Midwife in the Family Way

‘Like Montana and Mia and Misty.’ She gestured with her hand at the colourful throng of people she worked with at Lyrebird Lake. ‘Wise women and wonderful friends,’ she went on. ‘Like them, I consider my work a privilege.’

He understood that but it was rare for a person to say it. ‘As I do mine.’ He shrugged. ‘So now we can be happy we have worthwhile lives, though I fear I may be a trifle too focussed on the excuse not to lead a more facetted life.’ He grimaced in self-mockery. ‘And what do you do for yourself, Emma?’

She glanced around for her daughter. ‘I am also a mother.’

He smiled down at her perplexed frown. ‘A mother, yes, and a good one, I think. And for Emma—the woman?’

She narrowed her eyes at him and declined to answer, preferring to fire it back at him. ‘What do you do for the man, Gianni?’

Someone called out to her and she looked away. And then she smiled at him and was gone. He watched her go. Couldn’t not watch her. An intriguing and magnetic woman he hadn’t expected to meet. But his life would never change.

Chapter Two

TWO hours later Emma found herself looking around for Gianni.

He would be gone tomorrow, which was as well because the fascination inside her seemed to revel in every brooding glance he sent her way. There was an escalating excitement in her stomach unlike anything she’d felt before, and as she checked on her daughter, she realised that she missed seeing Gianni in her peripheral vision.

She needed to remember he’d go back to the drama and tension of emergency rescue with the international taskforce that Angus had retired from five years ago and she’d go back to her work.

But her mind wasn’t ready to relegate Gianni to a past experience. And she rearranged the knowledge she had in her brain and teased at it as if she could glean more.

So Angus had dragged the barely conscious Italian from the rubble and inspired him. Well, it had certainly sparked an unlikely friendship between the two men. And there was at least a ten-year gap in their ages.

Where had she been ten years ago when that had happened?

At school certainly. Not a teen mother yet. Her own mother still well and oblivious to the cloud that would destroy her life and cast a shadow over her family. But she wouldn’t go there.

When this Italian intruder was gone, Emma would go back to life in Lyrebird Lake as if he’d never been, which was a good thing.

Ah. There he was. She found him talking to Angus and as if he’d felt her gaze he looked up. For a moment their eyes held and then Angus said something else and Gianni looked away. Hurriedly she walked on and berated herself for being drawn to him. But what could a girl do when she found herself so aware of a man?

Since their first conversation, whenever she’d moved to another group to talk, shortly afterwards he too would arrive to join the circle and always that thrum of awareness rumbled between them. He’d seemed no more than a few steps away from her all afternoon, despite the fact he barely spoke to her. She sifted through everything Angus had told her as she waited for him to come to her again. Strange how she knew he would.

‘So you’ll be gone tomorrow,’ she said without preamble when he appeared to stand beside her.

‘That is true.’

A tennis ball from the cricket game rolled to her feet like a faceless yellow bird and she picked it up and tossed it back to the bowler, glad of the distraction while she bolstered up her courage. ‘It’s a shame you can’t stay a while and see more of the area around Lyrebird Lake.’

His glance swept over her. ‘If I had known it would be so beautiful here I would not have made plans.’ He smiled. ‘Would you have shown me around, Emma?’

She could have found a little time. If he was that attracted to the place, why leave so quickly? ‘Perhaps. And your plans can’t be changed?’

He gestured fatalistically with his hands and she had to smile at the pure Mediterranean gesture. ‘I go to see my brother. It is arranged. We haven’t spoken in years. It is time.’

More snippets of the man. ‘Did you fall out? Is he married?’

‘Such questions.’ But he smiled as he said it. ‘He too has lost his wife now, so the reason for our disagreement is past.’ That sounded even more intriguing and just a little tough on the poor wife, but she hesitated to persist. She was glad she hadn’t offended him with her inquisitiveness.

But everything about him spoke of a different culture, a different life experience, and sometimes she despaired of ever experiencing a world away from Lyrebird Lake. She’d begun to think that she’d pinned her lack of experience of the world onto Gianni’s multiculturalism and that was what was drawing her to him. It was as good a reason as any.

