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‘So you’ve named her?’ Max spoke from the door. Georgia looked serene and competent with the baby nestled in her arms, and he stifled the pang of pain he’d thought he’d got over about not having children.
Imagine someone like her to come home to after work. During his engagement Max had eventually realised that at best Tayla would fly to visit him every few weeks and he’d accepted she would continue with her life as charity social queen.
At the time it had seemed enough because he could never offer a maternal woman a family and Tayla made no secret of the fact that she didn’t want children. A realistic Tayla was better than the beauties who had chorused that IVF would do the trick.
Imagine if it had been possible to marry someone like Georgia? They could have even worked together and he’d have a real insight into the care the women were receiving.
Enough. He wouldn’t be searching for another wife. One close shave was enough. Maybe he could run his disastrous day past the board and they’d consider his circumstances against the fact he wasn’t married. He’d sort something out.
He frowned at the strange expression on Georgia’s face and he wondered what new complication had arisen.
For Georgia, after the first quick glance, she didn’t know where to look. Perhaps she’d caught her uncle’s affliction of avoiding eye contact, but this was a bit awkward after hearing Max needed a wife.
She flicked another peek at him and away again. ‘Harry just left.’
‘Yes, I know.’ Max frowned. ‘I saw him but he seemed in a bit of a hurry. I’m not sure he’s speaking to me after I failed so dismally as a son-in-law.’
Georgia winced and looked down as Elsa slept contentedly in her arms. That was definitely her fault. She wished her daughter would wake up and yell. At least she could avoid conversation then. Her brain was spinning from Harry’s bombshell. Max just didn’t seem the type to need a wife.
The guy had everything. Looks, money, fabulous career. A sliver of ice slid down her back. Maybe he wanted to own a trophy wife, like Sol had.
‘How is Tayla?’ It was all she could think of to say.
‘Unengaged. She doesn’t want to marry me any more.’ Max dropped the words into the room like an afterthought. ‘But she’ll be fine. I’ve sent her home with my brother. I think they will do very well together. We don’t normally get on but Paul’s been a godsend this week.’
Georgia frowned and played back his comment in her mind. Unengaged. Needed a wife. ‘Did you say the wedding is off?’
‘Definitely. I couldn’t guarantee to her I would never rush off like that again and she said it wasn’t good enough.’
‘She’s a fool.’ Georgia had thought the words and somehow they slipped quietly into the room for Max to hear.
‘I think so—but there you have it.’ He was irrepressible and she couldn’t help smiling. They both grinned at each other and the camaraderie was back.
Georgia decided she must have misunderstood Uncle Harry. Max didn’t seem too upset for someone who needed to have a wife. She would go with her instincts and her instincts said Max Beresford could be trusted.
‘So why were you marrying Tayla if you didn’t love her?’
He sighed and sat down. She realised he was dressed in theatre garb so he must have changed out of his soiled suit at some time. He pulled his hand over his strong chin as she watched him gather his thoughts.
‘The board of directors for the new job were adamant. They wanted me but no wife, no job. Tayla seemed like a good idea at the time.’
Georgia felt disappointment lodge in her throat. She was a damn poor judge of character. The man was shallow. ‘Not a good reason to tie yourself to one person for the rest of your life.’
‘It was only for a year if it didn’t work out.’ He looked up at her and smiled sympathetically. ‘I gather your foray into married life wasn’t a roaring success either.’
She wasn’t the one who needed the sympathy. ‘I believed in commitment when I took my vows.’
‘And how was your marriage?’ The gentle tone in which he asked the question made her eyes sting with sudden tears.
She did not want to go there. ‘None of your business.’
‘That bad, eh?’ He pressed his lips together as if holding back further comment, and suddenly she could at least admit how bad it had been to herself.
It was her turn to sigh. ‘Worse. How did you know?’
He shrugged his shoulders slightly. ‘From something you said when you were in labour about not missing Elsa’s father.’
The limo ride came back to her in Technicolor and she shuddered. ‘Labour. Could you call that labour? That horrific few minutes when I thought I would lose my baby?’
She shook her head. ‘That was like being hit by a truck.’ She couldn’t begin to imagine the desolation she would be going through now if Elsa hadn’t survived. ‘I haven’t thanked you for being there when I needed someone.’
