The Honourable Maverick / The Unsung Hero

by Alison Roberts / Kate Hardy

  ‘Garlic bread?’ The waitress flicked a lighter and leaned in to light their candle.

  ‘Please.’

  ‘Anything to drink? Do you want the wine list?’

  Sarah caught Rick’s questioning glance. ‘Why not?’ she decided aloud. A glass of wine would be a rare treat these days.

  ‘I think I’d better stick to water,’ Rick said when Sarah had made her choice. His grin was endearingly self-deprecating. ‘After last night, I mean.’

  Sarah sighed but smiled at the same time. ‘Don’t make such a big deal out of it, Rick. It was kind of cute, really—asking for a goodnight kiss.’

  She looked up and then wished she hadn’t because she got caught. Candlelight flickered and Rick’s eyes were very dark and watchful. The echo of the last word she’d spoken seemed to dance in the space between them and all she could think about for a moment was kissing.

  Kissing Rick.

  ‘Hardly a grown-up thing to do,’ he said softly.

  Good heavens. Her angry words that day she’d left Josh on his doorstep must have really hit home.

  ‘Just as well I’m used to boy stuff, then,’ she said lightly. ‘Let’s forget it.’

  ‘OK.’ But Rick still seemed on edge. ‘Guess I’ll have to add it to the list of things to do with you that I’m not so proud of.’

  ‘A whole list?’ Sarah was very thankful that her wine had arrived. A large first mouthful on her very empty stomach was having an instant effect in relaxing her. ‘Oh, come on…you’re doing something you have every right to feel very proud of.’

  ‘Being a donor?’ Rick was toying with his water glass. Running his thumb up the side to wipe off condensation the iced liquid had caused. Sarah couldn’t take her eyes off the movement. His long, surgeon’s fingers. The delicate, intense touch.

  ‘Has it occurred to you that it’s actually my fault that Josh is going through this whole business?’

  ‘What?’ Sarah shifted her gaze from his hands to his face. ‘Don’t be daft. You can hardly take the blame for Josh getting sick.’

  ‘But I can for him being here at all. For the way I treated your sister.’ Rick looked away. ‘All I can say in my defence is that it was a bad time. Self-destruction seemed like the only escape route I could find.’

  ‘I know.’ Seemingly of its own volition, her hand stretched across the table to touch Rick’s. His skin felt more than alive. It tingled and burned under her fingers and she had to pull her hand back in case it showed. ‘Ellie told me about your friend Matt. I’m sorry. It must have been a terrible time for all of you.’

  Rick merely nodded. He took a gulp of his water and Sarah followed his example and picked up her wine glass again.

  Oh…help. This was a vast topic and not one Sarah had expected Rick to bring up. She didn’t want him feeling guilty, though. Or feeling like he owed Josh something just because he was sick. She wanted Josh to have a father he could look up to and love. Who would love him back with the kind of unconditional love that could only be tainted by things like guilt or pity.

  She took another mouthful of the wine, set her glass down again and then spoke slowly and carefully.

  ‘Lucy was a big girl. It was her choice to sleep with you, Rick. She was hardly behaving that well herself, was she, if she jumped into bed with someone else fast enough to assume the baby was his when she found out she was pregnant.’

  ‘She really didn’t think it was me?’

  ‘Apparently not.’ Should she tell Rick about what she’d said to Josh? About his father riding a motorbike and being so handsome? Sarah swallowed hard. ‘She never said anything to me about you. I had no idea you even existed.’ She couldn’t help letting her gaze rest on his face for a moment and she certainly couldn’t stop the smile that tugged at her lips. ‘Seems weird now.’

  Why was that? With a sinking sensation, Sarah realised that it was because he had already made such an impact on her life that she would always be aware of him in some way. And she’d as much as told him so.

  But Rick only made a grunting sound that could have been agreement. Thankfully, he seemed to have missed the implication. Except he was frowning.

  Sarah held her breath, waiting for him to speak.