Maybe it was the fact that he was going that gave her permission to try and peer into that other world. She couldn’t ever remember being so fascinated by a man as this Gianni. ‘Tell me what it was like, growing up in Italy. Tell me about your parents.’

She suddenly realised how bold that sounded. ‘I’m not normally nosy. But you intrigue me.’ She frowned at herself and shook her head again. ‘Please don’t answer if you prefer not to.’

He smiled sardonically and raised his impossibly black eyebrows. ‘And if I don’t, will you walk away?’

She almost said maybe, and then corrected herself. She had never been a coquette. Why lie? She smiled. ‘Of course not.’ He was too compelling.

He shrugged his impossibly broad shoulders as if to say he couldn’t imagine why she would be interested but he would humour her. ‘Then I will tell you a little. My parents were both doctors but died in a boating accident when I was a teenager. I was held above the water, unconscious, by my brother until help came.’

‘That must have been heartbreaking for two teenage boys.’

He nodded. ‘If I had not hit my head, perhaps we could have saved them both, but that is all in the past.’ The bleakness was back in his eyes and she’d wished she could retract her question about his parents. Not all of those memories were in the past. She resisted the urge to touch his shoulder in sympathy.

But he went on, almost as if he too was aware time was running out for both of them. ‘Leon, older by two years than I, runs the Bonmarito Private Hospitals in Rome. In our family it is our custom for the sons to attend medical school and then marry the wife chosen by the family.’

She couldn’t imagine being married to a man she barely knew, especially one as blatantly masculine as this man, but bizarrely she had no problem picturing the scenario.

‘So you and Leon did that? Yours was an arranged marriage?’ When he nodded she shook her head. What must his wife have thought as he’d approached the marriage bed? Or had she been glad he had been young and handsome?

‘Si. And no prospect of divorce if it didn’t work in the beginning.’ He watched her shock with a flicker of sardonic amusement. Even at her expense, she was glad to see him lighten his mood a little. ‘The statistics for good marriages in my country are similar to yours,’ he said.

‘And was your marriage a happy one?’

The bleakness swept back into his eyes. ‘By the time she died I had fallen in love with my wife. Yes.’

Ouch. Conversation stopper. What was she doing asking such personal questions? And at a funeral? Weren’t they all depressed enough?

The last golden rays of the sun began to dust the trees across the lake and it was time for the party to break up. Time for her to say goodbye to this tragically enigmatic Italian and get on with her own life.

‘Thank you for your company, Gianni. I’ve enjoyed talking to you. I hope I haven’t annoyed you with my silly questions.’ She smiled at him but didn’t offer her hand. Pure self-preservation on her part. ‘Have a safe trip home.’

She looked across to the activity. ‘I must help clear up. Louisa is going to Angus and Mia’s house for tonight.’ Emma could see Misty and Montana gathering glasses and plates from benches.

Gianni nodded and inclined his head as he watched her walk away. Such things he’d not spoken of for years. His words escaping from his mouth like suddenly released prisoners. It was a wonder she hadn’t run away from him, not walked. He shook his head and glanced around, looking for Angus. Angus waved at the bench he wanted to move and Gianni strode across, glad to have something physical he could do.

They brought the last of the chairs inside as Montana touched Emma’s shoulder for attention. He couldn’t help but overhear.

‘Emma. I know it’s a favour, but I wondered if Grace could sleep over with Dawn tonight…’ Montana pointed out of the kitchen window to the veranda. ‘She’s really missing Ned. I think a little friend might help just for tonight.’

Angus had told him Montana had been the first midwife to board in Ned and Louisa’s home and Dawn had been a baby then.

He watched Emma glance out the kitchen window at the two earnest young heads together on the swing.

She nodded and he heard her say, ‘That’s fine. We were having an early night anyway. I’m taking her up to see Mum tomorrow afternoon.’ Then he had the next piece of furniture to move and the rest of the conversation was lost.

In her peripheral vision Emma saw Gianni and Angus move outside to search for more chairs and suddenly it was easier to concentrate. Montana nodded her thanks. ‘How is your mother?’

Emma thought of waving hands and erratic attempts to walk. ‘She didn’t seem as sad last week, but her moods swing pretty wildly. I just wish I could keep her at home but she’s even too much in the care she’s in sometimes. I don’t know what I’ll do if she has to leave the centre in Brisbane. And Dad misses the lake.’

