A Bride And Child Worth Waiting For

It’d kill him, Jill thought. The man was driven.

‘You’re dreaming diamonds?’ Charles said, teasing, and Jill gasped.

‘What…? No!’

‘Diamonds,’ Cal said, eyes widening. ‘Diamonds!’

‘Maybe just one diamond,’ Charles said. ‘Jill, seeing Gina and Cal are our babysitters-in-chief, I figure maybe Cal should be the first to know.’

‘You guys are getting married?’ Cal said incredulously.

‘Only because of Lily,’ Jill said in a rush, and the pleasure in Cal’s eyes faded a little.

‘Why?’

‘If we don’t get married Lily gets adopted by someone else,’ Charles said. ‘We’re sort of used to her being around.’

‘You mean you love her,’ Cal said gently, and the smile returned. ‘You want to tell me how it happened?’

‘Her uncle wants her adopted,’ Charles explained. ‘He’s her legal guardian. He wants a married couple.’ He turned to the tray of surgical instruments and focused on what needed attention.

Nothing needed attention.

‘We can’t let her go,’ Jill said warmly, life returning to her voice. ‘We all love her.’

‘Ofcoursewedo,’ Cal said. Lily was playing with Gina and Cal’s small son, CJ, right now. CJ and Lily were best friends. They were in and out of each other’s houses, they slept over at each other’s places; in fact, sometimes Charles thought Lily regarded Gina and Cal as just as much her parents as he and Jill.

It was a problem, he thought. Oh, it made life easy that Lily transferred her affections to whoever she was with, but Wendy worried that the child’s superficial attachments were the result of trauma.

It didn’t matter, Charles thought. It’d settle.

‘So when’s the date?’ Cal asked, and Charles looked questioningly at Jill.

‘I… We need to do it within a month.’

‘Hey, it’s a magnificent excuse for a party. It’ll be headline news…’

‘Private ceremony,’ Charles said before he thought about it. ‘No fuss.’

‘No fuss,’ Jill agreed, and Charles looked sharply up at her. Kicking himself. He’d done it again. He’d made the decision without consulting her.

‘And no photographs,’ she said. Her voice was flat, inflexionless. No joy there.

Of course not. She’d had the marriage from hell the first time round. Marriage could never be something she approached with joy.

He knew few details of her past, and those he hadn’t gained from Jill. His friend Harry, the Crocodile Creek policeman, had passed on information to Charles when he’d become involved with Jill that he’d thought might be important.

Married absurdly young and with no family support, Harry reported that Jill’s marriage had been a nightmare of abuse. She’d tried to run, but she’d been hauled back, time and time again. Her final attempt to defy her husband had nearly cost her life. Only the fact that there’d been a couple of tourists on the jetty as Jill had staggered from her husband’s fishing boat had saved her life.

But despite her appalling marriage, Jill Shaw was a woman of intelligence and courage. She’d still been young enough to start a new life. Cautiously, and with the encouragement from women she met at the refuge she’d ended up in after she’d been discharged from hospital, she’d applied for a nursing course as far away from the scene of her marriage as she’d been able to. She still feared Kelvin and had changed her name to keep hidden, but she’d moved on. She’d lived on the smell of an oily rag to get what she wanted.

She’d graduated with honours, she’d embraced her profession and when she’d applied to Crocodile Creek—it had to be one of the most remote nursing jobs in Australia—Charles hadn’t believed his luck.

But she wasn’t happy. Normally bossy and acerbic, with a wry sense of humour, the events of the afternoon seemed to have winded her. Was she afraid? Of more than her ex-husband finding her? Hell, she had to know he’d never hurt her. And she’d agreed. She did love Lily, he thought. She wanted this.

He was going to Wallaby Island tomorrow without her. He had to have her smile about this—he had to have her feeling sure before he went.

‘Cal, we’re finished now,’ he said, maybe more roughly than he intended. ‘Do you think you and Gina can hang on to Lily for a few more hours?’

‘Of course,’ Cal said easily. ‘We’re packing to go to Wallaby Island tomorrow. Having Lily will get CJ out of our hair while we organise ourselves.’

‘Fine,’ Charles said. He had his own packing to do but it’d have to wait. ‘Don’t mention what’s happening to Lily—we want to tell her ourselves tonight. But Jill and I are going out to dinner and we need to leave now.’

‘It’s only four now,’ Jill said, startled. ‘What’s the rush?’

