Delivering Secrets

by Fiona McArthur

  A chance at love—again?

  Single mom and midwife Ellie Diamond has returned to Bell’s River. Convincing herself it’s the opportunity to raise her young son in the idyllic coastal town that’s lured her back—not the chance to work with the man she once promised her heart to…

  Obstetrician Luke Farrell isn’t the same man he once was, but his attraction to Ellie is as fiercely irresistible as ever! Only secrets from the past lie between them, will bringing them out into the open endanger their fragile relationship again, or finally allow them to build a future together?

  Originally published in 2003.

  New to ebook!

  Delivering Secrets

  Fiona McArthur

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER ONE

  ELLIE glared at herself in the rear-view mirror. She’d never fit in as a clinic nurse, and what made her think Luke Farrell would talk to her—let alone give her a job? Until she’d moved back here last week, she’d thought he was married so she hadn’t come back to the small seaside town, once she’d qualified as a midwife, as she’d promised Luke she would all those years ago!

  She’d only lived in Bell’s Creek for a summer when she was seventeen. And that pact they’d made had been a romantic teenage whim.

  For most of Ellie’s childhood, her mother had breezed into a town, stayed a short while and breezed out. Ellie had learned not to pine over lost friends but she’d never been able to forget Luke Farrell.

  Ellie clutched her handbag as if it were her talisman and climbed out of the old Volvo. If she was going to make a go of this fresh start then a new job was a necessity. She had to pay the bills.

  Her skills and qualifications weren’t a problem. It was just desperation that made her panic so much about getting this job with Luke—nothing to do with the past. Shoulders straight, she pushed open the door and super-glued a smile on to her face. Be confident!

  The prune-faced receptionist glanced up and her eyes widened under black-rimmed glasses. Ellie decided it was either her very short hair—she’d shaved her head for Leukaemia Week a few months before—or because her belly was flat. Maybe you needed a pregnancy to qualify to come in here?

  The receptionist’s cold glance travelled down to the brown skin between Ellie’s low-slung trousers and the beaded hem of her midriff top. She sniffed. Ellie mentally shrugged, immune to sniffers.

  ‘Hi. I’m Ellie Diamond. I’ve an interview with Dr Farrell at one o’clock.’

  The receptionist shifted her gaze to a point over Ellie’s left shoulder. ‘Please, take a seat, Ms Diamond. I’ll let Doctor know you’re here. He will be with you as soon as he can.’

  Ellie smiled politely back. ‘It’s Mrs Diamond, and thank you.’ And that tells me nothing about how long. Ellie resigned herself to a wait as she sank into one of the comfortably padded chairs between two young pregnant women. A painting glared at her from the wall. She forced her fingers to relax on her handbag as she considered Luke Farrell’s choice in art.

  The painting was quite the ugliest wall adornment she’d ever seen. All reds and greens and white, slashed to form a portrait of a woman—at least, Ellie thought it was a woman, but it was hard to tell. It was an original and probably very expensive. She sighed. Her late husband, Steve, had said she had no appreciation for abstract art. But, then, she liked things to be vibrant and warm, not just a good investment.

  The heavy wooden door to the consulting room opened silently to allow a tiny Asian woman into the waiting room. Her belly poked imperiously forward through the silk of her dress. Then Luke walked out and Ellie felt seventeen again.

  The years had taken any softness from around Luke’s jaw and cheekbones, and had radiated fine lines from the corners of his beautiful eyes, but he was still well muscled and dark-haired. He said goodbye to the pregnant woman and his smile was the same—warm and genuine. It bounced off the walls of the room and even the painting looked better.

  Luke would always be able to sell toothpaste—or bed linen!

  Ellie’s hand surreptitiously felt for the pulse-volume increase in her wrist. Yep. She was having palpitations from a man she hadn’t seen for more than ten years. So much for maturity.

  Dr Farrell glanced around the room until he found the girl next to Ellie. ‘Ms Keys, please, come through.’ His voice was slow and deep and the young lady blushed and hastened to her feet.

