The Midwife's Courage

Had this whole mess happened because of the divorce, or because he was a really terrible person? Until things had gone pear-shaped with Sarah, he’d have said his life was in an impeccable state. Priorities in order. Heart in the right place. Career on track. Judgement damn near flawless.

Hang on, though! Had he lost that much faith in himself? Rebellion began to stir inside him.

Annabelle Drew, I saved your backside this afternoon, no matter how you twist your definition of marital happiness.

Poking at his feelings a little more, he discovered, to his surprise, that he was angry with her. Disappointed, too. Somehow, she was a woman of whom he would have expected better. Better priorities. Better principles. Better sense.

I will make it up to her, if she’ll let me. But she’s wrong to blame me for this!

Rolling onto his stomach in a twisted sheet, Dylan slept at last.

‘Thank heavens that’s over!’ Helen Drew said to her daughter, as the final straggle of wedding guests headed for their cars, later than both of them had hoped. She had her portable oxygen close beside her, and really should have been using it more tonight. Her breathing sounded terrible, despite the use of her inhaler, and she looked even worse. ‘You did a fabulous job, darling. I was proud of you.’

Annabelle felt her mother’s arms wrap around her like a comfortable quilt. On the dais vacated by the departing string quartet, Duncan had fallen asleep at last, about fifteen minutes ago. And Linda had gone, too, thank goodness. She was a good and loyal friend, great at helping Annabelle with tax and finance questions, but was useless, and knew it, with kids, the elderly and sick people. Her ineffectual offers of help had, in the end, been something of a strain.

‘You mean the fact that my face felt as if it was about to drop off didn’t show from the outside?’ Annabelle said to her mother.

‘Well, of course it did, but people expected that. They knew you were upset.’ Annabelle’s mother hesitated for a moment. ‘Life will go on, you know.’

‘Oh, I know that, Mum.’ Although she couldn’t quite imagine it at the moment.

She felt like one of those cartoon characters who stepped off a cliff, but didn’t start falling until the gravity of their situation hit home. Her mind ticked and rattled like an engine out of tune.

Cancel the hotel for this weekend. Cancel the two-week honeymoon, planned for just over a month from now, at a time when Alex had been able to make some space in his schedule. Thank goodness she hadn’t handed in her notice at the hospital yet! Where was Alex right now? At home?

‘And anyway, you and Alex, I’m sure, will patch things up,’ Helen said. ‘It would seem silly not to get married just because some idiot of a man decided to get clever during the ceremony.’

Which of those misconceptions, if any, to tackle first? Annabelle wondered.

First misconception—she and Alex weren’t going to patch things up. She knew that. Their relationship was over.

He had put so much thought and time and money into making theirs a perfect, elegant wedding, befitting the strong and sensible partnership they had hoped to create together. He’d wanted a ceremony and reception that would set a benchmark for friends and colleagues to aspire to, the sort of occasion that people would talk about for years. Well, they’d achieved the latter goal! Unfortunately, not in the way he’d wanted.

And he was a very stubborn man. Slinking off next week to a sparse little ceremony in a bureaucrat’s office wouldn’t make the grade, even leaving out the question of Alex’s loss of face.

Which Alex would never leave out. And he was probably right—people would gossip.

Second misconception—Dylan Calford wasn’t an idiot.

She’d known him, on and off, for three and a half years now. In some ways, she knew him better than she knew Alex, since there wasn’t such a gap in status between them. She knew what he looked like first thing in the morning, fresh from a snatched sleep in the doctors’ on-call room. She knew what he ate for lunch, and the places he’d been to for holidays since his marriage. They called each other by their first names.

He was proving himself as a fine surgeon, he was good to work with, and by all scales of character measurement, he was a pretty decent man. What Annabelle knew of him, she liked—had liked until today—and along with the rest of the hospital staff who worked with him, she felt for him over the issue of his divorce. He wasn’t quite the same person he’d been a couple of years ago. Harder. More cynical, and less patient.

And, finally, he hadn’t ‘decided to get clever’. He hadn’t intended his words to be overheard. Possibly, he hadn’t intended to speak them out loud at all.

Which means he genuinely thinks our marriage would have been a mistake.

