His Secret Love-Child Read online

  ‘He wasn’t the result of any sperm bank. Em, we need to write up these notes.’

  ‘Yeah, Charles told me it was a really hot affair.’ Em grinned, refusing to be deflected. ‘Not a sperm bank at all. This is the one that gossip says broke your heart. Charles said she really cracked your armour and it’s the only time in your life it’s ever been cracked. Well, now.’

  ‘Em…’

  ‘Hey, but she’s here and you don’t have an excuse to be heartbroken any more.’ Em even looked cheerful. ‘You’ve been using the excuse that you loved and lost for five long years. You’ve been using it to keep the world and commitment at bay. Now you can take up where you left off. And she’s not married. You know, I’ll bet that was one of the things that attracted you to her in the first place. I can see letting yourself fall for a divorcée with as jaded a view of commitment as you have. But now… I wonder what you’ll decide to do now?’

  ‘What the-?’

  ‘She’s been an excuse, hasn’t she, Cal?’ Em said softly, boring right to the heart of the matter. There was something about this time, this place-the dim light of the nursery with only this one tiny baby between them-that made a conversation like this seem possible. Or less impossible. ‘All these years, you’ve been telling yourself that you haven’t got involved with anyone because Gina broke your heart. You’ve been letting us all think you still love Gina.’

  ‘I don’t,’ he snapped. But… Did he?

  ‘Then why haven’t you gone out with other women?’

  ‘I have. Look, can we leave this?’

  ‘Of course,’ she agreed. ‘But as for going out with other women… Sure you do, until they get the first idea that they might be able to expect some emotional return. Then you drop them like hot coals. And if you think the rest of the staff in the house will leave it, you’re very much mistaken. Are you taking over here at nine?’

  ‘Nine till twelve. Yes.’

  ‘There you go, then.’ She turned back to her little patient. ‘We’ll just have to keep you alive until then, won’t we, Lucky?’ Her face softened. ‘And then it’s Dr Cal’s turn to keep you alive. Or Dr Gina’s, or whoever else is on duty. But we will keep you alive.’

  The intensity of her voice shocked him.

  ‘Of course we will,’ he told her, and she looked up and met his eyes. Her own eyes welled with tears.

  ‘There’s a mother out there who doesn’t have a son,’ she whispered. ‘It’s our job to keep our Lucky safe until we find her. But isn’t it strange that on this day, when we’ve found this unknown baby, you’ve found your own son?’ She smiled at him, a wavering smile that said as much about her own fragile emotional state as it did about her uncertainty over the little boy’s fate. ‘Go on, now, Cal. I have a job to do. And maybe you do, too. See if you can find CJ before you come back on duty. You have years of catching up to do.’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE house was still when Cal returned. Unusually still. Everyone must be out, he decided. Or busy.

  Half their luck.

  He grabbed a beer but then replaced it. With regret. He could really use a beer, but if he was to go back on duty at nine he had to leave it.

  Why was the kitchen empty? And the lounge? Where was everyone? This house was always full of people. He needed people.

  He needed people now.

  The door swung wide and he turned, but it wasn’t the people he wanted. Or maybe it was.

  ‘Hi.’ It was Gina. And CJ. His son.

  They’d been laughing, he thought. CJ was still smiling broadly and there was a trace of a smile fading from Gina’s face. Gina had showered and changed since he’d last seen her. Apparently her luggage was on the coach to Cairns, but someone had lent her jeans and a soft blue and white gingham blouse. She’d brushed her dark curls until they shone and she looked…she looked…

  ‘Did you have a good evening?’ he managed, but then he had to think for a minute to figure out what his words meant. Everything seemed disoriented.

  Luckily CJ noticed nothing strange. He was more than prepared to chat. ‘Bruce took us to Athina’s for dinner ’cos he says Mrs Poulos makes the best food in town,’ he told him. ‘And tomorrow he says he’ll take us crocodile hunting again.’

  ‘I’m not sure whether we can go,’ Gina told him.

