Читать книгу: «Falling For Her Wounded Hero»

CHAPTER ONE

THE SURF OUTSIDE his surgery window was calling like a siren’s song. Sunlit waves were rolling in with perfect symmetry. Dr Tom Blake had been watching them between patients, crossing his fingers that his list for the afternoon stayed short.

It did. Cray Point was a small town tucked away on a peninsula on Australia’s south-east coast, and almost without exception its residents loved the ocean. On a day like this, only the most urgent medical problems replaced the call of the surf.

Which meant Tom could surf, too.

‘That’s it,’ he called to his receptionist as he closed his last patient file. ‘We’re out of here.’

‘One more,’ Rhonda called back. ‘A last-minute booking. Mrs Tasha Raymond’s here to see you.’

Tasha Raymond.

A tourist? Something easy, he hoped, and headed out to usher her in.

And stopped.

The woman was sitting at the far side of his waiting room. She was close to thirty, he thought, and very pregnant. She had the exhausted and shadowed look he sometimes saw when pregnant women had too much to cope with—toddlers at home, too many work commitments, or a deep unhappiness at the pregnancy itself.

She was small, five four or five, and fair skinned, with brown curls caught into an unruly knot. She was wearing maternity jeans and an enormous windcheater. The shadows under her eyes suggested she hadn’t slept for days.

And he knew her. Tasha Raymond? He’d met her as Tasha Blake.

‘Tasha,’ he said, and she managed a smile and struggled to rise.

‘Tom. I didn’t think you’d recognise me.’

Fair point. Tasha was his half-brother’s widow but he’d only met her once, at Paul’s funeral four years ago.

He’d attended because he’d thought he should, not because he’d thought he was wanted. His stepmother had made it clear she’d prefer it if he stayed away. He’d gone, though, and had stayed in the background, and then one of Paul’s climbing mates who knew the family background had decided to intervene and introduce him.

‘Tom, I doubt if you’ve met Tasha. Did you know Tasha and Paul were married?’

The news that Paul had died trying to scale Everest had come as no huge surprise. Paul had spent his life moving from one adventure to another, taking bigger and bigger risks along the way. The knowledge that he’d found time to marry had been a bigger shock.

But the slight figure surrounded by Paul’s climbing friends had seemed almost a ghost. He’d told her how sorry he was, but he’d only had time for few perfunctory words.

For of course his stepmother had moved in. Afterwards he’d never been able to figure if her contempt was only for him, or if it had included Tasha. Tasha had been a pale figure huddled into someone else’s greatcoat to protect her from the icy winds at the graveside—and maybe also from her mother-in-law?

There’d seemed little point in pursuing the acquaintance, though. And after giving his condolences he’d left.

Four years ago.

Why was her face etched on his memory? Why was recognition so instant?

The notes in his hand said she was Tasha Raymond. She was obviously pregnant. Had she remarried? Four years was time to have moved on.

Rhonda was looking from Tom to Tasha with bright interest. Rhonda was the world’s worst gossip—well, maybe apart from her twin sister. Tom employed them both. Rhonda was his receptionist and Hilda was his housekeeper. The widowed, middle-aged sisters were excellent at their jobs but to say they were nosy was an understatement.

‘I can manage from here, Rhonda,’ he told her, smiling at Tasha with what he hoped was a brisk, professional nod. ‘You can go.’

‘Oh, but Mrs Raymond—’

‘Mrs Raymond is my late half-brother’s widow,’ he told her. He might as well. Rhonda would have asked Tasha to fill in a patient form and she’d have probably figured her history before he had. ‘I imagine she’s here on family business. There’s no need for you to stay.’

* * *

Rhonda reluctantly gathered her belongings and departed.

Tasha was left with Tom. She felt ill.

What was she doing here?

She knew what she was doing here. She was here because she was desperate. She had to have help.

I can manage alone. It had been her mantra when her parents had been killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan when she’d been in her teens. It had held her up when Paul had died on Everest.

Two days ago it had crumbled.

Paul had been big-boned and muscular, his tall frame made larger by pushing himself to the limits of endurance in every possible physical endeavour.

This man was his half-brother and she hardly knew him.

Tom’s hair was a deep brown, like Paul’s, but sun-bleached at the tips as if he spent time in the surf she could see outside his surgery window. He was taller than Paul, six feet two or three. His blue eyes were creased at the edges and his skin was tanned. He was lean, muscled, taut. Another who pushed his physical limits? Who thought risks were fun?

She couldn’t help it. She shuddered.

She was here because she needed him. Needing another Blake? The thought made her feel ill.

