WHY had he dumped all that stuff about his relationship with Josh on Miranda, of all people?
Nick felt almost ill about it—restless and wound up and helpless, bitterly regretful of his own loss of emotional control, the way he’d felt after their night together ten years ago. You just shouldn’t do things like that. Why? Where did it get you?
They’d managed to get through dinner, he and Josh, without any huge problems. No traces of egg or nuts in the food to trigger one of Josh’s allergies. No accidental spills. He’d eaten with hearty enthusiasm, which always gave Nick an irrational degree of pleasure.
But there’d been the usual distance between them. Josh had stayed largely silent, watching a couple of the other kids talking and laughing. He’d responded minimally to anything Nick said. Nick had had to ask Josh twice to pass him the pepper before he’d paid any attention and when he had, it had just been with the action. No ‘There you are, Dad,’ or even ‘OK.’ Lily was sitting next to a man in a wheelchair—her father, presumably—on the far side of the big dining room, which was a pity because the two kids had done so well together on the beach.
Josh was tired, that was part of it. Back at the cabin, he had a quick bath and his night-time regimen of preventative asthma treatment and breathing exercises, and then he fell asleep barely halfway through the Greedy Frog story Nick read to him.
All good, except that it was only just after seven-thirty, which left Nick with a solid three hours before his own bedtime—a huge window of opportunity for regretting every word of what he’d said to Miranda on the beach.
These eco-cabins didn’t have TV. Nick had now read through every page of the information folder he’d found. And he’d packed in too much of a hurry this morning to remember to bring a book of his own, while the plot line in Josh’s Very Greedy Frog story just wasn’t gripping enough to the adult mind to sustain a second reading! He would need to raid the resort gift shop for a couple of nice thick paperbacks tomorrow, or Josh’s early bedtimes would become very limiting by the end of the week.
Or maybe Joshie could manage a late nap during the day, he decided after some more thought, and then the two of them could take part in the evening activities listed on the schedule. The torch-lit night-time walks in search of nocturnal animals, the kids’ disco on Friday night as part of the opening celebrations, the campfire supper.
It was a plan, but it didn’t help Nick right now.
He couldn’t leave Josh alone in the cabin, but he felt too restless and dissatisfied with himself to stay inside. Instead, he made a mug of decaf, black with one sugar, and went out onto the veranda, where at least the sense of vague claustrophobia should lessen.
It was a gorgeous night, the air soft and buttery and salt-flavoured, filled with the rhythmic washing sound of the sea. He sat in one of the veranda’s big, cushion-covered wicker chairs and sipped his coffee, hoping that the air and the sounds would soothe his unsettled, regretful state.
They didn’t.
What would Miranda think?
He couldn’t let it go. Never had been able to let that kind of thing go, the rare times when it had happened—just twice, really, in his whole adult life. His night with Miranda had been the second time, and the night of his father’s death the first. That time, thank goodness, the urgent sounding of a monitor alarm had saved him from spilling everything to the soft-voiced, sympathetic nurse with the warm eyes who’d been at his father’s deathbed, when nineteen-year-old Nick himself had missed his father’s final moments by just half an hour. The alarm had cut him off a few minutes in, before any tears had come—before he’d literally cried on the nurse’s shoulder.
Dad himself would have been relieved. He had taught all three of his sons—Nick was the eldest—to present a strong and inviolate front to the world. Never show your deep emotions or your doubts. Never admit when you’re wrong. Don’t let people discover your Achilles’ heel or they’ll use it against you.
For a successful surgeon, the strategy worked.
For a man struggling after a divorce, fighting to keep and build a relationship with his only child…
He honestly didn’t know any more.
Hell, what would Miranda think of him now?
What kind of a man inspired fear and distance in his own son? What kind of a man admitted to it, in a truncated semi-public conversation with a woman he hadn’t seen in ten years?
Why was Miranda’s effect on him still the same? Something about her. Something about the indefinable chemistry between them. It was a long way from being just physical. For some unaccountable reason, she shattered his barriers just by being who she was. He could talk to her in a way he’d never talked to anyone else.
He’d first discovered his connection to Miranda at that medical students’ party ten years ago and the dam inside him had burst open. The next day he’d felt exactly the way he was feeling now, regret souring his stomach and tightening like an iron band around his head.
