CHAPTER ELEVEN

‘LOVE?’ Caitlin suggested, when Connor actually put this question to her a week later.

She was sitting in the sun on his veranda, her legs resting on a small table.

Smiling at him!

‘Anyway,’ she continued, ‘I didn’t think Turalla featured in your long-term plans.’

He settled on a chair in front of her, where he could see her face and rest his hand on her ankle—still needing both sight and touch to reassure himself she was alive.

‘It didn’t,’ he said, trying to put into words some of the things that had passed through his mind during the traumatic days after the fire and the shootings. ‘I was going to find out what had happened to Angie and leave.’

He hesitated, wondering how to explain and knowing, however the words came out, they were a signal that what had barely begun between them was about to end. Caitlin might talk of love, but her work was such a huge part of her life—

‘Come on,’ she prompted. ‘You’ve been trying to work out how to say what you want to say for days—just spit it out.’

‘I can’t leave the town right now. This kind of thing doesn’t just affect one family. It causes ripples right through the population.’

He sighed. ‘When I first applied to come here, getting back to the city was always a priority, but now I don’t know, Caitlin. I like working here, I like the people, and the lifestyle, and I also believe that country towns, however small, deserve a better deal with medical services. Why shouldn’t they have a local doctor who stays put, as your father did, instead of a series of young medicos intent on doing a year here then hightailing it out? Angie would have stayed, and although I’m not obligated in any way to take her place, I can’t help feeling I could have a happy life here.’

Caitlin heard the commitment in his voice, but she also felt his love for her in the tender way he wrapped his fingers around her ankle. She knew there was more, and waited for it.

‘Of course, things changed when you drove into town.’ He thrust his free hand through his hair in the helpless gesture she’d grown to love. ‘Now I’m reasonably sure I wouldn’t have a happy life anywhere you weren’t, so staying here for ever doesn’t seem to be an option.’

‘Not even if I stayed, too?’ she asked, and saw his eyes widen, then a frown draw his brows together as if he couldn’t understand the words.

‘But why? Your work! It’s too important to you. You—’

The protests might have continued forever if Caitlin hadn’t interrupted, leaning forward and capturing the hand that had been toying with her ankle.

‘Didn’t you hear what I said earlier?’ she asked him. ‘I know the question about what would keep me here was hypothetical, but my answer wasn’t. Love would keep me here, Connor. If you wanted me to stay…’

‘If I wanted you to stay? Of course I’d want you to stay, but that’s not fair on you.’

With an effort that caused exquisite pain in her damaged floating ribs, she leaned further forward and rested her hand against his cheek.

‘Connor, I can work from here. Even after I finish what I’m doing at the moment, with a computer link to the lab I can continue doing analysis, which is mainly what I do anyway.’

‘Here? In Turalla? You mean you’d stay?’

Caitlin chuckled.

‘For an intelligent man, you take a bit of getting through to! I know I’ve only been here a couple of weeks, but it’s been a revelation, coming back to a country town. I didn’t realise how much I missed the sense of community.’

Connor clasped her hand in his, holding it pressed against his cheek.

‘I love you, Caitlin,’ he said quietly, and she felt the warmth of his affection swamp her body.

‘Hey, stop snogging on the veranda, you two. It sets a bad example for the youngsters.’

Mike stood below them, his four children chasing each other around him, the twins using his legs as an escape tunnel.

‘I’ll throw the surgery keys down to you,’ Connor said. ‘Grab the box of blocks out of the waiting room and come on up. I’ll shout you a cup of coffee and you can tell us what’s happening while the kids play with the blocks.’

It took a while to organise, but eventually Mike was settled in a chair beside them.

‘I’ve just had a call from Anne. Ezra’s out of danger, and should be well enough to be flown back next week.’

Connor shook his head.

‘I still can’t believe the Anne part of the puzzle,’ he said, ‘even though I was there when she came up to the hospital before he was airlifted out and actually saw her reaction to his injury.’

‘Sue’s pieced it all together, and when I spoke to Anne she filled in the blanks,’ Mike said. ‘Sue and Anne both trained in Brisbane, living in at the nurses’ quarters. And although Anne was older, Sue remembers seeing Ezra around the place. That’s one part. Then, Connor, you said Mrs Neil kept calling Ezra Jerry. After she shot him.’