‘Tasha,’ he said softly, and his attention was all on her. ‘How can I help?’

It would have been a shock to see her, she thought. It had been a surprise to meet him at Paul’s funeral. This man and Paul had never been permitted to be brothers.

‘My mother would disown me if she ever caught me talking to that side of the family,’ Paul had told her. ‘Which always seemed a shame. When I was a kid my father took me on a holiday, supposedly just father and son. Unbeknown to my mother, he invited my half-brother, too. Tom’s four years older than me and I thought he was cool. Kind, too, to a kid who trailed after him. But of course Mum found out and hit the roof and as a kid I never saw him again. We met a couple of times later on with Dad, but then we lost touch. In an odd way, though, it’s always seemed like I have a brother. If anything happened to me, Tasha, I reckon you could go to him.’

If anything happened to him. Like being crushed by tons of ice on Everest.

She hadn’t needed Tom then, though, and she’d made a vow. She’d never need anyone again. Not like she’d needed her parents or thought she’d needed Paul. Paul had made her world crumble even before he’d been killed.

So what was she doing now, asking for help from another Blake? Paul and his father had both been charming, undependable womanisers. Why should this man be different?

Because she needed him? Because she’d taken yet another risk and failed.

Her last risk.

‘Tasha?’ Tom’s voice was still gentle, that of a concerned family doctor. Maybe that was the way to go, she thought. She could talk to him as one medic to another.

Only she didn’t feel like a medic. She felt like a terrified single mum who’d just heard the worst of news.

‘Tea,’ Tom was saying, suddenly brisk, and his hands were on her shoulders and he was propelling her back into her seat. ‘You look exhausted. I’m thinking tea with lots of sugar and then take your time and tell me all.’

‘I should have booked for a long consultation,’ she managed, trying to joke. ‘I only booked for standard. You’ll be out of pocket.’

‘Do you think I’d charge?’ His voice was suddenly strained but he had his back to her, putting on the kettle at the little sink behind Rhonda’s desk. ‘You’re family.’

Family. She stared blankly at his broad back, at the tanned and muscled arms emerging from his crisp, white short-sleeved shirt, at the stethoscope dangling casually from his back pocket.

He oozed competence. He oozed caring.

He was a family doctor. This was what he did. There was no reason for her to want to well up and demand a hug and turn his shoulder into a sodden mess just because he’d said the word ‘family’.

She wouldn’t.

But she needed him and the very thought had her terrified.

So she sat on, silent, trying to keep her thoughts in check.

Tom spent time making tea, checking how she had it, measuring sugar, stirring for maybe longer than it needed, as if he sensed she needed time to get herself together. By the time he set the mug into her cupped hands and tugged a chair up before her so he could sit down and face her, she had the stupid tears at bay again. She was under control—or as under control as she could be after the appalling news of two days ago.

‘Now.’ Tom was smiling at her, his very best patient-reassuring smile, a smile she recognised as one she’d practised as a new doctor. Family or not, she was clearly in the category of new client who may or may not have something diabolical going on.

There was a box of tissues on the side bench. He swiped it surreptitiously forward—or not so surreptitiously as she noticed and she even managed a smile.

‘I won’t cry on you.’

‘You’re very welcome to cry if you want. I wouldn’t have minded it you’d cried on me four years ago. That one meeting and then you were gone...’

‘To England,’ she told him. ‘I couldn’t stay here. Paul’s mother blamed—’

‘Paul’s mother is a vituperative cow,’ he said solidly, and Tasha thought of Deidre and thought she couldn’t have put it better herself.

‘She thought I should have stopped Paul trying to climb.’

‘No one could ever stop Paul doing what he wanted to do.’

‘You knew him?’

‘Not much. My mum was happy for me to meet Paul but Paul’s mother...not. When Dad moved on from Deidre as well, it made things even more complicated. Dad was a serial womaniser. My mum coped okay—she got on with her life—but Deidre stayed bitter. She fought Dad’s access to Paul every inch of the way. Dad cared about both Paul and me, but with Paul he ended up sidelined. As we got older Paul and I used to meet a bit. We’d have a drink with Dad occasionally, but after Dad’s death we lost touch. Tasha, you need to drink.’

‘What...?’

He took her cupped hands in his and propelled the mug to her lips. ‘Tea. Drink.’

She drank and was vaguely surprised by how good it tasted. When had she last had tea?

Come to think if it, when had she last eaten?

Great. Collapsing would help no one.

Neither would coming here. She should face this herself.

She couldn’t. She needed... Tom.

‘So tell me why you’re here?’ he asked.

