‘There are a few, such as a little silver casket for the baby’s first tooth or a lock of its hair. Some godparents open a savings account for it.’
‘That sounds more like my type of thing. I’ll sort it tomorrow.’
‘I’ve got a special baby book for Melissa and Ryan to record his progress all through childhood, with lots of lovely pictures in it too,’ she told him.
‘Sounds as if you’ve given more thought to it than I have,’ he said ruefully.
‘Maybe that is because I’ve had more time than you to shop around,’ she said, smiling across at him, but he had no smile for her in return, just the thought that being busy helped to deal with his disappointment regarding what was happening to their relationship, and how would she feel if he carried her off to some remote island where she could put her dark thoughts to one side and let him make love to her instead of being on the edge of her life?
Before she had the chance to reply to the implied rebuke he left, asking himself the question that he always did on this sort of occasion. Was he ever going to be able to leave Leonie with joy in his heart after one of their meetings?
The only time she’d given him hope that she felt as he did had been on the night when he’d followed her from the hotel and questioned if it was because she’d wanted to get away from him.
She’d told him it was the opposite, that she’d gone because she had been desperate to look upon him, if only for a moment, but once she’d seen him she’d panicked and left the place.
Yet even then he had felt no chemistry on her part, just a tender farewell, and when the door had closed behind her he’d gone home foolishly content.
* * *
When he called for Leonie on the morning of the christening she was wearing a cream dress and a wide-brimmed hat of black straw that shadowed the green eyes beneath it to some extent, and made him want to tilt it back to look into them, but she was already walking out to the car and they needed to get to the church in time.
Ryan and his family were well known in Heatherdale and the church was full of well-wishers and members of the opposite sex who would have liked to be his second wife but hadn’t stood a chance from the moment he’d met Melissa on a cold, dark winter night.
The christening party was at the front with Rhianna and Martha seated between Leonie and Callum until the moment that the baptism was to take place, and each time Callum glanced across at Leonie he was aware of her attempt to avoid eye contact by means of the hat, but why, for heaven’s sake?
She couldn’t be too reluctant to take part, having changed her mind from her original decision, but the hand holding on to her order of service was clutching it so tightly that her knuckles were showing white. If the children hadn’t been sitting between them he would have taken her hand in his and stroked it gently.
When it was Leonie’s turn to make her responses during the baptism she was calmer than she would ever have believed possible, but each time she looked down at the baby’s face as she held him in her arms, the longing and the pain that never went away was there, and although her hold of the little one was safe and steady the colour was draining from her face.
Callum, who had never taken his glance off her, placed his arm around her and said softly, ‘You are doing fine. We both are.’ Looking down on to the baby, he said, ‘I can give you one of these if you’ll let me. I don’t give a damn about what it is that holds you back from admitting that you love me. I know you, and in knowing you can’t believe you would ever do anything that you have to keep bottled up so tightly.’
The colour was coming back to her face, her world was righting itself for a short space of time, and during the rest of the christening she did what she was there to do without faltering or fuss. And when along with other guests they went back to Ryan and Melissa’s house, where a buffet was waiting for them, Leonie was weak with the relief of not having spoilt the ceremony with her sad memories.
She had Callum to thank for that. Could it be that he’d guessed from where they came?
She could see him in the garden, holding the baby with the children playing close by, and went out to join them, and as if he sensed her watching him he looked up and smiled. When she went to sit beside him he said whimsically, ‘Can we have the hat off now that the ordeal is over? I’m not happy if I can’t see your eyes. You will remember my offer, I hope.’
‘It will be engraved upon my heart,’ she told him lightly, though nothing had changed. The fact that she’d survived the christening without spoiling it for everyone didn’t mean that she wasn’t still afraid to face another commitment, even with Callum.
CHAPTER NINE
‘I’M GOING TO go when I’ve made my excuses to Melissa and Ryan,’ she said, following on that downbeat thought, and he frowned.
‘Why exactly?’
‘I need to speak to Julie about something.’
‘Can’t it wait?’
‘Er, no, not really.’
‘Do you want me to drive you there?’ He looked down at the infant that he was still holding. ‘I’ll give Liam to his mother and come back when I’ve taken you, as I would hate to think that both his godparents had left so soon.’
Ignoring the last part of his comment, she told him, ‘I don’t need a lift. I intend to walk there. It’s only a short distance away, but thanks just the same.’ She went to make her apologies for leaving early.
What she’d said to Callum had been true. She did need to speak to Julie, though the need to do so urgently had only just surfaced when she’d told him, and she knew he hadn’t been pleased, but suddenly to talk to the only person who knew what had happened to her was vital and she had to do it immediately.
* * *
‘I’m going to tell Callum what he wants to know,’ she said when she arrived at the small studio flat that was Julie’s and Brendan’s home for the time being.
‘Really!’ she exclaimed. ‘So why the change of heart?’
