a louder, more demanding cry rent the air and purple became pink and pink became an indignant red.
‘Bless him, he’s gloriously grumpy.’ Relief poured through Bec as she watched Tom reverently wrap the baby up until all that could be seen was a shock of black hair, enormous black eyes and his indignant wide-open mouth.
Tom as a baby. The thought thudded through her.
Had he looked like this gorgeous baby with his mixed Eurasian heritage? A stabbing pain rocked her. How it must have tortured his mother to have to abandon him to others’ care.
Bec turned her attention back to Melissa. The placenta was delivered with a minimum of fuss and the nuns, Bec and Tom cleaned everything up and scrubbed the floors. Melissa’s observations were stable and the baby sucked contentedly at his mother’s breast.
‘Bec, Tom, thank you so much.’ Mark pumped Tom’s hand and suddenly he encircled Bec in a hug, pulling her tightly against him.
Bec waited for panic to engulf her, the familiar panic that rendered her rigid with fear when unknown men touched her.
It didn’t come. Instead, she glowed from bringing a child into the world and completing a family. She hugged him back. ‘I’m just so glad it all worked out.’
‘But I knew it would. This place protects children,’ Melissa’s voice broke in. ‘Thank you so much. We shall call him Tom and his middle name shall be the same as Bec’s surname.’
Tom grinned. ‘I’ve never had a namesake before.’
‘You better introduce yourself, then.’ Melissa passed the baby back to Tom.
He looked down at baby Tom, now calm from being at his mother’s breast. The baby stared back at him.
Bec bit her lip at the sight of a tall, dark-haired, chocolate-eyed doctor tenderly cuddling the small, dark-haired, dark-eyed baby against his broad chest. A baby who perhaps looked a lot like a child of his own would have looked.
Tom as a father. The thought sucked the air from her lungs at the precise moment the chill she’d experienced earlier rushed back in. Only this time it stayed like a cold, hard lump.
She didn’t want to think of Tom as a father. He was a colleague and friend. And that was all she wanted, right? Being Tom’s friend suddenly became the hardest thing she’d ever agreed to.
* * *
Tom and Bec sat sipping tea that the nuns had made for them. A plate loaded with local fruits lay between them. Tom especially loved the contrast of colours in the dragon fruit—bright pink exterior with a white pulp, symmetrically dotted with fine black seeds.
Bec peeled a green orange. ‘I’m so glad that’s over. I’ve never been so scared in my professional life as I was then. I had every breech complication screaming at me in my head.’
‘You were sensational.’ He toasted her with his glass of tea.
She blushed at his praise, her eyes sparkling with childlike glee. Just like when she’d clapped her hands at the idea of making the incense.
He’d seen flashes of this sort of enthusiasm when he’d first met her. But back then she’d immediately covered up her natural response. Now she no longer hid her joy. A quiver of wonder vibrated inside him. Had he played a role in that? Had his friendship helped her blossom into the women she should have always been if her father and ex-boyfriend hadn’t thwarted her growth with their regime of fear?
She picked up some jackfruit. ‘You weren’t bad yourself. The brain is a wonderful thing, isn’t it? Stuff you think you’ve forgotten comes flooding back.’ She stared at him, her violet eyes blazing with the light of a job well done. ‘You were with me every step of the way. You have no idea how much that helped me.’
He wanted to sink into those eyes, into that passion she had for life. Embrace it. Embrace her. ‘I didn’t do that much. It’s a shame Rebecca isn’t a boy’s name.’
She laughed. ‘I think Tom Monahan Phillips-Lee is a very respectable name for a boy. He has such a great birth story. He’ll grow up being told over and over, “You were born in a Buddhist nunnery.” It will go down in the family annals and be a much more exciting story than the sanitised conditions of the French hospital in Ho Chi Minh City.’
She sighed. ‘My story was pretty dull. Born at one o’clock on a Saturday afternoon at King Edward Hospital. My parents couldn’t even remember what the weather was like.’
‘At least you have a story.’ The words came out uncensored.
She gazed at him, her voice soft but firm. ‘So do you.’
‘How do you figure that?’ Irritation sizzled inside him at her lack of understanding.
‘You’re part of history. You arrived in Australia and your parents chose you. They saw something in you that opened their hearts.’ She leaned forward. ‘I bet they told you over and over when you were little the story of how they came to choose you. Why they bypassed other orphans and loved you.’
‘Yes, they did.’ Her words chafed, their truth diluting his experience. ‘But I don’t have a birth story. I have no idea where I was born.’
‘You know you were born in Vietnam, in the south, during a war. I doubt it was a hospital. I like to imagine it was somewhere like this.’ She reached out and briefly touched his arm, her eyes full of serenity. ‘A peaceful place where your mother found refuge in uncertain times.’
His throat tightened. How had she managed to describe his thoughts? When he’d held baby Tom and stared down into his enormous eyes, which peered at him from under a fuzz of black hair, he’d had a sense of déjà vu. Crazy thoughts. ‘I think you’re having flights of fancy.’
She narrowed her eyes at him. ‘You’ve had the same thoughts. I saw them on your face when you held Tom. You sensed something in his eyes.’ She placed her hands over his. ‘I think that’s fine. If it helps you, believe that.’
He wanted to believe. But he was a scientist and he dealt in facts. He pulled his hands away. ‘The reality is probably far removed from this.’
‘Or it could be really close.’ Her insistent words hammered at him.
His jaw clenched. ‘Facts are the only thing that will help.’
She raised her brows. ‘I disagree. My imagination helped me to survive in my father’s house. If this place helps you then weave it into a set of “possible maybes” for your own birth.’
‘Next you’ll be going all mystical on me.’
‘Hey, you’re sounding very Western and we’re in Asia.’ A cheeky grin streaked across her face. ‘I’m going to light some incense before we leave to mark Tom’s birth.’
An unfamiliar dreamy look floated in the depths of her eyes. ‘He’s so cute. I bet you looked a lot like baby Tom when you were born.’
‘You going all clucky on me, Bec?’ Teasing her was easier than dealing with the strange sensation in his gut when she talked about babies.
