Long-Lost Father

“There was no one else, Brett,” she said quietly. “If I sounded strange, it was because I was alone and scared. I needed you with me, but you were off saving the world. I didn’t blame you, but abandonment goes both ways. You left for Mbuka within two months of our wedding—”

His voice was full of stress. “You knew I’d signed the contract with Doctors for Africa before we met. I was locked into two years’ service. The people at the refugee camp were relying on me for their lives. But if you wanted me home, all you had to do was tell me you were pregnant and bleeding. I’d have come home on the first flight.”

“But you’d have resented me for forcing you to turn your back on your lifelong dream,” she insisted wearily. “You were so passionate and eloquent about meeting the desperate need in Mbuka. Casey’s existence, then her blindness, would have kept you here. There are few good facilities for a blind child in a war zone, Brett.”

In the silence, a clock ticked…and the next rumble of thunder came.

“You didn’t give me the chance—or a choice, Sam. You didn’t tell me.” Brett’s voice was harsh. “You talked so movingly about the plight of the refugees when we met. You said you understood why I had to go…you said you’d come soon. Do you know how hard it was just being there, day after day? I lost more people than I saved and saw the most horrific injuries I’ll ever see, knowing they were inflicted by the guy in the next bed half the time. Desperate people poured in to the camp day and night. I worked around the clock without a break except to eat and snatch an hour’s sleep.” As if in agreement, lightning forked across the sky, almost right over the house. “Do you know how often I ached for my wife to be with me? If I’d have known why, I’d have felt less abandoned by the time I was kidnapped by the rebels.”

By the time I was out of hospital, I was on the run from your parents and their threats to take Casey from me, to have me proven an unfit mother by any means they could. “You never mentioned to me how bad it was there when we talked,” she said, giving him some sort of answer. “Would it have been a safe place for Casey to be born?”

“Maybe not—but you didn’t know that, so that can’t be the reason.”

The first patter of rain on the roof was normally a sound she welcomed, but tonight she barely noticed. The bulldog in Brett hadn’t changed; he grabbed on to what he wanted to know and hung on with a tenacity that outlasted every other objection—and got him his way in the end.

“The doctors said I couldn’t stress myself in any way—I had to rest to keep Casey alive,” she said, knowing this much she could say. “Handling your upset and fear, frantically trying to get home because I was sick—” She left it there, knowing she’d said enough. “And then—”

“Yes, we keep coming back to it, don’t we?” His tone was grim, as dark as the eyes boring into hers. So sure he was right in his belief that she’d abandoned his family. Yes, he was the same old Brett. What he thought, wanted or believed had to be the best thing for everyone.

“And then, when it was time to tell you,” she went on inexorably, “the official at Doctors for Africa told us you were dead.” She forced the word out, dragging in a breath so harsh he could probably hear it over the sounds of the storm finally hitting above them. “They told us there was no room for hope. I—I had to get out. I couldn’t take all the memories.”

She gulped down the ball of burning pain in her throat.

She hadn’t heard him move, didn’t know he’d moved until she felt his hand on hers. “You could have stayed with the family. You wouldn’t have been alone then.”

You have no idea how alone I would have been.

She sighed and rubbed her aching forehead, feeling as if she had taken a sudden fever. “I feel like I’m stuck on a whirligig, just with you being here. I had to accept your death, to put you behind me. I had to forget to stay sane.”

“Did you manage it, Sam? Did you forget me?” His fingers moved up her wrist and arm, soft and slow, and she shuddered in longing. Oh, the heady delight, not just of sensuality but of touch. Not a child’s wonderful hugs but the touch of a man who understood that she couldn’t be perfect, couldn’t always be strong…

“There’s no point in sharing our memories. We both know the truth. I know you loved me. But you were my life. Your work was your true love, your passion. It was important. I always knew I came second.”

His hand stilled on her arm. “Is that the reason why you didn’t tell me about Casey?”

Half-shamed, she nodded. “I didn’t know whether you’d come home to us. I didn’t want to know if I was going to come second again.”

He winced, his eyes haunted. “You could have given me the chance. You could have trusted me.”

“I did…in your commitment, your belief that you were in the right place, doing the right thing for humanity. It was almost all you talked about while we were together. I was scared you’d tell me what the people of Mbuka were going through and they needed you more than I did.”

Having said so much, she felt drained, shaking with emotion. She’d wanted, needed this for so long? But now he was here, dreams had intertwined with her most vivid nightmares, and she couldn’t find a way to untangle them.

You were never good enough for my son. You know nothing about family life. What makes you think you could ever be a good mother? David Glennon’s words haunted her. Give my son back his life when he returns from Africa—and give us the child. We’ll raise it as a Glennon deserves. You can’t give any child what they need to be safe and happy.

