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She’d shocked him by her turn-around.
He’d gone to see her before he’d left. Apologised. ‘I’m sorry. I know made things clear at the beginning of our relationship but I should have kept checking.’
‘And I should have talked about my change of heart,’ she’d admitted. ‘I know I said I never wanted family; babies. I can’t think why I do now, but I do.’
They’d parted friends. She was already eyeing off the new paediatric consultant, a young widower. A guy with a child already.
A ready-made family …
Once more his gaze drifted to the water. Jess and Dusty.
Dr Jessica McPherson. He’d looked her up last night. English qualifications. Based in London. Accompanied by her son, Dustin.
Obviously here to combine work and holiday.
If she didn’t have a child he could spend some time with her, he thought. She fitted his date description. Smart, attractive, funny. Returning to the other side of the world in ten days.
Smart, attractive, funny …
He watched her a while longer. Add gorgeous to that description, he decided. The way she laughed … The way she rolled in the sand with her son, totally unselfconscious. Her peal of delicious chuckles.
She had a child, he told himself harshly. He didn’t do children.
And suddenly Nate was there, front and centre.
Nate.
He was in the most beautiful place in the world, in the most comfortable bed with the best view and suddenly the tension inside him was almost to breaking point.
His family was dysfunctional to say the least, but Nate had been his one true thing. Nate, eight years old to his eleven. His adoring little brother. During childhood they’d hardly seen their parents, they’d been raised by nannies, but they’d had each other.
And then something had finally cracked in the social façade that had been his parents’ marriage. They’d woken one morning and it had been over.
‘Ben, darling, you’re coming with me. There’s a lovely school in Australia—I believe it’s even been used by royalty. And Arthur, the nice man I introduced you to last week, is based in Melbourne. We’ll be able to explore together. Your father’s decided he wishes to hold onto Nathaniel. Your bags are being packed now. Say goodbye to your brother. Your father’s gone out for the day—I don’t think he intends to say goodbye to anyone.’
After that … He hadn’t seen Nate for years, and when he had Nate had turned into his father. Blamed him. Vibrated vitriol.
To feel like that again …
No. He didn’t do family.
Outside Jess and Dusty were whooping up the beach, rolling in the soft sand, then lurching about like sand-covered monsters trying to scare each other.
How would she feel if anything happened to her son? How would her little boy feel if he lost his mother?
Don’t go there.
He always did. He always had. Families instilled an automatic dread.
So …
So there was two hours to go before he’d promised to go to the wildlife shelter. He still wasn’t sure how he’d been coerced into the visit but he’d get it over with fast. Meanwhile he could have breakfast and head to the beach. A swim would be great.
That’s what he would have done if they weren’t there.
They were there. A family.
He had work to do. A quick breakfast, a few laps of the hotel pool, then an hour or so on the computer.
He’d meant this time to be a rest. Beach time. Not if it meant getting involved. No way.
Dusty swam, splashed, dug, then reluctantly returned to their bungalow for breakfast, and when Sally and a rough-looking beach buggy arrived to collect them he was so wide-eyed he was practically speechless. For a child brought up in the heart of London, this was heaven.
He’d almost forgotten that flash of intuition he’d had about Ben on the boat, so when Sally stopped the buggy in front of Ben’s bungalow and Ben emerged, Jess saw her son react with something akin to confusion. He had warring priorities. Beach and wildlife—or a guy who might or might not be his uncle.
Should she have said something? Admitted that she thought she’d recognised him? It was too late now. Jess could only hold her breath and hope.
‘Hi, people,’ Sally said cheerfully. ‘You’ll have to put up with me driving this morning. Marge is our usual driver. I only got my licence when my husband died and that was when I was sixty so I’m not exactly skilled. But Marge isn’t well this morning so it’s me, me or me. Don’t talk to me. I need to concentrate. Hold onto your hats.’
There wasn’t a lot else to hold onto. There were two bench seats facing each other in the back of the buggy.
Jess and Dusty sat on one. Ben on the other. Facing each other.
