What kind of a man inspired fear and distance in his own son? What kind of a man admitted to it, in a truncated semipublic conversation with a woman he hadn’t seen in ten years?
Why was Miranda’s effect on him still the same? Something about her. Something about the indefinable chemistry between them. It was a long way from being just physical. For some unaccountable reason, she shattered his barriers just by being who she was. He could talk to her in a way he’d never talked to anyone else.
He’d first discovered his connection to Miranda at that medical students’ party ten years ago and the dam inside him had burst open. The next day he’d felt exactly the way he was feeling now, regret souring his stomach and tightening like an iron band around his head.
Why the hell had he let it happen? Why had he said so much? What would she think? Lord, he’d been so naked in what he’d said! She must think less of him because of it. She must! What red-blooded woman wanted an emotional, self- doubting wimp in her life?
It was like going into battle with no armour. Like swimming naked in a pool of sharks. Not just dangerous, plain stupid.
That was how his thinking had run at the age of twenty-four.
That was why he’d never phoned her after that long-ago night.
Because he had been too scared. Because he just hadn’t imagined that she would want him to continue what they’d started after he’d shown himself to be so weak, and because he couldn’t bring himself to risk that vulnerability again, even if she did.
What the hell might he tell her in the future? he’d wondered ten years ago.
About the times he’d cried himself to sleep at fourteen and even sixteen, in sheer impotent frustration, after some angry, circular altercation with his father? About how competitive he’d been with his medical studies, so that the prospect of anything less than stellar results had filled him with physical dread? About the secret, appalling thread of relief he’d felt at nineteen when Dad had died, mingling so painfully with his grief?
It was destructive and pointless to shine a light on that stuff. You shouldn’t dwell on your failings and weaknesses. That wasn’t the way to overcome them.
Words had power.
When you talked about something, you made it more real.
Now, almost in his mid-thirties, he intellectually understood that talking could sometimes help. Lord knew, he’d tried to talk to Anna when their marriage had begun to break down and many times since then, but they always seemed to hear the wrong things in what each other said, and their talks frequently made things worse, not better. Their relationship had never held that kind of intimacy and shared nakedness.
It was one of things he’d considered a strength at the time. Now he was a lot less sure. And yet the regret about talking to Miranda remained…
He must have been sitting out on the cabin porch for over an hour by this time.
He heard various sounds above the musical play of the ocean. Kid sounds, mainly—bumps and scramblings and noise and giggling, interspersed with the occasional adult voice. Lights flipped on and off in various windows. Clattering and more voices came from the camp kitchen where cleaning up was still in progress, as well as advance preparations for tomorrow’s meals.
Then, out of the darkness, he heard women’s voices and laughter, approaching from the direction of the medical centre.
Apparently even thinking about certain things could make them more real. He’d been thinking about Miranda and what she’d done to him ten years ago and now, and magically here she was, appearing in silhouette as she came along the mulched path with Susie Jackson, the camp physiotherapist he’d been introduced to briefly over dinner.
From the way they were talking, it sounded as if they’d already made friends and he had time to wonder how it was that women could do that. So quickly and easily giving themselves. As if it wasn’t scary at all. How did they latch on so fast to the points of connection? How could they tell so quickly who to trust?
‘We’ll give it a try tomorrow,’ he heard Susie say. Then the two women said a warm, cheerful goodnight to each other and Susie peeled off in a different direction while Miranda came past Nick’s cabin.
She saw him, of course. He was sitting in front of the main window, and he’d left a light on in the cabin’s kitchenette in case Josh woke up and became disorientated in unfamiliar surroundings. The light spilled through the window and showed Nick’s position on the veranda quite clearly, leaving no opportunity to hide.
‘Hi,’ she said.
‘Hi. Everything OK?’
‘It’s fine.’ She came to a hesitant halt, and Nick could see her wondering if this was a whole conversation or just a greeting on the move. ‘Susie did a couple of evening physio sessions on my CF patients and I wanted to be on hand this first night. Then we sat and talked for a while. No dramas, thank goodness. Pager hasn’t gone off.’ She patted her hip pocket.
‘Sounds good,’ he said mechanically, willing her to keep walking.
His neck had gone hot. She must be thinking about what he’d said on the beach. She must. And he didn’t want her to. He wanted her to forget the conversation had ever happened.
He struggled to find something else to say, something that would dismiss her and send her on her way without the fact being too obvious, but the right words refused to come. The silence stretched out. Two or three seconds could feel like that many minutes in a situation like this.
‘Did you—?’ he began, just as she spoke at last, breezy and offhand.
‘Well, have a good night, Nick.’
‘You, too.’
She walked on and he started to relax. She’d saved him, thank goodness, from uttering an inane line about whether she’d remembered to bring a book, because if she hadn’t he could recommend a great story about a Very Greedy Frog, ha, ha.