  ‘But we have to go. And he gave me this hat.’ This was obviously the highlight of the evening. The little boy was wearing a vast, battered Akubra Cal would have recognised from a mile away.

  ‘Bruce gave you his hat?’ Here was another astonishment. Cal knew Bruce well, and he knew the croc hunter lived in this hat.

  But apparently no longer.

  ‘He says it’s time he got a new one,’ CJ said proudly, lifting it off his head to poke his finger through a hole, centre-front. ‘I asked him if this was from a bullet and he said it might have been.’

  ‘Bedtime, CJ.’ Gina was steering CJ firmly toward the door.

  CJ balked, planting his feet. Bracing himself.

  ‘Can Cal read me a story?’

  ‘Cal’s busy.’

  ‘He doesn’t look busy.’

  ‘CJ…’

  ‘I’ll read him a story.’

  ‘You-’

  ‘Have you told CJ anything about me?’ He was angry, he decided, sorting through the myriad emotions he was experiencing and choosing the one in the forefront. He hadn’t met this kid until now, and CJ-his son-was wearing another man’s hat.

  ‘I’ve told CJ that you’ve been a friend of mine for a long time.’ Gina’s voice was carefully neutral. ‘I guess…if you do want to read to him then it’s fine.’

  ‘I do want.’

  ‘Then I’ll help him brush his teeth and put on his pjs. Jill’s found us some gear to keep us going until I can retrieve my luggage. So… His bedroom in five minutes?’

  ‘Fine.’

  Why had he done that? This was a crazy situation. He didn’t want to get involved.

  He was involved.

  CJ had beamed up at him from underneath Bruce’s hat and…

  And he was involved right up to his neck.

  It was Gina’s turn to sit alone on the veranda.

  The big French windows leading to her son’s bedroom were wide open. She could hear everything that was going on inside. So she sat, staring out at the moonlit sea, listening to Cal’s deep voice reading her son a story.

  This was CJ’s favourite book, carried everywhere in his backpack, and she must have read it to him a thousand times. Paul had read it to him even more.

  Now his father was reading it to him.

  She blinked. Hard.

  No tears. No tears!

  This is an unsentimental journey, she told herself fiercely, staring into the deepening darkness. Just come, introduce the two of them and get out of here.

  So why did you tell him you’d loved him, she asked herself, sifting through the conversation she’d had with the man she was listening to.

  She hadn’t meant to admit that. But telling him about CJ…there hadn’t seemed any way to explain her little son’s existence without acknowledging love. CJ had been conceived in love and she was proud of it. The fact that Cal would never acknowledge it-that he’d admitted that the pregnancy would have seemed a disaster to him-had the potential to hurt.

  It hurt now.

  ‘The pirate’s little boat started creeping out of the harbour. Creep, creep, creep.’

  It was too much. Cal reading to her son. Cal reading to his son.

  This was dangerous territory. Maybe she should leave in the morning. Fast.

  The baby wasn’t stable. She’d put her hand up as a cardiac expert. If she had to go in again, put more pressure on the valve…

  He was too little for her to contemplate further surgery, she thought. Far, far too frail.

  So what was she doing, staying here?

  The baby needed her.

  Right.

  ‘“Where’s my boat?” roared the pirate, and out
to sea the little boat chuckled.’

  Where’s my plane? Gina thought. Where’s my way home?

  Where was home itself? She was no longer sure. She sat and tried to think about the beauty of the night, tried to think about something other than Cal-but how could she?

  ‘Gina?’ It was a yell from the far end of the path. She rose, welcoming the distraction-any distraction-and Charles was spinning down the garden path, his wheelchair moving at speed.

  ‘Is Cal there?’

  ‘He’s inside. I’ll get him.’

  ‘I need you both.’ Charles’s voice was clipped and urgent. ‘His damn phone’s ringing out. What the hell is he thinking of, turning it off? I need him. You, too, Gina. If you’ll help.’

  Her heart stilled. ‘The baby?’

  ‘The baby’s OK.’

  That was good news. That was great news. For a moment she’d stopped breathing. But Charles was still speaking with urgency. It seemed one drama had been overtaken by another.

