‘AREN’T you going to reply to the final question?’ Julian asked, as Daisy retrieved her hands, turned back to the monitor and shifted to another page of her web-site.
She didn’t answer, pretending that hitting the ‘forward’ button took a great deal of concentration.
‘The one from the young man who fancies himself in love,’ he persisted, and Daisy gave in, going back to the question-and-answer page.
‘I get these all the time,’ she said, ‘and as both the questions and the answers are there for all to read—I don’t reply privately to anyone—you’d think he’d know what I think.’
She read the question again.
‘Do you think love lasts?’ It was signed, ‘In Love’.
‘You said “young man in love”,’ she said, turning back to Julian. ‘What makes you think “In Love” is a male?’
‘Males are far less committed to the concept of love, aren’t they? Generally speaking, they put less value on it. They do what they can, of course, to keep a woman happy…’
‘But it’s more to do with sex than love?’ Daisy murmured, but she was already replying.
‘In my opinion, romantic love just happens. It’s a mix of many things, attraction, lust and infatuation being only a few possible components. But relationships must be built, and building a solid relationship takes time, patience and understanding, also a measure of compromise—a whole lot of give and take—plus a whole heap of unselfishness and commitment. If you can build a good relationship with the person you love, then your love will most certainly last.’
‘Do you believe that?’ Julian asked. He’d come closer and was now leaning over her shoulder, and though she was used to friends being in the room as she replied to questions on her web-site, today Julian’s closeness was making her uneasy.
‘Yes,’ she told him, finishing with her signature line and the smiling daisy, which had seemed cute when the web magician had drawn it in but was now beginning to irritate her.
‘In spite of your own…?’
He hesitated and she finished for him, ‘Disastrous relationships? Of course. Just because it didn’t work for me doesn’t mean it won’t work for someone else. What I should have told “In Love” was that both of them had to be working on building the relationship—not just one of them.’
She must have sounded depressed or defeated because she felt Julian’s hand close on her shoulder then he drew her back against him and gave her a hug. The kind of hug Adrian still gave her when they met occasionally, or Gabi’s husband Alex might give her when she hadn’t seen him for a while.
A friendly hug.
Only in this case she took it as a comforting one.
And tried not to think that it might also be a kind of lead-up one—that Julian might be working on the ‘compatibility takes practice’ issue.
‘So, you’re free for the day—what are you going to do?’ she asked, drawing away in case it was a compatibility-practice hug. Even in parallel universes it wasn’t good to move too quickly.
‘What are we going to do? I did hope you’d take pity on a newcomer to town and spend the day with him.’
Not in the spa, Daisy said to herself, then she remembered he was Madeleine’s brother.
‘But you’re hardly a newcomer. You grew up here in Westside, didn’t you?’
‘I went to primary school here, then boarding school down south in Sydney. I was bright, you see, and my parents thought it would be best. The school had an accelerated learning programme. So from school it was natural to go on to university down there, and eventually into medicine. I haven’t really lived here permanently since I was ten, though I had holidays here until Mum and Dad shifted further north.’
He was smiling at her and, though she didn’t want to give in, the smile won her over, especially as her heart had gone out to the clever ten-year-old sent away to boarding school. Like her, he’d missed out on a normal family life, although for different reasons.
‘I guess we can do something,’ she conceded. ‘But I dressed in “playing with the twins” clothes. If we’re doing the town, I need to change. What if we meet in the foyer in half an hour?’
He held his hands in the air, and pretended to look shocked.
‘A woman who can be ready in half an hour?’ Then, before she could defend the members of her sex, he looked down at his clothes. ‘What about me? Will this do or are we going somewhere special?’
She looked him over, and though she was supposed to be checking out his clothes—he was in shorts today—she couldn’t but notice the strongly muscled legs and mentally note that his physical genes were certainly very good.
‘I’d like to call in at Royal Westside hospital. I realise that makes it a bit of a busman’s holiday for you, but there’s a child there I visit. One of Josh’s patients who’s just had a bone-marrow transplant. Her parents live in the Northern Territory—on one of the more remote properties up there—and though one or other of them tries to get down fortnightly, a number of friendly volunteers fill in on the other weekend.’
‘I’d like to do that—it would give me a chance to see something of the hospital. But I’ll shed the shorts. A lot of what we medical people do is helped by the image we project, isn’t it?’
