Cam swung into the driveway of his apartment block only moments before Georgie’s Mazda came into view. She’d sent him a text earlier, to say she was taking Cynthia to the movies and would drop her home a little after six. Despite the unsettling questions that still filled his mind, Cam wanted to be there when she arrived.
Even if he managed to prove that something illegal had taken place, there was no proof Georgie was involved. It could be something to do with the failure of hospital equipment or technology, or involve any one of the thousands of other staff members who worked at the hospital.
His enquires with the other large hospitals servicing the greater Sydney area confirmed Deborah Healy’s surety that none of them would have infant death rates as high as hers. Yet, apart from the fact the hospital’s reporting system had broken down, there was still no evidence of wrongdoing.
Pulling into his parking space, he climbed out and waited for the girls to join him. Like she had earlier that morning, Georgie parked her car alongside the curb. The two of them walked toward him, arm in arm, and he was moved to see the genuine smile that turned up Cynthia’s lips. He hadn’t seen her so animated since before he left the family home a decade ago. Not even weeks of therapy had made her smile that way.
“You two look like you’ve had a nice day,” he said when they reached him.
Cynthia’s grin widened. “We had the most fantastic day, Cam! We spent the morning at the day spa—look, do you like the color of my nails?” She thrust her hands out in front of her and laughed before continuing. “Then we had lunch at this really posh place down near the harbor. To top it off, Georgie took me to the movies.” Cynthia spun on her heel and tugged at Georgie’s arm. “How did you know I love going to the movies?”
Georgie smiled softly. “I love going to the movies, too. It was fun. Thank you for coming with me.”
Cynthia’s eyes widened and she shook her head. “No! I’m the one who’s grateful. I’m the one who wants to say thank you. I’ve had the best day ever!” She flung her arms around Georgie and hugged her. Cam’s chest tightened with emotion when Georgie hugged her back.
Careful, he silently warned himself. For all her outward goodness, he hardly knew Georgie Whitely, and until he knew the extent of her involvement, if any, in the mysterious infant deaths, he’d do well to keep his distance. He needed to proceed with caution.
“Well, I guess I’d better get going,” Georgie said, interrupting his thoughts.
“No!” his sister protested before he could respond. “Come in! Stay for dinner! Cam cooks a mean barbeque. She turned to him with an expectant look on her face. “Don’t you?”
He couldn’t find the words to turn her down. “I’m surprised you noticed. You’ve barely eaten anything I’ve cooked since you arrived,” he muttered.
Cynthia had the grace to look embarrassed. “That’s not true!”
Cam softened his words with a smile. “Oh, I think it is.”
“Well, that was before. I feel so much better now. In fact, I’m starving. What’s on the menu?” She shot him a cheeky smile and Cam couldn’t help but laugh.
If he were honest, he didn’t really mind that she’d invited Georgie to dinner. It would give him a chance to get to know her a little better and to sound her out about the infant deaths. It would be interesting to observe her reaction to a few questions and remarks.
Cam prided himself on being very perceptive. He had a knack for getting inside a person’s head and they didn’t even know he was there. It had helped him solve an admirable number of crimes over the years and he was confident his skills would continue to serve him well, even with the added complication of his attraction to his witness. His promise of caution would ensure he’d keep his libido under wraps. He turned to Georgie.
“Would you like to stay for dinner? After spending the day with this brat, it’s the least I can do.”
“Cam! That’s not nice!” Cynthia replied in mock outrage and poked her tongue out at him.
Cam chuckled and Georgie sent him a soft smile. It lit up her brown eyes and sent a rush of blood to his groin. He swallowed a groan and once again determined to keep well away from her. She was dangerous to his peace of mind and until he knew what was going on at her work place, it was best he keep his distance. But that didn’t mean they couldn’t exchange chitchat over dinner. Did it? All of a sudden, he wasn’t quite so certain.
“Are you sure?” she said, nibbling on her lip.
Cam dragged his gaze away from the tempting sight and nodded. It was too late now to retract the invitation.
“Yes, of course,” he forced himself to reply. “Come on, let’s go inside.” He threw his arm around Cynthia’s shoulders and the three of them walked toward the front entrance to the building.