Maybe she hadn’t been raised in a family, and she’d always known she wasn’t good enough for Brett. But David Glennon had been wrong about one thing. She’d turned herself into a good mother by constant work and determination. She’d never give Casey to the Glennons!

But she didn’t know yet what she was up against, and Brett’s silence wasn’t helping.

“What do you want, Brett?” she asked wearily. “It’s obvious you want something from me, not just Casey. Are you waiting to tell me that you want a divor—?”

He’d turned her into his arms, his mouth covering hers, before the word was complete. The kiss was frantic, full of a hunger so strong it knocked her off her emotional perch. She moaned into his mouth, alive for the first time in so long, aching and hungry. She gave kiss for kiss, knowing she’d have to pay for this weakness later, but finally, at last, she was a woman again…

Brett held her hard against him. “Does it feel like I want a divorce?” he demanded against her mouth. “Does it feel like I’ve forgotten you or replaced you?”

She couldn’t answer; she was shaking, not with fear, but with need, and he knew that as much as she did. Her sensuality was something she’d never been able to hide from him.

“This—” he kissed her again, deep, hot and hard “—is what kept me together through the years of torture and blackness. The hope of being near you. Touching you. Having you in my bed again.”

Her eyes slowly closed, and for a moment she gave herself to the unbearable beauty of his words. Making love—having that touch that made her feel so complete, so loved…

She gulped down the pain of aching temptation. “It’s not enough.” Her voice was drenched with the frantic need she heard in his words, and she shivered in violent craving. She couldn’t…

“It feels like enough.” His voice was rough with sensuality. He brushed his mouth over hers again, his hand caressing her waist, and it was all she could do not to puddle in a melted heap at his feet. “It feels damn good. We were always magnificent together. You can’t hide from what we have—or from me.”

She squeezed her eyes shut, but the vivid memories took over. Touching skin, mouths fused, caressing, whispering words of love…

She had to snap out of this, to face reality if he wouldn’t. “What we have, apart from mutual attraction, is shared memories—and a child. Circumstances forced us to change, to become different people.” She kept her gaze focused on his, watching his eyes darken in denial. “I’m not that adoring girl who needed you to fill her life. My life with Casey is busy and fulfilling.” Liar, a voice in her mind whispered. “I’m not your satellite now. I can’t be your one-person support-and-cheer squad. I can’t change my life—or more importantly Casey’s life—to make yours work for you. My first priority is Casey, and it will stay that way.”

Brett’s gaze darkened, his eyes almost black. She could see the intensity of suffering he’d been through in the years they’d been apart shining through in more than his damaged knee. He wanted more than her body—he needed her presence to give him strength to heal or at least drive away the anguish that obviously still hadn’t left after two years back home.

But her life had changed. All her strength, all her resources of giving and support, had to remain focused on meeting Casey’s needs. How could she give him what she no longer had?

The knowledge lay like lead over her heart and soul. Just being Casey’s mother took every scrap of strength she had every day. She had nothing to give him—

Except my heart. And how do I trust him to not take all I have, including my daughter, and leave for Melbourne on the first flight?

Melbourne was no longer home. It was where his parents waited with a court order to stop her from leaving again; where they’d use their influence to have her proven an unfit mother, simply because she wasn’t a Glennon, and didn’t have a family name or background to give them. Then they’d take Casey from her…the only worthwhile thing in her life.

She swallowed the ball of pain in her throat. “What we once had is gone. I’m sorry, but I can’t give you what I don’t have.”

His hands landed on her shoulders, holding her with gentle strength—the inner strength of knowing who and what he was that she’d always loved about him. “I don’t believe it. Either you’re lying to me or to yourself. You want me as much as I want you.”

“That isn’t the point. It’s been a long time for me—but it’s not enough. The issue isn’t how we feel about each other.” Barely able to move, she pushed wayward strands of hair from her eyes. “What you or I want doesn’t matter. This isn’t about us. Casey is my first, last and every duty of care. You should understand that as a doctor, even if you don’t feel like her father yet—”

Before she could finish her words, a sleepy little voice came from the other end of the room. “Are you my father?”

CHAPTER THREE

SHE SOUNDS LIKE SAM in miniature…

Lost in a haze of passion, of need for Sam’s touch, Brett reacted with the instinct of a man who’d lived in a place where to move too slow could mean death. He slewed his gaze to the open door off the open-plan lounge, to where the lilting voice had asked the half-curious question.

And he saw a tiny, mussed angel in Winnie the Pooh pyjamas.

Feathery curls a touch brighter than Sam’s fell in tumbled disarray around little shoulders. A face as fine and spiritual as a Botticelli cherub was turned to him. Tiny features, a replica of her mother’s, in a pale heart-shaped face. A mouth of baby pink was unsmiling yet not angry.

This is my daughter.