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Oh, he meant Tori, of course!
‘Nor Mum, for that matter,’ he said. ‘I’m hoping my aunt and uncle will come down from Harpoon Bay to see her tomorrow.’ He pushed back his chair. ‘Unfortunately my younger sister lives in London now.’
‘You haven’t finished your pizza.’
He waved it away. ‘Take it home with you, if you want.’
She asked for a box, and when they got back to the hospital she hunted up one of the nurses in the high-dependency unit and said, ‘Can you...kind of...remind Dr Black to finish this off during the night?’ She didn’t have to ask to know that he wasn’t planning to go home before morning. ‘Heat it up in the microwave for him even? Put it on a plate and shove it into his hands?’
‘Not looking after himself properly?’ the nurse guessed.
Hayley cannoned into the man himself in the doorway to this section of the unit. He’d checked that Tori was still asleep, and was about to cross the corridor to see his mother.
‘Still here?’ he said.
‘Your pizza’s in the fridge,’ she answered drily, earning his rusty laugh.
‘I thought it was your pizza,’ he said.
‘No, it’s definitely yours. I’m not all that fond of ham and pineapple.’ She added, before he could ask, ‘That was what we always used to get when we all went out after swim meets, remember? Mr Hazelwood didn’t used to give us a choice, or he said we’d have been there all night, making up our minds. I saw his point!’
‘And you never said you didn’t like it?’
‘I wasn’t going to be the only nuisance.’
‘You were always too nice!’
‘So were you. You used to wait before you took the last piece.’
‘Not very noble of me, since I knew Mum would have a second dinner waiting at home.’
‘You mean she didn’t know about the pizza?’
‘Hey, I was growing!’
They both laughed.
With one hand propped against the doorway, he leaned down and cupped his other palm against the back of her neck, his fingers nestling into the feathery texture of her short, dark hair. Instinctively, she lifted her face and their eyes met, and she saw an awareness in his gaze that she knew was mirrored in her own.
His pupils were wide and dark, and there was a new softness to the way he held himself. Now he was watching her mouth. Her lips parted on a sudden in-breath, her heartbeat quickened and then he released his hold and the moment passed.
It was a relief. She wasn’t prepared for something like this tonight.
‘I m-must get to Mum and Dad’s to pick up Max,’ she stammered. ‘Don’t lose touch now that you’re back.’
Big points for inanity on that one, Hayley!
‘I won’t,’ Byron said. He might have said more, but she was already striding off along the corridor.
He watched her for a moment.
It was visiting hour, and there were knots of people about, some of them looking distinctly uncomfortable in the hospital environment. Hayley took no notice of them, kept her head down and her walk rapid so that her delicate gold and jade earrings swung against her slender neck and caught the light. He’d noticed that before.
Speed seemed to suit Hayley, Byron decided. She had been fast in the pool, she was fast at the wheel of an ambulance and she was fast on her feet. Organised. Efficient.
Escaping.
He knew it. Was deeply glad she felt the same way he did about that little moment of heat in the doorway, and about the way their hands had kept straying together across the restaurant table as they’d talked. He’d always found her very attractive. She was compact yet strong, with gorgeously smooth skin and a constant sparkle of life and warmth in her dark brown eyes.
Of course they’d all been a mass of stimulated hormones at swim club, surrounded by all that slick, wet skin and smoothly honed muscle. He had fancied almost all the girls at one stage or another, even the ones he hadn’t particularly liked.
Perhaps that was how he’d learned so early on that you had to divorce physical attraction from emotional connection. When he’d met Elizabeth during his second year of medicine at Sydney University, their physical response to each other had been just one part of the package—the uniquely precious and complete package he knew he’d never find again. Didn’t even want to find again, in fact.
These days, he didn’t have that scatter-gun, adolescent approach to women. Only during those late teen years had he fancied anything and everything in a skirt. The sit-up-and-howl feeling came much less often, now. There was discrimination involved.
And yet he still found Hayley Kennett...or whatever her surname was now...very attractive indeed. Found that their long-ago kiss was surprisingly vivid in his memory. It unsettled him. Scared him, if he was honest.
No. Definitely. I don’t need it. I don’t want it.
It was an instinctive thing, and not something he wanted to analyse too closely. Wasn’t the reluctance enough? Did he have to work out why?
Yes. Perhaps he did. Take a deep breath and just do it, Byron.
He didn’t fully trust his judgement, or his reactions—that was part of the problem. It would be so easy to numb himself...assuage certain needs...with an affair, kidding himself that it was safe with Hayley because they’d known each other for so long. But what would happen when the affair ended and the numbness wore off? He’d be back to square one, and minus an old friend. Worse, he’d have lanced open the still-not-fully-healed wound of Elizabeth’s loss and the agony would be back.