  ‘Em will extend her watch and I’ll take over if needed,’ Charles was saying. ‘But there’s been a car crash.’

  From through the open windows Cal had heard the medical director’s voice. The pirate story had reached its conclusion. Now he appeared behind her. ‘Where?’ he snapped.

  ‘Out past the O’Flattery place. The chopper’s out on a call already, but it’s only ten or so miles, so you can go by car. By the sound of it, kids have been drag racing. Two cars have hit head on. Deaths and multiple casualties. I’ve sent one car already. You’ll take the second road ambulance and I’ll send anyone else as they become available. Gina, it’s either you or Em who has to go, and Em’s concerned at Lucky’s intravenous drip packing up. She’s saying she has a better chance of re-establishing a line than you, and that’s the biggest risk at the moment. She’ll stay close and we’ll set up the Theatres in readiness for what’s coming. Right?’

  ‘Right,’ Gina said, dazed. ‘But CJ?’

  Charles was there before her. He wasn’t the medical director of this place for nothing. Fast planning was what he did. ‘I’ve asked Mrs Grubb to come across and look after the littlie,’ he told her. ‘If that’s OK, then that leaves you free.’

  ‘Who else is available?’ Cal asked.

  ‘Mike and Christina have taken the chopper out to pull a suspected heart case off a prawn trawler,’ Charles snapped. ‘It’s probably a false alarm but we have to check. That’s where the chopper is. Hell, Cal, weren’t you listening at dinner?’

  ‘Maybe I wasn’t.’

  But Charles wasn’t listening now. He was focussing on Gina.

  ‘I know we have no right to ask more of you than you’ve done for us already,’ he told her. ‘But we’re desperately understaffed and we need you. Can I ask you to help?’

  There was only one answer to that. ‘Of course I’ll help.’ She was already moving toward CJ’s bedroom door. ‘I’ll explain what’s happening to CJ and come straight away.’

  ‘He won’t mind?’

  ‘He’s learned not to mind,’ she said, and if her voice was bleak, who could blame her?

  The ride south was at a speed which would normally have made Gina’s hair curl all by itself.

  Cal was driving. The first ambulance had left the moment the call had come through, the two available paramedics leaving Cal and Gina to follow. So now they followed. The siren screamed, Cal rode the corners like a racing driver and Gina gripped her seat and held on for dear life.

  ‘Um…I have a son,’ she said over the sound of the siren.

  ‘I’m taking no risks.’

  He wasn’t. He was an excellent driver. He had to be. Training for remote medicine meant everyone had to be multi-skilled, and the longer you stayed in the job the better you got. Cal was fantastic.

  Just at the job, she told herself fiercely. Just at the job.

  Charles’s voice crackled from the radio. ‘Cal? Gina?’ Cal nodded to the receiver.

  ‘Press the button to speak.’

  She knew what to do. She’d worked with Remote Rescue before and she’d loved it. If she was to stay here there was so much she could do, she thought, and then gave herself a fast mental slap. She wasn’t staying here. Why would she?

  ‘Charles?’ Back to medicine.

  ‘The first ambulance has reached the crash site,’ Charles told her, and by the tone of his voice she knew the situation was appalling. ‘Two dead, seven injured, some still trapped in the wreck, and the injuries sound major. We’re calling in everyone we can, but essentially you’re the only two doctors available.’

  ‘OK.’ She glanced across at Cal and saw his face setting in lines of grim determination. They both knew what lay ahead.

  ‘One of the local farmers will stay with the bodies until we can get them brought in. We’ll send the chopper out as soon as we can but meanwhile use the ambulances for casualties. Let me know if I need an evacuation team from Brisbane.’

  ‘Will do.’ Any patient with trauma requiring complex intervention-such as major burns-would need to go straight to a city hospital, Gina knew. ‘But you have great Theatre facilities.’

  ‘By the sound of the injuries they may not be enough. And Cal’s our only surgeon. You’ll help if needed?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Good luck, then.’