‘We need to get changed,’ Charles said. ‘And we need to get into town before the jeweller shuts. I’ve never been engaged before and if we’re going to do this…Jill, let’s do this in style.’

He wouldn’t listen to her objections. She didn’t need a ring. She didn’t need…marriage.

What was she doing?

Jill stood in her bare little bedroom and gazed into her wardrobe with a sense of helplessness. She was going out to dinner with Charles. She should wear clean jeans and a neat white shirt.

‘A dress,’ Charles called from his bedroom, and she winced.

A dress. The outfit she’d bought for the weddings?

It was an occupational hazard, working in Crocodile Creek, she thought ruefully. So many young medics came here to work that romance was inevitable. They’d had, what, eight weddings in the last year? So much so that the locals laughingly referred to the doctors’ house as the Wedding Chapel.

She’d never lived in the doctors’ house. She valued her independence too much.

What was she doing?

She wanted Lily. It was like an ache. From the time she’d held her, the night her parents had been killed, her heart had gone out to the little girl. Even Lily’s fierce independence, the way she held herself just slightly aloof from affection… Jill could understand it and respect it.

‘Dress?’ Charles called again, and she smiled. He was as bossy as she was. But not…autocratic. Never violent. She’d seen him in some pretty stressful situations. There’d been a family feud. His brother had been responsible for his injury, yet his father had vented his fury on Charles. He’d considered his injured son useless.

Charles had never railed against the unfairness of fate. He’d taken his share of a vast inheritance—a share which his father hadn’t legally been able to keep from him—and he’d proceeded to set up this medical base. He’d funnelled his anger and his frustration into good.

He deserved…

A dress.

OK. She tugged her only dress from its hanger—a creamy silk sliver of a frock that hugged her figure, that draped in a cowl collar low around her breasts, no sleeves, a classy garment Gina had bullied her into for Kate and Hamish’s wedding. She slipped it on, and then tugged her hair from its customary elastic band.

Her glossy chestnut curls had once been a source of pride. She brushed them now. They fell to her shoulders. She looked younger this way, she thought as she stared into the mirror. There was no grey in her hair yet.

She was a woman about to choose her engagement ring…

It was nonsense. She shoved her feet into sandals, grabbed her purse and headed for the door.

And stopped and returned to the mirror.

She stared at her reflection for a long moment, then sighed and grabbed a compact and swiped powder over her freckles. She put on lipstick that had been used, what, eight times for eight weddings?

Hers would be the ninth?

‘It’s nonsense,’ she whispered, but as she put the lid back on her lipstick she caught sight of her reflection and paused.

‘Not too bad for thirty-seven,’ she whispered. ‘And you’re going to marry Charles.’

It was a sensible option. But…Charles.

She couldn’t quite suppress a quiver of excitement. He really was…

‘Just Charles,’ she said to herself firmly. ‘Medical director of Croc Creek. Your boss.

‘Your husband?

‘Get real,’ she told her reflection. She stuck her tongue out at herself, grinned and went to meet her fiancé.

He liked it. She emerged from her bedroom and Charles was waiting. His eyes crinkled in the way she loved.

‘Hey,’ he said softly. ‘What’s the occasion? An engagement or something?’

Charles had made an effort, too. He was wearing casual cream trousers and a soft, cream, open-necked shirt. Quality stuff. Clothes that made him look even sexier than he usually did.

He hadn’t lost muscle mass, as many paraplegics did, Jill thought. His injury could almost be classified as cauda equina rather than complete paraplegia—a damage to the nerves at the base of his spine. He pushed himself, standing every day, forcing his legs to retain some strength. It’d be much easier to stay in the wheelchair but that had never been Charles’s way—taking the easy option.

He was great, she thought. The most fantastic boss…

But a husband?

‘Lily’s OK?’ she asked.

‘Settled at Cal and Gina’s.’

Her face clouded. ‘You know, I wish—’

‘That she wasn’t quite as happy to go to strangers,’ he said softly. ‘I know. It’s what Wendy says. Tom’s right in a way. She needs permanence. Even commitment. That’s what we’re doing now. Let’s go buy us an engagement ring.’

The jeweller was obsequious, eager and shocked. He tried to usher them into the door, tugging Charles’s wheelchair sideways in an unnecessary effort to help, and came close to upending him in the process. By the time Charles extricated himself from his unwelcome aid, the man had realised the potential of his customers.

