by Lucy Clark
Sean stared at her, unable to believe the utter delight reflected on her face. He’d wanted to see a bright beaming smile and she was definitely giving him one. He’d wanted her eyes to twinkle with delight and that’s exactly what was happening. But what he hadn’t counted on was the way the two combined would make her look so incredibly beautiful, it momentarily robbed him of breath.
Inner beauty, he’d learned, was far more important than external beauty. Daina had been a knockout on the outside and broken on the inside. Not that he was comparing the sisters, but to say Jane’s natural radiance was presently knocking him off balance was an understatement.
The other thing he hadn’t counted on was the fact that, a moment later, she seemed to be struggling to keep tears at bay. She bit her lower lip, her cheeks becoming tinged with pink as she tried to suppress her emotions. ‘Thank you, Sean,’ she whispered, and this time he heard the pure gratitude in her voice. She clutched her hands together at her chest. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been this happy.’
‘Really?’ He was astonished by the statement but didn’t pursue it. Something so simple had made her happy?
‘And you won’t change your mind?’
Sean couldn’t help the tingling of annoyance he felt at her question and was about to tell her that he was a man of his word and that she could rely on what he said when he remembered she’d endured years of Daina’s behaviour. One minute nice, the next horrible. Perhaps Jane wasn’t questioning him but rather seeking reassurance because she’d been let down too many times in the past.
Sean reached over and took her hand in his, noticing she gasped a little at the action, her green eyes flashing with something…was it repressed desire or just surprise? He hoped it was the former because ever since he’d met her he’d had a difficult time removing her from his thoughts. ‘Jane.’ His tone was slightly husky and he quickly cleared his throat. ‘I promise that I’ll always try to be open and honest with you—I think it’s what we both need after the way we’ve been hurt in the past.’
‘Uh-huh,’ she agreed, completely mesmerised, not only by his touch but by the way his gaze seemed to see right into her heart, stripping her of all her defences, leaving her naked and vulnerable before him.
Was that a good thing?
‘All finished here?’ the waiter asked, as he came over to clear their plates.
‘Oh.’ Jane quickly jerked her hand out of Sean’s grasp and looked down at her empty plate and cup. ‘Uh…yes. Yes. Thank you.’
Had she just been staring across a table into Sean’s eyes, holding his hand…in public? This place was so close to the hospital that anyone could have walked in and seen them together and not have understood that it was all quite innocent and that nothing was going on between them except for the fact that he was granting her wish, that he was allowing her to see—
‘Jane?’
‘Hmm? Huh? What?’ She looked across at him to find him smiling brightly at her, as though he could see the redness she could feel staining her cheeks. She looked away, dipping her head, using her hair as a shield against her embarrassment.
‘When would you like to see Spencer?’
Jane wiped her face with her napkin before picking up the toy catalogue from the table as the waiter cleared everything away. She thanked him then opened her purse to get out some money. Sean quickly held up a hand to stop her.
‘It’s fine. I have an account here.’
‘You do? You eat here that often?’
Sean nodded, instructing the waiter to put the food and drinks on his account. ‘The food is made fresh and it’s healthy. Besides, Ronan’s daughter goes to school with Spencer so why not eat at a place you can trust?’
‘Why not indeed,’ she said. ‘Well…then, thank you for lunch, Sean.’
‘You sound surprised,’ he remarked as he stood and came around the table to hold her chair for her.
‘Thank you again,’ she murmured, wishing he wouldn’t be so chivalrous and gorgeous smelling and close and warm and inviting. It stalled the logical thought processes in her mind.
‘You’re welcome.’ His smile was smooth, teasing and a little inviting, and Jane quickly picked up her bag and the catalogue and started for the door. She remembered to thank Ronan and his staff and to compliment the chef before she headed out of the cool air-conditioning into the heat.
‘What time’s the meeting about Tessa?’ Sean asked, swatting away a fly.
‘Not for another hour.’
