Storm Haven Read online

  He shook his head. ‘Nikki, I’m only here for three weeks. Then I get out of your life forever. But for those three weeks I intend getting rid of the shadows-or at least having a damned good try. You need someone to talk to. So talk to me.’

  ‘I don’t want to.’ It was practically a wail, and Luke smiled.

  ‘Yes, you do,’ he told her, and pulled her firmly in to lie against him. His hand came up to run through her mass of golden-red curls and his fingers sent warmth and reassurance through her body. ‘Beattie tells me you’ve been carrying this for five years. It’s too long to carry bitterness and hate. So tell me.’

  Nikki held her body stiffly, resentfully, but the fingers did their work insidiously. His hand moved against her head, sending messages of reassurance and comfort through her. Let the bitterness go, his hand was telling her. Tell me. Tell someone. Spill it out. And he wouldn’t release her until she did…

  ‘Scott was my husband,’ she said stiffly, reluctantly. ‘But I suppose Beattie told you that.’

  ‘And he left you?’

  ‘Yes.’ It was crazy talking to this man, cradled against his shoulder like a child needing comfort. She didn’t feel like a child, though. Nikki felt every inch a woman and her body was achingly aware of his.

  And yet…And yet she could talk to him. This was a comfort she had never known-a peace she had never been blessed with.

  ‘Scott and I grew up together,’ she said slowly. She was talking into the soft folds of Luke’s shirt. His face was above hers. She could feel the beating of his heart. There was no need to talk above a whisper.

  ‘Scott’s father was a fisherman,’ she continued. ‘But Scott hankered for life away from here. We went to university together in Brisbane-Scott to do law and me to do medicine.’ She sighed. ‘Scott’s motives-well, I’m not sure why he wanted to do law-but my mother had severe rheumatoid arthritis and ever since I was tiny I’d been frustrated by not being able to help. So we went to Brisbane-two kids from a tiny town-and we just kept on together. Scott was always there. Just as he’d been when I was small.’

  ‘Your parents were wealthy?’

  Nikki stiffened in Luke’s hold but his fingers didn’t pause in their gentle stroking. He was way ahead of her. He could read her mind, this man. It seemed that she didn’t need to tell him anything. He knew.

  ‘My father was the son of a British peer,’ Nikki said bitterly. ‘He had a fight with his father, came to Australia when he was a teenager, married my mother and stayed. Money was never a problem for us-or at least it never appeared a problem. Dad was Lord Peter Russell, and he never stopped using the Lord. My mother’s family left us Whispering Palms but my father always implied that he was humouring her by living in her childhood home rather than something much more grand. My father didn’t work. He spent heaps on my mother and me, and he made it sound as though he had lots for me to inherit. That’s why…’

  ‘That’s why Scott asked you to marry him.’

  Nikki writhed in Luke’s grasp but his hold didn’t ease. Instead it tightened and the waves of warmth and reassurance increased. ‘Tell me, Nikki,’ he said.

  ‘Of course it was why he asked me to marry him,’ Nikki said reluctantly. ‘But I was too stupid to see. I didn’t realise that the only reason someone so vibrant-so alive-as Scott would want to be with me was because he was on to something he couldn’t get any other way.’ She shook her head and angry tears started behind her eyes.

  ‘Scott and I were married while we were still at university,’ she continued bitterly. ‘We were happy for a while. And then, just as I graduated, my mother died. And my father-the man who I always thought was the strong one-couldn’t face what was left behind. He took what he believed was the only way out.’

  Luke gave an almost soundless whistle. ‘Tough!’ he said softly.

  ‘It was.’ Nikki put a hand up to wipe away angry tears but Luke was before her, his hand taking the tears away from her eyes. ‘But it got worse. After his funeral they gave me a note which he’d left with his lawyer.’ She took a deep breath. ‘My father left a note saying the money had finished a couple of years earlier-that he couldn’t face life without money and he was deep in debt. He’d managed to hide it until my mother had died but now…Now the only way for him was suicide…’

  ‘And Scott?’ Luke’s voice was grim.