‘Maybe not so much what we do, but the success of what we do,’ Daisy said, wondering how she could speak so calmly when in her mind she was watching a kind of internal video of Julian Austin shedding his shorts.
Revealing far more than well-muscled legs…
‘I know it shouldn’t be,’ she continued, averting her mind firmly from the mental images, ‘but I’m sure people have more confidence in a professional if he or she looks neat and tidy. Not that I’m into power dressing, but I’ll swap shorts for a skirt.’
And a very nice skirt it was, Julian decided when he met up with Daisy in the foyer a little later. Short enough to show shapely legs but not so short it would ride up and reveal underwear if she bent down to speak to a sick child. Practical! But still the vibrant colours she seemed to favour, the skirt white but splashed with pink, blue and violet flowers, while the neat blue top, tucked in sedately at the waist, made her eyes, for some unfathomable reason, look more green than grey.
‘Hospital first?’ he said, aware his assessment had probably gone on too long.
‘I thought so, then I’ve booked a lunch cruise on the river. It’s the best way to see the city.’
‘Fabulous, but I’ll pay,’ he insisted, then he linked his arm through hers and they walked out into the mellow autumn sunshine.
The hospital was familiar as he’d done a month of work experience there while still a student, but the new transplant unit in the paediatrics ward was eye-opening in its brilliance.
‘Most of this was Kirsten’s idea,’ Daisy told him, feeling as proud of her friend as a mother must of a clever child. ‘She wanted some kind of stimulating visual attraction that would interest even the sickest of children, and a cousin of Josh’s came up with the computer program while she organised the painting of the isolation rooms. My friend Bella is out of there now, but you can look through the windows if you want to see what I mean.’
Julian looked, and watched a little boy, with help from a woman who was probably his mother, run his fingers over a touch pad, manipulating images on the wall.
‘It’s unbelievable!’ he marvelled. ‘Boredom’s such an issue with these kids, and if they’re bored they don’t do as well—almost as if they lose the will to fight because there’s nothing in their life worth fighting for.’
‘Exactly!’ Daisy agreed, and although she felt a flutter of excitement that he shared her opinions, she reminded herself that most professionals would.
Professional compatibility was easy.
‘This is Bella,’ she said, leading him away from the special isolation rooms to a partly curtained-off alcove on one side of the open ward.
Bella was smiling and waving to her and Daisy hurried across, digging in her handbag for the new selection of farm animals she’d brought along.
‘I’ll never be able to get as many cattle as you have at your home,’ she told the little girl, after giving the fragile body a gentle hug, ‘but I found some Brahmans this time—isn’t that what your dad breeds?’
She put the plastic bag of toy animals on the bed, then found scissors to cut open the top. Bella spilled the tiny models on the sheet, then looked up at Daisy and smiled.
‘And I brought you a new visitor as well,’ Daisy said, stepping aside so Bella could get a good look at Julian. ‘His name’s Julian and he’s a doctor, like Dr Josh, only he doesn’t work in this hospital.’
Julian put out his hand and Bella, with the trust of youth, put her tiny one into it and gravely shook hands.
‘Let’s show Julian how we set up the farm,’ Daisy suggested, reaching down under the bed for the large piece of plywood she’d painted to represent Daisy’s home—or as much of it as would fit on a hospital bed.
Bella crossed her legs to make room for the board, and reached into the drawer of her bedside cabinet to produce a brightly coloured cloth bag. From this she tipped an assortment of animals and tiny model buildings, sorting through them until she came to what she wanted.
Julian noted her pallor, the small, hairless head, the drip pushing drugs into her veins. He’d have liked to check her chart, but felt that would compromise his visitor status. Then suddenly the child, who’d set a house and several sheds in the middle of the board, asked, ‘Are you a children’s doctor?’
‘Yes, I am,’ he told her, judging her to be five or six, though with developmental delays from drugs she could be a little older.
‘Do you know about AML?’ she asked, and Julian felt his heart squeeze. Though various forms of the disease had differing success rates, generally the chance of curing a child with any of the acute myeloid leukaemias was less than fifty per cent. In fact, not much more than forty per cent.
‘Yes, I do. Is that your problem?’