‘OK.’ He nodded. ‘Then, if you’re not needed at the hospital, what would you like to do?’
Jane stared at him, surprised he hadn’t simply made an excuse to leave. Did he want to spend more time with her? ‘We could go to the toy store.’ She held up the catalogue. ‘Take a look around, see if there’s anything there Spencer might like.’
‘Great. Mind if I tag along?’
‘You really want to?’
‘He is my son after all, so I’ll definitely be able to give you some pointers as to what he might like.’
Jane’s smile was bright and her eyes twinkled. ‘OK, then.’
‘Every year you send him the most wonderful presents. He loves them.’
‘He does?’ She hadn’t been sure whether Sean was passing on the gifts or whether he preferred Spencer not to have any contact whatsoever with her.
‘It must be difficult, buying for someone you don’t know.’
Jane shrugged. ‘I just buy him what I wanted when I was his age. I know we’re different genders but I was never really girly.’ She’d left that to Daina. ‘I loved cars and model aircraft and chemistry sets. Boys always have the better toys, as far as I’m concerned.’
‘Well, you’ve always picked winners.’
‘Wow. Yay, me!’
That gorgeous beaming smile was back and Sean drank it in. To say Jane was captivating him more and more with each passing second he spent in her company was an understatement.
‘You’re always so good with remembering his birthday,’ Sean said. ‘Never once have you forgotten.’
‘It’s a bit hard to forget Spencer’s birthday.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it’s the same day as mine. We share a birthday.’ Jane delivered the line as though she was telling him the weather.
‘You—? Wait. Spencer was born on your birthday?’
‘He was.’ Jane smiled up at him. ‘That’s why I’ve always felt such a strong connection with him. He’s my birthday buddy. He’ll turn seven and I’ll turn thirty.’
Sean shook his head in astonishment. ‘I had no idea. Daina…she never—’ He stopped, both of them still strolling along. Jane looked up at him.
‘She never talked about me, right?’
‘Not really.’
‘And I’ll bet when she did it was usually derogatory in some way.’
‘In the beginning, well, I guess I took everything she said as gospel.’
‘But after that?’
‘Do you mean when I realised my wife had serious mental health issues?’ They stopped at a set of traffic lights and Sean pressed the button, both of them waiting for the lights to change. Jane turned to face him.
‘How long did it take for you to realise?’
‘About twelve months, I’m sorry to say. You’d think as a doctor I’d have picked up the signs and symptoms sooner.’
‘You were no doubt very busy at the hospital, working all hours, and, believe me, Daina could be quite convincing when it suited her.’
Sean nodded. ‘You sound as though you know exactly how I felt.’
‘Let me guess. Whenever you tried to question her about things, she’d tell you that you were overreacting or that you’d grasped the wrong end of the stick. She’d give you just enough attention, indicating she understood what was happening, then she’d expertly turn the tables so that you were the one in the wrong, making you feel guilty and filled with remorse.’
‘Yes.’ Sean was astounded at just how we
ll Jane articulated what he’d experienced, living with Daina.
‘It’s very difficult when you’re emotionally involved with someone, when you love them, to realise they’re manipulating you.’
‘Yes.’ He nodded slowly and exhaled. ‘It wasn’t until Daina started trying to turn me against my parents and siblings that I began to realise there wasn’t something wrong with me, it was her.’ He spread his hands wide. ‘I knew what she’d said about my sisters couldn’t possibly be true. I know them so well, we’re a very close-knit family and when I discussed things openly with my sisters…well, it was then the blinkers finally came off.’
‘But you were still married to her for almost six years, Sean.’
‘She was my wife, Jane. She was mentally ill. I couldn’t just abandon her.’
‘I doubt she felt the same way about you.’ The words were out of Jane’s mouth before she could stop them and as the pedestrian light finally turned green she set off across the road. ‘I’m sorry if that sounds harsh,’ she continued as they started walking down the other side of the street, ‘but I know Daina. I know the way she could manipulate and twist the situation and I know that even if you loved her, even if you tried to get her help, she would have done little to actually help herself.’