Max smiled. ‘And I haven’t thanked you for saving me from Tayla. So now we have that out of the way, let’s forget the others. What are you going to do now?’
Georgia tilted her head. ‘My situation is fine. I’m free. I have a healthy baby, a home and a nanny arranged for the future when I go back to work.’
He looked a little taken aback at her well-laid plans. What had he expected?
‘I can see you are organised.’ He stood up. ‘And you must be tired. I’ll go. Congratulations on your beautiful daughter. My best wishes to both of you. Good bye.’ He smiled and left.
She watched him go, watched him walk out after all they had been through, and now she really was alone. Well, what had she expected? He wasn’t even her cousin-in-law now so she probably wouldn’t ever see him again.
Of course, she couldn’t sleep after that.
Elsa woke and gratefully Georgia fed her and stroked her hair and began to feel the peace she’d dreamt of when her child was safely born.
She tried to imagine how she would have felt if Max hadn’t been there and she’d been alone when Elsa had been born. If Elsa hadn’t been fine. It didn’t bear thinking about.
Then the cold ice of fear in the base of her stomach reminded her there were other things to be afraid of. What if Sol came back and tried to take Elsa, as he’d threatened? Could she keep her baby safe? Could Max help her keep her baby safe? It was a dangerous thought.
The next morning Dr Sol Winton stepped out of the lifts on the maternity floor and no one tried to stop him. The quality of his suit and the half-exposed stethoscope poking out of his pocket ensured that nobody questioned he belonged there.
He inclined his head at two nurses and his slow smile brought the colour to both their cheeks. The gilt-ribboned chocolate boxes screamed money and he placed one box on the nurse’s desk and kept one in his hand.
‘I’m looking for my wife. Georgia Winton?’
‘Certainly, Doctor. She’s in room four, down the corridor on the left.’
‘Thank you. Enjoy the chocolates.’
He set off as if sure of his welcome. A tall, well-dressed, charming man, who drew the eyes of women and exuded authority.
When he entered the room only the baby was there wrapped up in a bunny rug in the Perspex cot. A name card tucked into the end read, ‘Elsa, baby of Georgia, five pounds two ounces.’
He reached across and stroked the baby’s cheek and her downy skin was silky soft beneath his finger.
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_5beb340f-c7d9-5a6a-8bd1-b4ebdbab86ee)
MAX FROWNED and strode quickly down the corridor as he saw the man enter Georgia’s room.
He knew most of the consultants across the hospital but not this one. Some latent protective instinct raised the hairs on the back of his neck and all he could think about was that Georgia might need him.
His suspicions firmed at the sight of the man bent over Elsa’s cot.
Max loomed in the doorway. His voice came out low and hard. ‘Can I help you?’
Sol straightened slowly and he lifted his chin. ‘No. I don’t think so. Thank you.’
The man smiled but something about his phoney amusement increased Max’s own wariness and disquiet.
Max moved to one side of the doorway to allow a free exit from the room—though only if the man left Elsa in her cot.
‘Are you a friend of Georgia’s?’ Max enquired politely, yet the hint of steel suggested it wasn’t a frivolous question and he required an answer.
‘I’m more than that.’ Sol smiled gently. ‘Are you her doctor?’
‘You could say that.’ Max looked up as Georgia opened the bathroom door and his instincts firmed as her eyes widened and then closed for a second as if her worst nightmare had come true.
Her hand hovered over her mouth. ‘Sol?’ She shook her head but no further words came.
‘My dear wife.’ Sol smiled.
Georgia shook her head again and the words burst out in a vehement whisper. ‘I’m not your wife.’
Sol smiled again, and from the outside he looked quite pleasant yet something made Max take a step closer to Georgia in support.
Sol ignored him. ‘You’ll always be my wife. But I do see this is not a good time so I’ll leave you. Our daughter is beautiful.’ He placed the chocolates squarely on the bedside table.
‘Good day.’ He turned nonchalantly and sauntered away.
Georgia belted the robe as she rushed to Elsa to check she was fine. ‘Thank God you were here.’
Fighting back tears, she looked at Max. ‘Did he try to take her?’ She lifted and hugged Elsa to her as she sank onto the bed as if unable to support the weight on her legs. Her hands shook violently.
Max didn’t know what to do to comfort her.