She’d come this far but she didn’t want to tell him. She didn’t want to tell anyone.

Telling people made it real. It couldn’t be real. It had to be a nightmare.

‘Tasha, spill,’ Tom said, in that gentle voice that did something to her insides. It made things settle. It made the battering ram in her heart cease for a moment.

Though of course it started up again. Some things were inescapable.

‘My baby...’ she started, and Tom sat back a little and eyed her bulge.

‘Close to term?’

‘I’m due to deliver next week.’

He nodded, as if it was entirely sensible that a close-to-term pregnant woman had decided to drive to Cray Point just to see him.

She should keep talking.

She couldn’t.

‘Do you have a partner?’ he asked tentatively when she couldn’t figure what to say next. ‘Is the baby’s dad around?’

And finally she found the strength to make her voice work. ‘The baby’s father is Paul.’

‘Paul...’

‘He left sperm,’ she managed. She’d started. She had to find the strength to continue. ‘That last climb...I was so angry with him for going. There’d been two landslides on Everest, major ones. The Sherpas were pulling out for the season, as were most of the climbers, but he still insisted on going. Then he came home that last night before he left, laughing. “I’ve got it sorted, babe,” he told me. “I’ve been to the IVF place and left sperm. It’s all paid for, stored for years. If worst comes to worst you can have a little me to take my place.”’

She paused, searching for the words to go on. ‘I think it was a joke,’ she said. ‘Maybe he thought it’d make me laugh. Or maybe he was serious—I have no way of telling. But I knew...I waved goodbye to him and somehow I knew that I’d never see him again.’

She tilted her chin, meeting his look head on. ‘I was almost too angry to go to his funeral,’ she told him. ‘It was such a stupid, stupid waste. And then Deidre was in my face, blaming me, making nasty phone calls, even turning up at work to yell at me. So I left for England. You know I’m a doctor, too? I took a job in the emergency department in a good London hospital and I decided I’d put Paul behind me. Only then...then I sort of fell in a heap.’

Tasha shrugged. How to explain the wall of despair that had hit her? The knowledge that her marriage to Paul had been a farce. That her judgement was so far off...

She remembered waking one morning and thinking she was never going to trust again, and the thought had been followed by emptiness. If she couldn’t trust again, that excluded her from having a family. A baby. The thought had been almost overwhelming.

‘So you decided to use the sperm,’ Tom said, as if he was following her thoughts, and she felt a surge of anger that was pretty much directed at her naïve self.

‘Why not?’ she flashed. ‘Paul left it to me in his will. I could bring our baby up knowing the good things about Paul, feeling like it knew its dad. It seemed better—safer—than using an unknown donor, so I decided I’d be brave enough to try.’

And then she hugged her swollen belly, and the tears at last welled over.

‘I wanted this baby,’ she whispered. ‘I wanted her so much...’

Wanted. Past tense. The word was like a knife to her heart. She heard it and tried to change it.

‘I want her,’ she said, and her voice broke on a sob, but there was no changing what the scans had shown.

And Tom leaned forward and put his hands over hers, so there were four hands cupped over her belly.

‘Has your baby died, Tasha?’

And there it was, out there in all its horror. But it couldn’t be real. Please...

‘Not yet,’ she managed, and his grip on her hands tightened. I wonder if this is the way he treats all his patients, she thought, in some weird abstracted part of her brain that had space for those things. He was good. He was intuitive, empathic, caring. He’d be a good family doctor.

A good friend?

‘If anything happened to me, Tasha, I reckon you could go to him.’

Paul had been right, she thought. For just about the only time in his life, Paul had been right.

Oh, but laying this on him...

And he was a Blake. He even looked like his brother.

‘Tell me,’ he said, and it was an order, calm and sure, a direction she had to follow no matter how she was feeling. And she took a deep breath because this was what she’d come for. She had no choice but to continue.

‘My baby’s a girl,’ she whispered. ‘Emily. I’ve named her Emily after my grandma. I had to come back to Australia to access Paul’s sperm. I’m Australian and I have Aussie health insurance so I stayed here during my pregnancy. I’ve been doing locums. Everything was fine until the last ultrasound. And they picked it up. She has hypoplastic left heart syndrome. The left side of her heart hasn’t developed. That...that’s bad enough but I thought...well, the literature says there’s hope and there are good people in Melbourne. With the Norwood procedure there’s a good chance of long-term survival. I hoped. But two days ago I went for my last visit to the cardiologist before delivery and the ultrasound’s showing an atrial septal defect as well. And more. Nothing’s right. Everything’s wrong. While she’s in utero, she doesn’t need her heart to pump her lungs, so she’s okay, but as soon as she’s born...’