Why the hell had he let it happen? Why had he said so much? What would she think? Lord, he’d been so naked in what he’d said! She must think less of him because of it. She must! What red-blooded woman wanted an emotional, self-doubting wimp in her life?
It was like going into battle with no armour. Like swimming naked in a pool of sharks. Not just dangerous, plain stupid.
That was how his thinking had run at the age of twenty-four.
That was why he’d never phoned her after that long-ago night.
Because he had been too scared. Because he just hadn’t imagined that she would want him to continue what they’d started after he’d shown himself to be so weak, and because he couldn’t bring himself to risk that vulnerability again, even if she did.
What the hell might he tell her in the future? he’d wondered ten years ago.
About the times he’d cried himself to sleep at fourteen and even sixteen, in sheer impotent frustration, after some angry, circular altercation with his father? About how competitive he’d been with his medical studies, so that the prospect of anything less than stellar results had filled him with physical dread? About the secret, appalling thread of relief he’d felt at nineteen when Dad had died, mingling so painfully with his grief?
It was destructive and pointless to shine a light on that stuff. You shouldn’t dwell on your failings and weaknesses. That wasn’t the way to overcome them.
Words had power.
When you talked about something, you made it more real.
Now, almost in his mid-thirties, he intellectually understood that talking could sometimes help. Lord knew, he’d tried to talk to Anna when their marriage had begun to break down and many times since then, but they always seemed to hear the wrong things in what each other said, and their talks frequently made things worse, not better. Their relationship had never held that kind of intimacy and shared nakedness.
It was one of things he’d considered a strength at the time. Now he was a lot less sure. And yet the regret about talking to Miranda remained…
He must have been sitting out on the cabin porch for over an hour by this time.
He heard various sounds above the musical play of the ocean. Kid sounds, mainly—bumps and scramblings and noise and giggling, interspersed with the occasional adult voice. Lights flipped on and off in various windows. Clattering and more voices came from the camp kitchen where cleaning up was still in progress, as well as advance preparations for tomorrow’s meals.
Then, out of the darkness, he heard women’s voices and laughter, approaching from the direction of the medical centre.
Apparently even thinking about certain things could make them more real. He’d been thinking about Miranda and what she’d done to him ten years ago and now, and magically here she was, appearing in silhouette as she came along the mulched path with Susie Jackson, the camp physiotherapist he’d been introduced to briefly over dinner.
From the way they were talking, it sounded as if they’d already made friends and he had time to wonder how it was that women could do that. So quickly and easily giving themselves. As if it wasn’t scary at all. How did they latch on so fast to the points of connection? How could they tell so quickly who to trust?
‘We’ll give it a try tomorrow,’ he heard Susie say. Then the two women said a warm, cheerful goodnight to each other and Susie peeled off in a different direction while Miranda came past Nick’s cabin.
She saw him, of course. He was sitting in front of the main window, and he’d left a light on in the cabin’s kitchenette in case Josh woke up and became disorientated in unfamiliar surroundings. The light spilled through the window and showed Nick’s position on the veranda quite clearly, leaving no opportunity to hide.
‘Hi,’ she said.
‘Hi. Everything OK?’
‘It’s fine.’ She came to a hesitant halt, and Nick could see her wondering if this was a whole conversation or just a greeting on the move. ‘Susie did a couple of evening physio sessions on my CF patients and I wanted to be on hand this first night. Then we sat and talked for a while. No dramas, thank goodness. Pager hasn’t gone off.’ She patted her hip pocket.
‘Sounds good,’ he said mechanically, willing her to keep walking.
His neck had gone hot. She must be thinking about what he’d said on the beach. She must. And he didn’t want her to. He wanted her to forget the conversation had ever happened.
He struggled to find something else to say, something that would dismiss her and send her on her way without the fact being too obvious, but the right words refused to come. The silence stretched out. Two or three seconds could feel like that many minutes in a situation like this.
‘Did you—?’ he began, just as she spoke at last, breezy and offhand.
‘Well, have a good night, Nick.’
‘You, too.’
She walked on and he started to relax. She’d saved him, thank goodness, from uttering an inane line about whether she’d remembered to bring a book, because if she hadn’t he could recommend a great story about a Very Greedy Frog, ha, ha.
