Waves of Temptation

She knew as much as she ever wanted to know about Jessie’s father—but he’d also told her about his brother, Matt.

‘He’s the only good thing about my family, Kell. If anything ever happens to me, go to him. He’ll help you.’

Well, he had helped her, Kelly thought grimly. She thought of the insurance cheque. It had been tossed at her in anger but she owed everything to it.

‘So Jess might have been wrong about him being a nice guy, but he’s had his uses,’ she told herself. ‘Now forget about him. You have enough to worry about without past history. For instance, the surf tour’s moving on. You’ll need to take leave. You’ll need a place to stay, and you’ll need to figure a way to stop Jess’s heart from breaking when he learns that he’s no longer part of the surf circuit.’

* * *

He felt like he’d been hit with a sledgehammer.

Matt walked up to the hospital rooftop, to the cafeteria area that looked out over the ocean. He leant on the rail overlooking the amazing view, trying to let the enormity of what had just happened sink in.

Jessie had a son. Somehow, his brother wasn’t dead.

Okay, that was a crazy thing to think but right now that was how it seemed. He knew if he phoned his mother—‘You have a grandson. He’s named Jess and he looks just like our Jessie’—his mother would be on the next plane. She’d broken her heart when Jess had died, and she’d never got over it. Always a doormat to her bully of a husband, she’d faded into silent misery. Matt worried about her, but not enough to stay in Sydney, not enough to stay near his father.

Should he tell his mother? He must. But if he told his mother, his father would know, too. There was the rub. Could you fight for custody of a seventeen-year-old boy? No, Matt thought, but knowing his father, he’d try. Or, worse, he’d let loose the anger he still carried toward his older son and unleash it on Kelly and his grandson.

The thought of his father bullying Kelly...

As he’d bullied her...

He thought back to the appalling funeral parlour scene and he felt ill.

He’d been a kid himself, a student. The call had come late at night; Jess had had a fall and died. Yes, it seemed to be suicide. His body was at a Hawaiian funeral home and a woman calling herself his wife was making the arrangements.

His father had exploded with grief and rage. ‘Stupid, idiotic, surfer hop-head. You needn’t think I’m heading off to that place to see him. You do it, boy. Go and get him, bring him home so his mother can bury him and there’s an end to it.’

‘They say he’s married?’

‘He’s been off his head for years. If there’s a marriage get it annulled. We have more than enough evidence to say he was mentally incapable. And don’t tell your mother. Just fix it.’

But Jess had never been mentally incapable. The depression that had dogged him since adolescence had been an illness, the same way cancer was an illness. Underneath the depression and, yes, the drugs when he’d been using, he’d still been Jess, the gentle, soft-spoken big brother Matt had loved.

He might have known he’d have married a woman of spirit.

But a seventeen-year-old?

He’d judged her back then because of her appearance and obvious desperation, but things were making horrible sense now.

All apart from the age. Surely seventeen was underage for marriage in Hawaii? They’d have needed special permission.

Had they done it because Kelly had been pregnant?

These were questions Matt should have asked years ago, not now.

The questions had been there, though. He’d flown home with Jessie’s body and the questions had rested unanswered in the back of his mind. The image of a girl curled in utter misery, of a cheque floating to the floor, of a desperation he’d done nothing to assuage, these images had stayed with him. The questions had nagged while he’d qualified as a doctor, while he’d got himself away from his domineering father, while he’d attempted his own marriage... While he’d come to terms with life, as Jessie never had. Just as Kelly had obviously come to terms with her life.

He remembered his relief when he’d found the cheque had been cashed. Now I don’t need to feel guilty, he’d told himself. But the questions had stayed.

They had been answered now—almost. She’d used the cheque, but to what purpose?

To train herself in medicine?

To raise another surfer like Jess?

If his father found out... To have a grandson addicted to surfing...

Better not to tell him. Better to leave things as they were, just get this kid well and on his way.

But he looked so much like Jess...

So? He’d be in hospital for a week or so and then an outpatient for longer with rehab. He’d see him a lot. He had to get used to it.

And his mother?

Her image haunted him. In truth, her image had haunted him for years and now there was this new image juxtapositioned on the old.

Should the new image make the haunting go away?

