The Doctors’ Baby

CHAPTER SIX

IT WAS midnight before Jonas returned.

Em was wide awake when his car pulled in-not because she needed to be, but because she simply couldn’t sleep.

Everyone else was sleeping. There was no reason not to be asleep herself, and no reason why she should be nervous about having the children on her own. Jonas, she discovered, had even provided for night-shift child care.

Amy went home at six but if both doctors were called out, the arrangement was to open the connecting door to the hospital, alert the night staff, and the house could be treated as an extra kids’ ward, to be checked by the nurses at need.

It was so simple, Em thought. She just wished her feelings about Jonas were as straight forward.

Not so simple either were her feelings for the little boy in the crib beside her bed. Her bedroom was the logical place for him to be, she’d decided, a decision made even easier by the boys’ insistence that Bernard sleep in their bedroom, but the reason why her heart turned over at every movement Robby made wasn’t logical in the least.

She didn’t intend to have babies, she told herself for maybe the thousandth time in her life. So…she couldn’t attach herself to Robby. She couldn’t!

Just like she was never going to marry. There simply wasn’t room in her life for a family.

But she loved-loved-the baby sleeping beside her. She could no longer ignore it. And part of her loved the fact that her too-big house was now full of kids and dogs and…

And Jonas.

This was all far, far too complicated!

And now here was Jonas, returning to make her heart do things that were completely foreign to her. Complicating her life still further.

She should stick her head under her pillow and force herself to sleep, she told herself crossly, but she could do no such thing.

Instead, as Jonas’s key turned in the lock, she padded through to the living room to meet him.

He was exhausted.

She’d left the wall lamp on in case one of the children wandered in the night. It threw enough light on Jonas’s face to show his facial features harshly etched, as if he was deeply exhausted. His eyes were dark and shadowed, and the expression on his face was grim.

‘Jonas?’ Her heart lurched in fear. Dear heaven, Anna… What had happened?

But he saw her in the shadows, and his face cleared like magic. ‘Em.’

‘How is it with Anna?’

He’d taken a step toward her-for a moment she thought he was going to reach for her-but the tone of her voice stopped him.

It was meant to. She was getting far too emotionally involved here. She had to stand back a bit.

She couldn’t take his proffered hands.

So she made her voice clinical-doctor enquiring of colleague about a mutual patient-and she waited until he pulled himself into order.

‘I… She’s fine.’

She relented, just a little. ‘But you’re not fine,’ she told him. ‘I can see that. Come and have a cup of tea and tell me about it.’

‘You couldn’t make that a brandy?’

‘It went as badly as that?’

‘No.’ His face twisted into a grimace of a smile. ‘Hell, no. It’s just that I’m exhausted.’ He shrugged. ‘I didn’t get much sleep last night.’

Of course he hadn’t-and at least she’d had the train journey for sleep. Once more, her heart twisted. Somehow she managed to keep her voice dispassionate, but there were still these darned undercurrents running through her. Undercurrents she didn’t know what on earth to do with.

She took refuge in practicalities, crossing to the dresser, finding the brandy and pouring him a drink.

Handing it to him was tricky. She had to cross her emotional barrier. Her closeness limit. But then she backed away and hitched herself up onto the dresser, to watch him from a safe distance.

‘I won’t bite, you know,’ he said conversationally, and she managed a smile at that.

‘Nope. But I like it here.’ She motioned to the armchair. ‘Sit down and tell me all.’

He sat, but his eyes didn’t leave hers. ‘You look like a pale blue, very odd sort of garden gnome,’ he complained. ‘A garden gnome after a spray-paint job. You don’t look doctor-like at all.’

She thought about that, looked down at her jogging suit and smiled. ‘Hmm. Don’t you approve of the night-time me? Would you like to come through to my surgery while I put on a white coat?’

He grinned. ‘That’s kinky, Dr Mainwaring. I think I’ll leave it like it is. In fact, I kind of like it. Gnome-like instead of doctor-like.’

