The Surgeon's Doorstep Baby (11 page)

Only it was more than that, he conceded as they drove on. Maybe Maggie represented something he’d never thought about—or maybe something he’d repressed. A need for home?

He’d lived in this place until the age of six. After that, his mother had moved from place to place, from man to man. This valley must have some sort of long-term emotional hold over him.

And then there was Ruby. He glanced behind at his tiny niece, sleeping deeply in her baby cocoon.

What to do with Ruby?

She needed family, and right now she had it. She had him, and Maggie as back-up, and she had four siblings, Liselle, Pete, Chris and Susie, who all regarded her as their personal plaything.

She was starting to smile and everyone in the house was working for those smiles.

‘Hey, I got one. I’m in front by two.’ That had been Chris that morning, crowing with delight, and the memory made him smile.

The way Maggie handled Ruby made him smile, too. While he was unwieldy when Ruby was distressed, Maggie stepped in, calm and sure, and made things right.

But even put together, those things weren’t enough to define as love. To start thinking long-term relationship...

Nostalgia. Need. Isolation.

A girl with a grease spot on her nose.

Weakness and need was all it was, he told himself harshly, but now he had Maggie looking at him like he had a kangaroo loose in the top paddock. She’d even felt the need to explain her long-term life plans, spelling out that they didn’t include him.

Which was all fine—only why was he sitting here thinking he’d made a huge mistake? It was because something within him was telling him Maggie was important for far more than practical or nostalgic reasons. Maggie was someone the likes of whom he’d never met before and might never meet again.

Maggie. Grease spots. Maggie. Love and laughter.

Yes, she came with terrifying baggage—but to have the right to hold her...

He’d known her a little more than a week and he’d scared her.

‘Cabin fever must be getting to me,’ he said into the loaded silence, and she cast him a glance that contained...gratitude? He was letting her off the hook. Setting things back to normal?

‘It must be,’ she said, sounding relieved. ‘You should ring Miriam and tell her isolation’s playing with your head.’

‘Can isolation happen in a house with five kids, two dogs and how many cows?’

‘It comes in all forms,’ she said, and her voice changed a little, and suddenly he heard a note of desolation. ‘I’ve been surrounded all my life and I’ve longed for isolation, yet in a sense I already have it. Define isolation?’ She took a deep breath. ‘Sorry. It’s getting to me, too. You’re right, cabin fever. We need to avoid kissing—we’re likely to jump each other through sheer frustration. But the authorities are saying the water level’s starting to drop, and the forecast is for the weather to finally clear. Within a week they’ll set up a barge. The kids can go back to school. You can go back to Sydney. Life can get back to normal.’

‘Is that what you want?’

‘Of course it is,’ she said tightly. ‘I have a seven-year plan, remember? I’ve been working on it since I was ten years old and I have no intention of deviating from it now.’

* * *

But she was deviating.

Only in her mind, she thought savagely. Only when she let herself turn from practical Maggie into someone who let her mind wander all along sorts of crazy, impractical paths.

Paths that ended with Blake.

She should avoid him. She couldn’t.

They went home and it was time to redo Ruby’s legs. She’d been wearing casts for a week now. They needed to be removed, the tiny feet manipulated some more, inched closer to normal, and new casts applied.

So Maggie watched and helped as Blake tended his tiny niece with all the care in the world.

At least she could focus on Ruby rather than her uncle.

Left unattended, these feet would cripple this little girl—they’d make her life a torturous nightmare, with a wheelchair a real, long-term option.

But once the casts came off she could see improvement. The feet had been twisted far back at birth. They were still twisted, and left now they’d revert, but at rest, the little feet lay at an angle that was slightly closer to normal.

‘Can you run her a bath?’ Blake asked, as he started playing with the tiny feet, and she did. Well, okay, not a baby bath—this place didn’t run to it—but the kitchen sink was big, porcelain, perfect. She did a quick scrub, filled it with warm water and lined it with towels so Ruby wouldn’t be lowered against the hard surface.

She half expected Blake to hand Ruby to her, but it was he who lowered her into the water. It was Blake who looked down as Ruby’s eyes widened with surprise at this strange, new sensation.