‘Well,’ he said as he tugged out trays of his biggest diamonds. ‘Never did I think I’d have the pleasure of selling an engagement ring to the medical director of Crocodile Creek. And you a Wetherby. I sold an engagement ring to your brother. He runs the farm now, doesn’t he? Such a shame about your accident. Not that you haven’t done very well for yourself. A healthy man could hardly have done more. You’re still a Wetherby, though, sir. Now, your brother purchased a one and a half carat diamond when he got engaged. If you’d warned me… I don’t have anything near that quality at the moment, but if you’d like to choose a style, I can have a selection flown in tomorrow. As big as you like,’ he said expansively. ‘You’re a lucky lady, miss.’

‘Yes,’ Jill said woodenly. The way the jeweller looked at Charles was patronising, she thought. She’d spent enough time with Charles to pick up on the way people talked to him. This guy was doing it wrong. He was talking to Charles but keeping eye contact with her. He was making her know he was being kind to the guy in the wheelchair. And the way Charles had looked when he’d mentioned his brother…

She hated this shop. She hated these ostentatious diamonds. How big was the man saying this diamond should be?

Would Charles like her to have a bigger diamond than his brother’s wife?

‘What would you like, Jill?’ Charles asked gently, and she shook herself out of her anger and tried to make a choice. She had to do this.

‘Any diamond’s fine,’ she said. ‘I guess….however big you want.’

‘However big I want?’

He was quizzing her. He had this ability to figure what she thought almost before she thought it herself. The ability scared her.

Maybe Charles scared her.

‘You don’t really want a diamond, do you?’ he said.

‘If you think—’

‘I don’t think,’ he said with another flash of irritation. ‘It’s you who gets to wear the thing. Some of these rings are really….’

‘Ostentatious?’ she said before she could help herself, and Charles’s face relaxed. He smiled wryly, though the touch of anger remained.

‘I’m right, aren’t I? You hate these as much as I do.’

‘I suspect we do need an engagement ring, though,’ she said. ‘If you’re planning on telling everyone we’re engaged.’

‘I am planning on telling everyone we’re engaged.’ He hesitated and then held out his hand to the jeweller. ‘Sorry, Alf,’ he said bluntly. ‘I’ve a lady with simple tastes. I’m thinking it’s one of the reasons I’ve asked her to marry me, so we’ll not go against that. Thank you for your help and good day. Coming, Jill?’

‘We’re not…?’

‘No, we’re not,’ he said forcefully, and propelled his chair out the door before she could argue.

By the time Jill caught him up he was half a block away. She had to run to catch up.

He realised, slowed and spun to face her.

‘Sorry,’ he said, rueful. ‘Telling me the size of my brother’s engagement ring pushed a few buttons I don’t like to have pushed.’

‘I can see that,’ she said cautiously. ‘And the way he treated you…’

‘I don’t care about the way he treated me. I’m used to it. But you… You don’t really want a three-carat diamond ring?’

‘I don’t want any ring.’ She hesitated, looking down at her hands. They were work hands, scrubbed a hundred times a day in her job as a nurse. They were red and a bit wrinkled. The nails were as short as she could cut them.

‘I’d look ridiculous with a diamond.’

‘How about an opal?’ Charles asked, and she hesitated. ‘If you don’t want one, just say so.’

‘I love opals,’ she said cautiously. ‘But—’

‘But nothing. George Meredith’s in town. Have you met him? He’s a local prospector—he spends his time scraping in dirt anywhere from here to Longreach. What he doesn’t know about opals isn’t worth knowing. I know he’s in town because I saw him for a dodgy back this morning. I told him no digging for a week, to stay in town, get himself a decent bed and put his feet up. He’ll be down at the hotel. I also know he has some really decent rock. Let’s go and take a look.’

He had more than decent rock. He had ready-made jewellery.

‘I don’t normally make it up,’ he told them. A big, shy man, quietly spoken but with enormous pride in the stones he produced to show them, he stood back as they fingered his fabulous collection. ‘I sell it on to dealers. But a mate of mine’s done some half-decent work and while the back’s been bad he’s been teaching me to do a bit. These are the ones I’m happiest with. When me back’s a bit better I’m heading to Cairns—I reckon the big tourist places will snap this lot up. Hang on a sec.’