* * *
It was getting late when Cynthia finally stretched her arms above her head and yawned and announced she was going to bed. She kissed Cam goodnight and then surprised him by kissing Georgie on the cheek.
“Thank you for a wonderful day, Georgie. I’ll remember it forever.”
Georgie smiled with pleasure. “It was great,” she agreed. “We’ll have to do it again.”
His sister’s eyes widened in delight. “Could we? You mean it?”
Georgie chuckled. “Yes, of course. But we’ll have to wait a few weeks. It will take that long before our nails will need to be redone.”
Cynthia shrieked with excitement and threw her arms around Georgie and hugged her. “Oh, Georgie! Thank you! You’re the absolute best!” Then, throwing them a wave, she skipped down the corridor in the direction of her bedroom.
Cam stared at the woman who sat across from him at the kitchen table. She seemed almost too good to be true. Like a guardian angel sent to heal his sister’s pain. Could an almost-stranger really be that kind to a girl she barely knew? Or was it all an act? Cam was determined to find out.
“Would you like another coffee?” he asked.
“No, thanks. One’s enough.” She smiled and pushed back her chair and started collecting the dirty plates.
“I’ll do that,” Cam protested.
“It’s no trouble. Besides, you cooked. I have a rule in my house: The cook never has to clean up!”
Cam chuckled. “I like that rule. Too bad I’ve lived on my own for so long. Until Cynthia arrived, there was nobody around but me. I cooked, cleaned and did whatever else was required.”
Georgie headed toward the kitchen with her hands filled with dirty plates. She threw a grin over her shoulder. “Me, too. If only we’d known there was an easier way.”
Cameron’s heart leaped at the discovery she lived alone. It boded well for the fact that she might be single. The next instant, reining himself in, he told himself he shouldn’t be so interested in her personal life. He had yet to broach the subject of the dead infants and still didn’t have a clue how she might react.
They’d shared a pleasant meal around the table talking about their day. Cam had kept the conversation light, unprepared to discuss what had kept him busy throughout the day. He needed to comb through the hospital records and get a better sense of what had happened before he went any further. Still, the mood at the table was comfortable and he’d enjoyed getting to know Georgie better.
“You’re really good with your sister. She’s lucky she found you.” Georgie’s quiet words broke into his thoughts.
He stared at her. “I’m not sure that she found me. The way I heard it, you were the one who made the enquiries. If it weren’t for you, I would never have known she was in the city, let alone in a hospital giving birth.” He moved closer to where she was stacking the dishwasher. “I haven’t had a chance to thank you.”
“There… There’s no need to thank me. I was merely doing my job.” Her eyelids fluttered rapidly and her flimsy dress moved with each quick intake of breath. Cam was pleased to see she was affected by his nearness.
He’d always enjoyed women and they seemed to enjoy him. There had been a fair number of them, in and out of his life. No doubt a therapist would imagine the fact he’d grown up with a wicked adoptive mother, and a birth mother who hadn’t loved him enough to keep him, would have been enough to sour him off female companions for life. But that wasn’t the case. It wasn’t all women he held a grudge against, just two of them. As far as he was concerned, both of them could burn in hell, along with his cowardly father.
Shaking off his dark thoughts, he gave Georgie a soft smile. “Are all nurses as dedicated as you?”
“I’m not sure you’d call it dedication. Like I said, I was merely doing my job. When I first saw Cynthia, she was already in labor and it was obvious she’d had a rough time. I’m sure I don’t need to remind you about her appearance that first day.”
Cam remembered the dirty state his sister had been in, even after a shower, and nodded slowly. “I remember.”
“When I questioned her about her living arrangements, she told me she moved around a lot and was reluctant to give me specifics. It was obvious she had no fixed place to go. I was concerned for her and her baby and what would happen to them when they were discharged. When she told me she had no family other than a brother who was a police officer in the city, I took the only course of action open to me: I made an effort to locate you.”
“And you did.” Their gazes caught and held and the silence between them stretched out.
The tension in the air escalated and was only broken when Georgie turned away and focused her attention on stacking the rest of the dirty plates. The cutlery followed and the noise of that precluded further conversation. Cam busied himself by collecting the condiments off the table and storing them away in the pantry.
