The Doctor & the Runaway Heiress

be achieved in privacy and comfort. Collecting patients who’d needed complex medical care and taking them home-back to Whale Cove but more usually back to their Outback homes-was part of Flight-Aid’s charter. When they reached Sydney, therefore, Riley was able to take Amy and baby-and Pippa-into a reserved medical lounge and leave them there.

Harry was busy with the plane. Pippa was happy to take care of Amy.

Riley was about to meet his daughter and he was feeling like his head didn’t belong to his body.

Pippa. Lucy.

A week ago he didn’t have a complication in the world. He wanted, quite badly, to turn back the clock. To head back to Whale Cove, grab his surfboard and ride some waves.

He’d gone to bed last night planning a dawn start. They’d get back to Whale Cove, drop Pippa off and keep going to Sydney. He’d figure what to say on the way down. How to meet your daughter for the first time?

But he’d figure it. He’d collect Lucy, put her in a hire car and drive her back to Whale Cove. He’d be calm, collected, a guy in charge of his world. A man worthy of being a father?

He’d woken this morning, diagnosed jaundice, knew the early getaway wasn’t possible. Then Pippa was suddenly filling his house with people. Acting as if what she’d offered was reasonable.

Pippa.

She was messing with his head. More than it was already messed.

Pippa.

He didn’t do relationships. He’d learned it as a kid, maybe even earlier. Keep yourself to yourself and you don’t get hurt. For one crazy summer he’d forgotten, and the knife had twisted so hard he’d thought he’d go crazy.

Relationships were for other people. They caused pain.

They’d caused… a daughter.

His eighteen-year-old daughter was about to walk through the arrivals gate.

Three months back, when first contact had been made, he’d written saying he wanted to meet her. If there was any way she wanted him in her life, if there was anything she ever needed, she just had to ask. No reply. That email seemed to have gone through but his next had bounced-the email address had seemingly been cancelled. He’d gone to England to find her, only to be told she’d gone away, she didn’t want anything to do with him. He was her father in name only.

Relationships caused pain.

He couldn’t avoid this one.

She was a tourist, he told himself. Curious about a father she’d never met. Checking out Australia and her unknown biological father as an aside.

The huge metal gates were opening and closing as each passenger cleared customs. Reunions were happening everywhere. Families were clinging, sobbing, laughing.

There was a couple beside him. They were in their seventies, and their anticipation was palpable.

The doors opened and a family emerged, mum and dad and three littlies. The elderly lady gasped and clutched her husband’s hand. The little family reached them and was immersed in joy.

He did not do this.

When Lucy emerged… She’d be a kid on an adventure, nothing more, he told himself as he’d told himself over and over. Though why her grandparents weren’t funding her to luxury…

Like Pippa was funded to luxury?

Pippa.

It was the sight of the elderly couple holding hands. It made him think he wanted…

He didn’t want. He’d spent his life ensuring he didn’t want.

The doors slid open.

Lucy.

He recognised her. Of course he did. How many times had he looked at the photograph she’d sent him in her first email? She was thin, tall and pretty, but not like her mother. She looked… like him?

She stood behind her luggage trolley-searching?-and he saw his eyes, his dark hair. And fear.

There was a boy beside her, seemingly arguing that he should push the trolley. He was long and lanky, a kid of about twenty. Worried. He had dark hair curling wildly and olive skin. Then he pushed the trolley sideways and Lucy stepped out from behind.

She was pregnant.

Very pregnant.

She saw him. His picture was on Flight-Aid’s website-that’s how she’d originally contacted him. He was in his Flight-Aid uniform now so there was no need for red carnations in buttonholes. But there was no wide smile and ecstatic wave like he’d seen from most of the reuniting families. There was a tiny, fleeting smile of recognition. A smile backed with fear.

He thought suddenly of Amy. Same age. Same terror.

The thought settled his nerves. Put things in perspective. This wasn’t about him. The boy took over trolley duty. Lucy walked out from the barricade then stopped a few feet from him. ‘D-Dad?’

‘Lucy.’ Despite his wish to stay calm, neutral, all the worry in the world was in the way he said her name, all the things he felt about this frail slip of a kid. And she must have heard it because suddenly she sobbed and stepped forward. Somehow he had her in his arms. She was sobbing on his chest, sobbing her heart out, while the kid beside her looked on with worry.

Lucy. His daughter.

He held her close, waiting for the sobs to subside, wondering what a man was to do. Then he glanced over her head-and suddenly Pippa was there, in the background. She caught his gaze and smiled, fleetingly.

Problem? No. She gave a silent shake of her head, waved slightly, backed away.

And it settled him. For some reason it made him feel that he wasn’t alone, with a pregnant daughter and who knew what other issues? Pippa would help.

He didn’t need help.

He might, he conceded. His daughter was pregnant.

Lucy was drawing back now, sniffing, and the boy beside her was handing her tissues. He looked like he was accustomed to doing it. There’d been lots of crying?

‘It’s great to meet you,’ he said softly, looking down into the face of this half-recognised daughter. A part of him? ‘You don’t know how much.’

‘Really?’

‘Really.’

‘But I’m… I’m pregnant,’ Lucy said, half scared, half defiant.

‘I noticed that.’ He managed a smile. ‘How pregnant?’

‘Eight and a half months.’

What the…? He gazed at his daughter in stupefaction. She didn’t look so far gone, he thought, but, then, some women didn’t show as much as others. ‘You can’t fly at eight and a half months.’

‘Mum paid a doctor to say I’m only seven and a half months. I have a medical certificate.’

‘Your mother bribed…’

‘She wants to get rid of me,’ Lucy whispered. ‘Because of Adam. This… this is Adam.’ She clutched the hand of the boy beside her.

‘H-Hi,’ the boy said.

‘Good to meet you,’ Riley said, and held out his hand.

The kid was Eurasian, he thought. And with that, he had it figured.

He thought of the way Lucy’s grandparents had reacted to him, an illegitimate scholarship kid from Australia. White trash. Marguerite’s father had called him that to his face. And now… for Lucy to bring Adam home, as the father of her baby…

‘I’m starting to see,’ he said.

‘They tried to break us up,’ Lucy whispered. ‘They even bribed someone at Adam’s university to kick him out. They accused him of cheating. They rang Immigration; said he was illegal. We can’t fight them over there. Mum says if I keep the baby she washes her hands of me. Grandpa says he’s raised one kid he didn’t want, and he’s not helping with another. So we thought… maybe we could start again here. We were hoping… I was hoping that you’ll