by Lilian Darcy
'Hello, lover,' he said, and the endearment spoke of sex, in the low, caressing tone he used.
It spoke of the passion that lay at the heart of their relationship, and she thought, Yes, I've missed it terribly, just as much as he has.
His hunger for her glittered in his blue eyes, and his impatience showed in his hands. Without another word, he lifted her jaw with the caress of his forefinger and brought his mouth down to ravish hers. Then he touched her. Everywhere, it seemed.
His hands roved across her breasts, stopping only long enough to ensure that they were swollen and ready for him before dropping to her hips to pull her closer. He slid his hands inside the back of her snug-fitting stretch pants to cup her bottom.
'I haven't seen you naked for so long.'
'Two weeks. Less.' The night they'd found out about their healthy son.
'That's long.' He peeled her cotton knit top up beneath her armpits and skimmed the balls of his thumbs across her tight nipples.
'Yes... Yes, it is.'
She clung to the waistband of his jeans with two sets of curled fingers, like hanging onto the safety rail on a carnival ride. Her knuckles pressed into the warm, tanned skin at his waist, and she flung her head back and closed her eyes, gasping in delight at the continuing onslaught of his hands and his mouth.
'Let me undress you,' he said, sliding her pants down over her hips. 'Let me see you...'
'And you,' she said huskily. 'Not fair if you get all the pleasure.'
They didn't talk properly until afterwards. A long time afterwards. Not until they'd eaten the meal he'd prepared for her and curled up together on the couch with music playing in the background.
'Maddy and your mother got off all right, did they?'
'Yes, fine. I stopped on the way back at that spot where we picnicked, under the Norfolk pines, and watched their plane take off.'
'Silly!'
'Why?'
'I bet you cried.'
'Was that wrong?'
'No, I guess it wasn't,' he answered. 'Of course it wasn't. Just seems like you set yourself up for it, going to that spot where the planes look so dramatic and the sense of distance is so huge.'
'The distance is huge.'
An awareness hung in the air. Not of sex, for once, but the awareness of unspoken things. Problems. Decisions.
Candace was swamped with a painful need to have Steve take control of this, of their future.
Ask me to stay. Please! No, tell me to stay. Fight for me if you want me. Tell me we can work it out with Maddy and everyone else. Tell me nothing else matters but the fact that we love each other. Tell me that love can always find a way.
It was all clamouring so loudly inside her head that she was convinced he must hear it. Couldn't he feel the way her muscles had knotted? Her whole body was pressed against his side, length to length. He must be able to feel it.
But he said nothing. Until finally words came. 'Are you staying tonight?'
His voice sounded creaky, rusty, as if he'd been half-asleep, or something.
'I don't think I will.'
Maybe if she hadn't dressed again earlier. She had thought of just slipping into one of his T-shirts as she'd done once or twice before. There was something so intimate about that, surrounding herself in the cleanness and subtlety of his scent, swimming inside the garment because he was bigger than she was, casually claiming the right to borrow his clothes.
But she hadn't done it tonight. Instead, she was fully dressed, and it was easy to go.
Better to go. She probably needed some time alone anyway—some time to think about the stark fact that, with all that they'd been through, he hadn't said that he loved her.
'Sure?' he queried. 'I'd like you to.'
I'd love you to? I love you? Sorry, no, it didn't even come close! If he felt it, he needed to say it. And if he didn't feel it...
Out of self-preservation, she hardened her heart.
'Best not.'
She eased herself out of his arms and walked towards the door, turning halfway there to face him. 'I need some time to myself, Steve. I've had Maddy for four and a half weeks, and Mom for two. Now I just need to think.'
'Want to think here? Out loud?'
As an offer, it still wasn't nearly good enough. She shook her head.
'OK, then,' he said.
He kept watching her, and she couldn't tear her gaze away.
'Busy tomorrow?' So casual. Surely he cared more than that!
'I'm not sure,' she answered.
'All right, Candace.' He got up, looking restless now. 'Maybe I'll drop over to your place.'