She smiled again, but then there was silence. Things settled between them. Almost. Em was still achingly aware of the closeness of him. He was eight feet away. Or, if you looked at it another way, he was three short steps away…

‘Tell me about Anna,’ she managed, and waited some more.

He looked at her, with that strange, questioning look that told her he only half believed she wanted to know. He wasn’t accustomed to professional caring, she thought. He wasn’t used to country doctors who worried about their patients on a personal as well as a professional level.

‘It’s gone as well as it could have,’ he told her.

‘Which means?’ Once more, she waited.

‘Small tumour. As the X-rays showed, it’s less than a centimetre across. It was all contained in the soft tissue under the breast, and it doesn’t look like there’s any spread at all. They’ve taken a fair margin, but there’s no sign of dispersion. They haven’t had to touch the nipple, so she’ll be left with one breast just slightly smaller than the other. If the pathology shows the margins are clear, I doubt Anna will even need a prosthesis.’

‘That’s great. And the nodes?’

‘They’ve done a complete node clearance. It looks good.’ Jonas’s face cleared then, but he looked down into the brandy as if he was trying desperately to see into the future. ‘One node was slightly enlarged, but we have to wait until late tomorrow or the next day for the pathology results.’

‘Oh, Jonas…’

‘It’s a bloody long wait,’ he said.

‘Longer for Anna than for you.’ But still it was hard for him. Suddenly she could bear it no longer. Slipping off her perch, she took the steps to cross the barrier between them. She placed her hands on the back of his neck and started to massage, slowly, expertly easing the knots of tension across his shoulder blades.

He sighed at her touch, and leaned back into her, but she knew his mind was still on Anna.

‘You know, even if it has spread to the nodes, at stage two the prognosis is still positive.’

‘I know that.’ He shook his head. ‘There was someone else there,’ he said slowly, and Em thought this through. He sounded so weary it was as if conversation was an effort.

‘Waiting to hear how Anna went, do you mean?’

‘Yes. Just sitting, like me, waiting to know she’d come out of Theatre.’

Her brow wrinkled. ‘Was it Kevin?’ She’d thought Anna’s de facto husband had long gone.

He shook his head at that. ‘No chance. If it had been, I reckon I’d have strangled him with my bare hands. This guy’s name is Jim Bainbridge. Big guy. In his late thirties.’

‘I know Jim.’ Em’s hands were still doing their gentle massage and she could feel the knots of tension in Jonas’s shoulders slowly unravel. ‘Jim’s the local fire chief. He’s a really nice man. Almost pathologically shy, though.’ She thought about it and saw the connection. ‘He’s Anna’s nearest neighbour. They share a back fence.’

‘Mmm.’

‘You think he’s fond of her?’

‘I think he looked almost as strained as me. He definitely cares.’

‘Well, Jim’s not a loser or an alcoholic,’ Em said softly, seeing where his thoughts were heading and allaying his fears before he voiced them. ‘He’s gentle, he’s steadily employed and, to my knowledge, he’s a one-can-of-beer-after-a-major-bushfire man.’

‘Well, that’d be a change.’ Jonas sighed again. ‘It’d be a big man to take on Anna, though. Three kids and breast cancer…’

That made Em pause. Her hands stilled. ‘You mean you don’t think Anna has anything left to offer?’ she asked quietly. ‘Just because she’s lost a piece of her breast?’

‘I didn’t mean that. Of course I didn’t mean that.’ Jonas’s face creased into a weary smile, and his hands came up and caught hers over his shoulders. ‘I only meant…well, three kids are a handful, and on top of that she’s running scared.’

‘Just like you.’

‘I’m not scared.’

‘Of relationships?’ Her hands broke away from his and went back to kneading. ‘Of needing people? Pull the other leg, Jonas Lunn.’

Silence.

‘I’m not, you know,’ he said conversationally, as though it had only just occurred to him.

‘Scared of relationships?’

‘That’s right.’

‘So you’re aching to fall in love, right at this minute.’

