‘That’s the second thing,’ he said. ‘According to Gerald, you were publicly slapped and dismissed without cause. Assault and public humiliation, with witnesses. The hospital board should pay damages.’

She thought about that. Her weariness and anger seemed to fade.

‘The hospital board,’ she said slowly, ‘consists of five judgmental toads. I’m judged a bad lot by association. They only gave me the job because my qualifications beat every other applicant fourfold.’ She considered a bit longer. ‘Damages, eh?’

‘It’d be a statement,’ he said. ‘A line in the sand.’

She considered a bit more. ‘She did have cause,’ she said. ‘Vicar’s wife discovering vicar with Mum.’

‘Was that cause to hit you?’

‘No.’ She grinned, bouncing back. ‘Does it cost to sue?’

‘With the evidence as clear as it is, Gerald said one letter should do it, sent to the board with a promise to copy it to the press if damages aren’t forthcoming. He reckons they’ll be falling over themselves to limit fallout.’

‘Ooh …’

‘Do I have your permission to go ahead?’

She beamed and it was as if the sun had come out. ‘Yes.’

‘And the bank …’

‘No.’ Her humour faded. ‘Mum’s not going to jail on my account.’

‘How long do promises last?’ he said softly. ‘A promise made by a twelve-year-old …’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘It’s ridiculous, but I loved my dad. I do this for him. Thank you for what you’ve done already but I won’t take it further. My mum, my problem.’

He glanced at Zelda and at Merrylegs. Then he looked at Lily, at her expression of acceptance of a load that seemed almost too much to bear. He’d yelled at her, he thought, and he was sorry. ‘Are you sure I can’t organise you a quiet horse tomorrow?’ he asked.

‘Not Glenfiddich?’

‘No.’

‘Because?’

‘I will not watch you take risks.’

‘So don’t watch.’

‘Lily …’

‘Okay, sorry,’ she said, and held up her hands. ‘You’re trying to protect me. Thank you very much, but I don’t need it.’

‘You could enjoy a quieter ride.’

‘I guess I could,’ she said, but then managed a rueful smile. ‘I know, it doesn’t make sense, even to me, but I’d rather not. Not having been on Glenfiddich.’ She took a deep breath. ‘It’s just … Luke, I don’t want to be protected. For now I just want to be me.’

She seemed to wilt a bit after that. The gastro had knocked her, he thought, or maybe it was simply life that had knocked her. A crazy mother and a promise to the father she’d adored … She’d faced it alone since she was twelve.

He bullied her into toast and soup. She sat by the fire and gazed into the flames and he thought he shouldn’t have let her out today. She should have stayed home by the fire. He should have stayed home with her.

I don’t want to be protected …

What else was a man to do?

‘Go to bed,’ he said gently, and she cast him a look he couldn’t understand.

‘I like it by the fire.’

‘You’re exhausted.’

‘Yes, but—

‘But you don’t sleep?’

‘I slept last night.’

‘Gastro would make anyone sleep. Is that why you signed up for night duty?’ he asked. ‘To keep the demons at bay?’

‘I don’t have demons.’

‘I think … living with your mother must be nigh on impossible.’

‘Like having your wife die? And the fear of facing that sort of tragedy again?’

‘I’m not afraid.’

‘I think you are. Wasn’t that what today was all about?’ She rose, a little unsteady on her feet, and he jumped up fast to steady her. He took her shoulders and held on.

He could draw her closer.

He didn’t. He simply held.

A common bond—two nightmares?

It was enough to forge a friendship. This could be touching from mutual sympathy—but it felt much more than that.

The fire crackled in the grate, a sort of warning. That was a dumb thought, but right now anything was acting as a warning.

He should let her go.

He couldn’t.

‘Maybe you could curl up here and watch the flames while you go to sleep,’ he suggested, and the tension around them escalated. Maybe he could stay here, too. The flames … the warmth … this woman.

He knew how this woman could make him feel. She could drive out his demons.

He couldn’t make her safe. He knew she wouldn’t let him.

‘I will go to bed,’ she said, and somehow she managed to step back from him.

‘Count mopokes to go to sleep?’ he suggested, and she smiled.

‘Or frogs?’

‘You don’t have enough fingers and toes to count frogs.’

She chuckled and the desire to draw her close again was almost irresistible.

She stepped back fast, as if she felt it too.

