When the family had receded just outside the door Ian hopped out of bed and closed it firmly against them. And grinned again.
‘You’d think they owned me.’
Ryan smiled back. ‘You’ve told them?’
‘Yep.’
‘And you haven’t been cast out of the family?’
‘No.’ Ian’s smile faded. He sank onto the bed again. The toll of the last few weeks’ emotional turmoil and his brush with death the night before had left him weak, but there was a determination in his eyes which was growing by the minute. ‘Abbey… Dr Wittner was right,’ he said. ‘The family already knew I was gay. They hadn’t talked about it because they’d decided it was my business and I’d talk about it if I wanted it talked about. Typical, really. My family… ’
‘They want to help?’
‘They sure do.’ Ian shook his head, his voice laced with wonder. ‘I told them I was HIV positive and my sisters started berating me for not laying it on them and for not trusting them. My mother burst into tears and fell on my neck.
‘And my brothers-in-law told me I was a cloth-head and that your idea of me practising law here was the best one they’d heard for a long time. The general consensus was that I’d be a darn sight more use practising law in Sapphire Cove than pushing up daisies. Which I’m starting to think-’
‘Might be true,’ Ryan finished for him. ‘Hell, mate, you can only give it a go. Get yourself on a firm footing again, get your medical regime established and then see if you want to face the world outside Sapphire Cove again.’
Ryan looked out the window across the headland. The sea was a wide band of sparkling sapphire against the horizon. ‘Sapphire Cove really is the loveliest place in the world to live,’ he said, and his voice was tinged with regret.
‘How come you don’t live here any more, then?’ Ian asked, and Ryan shrugged.
‘I’m still on a career path,’ he said with some reluctance. ‘I have commitments in the States that it’d take more than AIDS to shift, and I have a fiancee who couldn’t live here in a fit No. I wish you all the best here, mate, but I’m afraid I have to go.’
The turtle eggs were safe.
Ryan should have been back at home with Felicity. Instead, he spent the next two hours sitting on the beach, watching the barren sweep of sand where last night the turtle had laid her eggs. The tide had done its job well. There was now almost no sign that underneath the sand there were scores of tiny turtles growing towards life.
How long did they take to hatch?
Heaven knew. Ryan didn’t. And he didn’t want to know. He didn’t want to be back in the States, look down at his calendar and say, Today’s the day half Sapphire Cove will be out, escorting baby turtles to the water.’
He had to go back.
There was nothing for him here, he told himself. Nothing. Sure, Sapphire Cove was a beautiful place, but he hadn’t fought his way up the career ladder to abandon it now-abandon it on a whim.
Abandon it because he wanted to please Abbey?
The thought of Abbey was overpowering. He couldn’t get her out of his thoughts. The feel of her last night… her soft curves yielding to his touch… the scent of her… her lovely dusky curls against his face…
Abbey…
Dear God, he wanted her. Ryan shifted uneasily on the sand and finally rose. He walked down to the water’s edge and stood, looking out to sea, as if the answers could somehow be found out there.
They couldn’t. Of course they couldn’t
He had to go home. To the States. He had to marry Felicity.
No.
He couldn’t marry Felicity. He couldn’t.
Last night Felicity had kissed him goodnight deeply-passionately. If the phone hadn’t demanded her attention she would have wanted to make love.
And Ryan hadn’t wanted to make love one bit. Not with Felicity. Back in the States he had thought of Felicity as one of the most beautiful women be knew. Powerful. Ambitious. Wonderful.
All the adjectives he’d used were still true, except the ‘wonderful’. He no longer wanted to many someone who spent her life attached to a mobile phone and a computer. He wanted to marry Abbey.
The thought settled into his mind like a flaming arrow and it buried itself into his heart and burned.
Marry Abbey.
If he married Abbey then he’d already have a son. He and Felicity had talked of children and had decided against them. It wasn’t that either of them disliked them. It was just that they hardly felt they had time for them.
But Jack…
Ryan thought back to the flaming-haired toddler, demanding more egg to be aeroplaned into his mouth. Wobbling on his sturdy little legs. His head upended in a pudding bowl. And Ryan’s mouth curved into a smile. It’d be no problem at all to have Jack. Maybe adopt him, if Abbey didn’t object.
And Abbey… Well, she could be a full-time mum. She’d like that. Give her a chance to be looked after for a change.
How would she like New York?
A flash of doubt swept through his mind at the thought of Abbey in New York, but he suppressed it fast. The thought of Abbey as his wife was so, well, so tantalising…
It had to be possible.
Convincing Abbey would be the easy part.
What came before was the hard part.
Telling Felicity he’d made an awful mistake.
CHAPTER TEN
‘YOU have to be kidding!’
As a reaction to a marriage proposal, Abbey’s first words left a bit to be desired, Ryan thought. Still, maybe it was no more than he deserved.
He’d asked Abbey to marry him in her dairy.
Ryan had come to Abbey’s that evening, expecting to find her resting and with Jack in bed. Instead, he’d discovered she’d told the local farmers who’d been milking her cows that she was fine by herself. Jack had been given his dinner and his mother had discussed bedtime with him but Jack had had a long afternoon nap and had been in no mood for sleep. He’d been making mud pies in a play-pen in a corner of the dairy and Abbey had been milking her thirteenth cow.
‘What do you want?’ she’d demanded when Ryan had come through the dairy gate and had startled Abbey’s cows in the process. The herd had then twitched and become nervous and had made Abbey’s job hard.
Ryan had been thrown so far off balance that he’d told Abbey what he’d wanted, straight out
‘I’m not marrying Felicity any more,’ he’d said flatly. ‘I want you.’
As a proposal it had lacked a little finesse, he told himself later. Abbey’s reaction had confirmed it.
‘You have to be kidding.’
She reached up and patted her cow’s rump, settled herself again and kept right on milking.
‘No. Ryan, stay over there,’ she ordered, as he took a couple of steps nearer. ‘My girls don’t like strangers. I know you milked them once but they don’t remember you. Or maybe they do and it’s that that’s making them nervous.’ She frowned, and he couldn’t see by her face what she was thinking. ‘So tell me. What have you done with your Felicity?’
‘I haven’t done anything with Felicity,’ Ryan said, exasperated. ‘But she’s no longer my Felicity. She’s gone