‘I could be tempted,’ he said, and the warmth in his voice gave her pause. ‘For instance, if you said right now that you’d come to bed with me…’

‘You’d have your packet of condoms out quicker than I could say wedding ring,’ she said bluntly, and she couldn’t quite keep the bitterness out of her voice. ‘That’d be right. Only it’s not going to happen. Neither of us will say bed, you won’t say condoms, and I won’t say wedding ring. Because it’s not what either of us wants.’

‘You don’t necessarily,’ he said carefully, ‘have to take bed, condoms and wedding ring as a job lot. They can be separated.’

‘What, go to bed with you without a condom?’ She raised her eyebrows in mock indignation. Still she kept on massaging. It was a link she didn’t want broken, condoms or not. ‘Gee, thanks very much. We have four kids here already. You’re saying let’s make it five?’

‘I meant the marriage thing,’ he told her. He put her hands away, rose and twisted to face her, his eyes suddenly serious. He placed his hands on her shoulders, forcing her to meet his gaze. ‘Enough.’ His eyes were locked on hers, and they were suddenly deadly serious. ‘Em, you need to know that I’d like to make love to you. Very, very much.’

And she didn’t?

She wanted to make love with Jonas more than anything in the world, she thought wildly. She wanted him to wrap her in those strong arms, to hold her against his chest, to lift her into bed and make her believe…

Make her believe for a few magic minutes that she was young and desirable, and free to make any choice she wanted in life.

But that was the way of madness.

Because at the end of all this, when Anna no longer needed him, he’d walk away without a backward glance.

And his next words confirmed it.

‘Em, there’s no need for you to look like you’re being asked to commit for life here,’ he told her. ‘For heaven’s sake, how old are you?’

‘Twenty-nine.’

‘And I’m thirty-three. That’s old enough to know we can take pleasure where we find it.’

‘And walk away afterwards.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Except it doesn’t work like that,’ she told him sadly, reality crashing back where it belonged. ‘Like me and Robby.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘I thought I could just love Robby for a little bit,’ she said, and her voice was bleak. ‘So I let myself become…involved. And now I’ve got it hard. The full bit. Because, as well as Robby needing me, I need him. I love him, Jonas. That’s what love is. Needing, and being needed in return. So now here he is, sleeping in the cot beside me, and the longer it goes on the more it’ll tear my heart out when he leaves.’

‘I didn’t know you felt like that.’ He frowned. ‘Where’s your professional detachment, Dr Mainwaring?’

‘I don’t have any.’ She took a deep breath and pulled back from him. ‘You seem to have it in spades but I don’t have my share. And it’s not fair. Because for you it’s no problem.’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’ He was frowning.

‘You could have a wife and a family any time you want,’ she said, and his brow snapped down again.

‘I don’t want.’

‘Exactly.’ She dug her hands into the pockets of her capacious sleeping trousers and met his look full on. ‘But I do. I always have. A family would be…wonderful. But I also want to be Bay Beach’s doctor. The two together are impossible.’

‘You could marry a local,’ he said, thinking it through. ‘And adopt Robby.’

‘Oh, yes?’ She jeered. ‘How could I do that? What man would take me on, when he’d know I’m on call twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week? You might be able to find a wife who’d live with you on those terms, but male-female roles haven’t changed so much that I could find a husband who’d live with it. There’s not a snowball’s chance in a bushfire of me forming a long-term relationship.’

‘Are things here so tough?’

‘They are,’ she said bluntly. ‘This town’s big enough for two doctors, and there aren’t enough doctors in the neighbouring towns. So I’m it. I’m overworked, I love my job but it allows me no time at all for anything else.’

‘Even for Robby?’

She tilted her chin at that. ‘There is nothing in the world I’d like more than to adopt Robby,’ she told him, and the words confirmed it even to herself. ‘For some reason I’ve fallen for him in a big way. I want him so badly I ache with it. But what sort of mother would I make?’

‘I think you’d make a fine one.’

