Читать книгу Love Islands…The Collection - Ким Лоренс, Jane Porter - Страница 17

AS THEY EMERGED from the airport terminal, Ben took her elbow and led her to a waiting car. It was long and low with blacked-out windows and Ben spoke to the driver before sliding in beside her.

‘Until I know what’s happening I’d like to—’

‘You don’t want me there.’

She flicked an anxious look at his face. There was nothing to read in those strong lines and angles but she knew that she’d offended him. She seemed to have a knack at this and on this occasion she really didn’t want to.

‘You’ve been so kind.’

His chiselled jaw tightened. ‘Kind is what a stranger is. I’m a father.’ Sounds good but what does it mean? What did he actually know about being a father? Oh, arranging transport and second opinions he could do. That was the easy stuff. The other things...what if he was no good at them? What if he was a lousy father? His own father had probably meant well, but that hadn’t stopped him failing miserably. Two parents waging their own silent war of attrition and he’d been the silent casualty.

‘I didn’t mean...’ She looked at his shuttered profile and, responding to an instinct she didn’t pause to analyse, laid her small hand on his.

Ben looked from the small hand to her face. The muscles in his brown throat worked as he swallowed but his expression revealed nothing.

‘You’re a good mother.’

She blinked at the abrupt declaration before responding with a guilty flood of self-recrimination. ‘I wasn’t there... I should have been... Emmy needed me and I was with you—’

Ben felt the tortured guilt in the swimming green eyes that met his like a dull knife sliding between his ribs. He pressed a finger to her lips. ‘You are now.’

She took a deep shuddering breath. ‘Sorry.’

‘When I was a kid I had a fall...fractured my skull.’ He lifted a hand to the side of his head. ‘There was internal bleeding and they had to operate to relieve the pressure. When my mother arrived—a week later—she was very concerned about the scars that might spoil my looks. Luckily the hair they’d shaved grew back. You are a good mother.’

A week...there were obviously scars that his hair did not hide. A good mother...who knew? But at least I’m not a monster, Lily thought soberly.

‘So go be a good mum and I’ll be around when you need me.’ Earning his right to call himself a father.

‘It’s not that... Mum will be there on the ward, you see, and you... The explanations on top of everything else... I’m not trying to...exclude you.’

There was a long pause before he nodded. ‘I have some calls to make. I’ll have Martin...’ he nodded towards the driver behind the glass screen ‘...drive around the block until you’re finished.’

‘But I might be a long time,’ she protested.

He shrugged and handed her a mobile phone. ‘Then you’re a long time, but in case you need...anything.’

She looked at the phone.

‘It has my number in it.’

Lily watched the man’s lips move. Words came out, she could hear them, recognise them, but the words seemed disjointed, nothing he was saying made sense because this wasn’t happening. She put down the full teacup, the contents cold, and turned her head to look through the glass partition where Emmy was sitting up in bed. She was wearing her favourite pyjamas and giggling as her grandmother pretended to search for the toy she clutched in her chubby little hands—it was one of her favourite games.

The emotion swelled in Lily’s chest, the ache so intense that it drew a rasping sigh from her pale lips. This couldn’t be happening. Emmy was too little, too... It was not fair!

Life isn’t fair, said the unsympathetic voice in her head.

‘Are there any questions you would like to ask me?’

Lily slowly turned her head; she felt weirdly frozen inside. ‘Are you sure? Could there be a mistake? Results can get mixed up.’ The magazines were always full of such stories. Hope flared and died in her eyes as the doctor, firm but sympathetic, put a hand on her shoulder.

‘Your daughter is a very poorly little girl.’

Lily bit her lip, drawing blood but not noticing the metallic coppery taste on her tongue. ‘But I’d have noticed.’ Should have noticed. The guilt was there; it never went away. Her job as a mother was to protect...and she hadn’t.

‘This is not your fault.’

‘Then whose fault is it?’ she hissed, anger flaring then fizzling like cold ashes as he responded.

‘Nobody’s fault. The onset is notoriously insidious—the symptoms are often missed at this stage by professionals. Your GP did well to pick them up when he did, which puts us in a good position.’