A few moments later, the cleanup was done and he reached for a bottle of port. “Would you like a glass?”
She shook her head. “I’m driving. I’d better—”
“You didn’t have any wine at dinner. One glass won’t put you over the limit.”
She seemed to think about it and then accepted his offer with a slight smile. “All right. One glass.”
He poured the drinks and carried them over to the glass sliding door that led out to the balcony. “Let’s have them out here. It shouldn’t be too cold, yet.”
Georgie followed behind him and he handed her a glass. “You have a great view,” she murmured, peering through the dark.
The lights from nearby houses and apartment blocks gently illuminated the night. His balcony overlooked a leafy park favored by morning joggers—him, included. He indicated the wooden deck chairs and they each took a seat. Georgie relaxed in one with a quiet sigh.
“What a week,” she murmured and took a sip of port.
Cameron stared over at her and wondered what she was thinking. “It can’t be easy, doing what you do. How do you keep it up?”
She smiled softly. “It’s my job and I love it. I guess it’s as simple as that.”
Cameron nodded. He understood how a job could keep someone enthralled, the good times far outweighing the bad. There were many people who wondered how he could do what he did for a living, but it was like Georgie said: Policing was his job and he loved it.
“It must be difficult to lose a newborn. How do you cope with that?”
“Yes, it’s difficult, all right. Thankfully, it doesn’t happen too often.”
“How often?”
She gazed at him for a moment, as if trying to work out where his interest lay and then answered. “I’ve worked as a midwife for two years. During that time, to my knowledge, three babies have died. That’s three too many as far as I’m concerned and each and every one of them broke my heart… But I’ve learned to accept that sometimes bad things happen for no good reason. Is it really our job to question why?”
He stared at her and his heart began to pound. The three deaths she referred to were well below the fifteen the general manager had mentioned, and the GM’s figures had been drawn from only the previous twelve months of the twenty-four Georgie had worked there. Was Georgie really unaware of the others, or was she lying?
His mind snagged on something else she’d said: ‘Sometimes bad things happen for no good reason. Is it really our job to question why?’ What the hell did she mean? Was she implying she knew more about them, but didn’t feel at liberty to say? Was she sending him some sort of cryptic message? Or did she really approach the tragedies with such a fatalistic attitude?
He groaned under his breath. So many unanswered questions were doing his head in. He prided himself on being able to read people well, and yet from Georgie, he could ascertain nothing. He was still of the opinion that she was a good person with the kindest of hearts, and yet she appeared to accept the deaths of the babies with a sense of fatalism he found a little cold. He had to know more.
“Do you really believe bad things just happen and there’s nothing you can do about it?”
Her eyes widened. She stared at him for a long moment and then blinked and looked away. She lifted her glass and sipped at her port and then exhaled on a heavy sigh.
“The truth is,” she began quietly, “I want to believe those deaths just happened. I have no choice. If I believe otherwise, I’ll drive myself mad with guilt. I birthed each of those three babies. I should have noticed there was something wrong, something that would cause them to stop breathing before the next day was done.”
She shook her head and stared at the floor, her voice a low monotone. “I did the usual checks. Not one of those babies showed any signs there was something wrong.”
“And yet there was.”
She looked up at him and his breath caught at the pain in her eyes. Slowly, she nodded.
“Yes, there was. There had to be. Nothing else makes sense.”
Cameron’s heart thumped at the raw emotion on her face. Any doubt he’d been harboring that she was involved in wrongful deaths—if there even were wrongful deaths—was swept away like the cool breeze that blew in from Bondi Beach.
“My mother’s tried to reassure me that it wasn’t my fault, but even with all of her years’ experience on a labor ward, it’s so difficult to believe her. They were my babies. I was responsible for ensuring they would be all right. How can their deaths be anything but my fault?”
Her voice broke and tears welled up in her eyes. Without hesitation, Cam pushed away from his chair and went to her. His only thought was to ease the suffering in her eyes. He’d never be able to believe she was capable of deliberately ending a baby’s life. She simply cared too much.