A surf doctor. What sort of doctor was that?

What sort of woman was that?

A woman with spirit.

How could he know that?

He just...knew. There was that about her, an indefinable strength. A beauty that was far more than skin deep.

Beauty? He raked his hair again, thinking he wasn’t making sense. He was too tired, too shocked to take it in. He needed to go home.

At the thought of his home he felt his tension ease. Home, the place he’d built with effort and with love. Home with his dogs and his books.

His house was the only place where he was at peace. His home mattered. He’d learned early and learned hard; people only complicated that peace.

He needed to go home now and put this woman and her son out of his head.

He needed to be alone.

CHAPTER TWO

THE SURF CHAMPIONSHIPS lasted for two more days and Kelly worked for both of them. There were gaps in the day when she could visit Jess, but she had to work for as long as she could. She needed the money.

The surfing community looked after its own, but there wasn’t a lot they could do to help. They’d need to employ another doctor for the next round of the championships in New Zealand. As soon as Jess was well enough for Kelly to rejoin the tour, the position was hers again, but pro-surfing ran on the smell of a surf-waxed rag, and they couldn’t afford to pay her for time off.

And she would not use the trust fund.

She needed to move from the hotel. One of the locals offered her a basic surfer’s squat and she accepted with relief. She’d find a decent apartment when Jess was released from hospital but until then she’d live in her surf squat and focus on Jess’s recovery.

From Jessie’s charts and from information she drew from junior doctors, she could track Jessie’s progress. There was therefore no need to talk to Matt Eveldene. The advantage of Matt being head of the orthopaedic ward was that where Matt went, students followed. She could always hear him coming so she could give Jess a quick hug and disappear.

‘Here come the medical cavalry. It’s time to make myself scarce.’

‘He looks at me funny,’ Jess said sleepily on the second day, and she hugged him again, feeling defensive about leaving him.

‘Surgeons are a law unto themselves,’ she said. ‘If he only looks at you funny, you’re getting off lightly. These guys spend their days looking inside people, not practising social skills.’

The surf tour moved on. She spent a couple of hours of her first free day moving into her dreary little apartment. Back at the hospital she found Jess awake and bored, so she spent an hour going over the results of the championship he’d missed out on, talking future tactics, as if those tactics might be useful next week instead of in six months.

Finally he went to sleep. What to do now? She knew how long rehabilitation would take. She had weeks and weeks of wondering what to do.

Okay, do what came next. Lunch. She slipped out to find some—and Matt was at the nurses’ station.

Was he waiting for her? It looked like it. His hands were deep in the pockets of his gorgeous suit, he was talking to a nurse but he was watching Jess’s door. As soon as he saw her, he broke off the conversation.

‘Sorry, Jan,’ he said to the nurse, ‘but I need to speak to Mrs Eveldene.’

‘That’s Dr Eveldene,’ she said as he approached, because her professional title suddenly seemed important. She needed a barrier between them, any barrier at all, and putting things on a professional level seemed the sensible way to achieve it. ‘Do you need to discuss Jessie’s treatment?’

‘I want lunch,’ he growled. ‘There’s a quiet place on the roof. We can buy sandwiches at the cafeteria. Come with me.’

‘Say “please”,’ she said, weirdly belligerent, and he stared at her as if she was something from outer space.

But: ‘Please,’ he said at last, and she gave him a courteous nod. This man was in charge of her son’s treatment. She did need to be...spoken to.

They bought their lunches, paid for separately at her insistence. He offered but she was brusque in her refusal. She followed him to a secluded corner of the rooftop, with chairs, tables and umbrellas for shade. She spent time unwrapping her sandwich—why was she so nervous?—but finally there was nothing left to do but face the conversation.

He spoke first, and it was nothing to do with her son’s treatment. It was as if the words had to be dragged out of him.

‘First, I need to apologise,’ he said. As she frowned and made to speak, he held up his hands as if to ward off her words. ‘Hear me out. Heaven knows, this needs to be said. Kelly, eighteen years ago I treated you as no human should ever treat another, especially, unforgivably, as you were my brother’s wife. I accused you of all sorts of things that day. My only defence was that I was a kid myself. I was devastated by my brother’s death but my assumptions about him—and about you—were not only cruel, they were wrong.’