He watched her go, her hips swaying slightly beneath a fall of swishy fabric in the same colours as that spectacular ocean just a hundred metres away, her shoulders neat and square on either side of her bouncing ponytail of dark hair. She looked about nineteen years old, although he knew full well that she was thirty-four, and he had a sudden surge of intense curiosity about what her life was like these days.
He was pretty sure she wasn’t married…boyfriend, maybe…and quite sure she didn’t have kids. But she did have a balcony where she kept plants. He couldn’t even remember how he knew that ridiculous detail, he just did.
It wasn’t enough.
Eight-thirty in the evening, on his own, nothing to do, with Miranda disturbing his thoughts for another hour, probably, even if she wasn’t physically present…
Damn.
‘Miranda, wait!’ he called out, just before she disappeared into the darkness on the way to her own cabin.
Miranda stopped. Right at the point when she’d absolutely made up her mind that Nick really didn’t want her to stay and chat, he was calling her back.
So what should she do about it? How much pride did she have? How nice was she? Once again, it hadn’t been hard to pick up his body language as he sat on the veranda. He’d struggled for something to say. He hadn’t stood up or anything, hadn’t tried to draw out their conversation, or even really looked at her face.
She knew a little more about men than she’d known ten years ago. She’d been with Ian for six years, after all, even though for three of those years it had been a long-distance thing. If a man wanted to talk—or even spend time with you in silence—he was usually pretty good at letting you know it. He closed the physical distance between the two of you. He looked directly at you. He smiled.
Nick hadn’t done any of those things.
Was this an issue of her pride, though, or was there another possibility?
‘I should probably go and relax for a while,’ she said, coming slowly back. Was this really what he wanted? Or, for both their sakes, should she give him an easy way out?
‘Relax here,’ he invited her. ‘I can’t leave Josh or take him anywhere, he’s fast asleep. Wish I could offer you some wine.’
‘I wouldn’t take it. I’m pretty much on call for the kids all week.’ She arrived at the short flight of wooden steps that led up to the veranda.
‘Not a holiday for you, then.’
‘Not really.’ She smiled at him, to see if he’d smile back. ‘Although I do have high hopes for my tan…’ Nope. No smile.
‘Please, come and sit,’ he repeated, and this time he jumped to his feet almost eagerly and dragged the veranda’s second chair into a more inviting position, as if he really meant it.
‘Just a few minutes,’ she said, making a point of looking at her watch so that she could claim another commitment if necessary.
She honestly didn’t know if she was being pathetic, stepping onto his veranda. Too nice, as usual. Too happy to give.
Damn it, though! She hated the way some people told you to play games in a relationship. Don’t show your emotional cards until you’ve seen his. Play hard to get. If you began a relationship with games, at what point did you stop them? Patterns were hard to break once you’d set them up. She’d kept her emotional cards to her chest with Ian. It had gone against everything in her nature, and it hadn’t led to a happy ending, had it? Wasn’t simple honesty the better approach? Honesty to the person you were with, and honesty to yourself about your own nature.
We’re adults, Nick and I, she reminded herself. We’re in our thirties, successful professionally, with a divorce under his belt and a failed long-term relationship under mine. I can step onto his veranda without it saying anything about what happened ten years ago.
‘You’re frowning,’ he said.
‘Didn’t mean to.’
‘Want some tea or coffee?’
‘Tea, please. Just a quick cup.’ Mugs could be handy things to look down at when you didn’t want to meet somebody’s eyes.
He rose at once and went inside, and she heard the sounds he made in the kitchen. In a few minutes he’d returned, the cardboard tea-bag tag still dangling over the edge of the mug, which was one of those ubiquitous pearlescent orange ones she remembered from her childhood, and even then they hadn’t been new.
Handing it to her, Nick said, ‘This must be a cyclone survivor, I think. My aunt and uncle had a cupboard full of these at their beach house.’
She laughed. ‘I was thinking almost the same thing. My parents had rows of them, twenty-five years ago, hanging on hooks on the wall.’
‘The camp has been here in some form or other for donkey’s years, I gather.’
‘Not always for kids like our lot, though.’
‘No. A church camp, then a nudist colony, in the eighties. Long ago, they used to hunt mutton birds on the island, for their oil.’
‘You’ve done your research!’
