A Bride And Child Worth Waiting For

‘So Lily’s a second chance for both of us.’ He reached over the table and took her ring hand, folding it between both of his. The warmth and strength of his hold gave her pause.

She’d been close to tears. Close to fury. His hold grounded her, settled her. Made her feel she had roots. But it also left her feeling out of her depth.

‘D-don’t,’ she said, and tugged back.

‘We need to show a bit of affection,’ Charles said wryly. ‘If we’re to pull off a marriage that doesn’t look like a sham.’

‘It doesn’t matter if it is a sham.’

‘You see, I’m thinking that’s where you might be wrong,’ he said. ‘We’ve been given Lily. It’s a huge gift.’

‘We should be home with her now.’

‘She doesn’t need us now,’ Charles said. ‘That’s the problem. Oh, she needs us in that we’re providing security whether she knows it or not. But if we said she was to live with Gina and Cal…’

‘She’d be upset,’ Jill said. She tugged her hand away and stared down into the depths of her ring. ‘Or she’d be more upset,’ she amended. ‘She’s traumatised.’

‘She won’t let the psychologists near.’ Charles sighed. ‘Well, you know the problems as well as I do. Do we tell her tonight that we’re getting married? That she can stay with us for ever?’

‘Cal knows. Gina knows. Sophia Poulos knows. We’d better do it or she’ll be the last in Croc Creek to find out.’

CHAPTER THREE

CHARLES settled the bill and they went out into the balmy night. On another occasion they might have walked here—or wheeled here, Jill corrected herself. Charles never let being in a chair stop him going places. The strength in his arms was colossal and he could push his chair long after those around him were tired from walking.

But there was packing to do tonight and they needed to collect Lily before it got too late. So they’d driven. Or Charles had driven. He was almost as fast getting into the car as a normal driver, opening the door, sliding into the driver seat, clipping his chair closed and swinging it into the rear seat behind him. By the time Jill had adjusted the drapes of her dress they were already moving out onto the road.

He was a normal guy, Jill thought as she tried to focus on the road ahead, and she swallowed. A normal husband. Did he realise what that did to her?

It terrified her.

She’d agreed to this marriage why? Because she loved Lily. Because she couldn’t bear that Lily be further dislocated.

Because Charles was in a wheelchair and would make no demands on her as a wife?

Maybe that had been a factor, she conceded. Up until now Charles’s paraplegia had made this marriage seem…safer? A sexless marriage.

But maybe that was dumb. His injury was so low that maybe…maybe…

Maybe nothing. It didn’t matter, either way. She trusted Charles. It’d be OK.

But she glanced sideways at his profile in the moonlight. The lean, angular features of a strongly boned face. The crinkles around his eyes where years of laughter had left their mark. And pain. He’d never admit it but you didn’t suffer the type of injury he’d endured without pain.

She loved the way his hair crinkled at the roots and then became wavy—just a little. She loved the silver in it. Premature grey was so damned sexy in a male…

Sexy. See, there was the thing. Charles didn’t see himself as sexy so neither should she. She was right to think of his paraplegia as her security. She had to keep thinking of him as disabled, because if she kept thinking of him as sexy this marriage of convenience would never work. She ought to run rather than risk it.

But she was tired of running. She wanted a home. A home, a husband, a daughter.

Charles.

If Kelvin found out, he’d kill them all.

Was she being paranoid? The logical part of her said yes. The part of her that had been controlled by Kelvin said she wasn’t being paranoid at all.

‘What are you thinking?’ he asked, his voice a little strained. Maybe he was finding this as hard as she was.

‘That maybe it’s good for you that you’re going to Wallaby Island tomorrow,’ she said, and for the life of her she couldn’t stop her voice from sounding faintly waspish. ‘This place is going to be awash with gossip, and you and Lily will have escaped.’

‘Just snap their noses off when they ask to see your ring,’ he said. ‘That’ll sort them out.’

‘You think I’m…prickly.’

‘I know you’re prickly.’

‘Charles, why do you want to marry me?’ she burst out. ‘I’m plain and I’m bossy and I’m old.’

