The Surgeon's Doorstep Baby (7 page)

‘Nonsense.’

It might be nonsense, Maggie thought, but she wasn’t telling this guy that. What she was aiming for—what Ruby needed more than anything in the world—was for someone—anyone—to bond with her. To bond so tightly that they’d fight for her for life.

‘There’s lots of room for both of you,’ she said briskly. ‘Bed. Now! Would you like me to bring you a cup of tea? Toast?’

‘No,’ he said, sounding revolted. ‘I’m not a patient.’

‘But you’re not fully healed,’ she told him. ‘And I’m treating you like the goose that lays the golden eggs. In you I have a qualified surgeon on my side of the river and there’s no way I’m planning on letting you have a relapse. Bed. Now. Egg on toast, coming up.

‘Maggie?’

‘Yes’ she said, and raised an enquiring brow—like an old-fashioned matron faced with an impertinent patient who should know better than to question her medical edicts.

‘Never mind,’ he said, and she grinned.

‘Good boy. You just hop into bed with your baby and let Nurse Maggie judge what’s best.’

And how was a man to respond to that?

* * *

Everyone seemed headed for a nap. Even Liselle had been shaken enough by the morning’s events to want to snooze. She’d brought books to study but she was ensconced in one of Corella View’s gorgeous, if faded, guest rooms, she had an entire double bed to herself and she couldn’t resist.

‘This place is fabulous, Mags,’ she whispered as she snuggled into an ancient feather eiderdown and a pile of goosedown pillows. ‘I could stay here for ever.’

‘Blake’s selling the house and he’ll be gone in a week,’ Maggie said, a bit too waspishly, and Liselle looked up at her in concern.

‘Does that upset you?’

‘I... No.’

‘It means you’ll come home to us,’ Liselle said sleepily. ‘That’s good. I like sharing my bedroom with you.’

Maggie smiled at her—but she didn’t mean that smile. Going home to her family...

But where else could she live in this valley that wasn’t home? Blake had been charging her peppercorn rent in return for caring for the house and dogs. She was a mile away from her family, and that was about the extent of safe range. Today had proved that.

She left her sister to sleep, made herself tea and toast and went out to sit on the veranda.

It was starting to rain again.

She was sick to death of rain.

She was sick to death of this valley.

Actually, it wasn’t true. She loved the valley. Her parents’ time in the city had been a nightmare and she’d returned home with them feeling nothing but relief.

But she wanted to be free.

What would it be like, she wondered, to spend a couple of weeks lying on a beach somewhere it wasn’t raining? Somewhere all by herself?

It couldn’t happen. The kids needed all her spare income for their schoolbooks and extra expenses. The welfare payments her mother received could only go so far. They depended on her.

So no holidays for Maggie.

So you might as well quit whinging, she told herself, and glanced back at Blake’s bedroom window as though he might have heard the thought.

She hoped he was asleep.

Her cellphone beeped. She checked it and winced. Old Ron Macy from up on the ridge had fallen and his ulcerated leg was bleeding. She needed to go.

But at least she had support. Blake was here, with Liselle as back-up.

She didn’t even need to tell him she was leaving, she thought, and she thought back to last night, to Blake calmly handing over the baby to her.
Here you are, your problem.

She couldn’t help grinning. She could go now, and the whole household would be
his
problem.

Blackie was restless. The dogs had learned by now that the phone usually meant she had to go. He was whining and she knew why. She rubbed his ears and then she tiptoed through the house to Blake’s bedroom and stealthily unlatched the door to Blake’s bedroom. Thunderstorms were due. The forecast was horrendous, and Blackie was probably already hearing thunder in the distance.

If storms hit in earnest Blake would find himself with two dogs on his bed—or under his bed—but it’d be better than them turning themselves inside out with fear.

She was leaving Blake with baby and dogs and her siblings.

He was recovering from an appendectomy.

‘He’s a big boy,’ she said, hardening her heart, but she didn’t have to harden it too much. Blake was snuggled in bed while she had to brave the elements.

And then she thought she didn’t mind this. A house full of people where she didn’t have responsibility.

It was sort of like a holiday, she told herself—only different.

* * *

Blake woke up and Ruby was wailing, two dogs had their noses in his face and two wan kids were huddled in the doorway.

And the sky was falling.

Okay, it wasn’t quite, but that’s what it sounded like. It was either dusk or the storm was so bad the light had disappeared—the natural light, that was, because the lightning was almost one continuous sheet. There was no gap between the lightning and thunder. The rain was pounding so hard on the roof it almost felt as if the house itself was vibrating.