‘No,’ Bella said cheerfully, ‘it’s Mum’s problem, and Dad’s too, I suppose. My problem is getting better as quickly as I can. Daisy couldn’t find me a proper kelpie—that’s a cattle dog—but I use this dog…’ she held up a miniature collie for Julian to inspect ‘…and pretend it’s my dog Bliss. I have to get better so I can go home and take care of him. Dr Josh gave me special treatment that made me very, very sick. I nearly died, didn’t I, Daisy?’
Daisy nodded and her eyes met Julian’s, the look in them confirming the child’s words.
‘She had an autologous bone-marrow transplant,’ Daisy said quietly, and Julian visalised the procedure where, at a time when Bella had been in complete remission, a little of her own bone marrow would have been harvested and then transplanted back into her later, where, hopefully, it would rebuild healthy bone marrow. Because of the risk of affected cells still hiding in the transplanted marrow, the process was only used if no compatible donor could be found. And though the pre-transplant and the recovery processes were much the same as in a marrow donation from someone else, because the child’s marrow was so depleted of cells, it took far longer for an improvement to show in the blood count, which would account for the child’s extreme pallor.
‘But now I’m getting better and Dr Josh says I’m the one who’s going to beat the odds. That’s funny, isn’t it? Grandma has mats she takes outside and hangs on the clothes line and she hits them with a broom and says she’s beating the carpets, but what are odds and how do you beat them? With brooms?’
Julian chuckled.
‘With brooms, and luck, and with a lot of tenacity and courage, which, it seems to me, you have by the bucket-load, young lady.’
‘The lion in The Wizard of Oz was looking for some courage.’
‘Well, if he happens to come here looking,’ Julian told her, ‘I’m sure you’ve got enough to spare for him.’
Bella laughed.
‘Silly!’ she said, shaking her head over the stupidity of adults. ‘He’s not real—he’s in a book. No, Daisy, the cattle go over here—that paddock’s for the horses.’
Dismissing Julian—no doubt because he was so silly—she turned her attention back to her farm, shifting the cattle Daisy had been carefully setting out and putting horses in their place.
‘Unless it’s muster or sale time we don’t really see the cattle close to the house,’ Bella explained, no doubt for Julian’s benefit. ‘They run in the gullies and the far paddocks. My dad has a helicopter to muster them. Can you fly a helicopter?’
Julian admitted he was lacking that particular skill, but proved a dab hand at setting out animals, even if he did get a tiger mixed in with the herd of cattle.
‘That tiger should be in the other bag,’ Bella said crossly, and Daisy, apparently understanding this remark, reached into the bedside cabinet and produced another cloth bag, this one patterned with zoo animals.
‘When we turn over the board, I can make a zoo,’ Bella told him. ‘Daisy made the board for me. She’s kind, isn’t she?’
‘It certainly seems so,’ Julian agreed, beaming at the woman kind fate had delivered into his hands.
‘She’s not married,’ Bella continued, and Julian upped her age by a year or two. Little girls didn’t care about people’s relationships until they were about eight. ‘Are you married?’
‘No, I’m not,’ Julian told her, hiding a smile because he realised this was serious stuff as far as Bella was concerned. ‘Maybe I could marry Daisy.’
‘No, Daisy says she won’t ever get married,’ Bella told him. ‘I know because I asked if I could be her flower-girl and she told me she wasn’t getting married. Ever.’
‘Maybe she’ll change her mind,’ Julian said, still serious although the hot pink colour in Daisy’s cheeks and the way she was avoiding looking at him made him want to smile. Maybe she was coming around to the ‘marriage of convenience’ idea.
‘Oh, I don’t think so. She says she’d rather have a baby than a husband, and that’s what you’d be, isn’t it? A husband. My dad is my mum’s husband, although he’s just my dad to me. He says he can’t be my husband because he’s already Mum’s—that’s how I know.’
‘You certainly know a lot of interesting things,’ Julian told her, and this time he did smile.
She smiled back, but he could see the conversation had tired her so he wasn’t surprised when Daisy suggested they tidy away the animals and she would read a story instead.
‘If I go to sleep, will you come back later?’ Bella asked her, and Daisy promised she would try.
‘Though I’m helping Julian mind his sister’s twins later this afternoon, so I may not make it. I think Jason and Alana are coming anyway, so you won’t need me.’
Satisfied, Bella closed her eyes and listened to the story.
Daisy and Julian left the sleeping child a little later and walked quietly out of the ward.
‘Will she be one of the lucky ones?’ he asked.