'I'll...' She hesitated. How much of a stand did she want to take? 'I'll leave you a note if I'm going out.'
'Do that,' Steve said.
Then he watched as she let herself out, standing frozen in the middle of his living room. He didn't move from the spot until quite a long while after she'd gone, and even when he did, it was only to pace restlessly out to his deck to let the air clear out his aching head.
He felt like howling at the moon. Instead, he just gave a shuddering groan.
When he'd asked if she was staying, he'd been so painfully tempted to leave off the last word, 'tonight'. So tempted to make it into a bigger question. The big question. The one he sensed she was grappling with as well. They were having a baby together, but they lived on opposite sides of the world. He couldn't just ask her to 'stay' as if it was easy.
If this was just about now, he could have said it in a heartbeat. Stay tonight. Stay for a week. Stay as long as you want.
But it wasn't about now, not even a stretchy, open-ended now. It was about forever. Was he arrogant enough to ask her to stay? Was he humble enough to follow her? Forever?
'Stay forever.' He tried the words on his tongue, speaking them quietly into the chilly night, and they frightened him. He tried them again, with a difference. 'I need you. Stay forever.'
It still didn't work. It wasn't fair. If he was going to say, 'Stay forever,' then he had to be damned sure about what he was promising, about the value of what he had to give. He had to be very arrogant indeed, in the face of what he'd be asking her to sacrifice, and he didn't know how to find that certainty and that arrogance to set against the doubts he sensed in her, and the complexities in her life.
'I'll follow you.' That wasn't any easier. Maddy was at a difficult age. Would Candace want her daughter to have a stepfather hanging around, not really quite old enough for the job?
Speaking of hanging around, would one of them stay at home with the baby, or would they both work? Candace's position as an attending surgeon would be considerably senior to anything he could get in the United States for the first few years. It was demanding, too. Not the sort of thing she could tackle part time. He might end up as the one at home. A certain humility on his part would definitely be a requirement. He wasn't a particularly humble person.
They hadn't talked about any of this at all, and he had no idea about what she would want. No idea. It was a problem. He was waiting for her to come up with some answers, trying to be fair to her, and it wasn't working.
Nothing in their relationship was working at all. Damn, he had to take control of this, take the courage and the arrogance to push both of them blindly forward without knowing where it might end.
A fire of rebellion began to build inside him, flaring with incredible speed. What time was it? Ten? Later? He didn't care. He wasn't going to leave this any longer. He'd been wrong to let her go home alone tonight. She didn't have the right to weigh her options and make her decisions alone. They had to do it together.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Inside the house, Steve grabbed a light jacket off a hook on the back of the door, checked his pocket and belt for keys and pager and loped out the door, almost at a run.
He was halfway down the stairs when he felt the buzz of the pager against his hip. It wasn't the first time it had interrupted him when he'd had Candace on his mind...or lying against his h
eart as they'd made love. They'd had the usual couldn't-have-come-at-a-worse-moment intrusions because of his profession. 'Phonus interruptus' another GP in his practice called it.
This one, he thought, had to take first prize for bad timing.
He checked the code on the readout, and it was the most obvious one—the one that meant, 'Your presence at the hospital is required. Accident and Emergency Department, please.'
He climbed into the car and got there in seven minutes, ready to be peeved—or maybe to explode—if he wasn't really needed. With Candace. That was where he wanted to be. Not here.
He was needed, though. Coming into the emergency department through a side door, he found the place brightly lit. Night Sister Jenny Shearer was pleased to see him so promptly. Behind her, he glimpsed one of the cubicles set up with equipment and a figure making a mound on the bed.
He didn't know this patient, Christine Smith. She wasn't local. Down from chilly Canberra for a winter break in the warmer climate of the coast. She had her husband Neil and two-year-old son Liam with her. She was twenty-nine weeks pregnant and her membrane had torn, leaking a persistent trickle of straw-yellow amniotic fluid and stimulating painful but intermittent contractions.