He must have been tired to have slept until now, but suddenly he was wide awake. Wet dog noses would do that to you. Both the dogs were shivering wrecks. The next bout of thunder boomed, and Ruby’s cry turned to a yell—and the kids from the door saw he was awake and suddenly they were right in bed with him.

Dogs, too. Why not? This was a huddle of quivering terror and he was in the middle.

‘Um...it’s just a thunderstorm, guys,’ he managed, trying to wake up, and in response they cringed closer. He moved over and lifted Chris nearer so his bandaged leg wasn’t squashed. With Ruby on the other side of him he was practically a Blake sandwich. ‘You should be in your own beds.’

‘We don’t like thunderstorms,’ Liselle said. ‘And Maggie’s gone.’

Gone. For one appalling moment he had visions of Maggie doing what Ruby’s parents had done—cutting and running. Heading over the threatened bridge, taking off for Queensland, leaving him with Ruby and Christopher and Liselle and Blackie and Tip.

‘There....there’s a note on the kitchen table,’ Liselle quavered. ‘Mr Macy on the ridge has fallen over and she had to go up and put a dressing on his leg. She says she’ll be back by teatime but if I’m worried about Christopher then talk to you.’

‘You shouldn’t be worried,’ Christopher said, not very stoutly. ‘I’m okay.’

Except he was scared and he was hurting, Blake thought wryly. He shouldn’t have tried bearing weight on that leg.

‘The dogs are scared, too,’ Liselle whispered, and the dogs whimpered in response. Blackie edged closer, edging around Christopher, her ancient nose pushing his chest—and suddenly she got what she wanted. The bedclothes were pushed back a bit and she was right down the foot of the bed so she was a mound of dog, like a wombat in a burrow, nestled hard against his feet.

Christopher giggled.

Ruby’s wails grew louder.

Way back in Sydney, a really long time ago, Blake had wondered what he should do during his enforced convalescence. He had an excellent apartment with views over the harbour. Miriam was there in the evenings. He had a housekeeper to keep the place in order—everything he wanted. More. There were other medics—colleagues—in his apartment block and he wasn’t left alone. His mates dropped in at all hours—
just to keep you company.
The decision to come here had been made partly for practical reasons but also because for some reason he was craving privacy.

Privacy had always been an issue for him. He’d learned early, in his parents’ conflicted household, to disappear into his own world, and as an only child, even when his mother had remarried someone more reasonable, he’d known he’d been expected to fade into the background.

Isolation kept him out of emotional drama. It was a defence. Maybe that’s why he and Miriam got on so well together—they instinctively respected personal space.

But he’d been at the same hospital for eight years now and lots of his colleagues no longer respected that space. Hence he’d decided that coming here was an option.

‘I...I’ll make Ruby’s bottle, shall I?’ Liselle quavered, and he looked at the slight seventeen-year-old who was obviously just as nervous as her brother.

‘I’ll get it,’ he said, and swung back the covers, dislodging Tip in the process, who cast him a look of reproach. Then the next thunderclap boomed and the dog was down under the covers with Blackie.

‘Maggie said you had to rest,’ Liselle said.

‘I’ll rest. I’ll get the bottle first.’

‘And then you’ll come back to us?’

To us. To a bed that was big but was now decidedly crowded. Two kids, two dogs, one baby.

‘Yes,’ he said, goaded.

‘Maggie should be here,’ Christopher whispered.

‘Maggie wouldn’t fit,’ he retorted. ‘You lie still and don’t move that leg.’ And then he went to fill his niece’s very vocally broadcast requirements.

* * *

Maggie was heading home, feeling guilty.

So what was new? She’d felt guilty all her life. From the time her mother had made it very clear she needed her, anything Maggie had ever wanted to do for herself had been wasted time.

Now...she’d sort of wanted to stay in the big house and play with one baby and watch one guy bond with that baby, but she’d had no choice but to head up the valley to see Roy Macy. His leg was a mess but there was no way he’d come to her. His neighbour would have driven him but she knew exactly how he’d respond. ‘No, don’t fuss, leave it be.’

Left alone it’d turn into a septic mess, so good old Maggie had headed out into the storm and fixed it.

And left Blake with her responsibilities.

No. Ruby was his responsibility.

Why did it feel like she was hers?

Because she was used to feeling guilty. She’d sort of wanted to stay—but she’d felt guilty about leaving.

‘I should have loaded Christopher into the car with me,’ she said out loud. ‘Just so I wouldn’t feel like this.’

But she still would have. Guilt was unavoidable. Baby Ruby had crept round her heart like a small, needful worm and no matter how much she told herself she was nothing to do with her, she knew it wasn’t true.

