Long-Lost Father

She flushed and turned away, her hands fiddling in the deep pockets of her blue sundress. Her hair was the same, the silver-blonde curls worn loose; she was barefoot, like the hippie he used to tease her about being. He’d loved her that way—the barefoot angel, his sweet nonconformist. She’d kicked her sandals off at the party where they’d met—that had drawn him to her. In a place full of stuffed shirts trying to impress each other, she’d been a lovely phantom of freedom.

It seemed they still had that in common—no need to impress anyone or to be anyone but themselves. But what else did they have? Did he even know her anymore?

“You could have left a forwarding address, Sam,” he said, forcing calmness into his voice, willing his heart to the same. Anger and accusation would get them nowhere. “Were you so relieved that I was dead you just left me behind?”

“You know nothing about what I went through,” she said, her voice barely audible through its shaking. “Maybe you can understand that in my grief for a husband I barely knew, I decided that starting over was best.” She lifted her brows as she finished the words, trying for a sarcasm that didn’t come off. Sam had never been any good at sarcasm, he thought with an unwanted shaft of tenderness.

But my Sam was never a coward, either.

“By changing your name and leaving no forwarding address?” he repeated the point, as cool as he could manage. “You never thought of checking with my parents or Doctors for Africa, to see if I could be alive? My parents were frantic about you and their grandchild. You never considered they’d need her when they lost me—or that she’d love to know the only extended family she has?”

Her nostrils flared; her lips were white with strain. “I don’t have enough experience with loving families to have thought of that. Sorry.” She didn’t sound bitter, just resigned…yet something simmered beneath the surface, some extreme emotion she wasn’t willing to show him.

Once, Sam had shared her every thought, her every insecurity and bad memory with him.

You’ve been apart six years, his inner voice jeered. What did you expect—that while your life blew apart, time stood still for her?

He sighed. “I’d have thought your background was even more reason. You finally had a family, didn’t you? My parents welcomed you into the family—”

“Despite the fact that I was a nameless orphan,” she agreed softly, “and not worthy of the honour of gaining the affections of a Glennon.”

What the hell did that mean? “I never once thought of you that way.”

“I know,” she said, still expressionless. What was she hiding?

“My parents were good to you,” he growled, testing that particular water.

Something fleeting crossed her face, then disappeared—an emotion as heartfelt as it was private. “They were very good to me.” Her voice held no inflection whatever.

Oh, man. A far greater distance separated them than a mere twelve feet of space. He felt like a soldier invading a fortress on his own, ramming his head against invisible barricades.

So much for those years of dreams in Mbuka, envisioning the joy of their reunion. Those dreams had gotten him through a life so dark and vile, so alone, that he could barely stand to think about what it had taken just to survive. He’d focused on coming home to Sam. She was his hope, his joy, the future, the only reason to want to get out of bed each day. A day filled with patching up people with little chance of surviving another week; a day where he was a prisoner of war and his medical skills were all that kept him alive, doctoring people who held life so cheap they’d shoot their mothers for food…

In the compounds and ragged camps, deserts and dank jungles of Mbuka’s changing war zones, clinging to this moment had been his only hope.

Coming home hadn’t done a damn thing to stop the nightmares, the shaking, the times when he’d just zone out and not know where he was, lost in memories an Olympic sprinter couldn’t outrun. During two years of grueling physical therapy after the reconstruction of his knee, and repeated bouts of infection, he’d snatched the dying vestiges of his dream and hung on to them with a mindless tenacity that defied reason. He’d shut out the demons of doubt that whispered to him. She’d never been there for your calls from Africa…and her calls late at night had been strained, scaring the hell out of you. Remember?

But he’d blanked it out. Sam hadn’t left him; they’d been so happy! Surely when he found her, he’d find home at long last…because home was in Sam’s arms, in the heart he’d always known had been totally his.

Well, he’d found her again, and he’d seen how she felt about it. While he’d used every resource of strength he’d had not to haul her against him and lose his living nightmare in her loving kiss, inside her welcoming arms and body, all she’d done was scramble to put distance between them.

A distance as emotional as it was physical. A distance she seemed determined to keep there.