How could something be a mistake when you needed it so badly? Annabelle knew that she and Alex weren’t in love the way most couples believed themselves to be when they married. They’d talked about that, seriously and at length.

Alex had exhibited his worst qualities today—as he sometimes did in surgery—but in their private time, he was thoughtful and interesting. They respected each other. He approved of her. They could talk about plans without friction. He was a tender, undemanding lover, and he worked hard at his relationship with Duncan.

And, oh, dear Lord, she’d needed their marriage! She needed to be able to give up work for a few years in order to focus her attention on caring for her mother and Duncan. She needed Alex’s financial support, not for herself but for the people she loved.

When they’d started going out together four months ago, it had been like being rescued from a dragon’s lair by a white knight. She’d started sleeping again. She’d seen light at the end of the tunnel.

Whereas now…

Suddenly, she felt sick. Anger towards Dylan Calford rose in her throat like bile. The concern he evidently had about the dire possibility of her making a mistake in marriage, of her ‘being unhappy’, was a luxury she couldn’t afford.

‘I wouldn’t have let it be a mistake!’ she muttered to herself. ‘I would have made it work, no matter what it took. I would have been happy! Imposing his cynical stance on other people just because he’s having a bad divorce is unforgivably arrogant!’

‘Are you angry with him?’ her mother asked.

‘Yes. Absolutely and utterly furious!’ Annabelle said aloud.

‘Don’t let it get in the way when you talk.’ Mum put out her hand and rested it heavily on Annabelle’s arm. ‘And try to talk to him soon. He acted out of pride. He’ll make it up to you. I’m sure you can work it out.’

‘Oh, Mum, no, I’m not angry with Alex. I understand why he walked out. It’s Dylan Calford I’ll never forgive for all this!’ Annabelle said.

CHAPTER TWO

DYLAN appeared at Annabelle’s house at nine-thirty the next morning.

Duncan had awoken, as usual, at six. No matter how late he stayed up, he never slept in. Right now, he was running wildly around the back garden, pushing a big toy truck, and he would barely slacken his pace all day. Annabelle often wondered what sort of a child his father had been. This active? This unstoppable? There was no one to ask about him.

‘Hello,’ she said coolly to Alex’s registrar at the front door of her little weatherboard Queenslander.

‘Uh, yeah, hi…’ he answered.

‘I suppose you want to come in,’ Annabelle prompted him, not sure why she was taking the trouble to help him out, even to this limited extent.

She had never seen him so at a loss for words. Had never seen him dressed so casually either. His body was one hundred per cent male. Broad shoulders, strong legs, dark hair and darker eyes, football player’s waist and hips. Orthopaedic surgeons had to be strong.

Since this was Brisbane in January, he wore shorts—navy blue and topped with a polo shirt subtly patterned in a beige and khaki print. He was freshly showered and shaven, and radiated an energy that was only partly physical.

He looked good, and he’d recovered his equilibrium already. He was intimidating, if she’d been in the mood to feel intimidated by anyone. Right now, she wasn’t.

‘Look, I won’t apologise again,’ he said, his tone that of a man who was sure of his ground.

‘No, don’t,’ she agreed. ‘But, please, don’t stay here on the veranda. It’s cooler out the back, and I need to keep an eye on Duncan.’

‘Sure.’ The word sharpened his slight American accent. Annabelle knew he had been here since his early teens, had been a star rugby player at Brisbane’s most illustrious boys’ school and held Australian citizenship, but sometimes his Chicago origins still showed.

She led the way through the house and he spoke behind her. ‘But I do want to do what I can to make this whole thing less difficult for you.’

‘Sure.’ She turned her head and smiled as she echoed the word he’d used, but the smile didn’t do much to soak up the pool of dripping sarcasm in her tone. There was nothing he could do to make this ‘less difficult’!

He didn’t reply, yet somehow this time his silence was much stronger than some bleating protest would have been. Her spine prickled suddenly.

They reached the back veranda, which was shaded by the riot of tropical growth that threatened to encroach upon it. Along the paved path, Duncan was still making truck sounds, while the small and securely fenced swimming pool beckoned invitingly in a patch of sunshine. Hibiscus and frangipani gave bright and sweetly scented accents of colour, and the wooden floor of the veranda was cool and smooth under Annabelle’s bare feet.