‘Yeah, here for thirty minutes of every day and that thirty minutes interchangeable depending on the demands of my patients.’ His incomprehension was making her angry. ‘Robby would be brought up by a nanny. Amy, maybe? Until she finds a better job? No! He’s much better off being adopted by someone who can love him to bits-who can be a real mother to him.’

‘But his aunt won’t hear of adoption.’

‘She will. Eventually she must.’

‘And meanwhile you keep tearing your heart out.’

‘I wouldn’t be tearing my heart out if you hadn’t offered for us to look after him.’

‘I’m sorry about that, Em,’ he told her gently. ‘I hadn’t realised. But, then, if I hadn’t offered he’d be in Sydney and you’d still be aching for him.’

‘Yes, well…’ The gentleness in Jonas’s tone was almost her undoing. Em felt the moisture welling behind her eyes and gave a defiant sniff. ‘You weren’t to know.’

‘I do now.’

‘There’s nothing to be done.’

‘Except live with it,’ he said softly. ‘I guess you’re right. As we need to live with this whole damned arrangement. Me and you and our four kids.’

‘And walk away at the end of it?’ Her voice was hopeless.

‘Yes. With great memories, though.’ He caught her shoulders and he looked deep into his eyes. His hold was firm and strong-the hold of a man claiming his own.

But, of course, he wasn’t.

‘Wonderful memories,’ he said softly. ‘Em, we both know this is transient-I have a world to go back to when I know Anna has recovered-but we can make it so good for now. We can give the kids a really good time. And…’

‘And?’ But she knew what he was about to say before he said it.

He said it, just the same. ‘Em, I think you’re one special lady. Sure, I’m not a man who puts down roots-I never will be-but that doesn’t stop me forming relationships if the lady’s special enough. And I really would like to sleep with you.’

She flinched. ‘I suppose I should feel flattered.’

‘No.’ He was watching her dispassionately. ‘Because you want the same thing. I can feel it.’

‘No!’

‘Go on.’ His eyes mocked her. ‘Say you don’t want it.’

‘I don’t want it.’

‘Liar.’ His hold tightened and suddenly there was a link between them that was growing stronger by the minute. It was the silence, she thought desperately. It was the warmth of the big, old house. The knowledge that there were four children sleeping in their care…

It was a setting that felt so sweet it made Em want to weep, and the more she looked up at this man the more she found it impossible to pull away.

‘Em…’ His eyes were searching hers, seeking an answer which she didn’t have the strength to give.

She should pull away. She should whisk herself back to her bedroom and lock the door behind her, leaving Jonas to watch her go.

But she could no sooner do it than fly. The link between them was way, way too strong.

He released her shoulders and his hands cupped her face. His fingers were tracing the paleness of her throat, pushing her face gently up to meet his.

And then there was a long, long silence-a silence where things were built and not broken. Where things were said that could never be said aloud.

Where things were joined that couldn’t lightly be put asunder.

Their eyes stayed locked. There was confusion in both of them-uncertainty-a lack of knowledge of the future-but for now, right at this moment, there was only each other.

And then he kissed her.

Em had been kissed before.

Of course she’d been kissed before. She was twenty-nine, she’d had a normal fun life as a medical student and even after she’d come back to Bay Beach there’d been men who’d fancied their chances with Dr Emily. They hadn’t wanted the baggage of the workload that went with her but, intermittently, they’d wanted her.

So she’d been kissed.

But not like this!

This was a kiss that she hadn’t believed was possible. It was the joining of two halves of a whole, she thought desperately as the warmth from Jonas’s mouth flooded through her body, warming her from the tip of her toes to the top of her head.

Warming her?

It was the wrong description. This was like resuscitation, she thought dazedly. It was like bringing the dead back to life.

Until this moment she’d never known she could feel like this, and the sensation was indescribable.

His lips claimed hers. Their mouths held and locked. Jonas’s arms were around her, crushing her breasts to his chest, and she was melting into him like this was her natural home.