‘It’s only until the river level drops,’ she told herself, looking bleakly out into the driving rain. ‘Then they’re out of here. I don’t know what he’ll do with Ruby, but it’s not my problem. Not My Problem. Blake Samford is on his own. Just let the rain stop. Just let the river drop before I fall any deeper for one baby...’

And for the man who went with her?

‘I’m not attached to Blake,’ she said, astonished at the places her thoughts were taking her. ‘As if. Yes, he’s gorgeous, but as if I have time...’

Time to notice how gorgeous he was?

She’d noticed.

She did not have time. She did not have the inclination.

Liar. Of course she had the inclination, only what chance was there ever for a love life for her when there were still four kids almost totally dependent on her?

‘You’ll start singing sad love songs next,’ she told herself dryly. ‘It’s just the way things are. Get over it. And stop thinking of Blake Samford’s body. Blake Samford’s smile. Blake Samford’s hands as he cradles his tiny niece...’

Whoa.

‘The sooner the river drops the better for all concerned,’ she muttered, and then she paused.

The thunder had been booming almost continuously since she’d left home and it was still booming, but over the noise she could hear...something else.

It was a roar, building from maybe imagined to real, growing more real by the moment.

Instinctively she swung the car away from the river road, up the slope of the valley.

To a place where she could see the massive force of water bursting down the valley as the dam upstream gave way.

To a place where she could see the bridge disappear in a maelstrom of rushing water, and the shallow slopes of the valley disappear within it.

CHAPTER SIX

‘T
HE
heifers...’

Blake was still in bed. He’d heard the bridge go. One part of him thought he should go and investigate the noise. The other part thought this farm was high and safe, he’d just got Ruby to sleep, the kids were settled, and there wasn’t a lot he could do about a collapsing bridge.

Until Maggie burst in.

‘The dam’s burst upstream,’ she said. She sounded exhausted, as though she’d run. She was soaking, her shirt was almost transparent, her curls were dripping round her shoulders, and the drips were making a puddle around her. ‘Your heifers are trapped.’

‘
My
heifers?’ He didn’t get it.

‘Your calves,’ she snapped. ‘Your dad’s yearlings. The water’s come up too fast. I thought the bridge might go but not the dam. They’re in the paddock on the far side of the road from the river, but the road’s now under water. So’s most of their paddock. There’s a rise in the middle but it only holds half a dozen and the rest are already being forced to swim. If I can get them away from the rise, I can drive them to higher ground, but all they can see is the stupid island that’s only going to let six or so survive. Liselle can’t swim. She’s scared of deep water and no one else is close enough to help. I know you’re recovering but I don’t have a choice. We can’t let them drown. I need your help and I need it now.’

* * *

With Liselle left in charge of Christopher and Ruby—there was no choice but to depend on her—they drove the tractor to the calves’ paddock.

Actually, Maggie drove the tractor. Blake stood on the footplate and hung on, feeling like a city kid, totally out of his depth.

He hadn’t been on a tractor since he’d been six. He was riding as sidekick to save his cattle. He was Maggie’s sidekick. He felt ludicrous.

Then he saw the calves and any temptation he had to laugh died right there.

They were in deathly trouble.

‘The water’s still rising,’ Maggie whispered as she cut the engine. ‘Oh, dear God, they’ll drown.’

He stared out at the mass of water, at the terrified calves, at the impossibility of what lay before them. The calves could swim—most of them were swimming now—but they were all focussed on one thing and one thing only—the tiny island that was growing smaller while they watched.

‘It’s too late,’ Maggie moaned. ‘I thought I might be able to wade out there and drive them off. We could hack a hole in the fence higher up and you could guide them through. Once they see any of their mates on dry land they’ll follow. But neither of us can swim out there and herd cows at the same time.’

They couldn’t. Even if they were incredible swimmers, to swim and make cows follow directions would be impossible. Blackie was with them but a dog was useless as well.

There was a deathly silence while man, woman and dog watched the heifers struggle.

Then...

‘The canoe,’ Blake said, almost as an extension of his thoughts. All his focus was on the heifers. These calves were strong but how long until the first slipped under?

‘Canoe?’ Maggie’s voice was a desolate whisper, but Blake’s thoughts were firming.

‘There’s a two-man canoe under the house, or there was last time I was here. It’s ancient. I’ve done some kayaking. I can handle it. But, Maggie, I can’t do this alone. My stitches need protecting, plus I know zip about herding cows. But I don’t think I’ll pull my stitches paddling. Not if I don’t push myself.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘I need to get the canoe up on the tractor. That’ll require both of us lifting, but Liselle can help. We need to get it here and launched. Then...if we stick Blackie in the front, do you reckon you could persuade him to bark?’