From somewhere, as she invited Dylan to sit in one of the cane-backed chairs, came the thought, At least now I don’t have to move. To Alex’s large, air-conditioned and professionally decorated river-front house. They’d been planning to sell this place, or rent it out as an investment.

‘You have a nice little place,’ Dylan observed.

‘I’m fond of it,’ she agreed.

That was an understatement. She loved this small eighty-year-old cottage, perched on an absurd patch of land that had a cliff for a front garden and a crooked walkway of twenty-seven steps up from the street to the front door. This was one of the older areas of Brisbane, just a few kilometres from the city centre.

She didn’t mention to Dylan that the mortgage on the house was stretching her finances far too thinly, now that she had child-care fees for Duncan on top of it.

Change to night shifts if I can. Mum’s health is only going to get worse, but hopefully she’ll have a few good years yet, and by then Duncan will be at school. As for the money…

The repetitious thoughts droned on in her head. Cutting them off, she offered, ‘Would you like tea or coffee? Or something cool?’

‘Coffee would be great.’ The cane chair creaked a little as he shifted his weight.

‘Can you keep an eye on Duncan for me while I get it?’

‘Of course.’

Mad. She had been stark, raving mad to invite him in, Annabelle decided in the kitchen. He didn’t particularly deserve a fair hearing, she considered, so why give him one?

Habit.

This was how she’d first become involved with Alex. He had been particularly brutal during surgery one day several months ago. Had had her on the verge of tears, which not many surgeons could have done. And he’d invited her out to dinner as an apology. ‘And to prove to you that what you see in surgery is only a small part of who I am. I should probably invite the entire theatre staff in rotation!’

Although it had seemed a little out of character, she had taken the invitation at face value, and had been surprised at the ultra-expensive restaurant he’d chosen. She had been even more surprised when he’d kissed her at the end of the evening. She hadn’t picked up on his intention until it had happened.

It probably hadn’t been until their fourth or fifth date that she’d gone beyond the fair hearing thing and had really started to appreciate Alex for who he was. His clever mind, his knowledge of wine and food, his informed opinions and the fact that he’d made his approval of her very clear.

It had been like an audition, or a job interview. She’d realised that. He’d been making sure she was suitable. He had been impressed to discover that her mother was that Helen Drew, the widow of Sir William Drew, QC, and when he’d then heard from Annabelle that her father’s finances had been in a disastrous state on his death several years ago, it hadn’t put him off.

At the same time, Annabelle had been assessing Alex in a similar way. For a start, they’d got on well. Always had something to talk about. Never yelled at each other, if you didn’t count surgery. Annabelle didn’t like the way Alex behaved in surgery, but he defended himself.

‘Sorry. It’s bloody hard. I’m a prima donna, I know. But there’s too much at stake, Annabelle, during a difficult operation. I’m going to swear if something goes wrong, and I’m going to yell at whoever’s responsible. That, by the way, is never me! Don’t try and get me to change.’

OK. Fair enough. She could tolerate it.

More importantly, from her point of view, Alex realised that Duncan was a permanent fixture in her life, and always took him into consideration. He was happy about supporting both of them, and understood that her mother required a huge amount of Annabelle’s time and care as well. He actively preferred that she give up work.

‘If you never go back at all, that’s fine with me.’

This wasn’t quite how she felt. She loved her career but, even leaving aside Mum’s needs, Duncan just wasn’t the kind of child that did well in the structured environment of a child-care centre, and she couldn’t ignore that. She had begun to see unpleasant shifts in his developing personality that upset her deeply, and she knew that the overworked and underpaid child-care centre staff breathed sighs of relief when he went home each day.

Duncan had been carelessly conceived during a holiday fling with a Greek barman, carelessly brought into the world and casually abandoned by his mother, Annabelle’s sister Victoria. Vic hadn’t intended to abandon him permanently, of course. She’d simply left him in Annabelle’s care when he was ten months old, while she went on an adventure holiday in Borneo.

‘Eleven days. You don’t mind, do you, Belle?’

No, she didn’t mind. She loved her baby nephew, and she had days off work owing to her.

