‘You think he’s fond of her?’
‘I think he looked almost as strained as me. He definitely cares.’
‘Well, Jim’s not a loser or an alcoholic,’ Em said softly, seeing where his thoughts were heading and allaying his fears before he voiced them. ‘He’s gentle, he’s steadily employed and, to my knowledge, he’s a one-can-of-beer- after-a-major-bushfire man.’
‘Well, that’d be a change.’ Jonas sighed again. ‘It’d be a big man to take on Anna, though. Three kids and breast cancer…’
That made Em pause. Her hands stilled. ‘You mean you don’t think Anna has anything left to offer?’ she asked quietly. ‘Just because she’s lost a piece of her breast?’
‘I didn’t mean that. Of course I didn’t mean that.’ Jonas’s face creased into a weary smile, and his hands came up and caught hers over his shoulders. ‘I only meant…well, three kids are a handful, and on top of that she’s running scared.’
‘Just like you.’
‘I’m not scared.’
‘Of relationships?’ Her hands broke away from his and went back to kneading. ‘Of needing people? Pull the other leg, Jonas Lunn.’
Silence.
‘I’m not, you know,’ he said conversationally, as though it had only just occurred to him.
‘Scared of relationships?’
‘That’s right.’
‘So you’re aching to fall in love, right at this minute.’
‘I could be tempted,’ he said, and the warmth in his voice gave her pause. ‘For instance, if you said right now that you’d come to bed with me…’
‘You’d have your packet of condoms out quicker than I could say wedding ring,’ she said bluntly, and she couldn’t quite keep the bitterness out of her voice. ‘That’d be right. Only it’s not going to happen. Neither of us will say bed, you won’t say condoms, and I won’t say wedding ring. Because it’s not what either of us wants.’
‘You don’t necessarily,’ he said carefully, ‘have to take bed, condoms and wedding ring as a job lot. They can be separated.’
‘What, go to bed with you without a condom?’ She raised her eyebrows in mock indignation. Still she kept on massaging. It was a link she didn’t want broken, condoms or not. ‘Gee, thanks very much. We have four kids here already. You’re saying let’s make it five?’
‘I meant the marriage thing,’ he told her. He put her hands away, rose and twisted to face her, his eyes suddenly serious. He placed his hands on her shoulders, forcing her to meet his gaze. ‘Enough.’ His eyes were locked on hers, and they were suddenly deadly serious. ‘Em, you need to know that I’d like to make love to you. Very, very much.’
She wanted to make love with Jonas more than anything in the world, she thought wildly. She wanted him to wrap her in those strong arms, to hold her against his chest, to lift her into bed and make her believe…
Make her believe for a few magic minutes that she was young and desirable, and free to make any choice she wanted in life.
But that was the way of madness.
Because at the end of all this, when Anna no longer needed him, he’d walk away without a backward glance.
And his next words confirmed it.
‘Em, there’s no need for you to look like you’re being asked to commit for life here,’ he told her. ‘For heaven’s sake, how old are you?’
‘Twenty-nine.’
‘And I’m thirty-three. That’s old enough to know we can take pleasure where we find it.’
‘And walk away afterwards.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Except it doesn’t work like that,’ she told him sadly, reality crashing back where it belonged. ‘Like me and Robby.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘I thought I could just love Robby for a little bit,’ she said, and her voice was bleak. ‘So I let myself become… involved. And now I’ve got it hard. The full bit. Because, as well as Robby needing me, I need him. I love him, Jonas. That’s what love is. Needing, and being needed in return. So now here he is, sleeping in the cot beside me, and the longer it goes on the more it’ll tear my heart out when he leaves.’
‘I didn’t know you felt like that.’ He frowned. ‘Where’s your professional detachment, Dr Mainwaring?’
‘I don’t have any.’ She took a deep breath and pulled back from him. ‘You seem to have it in spades but I don’t have my share. And it’s not fair. Because for you it’s no problem.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’ He was frowning.
‘You could have a wife and a family any time you want,’ she said, and his brow snapped down again.
‘I don’t want.’
‘Exactly.’ She dug her hands into the pockets of her capacious sleeping trousers and met his look full on. ‘But I do. I always have. A family would be…wonderful. But I also want to be Bay Beach’s doctor. The two together are impossible.’
‘You could marry a local,’ he said, thinking it through. ‘And adopt Robby.’
‘Oh, yes?’ She jeered. ‘How could I do that? What man would take me on, when he’d know I’m on call twenty- four hours a day, seven days a week? You might be able to find a wife who’d live with you on those terms, but male-female roles haven’t changed so much that I could find a husband who’d live with it. There’s not a snowball’s chance in a bushfire of me forming a long-term relationship.’
‘Are things here so tough?’
‘They are,’ she said bluntly. ‘This town’s big enough for two doctors, and there aren’t enough doctors in the neighbouring towns. So I’m it. I’m overworked, I love my job but it allows me no time at all for anything else.’
‘Even for Robby?’
She tilted her chin at that. ‘There is nothing in the world I’d like more than to adopt Robby,’ she told him, and the words confirmed it even to herself. ‘For some reason I’ve fallen for him in a big way. I want him so badly I ache with it. But what sort of mother would I make?’
‘I think you’d make a fine one.’
‘Yeah, here for thirty minutes of every day and that thirty minutes interchangeable depending on the demands of my patients.’ His incomprehension was making her angry. ‘Robby would be brought up by a nanny. Amy, maybe? Until she finds a better job? No! He’s much better off being adopted by someone who can love him to bits-who can be a real mother to him.’
‘But his aunt won’t hear of adoption.’
‘She will. Eventually she must.’
‘And meanwhile you keep tearing your heart out.’
‘I wouldn’t be tearing my heart out if you hadn’t offered for us to look after him.’
‘I’m sorry about that, Em,’ he told her gently. ‘I hadn’t realised. But, then, if I hadn’t offered he’d be in Sydney and you’d still be aching for him.’
‘Yes, well…’ The gentleness in Jonas’s tone was almost her undoing. Em felt the moisture welling behind her eyes and gave a defiant sniff. ‘You weren’t to know.’
‘I do now.’
‘There’s nothing to be done.’
‘Except live with it,’ he said softly. ‘I guess you’re right. As we need to live with this whole damned arrangement. Me and you and our four kids.’
‘And walk away at the end of it?’ Her voice was hopeless.
‘Yes. With great memories, though.’ He caught her shoulders and he looked deep into his eyes. His hold was firm and strong-the hold of a man claiming his own.
But, of course, he wasn’t.