Man and woman-meeting and merging. Becoming one.

The sweetness was indescribable. It was threatening to overwhelm her. The feeling that here at last was her place in the sun. Her man…

Only he wasn’t her man. He was Jonas Lunn, city surgeon, and in a few weeks he’d be away from here for good. He’d love her and leave her, and she’d have to get on with her dreary existence without him.

Her hair would have to stay braided.

So when his hand went to the base of her braid and she felt him twist the tie, wanting to free her mass of hair, the sensation made her pull away in instinctive self-defence.

‘No!’

‘Yes,’ he said, and his gorgeous eyes mocked hers. ‘You want this, Emily Mainwaring. You know it. You want this as much as I do.’

‘Maybe I do,’ she said honestly, meeting his eyes with candour. ‘But maybe I have enough sense to see where it would lead.’

‘It would lead to two people taking comfort in each other-that’s all.’

‘And then you’d walk away?’

‘Yes,’ he said honestly. ‘Of course I would. And life would keep going, but it’d be the richer for our joining.’

‘No, it wouldn’t, Jonas,’ she said, and her voice was tight with strain and bleakness. ‘It’d be dreadful. Like me losing Robby now. I’d break my heart.’

‘You don’t lose your heart by going to bed with someone.’

‘No?’ She glared at him. Men! Were they all this insensitive? ‘How else do you lose it?’

‘I guess you don’t lose it at all,’ he said uneasily. ‘At least, I don’t.’

‘Lucky you.’

‘Em, this is hardly World War Three. Do you have to be so dramatic?’

‘I’m not being dramatic.’ She was really angry now. What had he said?

‘That doesn’t stop me forming relationships if the lady’s special enough…’

How many special ladies had he walked away from?

Well, one of them wasn’t going to be her, she decided, and it was her anger that finally pulled her through. It gave her strength. Heavens, she had enough on her plate, worrying about Robby and the medical needs of Bay Beach, without tying herself in knots over this man.

‘Go to bed, Jonas,’ she told him.

‘With you?’

‘Your bedroom door’s thataway. And my bedroom’s in the other direction. So take yourself off and leave me alone. I don’t want you.’

‘Liar.’

‘I may be a liar but I’m lying for the best,’ she told him bluntly. ‘Whereas your way wreaks havoc for everyone. And I’m starting to see why Anna holds herself back from you. You’re detached and independent and you don’t give yourself at all.’

‘I give-’

‘You give your time, your money and your work. But not yourself, Jonas. And it’s not enough. You want to be needed, but you won’t need in return. It’s not enough for Anna, and it’s not enough for me. Goodnight!’

She walked into her bedroom and slammed the door behind her. Hard.

How could she sleep after that?

She lay in the dark and listened to Robby’s gentle snuffling, and her heart cried out for what could never be.

A baby and a man. A man and a baby.

Her two impossible loves.

In the adjoining room, Jonas did the same. He lay in the dark and let the events of the last twenty-four hours unfold around him.

Anna. Anna pushing him away. ‘I don’t need you. I don’t need anyone,’ she’d said as he’d offered to stay into the night.

And Em…

‘You give your time, your money and your work. But not yourself…’

What was a man to do?

He was just trying to do what was right, he told himself bleakly. He’d come down here because Anna needed him, whether she knew she did or not. And Em… She needed him too, emotionally as well as for her precious medicine.

So why couldn’t they just let him give what he was able to?

Because he’d walk away.

It was the truth. He knew it, and he’d acknowledged it openly. Anything else would be dishonest.

He wouldn’t make love to Em under false pretences. He didn’t need her. He didn’t need anyone.

But he wanted to make love to Emily so much that it hurt.

Hell!

The children were out of bed before he was, and his first waking thought was that a ten-ton weight had landed on his chest. But no. It was just three children.

‘Wake up, Uncle Jonas. Em’s making toast, even Bernard’s awake and we asked Em how Mum was but she said to ask you. So we came in to ask.’