  ‘Do you think it wrecked her life?’ he asked abruptly. ‘Getting pregnant?’

  Sarah was given time to consider her response by the arrival of their meals. The food was the most delicious she’d tasted in a very long time and she had to eat a couple of mouthfuls despite being aware of Rick waiting anxiously for her to speak.

  ‘Sorry. I was starving.’

  ‘No worries. I probably shouldn’t be asking you anyway. It’s just…I’ve been thinking about it, that’s all.’

  ‘Of course you have.’ Sarah rested her fork on her plate and gave him her full attention. ‘Being pregnant didn’t wreck Lucy’s life. It changed it but I think she was happier for that change.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘She was a country girl at heart. We grew up in a small town and she was quite intimidated by the city. I think she felt pretty lost. Lonely, even.’

  ‘She must have gone through hell, then, finding she was pregnant and wondering what to do.’

  ‘She was tough.’ Sarah’s smile was fond. ‘She coped. She didn’t even tell me until well down the track. And neither of us told our mother.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘She had a very strict moral code. She raised us on her own after Dad died and I don’t think she found that much joy in the process. Her church was more important than anything. When she eventually found out, she never spoke to Lucy again.’

  ‘God…families…’

  Sarah ignored the undercurrent of his tone.

  ‘When Josh was born Luce fell in love with him and he was all that mattered. She wasn’t going to let anyone take him away from her and that meant never involving the father. He was her family. Her future. When Mum died, she left me her house. I was going to sell it and give Luce the money but she decided that being out in the country would be a good place to raise Josh. She was so excited about it.’ Sarah took a deep breath. ‘You didn’t wreck her life, Rick. You gave her a dream. Like…like telling Josh that he could have a dog one day, you know? It’s kind of like hope that the perfect life is there, just waiting for you. And maybe…’

  She stopped talking, appalled at what she had been about to say. That maybe Lucy had been dreaming of finding a father for Josh who would be just like Rick. She choked back both the words and the sentiments they represented. Absurdly, she found herself close to tears. She tried to pick up her fork but her hand was shaking so she dropped it with a clatter and reached for her wineglass again.

  She knew she should say more but how could she without revealing far too much about the way she was reacting to Rick? She didn’t want to talk any more about Lucy right now either.

  Why is that? an insistent voice in her head queried. Because you don’t want the ghost of your sister standing between you and this man?

  Sarah drained her glass and made of a show of returning her attention to her food. Rick was watching her very intently but he didn’t say anything other than offering her another glass of wine, which she refused.

  In fact, neither of said very much for the rest of the meal or the walk back to Queen Mary’s, and Sarah had no idea whether she’d been successful in trying to abort the guilt trip Rick had embarked on.

  She was making a map of a rather similar kind of journey herself. Along the lines of cashing in on a fantasy Lucy could no longer even dream about. Good heavens, wasn’t being attracted to a man her own sister had slept with unacceptable enough all by itself?

  Of course it was. This had to stop.

  ‘Let me know when they schedule the transplant,’ Rick said as they reached the main doors of the hospital. ‘I’d like to be there.’

  Sarah nodded. ‘I will. Thanks.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Oh…the meal. Being here.’ Being you, she couldn�
�t help adding silently. ‘You know.’

  Rick had that watchful look again. ‘Maybe it should be me thanking you.’

  Sarah blinked. ‘What for?’

  ‘Oh…I don’t know. Making me grow up, perhaps? Being.’ He hesitated for a heartbeat. ‘Are we friends yet, Sarah?’

  ‘I think so,’ she said gravely. But then she smiled. ‘Don’t grow up completely. Keep a bit of that boy stuff.’

  ‘What, like asking for a goodnight kiss?’ It was a light-hearted comment. They were standing right in front of the entranceway. Any moment now and Sarah would go inside and back to the bone-marrow transplant unit. Rick would head for the car park and home. All they needed to do was share a smile and any embarrassment from last night would evaporate for ever and they could part on a new level of friendship.