Daisy shook her head.
‘I don’t know. Perhaps. If guts alone can get you through then, yes, she will be. But as you know, there’s no one hundred per cent effective way of being sure there are no malignant cells lurking in the harvested bone marrow, so there’s always the chance you get the child into remission, harvest cells, put him or her through hell in pre-transplant treatment, then re-infect her—in this case, with her own bone marrow.’
‘Now, come on. You make it sound like a no-win situation when there are wins, and it does work, if only occasionally. Bella’s confident, and so should you be. Don’t let her down by even thinking negative thoughts.’
She turned and smiled at him.
‘You’re so darned nice there must be some hidden horror lurking in your depths. You’re a secret drinker, gambler, drug addict—no, it can’t be that, you even look healthy. Maybe a…’
‘A what?’ he prompted. She shrugged. ‘I can’t really think of any truly horrible habits or fetishes you might have—oh, fetishes. I hadn’t considered that! You don’t like being chained up, or beaten, or expect your partner to like it? I read a book once—’
He was laughing so much he’d stopped walking so she had to turn back.
‘What?’ she demanded.
‘Do I really look like a man who’d like being chained or whipped?’
She studied him, then said, ‘But that’s just it. You don’t know. I read this book where a woman assumed her husband was a perfectly normal man—not that people who indulge in fetishes are abnormal but the point was she didn’t know—and then he had a heart attack in this kinky club, and she still didn’t know until after he’d died and she went to the club to collect his belongings. She thought he went to a chess club every Wednesday.’
Julian was still chuckling when they reached the foyer, but thankfully he refrained from pursuing the subject in front of the other people waiting there.
Once out of the hospital, Daisy suggested they walk to the riverside park, and along it to the wharf from which the cruise would depart.
As far as she was concerned, the day just got better. Admittedly, there was an undercurrent of uneasiness sliding about inside her—no doubt, to do with making babies and compatibility and partnerships—but when she ignored it, being with Julian was as pleasant and effortlessly enjoyable as spending time with one of her close friends. In fact, the lack of tension between them—given they’d only just met and barely knew each other—was sufficiently surprising for her to remark on it.
They were leaning on the railing of the boat, having walked around the small deck in an effort to reduce the effect of an enormous lunch.
‘You’re very easygoing—do you ever argue? Raise your voice? Get into a fight?’
His chuckle reminded her of the full-bodied laughter she’d heard earlier, a sound so spontaneous she smiled even thinking of it.
‘Would you like me to?’ he asked, and she shook her head.
‘No, but it seems strange—I mean, we’re virtual strangers, yet it’s been so easy. At least, it’s seemed that way to me. No stiff silences, no frantic searching for something else to say. No polite questions about work or travel. We’ve just talked.’
‘And talked,’ he added, smiling at her in such a way she felt warmed and cherished. Special!
Which, of course, was utterly ridiculous!
‘So, what do you think?’ he asked.
‘About what we should do for the rest of the day?’ She hazarded a guess at what he wanted to know. ‘Did you give Gabi a set time you’d be back? We shouldn’t be too late—she’ll be exhausted. We could get off the boat when it stops in about ten minutes and get a cab back to Near West. You’d see a different view of the city.’
His smile had faded slightly, though it lingered in a teasing twist to his lips.
‘Was that an innocent misunderstanding, or a deliberate red herring so you could avoid answering the real question?’
She frowned at him—more affected by teasingly twisted lips than she should be.
‘The real question?’
‘About our future?’
Whoosh! Air left her lungs with such force it was a wonder he didn’t hear it. Teasingly twisted lips had nothing on questions like that! But she had to stand firm.
‘Our future? Come on! I thought we’d settled that. We might both want a child but, apart from that, we’ve different priorities.’
‘Only because you hadn’t considered the alternative,’ he reminded her yet again, but smiling in such a way the alternative seemed not only possibly but positively attractive! ‘How could you have, when you hadn’t even met me?’
‘And now I have, and have known you a little over twenty-four hours, you want an answer today?’ Panic, disbelief, uncertainty—all combined to tighten her vocal cords so the words came out in a squeaky rush.
‘Not necessarily, but it would be encouraging to a man who’s fast becoming a knotted mess of insecurity if you could maybe give just a hint of how you’re feeling about this situation. Would it help if I produced a reference? I have one, you know. My mother, fearing no one would ever have me, once wrote one out.’