She took a deep breath. ‘As soon as she’s born the problems will start. The cardiologist says I need to wait as long as possible before delivery so she’s strong enough to face the faint possibility of surgery, but I’m not to hope for miracles. He says she’ll live for a little while but it’ll be days. Or less. The defect is so great...’

Strangely her voice was working okay. Strangely the words didn’t cut out. It was like the medical side of her was kicking in, giving her some kind of armour against the pain. Or maybe it was simply that the pain was so unbearable that her body had thrown up armour of its own.

Tom’s face had stilled. He’d be taking it in, she thought, like a good doctor, taking his time to assess, to figure what to say, to think of what might be the most helpful thing to say.

There wasn’t anything to say. There just...wasn’t.

* * *

Hypoplastic left heart syndrome...

He’d never seen a case but he’d read of it. He’d read of the Norwood procedure, a radical surgical technique giving hope to such babies, but with an atrial septal defect as well...

His hands were still gripping Tasha’s. They were resting against the bulge that was her baby, and he felt a faint movement. A kick...

In cases like this there usually weren’t any outward signs during pregnancy. A foetus only needed one ventricle. It didn’t use its lungs to get oxygen to the body, so while it was in utero there was nothing wrong.

If the experts were right, Tasha was carrying a seemingly healthy baby, a little girl who’d only survive for days after she was born.

This woman was a doctor. She’d have gone down every path. Her face said she had, and she’d been hit by a wall at every turn.

‘Transplant?’ he said, still holding her hands, and he thought maybe it was for him as well as for her. He had a sudden vision of his half-brother as a child, a tousled-haired wild child, rebellious even as a kid. A bright kid who’d tumbled from scrape to scrape. Paul had done medicine, too. Their father had been a doctor so maybe that’s why it had appealed to both of them, but the moment Paul had graduated he’d been off overseas. He’d helped out in some of the wildest places. He’d been a risk taker.

And now he was dead and his baby was facing the biggest risk of all. Being born.

A transplant? Without research it sounded the only hope.

‘You must know the odds,’ Tasha said flatly, echoing his thoughts.

He did. To find a suitable donor in time... To keep this little one alive until they found one, and then to have her fight the odds and survive...

He glanced up at Tasha’s ravaged face and he thought, Where are your friends? Where are your family? Why are you here alone?

And something inside him twisted.

He’d been a family doctor for ten years now. He loved the work. He loved this little community and when his patients were ill he couldn’t help but be personally involved.

But this woman was different.

She was his half-brother’s widow and as such there was a family connection. Her story was heartbreaking.

And yet there was something more. Something that made him want to loosen the grip on her hands and gather her into him and hold.

It was almost a primeval urge. The urge to protect.

The urge to take away her pain any way he knew how.

Which was all getting in the way of what she needed from him, which was to be useful. She was here for a reason. She didn’t need him to be messed up with some emotional reaction he didn’t understand.

‘So what can I do for you, Tasha?’ he asked, in a voice he had to force himself to keep steady. ‘I’ll help in any way I can. Tell me what you need me to do.’

She steadied. He could see her fighting back emotion, turning into the practical woman he sensed she was.

She let go his hands and sat back, and he pushed back too, so the personal link was broken.

‘I need an advocate,’ she told him. ‘No. Emily needs an advocate.’

‘Explain.’

She had herself under control again now—sort of.

‘I’m only part Australian,’ she told him. ‘My dad was British but Mum was Australian. I was born here but my parents were in the army. We never had a permanent home. Mum and Dad died when I was fifteen and I went to live with my aunt in the UK. That’s where I did medicine. Afterwards I took a job with Médecins Sans Frontières, moving all around the world at need, which is when I met Paul. Paul owned an apartment here so Australia was our base but we still travelled. I’ve never stayed still long enough to get roots, to make long-term friends. So now I’m in a city I don’t know very well. I’m about to deliver Emily by Caesarean section and straight after her birth I’ll be expected to make some momentous decisions.’

She faltered then, but forced herself to go on. ‘Like...like turning off life support,’ she whispered. ‘Like accepting what is or isn’t possible and not attempting useless heroics. Tom, I don’t trust myself but Paul said I could trust you. He spoke of you with affection. You’re the only one I could think of.’

And what was he to say to that?

There was only one answer he could give.

‘Of course I’ll be your advocate,’ he told her. ‘Or your support person. Tasha, whatever you need, I’ll be there for you. You have my word.’

‘But you hardly knew Paul.’