‘That’s what teachers used to say on my school reports.’ He quoted self-mockingly, ‘Nick is always well prepared.’
‘I’m seriously wondering how you knew this place was once a nudist colony, let alone about the mutton bird oil.’
‘No great mystery. My son was fast asleep by seven twenty-five, and I forgot to pack a book to read in the evenings. As a piece of gripping literature, the Crocodile Creek Kids’ Camp information folder provided a somewhat disappointing alternative, but the page on the camp’s history was pure gold.’
‘Oh, let me lend you a book, then. I optimistically packed three.’ She named them—one chunky piece of crime fiction, one delectably fluffy beach read and one literary novel. She almost added, Only keep your hands off my beach read, because I want that one first!
He chose the murder mystery, and looked much more cheerful than he had a few minutes ago. She promised him, ‘I’ll grab it from my cabin in a minute.’
‘Tomorrow at breakfast will be fine. For the rest of the week, I’m going to try to get Josh to have an afternoon sleep so we can do some of the evening stuff, but that might not work, which will mean I get a lot of bedtime reading done.’
‘There’s a babysitting service available through the resort hotel’s child-care centre. Beth and Susie have both promised me it’s very responsible. The centre staff all have formal qualifications in child care, as well as first-aid certificates.’
‘I must have missed that detail in the folder. Can’t think how, because I really thought I’d read it cover to cover.’
A silence fell.
Miranda felt fine about it, which wasn’t always the case when two people didn’t know each other very well—which she and Nick surely didn’t, any more. She sipped her tea and settled herself more comfortably into the chair, noting the way the soft light from the cabin window emphasised the craggy lines of Nick’s profile and the bulk of his shoulders.
His shoulders were tense.
Apparently he wasn’t fine about the silence.
‘Listen, what I said to you on the beach this afternoon…’
‘I know.’ She nodded. ‘We didn’t get a chance to finish. Of course we can talk about it now, Nick, if you want.’
‘No, that’s not what I meant.’ He shifted awkwardly in his seat. ‘Look, just forget the whole conversation. I shouldn’t have said any of it. It wasn’t fair to you or Josh, or—Yeah, not fair to anyone.’
‘Not fair to you?’ she interposed softly.
‘What? Oh, fair to me?’ He laughed, a short unhappy sound, and ran a hand up the back of his neck. ‘That’s hardly the point, is it?’
‘Well, don’t you think it might be? Nick, we were friends, once.’ She couldn’t help watching him, wishing she could come closer. Touch him even, the way she’d tried to do on the beach. Just on his arm. ‘We went through medical school together, we—Well…And I’m your son’s doctor. I’m not going to betray your confidence, or judge you, or use it against you. If you needed to talk—’
‘No, I shouldn’t have said it,’ he repeated, the stubborn repudiation of his own behaviour—and his own needs?—etched in every line of his body.
After that, there was nowhere to go. She couldn’t keep pushing. And she couldn’t think of anything else to say that didn’t sound like a very forced attempt to change the subject. Neither, apparently, could he.
She ended up gulping her tea too fast and almost burning her throat. When she made I’d-better-go-now noises and got to her feet, he stood too. ‘Thanks for keeping me company.’
‘Not for long enough. It’s still only nine. But I should…’ She made a vague gesture in the direction of her cabin.
‘You’ll probably be busy tomorrow,’ he agreed.
‘And I could be up in the night with some of the kids. Tayla’s prone to night-time asthma attacks. A couple of them need meds at ten.’ He must be riveted by that information!
After a few more awkward phrases from both of them, she said goodnight and left him on his own with the thoughts he refused to share, but she wondered if she’d been wrong ten years ago about why he’d never phoned.
Could it possibly be that he’d been too full of regret about how much he’d given of himself that night?
Having retreated to bed at nine-thirty in a state of one part boredom, two parts regret and three parts frustration, Nick woke early the next morning. The sun had not yet risen above the horizon, although he could tell it wouldn’t be long.
He dressed quickly in shorts and a T-shirt, wanting to get out into the freshness of the dawn air, but he made too much noise and heard the creak of the bed in Josh’s room. He’d woken him. Josh appeared in the doorway, still looking sleepy and confused.