They hung on. George had spread his stones out on the coverlet of his hotel bed for them to see. Now he delved into a battered suitcase and produced a can of aftershave. He glanced suspiciously at his visitors, then grinned as if he’d decided suspicions here were ridiculous, but all the same he turned his back on them so they couldn’t see what he was doing. He twiddled for a bit and then spun back to face them. The aftershave can was open at the base and a small, chamois pouch was lying in his open palm.

He opened it with care, unwrapping individual packages. Laying their contents on a pillow.

Four rings and two pendants. Each one made Jill gasp.

‘They’re black opal,’ George said with satisfaction. ‘You won’t find better stuff than this anywhere in the world. You like them?’

Did she like them? Jill stared down at the cluster of small opals and thought she’d never seen anything lovelier.

She lifted one, drawn to it before all the others. It was the smallest stone, a rough-shaped opal set in a gold ring. The stone was deep, turquoise green, with black in its depths. But there was fire, tiny slivers of red that looked like fissures in the rock, exposing flames deep down. The opal looked as if it had been set in the gold in the ground, wedged there for centuries, washed by oceans, weathered to the thing of beauty it was now.

She’d never seen anything so beautiful.

‘Put it on,’ George prodded, and as she didn’t move Charles lifted it from her, took her ring finger and slid the ring home.

It might have been made for her.

She gazed down at it and blinked. And tried to think of something to say. And blinked again.

‘I think we have a sale,’ Charles said in satisfaction. Both men were smiling at her now, like two avuncular genies.

‘It ought to go on a hand like that,’ George said. ‘You know, that stone… I almost decided to keep it. I couldn’t bear to think of it on some fancy woman’s hand, sitting among half a dozen diamonds and sapphires and the like. If you don’t mind me saying so, ma’am,’ he said, ‘your hands are right for it. Worn a bit. Ready for something as lovely.’

‘Not a bad pitch,’ Charles said appreciatively.

‘I mean it,’ George growled, and from the depth of emotion in his voice Jill knew he did.

But…

‘I can’t,’ she whispered. ‘This is black opal.’ She hadn’t lived in a place such as Crocodile Creek without knowing the value of such a stone. ‘You can’t…’

‘I can,’ Charles said solidly. ‘Jill, why don’t you go down to the bar while George and I talk business?’

‘I—’

‘Go,’ he said, and propelled her firmly out the door.

They went to dinner at the Athina. They were greeted with pleasure and hugs and exclamations of delight before they so much as made it to their table.

Word was all over town.

‘Oh, but it’s beautiful,’ Sophia Poulos said mistily, looking at the ring and sighing her happiness. ‘If you two knew how much we hoped this would happen…’

‘We’re only doing this for Lily,’ Jill said, startled, but Sophia beamed some more.

‘Nonsense. You wear a beautiful ring. You wear a beautiful dress. You are a beautiful woman and Dr Wetherby…he’s a very handsome man, eh? And don’t tell me you haven’t noticed. You’re doing this for Lily? In my eye!’ She gave a snort of derision and headed back to her kitchen. ‘Hey,’ she yelled to her husband. ‘We have lovers on table one. Champagne on the house.’

It was silly. It was embarrassing. It was also kind of fun. But as the meal wore on, as the attention of the restaurant patrons turned away, there was a sudden silence. It stretched out a little too long.

It’s just Charles, Jill told herself, feeling absurdly self-conscious. It’s just my boss.

‘What’s happening tomorrow?’ she asked, and it was the right thing to ask for it slid things back into a work perspective. Here they were comfortable. For the last eight years they’d worked side by side to make their medical service the best.

‘There’s three days’ work happening tomorrow,’ Charles growled. In the project ahead Charles held passion. The kids’ camp on Wallaby Island had been a dream of Charles’s since he’d returned to Crocodile Creek. Jill had been caught up in his enthusiasm and had been as devastated as Charles when the cyclone had wreaked such havoc.

But tragedy could turn to good. With public attention and sympathy focussed on the region, funding had been forthcoming to turn the place into a facility beyond their imagination. Charles was heading there tomorrow to welcome the first kids to the restored and extended camp. It was a wonder he’d found time to talk to the social worker about Lily, Jill thought ruefully, much less take this evening off to wine and dine a fiancée.

And give her a ring.

As they talked about their plans—or, rather, Charles talked and Jill listened—her eyes kept drifting to her ring.

She’d never owned anything so beautiful. Despite what George said, it didn’t look right on her work-worn hand.