Daisy blinked her surprise, especially as Julian continued speaking, as if that were a normal thing for his mother to have done.
‘She wanted to assure people I was house-broken, kind, considerate to a fault, caring, could make beds, cook and even hang out washing without pulling garments out of shape or leaving big dips in the hem from peg marks.’ He paused then added very seriously, ‘Mum set great store by this talent!’
Daisy had to laugh, though she totally agreed with his mother. Peter had once—and only once—pegged out their washing, and his method had been to allot each article a single peg, placed randomly into the clothing so T-shirts dried with a bulge like a third breast or skirts with a bunchy bit right between the legs.
‘She was right,’ Daisy said gravely. ‘It’s certainly a plus and something to be given serious consideration in the greater scheme of things.’
‘She didn’t say I didn’t have any fetishes, but she was the kind of woman who’d have mentioned them if I did—if you know what I mean?’
‘I’m sure.’ Again Daisy agreed, though she rather doubted his mother would have known about fetishes.
‘When did she write this? Was she getting desperate to have you settle down? You’re what? Thirty-three? Thirty-four?’
He turned towards her and frowned with a mock ferocity that made her laugh.
‘I’m thirty-one!’ he growled. ‘I’ll have you know all Austins go grey quite early, though I haven’t nearly as many grey hairs as Madeleine—just a worse hair-dresser.’
‘The grey’s distinguished, and you barely notice it,’ Daisy assured him.
And though he mouthed ‘Liar’ at her, she refused to be distracted.
‘Well, thirty-one,’ she said. ‘There’s a fair time lag from testosterone-laden youth, when you admit to a few minor skirmishes with the opposite sex, to now. What’s happened in between? Have you been celibate or what? It’s a long time—’
‘Between drinks?’ he offered, and she laughed again.
‘I was going to say “for a man” then decided it was a terribly sexist remark.’
‘It is,’ he agreed, and though he wasn’t smiling she sensed he was teasing her. To avoid answering her question?
‘Well? What happened? There must have been other women. Why didn’t they have the babies for you?’
He sighed and looked out at the greeny-brown water of the river.
‘A few of them might have, had I asked, but I didn’t ask because I knew they wanted more than I could offer them—knew they wanted love—and it never happened. Well, not on my side, at least. It was the see-saw effect—one up and one down. There was one woman who was different—special—and we had a relationship I thought had everything it needed for future success. I even reached the stage where I kidded myself love might exist, then one day I woke up next to Gillian and knew I didn’t love her.’
He looked into Daisy’s eyes and she saw something of the horror he must have felt etched in his face.
‘I actually shivered, Daisy,’ he said quietly, ‘as the realisation swept over me. It was as if someone had poured a bucket of ice water down my back. The real horror of it was that if I’d gone ahead, with Gillian thinking I loved her—and me pretending it was true—I’d have been cheating a fine woman of the relationship she deserved.’
He paused, then added—as if Daisy needed it spelt out— ‘Romantic love. Hearts entwined and garlanded with flowers. That kind of love.’
The psychologist in Daisy frowned.
‘Why were you so certain what you did feel for her wouldn’t grow into that kind of love?’
He shrugged.
‘I honestly don’t know, but I was.’ He paused, then added, ‘And if you think about it, it wasn’t likely to happen, was it? I’m not a believer in romantic love in the way you are. Or Gillian was, for that matter. But even if you do believe, you have to accept that it usually fades away, and you need all the things that would make an arranged marriage work—friendship, affection, compatibility, knowledge of each other—to keep a marriage going.’
‘I guess you’re right,’ Daisy admitted. ‘Though you did feel the “falling in love” urges when you were young. Did you never think that might happen again?’
Julian shook his head, shrugged, then shook his head again.
‘But that was different,’ he said, in the kind of patient voice people used when repeating a theory. ‘It’s proven that there are certain chemical changes within the body when attraction occurs, and add this to a young male’s developing sexual awareness, and a certain level of emotional instability that comes with adolescence and early manhood, and you get a rush of emotion we label, for convenience, love. Unfortunately it’s commercialised so much we have a culture that believes if you don’t feel it there’s something wrong with you.’
‘You’re saying what you felt for the girls who attracted you was emotional instability?’ Daisy’s tone echoed her disbelief.
