now—the innocence and fun of before had left them.
‘What would you like to eat?’ he asked.
‘I’ll just have a cup of tea,’ she said. ‘I’m meeting my parents tonight.’
‘Have you told them?’
Candy shook her head ‘I’ll tell them about the twins when I get back.’
‘They’ll know very soon.’ He’d tried not to notice her bump but now that he had he couldn’t not see it. ‘I’m not a very good doctor, am I?’
He somehow made her smile.
‘I think it popped out about ten seconds after I found out …’ Candy said. ‘I’ll just wear a big baggy top tonight. They’re not talking to me anyway, because I changed the locks and I’m going to Hawaii, so I doubt I’ll be there for very long.’
‘Yet you still go.’
‘I love them. I don’t agree with them a lot of the time but I still love them very much and I know when I do tell them I’ll break their hearts.’
‘For a little while,’ Steele said.
He took a breath. He could do this type of thing so easily for his patients but when it came to matters of a very private heart, things were very different, but he forced himself to step up.
‘Would you like me to tell your parents for you?’
Candy frowned. ‘Why would you do that?’
‘Because I’m used to breaking news to difficult, stubborn, immutable people. I do it every day,’ he said, and then made her smile. ‘I promise to leave out the part that we’ve been at it like rabbits. I’ll just say I’m a colleague. A doctor …’
Candy smiled. She really understood why he wore a suit and tie for work—the older people liked it. And he was right, her parents would respond very differently to Steele from the way they would to her. If not at first then fairly soon, they would calm down for the dottore.
‘I need to do this myself, Steele. It’s really nice of you to offer and I admit I’m tempted to pass it over, but … no. Thank you, though.’
‘Is there anything I can do to help?’
‘It’s not your problem, Steele.’ Then she looked over to him. ‘Actually, this has helped and talking to Macey too. It makes it feel a bit more real.’
‘Keep talking, then,’ he said, but she shook her head.
‘I can’t really. I mean, I’m upset about Gerry too and I’m trying to work out how to tell his family and I don’t think getting upset about Gerry is fair to you,’ Candy said. ‘I know I felt jealous when you spoke about your wife. I got an Annie burn.’
He loved her openness and he smiled when she admitted to having felt jealous. ‘Candy, you can talk to me about that.’ Ten years older, there were some things he did know. ‘Two days before I turned thirty I found out that a woman who I had gone out with for close to six months, just after my divorce, had died. Now, she wasn’t the love of my life. She was one of possibly too many loves of my life …’ He saw her pale smile. ‘And it hurt. I was stunned and devastated. I was all of the things that you probably are now.’
‘It doesn’t make you feel jealous when I talk about him?’ Candy checked.
‘I don’t know how it makes me feel,’ he admitted, touched that even with all that was going on in her world she could be concerned in that way for him. ‘But that’s my stuff to deal with. Right now you’ve got enough of your own.’
‘Oh, I do!’
‘You know there is one teeny positive,’ Steele said.
‘Tell me.’
‘Well, there was one thing about you that was starting to get on my nerves, a potential deal-breaker, in fact,’ Steele said. ‘Confirmed bachelors are very picky and selfish, you understand …’
Candy smiled. ‘Tell me.’
‘Your ability to fall asleep. God, I knew you were tired, we both were, but I was starting to wonder if you had narcolepsy or something.’
She laughed but it changed in the middle and she fought from letting out a sob because he’d just reminded her how very good it had been between them.
‘Candy …’ He took her hand but she pulled hers away.
‘Please, don’t, Steele,’ she said. They had always been honest and she was never more so than now. ‘Please, don’t confuse me now. I miss you very much. I think we both know that it was turning into a bit more than a fling. I think we both know that feelings were starting to run deep.’ Which was milder than the complete truth but now was not the time to admit to love. She pointed out the impossibility of it.
‘You like the single life.’
‘I did,’ he said, ‘but I very much liked being with you.’
‘You’ve geared your life around not having children.’
‘I have,’ he said.
‘You start your dream job in a couple of weeks.’
‘I do.’
‘And I’m pregnant with another man’s babies.’
It dawned on him then that he had only ever known Candy pregnant. That, really, nothing had changed between them, except that they both now knew and he told her so.
‘Candy, since the moment we met you’ve been pregnant with another man’s babies. I think we—’
‘Steele,’ she interrupted. ‘I have to work a few things out myself. I’ve been raised to share everything, to discuss every decision. I don’t want to do that now. I want to think. I want to know that I can do this on my own. I have to know that I can do this on my own …’
‘I get that.’
‘And please don’t pretend this isn’t difficult for you.’
He thought back to that morning, sitting on the edge of the bath and crying in a way he never had before, but he felt better for it, clearer for it. He looked at Candy and knew she was right. She didn’t need his thoughts now. She needed her holiday, she needed space, she needed to get used to the idea that she was going to be a mother.
‘I need to go,’ she said. She was on the edge of tears—just one touch of his hand and she wanted more, she wanted his arms, she wanted the comfort of him. She felt as if she had just got off a merry-go-round as they stepped outside. She had felt like that since the news about Gerry’s death had hit, since she’d sat in Anton’s office, since …
The world seemed to be spinning too fast of late, and Candy took a big breath and tried to steady herself, but big breaths seemed to be working less and less these days. Steele must have seen she was struggling. He wrapped her in his arms, as he had wanted to