No, if he was going to launch into any kind of new relationship, now that he was back in Arden, it wouldn’t be with Hayley, he decided firmly. It would be with someone much, much safer.
On that note, feeling relieved, he went in to see his mother.
CHAPTER THREE
‘MUMMY’S on roster today,’ Max told his preschool teacher, Karen, on a Wednesday morning in late March. ‘That means she’s staying all morning.’
‘I know. It’ll be fun having Mummy, won’t it?’ Karen agreed, smiling across the top of the little boy’s mid-brown head at Hayley.
‘What do you need me to do, Karen?’ Hayley asked. She hadn’t been the parent on roster at preschool before, although she’d done it several times the previous year when Max had attended a junior play school for two short mornings each week.
But before the teacher could answer, they were both distracted by the sight of Byron Black stepping up to the veranda, with his little girl’s hand in his. He was so tall that he almost had to duck to clear the low veranda ceiling, and there was something about him that had already drawn more than one pair of eyes.
‘Excuse me, Hayley,’ Karen said. ‘This is little Tori Black, and it’s her first day. She’s... uh...had a rather difficult time.’
‘That’s fine. I know Tori. And her dad,’ Hayley said.
She couldn’t help watching the pair as they came through the door. In the bright morning light, Byron looked anxious at first, as if wondering whether Tori was ready for this yet. His reaction made sense. It was six weeks since the little girl’s accident, and her burns didn’t show, but beneath her pretty purple sundress there would still be significant scarring, as well as areas of reddened skin like latticework where she’d recently had her grafts.
Karen went forward to greet them, while Hayley dropped to the carpet to help Max with his jigsaw puzzle of a cat. She was well aware that her thoughts were focused on Byron and Tori more than on the wooden pieces scattered over the carpet in front of her.
‘I did this one every day last week,’ Max said. ‘I know it off by heart.’ Which explained why he didn’t actually need her help at all. ‘Ear. Tail. Other ear. Head. Paws,’ he said, his fingers snapping each piece unerringly into place.
Being superfluous to Max’s puzzle-doing, Hayley felt less guilty about her continued awareness of Byron and his daughter. She had gone to the hospital to visit Tori and Mrs Black one more time, two days after the accident, and had given Tori a three-dimensional puzzle set, but Byron hadn’t been there at the time. The handovers she’d made in the A and E department since then had been made to other members of staff.
She’d heard some news of him, though, via another ambulance officer who had also known him during their high school years.
‘He’s started going out with Wendy Piper, who’s my wife’s GP,’ Paul Cotter had said. ‘Good luck to them, and I hope he likes horses!’
‘Dr Piper’s my GP too,’ Hayley had replied cautiously. In Arden’s compact health-care system, this meant that Dr Piper also worked at the hospital in certain capacities, including regular rosters in the A and E department. ‘But I hadn’t heard about her and Dr Black.’
‘Oh, she and my wife are friends as well. Rhonda’s agisting a horse for Wendy at the moment, too, so they meet up in a muddy paddock sometimes. Have a good gossip, I expect.’
Karen showed Tori where to hang her small pink backpack, where to put her piece of fruit and where the toilets were. Byron hovered just behind them, alert for any potential problem. Leading the little girl over to the puzzle shelf, the preschool teacher then said encouragingly, ‘Why don’t you choose one and your dad can help you with it?’
‘I’m good at puzzles. I love puzzles. I don’t need help, but he can join in,’ Tori corrected firmly.
‘Would you like to join in, Dad?’ Karen said, with a smile in her voice.
‘Love to!’
There! He’d also smiled now at last and it was amazing how much it changed his face. The warmth was something you could have heated your hands by. There was a generosity in it, too. Share my pleasure, it seemed to say. Love and loss weren’t the only emotions that touched this man through and through. Hayley found that she was smiling as well, although he hadn’t even looked at her yet.
Byron managed to find a space on the carpet that was big enough to accommodate his long legs and sat down, while Tori chose a puzzle. He caught sight of Hayley and they both said hello. Max noticed, and informed Byron, ‘Mummy’s on roster.’
‘Will she need some help?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Are you staying?’ Hayley guessed.
He shifted a little closer, and spoke quietly. ‘Yes, it’s probably not necessary, but her graft sites are still tender, and—Well, I just wanted to stay for her first day, that’s all.’
‘You can cut up the children’s fruit,’ Hayley suggested, ‘and then it won’t feel as if you’re just hovering.’
‘That’s a good idea.’ He looked relieved. ‘It’ll be good to be involved, at least this once. Mostly she’s going to be brought here and picked up by her home day-care mother.’
‘Is that working out well?’
‘Wonderfully well. She’s been going to Robyn’s for two weeks, and I’ve heard only glowing reports from both of them. I even,’ he confessed, ‘dropped in unannounced last week. You know, you hear stories about bad childcare...’
‘I know.’ Hayley nodded.