Jane glanced across at him, hoping she hadn’t overstepped the mark of this new level of friendship they seemed to be building. ‘I’m sorry if what I’ve said offends you but—’
‘No. You’re absolutely right,’ he interjected. ‘But I’ve been raised to appreciate the value of family and, as my wife, Daina was my family. I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself if I hadn’t done everything I could to help her.’
‘What did you try?’ Jane asked as they neared the toy store.
‘I organised appointments for her with mental health specialists. The first few times she refused to turn up and would often disappear for days or even weeks, not coming home and worrying me to the point of despair.’
‘Yeah.’ Her words were soft and she stopped under the shade of a nearby tree and looked up at Sean, who stood with his hands shoved into his pockets, his face drawn with remembered pain. ‘Hiding from the truth.’
‘A few times, though, I did manage to get her admitted to a clinic where she stayed for a few weeks, receiving medication for her condition, and it looked as though it was working.’
‘But the instant she was discharged, after convincing everyone that she really was fine, things would begin to change again?’
‘Yes.’ Sean raked one hand through his hair. ‘I tried everything I could to get her help but her problems, and she received so many diagnoses over the years, weren’t easy to overcome if she wasn’t willing to help herself.’
‘Instead, everyone around the person suffers.’
Sean looked at Jane with concern as she spoke. She was looking down at the ground and when he reached out, lifting her chin so he could see her eyes, he saw pain reflected there. ‘She hurt you a lot, didn’t she?’ It was a statement more than a question but Jane shrugged one shoulder, stepping back from his touch. Sean dropped his hand back to his side and watched her for another moment, seeing the years of unhappiness Jane had probably endured at the hands of her sister.
‘So what finally ended it? You’ve already told me you were divorced before Daina passed away. What was it that made you end that toxic relationship?’
‘Toxic. That’s a good word for it.’ Sean shoved both hands into his trouser pockets again and shifted his feet. ‘She was pregnant with Spencer and at first she kept telling me how delighted she was, how this baby would change everything, make everything better between us, but it was just another one of her lies.’
Jane remained silent, watching the different array of emotions cross his face. Confusion, hurt, dejection, anger.
‘I came home one day to find her gone. Usually when she left, or ran away, she’d pack a bag but this time nothing was missing. I checked the usual places, the different friends she relied on, but none of them knew where she was. Then two weeks later she came back home and seemed to be all right. She said she’d been confused, that she wanted to have the baby and that she loved me.’
Jane sighed. ‘I know where she went during that time, Sean.’
‘You do?’
She nodded. ‘Daina came to see me. I was living in Melbourne and she’d somehow found me and turned up on my doorstep, saying she needed a place to stay for the night. As usually happened when Daina was around, all she talked about was herself, that to start off with she’d thought she’d wanted a baby, that it might be fun, but that she’d been in the shopping centre where a baby had been crying. Constantly crying, not stopping, and she realised she didn’t want a baby after all. She said she’d tried to get an abortion but she was too far along with the pregnancy. The abortion clinics had turned her away.’ Jane sighed heavily. ‘That was why she’d come to see me.’
Sean gulped. ‘She wanted you to do an abortion!’
‘Yes.’
‘What did you say?’
‘That she was a fool. That she was too selfish to see that she had it all. She had good looks, a loving husband and was now going to have a child. I told her I was jealous of her. That seemed to feed her ego enough and she started talking about keeping the baby. It was all I could think of to ensure she didn’t do something else to try and terminate the pregnancy.’
‘How many weeks gestation was she?’
‘Thirty-one.’
‘What happened after that?’
‘She left, telling me she was going to return home to her wonderful life with her loving husband. I hoped it was the truth.’
‘And at thirty-three weeks I returned from a late shift at the hospital to discover her lying at the bottom of the stairs.’
‘Oh, no.’