They’d bathed her the night she’d come, before the first cast had gone on, but she’d been a very different baby then—malnourished, abandoned, unloved.

This was a Ruby who’d had a full week of regular feeds, regular cuddles—a regular family?

It wasn’t exactly regular, Maggie thought, thinking of her weird assortment of brothers and sisters handing her around—but now Ruby had the thing she most needed in the world. A constant.

Blake.

He was holding her as if she was the most precious thing in the world. She hardly needed to have put the towels down—his hands held her with warmth, security and love.

Love?

She looked into his face and saw emotions she didn’t understand.

This man was falling for this baby, she thought, and he was falling hard.

Blake Samford was a city doctor, aloof, a stranger. He was nothing to do with this valley or her. He’d sell this farm and be gone from her life.

But today he’d said...

Forget what he’d said. Concentrate on Ruby, not Blake.

But some things were just plain impossible. The way he was looking at this baby was twisting her heartstrings. This was no doctor looking at a patient. Neither was it a man who planned on handing Ruby to foster-parents as soon as he could.

He was an enigma, and even though she’d sworn to stay distant, she couldn’t help herself. She wanted to know more.

‘Tell me about your sister,’ she said, as Ruby discovered she could wiggle her arms and her cast-free feet and feel even more amazing sensations in the warm water. ‘About Wendy.’

‘I never knew her.’

‘I think you must have,’ she said gently. ‘The way you’re looking at Ruby.’

And then, amazingly, he told her. He cradled Ruby and played with her while he talked of a baby he’d seen only once—a baby who’d destroyed his parents’ marriage.

He told of being six years old and crouching by the baby while everyone around them yelled. He told her of placing his hand in the baby’s carrycot and feeling her finger tightening around his. He told of being six years old and terrified and thinking this baby was his little sister and she must be terrified, too.

And then he talked of the strange woman taking her away, of his parents never speaking of her again, and of his family no longer existing.

‘A psychologist would have a field day,’ he said, half mocking.

And she looked up at him and thought...and thought...if he hadn’t been holding his baby she’d touch him. She’d run her fingers down that strong cheekbone and caress the lines of pain and self-mockery.

The image of tall, dark, dangerous was receding.

There were worse things than being one of nine neglected kids, she decided. This man had been alone all his life.

But now he’d found Ruby.

Focus back on Ruby, she thought desperately. That was the plan. She had to have a plan around this man because she did not want to feel like she was feeling. It seemed like a vortex, a whirlpool, dark, sweet, infinitely enticing, but who knew what lay inside?

‘Don’t you need to manipulate?’ she managed, and he glanced at her and caught himself and she saw him swap—with difficulty—back to professional as well.

‘Of course I do,’ he said. ‘And it might be easier if we do the first part while she’s happy in the water.’

So he handed her over, and as their hands touched as they inevitably had to during handover, and she held his baby while his big, skilled hands manipulated those tiny legs with all the tenderness in the world, as she stood close to him and watched his face and watched his hands, she realised she was in so much trouble.

He’d broken off a relationship with Miriam because of one kiss. That was crazy.

But maybe the condition was catching.

* * *

Warm, dry, fed—and confined in her new cast—Ruby was fretful. She’d had a lovely time when her whole body had been free to move, and now she was back to being constricted. It’d be a long haul, Blake thought. Six weeks of casts, an operation to cut the Achilles tendon to let it heal in the new correct position, months of twenty-three hours a day in a brace, then more in a brace at night.

‘It’s the price you’ll pay for being able to dance at your wedding,’ he told her, but she wasn’t taking any comfort from that.

She was tired after her bath, and so was he. His mate back in Sydney had been right—the operation had knocked the stuffing out of him. Maggie didn’t need him right now. He could settle on his bed with Ruby beside him, and try and settle her.

Tell her stories of what their life would be like together?

For he was keeping her—as simple as that. Some time during the last week she’d twisted her way around his heart and she was staying.

He’d be joining the ranks of single dads.

How did they cope?

How would he cope?