‘As in you assumed Jess was back using drugs,’ she whispered. ‘As you assumed I was the same. An addict.’

‘I figured it out almost as soon as I got back to Australia,’ he said, even more heavily. ‘The autopsy results revealed not so much as an aspirin. I should have contacted you again, but by then I was back at university and it felt...’ He shook his head. ‘No. I don’t know how it felt. I was stuck in a vortex of grief I didn’t know how to deal with. Somehow it was easier to shove the autopsy results away as wrong. Somehow it seemed easier to blame drugs rather than—’

‘Unhappiness?’

‘Yes.’

‘Jess was clinically depressed,’ she said. ‘You’re a doctor. You know it’s different. He wasn’t just unhappy; he was ill.’

‘No antidepressants showed up either.’

‘He wouldn’t touch antidepressants,’ she said, not sure where this was going, not sure that she wanted to go with him. ‘He’d fallen into addiction once and it terrified him. In all the time I knew him, he took nothing.’

‘How long did you know him?’

She shouldn’t say. She didn’t owe this man an explanation, and her story hurt. But it was also Jessie’s story. It hadn’t been told and maybe...maybe Jess would want his brother to know.

‘Get in touch with Matt if anything happens to me,’ he’d said to her, more than once. ‘He’ll look after you.’

If anything happens to me... He’d obviously been thinking suicide. It still played in her mind, and it was still unbearable. So many questions... The questions surrounded her, nightmares still.

But maybe she had to expose a little of that pain. Matt was waiting for her to speak, and after all these years his gaze was non-judgmental. He wanted to know.

Eighteen years ago he hadn’t asked, and she’d hated him. But then he’d been young and shocked and grieving, she conceded, and shock could be forgiven.

Almost. There was still a part of her that was that cringing seventeen-year-old, remembering this man’s fury.

‘I met Jess when I was sixteen,’ she said, forcing herself to sound like the grown-up that she was. ‘And I was a mess. But not because of drugs. I was just...neglected. My father was interested in surf and booze and nothing else. My mother disappeared when I was four—at least, I think it was my mother; my father never seemed sure. It didn’t matter. It was just the way things were. I was dragged up in the surfing community. There were good people who looked out for me, but they were itinerant and there were lots who weren’t so good. But all of them came and went. I stayed.’

‘It must have been a tough upbringing,’ he said quietly, and she nodded.

‘You could say that. And then, of course, I reached my teenage years. I matured late, thanks be, but finally at sixteen I became...female, instead of just a kid. Then things got harder. Unprotected and often homeless, camping as we often did, I became a target and my father was little use. I was a little wildcat, doing my best to defend myself, but it couldn’t last. Then Jess arrived. He set up on the outskirts of the camp, seemingly intent on surfing and nothing else. I didn’t think he’d even noticed us but there was an ugly scene one night when someone offered my father money. I remember someone grabbing me as if he owned me.’

‘You were so alone.’

‘I... Yes.’

‘With no one?’

‘No one who cared.’

‘Kelly—’

‘It was a long time ago,’ she said, and she even smiled a little. ‘You know, when you spoke then, you sounded just like Jess. Just as angry on my behalf. That night he appeared out of the dark, out of nowhere, and he was furious. I hit out—and Jess moved in before the guy could retaliate. He just...took over.’

‘Jess was always bringing home strays,’ Matt said. His instinctive anger seemed to have settled and his tone gentled. Strays. The word drifted in her mind. She knew no offence had been meant and none had been taken, because that’s exactly what she’d been. A stray. Living in temporary surf camps. Going to school when the surf camp had been close enough or when her father had been capable of taking her. Living hand to mouth, the only constant being the surf.

But then there’d been Jess.

‘He was the best surfer,’ she said, pain fading as she remembered the way he’d transformed her life. ‘He’d only just arrived but everyone there respected him. He was also...large.’ She eyed Matt’s strongly built frame, his height—six three or so—his instinctive anger on her behalf—and she remembered Jess. For some reason it made her want to reach out and touch this man, comfort him, take away the pain behind his eyes.

She could do no such thing.

