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Almost as if he heard her thoughts he went on. ‘I should explain. You being engaged actually helps as I don’t want to give you the wrong impression.’
Wrong impression? Didn’t want her to get her hopes up, perhaps? What a poser. The man had tickets on himself.
‘I’m taking my father and his future wife out for lunch today and I think Louisa would be more comfortable if there was another woman there instead of just three men.’
For the first time he looked anxious. ‘I really do want this to go smoothly and I think you would be able to help that.’
Maybe not a poser? She’d have to stop jumping to conclusions about people, but Mark had left her wary. Now she understood and she wasn’t disappointed that he hadn’t actually wanted to ask her out. At all. Honest. ‘Steer the conversation when it falters, you mean?’
He nodded. ‘Something like that.’
She thought of his son. ‘I don’t think you’d have to worry with Simon at the table.’ Their eyes met in acknowledgement of the truth of that and Mia smiled.
Angus said, ‘My son is adept at conversation. I grant you that. Must be his mother’s side.’ A shadow passed across his face at the mention of Simon’s mother and Mia couldn’t help but wonder what the story was there. No way was she asking.
The less he thought about that the better, Angus admonished himself silently, and looked up at the curly-headed nymph across the table. Unfortunately it felt like he could sit and look at her all day. She made him feel alive—not something he’d dwelt on for a long time—and she made him smile inside. Years since he’d done that.
‘Nevertheless, you will come?’ He didn’t know why it was so important to have Mia with them, especially now he knew she was engaged, though what sort of ‘engagement’ had a break? The marriage didn’t sound too imminent. But he did want her with them today. He barely knew her, but he had this crazy idea in his brain that he wouldn’t mess up with his father and Louisa if Mia was there.
He could run hospitals, organise airlifts and troubleshoot the health of disaster-affected cities, but last night, even with Simon there yabbering away like a rabbit, he’d had trouble talking to the man who had banished him twenty years ago. And his father had been just as bad.
He watched her sniff the cup and it was funny just how much he enjoyed her obvious appreciation. Maybe he could bribe her with more coffee.
‘I’ll come if you think it will help,’ she said when she put the cup down. ‘Where were you planning on taking them?’
He’d sorted that one. ‘I thought the white guesthouse on the lake. They have lunches on the veranda.’
She nodded and he guessed that was approval. ‘We could walk there.’
He watched her consider that. Her thoughts flicked across her face like a digital photo frame, one after the other. How could anyone be that transparent? It was strangely endearing in a way. Then she said, ‘Nice. I’ll be there. What time do you want me to be ready?’
It was that easy. She’d be there. It had been Simon’s suggestion and his know-it-all son had been right again. She had said yes.
He would have asked her even if Simon hadn’t suggested it. He was pretty sure. ‘Twelve. I’ll book for twelve-fifteen.’
‘No problem. I’ve a breathing and relaxation class this morning for a client, but will be home by eleven. I’ll see you then.’
‘Thank you, Mia. I appreciate this.’
She was wearing a little green sundress and when she shrugged those beautiful shoulders of hers his fingers spread on his lap as he imagined the feel of her. He’d bet her skin would be like silk. He needed to get a grip—but not on her.
Lucky his face wasn’t readable like hers.
‘No problem,’ she said. ‘You’re offering free lunch at a place I’ve wanted to go to and with people I like. No hardship.’
Four hours later the restaurant owner settled them on the shady veranda and they could look through the overhanging branches to the lake.
Louisa had given Mia a squeeze on the arm as they’d sat down and in return she sent Louisa a reassuring nod because even if Angus didn’t smile much she had an idea he was a fair and reasonable man.
Mia would make sure there was nothing for the older lady to be nervous of, though, to give Angus his due, he’d invited her for just that reason.
Ned seemed overly hearty too and Mia began to understand that Angus wasn’t the only one who felt some strain with the family party.
Simon looked as relaxed as a tomcat in the sun and proceeded to nod at all the pretty girls at the other tables.
Mia couldn’t help smiling at him. Then she looked up she saw that Angus was watching her and her smile faded.
No wonder it felt more like a wake than a party, with Mr Dour over there. He could make a little more effort.
‘So, five days to the wedding?’ Mia said brightly into the silence, and half of the table jumped at the sound of her voice.
Angus’s half didn’t. He just stared thoughtfully at Mia.
Ned dived in. ‘I keep telling Louisa to let the caterers do the work. We’re having the reception outside in a marquee, no connection to the house or the kitchen, and I can’t have my bride exhausted for her wedding.’
Louisa looked fondly across at her fiancé. ‘Well you had to catch wedding fever from Misty and Ben and want it all done in a month. Not that I mind.’ Louisa reached across and squeezed Ned’s hand.