Six days into the trip, Victoria had been killed in a landslide on the side of a jungle-clad mountain. It was an exotic end to an exotic life, and a difficult start for a little boy. He deserved better, and he was going to get it in future, Annabelle had vowed.

Only now, because of Dylan Calford, he wasn’t.

The electric jug boiled and she poured steaming water onto the little mounds of shiny granules at the bottom of each mug, creating a hissing sound. The coffee smelled good and rich and fresh, but unmistakably like instant. She had real ground beans, and a whiz-bang Christmas-gift coffee-machine, but wasn’t going to waste either the coffee or the machine on Dylan Calford today. The coffee took longer to make that way, and might give him the mistaken impression that she wasn’t furious.

‘Here.’

She handed him the muddy black brew, and plonked a plate of sweet biscuits onto the coffee-table. There wasn’t much room on it at the moment. Duncan was running back and forth between his toy chest and the table, depositing his trucks and cars there one by one in a long, snaking row. His sound effects were loud.

‘Active little boy,’ Dylan commented.

‘He doesn’t have ADHD,’ Annabelle said.

‘Did I say—?’

‘A lot of people have said it. The manager of his child-care centre wanted him assessed.’

‘But you didn’t think it was necessary?’

‘No. Because when he’s with me, he’s fine. Active, yes. Top-of-the-chart active, but I read up on the subject when the issue was first raised, and he doesn’t show any of the other signs of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. The psychologist I finally took him to agreed. His concentration is fully engaged when he’s interested in something. He’s not aggressive, unless he’s handled aggressively first.’ Or not often, anyway, she revised inwardly, thinking of a couple of recent incidents at child-care. These were the reason she’d consulted the child psychologist, and she’d found his ideas on the issue very sensible. She summarised them briefly to Dylan.

‘He can’t express his feelings very well yet. His language skills aren’t good enough. So he gets frustrated in a situation where he’s not happy, and there have been a couple of incidents of biting and kicking at his child-care centre. A lot of young children go through a similar stage, and they grow out of it, if it’s handled in the right way.’

If. A big ‘if’, in this case, when Annabelle herself couldn’t be with him, and the staff at child-care didn’t have the resources to give him the extra attention he needed.

Knowing she could talk for minutes on end about Duncan, his difficulties and her feelings, she finished, ‘He just likes to be on the go, to head for the horizon and explore.’

Like Vic had. Perhaps he had received his temperament from her.

‘Parents usually know best,’ Dylan said.

‘I am his parent!’ She glared at him. ‘Or the closest thing he’s got to one, anyhow.’

‘Yes, that’s what I meant. You’d know, and I’m guessing you’re not influenced too much by wishful thinking either. Or not usually.’

He frowned, and Annabelle flushed. Was that a reference to Alex and their marriage plans? It was! She’d blurted out far too much to Dylan yesterday in her anger.

‘Why are you here, Dylan?’ she asked him coldly.

‘To make an offer. Some kind of compensation. I want to cover the cost of the reception at least.’

‘Alex is the one to approach about that, although I doubt he’d accept it. I wouldn’t!’

‘And ask you if there’s any other way I can make up for—’

‘There isn’t,’ she snapped. ‘Short of offering to marry me yourself.’

It had to be one of the most ill-thought-out suggestions she’d ever made, a product of fatigue and stress, and disappointment and anger, and something else she didn’t have a name for. Something new. She didn’t usually come out with wild statements like that.

Dylan laughed. It was a rich, confident sound. In any other circumstances, she would have wanted to join in. ‘Perhaps that’s exactly what I should do,’ he said. ‘The only thing that would really make the grade, right?’

‘I didn’t mean—’

‘Thanks. You’ve made me feel better.’ He was still grinning at her, his dark gaze sweeping over her like a caress. It disturbed her.

‘How?’

‘By proving to me that I did the right thing. The insane thing, under the circumstances, and I hadn’t realised it would be the show-stopping announcement that it was, but if you could propose me as a substitute husband—’

‘I wasn’t serious.’

‘One day later.’

‘I wasn’t serious!’

‘Even as a joke, then doesn’t that tell you—?’

‘Nothing.’ She shook her head sharply, clenched teeth aching. ‘It was a stupid, meaningless thing to say. It doesn’t tell me anything.’