How would he cope without Maggie?

‘Is that what the conversation in the car was all about?’ he demanded of Ruby. ‘Or is it my subconscious knowing it’d be easy if she fell for me—if she took you on as well as her brood. After all, she’s stuck here for the next seven years anyway.’

There’s a romantic way of looking at a relationship, he thought wryly. Red roses didn’t even begin to cut it in comparison.

But it had to be more than that. The way he was feeling...

‘How can I know what I’m feeling’ he asked Ruby, and watched her eyelids grow heavier and heavier until she drifted off to sleep. ‘Yeah, I’m smitten with you, and that’s cracking open places I don’t want to go. I want my independence.’

How could he be independent and keep Ruby?

Make Maggie fall in love with him? Work out how to bend his career so he could fit in family? Live happily ever after.

Was that independence? There was a part of him that was saying it was a solution to all their problems—but another part of him was telling him he’d be giving up way too much. Even if Maggie agreed.

But Ruby was so needy, and that kiss... The possibilities were there. As he watched his tiny niece sleep and thought of Maggie next door, with the weight of the world on her shoulders, he decided a man had to try.

The forecast was saying it would be another week before the river would be safe to cross. He wasn’t due back at work for another two weeks.

Anything was possible in two weeks, he thought.

Including making a family?

He’d never thought about a family. Why was he thinking about one now?

* * *

She had enough of a family without including him. She told herself that over and over during the next few days, and she meant it.

As much as possible Maggie kept her brood on her side of the oak door. They had to use Blake’s large sitting room—there wasn’t enough room for them anywhere else—but the kids were under threat of death not to disturb him. She cooked for her siblings and fed them in her own small kitchen. The kids thought they should invite Blake, too, but it seemed...dangerous? Inviting him into her tiny kitchen or letting her brood loose in his seemed equally fraught.

She needed to stay apart. That kiss...telling her he’d split with Miriam... It was a sweet seduction, she told herself fiercely. He’d get her over to his side of the house, she’d fall for Ruby and she’d be trapped again. Man gets landed with abandoned baby, man makes moves on motherly nurse... Coincidence? Ha.

So she needed to be firm. Doing his own cooking was part of caring for Ruby, living with her, making a life for her. It was part of Blake’s bonding process that was proceeding beautifully. She wanted no part in it, and she wasn’t interfering with it for the world.

Occasionally she needed him medically. Occasionally he needed her for advice on Ruby. That’s all the contact they needed, she told herself, and anything else was scary.

But the kids kept on telling her she was nuts. Even cruel.

‘When you’re not here he comes in and plays computer games with us, and helps me with maths, and he even helped Susie tie hair ribbons on her doll,’ Liselle told her. ‘We love playing with Ruby. Only when you come in and he’s here, you back out again so he doesn’t come in when you’re home. That seems mean.’

It did, Maggie conceded. But it also seemed safe. She was being defensive, and somehow she had need of all the defences she could muster.

‘And he makes life less boring,’ Pete muttered from the couch. ‘I’m so-o-o bored. The guys are making mud slides on the far side of the valley. Tom’s taking them over in his dad’s car. If Tom’s dad says it’s okay, why won’t you?’

Because Tom’s father was a moron and Tom behind the wheel was a danger to everyone, Maggie thought, but she didn’t say so.

‘You know Mum’s forbidden it,’ she said, more mildly, because she’d worked on this one. Barbie didn’t particularly care what her kids did, but Maggie had learned that if she put her under enough pressure—like threatening to withdraw financial help—Barbie could be persuaded to utter edicts. ‘
You won’t drive with Tom.
’

Pete couldn’t tell his mates Maggie said no. ‘Mum says no’ hurt his pride less.

‘Mum doesn’t care,’ Pete said sullenly. ‘Tom says she’s staying at Archie Harm’s place. She hasn’t even phoned to find out how Chris is.’

‘She does care,’ Maggie said, without conviction. ‘And you’re not to go with Tom.’

‘Then let me ask Blake to play this video game with me. It’s too hard for Chris, and Liselle won’t.’

‘Don’t disturb Blake.’