‘Goodnight,’ she said.

He couldn’t help it. He touched her hand, a feather-like touch, nothing more, but in that touch fire flared. It was contact that burned.

She tucked her hand behind her back. ‘Luke … no.’

‘No,’ he said, and let his own hand fall.

They were pretend lovers. Nothing more.

‘Goodnight,’ she said again, gently, and she walked out of the door, closing it after her.

He stood staring at the closed door. Thinking, How much courage would it take?

Too much.

He wasn’t tired. He headed out again, around the paddocks, following the line of the creek. How many times had he followed this route since Hannah had died?

It was different tonight. He was here because of Lily.

She touched such a chord … A woman keeping a promise at all costs. A woman of honour and intelligence and skill and laughter.

But …

The moment he’d seen her on Glenfiddich’s back, he’d been hit with the knowledge that there was nothing he could do to protect her …

She’d guessed right. She’d known that his fear had been all about Hannah.

He looked over toward his uncle’s house, where a solitary light burned on the veranda.

His uncle had learned the same hard lessons. He was like Luke.

They didn’t do relationships. Not now. Not ever.

CHAPTER SEVEN

LILY woke without the joy of the day before.

She could hear Luke moving downstairs. She heard Tom calling, dogs barking in the distance, and those dratted kookaburras.

Her stomach was cramping again. She’d talked to the doctor at home about the cramps. Tension, he’d said. Avoid stress.

Stress was sharing a house with a guy who was drop-dead gorgeous. Stress was playing pretend lovers with Luke.

She shouldn’t have come. This was a stupid deception, designed to protect a reputation she didn’t have and to add another level to Luke’s armour, but by coming here a layer of her own armour had peeled away.

This farm … these horses …

Luke.

Okay, there was the problem. She was feeling what she had no right to be feeling.

He was feeling it too, she thought, but …

But she’d seen his panic when she’d been on Glenfiddich, and his reaction had scared her. He’d yelled at her through fear. Shadows of a dead wife.

She was being dumb, she thought. This was an overreaction.

It was an overreaction because she was scared.

Because she was falling for Luke?

Maybe falling for anyone would be scary.

Growing up in her mother’s dramatic shadow, she’d never thought of romance. Of falling in love. Drama, emotion were to be avoided at all costs. She knew the devastation they caused and it wasn’t something she wanted.

Her relationship with Charlie had been like a comfortable pair of old socks. They’d been friends at school, they’d fallen into dating and they’d kept dating until suddenly Charlie had woken up one morning and realised he was heading for marriage with the daughter of the town tramp. When he’d cut her adrift she’d been hurt and angry, but she hadn’t been heartbroken. Sometimes when she looked at romantic movies, seen friends marry, she’d felt like that part of her had simply not been formed. She’d been born without it.

Now… What she felt for Luke.

It was as if she knew him at some level she couldn’t possibly understand.

She knew Luke’s story—between Gladys and the Harbour night shift she knew more than she’d ever need to know—but this went deeper than that. She’d instinctively joined the dots. Last night she’d said his fear for her was all about his dead wife and she knew it was. A lonely child, a tragic marriage … A man who walked alone.

He made her feel …

She didn’t know how he made her feel. She felt … She felt …

She felt like she had cramps in her stomach, she decided. She felt like she needed to roll over in bed and put her pillows over her head, which was exactly what she did.

Avoid stress? Ha!

Luke worked with Tom, stringing wires between the fencing posts they’d put in the day before, then going on to rewire fences further along the creek.

All the time he worked he expected her to come.

She didn’t.

‘You two still fighting?’ Tom said at last.

‘We’re not fighting. She’s had gastro. She overdid it yesterday. She should spend the day in bed.’

‘Then why are you wiring fences?’ Tom asked bluntly. ‘With a woman like that in your bed.’

‘She’s in the guest bed.’

‘More fool you. She’s a good ‘un.’

‘There speaks an authority on all women,’ Luke said. ‘Curmudgeonly old bachelor that you are.’

‘Had a woman once,’ Tom said reflectively, astonishingly. ‘Liseth.’ He sighed. ‘I thought maybe I had a chance, that our family hadn’t stuffed me completely. But with parents like ours you don’t rush into relationships. Anyway, I got drafted; Vietnam War. I was stupid enough to tell her to go out with other guys while I was away. I met her twenty years later, married to a car salesman. I walked into the office and she was there. She told me about her husband and her kids. All very polite. Then at the end when her husband was shifting the car she turned to me and exploded.