‘I dare you, Annabelle.’ There was a light of challenge and determination in his expression now that made her uncomfortable. He was leaning forward in his seat, his strength casually apparent. ‘I dare you to consider the proposition. I’ve got just as much to offer you as Alex does. Not exactly the same things, perhaps, but equivalent. Better, possibly, in some areas. Think about it.’

And suddenly, graphically, she was.

She was thinking about a wedding—symbol of solved problems—and a wedding night, and a bed with Dylan Calford in it. Naked. Or possibly not quite naked yet, but with some snug-fitting black stretch fabric across his groin. And smiling. The way he was smiling now, with a challenge glinting in his eyes, and a wicked, delicious expression that said, I can read your mind.

She went hot all over. My sainted aunt! She’d never thought of Dylan Calford that way before! He’d been engaged or married or absorbed in his divorce for the entire three and a half years she’d known him, and that had meant he’d been off limits. Not just in her eyes, but in his own.

He didn’t give off the knowing, overtly sexual vibe that available, good-looking men so often exuded. And, anyway, they rarely encountered each other outside the demanding environment of surgery, and never away from the hospital. When they worked together, there was always too much else to think about.

Today was different. There were no patients, no colleagues. His property settlement was at the negotiation stage, with the one-year anniversary of his separation already past. The vibe was there, singing and throbbing like the strings of an instrument. Two contradictory feelings warred inside her.

The first was instinct more than thought, and insisted, You’ll learn more from this than you ever learned from Alex. The second was an impatient need to reject the whole thing as dangerous, untrustworthy and insignificant.

The second feeling won.

‘You don’t mean it,’ she told Dylan flatly.

Hardly aware of what she was doing, she wrapped her arms across her body to try and stroke away the goose-bumps that had risen on her arms. Her nipples ached, and deep inside her there was a heaviness and a heat that hadn’t been there a few minutes ago. Definitely, she didn’t want any of it. Not now.

‘No,’ he agreed. ‘You’re right. I don’t. But you thought about it, didn’t you?’ His eyes were still fixed on her face.

‘Not in the way you mean.’

Or, possibly, exactly in the way he’d meant.

Had he been aware of the vibe he’d given off? The potency of it? The delicious wickedness of it? The fact that she’d absorbed it, wrapped herself in it and reflected it right back at him? Or was he giving it off unconsciously?

‘Well, think about it some more,’ he said. Or, rather, ordered.

He took what had to be a scorching gulp of his coffee, without apparently noticing the heat. If he had a tendency not to notice heat, that was good, a relief…and a reprieve.

‘There’s no need to think about it any more,’ she said sharply. ‘Not for a second.’

‘I wonder.’

Meanwhile, Duncan had become bored with the car and truck game, and every vehicle he owned was now lined up on the coffee-table like a peak-hour traffic jam. ‘Go inna pool, Mummy?’ he said hopefully.

‘In a little while, love,’ she answered.

A swim would be great. Bruising, with the way Duncan liked to hurl himself off the edge and into her arms in the water. His eager little legs always collided painfully with her thighs as he held her tight and instinctively kicked like a frog beneath the water. But it would cool her down. The building heat in the air was extra sticky today.

Duncan had already run off in search of towels. He’d probably come back with six of them.

As soon as he had gone, Dylan asked curiously, ‘He calls you that? Mummy?’

Annabelle went on the defensive at once. ‘Mum and I talked about it. We agreed it would be best at this stage. He has no memory of Vic—my sister. We haven’t decided when we’ll tell him.’

‘Tell me how it happened,’ he invited quietly. ‘Do you mind?’

She stifled a sigh. Sometimes she did mind, especially when the questions were nosy, tactless or judgmental. But somehow Dylan Calford seemed to be in her life now, since yesterday. Arrogant in his presumptions, dictatorial in his advice. She was still angry about it, yet at the same time felt her usual over developed need to be fair. Beyond the arrogance, his desire to make amends as far as possible was apparently genuine.

Not that he can make amends, she considered inwardly. Is it the thought that counts? Aloud, she said, ‘No, I don’t mind. She’d gone trekking, and there was an accident. In Borneo. It was in the news. You might have read about it.’