Taking her hand, he gently pulled her upright and enfolded her in his arms. She collapsed against him and cried softly into his shirt. Cam stroked her hair and down her back and murmured words of comfort in her ear. Her devastation tore at him. He’d always shied away from emotion, keeping himself removed, but listening to her forlorn weeping was a difficult thing to do.
At last, her crying eased to the occasional hiccup and sob and he set her gently away from him. Swiping at the dampness on her cheeks with the pad of his thumb, he stared down at her ravaged face. Even in the dimness of the evening, he could see her eyes were swollen and red. Her nose dripped. Her lip still wobbled.
To him, she was still beautiful.
Powerless to stop himself, he slowly dipped his head and captured her lips. Barely touching, he grazed her mouth and heard her indrawn breath. He pulled away and stared at her, sure that the desire that pounded through his veins was clear to see.
Her eyes grew round and then flared with an answering need. She stepped into him, closing the distance between them and her arms went around his neck. Needing no further encouragement, Cameron pressed her to him and kissed her like there was no tomorrow. And for that moment, it seemed the truth.
She tasted warm and sweet and heady, like the port she’d recently consumed. With a groan, his tongue swept over hers and danced inside her mouth. She matched his passion, kiss for kiss, until his body raged with fire. Somewhere, in the back of his mind, a tiny voice urged caution.
They were outside on his balcony. It was no place to make love. Inside, his young sister slept in one of the spare rooms. Now was not the time to have their passion get out of control, no matter how much he wanted it to. Knowing it was the only thing he could do, he eased away from her and loosened her arms from around his neck.
“Hey, sweetheart, we need to stop. We need to slow things down.”
She stared up at him, her eyes dark with need and confusion. She blinked once and then blinked again. Slowly, reason appeared in her eyes. Almost immediately, a blush raced across her cheeks. She stepped away from him, like she’d been burned.
“I’m sorry. Oh, my goodness! I don’t know what came over me! I’m sorry, Cameron. My God, I barely know you. I don’t normally do this; fall to pieces and then kiss men I barely know. Please, can we just forget it ever happened?”
Cameron pressed a finger against her lips in an effort to silence her increasingly frantic speech. “Georgie, it’s okay. Stop apologizing. I was a willing participant. In fact, I initiated it, remember?”
She blushed again and turned away. He almost smiled at her discomfort, enjoying the thought that his kiss had left her so frazzled, but he held himself back, knowing she wouldn’t take kindly to his mirth.
“I-I should be going,” she stammered and opened the sliding door.
He followed her inside, understanding her need to flee. Things had moved fast. His head was spinning, too. It was probably best for both of them that they call it a night.
She gathered her handbag from where she’d left it on a small table by the front door and then turned to him. “Thank you for dinner. It was lovely.”
“It’s the least I could do after what you did for Cynthia. She had a fantastic time and I know the excursion’s done wonders for her state of mind. She looks so much better already. I can’t thank you enough.”
“It’s fine. I was happy to do it for her. It won’t go anywhere toward making up for the loss of her baby, but it’s all I could think of to do.”
Cam frowned. “I hope you’re not blaming yourself for what happened to Josephine?”
Georgie shrugged and turned away. “Of course I’m blaming myself. What else would you expect me to do?”
Cam drew in a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “I’m sorry you feel that way. I’m sure Cynthia doesn’t blame you.”
“That might be so, but I… I can’t help it.”
“Sometimes bad things just happen, right? Isn’t that what you said? Get this: I’m adopted. My birth mother didn’t care for me enough to want to keep me. She handed me over for strangers to raise, and hell, they did a terrible job. But I don’t blame myself.” He stared at her long and hard and then shrugged. “Sometimes bad things just happen.”
She held his gaze. It gave him no satisfaction to notice the color had leached from her cheeks. Her eyes were huge in her pale face, wide and uncertain and clouded with fear.
Fear? What the hell did she have to be afraid of? No, he must have been mistaken.
“I-I have to go,” she stammered, averting her face.
He frowned in confusion, but silently turned away. He undid the security lock and opened the front door. She made a move to leave. Halfway through the doorway, she turned and shot him a sad smile. “Thanks again for dinner. Cynthia’s right. You do a mean barbeque.”
And with that, she was gone.