But Charles had always known what she was thinking. She had to learn to factor that in. ‘It’s perfect,’ he said gently, interrupting what he was saying to reassure her, and she flushed.

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…’

‘It’s me who should be sorry. This is no night to be talking about work.’

‘We don’t have a lot more in common,’ she said bluntly, and then bit her lip. She hadn’t meant to sound so…tart.

Maybe she was tart. Maybe that was how she always sounded. She’d stop pretences years ago.

One of the reasons she’d relaxed with Charles over the years had been that he seemed to appreciate blunt talking. He asked for her opinion and he got it.

She needed to soften, though, she thought. He wouldn’t want a wife who shot her mouth off.

‘We have Lily in common,’ he reminded her, and she nodded.

Of course. But… ‘I’m not sure why you want her,’ she said cautiously. ‘I know your reaction when her parents died was the same as mine—overwhelming sadness. But you do already have a daughter.’

‘I have Kate,’ he said. ‘A twenty-seven-year-old daughter I’ve only known for the last few months.’

‘You must have loved her mother.’

‘We all did,’ he said ruefully. ‘Maryanne was gorgeous. She was wild and loving and did what she pleased. I wasn’t the only one in love with her. You know that’s what caused the rift in my family? Philip, my brother, shot me by accident, but he put the blame on a mate of mine who also loved Maryanne. The repercussions of that can still be felt today. Anyway, that’s what happened. I was injured and was sent to the city. Apparently Maryanne was in the early stages of pregnancy but didn’t tell anyone. Certainly not me. A rushed marriage to a young man who was little more than a boy, and who was facing a life of paraplegia…that would never be Maryanne’s style.

‘By the time I was well enough to return here she’d disappeared down south. Apparently she had Kate adopted and then proceeded to have a very good life. The first I knew of it was when Kate arrived on the scene just before the cyclone.’

He said it lightly. He said it almost as if it didn’t hurt, but there was enough in those few words to let Jill see underneath. A young man wildly in love, deserted seemingly because of his paraplegia. Knowing later he’d fathered a child, but Maryanne had not deemed it worth telling him. It was more of the same, she thought. More of the treatment meted out by the jeweller.

Charles as a young man would have been gorgeous. She knew enough of his family background to know he was also rich. Maryanne might well have chosen another course altogether if she hadn’t classified the father of her child as something…

Well, it was all conjecture, Jill thought harshly. Charles must have done his own agonising. It wasn’t for her to do his agonising for him.

‘But it does mean you have a daughter,’ she said gently into the silence.

‘I do,’ he said. ‘But I missed out on the whole damned lot. With Lily it’s a bit like being given the chance again.’ He hesitated. ‘OK. Enough. What about you?’

‘Me?’ she said, startled.

‘All I know of your background is from other people,’ he said. ‘Maybe if we’re to be married I ought to know a bit more.’

‘You don’t want to know about Kelvin.’

‘Harry told me he was in jail.’

‘He had a five-year sentence for…for hurting me. I’m still…’

‘Afraid of him?’

‘He used to say he’d kill me if I left him,’ she whispered. ‘He demonstrated it enough for me to believe him.’

‘You think he’s still a threat?’

‘He doesn’t know I’m here. You know that. You know I’ve changed my name. Judy Standford, dumb, bashed wife of a fisherman down south, to Jill Shaw, director of nursing at Croc Creek. But he’ll still be looking.’

‘Surely after so many years…’

‘What Kelvin owns he’ll believe he owns to the end,’ she said bleakly. ‘He’d want me dead rather than see me free.’

‘Why the hell did you marry him?’ he asked savagely.

‘The oldest reason in the world,’ she said. ‘Like you and Maryanne, only maybe without the passion. I was sixteen. A kid. Kelvin was a biker, a mate of my oldest brother, Rick. Rick agreed I could go with them to a music festival. I was way out of my depth and I ended up pregnant. My dad…well, my dad was as violent in his way as Kelvin. Kelvin agreed to marry me and I was terrified enough to do it. Only then I lost the baby. And when I tried to leave… It just…’ She stopped, seeming too distressed to go on.

‘You don’t have to explain to me,’ Charles said gently. ‘But, even after you left, you never thought you’d marry again? You never thought you’d like a child?’

‘Of course I’d like a child,’ she said explosively. ‘I was seven months pregnant when I lost my little girl. I hadn’t realised…until I held Lily…’