They could have dealt with the situation here if it had just been a matter of having her on bed-rest. There wasn't a lot that could be or needed .to be done. Strict bed-rest, good fluid intake, monitoring of the contractions, checking for signs of infection.
The problem came with the fact that with a leaking amniotic sac, Christine had a ninety per cent chance of going into unstoppable labour over the next forty-eight hours. They didn't have high-level neonatal care facilities here. If the baby was born here, he or she wouldn't survive.
Steve wasn't at all surprised that Sister Shearer had already arranged for a SouthCare helicopter to make a night flight from Canberra to pick up the patient and transport her to Black Mountain Hospital. There the baby would have a fighting chance, at twenty-nine weeks, of surviving a premature birth with no long-term problems. Since the flight was short, Mrs Smith was unlikely to deliver during the journey.
On paper, Steve's job was to keep the patient stable until the SouthCare team arrived, then assist with the transfer. In reality, it was much more about reassurance, listening and answering questions.
'What happens if I get an infection? What are my chances of going to my due date?'
'Can I come with her in the helicopter? If this settles, will she be allowed home? I'm not sure if I can take the time off work...'
Steve fielded all this as best he could. They seemed like a nice family—young and steady, the parents trying to conceal their anxiety from their little boy, whom they'd had to waken from sleep at their motel, and who now looked frazzled and disorientated.
'Mummy,' he was saying persistently. 'Mummy...'
It turned into open crying, and Christine asked, 'Could he come up here on the bed, or something? Neil, should you just take him back to the motel straight away? It's insane for you to wait till I go, and then drive up to Canberra tonight.'
They talked about it, then Christine's face crumpled as another contraction came. 'They're only light,' she said. Saying it so it would come true, Steve understood. 'Seems like they might stop.'
Steve heard Neil mutter through pale, dry lips, 'This isn't fun. I hate this!'
But then the air began to shudder with the sound of the helicopter approaching outside, and everything got hectic. Liam had fallen asleep on his father's shoulder. Christine was coming out with all sorts of distracted last-minute instructions to her husband about her little son's care. His breakfast. His tantrums. Travis the toy tractor.
Steve watched the helicopter take off and was about to leave the hospital himself when he noticed a familiar car pulling up in one of the parking spaces to the side of the emergency entrance. His brother Matt's car.
His heart lurched, but Matt had seen him and was rolling his eyes when he got out of the car.
'Don't panic. It's OK,' he said. 'Annabelle has got a peanut up her nose. Put it there herself, of course, and didn't tell us because she was scared we'd be cross. We only found out about it when she woke up and was crying in bed because it hurt.'
He bundled his three-and-a-half-year-old daughter out of her booster seat and carried her into the A and E department. Wearing a pink dressing-gown on top of flannel pyjamas, she was looking big-eyed and ready to cry.
'Hey, didn't I tell you we might see Uncle Steve here?' Matt told his daughter in a bright tone. 'He's going to get that peanut out, and if you're a big brave girl about it, I bet he'll have a...'
'Jelly bean and a sticker,' Steve supplied.
'Hear that, Annabelle? A jelly bean and a sticker for you.' In an aside to Steve, he added, 'Fun, this is!'
'Do you get much of this sort of fun in the parenthood game?' Steve asked casually, although he knew what the answer would be.
'It's a laugh a minute,' Matt drawled, then took a second look at Steve's face. 'You're not thinking of—?'
'I'm working a few things out,' Steve cut in hastily. His scalp was tight and he was now even more desperate to get away. To get to Candace. To explode at her about rights and decisions and the future. Hell, she'd be asleep by now, probably, but he was too impatient and angry to wait. Too desperately in love with her as well. 'Let's look at that peanut, Annabelle,' he said, his voice a gritty rasp, overlaid with effortful good cheer.
Annabelle was a very big, brave girl, mainly because the peanut wasn't lodged all that far up her nose. Matt or Helen could have got it out themselves, only she'd kicked and screamed when they'd tried, and they'd become concerned about accidentally shoving it further in.