Montana hugged her. ‘There’s no easy answer and we’ll be here for you if you need to talk.’

‘I know.’ Emma shook off the melancholy of worry that she worked so hard to hide and returned to the practical. ‘What time do you want me to pick up Grace in the morning?’

‘It’s Saturday. Sleep in. We’ll go shopping early and I’ll drop her home before lunch, if that’s okay.’

Emma nodded as Louisa came back into the kitchen with her overnight bag and suddenly everyone was ready to leave.

Home wasn’t far and Emma declined the offer of a lift in Montana’s bus-like vehicle. The evening was cool and it would be good to clear her head in the twilight breeze. To have space to mull over the day on the silent walk home.

The sudden loud snap of a breaking twig pierced her reverie and her head flew up. Then she heard the unmistakable scrape of a shoe on gravel behind her just before a tall shadow loomed over her.

Emma’s heart flipped like those silver fish did every afternoon in the lake and her hand came up to her throat as if to hold back a squeak. Up until now the idea of being nervous of the encroaching darkness had never crossed her mind. This was Lyrebird Lake and the safest place she knew. But at that moment her heart galloped crazily as she tried to pierce the gloom to see the person’s identity.

‘Who is looking after you?’ Gianni spoke quietly, but there was a tinge of outrage in his voice.

She peered through the dimness and confirmed it was his face. ‘Gianni!’ Her shoulders dropped as she breathed heavily out in an exasperated sigh. ‘Around here we don’t sneak up and scare people. As long as no one does what you just did, I don’t need looking after.’ She sighed again as her pulse rate settled. She tapped her chest as if to reassure her heart all was well. ‘You frightened the life out of me.’ She started to walk again.

His dark brows almost touched each other. ‘You should not be walking alone, it is almost dark. Please let me drive you to your house.’

Emma rolled her eyes. ‘I thought accepting lifts from strangers was dangerous?’ she said dryly. She glanced around. Now they were standing closer to the streetlamp but between the orange pools of each lamp it was pretty deserted and darker than she’d realised. But until the silly man had put the notion in her head she’d been happy.

‘Come,’ he said imperiously, and held out his hand.

Emma looked down at his strong brown fingers, even darker in the dim light, and considered the implications of his touch. Did she want to feel the warmth that she just knew was going to stay with her? She didn’t think so.

Emma avoided his hand and turned to his car. ‘All right.’ But as she reached for the door handle his fingers were there before her.

‘May I?’ he said. ‘Please allow me?’

Emma stood back as he glided the door open. Touchy Italian, she thought. ‘No problem. Feel free. I’m just out of practice with people opening doors for me.’ She swung herself into the low-slung seat and glanced around the interior of the European sports car.

She read the label of the owner’s manual on the console. She’d never been in a Maserati before. Her door clicked shut beside her shoulder and she forced herself to relax back into the seat. The leather was doeskin soft and she wiggled her shoulders in it. Nice. Different from what she was used to, that was for sure.

When he climbed in and secured his seat belt she leaned forward slightly, anticipating the car’s forward movement. When it didn’t happen she frowned and resisted drumming her fingers. He continued to linger and she turned to look at him with narrowed eyes. And you’re waiting for…? she thought with rising suspicion.

‘Would you like me to fasten your belt for you?’ He’d turned to face her and she realised she’d forgotten the obvious. She bit her lip. The man was scrambling her brains the way her hands were scrambling to get the clasp done up before, heaven forbid, he did help her.

‘Does the roof go up?’ She was gabbling but suddenly it was very close inside the car.

‘No.’ He reached forward and the engine started with a muted roar. ‘It’s a coupé. A Cambiocorsa 2007. I have one at home.’

‘Really? Only one?’ she said straight-faced. The car was black and low to the ground. She could see that. But she doubted she’d ever feel the need to hire one. ‘So you drove down from Brisbane? This is a hire car?’ And he had one at home. He was certainly from a different world.

His profile shifted as he glanced at her. ‘Are you interested in cars?’

Was she? The subject wasn’t one she’d buy a magazine on. ‘Not really.’