‘Now, that,’ Charles said solemnly, ‘is ridiculous.’

‘Is it?’

‘So why do you want to marry me?’ he demanded. ‘I’m in a wheelchair.’

‘That’s just as ridiculous.’

‘You don’t think you want to marry me because I’m in a wheelchair?’

‘Because I feel sorry for you?’ she muttered. ‘Fat chance.’

‘You don’t feel sorry for me?’

‘Anyone feeling sorry for you gets their heads bitten off.’

‘So you’re scared of me.’

‘I’m not,’ she said, and then decided to be honest. ‘Or not very much.’

‘So let me get this straight,’ he said slowly. ‘You’re thinking you’re plain and bossy and old, you’re scared of me but you’ve decided to marry me anyway.’

‘It does sound dumb,’ she admitted.

‘Yeah,’ he agreed. ‘With all the romance in the air around Croc Creek, the place practically sizzles.’

‘It’s just as well it doesn’t sizzle near us, then.’

‘Not even a bit?’

‘Of course not. I mean, look at us. We’ve discussed this sensibly. We’ve bought an engagement ring. We haven’t even kissed.’

‘I kissed your hand.’

‘You did,’ she said. ‘Um…yeah. Very nice it was, too.’

‘You want to be kissed?’

‘No!’

‘We ought to,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘I mean…we do intend to make a marriage out of it. We could just try.’

‘Charles, don’t.’

‘Because you’re plain and old and bossy?’

‘No, because…’

‘Because I’m in a wheelchair?’

‘No!’

‘Then why?’ he demanded, and there was suddenly frustration in his voice. ‘Why the hell not?’

‘Because we don’t…’

‘Deserve it?’ He glanced over at her. She was staring straight into the night, trying to figure out what to say. What to do. She was fingering her engagement ring like it was burning.

‘Jill, don’t look like that.’

‘Like what?’

‘Hell,’ he said again, and before she knew what he intended he’d steered the car onto the verge. They were at the foot of the bridge beside Crocodile Creek. There was a sloping sandbank running down to the water.

In other circumstances a romantic couple might get out and wander down to the water’s edge to admire the moonbeams glimmering over the water’s dark surface.

Yeah, in other circumstances a couple might get taken by a crocodile. Getting out here was for fools.

Stopping here was for fools.

‘Jill, I’m not marrying any woman who’s afraid of me,’ Charles said steadily into the darkness.

‘I’m not…’

‘Look at me and say it.’

She turned and looked at him. He gazed steadily back, serious, questioning.

She knew this man. She’d worked with him for years. He was the best doctor in Crocodile Creek.

He loved Lily. He was doing this to give her a daughter.

‘I’m not afraid of you,’ she said, and it was true. She trusted him. She knew it at every logical level. It was only the thought of marriage that had her terrified.

But this was Charles. Charles!

‘It’ll be OK,’ Charles said softly, and he caught her hands and tugged her toward him. ‘Jill, I don’t think you’re plain or bossy or old.’ Then he smiled, that crinkly, crooked smile that transformed his face. The smile she loved. ‘OK, maybe bossy,’ he conceded. ‘But bossy’s good for a director of nursing. Maybe bossy’s even good for a mum, and that’s what you’re going to be. It’ll be fine. It might even be fantastic. Let’s give it our best shot, eh?’

And he tugged her close—and he kissed her.

She hadn’t been kissed for how long?

Years and years and years. Her kissing skills had lain dormant, forgotten. Buried.

But not dead.

She’d last kissed with passion when she’d been a teenager. She’d forgotten…or she’d never known…

Strong, warm hands holding her face, centring her so he could find her mouth. Lips meeting lips. Warmth meeting warmth.

Not warmth. Fire.

That was what it felt like. A rush of heat so intense that it sent shock waves jolting through her body. She felt her lips open, she felt his mouth merge with hers…

It was like moving into another dimension.

Her hands lifted involuntarily, her fingers raking his hair, firming their link. Not that there was a need for such firming. She couldn’t back away from this.

This magic.