So his parents were right: she’d escaped from him; she’d been glad he was dead. She’d found a new life in Sydney, leaving a trail so faint that it took almost two years to get a handle on her whereabouts.

Was the memory of what they’d been to each other so insignificant in her eyes? Was he so unimportant to her?

The child was definitely his; he’d seen the pictures of their child, a girl named Casey. The eyes were his, as were the dimples. There was no way Sam could claim her daughter was another man’s. He’d get DNA tests if he had to.

But, damn it, he shouldn’t have to—not with Sam, his Sam, whom he’d once trusted with his life, his heart and his entire future. Never in his vilest dreams had he believed that Sam could be this hard, so selfish as to disappear without trace, to take his child away from his parents, to deny them the comfort of his only child when they believed he was dead.

“What happened?” she broke into his reverie, sounding as if she was driven to ask. “To your leg, I mean.”

Funny that he’d been the one so long in a war zone, facing life and death every day, fighting death more than once; yet the real question wasn’t about him. What happened, Sam? What changed you?

He shrugged, feeling the shadows fall down on him. If he was going to break through Sam’s barriers, he had to lower some of his own. But the memories of Mbuka—oh, God help him, would he ever forget? Just getting through each night without taking something to kill the dreams—dreams of what he’d lived through left him a shaking mass of pain, waking from fevered dreams drenched in sweat, screaming Sam’s name like a prayer—seemed a victory.

“Brett?” Her voice sounded tentative, and he knew she’d seen him shaking.

“Sniper shot.” If he didn’t keep details to the bare minimum, the dreams would be worse tonight. “A splinter tribe near the Congo needed a doctor. But this time the cruciate ligament shredded into strips, stabbed the cartilage and got infected. I was no use to the warlords sick, so they left me out on the road to die. I was picked up by a tribe on the run with some compassion. They dosed me up with traditional healing cures and left me with some UN volunteers, who got me to a camp hospital.”

“This time?” she whispered, her eyes filled with horror. “Is that what happened to you when you…disappeared.”

He nodded; she deserved to know that much, to know why he hadn’t phoned or come home to her. “It’s an occupational hazard of being a doctor working in war zones. It took two years to escape from the first warlord, but I was captured again on the road south.”

“Why didn’t it hit the news?” she whispered, those amazing blue eyes of hers enormous with disbelief. “Your father has power and influence. Why didn’t your disappearance hit the world media? Why didn’t they look for you?”

“I signed the contract with my eyes open, knowing I could be shot or taken. It wasn’t anyone’s fault.” He shrugged. “Everyone assumed I was dead.” Funny, he knew that should mean that it wasn’t Sam’s fault, either, and he couldn’t blame her for believing he was dead—but he did blame her. She’d loved him, damn it. Why hadn’t she believed, as Mum and Dad had? Why had she just packed up and left?

“They didn’t check to see if you were there? How fair is that on families?” she cried.

“They had the living to save. The boundaries change in war zones every day, Sam. There is no way to check, to be sure.” He gave her a tired smile. “I’m sure they gave you the standard patter. ‘There is a very slim chance he could be alive, but please get on with your lives. You may never know.’”

She gulped, bit her lip and nodded. Her eyes were dark with emotion. “I—I believed them. I had to get out. Your parents were so—so…”

He nodded. “If Dad could have gone there and throttled someone, he would. But he’s in a wheelchair. He had a series of strokes.” He looked at her. “He had the first a week after you left.”

Her lashes fluttered down; she bit her lip. “I’m sorry, Brett. I didn’t know.”

“If you’d stayed, you would have known, Sam. Would it have changed anything for you?” he asked, unable to hide the fury. “Would you have stayed to help them through the nightmare? Would you have given the gift of their grandchild, my only child, to my sick parents? Maybe you wouldn’t have turned into a human shadow, changing your name and hiding my daughter from my family—her family, who only wanted to know and love her?”

She stood still, unmoving, her pallor even more strongly marked. She either couldn’t or wouldn’t answer him.

He watched and waited. From experience he knew Sam would rush into speech and say whatever was on her mind if he kept his peace. He’d always learned a lot about her that way—but then, that had been when she’d loved and trusted him. Back when he’d held her in his arms as he’d waited for her to purge her pain. But in the lengthening silence, he knew how far he’d have to go to regain her trust.