‘But Robyn had Tori and the other two she looks after, plus her own little boy, out in the sandpit, making roads and gardens out of twigs. All their sunhats were on, and she was making them a healthy snack. I felt like a heel for checking up on her in such an obvious way.’
‘Hadn’t you thought of an excuse for your visit?’ she teased.
‘No.’ He grinned wryly. ‘I’d squeezed it in between working out next month’s A and E doctors’ on-call roster and following up on a problem we’ve been having with some equipment. I had to take time off work because of Tori’s burns, and things have been hectic since I started back, so I just wasn’t thinking. Kicked myself for not at least handing over a spare pair of socks or something.’
‘Since the day-carer is a parent herself, she’ll understand.’
‘She did understand! Instantly! Might have been less embarrassing if she hadn’t! Doting father, caught red-handed in an act of flagrant worrying.’
Hayley laughed. Despite that fleeting look of anxiety as he’d entered the preschool, he seemed a hundred times more relaxed than he had been six weeks ago. More confident, too—confident enough to mock his own feelings. The softer, happier expression suited his face, and the confidence suited his voice. It was lazy, deep and rich, lacking the harshness of fear and agitation she’d noticed that day in February.
‘How is your mother?’ she asked.
His face fell a little. ‘She’s still in rehab, but progressing well. Taking a few steps with a frame. Saying a few words. Feeding herself, left-handed. It’s going to be a long road, and we haven’t made any plans yet, but she’s motivated and that’s a huge plus.’
‘It is,’ Hayley agreed.
‘Your mother looks after Max, you said?’ His interest seemed genuine, and she remembered that from the past as well. He probably wouldn’t have described himself as a good listener, but he genuinely was.
‘Yes, and Dad pitches in, too,’ she explained, ‘with bedtime stories when I’m on a late shift, and trips to the playground. I couldn’t manage a paramedic’s hours without them.’
Chris’s parents lived locally, too, but unfortunately they weren’t very interested. Even during her marriage, Hayley had never been very close to them.
‘They’re in good health, obviously,’ Byron said, still talking about Hayley’s own parents.
‘Very, thank goodness,’ she answered. ‘Dad’ll be sixty next year, but you wouldn’t know it.’
‘My in-laws are like that,’ he said. ‘Monica’s coming for a visit next week. Tori can’t wait, and I’m looking forward to it, too. She’s a terrific woman.’
There wasn’t much time to talk after this. The children packed away their puzzles and had group time and news. With a preschooler’s short attention span, these things didn’t last long. Then it was time for ‘activities’—all the craft and play tasks which were so important in building a child’s fine motor skills. Karen asked Byron if he could help one child at a time on the computer as they learned to manipulate the mouse and played a shape-matching game.
Hayley was fully occupied in writing names on paintings and pegging them out to dry, as well as helping Karen and her assistant in encouraging the children’s ideas and reminding them to take turns and share. She was still aware of him in the room, however, his deeper voice a low counterpoint to the high-pitched tones of children.
More aware than she wanted to be, if she was honest. He’d already betrayed the fact that any attraction on his part was reluctant. Not wanted. With Chris still talking on the phone about ‘getting back to what we had’, Hayley didn’t—shouldn’t—want this awareness either.
Next came a session of singing and drama, and Byron asked Hayley, ‘Where’s this fruit I’m supposed to cut up?’
‘There, on the sink in a bowl. Ask Karen about how to do it, because some things get peeled and some don’t, and there are particular ways she likes it cut.’
‘Who knew fruit was this complicated?’ she heard him mutter to himself at the sink a few minutes later, as she was wiping down the craft tables. She had to smile.
Yet he didn’t look nearly as out of place as many fathers she’d seen in a setting that was mainly the province of women and young children, despite his height and imposing build.
Chris, for example, didn’t always find the right tone. He tended to use a high-pitched, overly sweet voice, and say, ‘Wow! That’s incredible!’ a lot, when he didn’t really mean it.
‘It’s just a block tower, Daddy,’ she’d heard Max say to him once. ‘I can make much better ones than that.’
‘Talk to him like a person, Chris, for heaven’s sake!’ Hayley had lashed out at him one day.
‘OK, I know. I’m not used to it, that’s the trouble. Every time I see him, he’s grown. I never said I’d be good at this, did I? You sprang it on me. That’s why the whole thing fell apart. We weren’t planning on having kids for another five years.’
‘It takes two, Chris.’
‘Are you saying you weren’t the one who got careless?’ he’d answered, his voice rising.
That’s right, she remembered now. Her criticism had led to one of their worst arguments and, though she’d fought hard for her own point of view, she had to concede he had been right about some things. Unconsciously, she had got careless, hadn’t she? She’d foolishly thought that a baby wouldn’t be a problem for them.
Complicated. Love, parenthood, divorce. All of it was complicated.