‘She was drifting in and out of consciousness and she was cold. She’d sustained a concussion and at one point it did look as though she might lose the baby.’
‘Obviously, Spencer managed to pull through.’
At the mention of his son, Sean smiled. ‘He’s a tough little lad. Resilient.’ The smile slowly faded as he met Jane’s gaze. ‘After his birth, Daina admitted to me that she hadn’t accidentally fallen down the stairs as I’d presumed.’
Jane gasped, covering her mouth as she whispered, ‘She’d thrown herself down voluntarily.’
He nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘What happened?’
‘I finally saw the real Daina. After almost six years of my life, during which I’d tried everything I could to make her happy, to give her what she wanted, to try and please her, I saw her true self. She admitted that she’d continued drinking and even taking drugs throughout the pregnancy in the hope that the baby would abort spontaneously, but it hadn’t so, in her mind, terminating the pregnancy herself was the next logical conclusion.’
‘She always had such a convoluted way of thinking.’
‘Yes.’ He looked at Jane. ‘You understand completely.’ He reached out and took her hand in his. Jane tried not to react to the warmth that shot up her arm and burst into a mass of tingles throughout her entire body. Why on earth did one simple touch from him affect her in such a way?
‘I’ve never been able to talk to anyone else about Daina,’ he continued, completely unaware of how she was feeling. She wanted to pull her hand away but knew that would raise more questions than anything else. Instead, she focused on what he was saying. ‘Not even my parents, as close as we are, really grasped the full level of Daina’s vindictiveness. Sure, they could see she was a little unstable at times but she was quite the actress and played us all.’
‘Yes.’ Jane shifted back a little, the action causing Sean to casually release her hand. She quickly grasped the toy catalogue from her bag, needing something to hold onto, trying desperately to concentrate on what he was saying rather than the way he was making her feel.
Even her own parents hadn’t understood the full extent of Daina’s moods, h
adn’t seen the way she’d emotionally bullied Jane for years prior to the accident. Now, with Sean, Jane was finally coming to realise, just as he was, that someone else truly understood. It provided them with an instant bond, even though it was formed through negative experiences.
‘Spencer,’ Sean continued, ‘was in the neonate intensive care unit for the next three months but he was a fighter. After the delivery Daina was kept in overnight for observation and was then discharged, but before she left the hospital I told her our marriage was over. I would be filing for divorce as soon as possible and that if she didn’t agree, if she did anything to contest it, I would have her charged with attempted manslaughter of our child.’
‘You were angry.’
‘I was livid, not only at her but at myself. I couldn’t believe I’d been such a fool and for such a long time.’
‘You made up rational excuses for her behaviour,’ Jane offered.
‘Exactly.’ He spread his arms wide. ‘I can’t believe how…freeing it is to talk to you like this, Jane. You understand.’
‘I do.’
Sean paused for a moment, looking at her as though he was seeing her for the time. She was not merely Daina’s sister or Spencer’s aunt…she was Jane, a woman who had clearly been through some terrible emotional experiences but instead of allowing them to make her weak had drawn strength from them, working hard and specialising in treating children with eating disorders who were also lost. She was trying to make a difference in the world and that realisation made him appreciate her even more.
CHAPTER FIVE
‘WELL,’ SEAN SAID after a long moment. They’d stood there, staring at each other, and Jane found herself becoming a little self-conscious, especially as Sean seemed to be looking at her as though he’d just discovered a rare treasure. Surely that couldn’t be right. Jane had never classified herself as a rare anything. ‘We have to do something,’ he continued as he started walking again.
‘For what?’
‘For your birthday,’ he stated, as though it was completely obvious.
Jane realised he was changing the subject and she was more than happy for that to occur. Still, the thought of having someone actually plan something for her birthday was more than she could contemplate right now. ‘Oh, no. It’s fine.’ She brushed his words away. ‘Focusing on Spencer is better. You only turn seven once and it’s a big deal in a boy’s life…or so I’ve gathered from my young patients over the years.’