‘Paul’s family and so are you,’ he said, and he reached out and took her hands again. ‘That’s all that matters.’

* * *

‘Hilda?’

Hilda Brakenworth, Tom’s housekeeper, twin of Rhonda, answered the phone with some trepidation. She’d just finished making beef stroganoff and was contemplating the ingredients for a lemon soufflé. ‘Make it lovely,’ Tom had told her before he’d left for work. ‘Alice will be here at eight, just in time for sunset. Can you set the table on the veranda? Candles. Flowers. You know the drill.’

She did, Hilda thought dourly. Tom’s idea of a romantic evening never changed. But she was used to his priorities. Medicine came first, surfing second. His love life came a poor third, and the phone call she was receiving now would be like so many she’d received in the past. ‘Change of plan,’ he’d say and her dinners would go into the freezer or the trash.

‘Yes?’ she said, mentally consigning her lemon soufflé to oblivion.

‘Change of plan. I’ve invited a guest to stay.’

This was different. ‘You want a romantic dinner for three?’

He chuckled but Hilda had known him for a long time. She could hear strain in his voice—strain usually reserved for times when the medical needs of the community were overwhelming.

But did a guest staying warrant stress? She needed to phone Rhonda and find out what was going on.

‘I’ll put Alice off,’ he said. ‘She’ll understand.’

No, she won’t, Hilda decided, thinking of the beautifully groomed, high-maintenance Alice, but she didn’t comment.

‘Do you want me to make up the front room?’

‘I... Yes. And could you put flowers in there?’

‘It’s a woman?’

‘It’s a woman called Tasha.’ He hesitated and then he told it like it was. ‘She’s my half-brother’s widow and she’s in trouble. I’m hoping she’ll stay as long as she needs us.’

* * *

Cray Point was a tiny, seemingly forgotten backwater, a village on a neck of land stretching out from Port Philip Bay.

‘It’s one high tide away from being an island, but the medical emergency chopper can get here from Melbourne within half an hour,’ Tom told her. ‘Your Caesarean’s booked in a week and you’re not due for two weeks. We’re both doctors. We can surely detect early signs of labour and get you to the city fast.’

So a couple of hours after she’d arrived she was on the veranda, trying to eat the beautiful dinner Tom’s housekeeper had prepared.

Somewhat to her surprise she did eat. She’d looked at the meal and felt slightly nauseous, which was pretty much how she’d felt since that appalling last consultation with the cardiologist, but Tom had plonked himself down beside her, scooped stroganoff onto both their plates and directed her attention to the surf.

‘It’s too flat tonight,’ he told her. ‘It’s been great all day but the wind’s died and the waves have died with it. That’s the story of my life. I sweat all day trying to finish but the moment my patients stop appearing, so do the good waves. Dawn’s better but once I hit the water I forget what I’m booked for. So I have a great time and come in to find Rhonda ready to have my head on a platter and the waiting room bursting at the seams.’

‘Rhonda...’

‘Rhonda’s my receptionist. She and Hilda—she’s the housekeeper you just met leaving—are sisters. They rule my life.’

‘So no family? No wife and kids?’

‘With my family history?’ He grinned, a gorgeous, engaging grin that reminded her a little of Paul. ‘Paul must have told you about my dad. He did the right thing twice in that he married my mum and then Paul’s mother when they were pregnant, but he never stayed around long enough to be a father. He fancied the idea of his sons as his mates but the hard yards were done by our mums, and while they were raising us he went from woman to woman.’

‘You think that’s genetic?’

He grinned again. ‘I reckon it must be. Dating’s fun but I’m thirty-four years old and I’ve never met a woman I’d trust myself to commit to spending the rest of my life with.’ His smile faded. ‘But, unlike Dad, I won’t make promises I can’t keep. This life suits me. Mum was born and raised in Cray Point and this community nurtured both of us when Dad walked out on her. I left to do medicine but it’s always called me home. The surf’s great and the wind here in winter is enough to turn me into a salted kipper. I have a theory that the locals here don’t age, they just get more and more preserved. If you dig up the graveyard you’ll find old leather.’

‘That sounds like you have nothing to do as a doctor.’

‘Preserved leather still falls off surfboards,’ he said, and the smile came back again. ‘And tourists do dumb tourist things. I had a lady yesterday who rented a two-bedroom house for an extended family celebration and wanted it beautifully set up before they arrived. So she blew up eight air beds. On the seventh she started feeling odd but she kept on going. Luckily her landlady dropped in as she keeled over on the eighth. Full infarct. We air ambulanced her to Melbourne and she should make a good recovery but it could have been death by airbed. What a way to go.’