you hugged her all through the funeral but you haven’t phoned her since, you’re working yourself into the ground and now you react like a scared wimp when I suggest you keep tabs on her.’
‘Why would I be scared?’
‘You tell us and we’ll both know,’ John said cheerfully. ‘Okay. Margaret wouldn’t let her go without giving us her address. You want it, or do we have to figure some other way of taking care of her?’
Max raked his hair again. Did he want her address?
Short answer, no.
Long answer? Long and very complicated answer?
Of course he did. Yes.
The beach was glorious and she had it almost to herself.
It was early September. There were lifesavers watching her with lazy care, and she liked that. She also liked it that she was almost the only one in the water apart from a couple of German tourists whooping it up in the shallows.
It was Wednesday. A working day. Even those not at work thought it was too cool to swim. Too bad for them, she thought, backstroking lazily along the backs of the waves. She’d swum this morning and now, in the late afternoon, she was swimming again. After the rush of the past few months this was bliss. She had nothing to do but swim and float and watch the expanding bump that was her daughter.
She was so-o-o pregnant. Her belly button had turned inside out. She felt the size of a small whale. A whale’s natural environment was water, she thought, rolling happily over and over in the surf. This was where she was meant to be. Wallowing.
Ooh, it was lovely to be off her feet. Ooh, it was lovely to be here, even if she was alone.
She wouldn’t be alone for long, she told herself. She had a week to go, give or take a few days. Very soon now she’d have her daughter.
It wouldn’t stop her being lonely.
Now,
John and his family had moved into the farmhouse. They were lovely and they were giving her all the support she needed. Angus was happy, with his tractors and his calves and his dog. So she had John, Margaret, Sophie, Paula and Angus, plus the community of Yandilagong. After Betty’s funeral she’d learned just what belonging to a small community really meant. She had enough tuna casseroles and jelly cakes and cream sponges in her freezer to last her a lifetime.
Her future looked far less isolated and a lot more calorie laden than she’d ever dreamed possible.
So why was she lonely?
It’s because I’m alone right now, she told herself, in the manner of one talking to someone being deliberately dullwitted. Lonely means alone.
You’ve been alone since William died.
I haven’t felt alone. Not for a while now. Or not achingly alone.
Not until I met Max.
And there it was, the crux of the matter. One drop-dead gorgeous doctor and her whole world had been thrown out of kilter.
So put him out of your head, she told herself for about the thousandth time since Max had left. Just swim and don’t think of him.
She did a couple more laps of the patrolled part of the beach, then watched the German couple decide it was time to call it quits. Maybe it was time for her to do the same. Reluctantly she turned toward the shore-and saw a man striding down the sand toward her. A man who looked vaguely familiar.
Really familiar.
She stared in disbelief, thinking she was dreaming.
She wasn’t dreaming.
Max.
For a moment she thought wildly about swimming out to sea. The last time she’d seen him she’d been so angry. So humiliated. She tried to dredge up that anger now-and failed.
She floated and watched him greet the lifeguards, haul his shoes and socks off, roll up his chinos and stroll down to the shallows. He was shading his eyes with his hand so he could see better.
She was doing the same. Treading water, shading her eyes, trying to watch him.
Max.
A wave, bigger than usual, rose behind her. Acting on impulse, she caught it and let it carry her all the way to the beach. Or almost all the way. Her bump grounded her about twenty feet before the rest of her would have.
She surfaced, wiped the water from her eyes, pushed her curls back and he was about six feet away.
‘What are you doing here?’ she managed, and he looked down at her for a long moment without replying. As well he might, she thought.
She’d decided buying a pregnancy swimsuit was a waste of time-who was there to appreciate it except her? Her modus operandi was to wear a sarong to the beach, tug it off at the last minute and get into the water fast. She was wearing a faded pink bikini. The top was respectable-well, almost, though her bust had grown considerably bustier in her pregnancy. She couldn’t see her bikini bottom. It was somewhere under her bump.
Max, on the other hand, looked cool, collected and casually fabulous. Business shirt without a tie and the top buttons unfastened. Rolled-up sleeves. He was carrying shiny black shoes, socks tucked inside.
Very neat, she conceded. Whereas she…
She didn’t want to think about what she was.
‘John said I should check on you,’ he told her, and she winced. Of course. It wasn’t like he was here because he wanted to be.
‘I’m good,’ she said. ‘John should have called. I would have told him I was okay and spared you the trouble of making the trip.’
‘I wanted to see you.’
She stood up, awkwardly because of her bulk. He made an instinctive movement to help-and then stopped.
She saw it. He didn’t want to help. He didn’t want to touch her.
Okay, then. She stood knee deep in the shallows and shook herself like a dog, her curls flying every which way. She’d braided her hair but it refused to stay braided in the surf. She looked whale-like and wild, she thought.
Not Max Ashton’s sort of woman at all.
‘So there you go,’ she said tightly. ‘You’ve seen me. Okay?’
‘Maggie, can we talk?’
‘If you get any closer you might mess with me.’
‘That was a dumb thing to say,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry I said it.’
She glowered, but then she thought, no, this was childish. She could be the grown-up here. Maybe it’d even make her feel better to act magnanimously. ‘It’s okay,’ she conceded graciously. ‘I was acting a bit needy. I needed to be pulled up.’
‘You didn’t. I was out of line. I’m sorry.’
Was this what happened when you were magnanimous? You got someone feeling nicely off balance and guilty in return. Excellent. ‘Thank you,’ she said, still attempting grace. ‘Apology accepted.’ She didn’t move, though. Walking forward, out of the water, seemed a bad idea, and walking closer to him seemed worse.
Not to mention the fact that her walk was now more like a waddle. Not a lot of grace there.
‘You swim amazingly,’ he said, still sounding stilted.
‘For an Englishwoman,’ she finished for him, eyeing him with caution. Trying to figure where to go from here. ‘William spent most of his summers at Yandilagong. Betty taught him to surf and he taught me. Just after we finished medical school we did a rotation at Durness in Scotland. Do you have any idea how cold the sea water is around Scotland? This place is a sauna in comparison.’