  ‘Scott!’ Nikki laughed, a harsh, tight little sound that was caught by Luke’s nearness. ‘At first Scott was so supportive. He was marvellous when my mother died, and when they found my father. I remember thinking, At least I have. Scott. With Scott I can face this. Only then-the night of the funeral-the lawyer gave me the note and Scott and I read it together. And then… and then we sat down and went through my father’s desk and realised that after coping with the bills there would be nothing.’

  ‘I see.’

  Luke did see. From his voice Nikki knew she didn’t have to say the rest. It came out, though. It seemed as if it had to.

  ‘At first I thought Scott was just upset for me-but then…then I said that at least we still had Whispering Palms. It was my mother’s. She…she must have known about my father’s debts. The house was left in trust for our…for my children, so it couldn’t be sold. So at least we had a home…’

  ‘And Scott wasn’t impressed.’

  Nikki shrugged listlessly. ‘Scott said he was damned if he was working hard for the rest of his life. He said he’d been conned. He said he’d been trapped into marriage-that my father had led him to believe there were millions. And that much was true,’ Nikki admitted. ‘My father had always talked big. And Scott… well, Scott just stood up at the end of it and said, “That’s it, Nikki. This is where I get off.” And he walked out. Just like that. Just like…just like my father. “This is where I get off”.’

  Nikki fell silent. She stood motionless against Luke while his fingers did their work. ‘I never saw him again,’ she whispered finally. ‘He wrote once, to ask for a divorce. But that was all…’

  ‘Well.’ Luke’s fingers had stilled but now they started again. ‘That must have been some week out of your life, Nikki.’

  She shrugged. ‘In that week I had my pregnancy confirmed. In that week…well, it was the week I found out what the world is really all about.’

  ‘What Scott was all about,’ Luke said grimly. ‘You can’t judge the world by your father’s weakness and Scott’s appalling behaviour. You can’t, Nikki.’ He put her away from him then, his hands holding her shoulders at arm’s length, allowing him to look into her tear-drenched eyes. ‘Believe me, you can’t.’

  And for a moment she almost believed him. Nikki looked up into the depths of those eyes and found her world shifting. She could drown in those eyes. She could let herself go. She could be as big a fool over this man as she had been over Scott.

  Then from nowhere Charlotte’s words came crashing into her head to haul her back to reality. ‘Luke Marriott had every junior nurse, some senior ones, and a few female doctors besides, making fools of themselves every time he walked past. He’s broken more hearts than I care to name.’ Charlotte’s words echoed over and over again until Nikki came to her senses.

  Luke Marriott wasn’t breaking her heart. She wasn’t going to make a fool of herself. Not again. She couldn’t bear it. With an angry thrust she put herself away from him and whirled to face the door.

  ‘I know I can’t keep judging,’ she said bitterly, ‘but I can make darned sure I’m not such a fool again.’

  ‘If you don’t trust, then you can’t love,’ he said softly.

  She turned back to face him. ‘Well, who can I trust?’ she demanded. ‘Are you to be trusted? I don’t even know why the hell you’re here, Luke Marriott. You should be sitting back in Cairns with your adoring nursing staff and your highly paid surgical career…’

  That’s right,’ he said equitably. ‘I should be.’

  ‘So why the hell aren’t you?’ Nikki had gone past the point of courtesy. This man had lef
t her raw and exposed and she wanted to lash back-at any cost. ‘Why aren’t you there? What are you running from?’

  ‘I’m not running from anything.’

  ‘No?’ Nikki gave a bitter laugh. ‘Something had to go wrong in your life to make you give up such a lucrative profession as your surgical career. I’ve told you my pathetic past, Luke Marriott. Now you show me your shadows.’

  Luke’s eyes darkened. For a moment Nikki thought he would walk out of the room in anger, without replying. Then his look changed.

  ‘Fair enough,’ he said softly. ‘You did tell me.’

  ‘So…? So why did you leave Cairns in such a hurry?’ The words came out slowly as Nikki’s anger died. Suddenly she wasn’t sure she wanted to know his reason. And when it came, she was sure of it.

  There was a very good reason,’ he said slowly. ‘I had cancer.’

  Cancer…

  The word echoed around and around the small room. Nikki stared across at Luke as if he had physically struck her.

  ‘Cancer,’ she said blankly.

  ‘That’s right.’

  She took a deep breath. ‘What…what sort…?’

  ‘Hodgkin’s disease.’