‘Jerry was Ezra’s brother,’ Caitlin offered, remembering someone telling her about the two boys.

‘Exactly!’ Mike said. ‘Apparently he left home while still a youngster, and led a wild life. Ezra was always the good son, and he went off to Brisbane to university—he was doing religious studies so he must always have wanted to be a preacher. He met up with Anne and they began an affair. He had no idea what had happened to Jerry until Mrs Neil—whose name, by the way, is Candace, would you believe—came to him to tell him Jerry had been killed in a bikie fight and she was pregnant with Jerry’s baby. Ezra, who because of his religious beliefs was already riddled with guilt about his affair, did what he thought was the right thing—broke it off with Anne and married Candace.’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ Caitlin spluttered. ‘How do people make such a mess of their lives? I assume Anne then found out she was pregnant, and Harry is Ezra’s child.’

She thought for a moment, then said, ‘Oh!’ And covered her mouth with her hand.

Connor smiled. ‘I bet you’re thinking this is good for your research,’ he said, and she had to agree that it might just provide the extra links she needed.

But she forgot about the research when Connor added, ‘I think Rachel could be Ezra’s child as well. Ezra told me he took Jonah down to Brisbane. If Anne was there with Harry at the same time, it’s only logical the two of them would have shared just a little comfort.’

‘Oh, dear, how sad it all is,’ Caitlin murmured, thinking how terrible it would be to have to hide one’s love. Especially when the loved one lived in the same small town!

‘But why did Angie have to die?’ Connor asked Mike. ‘Did Sue work that out, too?’

‘No, but Ned Withers did. Mrs Neil—no way I can even think of her as Candace—won’t be judged fit to stand trial, but she’s told Ned enough for him to work out what had happened. She isn’t very bright, but one thing that she seemed to know was that blood tests could prove paternity. She didn’t know how or why—or that it would take a specific request—but had it in her head that if Angie took blood from Ezra a sign would flash across the blood bank computer saying, This man is not Jonah’s father. And it was important to her that no one knew that.’

‘Her respectability was important to her,’ Connor said quietly, and Caitlin reached out and took his hand, knowing he was thinking of Angie, and how she’d died for such a stupid reason.

‘I suppose some good’s come out of it all,’ Mike said. ‘Ezra and Anne can eventually get together.’ He looked out over the veranda railing as if seeing into the future. ‘And maybe you two as well.’

‘Maybe,’ Caitlin echoed, turning to Connor with a teasing smile.

‘Definitely maybe,’ Connor said. ‘Or should that be maybe definitely?’

He turned to Mike.

‘Actually, if you’d remove yourself and your brood from the vicinity, I could continue what I was doing before you interrupted. Not snogging, as you so indelicately put it, but persuading this woman to turn a maybe into a yes.’

‘I’m out of here,’ Mike said, standing up and calling to his children. They came scampering around the corner, and he lifted the twins, one on each arm. ‘I only came to say Sue has spread the word. The hospital’s Sunday barbecue is at our place tonight.’

He walked towards the steps then turned back to say, ‘Maybe you’ll have an announcement to make. Something we can all drink to—a toast to the future!’

Connor walked to the steps with him and watched as he returned to his car, then he came back and this time pulled his chair so it was beside Caitlin’s.

‘Will we have an announcement to make?’ he asked, and she looked into his eyes, seeing not the blue-green colour but the love he felt for her.

‘Soon,’ she said. ‘But for now let’s keep it to ourselves. Let’s enjoy getting to know each other better, and just being together, before announcing anything and having the whole town intrude on our relationship.’

Connor leaned over and kissed her on the lips.

‘You’ve been away from country towns too long,’ he told her, ‘if you think it takes an announcement for the town to intrude. Just yesterday Mrs Rennie’s daughter brought me an embroidered towel kind of thingy her mother had made as an engagement present.’

‘Oh!’ Caitlin said, then she kissed him back, because if the town was about to intrude she had to make the most of every moment she had alone with this man!