliffs can do. Watch your backs, people. Watch everything. Let’s go.’
* * *
They landed and they hardly talked. Blake and Luc had fitted part of their gear in the chopper but it had to be checked and rechecked before they went near the edge.
‘Anyone hear anything from the car?’ Blake demanded.
‘Nothing.’ The chief of the local fire crew, a woman in her fifties who’d introduced herself brusquely as Carol, had things under control. Or as much under control as she could. ‘The husband says Tess has her phone on her but it’s rung out. I won’t let anyone try again. If she’s unconscious, if any of the kids try to wiggle to answer it...’ She let the sentence hang.
‘The abseilers?’
‘Friends of our local cop,’ Carol said. ‘Seems they did a course a couple of years back. Rex called them out but they seemed so nervous I pulled them back.’
‘Well done,’ Blake said gruffly.
‘And you guys can do it?’
‘Piece of cake,’ Luc said. ‘In our sleep.’ He was adjusting his Prusik loop, the extra loop linking the main rope to the harness. The loop was sometimes referred to as dead man’s handle, an essential backup safety measure. He looped it around his rope and attached it to his carabiner. Making sure he locked it. ‘Those cranes you mentioned?’
Finding His Wife, Finding a Son Page 13