A Secret Shared...

And he knew it was.

Kate did what she could for Amy and for her little son. Amy’s mother and sister had spent the last week here as well. Other arms enfolded the distraught mother, freeing Kate to leave her in their care. In the end she backed out unnoticed, as grandmother, mother and aunt collectively said goodbye to their little boy.

She put herself on autopilot for a while, filling in forms, phoning the coroner, clearing the way for funeral directors to fly Toby and his family directly back to Queensland, where they’d lived. She headed back to her bungalow and showered. Then she stood on her veranda and stared out to sea for a while, trying to get Toby’s death in perspective. Impossible, but she had to try, just like she always did. Other children needed her. Somehow she’d learned to move on.

She’d learned to move on from a lot, she conceded, and part of that was her history. And her history included Jack Kincaid.

It had been such a shock to see him.

Jack. His name echoed over and over in Kate’s head and she felt ill.

She couldn’t be ill. Jack’s nephew was her next client. Jack Kincaid was waiting for her to finish the formalities with Toby and his mother. Jack Kincaid had to be faced.

But maybe he wouldn’t wait. She’d seen his horror when he’d realised Toby was dead; when he’d seen that she wasn’t fighting to prolong his life.

She might have got Toby back, she conceded. If she’d tried CPR, had had oxygen on the beach, had fought with every medical skill she had, Toby might still be alive. He’d be unconscious, though. They all knew the tumour was massive and unresponsive to any more chemotherapy or radiation. If she’d fought he could have had maybe a week, maybe even longer, on oxygen, on life support, but his mother hadn’t wanted that. No one had wanted it.

She hadn’t had to flinch at the condemnation in Jack Kincaid’s eyes. She had not one single regret over her care of Toby.

But what would she tell him? Jack had been a friend at medical school. If he was still here she needed to give him an explanation. What?

The truth? Did she trust him enough for that?

She might have no choice. It seemed Harry was Jack’s nephew, Jack’s sister’s child. If she’d recognised the name she would never have accepted him as a client, but the booking had been done by a woman with a name as unfamiliar as all the names she so carefully vetted. Harry had been supposed to be coming with someone called Helen.

No matter. Chinks of her old life were bound to intrude sooner or later. She’d known that. It was just … she’d hoped it would be later.

She thought back to the Jack she’d known over ten years ago. He’d been acutely intelligent, intuitive and skilled. On top of that he’d been drop-dead gorgeous. Tall with dark hair and strong bone structure, always tanned, almost too good looking for his own good, and his dark eyes had always gleamed with mischief. Maturity had only added to his looks, she conceded, but it was the Jack of years ago she was thinking of now. If there had been pranks to be played, Jack had always been at the centre. If there had been a beautiful woman to be dated, Jack had been right there, too.

Early on they were allocated as partners in the science component of their course. They suited each other as study mates. Her seriousness didn’t distract him, and his intelligence and humour pleased her. But his dating habits were legend. ‘You should have a harem,’ she told him. ‘That way you wouldn’t have to date one by one. You could have them all together.’

‘I’d rather that than be stuck with one person for ever from sixteen,’ he retorted. She finally told him of Simon’s existence when he … When they … Well, late one night things got a little out of hand and she had to tell him the truth. That she had a boyfriend. That she’d had a boyfriend for years so she couldn’t be attracted to Jack.

‘Monogamy for life from sixteen?’ he mocked. ‘You must be out of your mind.’

Later, when his words proved true—for it seemed that she had indeed been out of her mind—she’d lie awake in the small hours and think about how different life could have been if she hadn’t been a good girl. How it could have been if she’d been able to forget family obligations. If she’d given in to the attraction she’d surely felt.

Move on, she told herself harshly. The time for regrets was well and truly past. What she needed to focus on now was calming Jack down, persuading him to either let her treat his little nephew or tear up the contract and leave.

But whatever way he went, she had to gain his silence.

On impulse she headed indoors and hit the internet. Jack Kincaid.