That goes both ways, Sam, he thought grimly. Like it or not, they had to deal with each other. If she thought he’d walk out on his daughter, she’d better think again.

It seemed they both had some thinking to do. The one thing he’d banked on in this living nightmare was that Sam would be the girl he’d fallen in love with, loved so hard and deep that he’d married her after only eight weeks. But she had changed, so profoundly he found it difficult to recognize her. At this moment he didn’t know if the Sam he’d loved and would have trusted with his life still existed inside the lovely yet withdrawn woman in front of him.

“Coffee?” she asked when the quiet stretched out to unbearable proportions.

“If you have decaf.” At this time of night caffeine kept his mind active and led to the kind of visions that made him reach for the tranquilisers.

“Okay.” With relief in her eyes, she left—no doubt to gather her thoughts. Her legs and hands were shaking. She held on to pieces of furniture as she walked.

She was still in shock. As a doctor, he knew he needed to go easy on her and wait before he made any judgments. Anything else was unfair to Sam.

To his surprise, he found he needed time, as well. He thought he’d known exactly what he was going to say to her, but his mind had emptied the moment he’d seen her in the pool, as lithe and beautiful as he remembered.

He sighed and rubbed his knee; it was aching badly. He’d have to take a painkiller soon, but he wanted to be coherent for what was coming.

He’d never felt so lost or alone in his life, as if he was still missing in action…

Or maybe it was his world that had gone missing. His tunnel-vision focus for so many years had been getting home to Sam, his light and life. But that particular tunnel had been blasted out of existence, as if he’d stepped on an emotional land mine. He didn’t know what to do or say to get his life back, the only life he’d ever wanted apart from spending a few years serving his fellow man in Africa. He’d had it all planned…living in his beloved Melbourne, a heart surgeon, with Sam by his side. Starting a family when they returned to Australia, satisfied they’d done their part for humanity.

It seemed that everything he’d ever dreamed of had been relegated to the past. His shattered knee would heal eventually, and the moment it did, he’d accept the surgical residency he’d been offered in Melbourne’s top hospital. But his African dream had exploded in his face within weeks. He already had a child, but she was a stranger to him. And he didn’t know his wife anymore. His Sam lived for him, made his life hers; his Sam would have moved heaven and earth to reach Africa and find him.

This Sam watched him like a hawk, didn’t rush into his arms, didn’t cry joyful tears to know he was alive. This Sam didn’t need him, and he didn’t have a clue where to go from here.

Give her time…give yourself some, too. Trouble was, he felt he’d been marking time for years. He might need time, but he couldn’t convince his heart and body of that need—others were crowding it out with their long-denied demands.

“Here.” A soft voice, a gentle touch, and he looked up to see her standing above him, holding a steaming cup. Her face held question…and just for a moment, her luminous eyes, the colour of a spring sky, were touched with caring. She smelled fresh and clean, like the pool. Her voice was still sweet, almost singsong; she finished every sentence with a tiny lilt, as though she was asking an unconscious question.

So some things hadn’t changed. He shook himself and smiled at her. “Thanks, Sam.” Testing the boundaries, he let his fingers brush hers as he took the cup from her.

Her eyes darkened; her lids fluttered down, tender and languorous. Her lips parted—then she bit the lower one and came back to reality. “You’re welcome. You look tired,” she added with a gruffness that covered the husky tone she always used when he touched her.

Does that mean she hasn’t gotten over me?

She moved back to the lounge opposite his, her face shuttered again. She didn’t know what he wanted and wasn’t giving an inch until she knew.

Obviously it was time to cut to the chase. “I’d like to meet my daughter.”

She gripped her hands together so tight he could see the bone through the knuckles…and for the first time noted how thin, how delicate she’d become. Her skin, once pale and translucent, now seemed transparent.

“She’ll be thrilled to find out she has a father. Most of her friends have families. She started asking about you a few months ago.” Her hesitation was palpable. “Brett, you need to know something about Casey—”

“That she’s blind?” he asked bluntly. “That’s why you aren’t working as a secretary anymore. It’s why you only work on reception two days a week at the Deaf and Blind Children’s Centre. So you can take her. You can stay with her.”

