was something about that big, craggy man at the door that sucked the breath from her lungs and accelerated her heart rate in a totally unwanted response, but it was okay. She knew it was a hormonal reaction that she could control. Would control! She was coping with pregnancy hormones, wasn’t she?
She’d come to Lyrebird Lake to start anew, build a good life for her unborn child and herself, fresh and immune to the destructive hold men like him seemed to have over her.
Not precisely him, because she didn’t know him from Adam, but there was that look in his eye that said he’d like to take half a dozen steps forward and carry her back into the bathroom and kick the door shut.
Her arms broke out in goose-bumps. Where the heck had that come from? She could feel the heat in her cheeks and she stepped away from the door as if there was a blowtorch on the other side.
He was Ned’s son, for crikey’s sake. A man that had walked out of his father’s country doctor’s residence twenty years ago and not bothered once to see if dear, sweet Ned was still alive, or so her friend, Misty, said.
No doubt after he’d had his way with her in the bathroom he’d be gone from her life just as quickly as the man who’d run from the child growing inside her.
Stop it!
Nobody was having their way with anybody in the bathroom and she needed to take control. She was good at that.
Mia ripped off her towel and pulled on her briefs. Now that she came to think about it there had been two people at the door, but she couldn’t remember anything about the other one except that he’d turned around, as he should, when confronted by a person undressed in their own house.
Not like…Angus. That was his name. She clipped her bra and spun it to the front. The big A, more likely. Mia stepped into her green shorts and yanked her ‘Fight Breast Cancer’ T-shirt over her head and glanced in the mirror.
Her hair bounced red ringlets all over her head like a frenzied mattress and she squeezed and rolled the coils so they flattened onto her head until most were confined by the elastic band in the middle. She hated the unruliness of her hair as the one thing she couldn’t control.
He’d been tall so she pushed her feet into her highheeled sandals and straightened her shirt over her slightly rounded waist. She didn’t look pregnant yet.
Right, then.
She was back. He and Simon had retreated to the veranda and he’d considered going over to the hospital to look for his father because he’d behaved badly in there. He should have backed out of the door and knocked again, but his usual ease with women had been poleaxed by the vision in the hallway.
The vision looked him up and down and he saw that she was actually quite ordinary. Well, ordinary in an extraordinary way. Actually rounded and somehow…lush. Not really ordinary at all.
‘I’m Mia Storm. One of the midwives. I board here. I gather you’re Angus.’
She was a summer storm all right. Still in pink and green, hot as all get out one minute then drenching him with a cold shower of disdain, then blowing information at him like a gust of leaves. She looked like a militant hybrid with a rosebud mouth. She was hot!
He couldn’t think of a thing to say and he had to be saved by a nineteen-year-old Lothario. It was embarrassing. And ridiculously backed up his son’s impression of his father’s lack of experience. If it weren’t so mortifying, it would be amusing.
Simon stepped forward and held out his hand. ‘I’m Simon, the son he didn’t know about, and I’ve dragged him here to see the grandfather I’ve never met. You’ll have to forgive him. He’s still adjusting his horizons.’
Mia looked from Simon to Angus and her face softened. Simon had certainly taken the gust out of her storm and Angus could only watch in admiration. She smiled at both of them, the sun came out, and now he wouldn’t be able to speak for another ten seconds. What the heck had happened to him?
‘Hello, Simon.’ She chuckled delightfully, Angus thought fuzzily, at Simon’s ingenious explanations, and then Simon leant forward and kissed her cheek.
Angus frowned. The little upstart. As if it was the most natural thing in the world. Maybe he really had missed the boat on social behaviour.
‘And does your father have your winning ways?’ She tilted her head at him and somehow Angus knew she’d forgiven his faux pas in the hallway and even might feel sorry for his lack of social graces compared to his son’s.
He cleared his throat. ‘My apologies, Mia. I shouldn’t have opened the door. I thought the house was empty.’
Simon butted in. ‘Apparently Dad hasn’t socialised much in the last twenty years, but he’s really good at disasters.’
Thanks, son. That made him sound so promising. ‘Okay, Simon. Mia doesn’t want to know about me.’ Angus’s eyes were drawn back to hers. ‘You said my father was over at the hospital with the new baby.’ A thought tickled his sense of the ridiculous and he glanced at Simon. ‘Not a new uncle or aunt for Simon perchance?’ Serve him right. Let the upstart work out the odds for that.
This time she smiled for him. And again it was worth waiting for. ‘No. Ned’s a bit past having babies I think. One of the doctors here, Ben—his daughter had a child. Ned’s gone over to pass a silver coin across the baby’s palm.’
It was strange how nostalgic that unexpected reminder of all his father’s superstitions made Angus feel. How had twenty years gone without returning to at least make peace with him?
Angus had been going to, or he’d thought of it, but there’d never seemed to be time between flights and international health disasters to get up this way. He’d been ashamed of his behaviour all those years ago and hadn’t wanted a rushed trip. And after he and Simon’s mother had ‘lost’ the baby it had been too heart-wrenching to come back in the early years.
Later it had always been the too-short breaks between missions he’d blamed. But that stood up poorly now. His father must have aged so much since he’d last seen him. ‘How’s Dad’s health?’
‘Apart from his eyesight and a stiff hip, Ned’s well.’ She looked into his face to gauge his reaction. ‘He’s well enough to marry Louisa and dance at his own wedding.’
‘I’m glad. It seems I’ve been fortunate that it’s not too late to catch up.’
She looked him up and down like a schoolmarm and he felt the dusting of disapproval for his negligence. ‘Very fortunate.’ Then she glanced into the house. ‘Do you want to come in and wait here, or do you want to look for him over at the hospital?’
Angus needed to get over his response to this woman before he met his father and opened up a whole new bag of angst.
He didn’t do sentiment, hadn’t for years, but right at this minute he felt emotionally laden and he needed to shake the excess from his mind first.
This morning’s first meeting with Simon, finding his son looked like a younger version of himself with better people skills and the realisation of all he’d missed out on. With its accompanying well of bitterness at Simon’s mother’s betrayal, which he’d had to hide from her son, and now he’d been knocked for six by the rose.
Angus