Julian shook his head again. ‘In a way. At that age, all emotions are over-emphasised. You have people looking for causes—outbreaks of nationalism, idealism, environmentalism. Young people can feel passionate over just about anything. Look at how young men rush off to war.’
Daisy heard the words and, although she could see some sense in them, to her they were more theoretical than practical. She set the unnamed young women aside and concentrated on Gillian, who had apparently been a more recent interlude in his life.
‘But what if Gillian had understood you didn’t love her and accepted it? If she was content to love you without being loved back? Wouldn’t that have been the same as a marriage of convenience? Wouldn’t that have worked?’
He looked at her as if she’d suggested walking down Main Street stark naked.
‘Oh, no! It would put the one being loved under a terrible obligation. He or she would feel guilty all the time, accepting positive showers of love and not being able to reciprocate.’
Again, the psychologist considered his words and found them acceptable, but the woman in her felt a little unsettled by his certainty.
‘So you’re opting for a marriage of convenience. Will you write “don’t ask for, or try to give me love” into the marriage contract?’
He looked puzzled by her question.
‘But that’s the whole point of a marriage of convenience,’ he reminded her. ‘It’s not a contract of love, so there can be no misunderstandings about emotional involvement or misconceptions about romantic content in the relationship.’
‘I guess,’ Daisy agreed half-heartedly, wondering why this should make her feel a trifle sad. It wasn’t as if her experiences of love had taught her anything other than to avoid it. Yet the feeling that someone as obviously capable of love as Julian appeared to be had lost the ability to feel it—that’s what was sad.
The boat docked and she led the way to the gangplank.
‘There’s no sign of a taxi,’ Julian remarked, as they walked up old stone steps from the small jetty.
‘There’s a shopping centre just up the road—we’ll get one there,’ she told him.
Then silence fell between them, not uneasy, just a waiting kind of silence, as if everything that needed to be said had been said.
Though, of course, it hadn’t.
She certainly hadn’t agreed to his mad idea of a marriage of convenience.
Though it would provide her with a means towards the end she sought—and would provide her child with a caring and involved father. He and Madeleine shared genetic material and her twins were healthy, lively kids, while Julian himself was well built and obviously intelligent—very intelligent, to be admitted to an accelerated learning programme—more genetic pluses. In fact, finding someone better might be a long and tedious task, while the thought of advertising made her insides flinch.
In the cab, she named the suburbs through which they were passing.
‘They’re familiar to me as names but as we always lived on the other side of the river, I didn’t ever know them,’ Julian said, effectively killing that conversation. ‘Will you come up when we get back? I’m imagining two tired and sandy little boys who’ll need a bath but be fractious enough to make a solo effort difficult. I could probably cope but would rather not have to try.’
‘I’ll come up,’ Daisy assured him. ‘After all, I volunteered to help you, and having today off has already been a bonus.’
‘In many ways,’ he said, and reached out to take her hand, holding it lightly clasped in his on the seat between them. ‘Wouldn’t you agree?’
The sudden jitter in her heart was to do with the unexpected intimacy—and perhaps because she suspected he was quietly pursuing his ‘compatibility’ agenda. Something told her this man would be like that—laughing, smiling, talking, joking, but all the while setting a dead straight course towards whatever goal he’d set himself.
Which, at the moment, seemed to be a marriage of convenience.
With her!
Daisy laughed quietly and he turned and raised his eyebrows, inviting her to share.
And because she found it so easy to talk to him—to share—she answered.
‘It’s the word “convenience”. We’re talking about a marriage of convenience, but in the true sense of the word, wasn’t it unbelievably convenient that the two of us should meet? I mean, right here and now, when both of us were contemplating a similar project.’
‘Making babies?’ he said, and squeezed her fingers.
The cab driver, who’d obviously been eavesdropping on what had been, until then, a fairly boring conversation, said, ‘Not in my cab, thanks!’
‘No, no!’ Julian assured him, apparently unfazed by the remark. ‘We’re both too old to be messing around in the back of a cab.’
The driver chuckled, but Daisy didn’t find it funny.
‘I think I was always too old to mess around in the back of a cab,’ she said gloomily, so Julian had to squeeze her fingers again, as if to cheer her up.
The cab drew up outside Near West as Madeleine’s big vehicle pulled into the drive. While it paused for the garage doors to open, Daisy could see the twins, fast asleep in the back, while in the front passenger seat, Gabi also slept. Only Alex waved, and, judging by the enthusiasm of the action, he’d be glad to get rid of his charges.