  It had to be, she thought dully. Hodgkin’s disease was a cancer of the lymph glands, often presenting in otherwise healthy young males. Nikki had seen a couple of cases in her practice. One had died and Nikki still cringed at the tragic waste.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I…I see.’

  ‘No.’ He shook his head and his eyes were suddenly far-away. ‘I bet you don’t see, Dr Russell. Only someone who’s faced cancer themselves can see what a diagnosis like that can do to you.’

  ‘It must…it must have been frightening.’

  He shrugged. ‘What do you think?’ He closed his eyes momentarily. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been so scared in my whole life.’

  Nikki moistened her lips, searching for the right words. In the end she found refuge in medicine-a doctor’s approach.

  ‘How did you find it?’

  ‘I had night sweats,’ he said shortly. ‘I’d been working too damned hard and was feeling pretty run down. Then I started waking drenched with sweat. For a while I told myself I was imagining things. Then I found a swollen lymph node in my neck.’

  ‘Weight loss?’

  ‘No.’ He smiled without humour. ‘I was living too well for that.’

  Still…Nikki’s mind was racing. Without weight loss, he’d caught it early.

  ‘So you had tests in Cairns?’

  ‘No.’ Luke grimaced. ‘I can put two and two together pretty fast, even if I was hoping to hell I was making fourteen. I was at the end of a job in Cairns. An oncologist friend, Rod Olsing, who worked with me for a while in Cairns, had just moved to Sydney, so I rang him and took myself down there.’

  ‘Why?’

  He shrugged again. His habitual smile was gone, replaced with bleak remembrance.

  ‘Cowardice, if you like. In Cairns I’d been successful and totally in control. Suddenly I was badly out of control and I couldn’t face it. So I went south and faced it there.’

  ‘And it was bad?’ Nikki’s voice had softened in automatic sympathy.

  ‘Yeah. It was bad.’ He gave a short laugh. ‘And there’s nothing like lying in a strange hospital thinking you’re facing death for making you look at life. Or what you’ve been calling life.’

  ‘You had radiotherapy?’

  ‘And chemotherapy.’ Luke dug his hands deep in his pockets and turned away. ‘The X-rays and CT scan were clear, thank God. The glands in the neck were the only ones affected, but the night sweats made me stage 1B instead of stage 1A. Hence they gave me the works.’

  Nikki nodded. The appearance of a single tumour would usually be treated just by radiotherapy. The night sweats would mean chemotherapy, though. Involuntarily her eyes went to Luke’s shock of blond hair and he caught her look as he turned back to face her.

  ‘It’s grown back nicely,’ he said grimly, touching his hair. ‘That’s the least of the side-effects.’

  Nikki nodded sympathetically. ‘But you’ve been in remission now for…?’

  ‘For close on two years.’

  ‘But that means there’s every chance you’re cured. The cure-rate for Hodgkin’s is…’

  ‘Over seventy per cent if it’s caught at stage one. I know, Dr Russell; believe me, I know.’

  ‘Well, then.’ Nikki took a deep breath. ‘Well, then, why aren’t you getting on with life again?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘By running?’

  ‘I’m not running.’

  ‘So what are you doing here? Isn’t your career centred on the city? You’ll never get anywhere doing three-week locums.’

  He shook his head. ‘On the contrary, Dr Russell. I’ll never get anywhere by being a successful city surgeon.’ He touched her hair lightly with his finger. ‘And now, if you’ll excuse me, Dr Russell, your locum is going to bed.’

  To bed but not to sleep.

  Nikki lay for hours watching the light of the full moon gradually move across her ceiling. The big ceiling fan whirred lazily, mesmerically, over her head. Usually it soothed her to sleep, but not tonight.

  Hodgkin’s disease…The prognosis ran around Nikki’s tired mind as though she were being examined tomorrow. Even with the added symptom of night sweats, Luke’s prognosis was good. If he’d been in remission for two years he was nearly out of danger. Nearly…

  And then something hit her tired mind, making her sit up in bed and turn on her light. Hodgkin’s disease…Treatment…

  Was she right? Suddenly it was imperative that she know, and know right now. Now…

  Padding softly through the darkened house, she found the text she wanted and returned to bed. Where was it…? Treatment of Hodgkin’s…Diagnosis… Management…Chemotherapy…

  What regime had they used? Nikki flicked the pages over, missing what she wanted in her urgency and having to return.