Sam ran her tongue over her top lip before she nodded. “She’s not at school full-time until the end of summer. I need to work, but I want to be with her as much as possible.”

“How strong is her disability? What percentage of sight does she have?” The question had been in his mind since the detective had first told him. “Is she legally or profoundly blind? Is there any chance of optic regeneration through surgical procedure?”

Sam’s eyes flashed. “This isn’t a preliminary examination, Dr. Glennon. You’re not her doctor, you’re her father.”

Stung, he retorted, “Pardon me, but since my daughter is five and I’ve never met her, it’s hard for me to be emotional about this. I didn’t see her birth or change her nappy, do a night feed or hold her when she cried.” He shrugged. “Maybe I’d have been more emotional if I’d known her the past two years. She and I could have shared a lot—like our physical therapy classes.”

Like a balloon pricked, the fight went out of Sam. “You’re right.” Her eyes closed over tears; she looked lost, defeated…and he remembered the reports from the detective. If he’d gone through hell in Mbuka and during recuperation, her life hadn’t been anyone’s picnic. Yet she’d not only survived, she’d adapted, changed her life for their child’s sake and made a success of it.

He sighed, rubbing his brow. “I’m having a hard time with this. I thought you’d at least be glad that I’m alive.”

“I am. I am!” she cried, looking wretched. “But I feel like a mouse that can’t get off one of those treadmills. I didn’t expect this. I had no notice you were coming—”

“Would you still be here if I’d given you notice?” he asked with all the force of the cynicism he felt welling inside.

She drew in a quick breath. “I don’t know,” she admitted with all the frankness he’d once loved in her. “I don’t know why you’re here. What do you want from me, Brett?”

Everything. But he’d be an idiot to say it now; he wasn’t even sure if it was true. What he’d planned for and dreamed of for so many years had been coming home to his Sam. But while this woman looked like his Sam, sounded like her, she sure as hell didn’t act like her. He wanted his wife, the life and family he’d dreamed of sharing with her.

So he chose the easy option. “I want to see my daughter, Sam. I want to spend time with her, to go places with her—”

But stark terror flashed through her eyes. “You can’t take her anywhere without me. She—she doesn’t know you. She doesn’t take well to strangers. You have to see her with me here.”

He frowned, feeling the emotional undercurrents pulling him into unknown waters. “For now, I just want to meet her, Sam.”

“So long as you know,” she muttered.

“That’s fine—for now,” he said, refusing to pull his punches. “But Casey has a family she’s never met. I want to take her to Melbourne and let my parents and sister spend time with her. My parents are really anxious to meet her. She has cousins, too—”

“No!”

The gritted snarl jolted him.

Brett stared at her white face, her burning eyes, and knew that whatever Sam’s problem was, they were near the heart of it. “You can’t deny Casey’s right to a relationship with her family. You know how badly that could affect the rest of her life.”

Sam strode over to him, her face almost completely white and her eyes almost black with an emotion he hadn’t been able to define until now. It was panic—blind panic. “You’re not taking her from me, Brett.”

It was obvious that by her intense reaction to his request, something was missing in this scenario. “I never said I wanted to take her from you, Sam. I only want her to meet her family. Is that such an unreasonable thing to ask?”

“M-maybe not,” she said, her voice throbbing with hidden fear. “But you can’t take her anywhere without me. Where she goes, I go.”

Wishing he could shake the confusion right out of his head, he frowned at her. “Why are you talking about this? I haven’t even met Casey.”

Sam, so pale moments before, flushed again, soft and rosy. With her curls drying around her face, she looked so much—so damn much—like the angelic Sam he’d fallen in love with all those years ago, he ached.

“I know,” she muttered, looking at her feet. “But if your parents want grandchildren to fuss over, you can find another woman easily and have the sort of family, the sort of children your family will—” She skidded to a halt, looking confused and guilty.

Not half as confused as he felt just by looking at her. She was blurting out what was on her mind now, as he’d planned; but none of it made sense to him. He was lost in looking at her. She was so sweet, so pretty in her confusion, he ached. Ached to turn back the clock and change choices that had been set in stone before he’d met her. Ached to haul her close and tumble down the barriers she’d put up between them.