He nodded as if the answer was what he expected. ‘Then let us not discuss them.’ End of discussion.

Emma blinked. He’d assumed a protective and almost fatherly role, and Emma wasn’t sure she liked it. Well, she was no doormat for obedience. Think of your own topic, then, buddy, she thought. He didn’t offer any other conversational gambit and the silence stretched.

He was going tomorrow, she told herself, which made it acceptable if she gave in. ‘I live straight down this road. Barely worth driving, in fact,’ she said with less than subtle pointedness.

‘Si. And I also do not live far from here as I have rented a chalet at the Lakeside.’ He glanced across and then away. ‘They have a fine restaurant. Italian.’ She could hear the smile in his voice, and she wondered if it was just because it was almost dark and she had to rely on other senses or if it was because for the first time today he’d smiled broadly enough that it affected his voice. She was glad she couldn’t see the curve of his lips. She’d been trying not to look at the sinful promise of his mouth all day. No doubt the sight would haunt her.

‘So?’ he said.

What on earth was he saying? ‘So, what?’

He sighed. Patiently, as if with a child, and with this man she was beginning to feel like one. Not something she’d felt since she the age of sixteen and not something she decided she enjoyed. ‘Will you join me for a meal, please, Emma?’

Her heart did that fish thing again. Now? ‘Aren’t you going back to Angus’s?’

He shook his head once in the dimness. ‘His stepmother is there tonight. I dined with him last night and we talked. I will lunch with him tomorrow before I leave.’

Emma filled the silence while she considered the implications of his invitation. ‘Angus had a wonderful relationship with Ned since he’d made up with his father.’ Her mind skittered to the idea of dining alone with Gianni in an intimate setting and away again. Her thoughts went back to Angus. It was safer. ‘He seems to be at peace with Ned’s passing.’

‘Yes.’ Gianni inclined his head while he contemplated her profile. ‘Thankfully they had time to enjoy each other’s company. And Angus was instrumental in my recent contact with my brother. But you haven’t answered my question.’

The guy had a single focus. She went with the answer she’d known she’d make from the beginning. To live dangerously. ‘Perhaps. I need to eat.’ She looked down at her grubby skirt that she’d played cricket in. ‘I’d like to get changed, though.’

He nodded again. ‘How much time do you need?’

She thought about it. How much did she really need? Five minutes. ‘Half an hour,’ she said.

‘Good.’ Satisfaction was obvious. ‘Much faster than I expected.’

She tried vainly not to smile and she hoped he didn’t see or think she was making fun of him. ‘It’s this house, with the roses over the gate.’

She lifted her hand to the handle and his fingers came over the top to stay it. ‘Please wait for me to open it,’ he said quietly, and her hand froze under his. She sighed and leaned back against the leather.

She’d been right. His skin was warm and made the gooseflesh pop up on her arms like bubbles in the muddy sand at the edge of the lake. His hand moved away and she would have sworn his fingers were still there. Hot over hers.

If he could do that with just a touch, she was in big trouble if she invited anything else. But she wouldn’t. It was just a meal, she was feeling flat after the funeral and Grace was away, and she didn’t get to eat at the Lakeside very often. Never had, actually.

He opened her car door and she climbed out. It seemed a waste of energy to her but the cosseting was strangely compelling. He ushered her through the gate and up the path to her front door like an old-fashioned footman. Then waited while she unlocked the door and only left her when she entered her house, but he didn’t drive away until she’d shut the door.

She heard the roar of the car as it accelerated away and Emma’s heart flopped around as she leant back against the closed door. Her hand actually slid to her throat where her pulse pounded. What had happened to her in the last five minutes? It had just been a lift a few hundred metres but she felt vibrantly alive. Ridiculously so.

There were a hundred good reasons not to be attracted to this man, or any man for that matter, and fifteen good reasons to wallow in it.

The hundred were all complications and she didn’t need them.

The fifteen were about the number of good years she estimated she had before the disease that had turned her graceful and gracious mother into a tormented bed-ridden shell of a woman could begin to do the same to her.