  His glance passed over Ellie and then froze briefly as his slashing black brows furrowed for a moment and his eyes burned into hers. He looked away and Ellie felt as if she’d been pigeonholed for later. The door shut behind them and it was as if the room became ordinary again.

  Ellie frowned. She’d forgotten the effect Luke had had on her. From the distance of Sydney she’d gradually decided her attraction to him had been overrated, a teenage infatuation. From that one glance she could remember the colour of his eyes, the curve of his nose and the strength of his chin, and a hell of a lot of other things!

  She forced herself to shrug. To look cost nothing, but she’d never been in the same league as Luke Farrell. Laid-back Steve had been more her style and his death had scared her more than she’d thought possible. To get involved with a man could ruin your life. And she wasn’t putting herself or Josh through that heartbreak again.

  It took another twenty minutes before the waiting room was empty except for Ellie. When the outside door shut on the final client Luke gestured her in.

  Ellie slipped in front of him and she couldn’t help but appreciate that he was a good head taller than her own five feet six. It was kind of nice in a you-make-me-feel-feminine way.

  When Luke had shut the door, he held out his hand. ‘Thank you for coming, Ms Diamond,’ he said formally.

  Ellie met his eyes. ‘It’s Mrs Diamond. I’m a widow.’

  He broke eye contact and all he said was, ‘My condolences.’ Ellie looked down at his hand and warily put her fingers in his. Bad mistake. His grip was like a homecoming, safe and warm and caring, and she didn’t want to let go. She forced her fingers to drop his hand and almost fell into the chair he indicated. Her knuckles were white again on the handle of her handbag.

  Luckily, he didn’t seem to notice anything strange in her behaviour. His expression was polite and interested. Ellie could see he’d perfected the art of listening.

  He’d always been one of those people who made you feel a ridiculous urge to confess all sins and bemoan what a cruel world it was. Ellie suppressed the impulse. She needed some direction here. It must be time to pull the résumé from her hand bag.

  Her credentials were crumpled at the edges, and she smoothed the papers a little before she placed then on the desk. She recited her latest confidence mantra under her breath. You are a great midwife. He would be lucky to have you. The silence stretched on and Ellie had to break it. She drew a deep breath and smiled shakily.

  ‘Thank you for seeing me, Dr Farrell. Luke. You have a lovely surgery here.’ She felt inane but at least she was trying.

  Luke almost sighed with regret. Lord, how he’d loved her all those years ago. Her voice still sounded the same as it always had—beautifully melodic, like the rhythmic beat of the waves he could hear at night in his bed. He frowned at the fanciful thought. He didn’t have fanciful thoughts about women in this office, and he’d stopped fantasising about Ellie McGuire ten years ago.

  Or
at least in the five since she’d failed to make good on their pact to return to Bell’s River. To make matters worse, Ellie hadn’t even had the decency to tell him herself that she wouldn’t be coming back. She’d left a message with his mother instead. Since then, Luke had decided that was all for the best. But why did she have to come back now?

  He stared down at the papers but didn’t pick them up. He was at a loss to know how to interview her. Apart from the fact that he wasn’t masochistic enough to want to work with the only woman he’d offered his heart to, she was the direct opposite to what he’d had in mind for his obstetric practice.

  He’d envisaged a middle aged, soft-spoken, motherly woman available to take the blood-pressure checks and urine testing off his hands. And hopefully provide a sympathetic ear to problems that his clients were often reluctant to discuss with a male doctor.

  What he had in front of him was a woman from his past, whom he’d finally not thought of for a reasonable length of time.

  Admittedly she looked different to the seventeen-year-old he remembered. Apart from the fact that she now wore her stunning fiery red hair in a short crop, the years had only fulfilled the promise of her youth.

  Ellie’s skin was still that pale peach that should have burned in the sun but didn’t seem to, and if she had lines on her face, they were too fine for him to see. With her pert breasts and those long legs, she was even more gut-wrenchingly beautiful.