He watched her go, her hips swaying slightly beneath a fall of swishy fabric in the same colours as that spectacular ocean just a hundred metres away, her shoulders neat and square on either side of her bouncing ponytail of dark hair. She looked about nineteen years old, although he knew full well that she was thirty-four, and he had a sudden surge of intense curiosity about what her life was like these days.
He was pretty sure she wasn’t married…boyfriend, maybe…and quite sure she didn’t have kids. But she did have a balcony where she kept plants. He couldn’t even remember how he knew that ridiculous detail, he just did.
It wasn’t enough.
Eight-thirty in the evening, on his own, nothing to do, with Miranda disturbing his thoughts for another hour, probably, even if she wasn’t physically present…
Damn.
‘Miranda, wait!’ he called out, just before she disappeared into the darkness on the way to her own cabin.
Miranda stopped. Right at the point when she’d absolutely made up her mind that Nick really didn’t want her to stay and chat, he was calling her back.
So what should she do about it? How much pride did she have? How nice was she? Once again, it hadn’t been hard to pick up his body language as he sat on the veranda. He’d struggled for something to say. He hadn’t stood up or anything, hadn’t tried to draw out their conversation, or even really looked at her face.
She knew a little more about men than she’d known ten years ago. She’d been with Ian for six years, after all, even though for three of those years it had been a long-distance thing. If a man wanted to talk—or even spend time with you in silence—he was usually pretty good at l
etting you know it. He closed the physical distance between the two of you. He looked directly at you. He smiled.
Nick hadn’t done any of those things.
Was this an issue of her pride, though, or was there another possibility?
‘I should probably go and relax for a while,’ she said, coming slowly back. Was this really what he wanted? Or, for both their sakes, should she give him an easy way out?
‘Relax here,’ he invited her. ‘I can’t leave Josh or take him anywhere, he’s fast asleep. Wish I could offer you some wine.’
‘I wouldn’t take it. I’m pretty much on call for the kids all week.’ She arrived at the short flight of wooden steps that led up to the veranda.
‘Not a holiday for you, then.’
‘Not really.’ She smiled at him, to see if he’d smile back. ‘Although I do have high hopes for my tan…’ Nope. No smile.
‘Please, come and sit,’ he repeated, and this time he jumped to his feet almost eagerly and dragged the veranda’s second chair into a more inviting position, as if he really meant it.
‘Just a few minutes,’ she said, making a point of looking at her watch so that she could claim another commitment if necessary.
She honestly didn’t know if she was being pathetic, stepping onto his veranda. Too nice, as usual. Too happy to give.
Damn it, though! She hated the way some people told you to play games in a relationship. Don’t show your emotional cards until you’ve seen his. Play hard to get. If you began a relationship with games, at what point did you stop them? Patterns were hard to break once you’d set them up. She’d kept her emotional cards to her chest with Ian. It had gone against everything in her nature, and it hadn’t led to a happy ending, had it? Wasn’t simple honesty the better approach? Honesty to the person you were with, and honesty to yourself about your own nature.
We’re adults, Nick and I, she reminded herself. We’re in our thirties, successful professionally, with a divorce under his belt and a failed long-term relationship under mine. I can step onto his veranda without it saying anything about what happened ten years ago.
‘You’re frowning,’ he said.
‘Didn’t mean to.’
‘Want some tea or coffee?’
‘Tea, please. Just a quick cup.’ Mugs could be handy things to look down at when you didn’t want to meet somebody’s eyes.
He rose at once and went inside, and she heard the sounds he made in the kitchen. In a few minutes he’d returned, the cardboard tea-bag tag still dangling over the edge of the mug, which was one of those ubiquitous pearlescent orange ones she remembered from her childhood, and even then they hadn’t been new.
Handing it to her, Nick said, ‘This must be a cyclone survivor, I think. My aunt and uncle had a cupboard full of these at their beach house.’
She laughed. ‘I was thinking almost the same thing. My parents had rows of them, twenty-five years ago, hanging on hooks on the wall.’
‘The camp has been here in some form or other for donkey’s years, I gather.’
‘Not always for kids like our lot, though.’
‘No. A church camp, then a nudist colony, in the eighties. Long ago, they used to hunt mutton birds on the island, for their oil.’
‘You’ve done your research!’
‘That’s what teachers used to say on my school reports.’ He quoted self-mockingly, ‘Nick is always well prepared.’
‘I’m seriously wondering how you knew this place was once a nudist colony, let alone about the mutton bird oil.’
‘No great mystery. My son was fast asleep by seven twenty- five, and I forgot to pack a book to read in the evenings. As a piece of gripping literature, the Crocodile Creek Kids’ Camp information folder provided a somewhat disappointing alternative, but the page on the camp’s history was pure gold.’
‘Oh, let me lend you a book, then. I optimistically packed three.’ She named them—one chunky piece of crime fiction, one delectably fluffy beach read and one literary novel. She almost added, Only keep your hands off my beach read, because I want that one first!