Fifty per cent chance of having the gene. In the last few years Emma had toyed briefly with the idea of taking the final genetic test, a test that could prove her fate irrevocably, but she’d always come back to that tiny spark of hope she’d not inherited the predisposing gene. She didn’t think she’d cope if that hope was gone. She couldn’t give up that tiny beam of optimism that once lost would never return.

Her arms crept around her waist and Gianni was forgotten, everything was forgotten, as her worst nightmare touched her again with cold fingers of dread.

The fear was for Grace, her daughter, and the fact that if Emma was shadowed then Grace had a fifty per cent chance of having it, too. Emma couldn’t do it. At this time in her life she couldn’t live with Grace being positive for Huntington’s disease.

Instead, Emma lived her life as if she had only until she turned forty, like her mother had before she’d become ill, and she saved every penny to ensure Grace would have the choices for the support Emma might not be able to give.

But for this moment Emma was alive, she was well, and apparently she was an attractive woman. Not something she’d thought about for a very long time. She didn’t know when she’d decided that she wanted to savour a little of what Gianni had to offer. If he was offering anything apart from a meal, that was.

She’d never looked for another boyfriend after she and Tommy had drifted apart. She’d been too busy. Too focussed.

As two sixteen-year-olds she and Tommy had discovered they’d little in common except Grace, and Emma had been sensible enough not to tie herself to a man she’d already grown out of. Tommy had left to see the world with Emma’s blessing. But maybe she’d missed out on the subtle thrill of a man’s appreciation.

In fact, even with the little exposure to Gianni’s attention today she’d begun to revel in the unfamiliar feeling of being a fragile flower to be cherished and taken care of. Not something she had any experience of and no doubt it would irk her very quickly in the real world, but this was an out-of-the-ordinary opportunity to let herself be spoiled.

And there was something about Gianni that called to her in a way she’d never heard before. Heaven forbid, there might be a fabulous encounter her body was trying to tempt her into, and the idea had a compulsive magnetism, like the man did. As long as she was careful and it didn’t get out of hand.

Gianni was right out of her comfort zone. And he was leaving soon. To go back to Italy. If she made a fool of herself, he was a ship in the night with a home port she couldn’t get much further away from than inland Queensland.

She looked at her watch and bounced away from the door as if someone had poked her with a cattle prod. She’d wasted five minutes!

Chapter Three

TWENTY-FIVE minutes later Gianni knocked on Emma’s door and the sound echoed through Emma’s chest and under her ribcage. Boom. Boom. Boom. He was here. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a real date. Probably never.

She sucked in her breath and ran her tongue inside her gums to make sure she didn’t have any lipstick on her teeth. Still not convinced, she grimaced toothily at the mirror on the way to her door. Yep. All was well. Another deep breath as she paused and hoped she’d dressed right. She opened the door.

Christo. Gianni sucked his own lungful of air. Emma’s blonde hair was loose over her shoulders and she’d abandoned the pink lipstick for a deep sultry red that matched the lush material of her blouse. To call it a blouse was a blasphemy. The soft material clung like a skin and lingered like his eyes on the swell of her breasts and plunged, also like his eyes, down into a V of paradise.

His breath jammed for a moment and then resumed, like his mesmerised surveillance of her preparations. All this in half an hour?

He’d never been attracted to trousers on women, preferring the femininity of a swirling skirt, but when she twirled to show him, the way her firm buttocks snuggled into the stretchy black material made his eyes blink. Then she moved back further to open the door for him and he could see it hung almost like a skirt, lots of fabric swirling around her legs from the tight tapering waist, teasing him with the thought of it in a pool of darkness at her feet.

‘Hello?’ Her voice broke the spell and he blinked and swore again in his head. What was it about this woman that grabbed him by the throat and demolished his brain?

‘Bella. You are beautiful and took my breath away.’

She laughed. Softly, and to him like the musical bells of his favourite chapel. Everything she did entranced him. ‘Thank you.’ she said. ‘The men around here would be far too embarrassed to say that out loud.’

He frowned. ‘I speak the truth.’ He glanced around the inside of her house. A welcoming room, evidence of a family and very clean. But he wanted her in the dark, beside him in the close confines of the car, somewhere he could inhale her scent and absorb the vibrations her body caused in his. With no distractions. ‘Shall we go?’