It was a feeling so intense it seemed she was almost out of her body. Transformed into something she’d never been, or if she had she’d long forgotten. A girl, a woman who could melt with pure desire.

For just a moment she let herself fall. She let herself be swept away, feeling how she could feel if she were a girl again and life was before her and she didn’t know what happened to women who surrendered control.

Kelvin had called her an ugly cow—over and over until she’d believed it totally. But maybe…just maybe he was wrong.

This was delicious, delectable, dangerous… Seductive in its sweetness. Overwhelming in its demands. For he wasn’t just kissing her; he was asking questions she had no hope of answering; he was taking her places she had never been and had no intention of going.

But she was going there.

No. She was Jill Shaw, solidly grounded nursing director of Crocodile Creek hospital. She recalled it with a tiny gasp of shock. Her hands shoved between Charles’s chest and her breasts and she pushed back.

He released her immediately, leaning back so he could see her in the moonlight. He looked as surprised as she did, she thought shakily. As out of his element. The great Charles Wetherby, shocked.

‘I don’t think…’ She tried and then had to try again for her voice came out a squeak. ‘I don’t think this is a good idea.’

‘Kissing?’

‘Anything,’ she managed. She was still squeaking. Oh, for heaven’s sake… She was a mature woman. It had just been a kiss.

Yes, but what a kiss. If a kiss could wipe a woman’s logic away as this one had… If a kiss could make her feel beautiful…

She wasn’t beautiful. She had to get her bearings. She had to be sensible.

‘We don’t want anything to happen?’ Charles queried, and she bit her lip.

‘Certainly not.’

‘Any particular reason?’

‘We’re too old.’

‘Hey! Speak for yourself.’

‘I didn’t mean…’ She swallowed. ‘Charles, maybe I need to say… I just don’t want…’ Another swallow. Another attempt. ‘I’m not going to be what you might call a jealous wife. I don’t know what you do now…’

‘For sex, you mean?’ he asked, and affront had given way to bemusement.

‘I don’t need to know,’ she said hurriedly. ‘I mean… I don’t even know…’

‘If I can?’ he said, still bemused. ‘I can.’ Damn him, he was enjoying her discomfiture.

‘That’s…that’s good. I guess. So if you want to…’

‘If I want to then you’ll permit it? But not with you?’

‘Just because you kissed me doesn’t mean I’m expecting…’

‘What if I want to?’

‘You don’t want to,’ she said flatly. ‘Or, at least, I don’t. Look, it was a very romantic evening, for which I thank you. I love my ring.’ She glanced down at it, a moonbeam caught it at just the right angle and she saw fire. ‘I really love my ring. But what we’re doing is practical.’

‘You don’t find me—’

‘Don’t ask,’ she snapped. ‘It’s ludicrous.’

‘Of course it’s ludicrous,’ he said, and the trace of laughter died from his voice as if it had never been.

What…? Oh, God. ‘I didn’t mean that,’ she whispered, mortified.

‘Of course you didn’t.’ He turned back to the wheel and flicked the engine into life. ‘Don’t worry. I won’t touch you again. It’s time we were home.’

‘Charles…’

‘It’s OK,’ he said wearily. ‘As you say, we’re too old. Let’s go and pick up Lily and tell her she has two very respectable prospective parents.’

Jill shrank back into the passenger seat and felt about six inches tall. She’d never meant to infer she found Charles’s disability offensive. Or even a bar to…well, to anything.

It was just that she didn’t want anything. She didn’t want contact at all.

She surely didn’t want to risk those sensations coursing through her that threatened to undermine the control she’d fought like a wildcat to regain after her marriage. She never wanted to be exposed again.

She should apologise to Charles. His face was set and grim, and she could lighten it. She could make him smile.

But…but…

Did she want him to smile? Not when they were alone, she thought frantically. Not when she was dressed like this, when she was wearing his ring. Not when his smile made her feel vulnerable and exposed and terrified.

No. Better to sit here, rigid, on the far side of the car, to school her expression into passive nothingness.

Like a cold fish.