‘He’ll bark on command.’ And Maggie was with him.

‘So we could get the canoe amongst them with a barking dog. If you told me what to do herding-wise...’

‘Yes!’ she said, and the desolation was gone. It was practically a shout. Maggie was suddenly a woman of action—a woman with a plan where there’d been no hope. She was already swinging herself back onto the tractor. ‘What are we waiting for?’

* * *

It took them ten minutes to get back to the calves. Liselle had come out when they’d yelled and had helped heave the decrepit canoe out from under the house and get it up on top of the tractor in the driving rain. Somehow Maggie managed to drive with Blake holding the canoe steady—or as steady as possible, which wasn’t very steady at all.

He had internal stitches, he thought ruefully. If he had been his patient, he’d tell him he was out of his mind.

Eighty drowning calves didn’t give him that option.

Maggie was gunning the tractor, not worrying about bumps, cutting corners, just going for it.

‘Your other career’s as a racing-car driver?’ he demanded faintly, and she grinned.

‘Eat your heart out. Oh, Blake, they’re still there.’

She’d rounded the bend, the road disappeared under water and they could see them again, swimming in panicked circles around that tiny rise, fighting for a foothold.

In seconds the tractor was stopped. They shoved the canoe off—much easier getting it off than getting it on—then pushed it through the submerged road gate and into the water.

Maggie had brought bolt-cutters. As he climbed aboard and organised the paddle, she heaved the bolt-cutters in, lifted Blackie in as well, and slid in herself after that.

‘Can you take me round the back?’

To the far side of the paddock? He could see why she needed to go there. The fence there was also under water but beyond the fence the land rose sharply. The dry land beyond was obvious, as it wasn’t obvious where they were now. For the last couple of hundred yards they’d driven over a road a foot deep in water.

‘I’ll cut the fence there,’ she said. ‘I’ll get them out if you and Blackie can scare them into swimming in my direction. They’re terrified, but they’ll follow a leader and they’re not dumb like sheep. If you get the canoe near the island and shoo the calves there into the water they’ll look for the next best option. Which will be me and a cut fence and dry land behind me. We can do this. Go.’

He went.

* * *

He’d had his appendix out a week ago.

She was under no illusions that this man should not be pushing a canoe through floodwater. He should be lying around in bed, convalescing.

She should never have asked him to help.

But the alternative had been to let eighty calves drown. She hadn’t been able to do it, and neither could he.

Like he couldn’t send away a baby?

He was soft in the middle, Maggie thought, but outside he looked as tough as the heavy-duty bolt-cutters she was holding.

He was wearing fawn chinos and a soft cotton shirt, with the top buttons undone and the sleeves rolled up to the elbows. He’d kicked off his shoes. The water was plastering his shirt to his body, delineating every muscle. His dark hair was soaked from the rain. Rivulets of water were running down his face but he wasn’t brushing them away. He was totally focussed on what he was doing.

He looked like a warrior, she thought, suddenly and inappropriately. He looked lean and hard and dangerous.

She had a sudden flash of what this man would be like as a surgeon. She’d done a theatre stint in training; she’d watched men like this at work. They took lives into their hands...

She’d never been able to figure how they found the courage to take that first cut, but she could see it now. Surroundings were forgotten. Pain was forgotten—and he must be in pain—a week after an appendectomy it’d hurt even to laugh, and here he was, slicing the old-fashioned paddle through the water with total rhythm, total focus—as if he was paddling for the Olympics and not for cows.

‘Blake...’

‘Yes?’ His response was clipped, hard, sharp, a surgeon in Theatre, wanting to know why a nurse was interrupting. He was focussed totally on what he was doing, but not so focussed that he forgot outside complications were possible.

She wanted to help. The stupid canoe only had one paddle. She could only sit like a princess, in the bow of the boat, holding Blackie.

‘Steer well around the island,’ she managed. ‘I don’t want them panicked further before I’ve cut the fence.’

‘Fair enough.’ The canoe’s course altered slightly, and she thought that was no mean feat either. This canoe was ancient and high and wobbly. There were all sorts of obstacles in the water and the water itself was a mass of whirls and
eddies. She was sitting as still as she could, as centred as she could, holding Blackie tightly as if by sheer concentration she could help this man.

He must work out. He must...she didn’t know...run? He must do something to keep that lean body whip-sharp. His face was a study in concentration as he sliced across the current, and she could only guess how hard it must be.