  The smile was there already. The intention to leave at that was also there. So why on earth did she stay exactly where she was?

  ‘I’m the one who had the wine,’ she heard herself saying. ‘I think it’s my turn to ask.’

  She didn’t have to.

  ‘Fair enough.’ Rick was smiling as he dipped his head and touched her lips with his own.

  It was a brief kiss. The kind that friends could exchange. There was nothing more in its length or pressure than the token gesture she had given Rick last night but it was different. Very, very different.

  Dangerous.

  The electric sensation of touching his hand with hers had nothing on this contact of their lips.

  Sarah was playing with fire here, and she knew it was wrong. She could blame it on exhaustion, or the wine, or stress, or the fact that her hormones were in flood after the longest drought, but no excuse was going to make it any less wrong.

  Summoning every ounce of strength she possessed, Sarah broke the contact almost the instant it had happened and turned away.

  ‘See?’ Her tone was so light it floated. ‘No big deal. Goodnight, Rick.’

  The doors slid open with admirable swiftness. She knew Rick was still standing there but no way was she going to risk a backward glance.

  It wasn’t going to happen, she told herself fiercely, increasing her speed. She wasn’t going to allow it to happen.

  Sarah could not, would not, fall in love with Rick Wilson.

  He was Josh’s father.

  Quite possibly the most important person right now in a small boy’s life.

  A small boy she loved with all her heart.

  A life that was hanging in the balance.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THE tension in that small room could have been cut with a knife.

  ‘Drip, drip, drip,’ Josh said, looking up at the bag of dark, red fluid hanging above his head. ‘It looks like blood.’

  ‘It’s better than blood,’ Mike told his young patient. ‘It’s the stuff that makes blood.’

  ‘How’s it going to get inside my bones?’

  ‘Through the blood vessels. The same way the new blood gets out.’

  ‘How does it know to stay in there? Why doesn’t it just keeping floating round and round?’

  ‘It’s smart.’

  Mike was watching Josh intently for any sign of an adverse reaction to the transfusion. The boy lay with only his pyjama pants on. His chest was bare, partly so they could watch for the beginnings of any rash and also because it was well plastered with electrodes for the continuous ECG monitoring every beat of his heart. Blood pressure was being recorded automatically every few minutes and Josh’s favourite nurse, Katie, was standing with a clipboard, noting down everything that was being tracked.

  Sarah was there too, of course. She was sitting beside the bed but Josh had refused to have his hand held.

  ‘I’m not a baby,’ he’d said. ‘And it doesn’t even hurt.’

  Rick was standing beside the window. A part of this procedure but outside the inner circle with nothing to do but watch. And feel the atmosphere pressing in on him. Was this tension only due to the importance of this procedure going well?

  Not for him.

  He’d been over and over it in his head ever since Sarah had walked through those doors last night but he was no closer to making sense of any of it.

  What the hell had been going on last night?

  Things had been going so well. That bistro was one of his favourite places with its unpretentious, laid-back atmosphere. Kind of casual but intimate at the same time. The food had been up to its usual standard and he’d found himself thoroughly enjoying the company. Especially when Sarah had seemed intent on making him feel better about the notion that had been haunting him. That he might have completely derailed her sister’s life by being the cause of an unwanted pregnancy.

  She’d almost been telling him he’d made her life better, for God’s sake. That he’d given Lucy a whole new direction. A dream. And then she’d clammed up and had had that look of struggling not to say what was on the tip of her tongue.

  He’d seen that look before, he’d realised last night, sitting at his window watching a night shift in action on the wharf and puzzled by the mixed signals he seemed to have been given. Right back when they’d first met at the wedding. He’d asked her about her trip to the States. About searching for a possible donor for Josh. She’d known she was talking to that person right then but she’d promised not to say anything, hadn’t she, so she’d buttoned her lip.

  What did that have to do with what she’d been saying about Lucy? She’d dreamed of a family. Raising her kid in the country and having a dog. The perfect life. Except it hadn’t been, had it, because her precious son had been missing something important. A father.