Three little faces peered at him with varying levels of anxiety, and he relented enough to gather as many arms and legs as he could into a together bear-hug. It felt strange-but good.

These were his niece and nephews. He’d never been allowed close but they, it seemed, didn’t have the reservations their mother had.

‘Your mum came though the operation fine,’ he told them. ‘If everything goes well the ambulance will bring her back to the Bay Beach Hospital tomorrow, so you’ll be able to see her then for yourselves.’

They’d arranged that already. They could have transferred her today, but Anna wanted to be away when the test results came through. She wanted time out without the children, to come to terms with everything that had happened to her.

And to prepare herself for the worst, if the worst was likely.

Please, let it not be, Jonas said silently, and told himself again that there was no reason to think that it should come to the worst.

Cancer. What was the medical saying? That it was a word. Not a sentence…

He forced his attention back on the kids. ‘Did you say Em’s making toast?’

‘Yep. She’s just got back. There was a farmer who got his foot crushed when a cow stood on him.’ That was Sam. ‘So when we woke up, one of the nurses was here and she told us to be very quiet until you woke up. But then Em came back and said you were a lazy-bones so we could come and wake you up all we liked.’

‘Isn’t Em wonderful?’ He grinned and threw back the covers, but a part of him felt guilty. She’d been out working while he’d slept. She’d organised a nurse to check the kids so he could sleep on.

She had the phone beside her bed, he thought. Another was in the hall, but if she answered on the first ring he wouldn’t hear it.

That’d have to be changed.

But the kids were focusing on breakfast. ‘There’s three sorts of jam,’ Ruby told him earnestly. ‘Em’s got strawberry jam and raspberry jam and marmalade, and Bernard likes marmalade best, and Robby’s got strawberry jam all over his face.’

‘I bet he has.’

‘Come on, Uncle Jonas.’

‘Wait until I get dressed.’

‘The toast’s ready now!’ And, like it or not, his pyjama-clad figure was towed forth into the kitchen.

Em was there, and the sight of her made him…well, it sort of set him back.

It wasn’t a shock, exactly. She was looking the same as she had the day before. It was just that she was holding baby Robby in her arms and was chuckling at the mess he’d made, and Bernard, amazingly, was on his feet, whuffling around for more toast. Em was surrounded by domesticity and chaos.

It was nothing he couldn’t recover from, he told himself harshly. Given time.

And a bit of distance.

It wasn’t to be. Robby was thrust into his arms like he was expected to take a dual parenting role. ‘I need a facecloth,’ Em told him. ‘Urgently. Take a kid while I find one.’ Then she looked him up and down. ‘By the way, I love your pyjamas.’

They were silk. They also had very cute pandas all over them. A gift from a lady friend…

Hell, he almost felt like blushing.

The kids were giggling, too. ‘We didn’t think uncles would wear pandas on their pyjamas,’ Ruby said seriously, and Jonas swooped her up in his spare arm. So he had two kids in hand.

‘There’s nothing this uncle can’t do,’ he told her grandly.

‘Changing nappies?’ Em teased, and he winced.

‘It’s a learned skill,’ he told her. ‘As a surgeon, I’ve just learned to apply sticking plasters. It takes years and years of practice before I can graduate to nappies.’

‘Plus a bit of raw courage thrown in for good measure.’ She was laughing at him, and the sight unnerved him. She was so…

Gorgeous.

Em was gorgeous, he told himself as she attacked Robby with a facecloth. She was dressed for practicality, in jeans and T-shirt, her hair was drawn back into its customary severe braid, she wore not a touch of make-up-and she was gorgeous!

He wanted her so badly…

For now.

And she wouldn’t let him near because he’d hurt her long-term.

She had to be the judge of that, he told himself as he settled down to breakfast, surrounded by kids and chaos. No means no. The lady doesn’t want you, Jonas Lunn. You’ll complicate her life, and the last thing you want is to complicate anyone’s life.

Isn’t it?

Hmm.