‘I would have married you,’ she said. ‘In a heartbeat. Even if we’d only had those two months before you went overseas, it would have been enough.’

‘Tom …’ The vehemence of his uncle’s voice shocked him.

‘Yeah,’ Tom said. ‘I was a fool, like you were a fool with Hannah; but in your case the fool part wasn’t one-sided. So we’ve made mistakes, do we have to keep making them? Enough. All I’m saying, boy, is life’s short and she’s a good ‘un. Now let’s get this wire done. And I want to talk to you about my arm. I damn near dropped the chainsaw on Friday. I reckon I might have tennis elbow.’

‘Chainsaw elbow,’ Luke said, and the old man grinned.

‘You doctors have fancy names for everything.’

‘Hi.’

The men turned and saw Lily at the edge of the clearing.

Uh-oh. How much of the conversation had she heard? Just the end, Luke hoped, though the silence in the bush meant sound travelled.

‘I’m feeling better,’ she said. ‘I wanted to stretch my legs. And, no, Luke, I’m not about to ride another of your horses, even though I had to duck round Glenfiddich’s paddock so he wouldn’t see me. And I’m not here to interfere. I’ll keep on walking.’

‘Keep walking with Luke,’ Tom growled. ‘He’s done enough for one day.’

‘So must you if you have chainsaw elbow,’ Lily said, teasing a smile from the old man.

‘Nah, I’m fitter than the pair of you,’ he retorted. ‘You head off and do what a young feller and his lady ought to do.’

Luke looked at Lily and Lily looked at Luke, and Luke put down his tools.

What was it that a young feller and his lady ought to do?

They walked slowly back to the house. She was walking a bit gingerly.

‘Your tummy’s okay?’ he asked.

‘Recovering nicely.’ Her tone said not to go there.

‘Rest this afternoon.’

‘You should tell Tom to rest,’ she said. ‘Not that he will when you’re around. He’s lonely.’

‘Tom—lonely!’

‘He’s like you,’ she said softly. ‘He drives people away. I met Patty Haigh up on your north boundary fence when I was walking …’

‘Patty!’ Patty was the cheerful next-door neighbour who cooked and cleaned for Tom. She was the mother of seven sons. She was always ready for a gossip—not that he and Tom gossiped.

‘She worries about Tom,’ Lily said.

‘Tom’s okay.’

‘She doesn’t like him being on his own.’

‘Neither do I,’ he said. ‘That’s why I bought adjoining land.’

‘Why don’t you commute?’ she asked curiously. ‘Patty says you can get to the Harbour in forty minutes from here.’

‘An hour and a half at peak hour.’

‘Since when do doctors travel at peak hour? You can fit your hours around traffic.’

‘Tom doesn’t want me here.’

‘That’s not what Patty says. He needs family.’

‘He doesn’t want family. Neither of us do.’

What did Lily know about Tom? he thought. Lonely? Tom was as fiercely independent as he was. But. Tom’s revelation of moments ago had shaken him.

Regardless, it was nothing to do with Lily.

The chainsaw revved up behind them. He winced. He hated Tom using power tools when he wasn’t here; it was a risk, the price they both paid for independence.

He blocked it out. Or tried to. He tried not to care.

‘You want to go back and help?’ Lily asked, looking concerned.

‘He wouldn’t thank me.’

‘Like my mum doesn’t thank me for caring,’ she whispered. ‘Sometimes you have to do what you have to do.’

‘And sometimes you need to back off.’

‘Like you have from everyone?’

‘Butt out,’ he said, trying to sound good humoured. If she was to pry into his personal life, the next four weeks would be endless.

‘You made phone calls on my behalf,’ she said mildly. ‘Do you call that butting out?’

‘That’s …’

‘Different,’ she said cordially. ‘You can butt into my life, but I can’t do the same in yours.’ She glanced back along the track. ‘That chainsaw …’

‘He doesn’t want us! He’s vowed not to want anyone.’

‘Like you?’

‘I wouldn’t know. Tom and I don’t talk of it. What business is it of mine?’

‘All your business if you love him.’

‘Then you end up where you are with your mother.’

‘Are you saying your uncle Tom is like my mother?’