The thought of making love to her made him burn inside, so fierce and hot that he had to force his mind back to the real issue. He needed to be calm and focused. “Casey deserves to know who she is. This isn’t about your past, Sam,” he added gently, knowing how hard this would hit her. But someone had to tell her, and he was the only father Casey had.

Unless Sam has found another man and Casey has already accepted him as her father?

“This is about Casey and her needs,” he went on, ignoring the dark coils of jealousy that sprang up at the thought of another man touching Sam. “Why isn’t she the sort of child my family will welcome? I know they can be a bit snobbish about dress and appearance, but they’ve never stopped me doing what I want with my life. They’re dying to meet Casey. They have a room full of presents for her, stuff recommended by the Royal Blind Society. They want to meet her so badly. She’s their granddaughter, Sam, their flesh and blood.”

After a moment, she sighed. He saw her hands trembling. “I didn’t mean it like that,” she muttered low. “It’s not that…”

“Then what is it? You said she’d asked about me. Are you trying to keep me from her, Sam? Would you deprive her of her father, of her family heritage, so you won’t be alone?”

At that he saw the faltering of that fierce lioness, saw her resistance stumble, leaving a crack of vulnerability shining through.

“If she finds out the truth one day—that she has a whole family in Melbourne that you’ve kept from her—she’ll resent the hell out of you for keeping her from them. Casey deserves to experience the love of extended family that’s every kid’s right. You should understand that, Sam. Do you still lie awake at night wondering who you are, wondering where your mother is and why she left you? Why your dad didn’t hang around?” He waited a moment, but she didn’t reply. “I know you do, Sam. Everyone wants to know who they are. Are you going to deny that security to Casey just so you won’t be alone anymore?”

She looked up at that; her eyes flashed. “You don’t understand.”

“Make me understand,” he said quietly. Trying to see how she’d react to his words.

Sam turned and walked to the window, looking out at the trees bending in the wind. The storm, which had hovered off-coast for a while, was closing in fast—but it didn’t compare to the turbulence inside her heart. Within minutes of Brett’s return he’d left Sam feeling raw and exposed—and now she felt more vulnerable with each probing word he uttered. On a night when emotional roller coaster didn’t begin to cover the way she felt, she couldn’t speak.

The laughing, live-for-the-moment Brett she’d adored had become quiet, dark and driven. What had he been through in Mbuka? Instinctively she knew whatever he’d told her so far had only scraped the surface of his suffering. The almost two years of therapy he’d endured showed how close to death he’d come.

And now his father was ill, in a wheelchair…and it was her fault.

Given what he’d been through, what his family had been through, she couldn’t tell him about his father’s threat to take Casey from her. Being an orphan who’d never had the priceless treasure of family, a heritage or any sense of belonging, she couldn’t take those threats from Brett. She’d spent her entire life craving what he had. It wasn’t his fault his family didn’t find her good enough for their beloved son. How could she blame them for that, now she had Casey? She wanted the very best for her beautiful girl…

Brett might be the single greatest threat to her security in Casey’s life and love at this moment, but he’d obviously suffered enough. For the sake of the love she’d once had for him—for Casey’s sake, too; the Glennons were her grandparents—she must keep silent about the reason for her flight from Melbourne.

She may not know how it felt to belong or about being loved, but she knew about disillusionment and abandonment.

She lifted a shaking hand to wipe away the sweat she hadn’t known was breaking out on her face until that moment. “There’s nothing to understand. Casey and I are a double package, and that’s all—and we both stay in Sydney.”

She could see his gaze on her, searching her face; she forced her eyes to remain calm as she faced him down.

Eventually he sighed. “I’ll play your game for now, but the playing field could shift sides without warning. I want to know my daughter.”

“I wouldn’t prevent you if I could.” She’d take what advantage she could get, for as long as she could, but Brett was far too much a take-charge man to sit in the backseat for long. “You’ll love her, I know you will. She’s such a little imp at times, but so loving. You barely know she’s blind half the time, she’s so able and smart.”