She glanced across at the calves and saw one slip from the island, then get pushed under by another struggling to find purchase.

She held her breath but it surfaced again.

Eighty young cows, depending on one ailing surgeon.

Maggie, depending on one ailing surgeon.

Finally they reached the far fence. The water here was only eighteen inches deep. As soon as she could grab the fence wires, she was out of the boat, steadying her bolt-cutters.

‘Stay,’ she snapped at Blackie. ‘Sit. Stay.’

He was a great dog. He whined but he stayed in the bow as Blake turned the canoe and headed back out to the middle.

She hacked into the wires with a strength born of desperation then, as the last wire fell away, she headed out of the water, up the rise, so hopefully the calves could see the gap in the fencing, and see her standing on dry land beyond.

‘Oi,’ she yelled, trying to make the panicked calves look at her. ‘Oi, Oi, Oi, Oi, Oi.’

Blake was behind the island now, cutting his way through the calves in the water, heading for the few on dry land.

‘Speak,’ she yelled to Blackie, and Blackie did just that.

He barked and barked, while Maggie yelled, and Blake manoeuvred his shaky little craft behind the herd, beached himself on the island, stood on the tiny piece of dry land and proceeded to remove the calves’ last place of refuge.

* * *

He knew nothing about calves. They knew nothing about him, and maybe that was a good thing because they reacted to him and to the barking dog as if they were worse threats than the water.

The calves headed away from him, away from their target island. He was waving his arms like an idiot and Blackie was barking, so they launched themselves in the opposite direction—and suddenly they were swimming towards Maggie.

Maybe they knew her voice, or maybe she’d herded more cows than he had in his lifetime, but the calves seemed to be instinctively turning toward her.

If he was a calf, he’d turn toward Maggie.

There was a stupid thought.

He was hurting. He was standing on the only piece of dry land for fifty yards. He was waving and shouting like a fool—and he still had time to think... Think that Maggie was gorgeous?

She was wearing faded jeans and a shirt that had become almost transparent. She was soaked to the skin. Her chestnut curls were dripping around her shoulders, plastered to her face. Her feet were bare, she was yelling louder than he was...and the calves were heading toward her. And he knew why.

What was beautiful about her?

Bone structure? Facial features? Sense of fashion?

Um...none of those things, though the freckles and the gorgeous curves surely helped.

But it was the sheer courage of her. The way she tackled life head on.

The way she’d refused to care for his baby?

But she would care. He knew instinctively that she would. If he hadn’t been here, if she hadn’t figured he was more than capable of caring for his niece, then he knew she’d have taken her on, as she’d taken in Christopher last night, and Liselle, and he knew there only had to be a drama and she’d have more people sharing her tiny living space. That he’d offered to share his side of the house had seemed a blessing and a surprise to her. He wondered how many dramas she’d had since she’d moved into his tiny housekeeper’s residence—but he knew without being told that without his urging, she’d never have let her life edge through the dividing door into his home.

Only it wasn’t his home. It was a mausoleum of a homestead, redecorated in the fashion of the time by his mother and not touched since.

This morning, in bed, it had felt more like a home than it ever had in his childhood.

Because of Maggie?

‘Oi!’

Her yelling had grown more insistent, riveting his attention totally on what was happening. The calves were shoving together in the water, seeking safety in numbers, swimming as a herd, but they weren’t heading totally in the right direction.

They hadn’t seen the gap in the fence.

Okay, boy, he thought grimly. Back in your boat.

‘Are you okay?’ Maggie called, and he thought all this and she was remembering his stitches.

‘Blackie and I are fine,’ he called. ‘I’m bosun, he’s cox. If I can just persuade these calves to join us, we’ll be a crew.’

His side was hurting. Badly. What had his surgeon said? No stretching for six weeks. Ha. Block it out, he told himself, and he headed for the calves, paddling hard, cutting through the water, focussing doggedly on what he was doing rather than the pain in his side. He was cutting the calves off from heading back to the island, herding them forward but sideways. He had to turn and turn again as the calves took fright and tried to scatter, but between them, yelling, barking, shoving the canoe at them, he and Blackie made them swerve and kept going.

They were exhausted, he thought, and he was expecting at any minute that one would slip under. They had to see...

The fence was about four feet high, so the gap was obvious. If they could see it they’d be safe.

‘Oi,’ Maggie yelled again, and Blackie barked, and he veered the canoe behind them—and the calf in the lead lifted its head as if casting round for one last desperate chance...

And saw.

And then the entire herd was surging through the gap. Maggie was stepping aside, the calves were through, rising out of the floodwater, finding their feet, scrambling onto dry land.