Uncle Steve in his doctor clothes was apparently intimidating enough to induce co-operation. Or perhaps it was the prospect of the sticker and the jelly bean. Matt and Annabelle were ready to leave again in a few minutes, as soon as they'd made a trip to the bathroom.
'What I said before about fun...' Matt said urgently outside the bathroom door, when he saw that Steve was about to head off.
'I know,' he reassured his elder brother. 'Don't worry. You haven't put me off. I know it can't always be fun.'
Over the past few weeks, without him being fully aware of how his attitude was changing, the job description had come to make sense.
'When you're with the right person, you can take whatever comes,' Matt said. 'Helen and I have found that out this year, if we didn't know it before. Don't let Candace get away just because there are a few hurdles, mate. You can get over those.'
He pressed a fist against Steve's upper arm.
'I know,' Steve repeated. 'I know, OK? Let me get on with it, Matt.'
'Now?'
'Now!' he confirmed grimly. 'Should have been weeks ago.'
Although she had craved solitude when she left Steve's, her own house seemed too empty when Candace closed the front door behind her. Elaine's bag no longer hung over the back of a chair. Maddy's magazines had been piled away, and her litter of hair accessories was gone from the bathroom.
Candace wandered through the living room and down to the bedrooms. Maddy and Elaine hadn't vanished without trace, she was reminded when she breasted their doorway. Their twin beds were covered with the many fruits of their shopping expeditions.
There were at least twenty items which Elaine had casually asked Candace to 'mail back for us'. Elaine had gone so far as to acquire boxes, bubble wrap and packing tape, but she hadn't actually done any of the packing.
Candace picked up a heavy kitchen cutting board made of Australian hardwoods, measured out a section of bubble wrap and parcelled up the smooth rectangle of wood. It fitted very neatly into the bottom of one of the boxes, but maybe an extra layer of bubble wrap wouldn't go amiss...
Before she knew it, she was fully engrossed in the job, and decided that she may as well keep going until she'd finished. It wasn't as if she was going to get to sleep yet, and she could think just as well while her hands were
busy. Better, maybe. For good measure, she put on some soft music and made coffee as well.
Thinking. Decisions.
Have the baby here, or go back to Boston? Taking Steve out of the picture, only one thing made sense. To go home. The idea beckoned, yet at the same time seemed to suggest bitter failure.
I won't decide yet. I'll leave it a little longer.
No, that was weak. She couldn't afford, emotionally, to keep herself on hold for Steve any longer. If he cared the way she did, surely he'd have said something by now? Her thoughts circled back to the beginning, dwelt on Maddy and Mom, Todd and Brittany and their baby, returned once mote to Steve.
It was after midnight when she heard footsteps pounding up her stairs. It frightened her until she recognised their familiar rhythm. Going to the door with some tape and a half-wrapped souvenir mug still in her hands, she knew it would be Steve. Didn't know whether to be angry or grateful.
He was turning up at this time of night? Hadn't she told him she needed to be alone? Hadn't her spirit cried out for him to give her some help? The two sets of feelings warred inside her like hostile siblings.
She opened the door and he strode straight inside, pivoted on one foot and began forcefully, 'I've been thinking about it, Candace, and you have no right—!' Then he stopped abruptly and his face went white. 'You're packing.'
'Y-yes, for my—'
But he didn't give her a chance to finish. Didn't notice, or maybe didn't care, how he'd unnerved her.
'No!' The word grated between his clenched teeth.
He grabbed tape, mug and bubble wrap from her hands and flung them onto the couch. He looked magnificent, hardened by anger, arrogantly certain of himself. Wounded, though, as well. He was like a jungle cat, both enraged and endowed with exaggerated strength because of his pain.
'Don't!' he said. 'You have no right— You can't just leave without some input from me. You can't leave at all.'
His grip closed around both her upper arms, and this close she was frightened at how white he looked. His eyes were like blue flame, blinding her into incoherence.