‘I can’t go on the way I have been with Callum. He deserves better than that. He was so kind to me at the christening because he knew that I was dreading it for some reason, but didn’t know why, and I’ve left him looking down on the baby like the wonderful father he would be for a child of his own.
‘His life is all mapped out for him in this lovely place. He has his position at the hospital, his friends and colleagues, and a reputation second to none, while I’ve always felt like a passing ship, but I don’t any longer, Julie.
‘When we first met he was set on giving marriage and all that went with it a wide berth, even to forgoing the family that he had longed for, but now he’s put all that to one side and wants us to have children of our own, which I long for too. Although amongst the uncertainties that I live with is the dread that I might have another stillbirth, and he needs to be told about that.’
‘Don’t concern yourself too much over that,’ her friend said gently. ‘The guy loves you first and foremost, and that is all that matters. You are so right for each other, Leonie. So when are you going to tell him?’
‘The first chance I get,’ she said, with some new determination strong within in her.
She didn’t stay at Julie’s long. It was Sunday night and she would be back on the wards tomorrow, waiting for the right opportunity for them to talk, when she would tell Callum what she had kept from him. So once Julie had expressed her joy and relief at the news she had brought, Leonie went home to await the morning.
* * *
She was on the unit, discussing with other nursing staff the treatment that Callum had arranged when he’d been called out late after the christening to a young girl who had been at a birthday party that seemed to have got out of hand and had sustained a serious neck injury, and now he was back on the job and telling her in a low voice, ‘You missed a great occasion by rushing off like that. It must have been very urgent.’
‘It was,’ she told him, and in her haste to create a better understanding between them, said, ‘Would it be convenient f
or you to show me round the town and the surrounding countryside some time this coming weekend?’
She was expecting him to say yes and was disappointed when he shook his head and said, ‘I can’t, I’m afraid. That’s when my mother and stepfather are arriving for a two-week visit and I will be fully occupied. Would you like to come round for a meal so that you can meet them instead?’
‘Yes, I would love to,’ she told him. With some of her determination of the night before dwindling, it would be an occasion to look back on in times to come if he wasn’t impressed by what she had to tell him.
‘I won’t be at the hospital much while they’re here,’ he said. ‘The same doctor who filled in for me when I was at the seminar will do so again, so I might have to phone you to agree on an evening for you to join us. Are you likely to be free?
‘Yes, of course,’ she told him, and wondered what he thought she did at night apart from visiting the community centre sometimes.
Meeting Callum’s mother and stepfather would be an opportunity for them to be together in the vacuum that his family’s visit was going to cause over the next two weeks, but it would provide no opportunity for the kind of thing she was going to tell him, and after being unwilling for so long now she really did want to wipe the slate clean, and for the rest of the week she was on edge.
Callum was aware of her anxiety, the same as he was aware of everything about her, but as no reason was given when he questioned it he gave up and concentrated on the pleasure to come of seeing his mother and the amiable Brent in Heatherdale for a short space of time.
He’d been surprised when Leonie had wanted to meet them, would have thought she would see it as further entanglement with him in her life, but it had seemed that she would be only too pleased to meet his family. For him it would be happiness untold to have the two women that he loved totally getting to know each other, in spite of the fact that the best ward sister he’d ever worked with continued to keep him at a distance.
* * *
The coming weekend when Callum would be involved with his visitors was going to be long and empty, Leonie thought, even if she went to the community centre on both nights, but consoled herself with the thought that there was the meeting with his parents to compensate and, anxious as she was to open her heart to him, she was not going to do it before that.
So when there was a shortage of staff over the weekend she volunteered, as she sometimes did, not expecting him to call at the yurt on Sunday afternoon to arrange the proposed meeting with his parents while they were sleeping off jet-lag.
Callum was disappointed not to find her there but thought wryly that knowing Leonie she wouldn’t be sitting around, meekly awaiting his commands. So he pushed a note under the door to ask if Tuesday night would be all right for her to join them and that he would come for her if it was.
When she came home and saw it she groaned at the thought of not having been there when he’d come. Every moment spent with him was precious.
She rang him when she’d stopped fretting about it and said, ‘Can you guess where I was when you came?’
‘Am I likely to?’ he wanted to know.
‘It’s a place that you see a lot of.’
‘Not the hospital, by any chance?’
‘Yes, they were short-staffed over the weekend, so having nothing else to do I volunteered. Tuesday will suit me fine, Callum. There’s no need to come for me, I can walk to your place in a matter of minutes.’
‘Yes, well, we’ll see about that on the night,’ he said. ‘What would you prefer, that the four of us dine in one of the hotels in the town, or that I cook for us?’
‘A hotel,’ she told him. ‘If you cook you’ll be in the kitchen all the time, and I don’t know your parents and they don’t know me.’
‘All right, hotel it is,’ he agreed. ‘Now I must go. I hear voices, which would seem to mean that my mother and Brent have surfaced after sleeping off the effects of the flight.
‘Take care, Leonie, don’t do anything rash before I see you again.’