  He wasn’t into gorgeous radicals with cutely cropped hair and lots of jewellery—so why did he feel like he was suffering from a sudden attack of asthma?

  A sardonic voice inside his head whispered that there was no breathlessness when his fiancée, Anthea, walked into the room.

  Luke leaned across the desk and picked up Ellie’s résumé to distract his disloyal thoughts. Midwifery, Advanced Life Support Obstetrics, Neonatal Intensive Care, two years each at three different hospitals—so she still moved around a lot.

  Little Ellie had done well with her midwifery, he mused. Her credentials were impressive. Emotionally he could never judge this woman fairly, but morally he should consider her. ‘So what brings you back to Bell’s River, Ellie McGuire?’ He didn’t add ‘five years too late’, but he felt like it and the bitterness tasted like flat beer on his tongue.

  With Luke’s use of her maiden name Ellie sighed. ‘I moved here a week ago.’ She shrugged. ‘I have some great memories from here.’

  Uncharacteristically, she avoided his eyes and he would have loved to have known what she was thinking.

  ‘My husband died four years ago from leukaemia and I want to settle somewhere near the sea.’ She’d always loved the sea, and he’d always fantasised about making love with Ellie behind one of the dunes out past the cove. Bare skin and sea breeze…

  Then she added, ‘I have a four-year-old son.’

  She’d married someone else rather than fulfil her promise to him, and had borne that man a son. Both facts twisted the knife in a wound he’d thought healed. His attention slid between her top and her low-slung trousers. Her belly was brown and flat, unmarred by any sign of the past pregnancy.

  Luke fought the images that formed when he looked at her. Once he’d dreamed of Ellie and their children, but that’s what he’d been doing—dreaming.

  He gritted his teeth. She’d always confused the hell out of him, but he felt a little better when he realised she was nervous, too. She absent-mindedly twisted the silver ring that adorned her left hand. So Ellie was uncomfortable. Good.

  ‘But why this position, Ellie?’ He couldn’t bring himself to call her Mrs Diamond. ‘You always wanted to be a hands-on midwife. Surely a hospital setting would suit your experience better.’ Then he cursed himself for admitting to remembering things about her.

  Haunting, almond-shaped eyes met his gaze. She made him think of their special cove—and the pact—and tanned skin on tanned skin. And especially the time she’d offered herself to him there and he’d stopped at the last moment with some notion of her being too young and his fear of consequences.

  ‘The hospital can only offer me casual work. I’m a good midwife,’ she said, and her voice flowed across the desk and wrapped around his shoulders like a ghost from his past. ‘I care about women. I’m interested in antenatal care and that a woman should have the best birth experience that she can possibly have. I want to do what I can to help that happen.’

  Her voice ebbed and rolled and he could have listened to her all day if he could just leave his eyes shut and remember what she used to look like with her long wavy red hair and bare feet.

  Then she brought him back to the present with a thud when she added, ‘And I need a job.’

  There was no doubting the tinge of desperation in her voice or in her words. Especially the last sentence. He stifled the urge to help her. ‘I’m sorry, Ellie. I can see from your experience and references that you do care for women, and I’m sure whoever employs you next will be very fortunate to have you, but I was looking for someone more motherly.’

  Her green eyes looked defeated for a moment and then they darkened to the purple-green of threatening hail clouds. He could almost sniff the brine of an impending storm and it was something he’d forgotten she was capable of. She didn’t often fire up but when she did there was hell to pay. Even her voice was more substantial. ‘I am a mother, Luke Farrell. My son is four years old. You can’t get more motherly than that. It’s my appearance, isn’t it?’

  He winced at her directness but she was partly right. ‘It’s the whole package, Ellie. But the hairstyle, certainly jumps out at one.’ He admitted to a curious fascination and the interview was a shambles anyway. ‘What on earth made you cut your hair so short?’