Nick took no time to think and no time to take it slow. Instead, he scooped his son into his arms, still in his little cotton pyjamas, and told him, ‘Come on, we’re going to watch the sun come up.’
The beach was deserted, the sand still cool and grey and shaded, and the ocean as flat as glass. This part of the island faced the north-east, and on the far right of the sweeping vista Nick could see the place where the sun would rise. He just had time to set Josh down in front of him, sheltering him from the light chill in the breeze with his own body. ‘Feet cold?’
‘No.’
‘Ever seen the sun rise?’
‘In hospital.’
Oh, hell…
He squeezed Josh’s shoulders. ‘Well, this will be much better.’
It was. Seconds later, a line of fire spread between the sky and the water, which was suddenly dazzling with white light. The air immediately began to warm, while colour spread over everything. The greens of the rainforest glowed. The sand turned to gold. The sky grew bluer and deeper by the minute.
‘Can I swim?’ Josh asked.
They hadn’t brought a towel or a swimsuit, but Nick couldn’t turn down the idea. Josh’s whole face was eager and his breathing was clear, no hint of a wheeze.
And he’s talking to me. He’s looking at me.
Somehow the looking felt even more important than the talking. He could deal with Josh’s silences—just—but the resolute, close-faced looking away always cut him to the bone.
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Take off your pyjama top and just wear the bottoms.’
He stripped off his own stretch cotton T-shirt, thinking that it could serve as a towel to wrap Josh in if he got cold.
Would he?
Anna had stressed the danger of sudden cold as a trigger for Josh’s attacks. Nick hated that she gave him these intimidating lists of warnings and reminders when he would have known it all for himself if she hadn’t tried so hard to keep him away.
As usual, he questioned his own degree of blame. He had withdrawn too much. He hadn’t fought hard enough. He’d let her shut him out. The two of them had got married for the wrong reasons, and that fact hadn’t helped. When the emotions had got tough, he’d opted out. Had he learned this lesson from his father too well? Was he wrong?
The air wasn’t cold, he decided.
They went down to the water together. Josh loved swimming in the heated pool he went to every week. Most asthmatics were helped by swimming. But because of the trigger of cold, he hadn’t ever been into the chilly waters of Australia’s southerly seas, even in high summer. Here on Wallaby Island, it was different. The water was softly cool, and safely flat. The tiny waves lapped the sand…and Josh’s toes…like bits of lace.
He jumped over each one. Nick took his hand and they jumped together, wading out a little further each time, taking it slowly, until Josh was in chest-deep, which Nick decided was far enough. Josh was thrilled about it, leaping and splashing, laughing helplessly when Nick threw him into the air and swung him around, making an arc of wake with Josh’s feet.
He’s forgotten to be scared of me…
For the moment, at least.
His body was too thin and pale, though, and even in such balmy water he soon began to look purple around the mouth. His teeth were chattering.
‘Time to stop,’ Nick said.
He turned towards the shore, and there was Miranda in dark blue jogging shorts and a white vest top, coming back from a jog along the sand. He took a breath to call out to her, Hey, Miranda, look at Josh in the water! But then he swallowed her name back, knowing it would have come out too eagerly.
She saw them, though, and waved as she jogged—had probably recognised them when she’d first arrived for her run. There were several other people on the beach now, too. How could you stay in bed or shut away in a cabin on a morning like this?
Josh didn’t argue about stopping. Despite the warmth of the water, it had chilled him now. He’d started to wheeze, but wouldn’t let Nick carry him back to the beach. ‘I can go myself.’ They waded to the shore together, with Nick listening to every breath. He wrapped his discarded T-shirt around Josh, grateful for his own size because the garment practically qualified as a blanket on a small five-year-old.
‘OK, Joshie?’
Josh nodded.
‘Your inhaler’s back at the cabin.’
‘I’m OK,’ he wheezed. He had his fists clenched and his jaw stuck out, but the gestures came from stubbornness, Nick decided, not panic.
Should he be panicking, though? Josh’s asthma gear was a hundred or so metres away. The medical centre was twice that distance. The nearest hospital lay across a gap of tropical ocean. Maybe panicking was the right approach.
There was a helicopter rescue service, Nick reminded himself. He wasn’t going to overreact yet.
