The Australian's Desire: Their Lost-and-Found Family / Long-Lost Son: Brand-New Family / A Proposal Worth Waiting For

Luckily it was southeast of Crocodile Creek and the last short leg had been drama free. Thank God. He descended the plane steps, looking forward to seeing Gina. Trying not to look exhausted. Trying to look as if he was eager for this visit to begin.

Gina wasn’t in the small bunch of waiting people. Instead …

His heart sank. Georgie. Dr Georgiana Turner.

He’d hoped she’d have left town by now. What Gina saw in this … tramp, he didn’t know.

‘Hey, Alistair.’ She waved and yelled as he crossed the tarmac.

She was chewing gum. She was wearing tight leather pants and bright red stilettos. She had on a really tight top—so tight it was almost indecent. She was all in black. The only colour about her was the slash of crimson of her lips, her outrageous shoes and two spots of colour on her cheeks.

‘How’s it going, Al?’ she said, and chewed a bit more gum.

‘Fine,’ he said, trying to be polite and not quite succeeding. ‘Where’s Gina?’

‘See, she was expecting you yesterday. So today she and Cal are running a clinic out on Wallaby Island. The weather’s getting up so they thought they ought to go when they could.’

‘You couldn’t have taken her place?’

‘Hey, I deliver babies. Gina’s the heart lady. There’s not a lot of crossover. You got bags?’

‘One. Yes.’

She sniffed, in a way that said real men didn’t need baggage. She turned and headed for the baggage hall, her very cute butt wiggling as he walked behind her.

It was some butt.

OK, that’s what he couldn’t allow himself to think. That was what had landed him into trouble in the first place. She was a tart. Somehow she’d gained a medical degree but, no matter, she was still a tart.

But even so, he shouldn’t have tried to pick her up.

Now they stood side by side at the luggage carousel, waiting for his bag. It took for ever. There were other doctors there from the plane.

‘There’s some other wedding happening here,’ he ventured for something to say, and Georgie nodded, looking at the baggage carousel as if it was she who’d recognise his bag.

‘Yep. One this Saturday, one next. Planned so those going to both needn’t make two trips. We were starting to think there’d be no guests for the first one.’

‘It’s some storm down south,’ he said reflectively. ‘That’s how I met these guys. The trip from New Zealand should have been cancelled. We hit an air pocket and dropped what felt like a few thousand feet. Anyone who wasn’t belted in was injured.’

‘You got called on as a doctor?’

‘A bit. I was asleep at first.’

‘Off duty,’ she said blankly, and he winced. There was no criticism in her voice. It was a simple statement of fact, but she knew how to hurt. When he’d woken to discover the chaos he’d felt dreadful. He’d helped, but other doctors had been more proactive than him.

‘Look, I—’

‘Is this your bag? It must be. Everyone else has theirs.’

‘It’s mine,’ he said, and she strode forward and lugged it off the conveyor belt before he could stop her. She set it up on its wheels and tugged out the handle, then set it before him. Making him feel even more wimpish.

‘Right,’ she said. ‘My wheels are in the car park.’

‘Your car?’

‘My wheels.’ She was striding through the terminal, talking to him over her shoulder. He was struggling to keep up.

He was feeling about six years old.

‘Hey, Georg.’ People were acknowledging her, waving to her, but she wasn’t stopping. She was wearing really high stilettos but still walking at a pace that made him hurry. She looked like something out of a biker magazine. A biker’s moll?

Not quite, for her hair was closely cropped and cute—almost classy. The gold hoop earrings actually looked great. She was just … different.

‘Doc Turner.’ An overweight girl—much more your vision of a biker’s moll than Georgie—was yelling to get her attention. ‘Georgie!’

Georgie stopped, spinning on her stilettos to see who was calling.

The girl was about eighteen, bottle-blonde, wearing jeans that were a couple of sizes too small for her very chubby figure and a top that didn’t cover a stomach that wobbled. She was pushing a pram. A chubby, big-eyed toddler clung to a fistful of her crop top, and a youth came behind, lugging two overstuffed bags. The youth looked about eighteen, too, as skinny as his partner was chubby.

They were obviously friends of Georgie. ‘Lola,’ Georgie said with evident pleasure. ‘Eric. How goes it?’

‘Eric’s mum’s paid for us to go to Hobart,’ Lola said with evident pride. ‘She’s gonna look after us for a coupla weeks till all me bits get back together.’

‘Lola had a lovely little girl last week,’ Georgie told Alistair, looking into the pram with expected admiration. ‘It was a pretty dramatic birth.’

‘Had her on the laundry floor,’ Lola said proudly. ‘Eric had gone to ring the ambos and there she was. Pretty near wet himself when he came back.’

‘Lola, Eric, this is Dr Carmichael,’ Georgie said. The rest of the passengers from the plane were passing them on the way out to the car park. Nice ordinary people with nice ordinary people meeting them. Not a tattoo in sight.

Lola had six tattoos that he could see. Eric … Eric was just one huge tattoo.

‘Doc Carmichael is Gina’s surrogate father, here to give her away at the wedding,’ Georgie said.

‘He’s Gina’s surrogate father?’ Lola checked him out. ‘What’s surrogate?’ Then she shrugged, clearly not interested in extending her education. ‘Well, he’s older than my old man so I guess he’ll do.’ She surveyed him critically. ‘That silver in your hair. Natural?’

‘Um … yes,’ Alistair said, discomfited.

‘Looks great. Love a bit of silver. Looks real distinguished. Eric, you oughta get some put in. Next time I get me tips done you come, too.’ She moved forward a bit to get a closer look and smoothed Alistair’s lapel in admiration. ‘Cool suit. Real classy. Anyone ever told you we don’t do suits in this town?’

‘You taking him into town?’ Eric asked.

‘Yeah,’ Georgie said.

‘You got a spare helmet?’ Lola demanded. ‘He’s gonna look real dorky in that suit on the back of your bike. And what about his bag?’

‘I’ve got a spare helmet and I hooked up the trailer.’

‘Sheesh,’ Eric said. ‘Rather you than me, mate. She rides like the clappers.’