Lily seized eagerly onto his words. ‘It does?’

‘At this stage ninety-five per cent of children go into remission following a bone-marrow transplant.’

Hope fluttered inside her skull. ‘So bone marrow is a cure?’

‘I don’t want to raise your hopes.’

Too late, she thought, fighting a mixture of frustration and trepidation as he consulted the tablet he held.

A bunch of figures that spelt out her baby’s future.

The man laid the tablet aside and removed his glasses. ‘Though the number of bone-marrow donors have increased over recent years...’

Anticipating the but, Lily rushed into speech. ‘She can have mine, can’t she?’ She laid her arm on the table and began to roll up her sleeve. ‘Take what you like.’

‘It doesn’t work like that, I’m afraid,’ the man said gently. ‘I don’t want to be negative, but the fact is that your daughter has an extremely rare blood group.’

Lily closed her eyes and released a low sigh as she finally realised where he was going. ‘And I don’t.’

‘I have already discussed the subject of compatibility with your mother. She was unsure of the situation, Emily’s father...paternal relatives. It is a relatively minor procedure for the donor though there is some discomfort involved.’

Lily surged to her feet feeling the first fluttering of real hope. ‘Her father, he’ll do it.’

The doctor gave a cautious smile and reminded gently, ‘He’ll need to be tested.’

She tilted her head again. ‘He’ll do it?’ She heard the question in her own voice and from his questioning expression so did the doctor. ‘He’ll want to.’

And if he didn’t?

She pushed the question away, she had to, because the other option... Her thoughts came up against the self-protective wall she had erected and bounced back.

Back on the ward, Lily gave an edited version of what the doctor had told her to her mother. They spoke softly because Emmy had fallen asleep, her thumb in her mouth. Looking at her made Lily’s heart ache. That anyone so innocent should suffer...it seemed so wrong.

Elizabeth sat there in silence during Lily’s halting delivery and then, with a hand pressed to her mouth, rushed from the room.

Lily found her a few moments later in the corridor, red-faced, but calm. ‘This is the last thing you need. I’m sorry I didn’t want Emmy to see... How are you, darling?’ She held out her arms.

After a few moments Lily pulled free of the warm maternal embrace. ‘I’m fine.’ Empty was a better description, empty but for the sense of purpose that she focused on with tunnel-like determination.

‘I have to leave, Mum.’

‘But why? To go where?’

‘I’ll explain later, but I’ll be back soon, I promise, and you have to go home for some sleep when I do.’ She kissed her mother’s smooth cheek. ‘You look exhausted.’

‘It’s not me I’m worried about.’

Lily’s voice thickened. ‘Have I said thank you for being there...for everything...?’

‘What you don’t seem to realise is that what you’d do for Emmy I would do for you. You’re still my little girl.’

There were tears in Lily’s eyes as she walked down the corridor. She dabbed at them impatiently and reminded herself there was hope. Outside it had begun to drizzle. Standing on the wet pavement, she fished out the phone Ben had given her and pressed the dial key. He picked up almost straight away.

‘Ben, it’s Lily, could you—?’

She stopped as a long limo drew up beside her, a window swished down and Ben, phone to his ear, leaned out.

Lily laughed. She hadn’t really believed he was going to drive around the block.

‘Need a lift?’

She nodded and the door swung open.

‘Where to?’ He studied her face and watched a single tear slide down her cheek, then another. He felt as if someone had reached into his chest and squeezed his heart. ‘Oh, baby!’ He reached for her and she drew back, a hand extended to ward him off.

‘Do not touch me...don’t!’ she quivered out.

He stiffened.

‘It’s not you, it’s me...if you touch me I’ll start crying and I don’t think I’ll be able to stop!’ she wailed.

He touched a teardrop on her cheek with his thumb. ‘You’re already crying.’

With a sob she flung herself at him. Ben looked down at the fiery head pressed to his chest. After a pause his arms went around her and he let her cry herself out while he signalled the driver to carry on driving.