She’d heard one of the younger nurses call her that once, and she’d thought, Good. That was how she wanted to be thought of. Emotional nothingness.

But she had a daughter. Or she’d have a daughter once this marriage took place. How could she be a cold fish with a daughter?

‘Keeping ourselves only unto ourselves except for when we’re with Lily,’ Charles said.

‘You understand,’ she whispered, humbled.

‘We’re birds of a feather,’ he said.

‘Charles, I am sorry.’

‘Don’t be sorry,’ he said. ‘It was me who kissed you. I was overstepping the boundaries. It won’t happen again.’

Lily was asleep when they arrived at Cal and Gina’s. Cal heard the car and brought her out to them. She was slight for her age, a wiry, freckled imp with a tangle of brown-gold curls and a smattering of freckles, just like Jill’s. She woke as Jill buckled her into her car seat but she made no demur. She was accustomed to this. Even when her parents had been alive, their love affair with rodeos meant she was very adaptable.

‘Goodnight, sleepyhead,’ Cal said, ruffling her tousled curls before he stepped back from the car. Then he smiled at Jill. He lifted her ring hand and whistled.

‘Congratulations.’ He hugged her and kissed her on the cheek. Jill found herself flushing.

‘It’s nothing.’

‘It’s fabulous,’ he said. He looked into the car at Charles and grinned. ‘Congratulations to you, too.’

‘Thanks,’ Charles said. ‘But we’re only doing it for Lily.’

‘Right,’ Cal said, sounding dubious. He looked back into the car at their sleepy little daughter. She was wearing her favourite pink pyjamas with blue moons and stars, her curls were tied up—or they had been tied up—with a huge, silver bow and there was a smudge of green paint on her nose.

‘We did give her a bath,’ he said ruefully. ‘With CJ. And Gina did her hair.’

‘I’ll give her another one before she leaves tomorrow,’ Jill said.

‘You’re not coming across to the island for the opening?’

‘I’m in charge here.’

‘Alistair can take over. You know he’d like—’

‘I’m in charge here,’ she said flatly.

‘But you’re telling Lily tonight, right?’

‘Telling me what?’ Lily asked sleepily.

‘What we’ve been doing tonight,’ Charles said bluntly from inside the car. ‘Come on, Jill. I need to go back to the hospital before I go to bed. I have two patients I want to see tonight and there’s packing to do afterwards. We need to move.’

So move they did. They took Lily home and tucked her in as they’d done a score of times before this night and Jill thought, Where do we start?

Lily started for them. She snuggled into her little bed, checked that her toys—two teddies, one giraffe, a bull like her favourite real bull, Oscar, one duck and a doll with no hair—were all lined up in their appropriate places. Then she said, ‘It’s a really pretty ring. Did Charles give it to you?’

‘Yes,’ Jill said, and felt helpless.

‘Why?’

‘We’ve decided to get married,’ Charles said. ‘You know your uncle came today? He says he wants you to live with a real mother and father. For some reason your Uncle Tom thinks that we can only be a real mother and father if we’re married. Jill and I want to look after you until you’re old enough to take care of yourself. So we’ve decided to get married so your Uncle Tom will let us keep you.’

She regarded them both, her eyes wide and interested.

‘So you’ll look after me all the time?’

‘Yes,’ Jill said firmly. ‘If it’s OK with you we’ll sign papers that say no one can take you away from us.’ She took a deep breath. ‘And, Lily…if you wanted to call us…well, maybe you wouldn’t want to call us Mum and Dad. Your mum and dad were your special, real parents. But if you feel you’ll like to maybe call us something like Mama and Papa…’

‘Your names are Jill and Charles,’ Lily said flatly.

‘That’s right,’ Charles said, and he flicked a strand of Lily’s hair back behind her ear. ‘We’re Jill and Charles, or whatever you want to call us. And you’re Lily. But we’re family from now on. Right?’

‘OK,’ Lily said obligingly, and hugged her teddies and closed her eyes. ‘Goodnight.’

And that was that. A mammoth, life-changing decision converted to a few simple sentences. They returned to Jill’s living room and Jill felt deflated.