  ‘Thanks, Charles,’ she said, and replaced the receiver with a sinking heart. She glanced across at Cal again but she didn’t say anything and neither did he.

  He tried so hard not to care, she thought, but it didn’t work. His armour was eggshell thin.

  They went round a corner and she thought about where she’d left her stomach for a bit. Then they straightened and she thought about Charles. She needed some sort of diversion. Anything.

  ‘Charles must hate that he can’t come on calls like this,’ she tried.

  ‘Yeah.’ Cal was concentrating fiercely on the road but it had straightened now. They were out of town, heading into flat hinterland.

  ‘Tell me about him.’ Anything to get rid of this tension, she thought, and Cal flashed her a sideways glance. He understood exactly she was doing, she realised. Maybe he even agreed with her.

  ‘Charles is a great doctor,’ he told her. ‘The best. Charles’s family-the Wetherbys-own a station near where you were today. Wetherby Downs. They endowed the hospital. Charles was injured when he was about eighteen-his best mate’s gun went off when they were pig-shooting. Charles went to the city, learned to be a doctor and has come back and put everything he knows into this place. He’s built up the best rural medical centre in Australia. The flying doctor base, the helicopter rescue service, the hospital-he runs it all and he has a mind like a steel trap.’

  He hesitated for moment and Gina thought he might stop-but then his voice continued. He was staring out into the night, staring out at the road, and Gina knew he was seeing far more than the dusty track ahead.

  ‘But I suspect on a night like tonight, Charles would change that all if he had a body that’d take him into the heart of the action,’ he said slowly, reflectively. ‘To be stuck back at base, waiting…’

  ‘At least he can do something. To be injured like that, but to still go on and do something you’re proud of…’

  ‘Paul couldn’t?’ He asked the question gently, as if unsure that he had the right to ask, and it was her turn to stare ahead.

  ‘The only good thing that Paul could do for the last few years was to raise CJ,’ she said at last. ‘Be with CJ. I kept working to support us all, but Paul was never lonely. We paid a nurse to stay during the day-but the nurse looked after Paul and CJ. If you know how much that helped…’ She hesitated. ‘Cal, that’s why I’m here. It’s most of the reason I’ve come. To tell you how grateful we both are.’

  There was a moment’s silence-and then a blaze of anger. She could feel it before she heard it. ‘So even your husband was grateful to me. How’s that supposed to make me feel?’

  ‘I don’t have a clue,’ she tol
d him honestly. ‘I’m in uncharted territory. I don’t even know whether I’m doing the right thing-admitting to you that CJ exists.’

  ‘How can you question that? You should have told me five years ago.’

  ‘You didn’t want him.’

  ‘No, but now he exists…’

  She felt a tiny flare of panic. ‘But now he exists, what?’

  ‘He’s my son.’

  ‘No more than if you were a sperm donor.’

  ‘You know it was far, far more than that.’

  ‘Yes.’ She nodded and only she knew that her hands were clenching on her lap. Her fingernails were digging into her palms and they hurt. ‘Of course I know that.’

  Silence. Then. ‘You’re planning on staying for how long?’

  ‘Until tomorrow.’

  ‘You need to stay longer.’

  ‘Cal, let’s not…’

  ‘Let’s not what?’

  ‘There’s no obligation on your part to care for him.’

  ‘He looks like me.’ It was a flat, inflexionless statement of fact but there was pain behind it. She could hear it.

  ‘That’s still no reason for you to be involved.’

  ‘Dammit, Gina, he’s my son.’

  She thought about that while a mile-maybe two-disappeared under their wheels.

  ‘Yes, Cal, he is,’ she said at last. ‘But you need to think of the whole picture. CJ’s happy thinking Paul is his daddy. Are you sure you want to change that?’ She hesitated. ‘And I don’t want to upset what’s between you and Emily.’

  ‘There’s nothing between me and Emily.’

  She sighed. ‘Of course there’s not.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘There’s nothing between you and anyone.’

  ‘You and I-’

  ‘Were lovers,’ she said flatly. ‘But we weren’t committed.’