Professor Jack Kincaid. Head of Oncology at Sydney Central. Research qualifications to make an academic’s eyes water. Medical practice extraordinary. His early promise had been met and more; this man was seriously skilled, seriously qualified. More, as she flicked through the site she found links to patients’ opinions of the man who’d treated them.

Seriously good. Seriously kind. Empathic. A workaholic by the look of it.

But he’d booked in here for two weeks. Two weeks of this man’s time looked to be an incredible commitment.

Okay, she was impressed, but she was also scared. This wasn’t a man to be deflected with weak excuses. It’d be the truth or nothing, if he decided to stay.

She headed back to work, and found herself almost hoping he’d decide to leave. That’d make her life a whole lot less complicated.

They had to wait for over an hour, and every minute brought fresh doubts.

He took Harry for a walk around the resort. There were a dozen bungalows built on the beachfront, with dolphins painted on their front doors. Wind chimes hung from their verandas and brightly coloured hammocks hung from the veranda rails.

Sand spits covered with stunted eucalypts reached out from both sides of the resort, the spits forming a secluded bay. A great sweep of netting enclosed half the cove. That’d be a pool for what the information sheet told him were the captive dolphins. These, according to his sheet, were either dolphins who’d been injured in some way or who’d been raised in some form of captivity and brought here in an attempt to rehabilitate them to the wild.

Some dolphins could never be rehabilitated, the sheet said, and these were the dolphins trained to interact with the resort’s clients. Their injuries were so bad or they’d learned to be too dependent on humans to ever survive in the wild.

Jack and Harry wandered down to the beach again, hand in hand. Harry had fallen back into silence as he always did. For the last three months he’d simply done what he was told.

He still walked with a heavy limp—his left leg still needed to be braced. He stumped along and Jack’s heart twisted for him.

One stupid moment of speed and carelessness. Metal on metal. Lives changed for ever.

There was a scattering of people on the beach, well away from the netted area where Toby had died. These must be more of the resort’s clients, he thought, as this place was too far for tourists to come. There were gay little beach shelters scattered about for whoever wanted or needed shade. A couple of kids were in beach-tyred wheelchairs. A few kids were playing in the shallows. Parents were playing with them, talking among themselves.

He had no wish to join them. Did he have any intention of staying?

‘Maisie,’ Harry said, dragging his thoughts back from introspection, and he glanced back to where the little boy was looking and saw the big golden retriever bounding down the beach towards them. Carrying a ball. She raced straight up to them, dropped the ball at Harry’s feet, then bounced backwards and beamed with a full-on canine beam.

‘Toss it,’ Jack suggested. Harry hesitated but Maisie was practically turning herself inside out with ball-need.

Finally Harry picked the ball up and threw it all of three feet.

The big dog pounced, but before bringing it back she raced towards the shore, dropped it into the shallows, quivered and then brought it back to them. Her message couldn’t be clearer. Throw it further. Throw it into the sea.

‘You throw it,’ Harry whispered, and such a command was almost unheard of from Harry.

So Jack threw it, to the water’s edge. The dog retrieved it with joy but this time she took it further into the shallows before bringing it back.

Once again her message was clear. ‘Throw it even further.’

‘She wants you to throw it deep,’ Harry whispered, so Jack did. He hurled the ball out to where the waves were just breaking.

Maisie was on it like a bullet, streaking through the water, diving through the waves, reaching the ball …

But then not stopping.

The reason the waves were so shallow here, why the beach was so safe, was that the outer spits curved around, protecting the inner bay. At low tide the spits would be connected to the land but now, at high tide, the sand spits formed long, narrow islands. The island looked beautiful, sand washed and untouched, apart from a host of sandpipers searching for pippies or crabs or sand fleas—whatever sandpipers ate.

And now Maisie was headed for the spit island as well. She swam strongly until she reached it, then raced onto the sand, sending sandpipers scattering in alarm.

But then she turned and looked back at the beach. She looked at the water between herself and the shore.

She looked at Jack and Harry. She dropped her ball at her feet—and she shivered.