‘Did they give you a spade?’ Dusty demanded of Ben.
‘No.’ Ben was looking … bemused. He was wearing light chinos, a short-sleeved linen shirt, open at the throat, canvas boat shoes. His hair was already rumpled by the soft sea breeze.
He looked far too much like his brother, Jess thought grimly. And like her son.
‘They gave me one,’ Dusty was saying. ‘It’s humungous. I built the best ever sandcastle and moat. We built it just past the high-tide mark and when the tide comes in the water will reach the moat and fill it. Do you want to look when we get back?’
‘The doctor will have work to do when we get back,’ Jess said, with gentle reproof, and Ben flashed her an appreciative glance.
‘I do. I’m presenting first thing tomorrow.’
‘I don’t know how you find the courage to take on public speaking,’ she ventured, trying to think of what a real colleague would say. ‘It’d scare me witless.’
‘Having a son would scare me witless,’ he said.
‘You don’t have children?’ That’s also what a normal colleague would ask, she thought. That’s also what Dusty would like to know. If he had cousins.
‘No family,’ Ben said, and it was almost a snap.
‘What, no one at all?’
‘The wildlife lodge’s just over this hill,’ Sally yelled cheerfully from the front. ‘I think … uh-oh … Hold on!’
A hump. The buggy lurched sideways. Jess grabbed Dusty, Ben grabbed her, Sally hit the brakes and suddenly they were sliding onto the floor.
Sally pulled to a stop. Looked back at her passengers, appalled. ‘Oh, my … Marge said not to hit that crest too hard. I forgot. Are you okay?’
‘I …’ Ben was still holding Jess. She could hardly breathe. ‘I think so.’
Dusty was underneath her. Ben was holding him, too.
Dusty giggled.
There wasn’t much alternative. She should giggle.
It was just that … she was underneath an Oaklander.
Ben.
She was starting to separate him from Nate in her head, but she still remembered how Nate had made her feel.
Separate or not, he was an Oaklander. But she couldn’t pull away.
‘I think we’re better staying down,’ Ben said. ‘We can’t fall any further.’ There was a rubber mat on the floor of the tray. Ben’s advice made sense.
He tugged her sideways so she was free to breathe and she tugged Dusty close so they were spooned into each other.
Dusty giggled some more.
And suddenly Jess was chuckling as well—because there was nothing else to do. She was so disconcerted.
Ben’s arms were around her waist. An Oaklander, holding her. Ben … Different.
‘Okay, Sally, let her roll,’ Ben said, and Sally grinned and grated the gears and tried again. With her passengers on the floor. And three minutes later they were there. The buggy pulled to a stop and Jess was almost sorry. And what sort of stupid reaction was that?
Dianne was busting out of the house to meet them, down the veranda steps, exclaiming in dismay as she saw their seating arrangements—or lack. ‘Sally! Marge said to go slow.’
‘I did,’ Sally said cheerfully. ‘Or mostly I did. I need to practise.’
‘That was … fun,’ Jess managed, hauling herself upright. Ben climbed down from the buggy, swung Dusty down, then held out his hands to help her.
She looked at his hands, considered, and then thought maybe not. Climbed down herself. Staggered.
His hand caught hers and steadied her.
Strength …
An Oaklander.
‘Well,’ Dianne said, glowering at Sally. ‘Maybe walking would have been more comfortable. I’m sorry. But now you’re here … Our babies are doing fine. The wombat’s doing beautifully. I reckon it was that cuddle you gave him yesterday, Dusty. Cuddles cure everything.’ Her face clouded a little. ‘Most things. Anyway, come and see.’
Yesterday Jess had assumed the place would be a tiny affair, a shelter run by three retired do-gooders with the best of intentions but not much else.
She was wrong. On their home turf Sally and Dianne turned into professionals who knew what they were doing and cared deeply. This was a professional operation, running smoothly and efficiently. It was used in part by the mainland university as a research station. It was used as a centre for breeding and releasing of endangered species. It was used also as a care facility for tending and re-introducing injured creatures to the wild.
