One Baby Step at a Time

Hopeless, that’s what she was.

He’d selected a table that looked out from a covered deck over the town’s main beach and the placid tropical waters. Bill slipped into a chair beside him, so she, too, could look out to sea. Far out on the horizon they could see the shapes of the islands that dotted the coastline—tourist havens on Australia’s biggest natural wonder, the Great Barrier Reef.

‘I’ve ordered the big breakfast for both of us,’ Nick informed her. ‘Anything you don’t want, I’ll eat. And coffee—double-shot latte still your drug of choice?’

‘It is, and thanks,’ Bill replied, telling herself at the same time that a nice normal breakfast with Nick should banish all the silly stuff that had been going on in her head.

Especially as Nick was wasting no time checking out the talent, with his eyes on a group of three long-haired blondes, laughing and joking on the other side of the wide deck.

‘The town’s scenery’s improved,’ he joked.

‘It’s the money that’s being splashed around,’ Bill reminded him, deciding to take his comment seriously. ‘Money attracts money but it also attracts the kind of people who like to have it—like to spend it. The problem is that while the miners and the people who work in mining support services are all earning big money, the price of housing goes up, rents go up, and the ordinary people of the town, especially those who don’t own their own houses, are stuck with costs they can’t afford.’

Nick smiled.

‘Still a worry-wart,’ he teased.

‘Well, someone has to worry about it. Nurses at the hospital don’t get paid more than their counterparts in other places in the state, yet accommodation costs in town are enormous. Fortunately the hospital has realised it has a problem and has built some small rental apartments in the grounds, but you spread that problem out across the town—the check-out staff at supermarkets, the workers in government offices, the council truck drivers—all the locals suffer.’

She stopped, partly because she was aware she’d mounted her soap-box and really shouldn’t be boring Nick with the problem but also because the blondes appeared to have noticed him—new talent in town?—and were sending welcoming smiles his way.

‘Maybe they saw the car when you drove in,’ Bill muttered.

‘Ouch! And anyway the car park’s out the back. No, it’s my good looks that have got their attention—see, one of them is coming over.’

One of them was coming over. The leggiest one, with the longest, shiniest, blondest, dead-straight hair!

‘Aren’t you Nick Grant?’ she asked, and as Nick nodded, she held out her hand.

‘I told the girls it was you. You used to go out with Serena Snow, didn’t you?’

Again Nick had to agree, and the leggy blonde introduced herself.

‘I’m Amy Wentworth. I met you a couple of times at parties back then. What are you doing up in this neck of the woods? Holidaying? Off to the reef for a few days’ R and R?’

So far she’d totally ignored Bill—not that it mattered, Bill told herself.

She studied the woman while Nick explained he was working here, living in the new apartment building at the marina but with no elaboration on why. Amy raised her eyebrows.

‘Can’t imagine you in a hick town like this. Oh, I know there’s a lot of money around, but what do you do when you’re not working?’

Nick grinned at her.

‘I’ll be doing pretty much what I did when I wasn’t working in Sydney.’

Amy drifted away but Bill wasn’t going to let him get away with that tantalising reply.

‘Which was?’ she asked.

‘What which was?’

‘The “pretty much what you did in Sydney” bit of that conversation.’

‘Ah, but I told you years ago,’ he reminded her. ‘I had a good time and I intend to do just that up here. You don’t need nightclubs and friends with yachts on the harbour to have a good time.’

‘We’ve got a nightclub and a two of my brothers have yachts, or big motor launches,’ Bill said defensively, and Nick laughed.

‘Exactly, although I think the nightclub crowd are a bit young for me, but you can have a good time wherever you are. In fact, I’m off for three days next week and think I might pop across to one of the island resorts—do a bit of diving and fishing and …’

‘Meeting beautiful women,’ Bill finished for him.

Again Nick smiled, although this time it was a little forced because in the back of his mind he’d had another reason for returning to Willowby, one that was becoming important to him.

‘That too, of course,’ he answered glibly. ‘Want to come?’

CHAPTER THREE

SHE DIDN’T REPLY, studying him intently for a moment instead, and he knew that look. Undoubtedly she’d picked up something from his tone.

‘Did it hurt you?’ she asked.

Yep, he’d been right about the look and although he knew full well what she meant by the question, he wasn’t going to cede ground to her by admitting it.

‘Did what hurt me?’

‘You know full well what I mean,’ she said crossly. ‘Serena saying no to your proposal.’

His turn to study her. The problem with friendship—a strong and enduring friendship like the one they shared—was that you couldn’t lie to the other party. Oh, you could fudge around a bit and dodge answering, but you couldn’t right out lie.

He turned his gaze from Bill’s too-perceptive eyes and looked out over the beach and island-strewn sea.

The truth!

‘More than I could have imagined,’ he admitted, and turned back so, now it was out, he could meet the gold-brown eyes fastened so steadfastly on his face. ‘I don’t think it was Serena’s rejection so much. I liked her well enough. For all her self-focus she was fun to be with and happy that we more or less lived separate lives—both of us working long hours at different times—so I can’t see why it wouldn’t have worked.’

Bill’s small, rather shocked ‘Oh’ broke into his thoughts but now he’d started he wanted to finish what he’d been saying.

‘You know how I feel about the “l” word, Bill, so I can’t say I loved her, but what had … not excited but certainly intrigued me was the idea of having a family—a wife and child—people who belonged, not to me but with me, if you know what I mean.’

The disbelief on Bill’s face was so easy to read he had to laugh.

‘Yes, yes, I know I said it would never happen, but finding out Serena was pregnant, well, it kind of changed something inside me, as if a wire that had been shorted out was suddenly reconnected and family stopped being in front of going down mines, abduction by aliens and the bogeyman in my fears.’

He paused, marshalling his thoughts.

‘In part, it’s why I came home—came back to the only family I’ve ever known: Gran and you de Grootes.’

‘Looking for a family of your own?’ Bill asked.