‘No, but …’ He raked his hair. ‘You can care too much. It leaves you open for hurt, like you’ve been hurt. It sounds to me like you should have backed off years ago.’

‘Like you,’ she said cordially. ‘And Tom. Living in your emotion-free bubbles.’

‘I like emotion-free bubbles.’

‘Good for you,’ she said, and smiled, and it was an entrancing smile. Enchanting. Beguiling. It made him want to.

Step right out of his emotion-free bubble.

It wasn’t going to happen. It was not.

The chainsaw was roaring in the background. They walked on in silence, using the noise as a silent excuse not to talk.

He was so aware of her, a slip of a girl with an enchanting smile, with judgment written all over her. And challenge.

He thought of Tom. Was she right? Was the old man finally admitting he needed people?

The chainsaw was biting through wood. It really wasn’t safe, he conceded.

He had talked to Tom about it. Tom had told him where he could put his worries.

Suddenly the chainsaw’s motor whined sharply, differently, rising in pitch as if it had been jerked free of wood. The wood was rotten. If Tom was pressing against solid wood and met rot …

Even as Luke thought it, the chainsaw motor cut out as it was meant to do the moment pressure was released from the hand hold.

And as the motor died … a scream.

Luke was running almost before his brain had processed the sounds.

They’d been replacing fence posts. The old ones had been hauled out and stacked.

Tom had balanced the first post against the pile, then started slicing it for firewood. Now he was sprawled on the damp grass, the chainsaw tossed beside him. The dogs were whimpering in fear.

A pool of bright scarlet was blooming out from Tom’s leg.

Lily wasn’t as fast as Luke. By the time she reached the clearing Luke had rolled Tom from curled and clutching his leg onto his back so he could see the damage.

In that one instant, she knew what had happened. He’d swiped the chainsaw downward. Maybe the wood was more rotten than he’d expected—maybe he hadn’t needed as much pressure as he had exerted. For whatever reason the saw had sliced far further than he’d intended, smashing into his upper thigh.

He must have hit the femoral artery. It had to be cut, she thought with horror. There was no other explanation for this amount of blood.

Luke was searching for pressure points, one hand pressing, the other ripping at his shirt to try and get a wad, a tie, anything.

Her shirt was off in an instant, folded, handed to him. Then she grabbed Luke’s sleeve and ripped with a strength she hadn’t known she had. She ripped the sleeve right off, then ripped again from shoulder to cuff.

It gave them padding and a tie.

‘Let me … let me…’ Tom was gasping, trying to see.

‘Lie still,’ Luke snapped. There was no time for reassurance, not while the blood was pumping as it was. ‘Tom, lie still. You’ve cut an artery and we have to stop it.’

‘Bloody fool,’ Tom muttered, and subsided.

His face was ashen.

So much blood.

The pad was doing nothing, no matter how hard Luke pressed. Lily was twisting the tie above the wound but making no difference at all to the blood flow. Already Tom was looking clammy, a sheen of cold sweat on his face.

He’d bleed out in minutes.

If they were back at the hospital they’d have tools to cut down, to find the artery and clamp it off. Here they had nothing.

‘I can’t locate it,’ Luke snapped, and the agony in those words was desperate. ‘Your hand’s smaller. You try.’

It was a desperate request. He had nothing else to try.

He took the tie, while she shoved her fist into the wound, hard, as tight as it’d go. Was her hand small enough? She was searching for the source of the blood, pushing with a desperation born of terror.

Harder …

The blood welled around her fingers … and slowed.

Slowed more.

But in time?

She had to be in time.

‘Hey, she’s stopped the bleeding,’ Luke told his uncle. Until now it had been impossible to disguise the panic. ‘Lily’s hit the spot. Don’t you move, not a whisker.’

‘I wouldn’t dream of it,’ Tom whispered. ‘Oh, girl, I’m making you all mucky.’

‘I love horses and I love nursing,’ Lily told him, trying to match Luke’s reassurance, trying to keep the strain from her voice, as if holding back blood like this was routine. Knowing how close to disaster they still were. ‘I like a bit of muck.’

Tom tried to laugh but it didn’t come off. He looked …

Like he could go into shock at any minute.

It was a real possibility.