The ward they were shown into was amazing. ‘Our children’s ward,’ Sally said proudly, and showed them into a softly lit bungalow with rows of pouches hanging from hooks just above floor level. ‘Each pouch has its own electric blanket, set to the individual animal’s body needs,’ she said. ‘Some of our babies can’t sweat so it’s important we get it right. We have nine babies here right now.’
‘Survival rate?’ Ben asked.
‘Depends,’ Sally said, and all trace of the fluffy do-gooder Jess had thought her disappeared. She was calmly competent, a woman who knew exactly what she was facing. And she wasn’t trying to dress it up for Dusty. She was treating them as three professional adults.
‘Some of these babies are deeply traumatised,’ she said. ‘If the mother dies without the joey being injured and someone finds it straight away and cares for it properly, then it stands a good chance. But sometimes a baby’s thrown from the mother’s pouch and not found for a while.’ She grimaced. ‘Or sometimes there’s something genetically wrong with the babies that are sent to us. A weak baby may not be able to cling to the mother. It falls and is left. That’s a hard call. We never harden to it; we give it our best shot but we know we can’t save them all. Would you like to see our kitchens? We have the best scientific baby formula production area in the known world. Dusty, maybe you could help feed … And we’re always looking for help sluicing out cages.’
She grinned at the look on their collective faces. ‘Well, what did you expect?’ she said, and chuckled. ‘We’re not open to sightseers but we are open to people who genuinely want to help. We’re always short-staffed. And …’ Her face clouded again. ‘We’re even more short-staffed this morning with Marge not well. Your help would be a godsend.’
‘Is there anything we can do for Marge?’ Jess asked, seeing the worry. But …
‘No. It’s just a sore leg—she was kicked by a wallaby last week. Kicks go with the job. She had a massage yesterday—that was why two of us went to the mainland rather than just one to collect the animals—but it seems to have stirred it up rather than settled it. She’s sounds like she’s getting a cold as well. But at least she’s accepted she needs to rest.’
‘We are doctors. You wouldn’t like me…?’ Jess ventured, still seeing worry.
‘She’d be furious if I asked you to,’ Sally said. ‘She hates fuss. You know, she’s almost eighty. She shouldn’t be here, but she says, well, she says she wants to die doing the work she loves and Dianne and I respect that. It’ll be what we want for ourselves.’ She gave herself a little shake, visibly pushing fears aside. ‘But today we’ve persuaded her to rest and that’s huge in itself. She’s snuggled into bed with Pokey, but she’s feeling guilty and if we push her any more she’ll get up just to prove she can. Right. Work. Let’s go.’
Work.
They fed babies. They sluiced.
It was kind of fun.
The animals were in separate runs according to age, sex and species. Each run had a patch of natural ground, designed to be as close to the natural habitat as could be obtained, but there were sections in each run where feeding took place, or treating. These section were concrete slabs that had to be meticulously cleaned.
Jess scrubbed out the run of four short-nosed wombats. She worked alone. Dusty and Ben were in the turtle/tortoise run, cleaning the area around the pool. Scrubbing. Chatting.
Jess couldn’t hear what they were chatting about.
‘Do you want to work together or apart?’ Sally had asked.
‘Apart,’ Jess had said, fast.
But Dusty had said ‘Together’ at exactly the same time. Ben hadn’t responded.
‘That’s easy, then. Jess, you do the wombats, and Dusty and Ben do the tortoises,’ Sally had said, and before she knew it that’s exactly what was happening.
She could see them from where she was, fifty yards away, two heads, one small and blond, one adult and dark.
Dusty, asking questions.
Ben, seemingly at ease. Answering. Chatting back. Scrubbing as if he was accustomed to hard manual work.
Dusty manfully trying to keep up with him.
Even from here Jess was sensing the beginning of hero-worship.
‘I think this might be Dr Oaklander,’ Dusty had whispered to her during the tour, and she’d nodded, as grave as he’d been. They’d introduced themselves briefly as Dusty, Tess, Ben, and she’d seen Dusty react to the name. Ben.