  ‘I was sponsored to shave it a while ago.’ She shrugged and ran her hand through her close-cropped hair. ‘To raise money for leukaemia research. I don’t regret it, just wish it would grow faster perhaps.’ She gathered up her papers.

  When she stood up, her bare stomach was at Luke’s eye level and he felt his lips twitch. Ellie had always enjoyed wearing unconventional clothes but he couldn’t really think of a less suitable outfit for a job interview. It was so typical of her.

  Ellie lifted her hand in a tiny salute, a gesture he remembered from the old days, and his heart squeezed. Now he felt that he’d been dismissed instead of the other way around. She didn’t offer her hand and he missed the contact. And he didn’t like the way he’d prejudged her application. Luke tried to envisage her in some sort of corporate uniform with maybe smaller earrings and no necklaces. It was hard.

  He found himself standing, too—irresistibly drawn to the cliff-edge of spending more time with her. ‘Look, Ellie…’ He glanced at his watch. He had an hour before the next patient was due. ‘Maybe I haven’t given you a fair go. I have a standing reservation for lunch at a restaurant in town—would you like to join me? You’re welcome to come and try and convince me that you would be an asset in this practice.’

  Ellie’s first impulse was to give him a crisp ‘no, thank you’, but the unpaid bills would still be on the kitchen table when she went home. She had that vague promise of casual shifts at the local maternity unit but that was only if someone was off sick or left. Her mother had taught her it wasn’t nice to pray for the plague—or stay around to catch it.

  And maybe she did look a bit scary, to someone as strait-laced as Luke Farrell had always been. She had the feeling that this was a bad idea anyway. She sighed and nodded. ‘OK. But no restaurant—you can buy me a hamburger next door.’

  He blinked and then smiled, and in Ellie’s mind the room faded under the direct wattage. ‘You’re on.’

  * * *

  Luke watched her wrestle with the huge hamburger. Ellie’s long fingers were splayed as she tried to hold the rapidly disintegrating bread roll together in a losing battle. A browned pineapple ring threatened to slide sideways into her lap and the beetroot darkened the pink of her lips as she caught it just before it skidded out between the shred
ded lettuce and the egg.

  He suppressed a smile. He rarely ate here because they didn’t give you a knife and fork and you needed a bath after eating the big hamburgers. But Ellie had always preferred take-aways to dining in. Ten years ago she’d rather have had the cove and hot chips to a night out at the local restaurant.

  She had her elbows on the table as she tried to narrow the field of the mess. ‘Why didn’t you warn me about this burger?’ She glared at him and this time he did smile.

  ‘And miss the show?’ He shook his head and she smiled wryly back at him.

  ‘So, is this convincing you to give me the job?’ She took another bite and concentrated on finishing her lunch.

  Luke sat back in his chair and looked at her, not at the woman-package of her because that was too distracting, but the half-hidden laughter in her eyes and the warmth and zest for life that she’d always shown. ‘How reliable are you?’ The words came out more harshly than he’d intended. He didn’t say, You didn’t come back when you were supposed to, last time, but it was there in the air between them.

  He watched her attention flick back to him and, because she didn’t have a hand to save it with, a piece of tomato slid from the side of the roll and fell onto her bare stomach. Without thought he pulled a serviette from the dispenser and scooped it gently off her stomach. She shivered beneath his fingers and he winced. He didn’t have the right to do that.

  Ellie put down the remains of the hamburger and pushed the plate away, as if her appetite had deserted her. She snagged her own serviette and patted her mouth and fingers. There was a tiny tremor in her voice but he couldn’t tell if it was due to distress or anger. ‘What makes you think I’m unreliable?’

  ‘Let’s just say past experience.’ She frowned and before she could answer he brushed his comment aside. ‘But you seem to have good references, which don’t indicate a problem with your working life.’

  ‘Gee, thanks.’ Ellie scowled at him. ‘So how about you tell me what else you want from your practice nurse if she can guarantee reliability?’