* * *
Callum rang again briefly on Monday to say he’d made a reservation at the hotel where Julian’s wedding reception had taken place and would call for her and take her to the apartment to meet his parents before they left for the town centre.
It had been a hot and sultry day and the unit had been even busier than usual without him. Detecting a flatness about her voice, he asked, ‘What’s wrong, Leonie? You are not going to let me down on this, I hope?’
‘No, of course not,’ she told him. ‘I’m just tired, that’s all, but am really looking forward to tomorrow night.’
* * *
She was wearing the green dress that matched her eyes when Callum called for her the following night, and she presented a calm that belied her inward nervousness at the prospect of what she had blithely thought was a good idea and now wasn’t so sure about. But there was no way that Callum was going to know that, and when they arrived at his apartment and he introduced her to his parents she had her doubts under control.
From his mother Margaret’s point of view she was observing the kind of woman that she would love to have as a daughter-in-law, if only Callum would open up and tell her how much this person meant to him, because the fact that he had invited her to meet them had to mean something.
She had stood by helplessly when he’d married Shelley and couldn’t bear the thought of another fiasco like that had been, but she sensed that this was different and hope was kindling.
The evening was a huge success for all of them, with Leonie forgetting what the future held for a while, Callum aware of his mother’s approval of the love of his life, and his stepfather beaming good-naturedly upon them.
When they stopped outside the yurt at the end of the evening he said, ‘Mum and Brent are going to Manchester for the day on Saturday so I will be free to show you the delights of Heatherdale after all, if you wish.’
‘Yes, if you can spare the time,’ she told him, as the magic of the last few hours faded at the thought of what lay ahead, but it would be the right time to tell him what she had to tell without another week of thinking about it.
‘It has been lovely to meet you,’ Margaret told her as they said their goodbyes, holding close for a moment the woman whose sad eyes belied her bright smile.
Tears pricked Leonie’s eyes at the thought of what it would be like to have this woman as well as Callum in her life.
After seeing her safely inside, they went and Saturday loomed up for her like doomsday.
* * *
The weather on the day was how she felt, Leonie thought when she drew back the curtains—dark and miserable with no sun in the sky. It was raining, a heavy drizzle, but she didn’t want them to cancel their time together and hoped that Callum was feeling the same.
It seemed that he was. He rang to say that if she was still interested so was he, and maybe they should start the scenic tour in the town and then work their way upwards if and when the rain stopped, and not to bother with food as they would most likely be near somewhere to eat around lunchtime.
When he’d hung up Leonie wished that it really was a sightseeing excursion instead of confession time, but hadn’t changed her mind, and so she dressed in jeans, a cotton top and walking shoes and waited for him to appear.
‘Why do I have a feeling that you are not looking forward to this?’ Callum asked when she opened to door to him.
‘You are wrong,’ she told him, and thought if she had never told a lie before, that one would make up for all the others and changed the subject. ‘I loved everything about your mother, Callum. She is delightful.’
‘Yes, she is,’ he agreed. ‘Her greatest wish is to see me married to someone I adore and that the two of us give her grandchildren. How are you fixed, Leonie? You know how I feel, but I can’t say that I get to know much about your side of things as you keep me on a knife edge where that’s concerned.’
‘Not any more,’ she said in a low voi
ce. ‘I asked for this day with you to tell you the truth about me that I have been too afraid to bring out in the open...or I suppose it might be that deceit becomes me.’
‘Hardly.’
‘Oh, yes! I had an affair with someone at the London hospital where I worked, and not only did he make me pregnant but I had no idea that he was married until I was confronted by his wife on his behalf and was told that he’d done the kind of thing he did to me before and had no intention of leaving her. She even suggested that if I didn’t want the baby, they would take it.
‘You’ve seen me with children, Callum, and there was no way that he was even going to get near it, but my baby, my beautiful baby, was stillborn at full term, and it was then that Julie came on the scene and helped me to face up to my loss.
‘I know that I behaved with incredible stupidity to let that man into my life, but I’d just lost my parents and was so lonely and griefstricken that I let him use me, expecting that we would get married once the baby was born, but it was all lies.’
Callum’s face was darkening, his mouth tightening, but he hadn’t said a word while she’d been speaking, and she said finally, ‘I know it doesn’t make nice telling.’
‘So Benedict was your baby?’ he said, ignoring her last comment.
‘Yes.’
‘I was jealous as hell, thought he was a lover or something of the sort.’
‘And yet you offered to try and find him and bring him to me.’
‘Yes. It was the least I could do. Leonie, what makes you so sure that I won’t understand? I come from a family where there was love all around me, the love of a woman for a child born outside marriage—me.
‘You met her the other night. My mother worked ceaselessly to give me all the things that I might have missed being fatherless, and made sure I never felt abandoned or different from my friends, or cheated of the kind of things that other kids had. And I know you would have been the same when something very similar to what happened to her happened to you.’
Heatherdale's Shy Nurse (Mills & Boon Medical) Page 13