Mia blurted out the question as it rose. ‘So had you thought about staying till Saturday, then, Angus?’ She hoped no one thought she had any interest in the answer, but it was too late to call it back once it was out.
There was silence at the table and Angus narrowed his eyes at Mia and then turned to his father.
‘I hadn’t intended to.’
Simon leant forward as if to say something and Angus raised his finger and silenced him without looking in his direction. Interesting dynamics with so short an acquaintance, Mia thought, but Angus did look used to command. Simon sat back in his seat.
Angus went on. ‘I’ve a meeting in Brisbane on Thursday, but could fly back that night and stay the extra two days, I guess. If Louisa and you would like us to, of course.’ He looked at Louisa for the first time and his face softened. ‘If you’ll have us.’
Angus glanced at his son, who nodded before returning his attention to his father’s fiancée. Mia thought for a moment he would smile, but he didn’t.
‘Of course.’ Louisa smiled for everyone and she seemed to relax a little. ‘We’d love you to stay. I’m so pleased you can manage it.’
‘That’s settled, then,’ Mia said as another silence settled over the table. Mentally she groaned as nobody picked up the conversational ball. This was hard work. Didn’t these people know how to have a good time? She looked at Simon and mischief lurked in his eyes. Salvation.
‘Tell us a joke, Simon,’ Mia said, and sat back to listen.
Simon couldn’t wait. ‘Once there was…’ And the lunch improved marginally from then on.
CHAPTER THREE
‘GOOD morning, Mia.’ Angus stood as she entered the breakfast room and she didn’t bother to tell him to sit down. Mia wondered if she would have been disappointed if he hadn’t risen. How quickly she could adapt to chivalry.
‘Morning,’ she said briefly.
After saying he’d stay for the wedding, Angus had said very little else at the lunch and despite Simon’s jokes it had been a long and painful affair. She was still cross with Angus’s poor effort, although Louisa had spoken to her later and raved about how much better that meeting had gone than the previous night.
And to think she’d wanted to be a fly on the wall the first night. No doubt the flies had left the room bored witless.
The aroma of his special coffee beans teased her nose and she sniffed reluctantly. At least he made excellent coffee and she wondered if he’d be offended if she wasted it just to sniff.
When she sat down she could feel the weight of his appraisal and she looked up and glared at him. His eyes widened in surprise and she looked away. As well you might wonder, mister, she grumbled silently to herself. Poor Louisa must dread running into him.
Who did he think he was anyway, putting a damper on the whole house? Her control snapped. ‘So what happened between you and your father to make you so cold towards him now?’
One thick black brow twitched. ‘You do like to dance around a subject, don’t you?’
‘I’m not in the mood to play games this morning, Angus. If I hadn’t been called into work after lunch I would have said this yesterday. Now I’ve lost sleep over how upset I was for Ned and Louisa.’
He sat back in the chair and considered her. ‘I’m sorry you lost sleep about something that’s really not your concern.’
Snooty pig, Mia thought. Well, someone had to stick up for Ned and Louisa. ‘Because it’s not my concern is the very reason I can say what I like. You can freeze me out, but the cold will bite back.’
‘It’s all a Storm in a coffee cup,’ he quipped, and she rolled her eyes.
Spare me, Mia thought. ‘Do you have any idea how many times I’ve heard jokes about my name in my lifetime?’
His face was deadpan. ‘Storm by name and storm by nature.’
She inhaled the steam and it was as good as she remembered. He’d be gone by the time she could really enjoy the stuff. ‘You won’t divert me. I want to know what happened between you and Ned.’
The expression on his face didn’t change, but she had the feeling she’d actually penetrated the thick barriers he’d surrounded himself with. So she wasn’t surprised he told her—just with the brevity of the telling, and the fact that he sounded like a bored newsreader discussing a famine he had no interest in.
‘My mother left my father when I was sixteen. She ran away with another man and I blamed my father because I didn’t want to blame my mother.’
‘Poor Ned,’ she said.
He inclined his head, but she couldn’t tell if he agreed or not. He went on. ‘Then I slept with Simon’s mother and she fell pregnant and my father warned me she wouldn’t stay with me either. After a heated discussion with my father, Simon’s mother and I left, and I haven’t spoken to him since he told me never to return.’
That explained that, but something still wasn’t right. ‘If you knew Simon’s mother was pregnant, how come you didn’t know about Simon?’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘Because as far as I was aware he wasn’t born alive.’
She thought about that. Someone had done the dirty on Angus.
He rolled his shoulders and rocked his head from side to side as if his neck was stiff, and she wondered if he’d slept at all last night either. Maybe she should offer to massage his neck. That thought started a slow burn she didn’t want to think about and she took another sip of her coffee.