Miranda reached them. She was wheezing, too, from the exertion on her lungs. She had her hands on her hips and her chest was pumping up and down, strands of damp hair stuck to her forehead, ponytail in place, tips of her elfin ears showing, long tomboy legs bare and brown and softly muscled, and that indefinable sense of achievement and satisfaction that Nick always got, too, when he ran, despite the aching legs and fighting lungs.
A surge of sudden and very male desire flooded through him, and he wondered what it would feel like to hold her hot, breathless body in his arms, and how her skin would smell after she’d run on a beach at dawn.
‘You look happy,’ he said stupidly.
She grinned. ‘I love the beach, and I love to run.’ Then she added, ‘Got your inhaler, Josh?’ She’d heard the sound of his breathing.
‘Do you want to borrow it?’
‘No, sweetheart, I meant for you.’
‘I’m OK. It’s in the cabin.’
Still breathing hard, Miranda looked at Nick, and he read her easily. ‘We’ll go back,’ he mouthed.
‘No drama,’ she mouthed back, ‘but, yes, I think you should.’ Then she turned away and began her cool-down routine of slow stretches, closing her eyes and facing the morning sun.
Nick went to pick Josh up but he shook his head and started off on his own, in a gesture of independence Nick suspected he wasn’t allowed to follow through on very often. He followed his son, watching the neat, resolute feet moving rhythmically on the sand, watching him warm up fast in the morning sun, with the damp T-shirt still wrapped around him.
Neither of them spoke, but the silence between them felt fine after their noisy time together in the water. To an outsider, they would have looked as if they were going back to get dressed for breakfast, not in search of lifesaving medication.
Josh was still wheezing by the time the two of them were sitting on his bed with the inhaler and spacer ready. As far as Nick could tell, however, the wheezing hadn’t progressed to the frightening tight and struggling stage it often reached.
‘Ready for this?’ he asked Josh, who nodded, and they managed the dose together with good smooth timing. He breathed more easily at once.
Nick did, too. ‘Time for breakfast soon,’ he said.
There came a light knock at the cabin door some minutes later, after they’d dressed in dry clothes and were ready to go and eat. Miranda stood there. She’d showered and changed after her run. Nick could smell the lingering scent of shampoo on her damp hair, which lay loose around her shoulders, and she was wearing a skirt and top that looked tropical but sufficiently professional to remind him she wasn’t here for a break.
‘Everything fine?’ she asked.
He knew she was speaking as Josh’s doctor, and responded accordingly. ‘Yes, the inhaler worked fast today.’
‘It wasn’t a bad attack. You did the right thing, taking it calmly and letting him walk back on his own.’
‘Are you heading over for breakfast?’
‘Yes, I’m on my way. Coming, too?’
It seemed logical to walk together, and to sit together once they reached the camp’s large communal dining room. Nick remembered how their conversation had limped to a halt last night when he’d refused to continue what he’d begun to say on the beach. He wanted to talk to her, but not about the tough, confronting things. Why put either of them through that? And why avoid her, when there were plenty of easy subjects they could talk about?
‘How often do you run?’ he asked instead.
‘Oh, you know, the usual kind of schedule for that kind of thing.’ She grinned, warm eyes alight. ‘Every day, except for all the days when I don’t.’
He laughed. ‘That’s about my schedule, too.’
Josh had found Lily. ‘Can I take my plate over to the other table?’
‘And sit with Lily?’
Josh nodded.
‘Of course you can.’
Which left Miranda and Nick not exactly on their own, because there were people all around them and questions she had to answer every few minutes, but there was an odd kind of privacy to their breakfast all the same, and by the time they’d each drunk two cups of coffee and eaten bowls of cereal and yoghurt and fruit, the dining room had almost emptied out and Josh and Lily were chasing each other round the tables.
Nick hadn’t even registered how much time must have gone by until Lily fell and scraped her knee, which caught the attention of Charles, who’d been talking to the catering manager over by the kitchen door. He wheeled himself over, and Miranda looked at her watch and gave an exclamation of horror. ‘I need to get going!’
So I can still talk to her, Nick thought.
And we can still, both of us, lose all track of time because we’re enjoying it so much.
He didn’t know what it meant, but he felt a mixture of eagerness and trepidation that was rapidly brewing into a potent cocktail inside him.
How much had he changed? Enough? Or not at all?