‘No. He didn’t pick Elsa up. He just looked at her.’ What the hell was all that about? Max thought, and he glanced at the door through which Sol had disappeared. He’d love to ask the sleaze but he’d gone and Georgia needed him.
Max sat down beside Georgia on the bed and slid his arm around her shoulders. She quivered under his arm like a new lamb.
‘I’ll put safeguards in place. Your ex-husband won’t be able to get to you if that’s what you want.’
She shook her head and shuddered as she wrapped her arms around her baby. ‘I don’t want to stay here.’
Max squeezed her shoulders. ‘Where do you want to go?’ Her distress affected him in a way he hadn’t expected and he’d like to have shaken the truth out of the other man.
Georgia’s free hand was at her throat. She could barely speak because of the panic she was trying to control. ‘I was afraid this would happen. There is something I need to explain. Something I haven’t told anybody.’
She hesitated with reluctance to dwell on the whole distressing nightmare but it had to be spoken of. Her reluctance had almost cost the ultimate price. Elsa.
Sol would take her baby if he possibly could. He’d threatened her in those silky tones of his and the thought terrified her, made her sick to her stomach, and now it grew to epic proportions, like a phobia about spiders—except her phobia was all about Sol.
Even what he had done to her before was nothing to this fear that he might take her baby, and even though a tiny spark deep in her brain whispered she was being irrational, she had no control over the dread that was rising in her throat.
Georgia drew a deep breath and her voice sounded weak and strained even to her own ears.
No wonder Sol could smile.
And no doubt Max would hear the paranoia too but there was nothing she could do about that except try and master it at a later time when she had time to regroup. At this moment she just needed Max to understand.
She hadn’t progressed to why that seemed so important at this moment.
‘Before I met Sol I was happy in my work, a senior midwife in my unit and studying for my master’s in midwifery.’
Max nodded. ‘Harry said you were well respected and then you became sick—is that right?’
‘In the end I began to think I was sick. I need to start the story before then.’
She closed her eyes for a second to gather her thoughts. ‘I met my husband, the new senior consultant at our hospital, Sol Winton, and he swept me off my feet. He promised nothing would change, and marriage would only enhance my full life, and that he couldn’t live without me.’
She laughed without amusement. ‘I was flattered. I’d passed thirty waiting for Mr Right. I’m no raving beauty and he was distinguished, handsome, and I’d begun to think I’d missed out on love and marriage and children. He caught me at a vulnerable time and I thought I loved him.
‘In truth I was married for two years to a man who wanted to own me, body and soul, and rule my life down to the smallest degree.
‘In the beginning I believed his excessive protectiveness was because he treasured me but I soon realised it was because he felt I was his prized possession and he was training me to jump.’
Georgia drew a shuddering breath and her shoulders shook until Max edged back closer and leant against her. ‘You OK?’
The tremor stopped and she nodded. ‘I don’t like to go over it but I have to so that you’ll understand.’
Max shook his head. ‘Not if you don’t want to.’
‘I have to,’ she said with resolve.
‘OK.’ Max pressed harder against her as if he knew she needed that support.
She felt strangely safer with Max’s hip and shoulders touching hers, which was ridiculous but it helped her to go on. ‘I tried to make Sol see that marriage wasn’t a power game and I needed to be my own person, but my charming ex-husband, the highly esteemed obstetrician, informed everyone I was a paranoid depressive. That’s not an easy thing to dispute if you have reason to be unhappy.’
‘That would explain what Harry said about your marriage getting you down.’
‘Harry mentioned it, did he?’
She saw the look on Max’s face and sighed. ‘This is what I meant about disputing people’s opinions. Sol made it seem I protested too much.’
Max frowned. ‘It’s OK. I believe you. Go on.’
‘I was a professional woman with a career and friends before Sol. But he became more and more demanding. He isolated me from my friends and began to dictate my daily routine. He would change it at a whim.’ She clutched Elsa to her as she remembered.
‘He cancelled my appointments with my uni, pulled my shifts so that when I turned up, cases had been replaced by another midwife, and that was when I realised people had begun to talk. He’d arranged a visit to a psychiatrist and circulated that I suffered from an anxiety-driven mental illness. The saddest thing was that I almost began to believe him, but I kept telling myself it was his problem, not mine, and refused to take medication. Finally I left him.’