In all fairness to Angus, though, Mia thought, it took two to fight. ‘Did Ned never contact you?’
‘He had no idea where I was. For a while there in the air force I wasn’t contactable anyway.’ He stood up, properly filled her cup, and then carried his plate to the sink where he rinsed it.
That little action, a tiny thing that Mark had never done in the whole time they’d been together, dissolved any last remnants of anger from yesterday.
That Angus topped up her coffee, regardless of the fact she wouldn’t finish it and had put a plate in the sink because it was not her job, or Louisa’s, to look after him, did a strange thing to her stomach. Made her look at Angus again in a much more favourable light. Thankfully he didn’t seem to notice her frozen stare.
He had to have other faults, she decided. ‘Tell me about when you left home with Simon’s mother.’ Something he did must have driven her away. ‘Didn’t you know she was unhappy?’
He held up his hands in surrender. ‘I must have missed it. She was pregnant! I thought she was moody from the pregnancy. But gradually I began to see I was more excited about the pregnancy than she was. I certainly hadn’t expected to have a child at twenty, but when it happened I actually got used to the idea I would be a father, planned to be a good one, and really looked forward to the birth. But we had little money after bills and she missed the comfort she was accustomed to. Her parents owned the large hotel on the lake in those days. They kept telling her I was too young to look after her properly.’
‘So why did you think she’d lost the baby back then?’
He didn’t answer immediately, and she thought he wasn’t going to, but he did. ‘I never knew how it happened. Could only imagine and, of course, you imagine the worst. It started one day when she said she was going home for a visit to her parents and two days later she rang me to say she’d had a stillbirth. A son. I’d spent the last two nights painting a cot and had bought things for the baby to surprise her and now our baby was gone. Lost. And I’d never even seen him and never would. I was devastated.’
He looked at her and despite the lack of tell-tale signs she knew those memories had shaped the man.
‘I think I know why most people heal better when they see and hold a child that has died. When I was in disaster areas I was just as anxious to retrieve those that had died for that reason. To make it possible for a parent to hold that child, hug them, for what was going to be the last time they had the chance to parent that child. I got none of that and I really wanted it. I wanted to see my son, but she said the funeral had come and gone.’
He shook his head. ‘But Simon didn’t die in utero. He was growing up with another father all the time. As far as I knew, he was gone. I’ve always wondered what he looked like. She told me she just wanted to forget so I thought the worst. And, of course, she didn’t come back.’
‘Why didn’t you return to the lake to see her later?’
‘She told me she didn’t want me to follow her home.’
Poor Angus. To be locked out of sharing his grief while being estranged from his own family as well.
He looked away and she could see he regretted his disclosures. She hoped that now he’d spoken about them he might begin to heal. And surely it would help now he could at least begin to be a second father to Simon.
‘So nineteen years later Simon just appeared?’
‘So it seems. In fact, she hadn’t miscarried, just met and decided on her future husband, and her pact included telling Simon the other man was his real father.’
He shrugged. ‘I might not have made it back to the lake if Simon hadn’t forced my hand. So here I am. Now, if you don’t mind, that subject is closed.’
Mia subsided, sniffed, and her olfactory cells celebrated. ‘So where…’ he turned and stared her down, daring her to ask another question and she resisted the temptation and grinned ‘…do you get your coffee beans?’
He froze, his cheek twitched, but no smile. But nearly, buster, she thought. I nearly had you.
‘Touché,’ he said. ‘Shades of me yesterday. You had me going then.’
She smiled into the cup. ‘Yep.’
‘You realize, of course, it’s your fault I’ll have seven days in Lyrebird Lake.’
‘Your choice.’
‘Your suggestion.’
Mia shrugged. ‘I just said you should. You don’t know me from Adam.’
‘Oh, I think I’d know the difference between you and Adam.’ He looked her up and down and suddenly she remembered her thoughts of him that first day he’d arrived. The bathroom, she could feel the steam on her skin, and hear the sound from the door that he’d kick shut with both of them inside. She could feel the heat steal up her cheeks and a sudden flutter in her stomach made her push out her chair in a sudden ungainly rush.
His voice followed her to the door. ‘So what are you doing this morning?’
Brain? Where was her brain? Then it began to work again. ‘I’ve a breathing and relaxation class with a new couple.’ Thank goodness for the excuse, she thought.
‘Breathing. I’m very interested in that. Did my obstetric rotation years ago and there’s something very special about the moment of birth, especially a calm one.’
Where was this going? Mia thought warily.
She’d been right to be wary. ‘Any chance of tagging along to listen?’ Angus said. ‘One of the medics at the base and his wife rave about breathing.’