‘We should go down and help him get them out of the car,’ Daisy suggested, and Julian, who’d finished paying the cab driver, agreed.
‘Gabi and Alex have done more than their share of the babysitting.’
It was the end of any personal conversation until after seven, when the tired and cantankerous twins had finally fallen asleep. Once again, Daisy slumped into the comfortable lounge and propped her feet on the coffee-table.
‘Imagine if they were triplets!’ she said. ‘Or quads? How do those parents manage?’
‘With a great deal of help from their friends, I imagine,’ Julian told her. ‘Would you like a drink? A glass of wine?’
‘No, thanks,’ she said. ‘I’d probably pass out.’
‘What about a spa?’ he suggested. ‘And much as I feel I need one to get the kinks out of my back and legs—they’re so small, those children—I’d be happy to let you go in on your own if you’d prefer.’
Daisy could almost feel the warm water pumping against her tired body.
‘No, that would be unfair. You get it organised and I’ll slip downstairs and get my swimming costume. We can both go in together.’
‘Clothed!’ Julian said, but he smiled and didn’t seem unduly disappointed.
‘You call those two scraps of material a swimming costume?’ he asked when she’d returned, been shown the spa, announced her approval of it, then had slipped out of the big shirt she’d been wearing over her costume.
Julian was glad he’d pulled shorts on over his, so the fact that his body thought they’d be compatible wasn’t immediately obvious to his visitor. He turned away as she slid into the pulsing water, pretending to fiddle with the intercom, which connected to the twins’ bedroom.
Then, once he was sure she’d be suitably immersed, he dropped his shorts and stepped in himself.
The situation had such overtones of intimacy his body continued to misbehave, so he was relieved—relieved and slightly put out, in fact—when Daisy asked, ‘Has any paediatrician ever done follow-up studies of children born in water? Is there any data that you know of to prove they turn out healthier or more settled babies?’
He wanted to smile—mainly because the question showed just how far her thoughts were removed from his—but he was also intrigued.
‘Were you considering a water birth yourself that you’re asking?’
She shook her head.
‘The concept frightens me. I keep thinking, what if the baby drowned, and all because I wanted to be more comfortable during my delivery? I know it doesn’t work like that, and babies don’t drown, but logic doesn’t always hold sway against instinct, does it?’
‘So why the question?’
‘Because I’ve heard about it, read about it, and a lot of the literature suggests it might be easier for the baby—less traumatic. And supporters seem to feel that this leads to a more placid infant.’
Julian looked at her, seeing the way the steam in the room had made her hair settle into ringlety kind of curls. She attracted him—which was a bonus in terms of their possible future—but she intrigued him as well. Not many women he’d known talked so openly about their thoughts and feelings to men—particularly not to men they’d only recently met.
Perhaps the talk of a ‘joint venture’ between them had done away with the barriers convention might normally have set in their path so they’d slipped effortlessly past the initial and often awkward stages of ‘getting to know you’ and were now at ‘developing a relationship’.
‘So, if I say yes, there’s proof the children born in water are more content, will you override those instincts of yours and opt for a water birth for your own child?’
Daisy considered his question.
‘Probably,’ she replied, ‘but I’d want to see the proof and consider the size of the study and any other contributing factors.’
He laughed.
‘Trust a psychologist to want the facts and figures!’ His leg had shifted so his toes brushed against hers, and the sensual jolt was so strong he had to be careful not to show his reaction—or let her hear it in his voice.
‘But as far as I know, there hasn’t been a study—well, nothing that would provide positive proof one way or the other. Of course, there could have been, but I’ve not come across it. Actually, if ever you have time, it might be interesting for you to go back over patient files which, for children Dr Clement has seen since neonates, would have birth details on them. Then you could judge for yourself. Actually, we’ve the twins on hand. Do you know how they were delivered?’
Daisy shook her head, then said, ‘They were born before I shifted in. Gabi might know—in fact, she must be thinking about these things herself. Her baby’s due in a couple of months. I’ll talk to her.’
And as if satisfied by this decision, Daisy sank deeper into the water, which was a shame as it removed Julian’s view of a deep and enticing cleavage. But the bonus was that her legs shifted so this time her foot brushed across his instep, the touch an accident but still encouraging.