  Him.

  Whatever she’d said, there was still blame to be found. He’d changed the whole direction of her sister’s life and then abandoned her because it had meant nothing to him. Left her with a child and a dream that was never fulfilled. Of course she would blame him, and fair enough.

  He could handle that but he’d thought they’d got past it and the beginnings of a real friendship were there. She’d forgiven him for the stupid, drug-induced pass he’d made at her. No big deal, she’d said.

  She’d even kissed him to prove it.

  Except it had been a big deal. For him. That fleeting contact of her lips. Being close enough to smell her scent and feel the warmth of her breath. Oh, man.

  It was still there in the room. That kiss. Like an elephant. Sarah probably didn’t even see it. Partly because her attention was entirely on Josh but also because it had meant nothing to her.

  Was this karma? He’d slept with her sister and the repercussions were still crashing into his life like a tidal wave. His attraction to Sarah was just part of it and the whole picture was laced with emotion that pulsed like a life force. A network of vessels like the ones inside Josh that his bone marrow was now a part of. Things were too mingled to separate. Him and Josh. Him and Sarah. It was.

  Confusing, that was what it was.

  ‘Why doesn’t my dad come and visit me any more?’

  ‘He does. Every day.’

  The hesitation was telling. So was the plaintive note in Josh’s voice. ‘Not so much.’

  Sarah’s hands stilled in her task of sifting through DVDs to try and find something that might interest a bored child. It was true. Ever since the transplant had happened, the number of times per day that Rick came in to see them had dropped dramatically. OK, it had only been a few days but the hope that only she was noticing was something she could no longer cling to.

  It was disturbing to say the least.

  Did Rick feel like his duty was done now? The donation of bone marrow had been made and apparently accepted by Josh’s body so far, with no sign of rejection issues. It was probably too early to stop worrying about the onset of graft versus host disease. Or was it? She needed to ask Mike about that when he came in on his rounds. She could ask Rick but the routine visit from Josh’s consultant was more likely to occur first. Rick seemed to be leaving it later and later in his day to pop
in and the visits seemed to be getting shorter.

  Less…personal.

  Or maybe that was only from her point of view because Rick was so focused on Josh when he was in the room. The man and boy seemed to be getting closer and more comfortable with each other every day. She felt like she was being shut out. Rick was perfectly polite and friendly to her but she could feel the distance between them like a solid barrier. Kind of like the way he’d been after she’d first broken the news that he could be Josh’s father and he had switched off that initial interest in her.

  Was that part of it? The way she’d brushed him off after dinner the other night? Was he backing away from Josh because of that? Oh…why on earth had she given in to that temptation to kiss him? Maybe he thought she was playing games. Flirting and then playing hard to get. It might have been misguided but all she’d been trying to do was take the significance out of that first kiss. Put them on friendly terms but nothing more.

  But now she seemed to be in exactly the scenario she’d been trying to avoid by not letting herself get too close to Rick. It wasn’t supposed to backfire like this.

  ‘Do you want to watch Harry Potter again?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘How ‘bout we look at some of the maths Miss Allen sent in?’

  ‘No-o-o.’ Josh shook his head with miserable jerks. ‘I’m too tired. I feel sick.’

  Sarah’s heart skipped a beat. It was so hard to stop her voice getting instantly tighter and higher. ‘What kind of sick?’

  ‘I’m hot. And my back hurts.’

  Oh…God. They were living on such a knife-edge now. These few weeks following the transplant were the most critical. It took time for the transplanted bone marrow to migrate into the bone cavities. To engraft and start doing their job of producing normal blood cells. Until then, Josh was at high risk of infection or excessive bleeding. Blood samples were being taken daily to monitor whether engraftment was taking place and to watch organ function. Josh was being given multiple antibiotics along with anti-rejection drugs on top of what had become his normal drug regime. He would also receive blood and platelet transfusions as required.