‘He told me he hadn’t seen his family for years,’ she went on, trying to ignore the urge to comfort Matt. ‘By the time you saw his body the depression had left its mark. He hadn’t been eating for weeks. But imagine him as I first saw him. He lived and breathed surfing. He was beautiful. He was built like a tank. No one stood up to him—and yet he stood up for me.’

‘You became his lover?’

There was a moment’s pause. She really didn’t want to go there, but she needed to tell it like it was. For Jessie’s sake. He’d been her hero, not some low-life who’d picked up teenage girls.

‘No,’ she said at last. ‘Believe it or not, I was sixteen and that was how Jess treated me. Dad and I were living in a rough beach shanty, but Dad left soon after Jess arrived, looking for better surf on the other side of the island. He came back every so often, but Jess built a lean-to on the side of our hut and we stayed put. Jess said it was to protect me and that’s what he did. He surfed with me, but it wasn’t all fun. He pushed me to go to school. I’d been going intermittently but Jess insisted I go every day. He gave me money for clothes. He stopped Dad...well, he kept me safe. He was my gorgeous big brother. But then the black dog got too much for him.’

‘The depression.’

‘He called it his black dog. He said that’s what Winston Churchill called it and that’s what it felt like. A great black dog, always shadowing him. He said it’d been shadowing him since he was a kid, something he was born with. He told me how his dad hated it, thought he was weak because of it. He told me about how’d he’d tried to escape with drugs when he was in his late teens, and what a mess that had been. I think that was a way of warning me, because drugs were everywhere in our scene. But Jess wouldn’t touch them. Never again, he said, even near the end when the depression was so bad and I pleaded with him to get help. “They’ll only give me pills,” he said, “and I’m not going down that road again.”’

‘If I’d known...’

‘Jess said you didn’t want to know,’ Kelly said gently. ‘Jess said you and he were close, but after rehab... He knew that shocked you. After he got his life together and the surfing was helping, he said he sent you the airfare to come and have a holiday together during your university holidays, but you wouldn’t come.’

Matt closed his eyes and she saw the pain wash over him. No. It was more than pain. Self-loathing.

‘He’d come out of rehab and gone straight back to surfing,’ Matt managed. ‘I thought—’

‘You know, surfing and drugs don’t really mix,’ she said gently. ‘There are always the fringe dwellers, people like my dad who surf a bit but who love the sun-bleached lifestyle more than the skill itself. But to be a real surfer you’re up at dawn, day after day. The sea demands absolute attention, absolute fitness. You need to work as Jess did—he did casual bricklaying to pay bills—but he surfed at dawn and then he was back at dusk to surf every night, falling into bed with every single part of him exhausted. Jess used the surf to drive away his demons and it mostly worked. He had no time for drugs. I swear he wasn’t taking them. I swear.’

‘I believe you,’ Matt said heavily. ‘Now. But back then...I’d just found out my brother had killed himself and, what’s more, that he’d married a seventeen-year-old just before he’d died. What was I to think? And then...pregnant?’

‘That was my fault,’ she said evenly, but he shook his head.

‘Seventeen was hardly old enough to consent.’

‘In those last months Jess wasn’t fit enough to think of age differences,’ she said evenly. ‘The depression was so bad he just...went away. Physically he left for a couple of weeks and when he returned to camp he looked gutted. I was terrified. He was limp, unable to make any decisions. He didn’t want to surf. He didn’t want to do anything. If I told you all he’d done for me... Well, I was so grateful, I loved him so much, and the state he was in, I was terrified. Anyway, I did everything, anything I could think of to pull him out of it, and in the end I just lay down and held him. I held him all I could, every way I could, and when he finally took me I was happy because I thought he was coming out of it. I thought...he must be.’

‘Oh, Kelly...’

‘And I’d bought condoms—of course I had—and we used them, but that first time, well, I had the experience of a newt and I guess I was doing the seducing and I didn’t do it right and then I was pregnant.’

‘You told him?’

‘He guessed. And for a while that woke him up. We had this first morning when we knew... I’d woken up sick and he waited until I was better and we took the boards out beyond the surf break to watch the dawn. And we lay there talking about our baby like it might really exist, about this new life that was so exciting. Life for both of us had been crap but this new life...we planned for it. And Jess told me I’d be an awesome mother and he’d try, he’d really try. But that was the last time...’

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