He chose the murder mystery, and looked much more cheerful than he had a few minutes ago. She promised him, ‘I’ll grab it from my cabin in a minute.’
‘Tomorrow at breakfast will be fine. For the rest of the week, I’m going to try to get Josh to have an afternoon sleep so we can do some of the evening stuff, but that might not work, which will mean I get a lot of bedtime reading done.’
‘There’s a babysitting service available through the resort hotel’s child-care centre. Beth and Susie have both promised me it’s very responsible. The centre staff all have formal qualifications in child care, as well as first-aid certificates.’
‘I must have missed that detail in the folder. Can’t think how, because I really thought I’d read it cover to cover.’
A silence fell.
Miranda felt fine about it, which wasn’t always the case when two people didn’t know each other very well—which she and Nick surely didn’t, any more. She sipped her tea and settled herself more comfortably into the chair, noting the way the soft light from the cabin window emphasised the craggy lines of Nick’s profile and the bulk of his shoulders.
His shoulders were tense.
Apparently he wasn’t fine about the silence.
‘Listen, what I said to you on the beach this afternoon…’
‘I know.’ She nodded. ‘We didn’t get a chance to finish. Of course we can talk about it now, Nick, if you want.’
‘No, that’s not what I meant.’ He shifted awkwardly in his seat. ‘Look, just forget the whole conversation. I shouldn’t have said any of it. It wasn’t fair to you or Josh, or— Yeah, not fair to anyone.’
‘Not fair to you?’ she interposed softly.
‘What? Oh, fair to me?’ He laughed, a short unhappy sound, and ran a hand up the back of his neck. ‘That’s hardly the point, is it?’
‘Well, don’t you think it might be? Nick, we were friends, once.’ She couldn’t help watching him, wishing she could come closer. Touch him even, the way she’d tried to do on the beach. Just on his arm. ‘We went through medical school together, we—Well… And I’m your son’s doctor. I’m not going to betray your confidence, or judge you, or use it against you. If you needed to talk—’
‘No, I shouldn’t have said it,’ he repeated, the stubborn repudiation of his own behaviour—and his own needs?—etched in every line of his body.
After that, there was nowhere to go. She couldn’t keep pushing. And she couldn’t think of anything else to say that didn’t sound like a very forced attempt to change the subject. Neither, apparently, could he.
She ended up gulping her tea too fast and almost burning her throat. When she made I’d-better-go-now noises and got to her feet, he stood too. ‘Thanks for keeping me company.’
‘Not for long enough. It’s still only nine. But I should…’ She made a vague gesture in the direction of her cabin.
‘You’ll probably be busy tomorrow,’ he agreed.
‘And I could be up in the night with some of the kids. Tayla’s prone to night-time asthma attacks. A couple of them need meds at ten.’ He must be riveted by that information!
After a few more awkward phrases from both of them, she said goodnight and left him on his own with the thoughts he refused to share, but she wondered if she’d been wrong ten years ago about why he’d never phoned.
Could it possibly be that he’d been too full of
regret about how much he’d given of himself that night?
Having retreated to bed at nine-thirty in a state of one part boredom, two parts regret and three parts frustration, Nick woke early the next morning. The sun had not yet risen above the horizon, although he could tell it wouldn’t be long.
He dressed quickly in shorts and a T-shirt, wanting to get out into the freshness of the dawn air, but he made too much noise and heard the creak of the bed in Josh’s room. He’d woken him. Josh appeared in the doorway, still looking sleepy and confused.
Nick took no time to think and no time to take it slow. Instead, he scooped his son into his arms, still in his little cotton pyjamas, and told him, ‘Come on, we’re going to watch the sun come up.’
The beach was deserted, the sand still cool and grey and shaded, and the ocean as flat as glass. This part of the island faced the north-east, and on the far right of the sweeping vista Nick could see the place where the sun would rise. He just had time to set Josh down in front of him, sheltering him from the light chill in the breeze with his own body. ‘Feet cold?’
‘No.’
‘Ever seen the sun rise?’
‘In hospital.’
Oh, hell…
He squeezed Josh’s shoulders. ‘Well, this will be much better.’
It was. Seconds later, a line of fire spread between the sky and the water, which was suddenly dazzling with white light. The air immediately began to warm, while colour spread over everything. The greens of the rainforest glowed. The sand turned to gold. The sky grew bluer and deeper by the minute.
‘Can I swim?’ Josh asked.
They hadn’t brought a towel or a swimsuit, but Nick couldn’t turn down the idea. Josh’s whole face was eager and his breathing was clear, no hint of a wheeze.
And he’s talking to me. He’s looking at me.
Somehow the looking felt even more important than the talking. He could deal with Josh’s silences—just—but the resolute, close-faced looking away always cut him to the bone.
The Australian's Desire (Mills & Boon By Request) Page 39