to him—apologised—and Tom had grinned. ‘Don’t fuss yourself, lassie,’ he’d told her. ‘Alice knows I don’t take my love life seriously. The whole town knows it.’
So he was like Paul. That was the thought that was holding her rigid now.
He was lovely, kind, gentle, caring.
He went from woman to woman.
He’d just suffered a cerebral bleed from a surfing accident. He was yet another man who took crazy risks...
The Blake brothers spelled trouble. She didn’t want to go anywhere near him, but she owed him so much.
She thought of him now, the image that was burned into her mind. Waking up from sleep and finding him crooning down to her little daughter.
‘Surfing’s awesome,’ he’d been telling her tiny baby. ‘The feel of cool water on your toes, the strength of the wave lifting you, surging forward... Feel my fingers as I push under your toes. Imagine that’s a wave, lifting you, surging... That’s right, our Emily, curl your toes. You have such a tiny life, our Emily, but we need to fill it with so much. I wish I could take you surfing but feel the power under your toes and know that surfing’s wonderful and you’re wonderful and I hope you can take all this with you.’
And Tasha found herself blinking and Hilda gasped and glared at Rhonda, who grabbed a handful of tissues from the counselling table. Tasha suddenly found she was being hugged. ‘Dear, no,’ Rhonda gasped. ‘We shouldn’t have come. We never should have asked. Tom will be okay. Cray Point will survive. Forget it, sweetheart, forget we ever came.’
Somehow she disengaged from their collective hug. Somewhere she’d read a research article that said hugging released oxytocin and oxytocin did all sorts of good things to the body. It made you more empathic. It made you want to connect more with your fellow humans.
With Tom? She’d be playing with fire.
Why? Because he was like Paul? He wasn’t. Not really. She’d stayed with him for a month and there’d never been a hint that he was interested in her...that way.
Besides, she was older, wiser, and she knew how to protect herself.
And this time she didn’t need Tom. Tom needed her, and Rhonda and Hilda were waiting for an answer.
And in the end there was only one answer she could give. No matter what Tom’s personal life was like, what he’d done for her had been beyond price.
And then the idea that had been playing at the edges of her mind suddenly, unexpectedly surfaced. The idea had been growing, like an insistent ache, an emptiness demanding to be filled, a void it took courage to even think about.
She could still scarcely think about it but if she went to help Tom she’d be returning to Australia, where an IVF clinic still held Paul’s gift.
She’d agonised over using Paul’s sperm last time, but in the end it had come down to thinking her baby could know of its father. This time the tug to use the same sperm was stronger. Another baby would be Emily’s brother or sister.
And suddenly that was in her heart, front and centre, and she knew what her answer would be.
‘Of course I’ll go,’ she told them swiftly, before she had the time to change her mind. Before fear took over. ‘It’ll take me a couple of days to get there but I’ll do it.’
‘Oh, Tasha,’ Hilda breathed.
‘But don’t tell him,’ Rhonda urged. ‘He won’t let you come if you tell him. He’ll say he’s fine. He’ll fire us for contacting you.’
‘I’d like to see him try,’ Hilda declared, but she sounded nervous and Tasha summoned a grin.
‘Okay,’ she told them. ‘I won’t warn him. But he’d better not be in bed with Susie when I get there.’
‘I wouldn’t think so,’ Hilda declared, though she didn’t sound absolutely certain.
‘Sure,’ Tasha said, but she didn’t feel sure in the least.
THERE WERE THINGS to do and he should be doing them. It was driving him nuts.
Old Mrs Carstairs hadn’t had a house call for weeks. She’d been hospitalised with pneumonia in late autumn and it had left her weak. She should be staying with her daughter in Melbourne but she’d refused to stay away from her house a moment longer.
And who could blame her? Tom thought morosely. Margaret Carstairs owned a house high on the headland overlooking the sweeping vista of Bass Strait. She was content to lie on her day bed and watch the changing weather, the sea, and the whales making their great migration north. She was content to let the world come to her.
Except the world couldn’t. Or Tom couldn’t. And unlike Margaret Carstairs, he was far from happy to lie on a couch and watch the sea. Any reports about Margaret came from the district nurse and he knew Brenda was worried.
But he couldn’t drive and he’d have trouble walking down Margaret’s steep driveway when he got there. When he’d first woken after surgery he’d been almost completely paralysed down his left side. His recovery had been swift, but not swift enough. He still had a dragging weakness, and terror had been replaced by frustration.
He couldn’t ignore his body’s weakness. He couldn’t drive. He used Karen, the local taxi driver, but since his leg had let him down while crawling into a crashed car, even Karen was imposing limits.
‘He would have died if I hadn’t done it,’ he muttered to no one in particular. It was true. The driver had perforated a lung. It had been a complex procedure to get him out alive and if Tom had waited for paramedics it would have been too late. The fact that he’d become trapped himself when his leg hadn’t had the strength to push himself out was surely minor. It was an excellent result.
But he still couldn’t drive and he still had trouble walking in this hilly, clifftop town. So here he was, waiting for the next emergency that he couldn’t go to.
His phone went and he lunged for it, willing it to be something he could handle.
It wasn’t.
Old Bill Hadley lived down the steepest steps in Cray Point. He was lying at the bottom of them now, whimpering into his cellphone.
‘Doc? I know you’re crook, but I reckon I might have sprained me ankle. I’m stuck at the bottom of the steps. I’ve yelled but no one can hear me. Middle of the day, everyone must be out. Lucky I had me phone, don’t you think? Do you reckon you could come?’
Bill Hadley was tough. If he was saying he might have sprained his ankle it was probably a fracture. Tom could hear the pain in the old man’s voice, but he couldn’t go. Not down those steps.
‘I’ll call the ambulance and get the district nurse to come and stay with you until it arrives,’ he told Bill, and he heard silence and he knew there was pain involved. A lot of pain. ‘Brenda can stabilise your ankle and keep you comfortable.’
‘She...she
