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.’
‘From an ancient dog or one with a gum problem.’
‘And the kid with his head stuck in the bars of his cot,’ Nick recalled. ‘You’d have thought his father would have had a hacksaw to cut through a bar and release him instead of taking the cot to pieces to bring it in for us to do it.’
‘It did look funny.’ Bill smiled at the memory of the two parents arriving with the side of the cot held between them, and the grandmother carrying the perfectly contented baby, which had been looking around with wide-eyed curiosity and doubtless wondering about all the fuss.
‘Cute baby, though,’ Bill added, although she knew she should dodge baby conversations altogether because even after more than a year it hurt to see other people’s babies.
‘Very cute,’ Nick agreed, rising to his feet as his pager buzzed.
‘Drunk in cubicle three,’ the duty manager told Bill as she returned to work. ‘There’s a nurse in there with Nick but they might need more help.’
Bill closed her eyes for a moment. Babies were upsetting enough, but if there was one thing she hated, it was handling drunks. They came in all shapes and sizes, and varied from angry and abusive, through straight obstreperous, to wildly happy, laughing