Lily couldn’t move. Her fist was a ball curled tight against damaged tissue, pressed hard against the pulsing artery. Somehow she’d hit the spot, somehow she’d blocked the blood supply. If she moved a fraction …

Luke was tightening the tourniquet with one hand, holding his phone in the other. Snapping details to an emergency service.

‘Air ambulance, helicopter, code blue. GPS co-ordinates …’ He lifted his uncle’s phone from his pocket—a new model, Lily saw, and read the positional co-ordinates off. Thank goodness for technology. ‘There’s a clearing a hundred yards to the north. I’ll secure it before you get here. If you can break the sound barrier I’d appreciate it. Move.’

He flicked the phone off.

There were sheets of paper-bark hanging from the massive gums along the river. While Tom—and Lily—stayed motionless Luke hauled a dozen of the soft bark sheets, folded them into a wedge and manoeuvered them with extraordinary care underneath Tom’s hips and legs. He had to be careful; there was no way he was interfering with Lily’s position. But it had to be done. Any available blood needed to flow to Tom’s head and not to his lower limbs. His hips had to be higher than his heart.

Done. He twisted the shirt tighter around Tom’s thigh and Tom grunted in pain.

‘I have emergency gear in the car,’ he told Lily. ‘Catheters. Saline. Morphine.’

‘Then why are you here?’ She was impressed by how calm she sounded. Luke needed to get an IV catheter in now, if not sooner. If Tom’s veins collapsed, resuscitation would no longer be possible.

They both knew that point was close.

‘I’m going.’ Luke sounded agonised. He’d hate to leave but he couldn’t stay. He touched his uncle’s face, then he touched Lily on the shoulder—a feather-light brush.

Then he was gone.

They were the longest minutes of Lily’s life, keeping pressure on the wound, praying Tom’s condition wouldn’t worsen. Trying not to let Tom see she was terrified.

The dogs, Border collies, lay and watched and she sensed their fear as well.

‘I hope Luke can run,’ she ventured, and Tom tried a smile.

‘Like the wind,’ he whispered. ‘He spent half his childhood running on this farm. Most weekends. All his school holidays. Ran all over this farm.’

‘Did he never go back to Singapore?’

‘Parents sent him to boarding school to get rid of him,’ Tom muttered. ‘He had a ruddy big birthmark on his face. His parents hated looking at it. My brother was too mean to get it fixed, though. Told the kid it was character building but in truth he was fixated on money. Like that bloody wife of his …’

He broke off and gasped and Lily wished she could hug him, wished she could move. Selfishly she also wished she could alleviate the pins and needles in her hips.

She could do nothing.

They were totally dependent on Luke. He needed to fetch equipment. He needed to check for a safe place for the helicopter to land. It was maybe a ten-minute run back to the house. Ten minutes there, ten minutes back, time to get land cleared …

All she could do was sit.

It was killing her. It was killing Tom. With every moment his chances grew slimmer.

Then, before she imagined it was possible, she heard the roar of a motor revving through the trees, crashing … and Luke’s Aston Martin broke into the clearing, bush-bashing like he was driving an ancient SUV rather than a sports car. No matter, he was here. He was out of the car almost before it stopped, hauling his bag with him.

‘Tom …’ She heard the catch in his breath, knew how terrified he’d been of what he’d find.

‘We’re fine,’ Lily said quickly. ‘And we always knew Aston Martins were offroaders.’

He managed a fleeting grin as he hauled a catheter from his bag.

‘You drove that thing through the bush?’ Tom gasped, and Luke’s smile became genuine. Luke would have run thinking the worst, Lily thought. He’d have known that if Tom had gone into cardiac arrest while he was gone there’d have been nothing she could do—not when taking her hands from the pressure point meant blood loss would resume.

But now …

Luke was inserting a catheter. He had IV fluids! Not blood product, she thought, that’d be too much to hope from most emergency kits, but he had saline, and any fluid was a lifesaver.

Could be a lifesaver.

Please.

The catheter was inserted in seconds. An IV line was set up.

‘There’s morphine going in, Tom,’ Luke said. ‘Any minute now you can stop gritting your teeth.’

‘I’m not gritting my teeth,’ Tom said, indignant. ‘Or not very much.’

Lily let out her breath, not knowing until then that she’d been holding it. There was a chance …

‘I’m releasing the tourniquet for a moment,’ Luke said. ‘I’m not saving you only to lose that leg. You might want to grit those teeth.’

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