Embarrassed by her outburst and ashamed of her weakness, she finally pulled away. ‘I must look terrible.’

‘You look...’ He stopped, an odd expression spreading across his face before he said abruptly, ‘Fine. So...?’

He was prepared for the worst. He had been from the moment she had slid into the car emanating the sort of tension that did not say good news. And then she had started crying. He had never heard sobs like that before. They seemed to have been dragged from deep inside her. The sense of helplessness he had felt remained, a cold knot in his gut. He had dated beautiful women, women who were well groomed and elegant, and yet as he looked at Lily sitting there, her tear-stained face bare of all make-up, her hair a wild tangle, it struck him that he had never seen any woman look more beautiful.

‘Sorry, I should have told you straight away.’

He took a deep breath. He was... No...prepared was a joke. Some things you couldn’t be prepared for.

‘She’s very ill—ʼ

She sniffed, visibly fighting for control, and Ben smothered a wave of protective concern that made him want to take her in his arms again. He was conscious that in her emotionally vulnerable state even small gestures could be misinterpreted, taken for something they were not.

He might be a bastard but he was at least an honest one. He’d never raised a woman’s expectations in his life.

‘Very ill, it’s a...her blood. The doctor explained, but her best hope is a bone-marrow transplant.’

There was hope.

Listening, Ben knew how a man in a very long very black tunnel felt when a light appeared. He had a dozen questions but he closed his mouth, stifled his impatience and instead prompted gently.

‘That’s good.’

Her face told him there was a but coming.

‘She has a very rare blood type and the chances of a donor being found in time are slim. Her main...only hope, really, is a compatible blood relative. I’m not compatible—’ It still felt like a kind of failure that she wasn’t able to be the one to save her child’s life.

As soon as she mentioned the blood group he recognised the significance.

‘But I am.’

Lily nodded. ‘It seems likely. I don’t really know about these things but I’m assuming if she didn’t get my blood group she got yours? Though they wouldn’t know for sure until they test you, but... I told him that you’d do it.’ She felt his long fingers tighten on her forearm and looked down, not realising until that moment that he was holding her.

She looked up, wondering uneasily if she had taken too much for granted. Obviously she would do anything for her daughter, but Ben didn’t even know her. He wanted to be involved, but she still couldn’t shake the fear that deep down he might even resent her existence.

‘I probably should have asked you first...’

He shook his head slowly from side to side. ‘No, you should not have asked me. You’d do anything for Emmy, wouldn’t you?’

‘Of course, I’m her mother.’

‘And I’m her father. So I would do anything for her too.’ Anything... His initial rush of emotions settled into deep relief.

‘The fact that I can do something...’ He spoke with more confidence as he realised he possessed the instincts he had feared were absent in his make-up. ‘Anything...’ He dragged a hand across the surface of his gleaming dark hair and turned to the practicalities. ‘I’ll do it...when...how...?’

‘The doctor said he’ll see you in the morning. It’s a relatively simple procedure. They can do it straight away. There’s some discomfort,’ she warned.

‘Is it so hard for you to believe that I would endure the odd twinge for our daughter?’

She shook her head. ‘Sorry. I suppose,’ she admitted in a flash of shamed honesty, ‘I feel a bit jealous. I wish I could be the one to save her. I know it’s stupid and what matters is that she is saved.’ She closed her eyes and said, ‘But I wasn’t even there for her... I wish I hadn’t gone on that stupid holiday.’

‘Emmy would still be ill.’

Her eyes opened and she nodded. ‘Not rational, I know. I keep thinking about how I felt when I found out I was pregnant.’ He saw an emotion he couldn’t interpret flash in her eyes.

‘You were scared?’

‘I was stupid,’ she retorted, closing her eyes to ease the ache behind them. ‘You know, for weeks I was in denial. I just kept saying, like some sort of total idiot, it can’t happen your first time, but of course it can and it did.’ The words were out before she realised what she had said. Maybe he hadn’t really been listening?

Slowly she opened her eyes and realised straight off that fate had not granted her a reprieve. Ben had heard and his lean face was frozen in a combination of shock and disbelief.

