A Miracle for His Secret Son / Proud Rancher, Precious Bundle: A Miracle for His Secret Son / Proud Rancher, Precious Bundle

‘Oh.’

‘He’s a good man, Nick. He’s not like Sean. He really wants to help you.’

The boy stared at the partly assembled pizza. ‘Are you going to put bacon on that?’

‘Of course.’

‘Plenty?’

‘Just the right amount. You know what Dr Kingston said. You’re supposed to have lots of vegetables and not too much salt.’

Nick sighed theatrically and, for a moment, Freya thought the subject of Gus had been dropped.

Not so.

Leaning with his elbows on the counter, her son scowled. ‘I don’t get it. I really don’t get it. If Gus is such a great guy, why isn’t he a proper father? Why doesn’t he live here with us?’

Freya’s heart thudded and her brain raced as she searched for the exact words to explain. This moment was so critically important. The explanation was complicated, but she had to get it right.

Clearly, Nick thought she was taking too long and he rushed in with more questions. ‘If Gus is so helpful, why’d he go away in the first place? What’s wrong with us?’ Sudden tears spilled and Nick swiped at them angrily with the backs of his hands. ‘What’s wrong with our whole freaking family?’

‘Oh, darling.’ Freya gave up searching for perfect words to answer these questions. Instead, she rushed around the kitchen counter to hug him.

On Monday morning Gus looked out of his hotel window at blue skies and perfect rolling surf and wished his heart felt lighter. He’d spent another restless, unhappy night thinking about Freya and Nick and he’d resolved nothing.

Still yawning, he showered and shaved and went down to the hotel dining room for breakfast. Coffee, fresh fruit and scrambled eggs helped.

Then, as he left the dining room, he came to a sudden, heart-thumping halt. Nick was in the foyer, speaking to a woman at the front desk.

The boy was dressed for school in a blue and white polo shirt with grey shorts and sneakers. He had a school bag slung over his shoulder and he fiddled nervously with its zip while he spoke to the woman behind the counter.

What was he doing here? Gus’s heart picked up pace as he hurried forward. ‘Nick?’

The boy whirled around. His eyes widened and he smiled nervously. ‘Hi, Gus.’ He turned back to the desk and said to the woman, ‘No need to call the room. It’s OK. I’ve found him.’

I’ve found him.

The words were like music to Gus, or the world’s finest poetry. His son was looking for him. His heart swelled with elation. ‘It’s good to see you,’ he told Nick thickly.

The boy nodded. ‘I was hoping I’d find you.’

‘Have you had breakfast?’ Gus smiled, trying to put the boy at his ease.

‘Yes, thanks.’ Nick swallowed nervously. ‘Mum didn’t send me here or anything. I just wanted to see you—to…to talk.’

‘Sure. We could go up to my room or—’ A glance through the hotel’s large plate glass windows showed the beach sparkling in the morning sunshine. ‘We could go outside.’ Gus smiled again. ‘I think I’d rather be out in the fresh air. How about you?’

‘Yeah. Outside would be better.’

They went out through automatic sliding glass doors into the pleasant subtropical sunshine. Children zipped past on bikes or dawdled to school. Ubiquitous surfers carrying surfboards mingled with early shoppers strolling on The Esplanade. Gus and Nick walked over soft grass strewn with pine needles to an empty bench seat beneath Norfolk Island pines.

‘Look at that.’ Gus gestured to the curling waves and the pristine curve of the beach. ‘You know you’re lucky to be living here, don’t you?’

‘Yeah.’ Nick smiled shyly. ‘But it’s not so great when you have to go to school all day.’

‘Although…as I remember, the surf’s still here when school’s out.’

‘Yeah, I know.’ Nick grinned. ‘It’s a cool place to live, except lots of people only stay for a while, then move away.’ He shot a sideways glance to Gus. ‘Like you.’

Making a deliberate effort to appear casual and relaxed, Gus leaned back against the seat’s wooden slats and propped an ankle on a knee. ‘There aren’t a lot of jobs in these parts. That’s why people move on. I had to go away to university and then, later, I worked overseas.’

‘Yeah, Mum told me.’ Nick looked down at his school bag, dumped at his feet, and he reached for the strap, twisting it with tense fingers. ‘Like I said, Mum didn’t send me here. I told her I had to get to school early. She doesn’t even know I’m talking to you.’

Pleased by the boy’s honesty, by his obvious concern for Freya, Gus felt a strangely warm glow. ‘Maybe we can tell your mum…later.’

‘I guess.’ Nick kicked at a fallen pine cone. ‘We talked last night. About you. Mum told me what happened.’

‘Happened—as in—?’

‘Why you two split up. She said you didn’t deliberately leave us. You didn’t even know about me.’

‘Well…yes…that’s right.’

‘And she said it was her decision not to tell you about me.’

Gus couldn’t resist asking, ‘Did she explain why?’

Nick shrugged. ‘Kind of. It didn’t really make sense.’

You and me both, kiddo, Gus thought. Even though he understood Freya’s motives, her secrecy still hurt, still didn’t make proper sense to him. Just the same, he tried to explain it to the boy. ‘Sometimes we do things that feel right at the time that don’t always make sense when we look back on them later.’

‘Especially in my weird family.’

‘Trust me, Nick, every family has its own kind of weirdness.’

Wind ruffled the boy’s dark hair and he seemed to consider this for a moment, then shrugged it aside. ‘The way Mum tells it—sounds like she wasn’t good enough for you.’

Gus lost his casual pose. ‘Freya told you that?’

‘She didn’t say those exact words.’

‘But she told you that she couldn’t fit into my life?’

‘Yeah. Something like that. Sounded pretty lame to me.’

A heavy sigh escaped Gus. How could he ask Nick to understand that he and Freya had been young, that most young people made bad judgements one way or another, although they never felt like mistakes at the time?

The boy was eleven and he couldn’t be expected to look on eighteen-year-olds as young, especially when he faced a shockingly uncertain future.