  There were two chemotherapy regimes listed. The first was MOPP…Nikki stared blankly at the printed page. ‘MOPP is associated with significant toxicity including infertility…MOPP therapy produces nearuniversal sterility in males…’

  MOPP wasn’t warranted, though. Not for stage 1B. The lesser regime was ABVD: ‘Adriamycin, bleomycin, vinblastine and dacarbazine…Reduced risk of sterility…Recommended in stage 1B…’

  Surely they’d used ABVD and not MOPP?

  Even so…Even so, there was a strong chance that Luke Marriott was now sterile-that he would no longer be able to father children.

  How would such an outcome hit a man who exuded masculinity as Luke Marriott did? To know that he could never father a child…

  It was all just too hard. There was too much going on in Nikki’s tired mind for her to assess what she had been told. Somehow her eyes managed to close and she fell into a troubled, dream-filled sleep.

  She woke to laughter.

  Nikki stirred, her eyes moving automatically to her bedside clock. It was close on seven, later than she usually woke, but in her exhausted, troubled state the night before she had not set the alarm.

  The laughter sounded again, the high, tinkling sound of Amy having fun. For a moment Nikki frowned, thinking how rarely she had heard that sound lately. Why?

  And then she heard a splash, and Nikki rose to her feet before she was aware she was doing so, her feet flying to the door. Amy wasn’t allowed in the pool by herself. She knew the rules. It wasn’t safe…She flung open the French windows, stepped through into the soft, morning sunlight, and stopped dead.

  Amy wasn’t alone in the pool. Luke Marriott was there too, his arms holding the laughing little girl high above the water and then swooping her down like a bird, so that her body flitted through the water and then swept up again, showering the man beneath her with sunlit water.

  ‘Do it again,’ Amy screamed. ‘Do it again.’ And Luke obliged, laughing with her.

  Was this her daug
hter? Nikki put her hand to her eyes as if to rub the shreds of dreaming from them. Amy was a serious, grave little girl who seldom laughed. She took her life seriously, did Amy.

  Or maybe that wasn’t true. As Amy had been brought up in a house with an elderly housekeeper and a mother who distrusted the world, maybe there just weren’t enough opportunities for laughter.

  Amy looked up then and saw her mother. ‘Look at me,’ she screamed happily. ‘Look at me, Mummy. Dr Luke’s teaching me to dive. Look at me dive. Do it again, Dr Luke.’

  Luke Marriott looked up at Nikki, his eyes quizzing her dangerously. ‘Maybe your mummy had better go put on her swimming costume and join us. She’d be more respectable that way.’

  With a gasp Nikki looked down. Her nightgown was a short, soft cotton one that was years old, and its age meant that it was almost transparently thin. And the sun was behind her! She put her hands up to cover her breasts and backed away.

  ‘Mummy, do come in.’ Amy’s voice pleaded with her. ‘Please, Mummy. We’re having a really, really lot of fun.’

  ‘Amy, I have to work,’ Nikki said uncertainly. ‘You and Luke are enjoying yourselves without me.’

  ‘I always enjoy myself without you,’ Amy said sadly. ‘But if Dr Luke is here too…’

  Oh, help…The tiny niggle of guilt which her daughter’s laughter caused now rose to overwhelm her. ‘I always enjoy myself without you’…

  They were both watching her now-man and child. Amy was nestled in Luke’s arms as though she belonged. She watched her mother with eyes that expected to be rebuffed. Luke’s eyes gave away nothing.

  ‘OK.’ Nikki swallowed. ‘I’ll come in.’

  She was rewarded instantly with Amy’s whoop of joy. ‘Yes!’ she yelled. ‘Mummy’s coming in. Mummy’s coming in! Hurry, Mummy. The water’s beeyoootiful…’ She arched back and plummeted her small body downwards, under water, and emerged, choking and laughing. ‘We’ll get Mummy in, won’t we, Dr Luke?’

  ‘It’s your Mummy’s decision,’ Luke grinned. ‘We have nothing to do with it.’

  ‘Oh, yeah?’ Nikki said to herself grimly, stalking in to find her bathing costume. This place had been sane before Luke Marriott arrived. The man was turning their lives upside-down.