Australia: Handsome Heroes: His Secret Love-Child

‘Hamish says your friendship with Emily is platonic,’ she murmured softly, and her hand stayed on his arm, whether he willed it or not. ‘He says you’re still driving people away.’

‘I didn’t drive you away.’

‘No?’

‘Gina—’

‘OK, let’s leave it,’ she told him, her voice softening in sympathy. But instead of removing her hand from his arm, she linked her fingers through his and tugged him sideways. Cal had such shadows but he’d earned them the hard way. For him to move past them must be a near-impossible task. ‘Let’s leave the lid on it.’

‘What are…?’ She was tugging him through the shallows. ‘Where—?’

‘Cal, there’s one thing I have learned in the last few years,’ she told him, still tugging so he had no option but to follow. ‘Reinforced by stuff like tonight. And that’s the reality that you can’t spend your life dwelling in the shadows of what’s gone. If you do that, then you might as well finish it off when you lose the ones you love. But I only have one life, Cal. I intend to make the most of it.’

‘So what’s that—?’

‘It means I’m going for a walk in the moonlight,’ she told him, refusing to let him interrupt. ‘CJ’s safe with Mrs Grubb and the new Grubb puppy. This water is delicious. It’s a full moon and it’s low tide. We have miles of beach all to ourselves and there’s no way either of us is going to sleep after today’s events. So let’s walk.’

He stopped. Firm. Planting his feet in the shallows. Holding himself still against the insistent tug of her hand.

‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’

‘I think it’s a splendid idea,’ she told him, sounding exasperated.

‘I don’t want to get close to you, Gina.’

‘You know, I have news for you,’ she told him, linking her arm through his and keeping on tugging. ‘You’re the father of my son. You’re here now. You don’t want to get close? Cal Jamieson, you already are.’

He was walking. Gina started down the beach through the shallows, and Cal let himself be tugged beside her, and as he relaxed and started to walk without being tugged she knew she’d achieved a significant victory.

He’d always taken deaths personally, she thought. It was one of the things she loved about him. Most doctors developed personal detachment from patients, but she’d never seen that in Cal, no matter how hard he fought to find it.

He’d never succeeded in personal detachment. Except in his personal relationships.

Except with her.

But for now he was walking beside her, fighting the way he was feeling about her and about CJ, and at least that meant that he wasn’t internalising Karen’s death, she thought. The hours after such a death were always dreadful. Going over and over things in your mind, wondering what else could you have done, what you’d missed…

She could distract him for a little while, she thought, and if by doing so she could distract herself from…things, great.

Or at least good.

Given the staffing in the hospital, they both knew they couldn’t venture far, so they confined their walk to the end of the cove. But as they reached the headland, Gina decided it was not far enough. So they walked to the opposite headland. Then they turned again—and again. Walking in silence.

So many things unsaid.

‘We’ll wear the beach out,’ Cal told her, breaking the silence on their third turn, and Gina kicked up a spray of water in front of her and smiled.

‘Good. I like my beach a little world-weary. You have no idea how much I miss the beach.’

‘So where are you living?’ It was almost a normal conversation, Gina thought. Excellent.

‘Idaho. Same as when you first knew me, Cal. Some things don’t change.’

‘But you love the beach.’

‘Mmm, but my family and friends are in Idaho. So sure I miss the beach but where I live is a no-brainer.’

‘You always intended to go back?’ he asked, and she felt the normality fade as anger surged again. Deep anger. This water wasn’t cold enough.

‘Strangely enough, I didn’t,’ she told him. ‘Five years ago I came out for a break after Paul left me. Yes, I intended it to be brief, but then I met you. And then I thought about staying permanently.’

‘So you considered deserting your family and friends.’

‘I had hoped,’ she said softly, ‘that in you I might have found both. I was dumb. But I was young, Cal. I’ve learned. So it’s back to Idaho for me.’

‘You must know that I’ll want to see CJ.’

‘I’ll send photographs.’

‘I didn’t mean that.’

‘So what do you mean?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said, exasperated. ‘He’s my kid.’

She thought about that for a minute, trying to figure out a response that didn’t involve anger. ‘Do you think,’ she said softly into the night, ‘that because your mother and your father were your biological parents, they had automatic rights over you?’

‘Not rights,’ he said, in an automatic rejection of an idea he clearly found repugnant, and she grimaced.

‘No. They had obligations, which they didn’t fulfil. But rights…You have to earn rights. If you love your kid then maybe you have the right to hope the kid will love you back. You’re at first base, Cal.’

‘He looks like me,’ Cal said inconsequentially, and his words sent a surge of disquiet through her. Like something was being threatened. Her relationship with CJ?

‘So do you love him?’ she managed to ask, and he seemed startled.

‘Hey…’

She kicked up a huge spray of water before her, so high it came back down over their heads. Enough. This conversation was way too deep and she didn’t know where it was going, and she wasn’t sure how she could handle it wherever it went. And she was so tired. She kicked again and then suddenly on impulse she dropped Cal’s hand and waded further out into the sea. Her clothes were already wet. They were disgusting anyway after this night, so a little more salt water wasn’t going to hurt them. The moon was so full that she could see under the surface of the shallow water and…and what the heck.

Walking forward to the first breaker, she simply knelt down and let the water wash right over her.

It felt excellent. Her anger, her uncertainty, the way she was feeling about Cal…the way her hand had felt as if it was abandoning something precious when she’d released Cal’s. The waves had the power to soothe it all.

This had been some day. The trauma of the baby, and then the accident, and Cal as well. It was simply, suddenly overwhelming. Now her brain seemed to have shut down as her body soaked in the cool wash of the foam. She knelt and let wave after wave wash over her and she just didn’t care.

She didn’t know where to go from here.

She wasn’t sure how long she knelt there, how long was it before she surfaced to the awareness that Cal was still with her. He was kneeling behind her. A wave washed her backwards and his hands seized her waist so that she wasn’t washed under.