One Baby Step at a Time

Again he paused, but honesty won out.

‘Yes, I think so—I think it’s what I need, Bill. What I really want.’

‘Oh, Nick,’ Bill said softly, and she covered his hand with hers as she had so often in the past. Though he’d reciprocated often enough, when some fool of a youth had hurt her in some way or when her pet hamster had died.

The strange thing was that this time it felt different. Nice, but different.

‘I also need to sleep,’ he said, regaining control over some erratic emotions and reclaiming his hand at the same time. ‘Then this afternoon I must go over and see Gran. You want to come?’

Fool! Wasn’t he going for distance here until he’d sorted out his reactions to his old friend?

‘No, I saw her yesterday—well, the day before now—although,’ Bill said firmly, ‘that brings me to another issue. I had an email from you only last week—you answered the one I sent to say she was looking a whole lot better—and there wasn’t a word about coming here to work. And if you were talking to Bob and pinching the best apartment in his building then you must have been fairly certain then.’

Nick laughed again—the disjointed sentence was sheer Bill, words tumbling over each other to get said, especially when she was angry with him.

‘One,’ he said, holding up his hand and pointing to his first finger, ‘I wanted to surprise Gran and if I told you …’

He let the sentence hang but had the satisfaction of seeing a faint blush colour her cheeks. As honest as the day was long, Bill would be the first to admit she found it almost impossible to keep a secret.

‘And two …’ he pointed to his next finger ‘… I wasn’t sure you were even here. In that email you’d said you had time off and were going to Townsville to talk to someone about some course.’

She nodded.

‘The mine rescue people, about a new course. It was to be this week and next, but was cancelled. Pity really because it was going to be on flooded underground rescues and I haven’t done that yet.’

‘Mine rescue—flooded underground mines?’ He could hear his voice rising but couldn’t stop it. ‘What do you mean, you haven’t done that yet? What on earth are you doing, getting involved with mine rescue, and what are your brothers doing, letting you do it?’

Her laugh made the sun seem brighter.

‘Oh, Nick, you sound just like Bob, but Danny and Pete are already in the elite mine rescue squad and they’ve encouraged me to get involved. I’m not up to their standard yet—not flying off to foreign parts to help out—but I can hold my own as part of the local team when the experts are away, especially with my nursing and paramedic experience.’

Nick didn’t know why he was surprised, but just the thought of mine rescue made him shudder. Danny, the second of the de Groote boys, had taken him and Bill down a mine when they’d been in their early teens, and though Bill had revelled in the darkness and gloom, he had hated every minute of the musty smell and the idea of being over a mile beneath the mountain.

Had been afraid every minute of it, to be honest, but he hadn’t mentioned that part to his fearless friend.

Though Bill was terrified of snakes, so—

‘I’m heading home to bed,’ she said, cutting into his thoughts and sounding so casually at ease she obviously wasn’t feeling any of the strangeness he was. ‘I guess I’ll be seeing you around.’

She stood up, paused, then dropped a light kiss on the top of his head.

‘Nice to have you back, curly,’ she added lightly, before weaving her way between the tables and disappearing round the corner of the deck.

He couldn’t help but turn and watch her go.

Bill pondered Nick’s startling revelation that he’d discovered he wanted a family. Was that why he’d come home? Did he see Willowby as the place to raise this family?

They were unanswerable questions so she moved on to considering the uneasiness the subject had caused in her insides when it was nothing at all to do with her.

Although hadn’t that been her dream? The memory of her delight in finding she was pregnant made her stomach tighten.

Enough!

No melancholy!

And anyway, wasn’t there enough to occupy her brain with Nick’s sudden reappearance?

She drove home slowly and carefully, aware she was tired, but her mind now snagged on the unexpectedness of the situation—on Nick.

But thinking about it, she could see it was only natural that Nick would want a family for all he’d spent his youth mocking the institution. She’d always known his mockery was to cover the hurt of his own parents’ behaviour, jaunting around the world, crewing on luxury yachts, visiting exotic places, their son left with his grandmother not, as they’d said, so he’d have stability but because it had made it easier for them to continue to enjoy their lifestyle.

They’d eventually drowned at sea when their own, much smaller yacht was caught up in a typhoon, but their deaths had had little effect on Nick because Gran had given him more than stability, she’d given him love—unquestioning and all-encompassing love.

So, while Nick’s admission was surprising, it was her own reaction to it that needed more consideration. As did her reaction to the sight of his bare chest, and the way his muscled thighs had matched her strides on the beach, or the strange feelings seeing him had produced, not in her heart where their friendship lived, but along her nerves and—

No, she wasn’t going there!

Surprise—that’s what had caused the weird reactions.

She stopped at the control panel to the underground parking area to press in the security code then drove in as the big door opened. She parked and made her way to the lift, the exhaustion that followed a busy night on duty fast catching up with her.

Exiting on the sixth floor, she headed down the corridor to her apartment, an end one with a view out to sea, a really special place to live for all she’d complained about its size. Two floors above her the two penthouses spread across the top level—big four-bedroom homes, each with three bathrooms, wide decks taking in the view out over the Coral Sea, and a smaller deck on the western side, looking back towards the green-clad mountains.

Bill smiled to herself, pleased that even in choosing accommodation that might only be for a year, Nick was following his avowed intention to have nothing but the best!

It had to be tiredness, Nick decided as he drove home, that had weakened him to the extent he’d admitted his disappointment over Serena and the baby to Bill. Normally he’d have teased her about being nosy, or asked a question about her own love life to divert her attention from the fact he hadn’t answered, but, no, he’d heard himself bleating out his pathetic reaction, even feeling remembered pain for the loss of a dream—a family of his own.

But he hadn’t lost the dream, he reminded himself. Wasn’t that why he was here? He’d been drawn back by Gran, of course, but also by the feeling that in Willowby he might find the woman who would help the dream come true. A family woman and, yes, his thinking had been that Bill would know someone who’d be just right for him—Bill or someone in her family. They were into family in a big way, the de Grootes.

And hadn’t he always turned to Bill when he had a problem, or needed help?

Letting himself into the penthouse, he set aside his tumbling thoughts and sighed with pleasure. The familiar view out across the island-dotted sea still took his breath away. And tired though he was, a part of him wanting nothing more than to slip into bed, he had to walk out onto the balcony and breathe in the fresh sea air.

He was home.

Second night on duty. No life-threatening emergencies and he’d heard from the hospital in Brisbane that his patient from the previous night was doing well.

‘It has to be the night for the bizarre,’ Bill said, slumping down beside him in the tea room during a lull in proceedings. ‘I suppose dog bites are common enough, but the bite usually doesn’t come with a couple of dog teeth in the wounds. The dog must have been a hundred and five for its teeth to have come out so easily.’

Nick shook his head.

‘I can’t believe I nearly missed the second one. It was weird enough discovering one tooth in a puncture wound, but it was only when you were putting on the dressing that I realised I hadn’t probed the second hole and, sure enough, another tooth.’

‘Perhaps someone wrenched the dog off and that’s why it lost the teeth.’

Nick considered this for a moment.

‘No, there’d have been tearing around the wounds and there was no sign of that—just bite holes and teeth.’