The door from her living room led through to Charles’s living room. This was what they did every night. They said goodnight to Lily. Charles wheeled through to his apartment. He closed the door behind him.

Contact over.

‘You know, we could knock this whole wall out,’ Charles said thoughtfully, and she stared at him.

‘What?’

‘This used to be an old homestead before the hospital was built. It was too big for me so I cut it into two apartments. But this room… It was the original sitting room. It had huge French windows looking over the cove. I had to sacrifice the windows to convert it into two rooms. We’ve knocked a door through. Why not go the whole hog, knock the entire wall down and put the windows back in? You know we almost always have the televisions on the same channel. Or we could have stereo televisions. Or,’ he said, warming to his theme with typical male enthusiasm, ‘one really big television.’

‘I might have known,’ she said tightly. ‘Boys with technology. Is this the entire motivation behind the proposal?’

‘Hey, you get an opal,’ he said, aggrieved. ‘I reckon I ought to get a big screen. How big do you think, if we make it one room?’ He hesitated. ‘A family room,’ he said cautiously. ‘Where we can be a family.’

‘But I need my privacy.’

His smile died. ‘I’m not talking combining bedrooms, Jill.’

‘No,’ she said, and faltered.

‘So marriage doesn’t mean watching telly together. It doesn’t mean family?’

How to explain that that was dangerous in itself? Closeness? Familiarity? She didn’t do it.

As it was, it sometimes felt too close. Lily popped back and forth between the apartments. She slept in her bedroom on Jill’s side, but if Jill was caught up at the hospital Charles would check on her. Jill would occasionally get home and discover Charles on her side of the beige door.

It shouldn’t matter. But she’d spent so long building her defences that to breach them now…

Kelvin was there. He was still in her head. A shadow, waiting to crash down on her. She should see a therapist, she thought dully, but then a therapist would tell her she was imagining her terror, and she knew she wasn’t.

She was risking enough with this marriage. If she could just keep it…nothing, maybe the sky wouldn’t fall on her head.

‘OK, we won’t knock down the wall,’ Charles said wearily. ‘We go on as before.’

‘Maybe I could buy you a bigger television,’ she said, striving for lightness.

‘I guess I can make that decision on my own,’ he said flatly. ‘I need to get over to the hospital.’ He hesitated. ‘Jill, I’m intending to be on the island for two weeks. I’ve agreed to take Lily and she’s looking forward to it. But Cal’s right. You could come over. Come to the opening ceremony at least.’

The opening… Half the press in the country would be converging on the island. Photographers. Media. No and no and no.

‘I said I’d take over here.’

‘We can cover you. Hell, Jill, you can organise the roster for you to be gone. You’ve done half the planning for the new rehabilitation centre anyway. You’ve cut all the red tape. You’ve negotiated with the Health Commission. It’s your baby.’

Should she explain it was because she was still afraid of Kelvin? After eight years? He’d say it was crazy.

It was crazy.

‘It’s your dream, Charles,’ she said at last.

‘We’re allowed to share dreams,’ he snapped, and she blinked at the anger in his voice.

‘I… Yes,’ she whispered. ‘But there’s no need for me to be there.’

‘You can stay in the damned resort if you want,’ he snapped. ‘It’s on the far side of the island from my bungalow.’

‘That’s dumb.’

‘It is dumb, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘But it’s what you seem to want. Jill, I’m not going to pressure you, but if you act like I’m an ogre…’

‘You kissed me.’

‘So what?’ he said explosively. ‘You’re an attractive woman, you’ve just agreed to marry me and I kissed you. Obviously it was a mistake. I’ve agreed it won’t happen again. But Lily needs a mother and a father. As far as I can see it, that’s not going to happen if we live on separate planets.’

‘Charles—’

‘Just work it out,’ he said wearily. ‘Figure out the rules and let me know what they are. Meanwhile I have patients to check. Go to bed. I’ll see you in the morning before I leave.’

He spun his chair and pushed it through the dividing door, back into his side of the house.

He closed the door behind him.

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