‘First time...?’ he prompted, in a low, dangerous voice while in his head another voice said, No, not possible.

It was simply not possible that the woman he had taken to bed that night had been...no, that was not possible.

‘It doesn’t matter.’ Her little shrug was fuel to the flame of emotion that was burning him up. The guilt was eating him up from the inside out.

‘My God, it’s true—you were a virgin, weren’t you? I was your first!’ He looked at her as though she were a live grenade someone had dropped in his lap.

‘Only...’ Oh, Lily what is wrong with you? ‘...I’ve been pretty busy since.’

He closed his eyes. Lily couldn’t take her eyes off the nerve that was clenching and unclenching beside his mouth.

‘I don’t believe it,’ he groaned as he pushed one hand deep into his thick pelt of dark hair. He opened his eyes. ‘A virgin?’ He felt a fresh slug of guilt leavened with, if he was honest, a degree of arousal. It was a silly male possessive pleasure to know he’d been her first. ‘You didn’t say a word, and why me?’

‘I thought you’d realise and, in case you haven’t noticed, you are obscenely good-looking.’ She’d hoped to lighten the mood but he didn’t even crack a smile. If he looked like this now, she thought with a delicate little shudder, imagine how he’d look if she told him the full truth. Well, that was never going to happen. ‘There’s no need to make a big thing of it. I don’t regret it. She’s the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to me. She was a beautiful baby and now...with what’s going on, all that stuff doesn’t matter now.’

Before he could respond the phone in her pocket began to vibrate—her own, not the one that Ben had given her. The sound of it was audible in the silence that had fallen.

Her hand was shaking as she reached into her bag then glanced at the screen. What she saw made her body stiffen. ‘Sorry, it’s the hospital. I have to check this.’ She turned her face to the window to hide her expression as she replied. ‘Yes, this is Lily Gray.’

She listened to the voice on the other end before giving a deep sigh of relief. ‘That’s marvellous, thank you so much, thank you.’

She turned, smiling, and responded to his arched brow with a shake of her head. ‘Sorry, it’s good news. It was the hospital to say there is a match on the register—a perfect match, they said, for Emmy. They are trying to contact him so it’s possible you won’t need to do anything.’ She frowned. Ben was not listening. He was scrolling through his own phone—perhaps he didn’t understand the significance of what she was saying. ‘Apparently this person is someone who lives here in England. They warned me the odds were incredibly remote that they would find a match. If he agrees—’

Ben slid his phone back into his pocket. ‘They’ve contacted him and he does agree.’

She looked at him, her blank look fading as he held up his phone and said softly, ‘I’ve just been contacted.’

‘You’re on the bone-marrow register?’

‘For a couple of years. A friend’s wife needed a bone-marrow transplant so I got tested.’

‘Did she get it?’

‘Yes.’

His face told her nothing but she knew, she felt a cold clutch in her belly but ignored it. Emily was going to be all right. She’d make it all right.

‘She didn’t survive, did she...?’ The impotent rage and ice-cold fear warring within her fought for an angry release. ‘You can say it, you know.’ Hearing the shrill note of irrational accusation in her voice, Lily took a steadying breath and dug into her reservoir of inner calm and found it empty.

‘I’m not going to fall apart.’ Falling apart was not an option. Emmy needed her; her mother needed her.

Studying her pale face and refusing to acknowledge the sharp stab of tenderness, he wondered if she thought saying it often enough would make it true.

‘She’ll be fine, you know, Lily.’

She nodded but couldn’t meet his eyes. She was grateful that he was saying what she wanted to hear but she couldn’t let herself believe it.

‘So what do you think she’ll make of me?’

It took her a moment to translate the emotion behind his question. Maybe because insecurity and fear were not words she associated with big, take-charge, in-control Ben.

Her tender heart ached ‘She’s two—she loves everyone.’

Ben gave a tight smile; he knew that love had to be earned. ‘If I do it wrong, tell me.’

‘There’s no handbook, just wing it. It’s what I’ve been doing for two years.’ If genes had anything to do with it, Emmy would adore him—just like her mother.