‘I might have a route through Charles,’ he told her.
She frowned. ‘Charles is rich?’
‘Charles’s family is rich. The Wetherby station is vast. Old man Wetherby was a nasty piece of work. After Charles’s accident he couldn’t bear looking at him. Disability disgusted him. That seemed fine by Charles-he couldn’t stand the old man either. Anyway Philip, Charles’s brother, now runs the place. Charles refused to take anything personally from the farm but he’s not above touching his brother’s conscience when he needs something for the hospital. Or in this case, if he needs something toward a pool. Philip can well afford it.’
‘But will he?’
‘There are things going on between Charles and his brother that I don’t understand,’ Cal told her. ‘All I know is that Philip is a weak reed but an incredibly rich weak reed, and a contribution for a pool wouldn’t touch his huge financial base. As long as he doesn’t have to commit any effort…’
‘It’ll be you who has to commit the effort. ’
‘So it seems.’
‘Why are you doing this?’ she said, so softly he hardly heard.
Why was he doing this? Good question. ‘It has to be done,’ he said, trying to figure it out for himself. ‘Those kids last night shouldn’t have died.’
‘No, but they’re just more in a long sequence of tragedies. Mary was telling me. The death rate among the adolescents out here is horrific.’
‘So it is.’
‘So why today?’ she whispered ‘Why today did you get out of your comfort zone and offer to do something about it?’
‘I don’t know.’ And wasn’t that the truth?
‘Was it because of me?’
‘Gina…’
‘Because I accused you of not letting yourself care?’
‘I care.’
‘Of course you care,’ she told him. ‘You care and you care, even when you try so hard not to. It’s impossible not to care, Cal. It’s impossible not to expose yourself to get hurt.’
‘Can we do without the life lesson?’
‘Sorry.’ She relapsed into silence but she still seemed uncomfortable.
‘We could still get married,’ he said, and she jerked into rigid awareness.
‘I beg your pardon.’
‘You could stay here. We could marry. I could care for you and CJ.’
‘Care…as in look after.’
‘Of course.’
‘Why would I want you to look after me?’
‘Hell, Gina…’
‘I might agree if it was mutual,’ she told him.
‘How do you mean-mutual?’
‘Well, if you, for instance, told me that what happened out there today moved you to tears and you felt just dreadful and you needed a hug in order to get the strength you need to keep going.’
He froze.
There was a long silence. Her words played over and over in his head.
It was like there was a huge carrot in front of his nose-no, a wonderful, amazing dream, enticing him, sweetly singing its siren song. All he had to do was take a step forward.
And fall into a chasm so deep he could never get out of it.
He’d fallen before. He couldn’t. He just…couldn’t. He’d taken one small step today and he hadn’t fallen, but this wasn’t a small step. This was huge. Vast. Overwhelming.
To admit he needed someone.
He needed Gina.
He didn’t. He couldn’t.
‘No.’
‘Of course, no,’ she said softly into the stillness. ‘Of course, no, Cal Jamieson. So I guess that means we’re stuck. You’re here working your wonderful medicine-and taking one tiny step into caring that might or might not destroy you. And me returning to Idaho. And never the twain shall meet.’
‘If you weren’t so pig-headed…’
‘Not pig-headed. Sane.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I’ve broken my heart over you once before, Cal,’ she said steadily. ‘I’m not going down that route again.’
‘I’m not asking you to break your heart.’
‘You think living with you and loving you and watching you not need me for ever and ever and ever would do anything but drive me crazy?’ she asked. ‘Cal, you’re a doctor short in this wonderful hospital of yours, and Hamish’s make-do medicine won’t cut it. You definitely need a psychiatrist.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
CJ WAS waiting for them when they got back, sitting on the veranda steps, licking the world’s biggest ice cream, while Rudolph Mutt sat adoringly at attention beside him. Hamish was watching them, and as they appeared he uncoiled his long legs from the veranda seat and smiled.
CJ was still wearing Bruce’s hat.
Tomorrow his son was going to spend his last day in Australia with the man who had given him the hat, Cal thought.
Not him.
‘Here they are, CJ,’ Hamish was saying. ‘The world’s best medical team, home from sorting out the problems of the world.’
‘How are things here?’ Cal wasn’t in the mood for smiling. He was feeling like things were out of his control and he wasn’t sure how to get them back.
Hamish’s smile faded. ‘We’ve had the coroner working through the autopsies, and one of the kids’ dads has had a heart attack.’ He hesitated. ‘Gina, we were wondering whether you’d see him. You looked after the prawn fisherman last night…’
‘He just had indigestion,’ she said. ‘It didn’t take a cardiologist to work that out.’
‘Yeah, it was a pity we had to take the chopper two hundred miles out to sea when all he needed was antacid.’ He hesitated. ‘But this guy’s a definite case. Charles wants to send him down to Cairns but he won’t go. And maybe I wouldn’t either if I had a kid to bury.’
‘I’ll see him,’ Gina said. CJ had risen for a hug and she was hugging him, hard-ice cream and all-and that was doing something really strange to Cal’s insides.
Damn, he wanted to be in that hug.
No, he didn’t. What was he thinking?
‘Our baby?’ Gina asked, her face muffled by small boy. ‘Lucky?’
‘Lucky’s good,’ Hamish told her. ‘His heart rate’s settled beautifully. A couple of minor prem hassles but I’m thinking he’s no more than three weeks early. We have him on oxygen but it’s more a precaution than a necessity.’ He eyed Cal and then stooped to pat Rudolph. ‘We might be seeing a happy ending with Lucky.’
‘The von Willebrand’s?’
‘Tests came back positive,’ Hamish told them. ‘It’s a hassle but properly treated it should be no more than a minor inconvenience as he goes through life. And it does mean we called it right in not giving him heparin now.’
