Читать книгу Medical Romance November 2016 Books 1-6 - Kate Hardy - Страница 16
ОглавлениеMAX SAT ON the stairs, listening to his parents argue.
Again.
For the first time in his fifteen years he was scared about what might happen to him. Would they leave him here by himself?
‘I am going on that cruise, whether you come with me or not.’
His dad’s angry voice carried easily, just as it always did. Even if Max had been upstairs in his room, he would have heard those words.
‘And what about Maxwell?’
‘What about him? If you’re worried, ask your aunt Vanessa to come and stay with him. I’m sure she’ll be happy to lounge around the pool and do nothing.’
‘Doug, that’s not fair.’
‘What’s not fair about it? I consider it an equitable trade. I worked hard for this bonus, and I’m not going to give it up.’
There was a pause, and he held his breath as he waited for his mother’s answer. ‘Okay, I’ll ask her. But we can’t keep doing this. Vanessa has accused me more than once of not wanting him.’
‘Just ask her.’
No reassurance that his parents actually did want him. They never took him on any of their so-called trips.
His hands tightened into fists as they rested on his knees. Then he slowly got up from his spot and crept back up the stairs. To pretend he didn’t care.
Except when he got to his room and opened the door there was someone already in there. A woman...crouched on the floor beside his bed, crying. She looked up. Blue eyes met his.
Annabelle!
Suddenly he was grown up and his childhood bedroom morphed into the bathroom of their London flat. Anna held a small plastic stick in one hand, her eyes red and swollen. When he went to kneel down beside her to comfort her, she floated away. Through the door. Down the stairs, where everything was now eerily quiet. No matter how hard he tried to reach her, she kept sliding further and further away, until she was a tiny blip on the horizon. Then poof! She was gone. Leaving him all alone. Just as his parents had.
Max’s eyes popped open and encountered darkness. He blinked a couple of times, a hand going to his chest, which was slick with sweat.
God. A dream.
He sat up and shoved the covers down, swinging his legs over the side of the bed.
Well, hell!
He didn’t need a dream to tell him what he already knew.
But maybe his subconscious had needed to send him a clear and pointed message about going to that Christmas party with Anna: that he needed to tread very, very carefully.
* * *
Baby Hope was still holding her own. And he’d finally shaken off the remnants of that dream he’d had that morning.
He’d also received some positive news about the accident victims they’d treated a couple of days ago. Several of the patients had already been released to go home, and the rest of them were expected to recover. Sarah, who’d been one of the most badly injured, might have to have surgery to stabilise the sternal fracture. But everyone was hopeful that she’d heal up without any lasting damage.
That was some very good news.
He hadn’t seen Annabelle yet this morning. Which was another good thing.
Right, Max. Just because you’ve passed the entrance to the hospital multiple times since your arrival this morning, means nothing.
A thought hit him. Maybe she’d come down with the same virus that had plagued other hospital staff.
It didn’t seem likely. A few of those had trickled back to work today, and no one else had called in sick. At least, that was what one of the nurses had told him. So it seemed that the outbreak might be dying down. A good thing too. The closer they got to Christmas, the more patients they’d probably be seeing. Everywhere he looked, there were doctors and nurses whose faces appeared haggard and tired.
Frayed nerves were evident everywhere, including the operating room this morning, where he’d had to repair a hole in a young patient’s heart. The anaesthetist had snapped at a nurse who’d only been trying to do her job. He’d apologised immediately afterward, but the woman had thrown him an irritated glance, muttering under her breath. It was probably a good thing that he’d understood none of the words.
All of a sudden, Annabelle came hurrying down the hall, a red coat still belted tightly around her waist. When she caught sight of him and then glanced guiltily at the clock to his right, one side of his mouth cranked up in spite of himself. She was late.
The Annabelle he knew was never late. Ever.
He moved a few steps towards her. ‘Get held up, did you?’
‘I’m only six minutes late.’
For Anna, that was an eternity. He held up his hands to ward off any other angry words. ‘Hey, I was only asking a friendly question.’
‘Sorry, Max. It’s just been quite a day already.’
‘Yes, it has.’ His had started off with that damned nightmare, followed by a surgery at five o’clock this morning. Fortunately, the procedure had been pretty straightforward, and he’d been out of the surgical suite an hour later.
Her glance strayed to his face. ‘What time did you get here?’
‘A few hours ago.’
‘I thought shift changes were at eight.’ Her fingers went to her belt, quickly undoing the knot.
He nodded. ‘They are. I had an emergency to see to, so I came in early.’
Her breath caught with an audible sound, her hands stopping all movement. ‘Hope?’
‘No, another surgery. It was urgent, but it came out fine.’
‘I’m so glad.’ She finished shifting out of her jacket and stepped into her office, where she hung the garment on the back of the door. Her lanyard was already hanging on a cord around her neck. ‘Have you been to see Hope yet?’
‘Once. She’s still stable. I was just getting ready to check on her again. Care to join me?’
‘Yes. I was halfway afraid something would go terribly wrong during the night.’
A cold hand gripped his heart. It had indeed. He shook off the thought.
‘I would have called you, if something involving Hope had come up.’
She nodded. ‘Thank you.’
‘So your day has already been tough?’
‘Kind of. I’ve been on the second floor.’
‘Oncology?’ Some kind of eerie premonition whispered through his veins.
‘Yes.’ Her voice quavered slightly. ‘We found out this morning that one of my nephews has been diagnosed with a brain tumour. I went to ask Dr Terrill a few questions about the type and prognosis. Just so I could hear first-hand what he might be facing.’
He hadn’t yet met any of the doctors or nurses on the second floor, as each area was kind of insulated from each other. ‘I’m sorry, Anna. Who is it?’
‘It’s Nate. Jessica’s son...the one I mentioned.’
A band tightened around his chest. ‘How old is he?’
‘Just two.’
Jessica, the youngest of Annabelle’s sisters, had already had a couple of children by the time he’d left. In fact, the huge size of Anna’s family was one of the things that had created such pressure on her to have children of her own. She would never admit it, but with each new niece or nephew the shadows in his wife’s eyes had grown. She’d wanted so desperately what her sisters had...what her parents had had. If the family hadn’t been so close, it might not have mattered quite so much. But they were—and it did.
He wanted to ask what Dr Terrill had said, but, at two years of age, the tumour had to be something that didn’t take years to emerge.
‘Jessica noticed he wasn’t keeping up with his peers on the growth charts like he should. And recently he’d been complaining that his head hurt. So they ran a series of tests.’
Headaches could be benign or they could signal something deadly. ‘Do they have the results?’
Annabelle could say it was none of his business. And it wasn’t. Not any more. He’d lost the right to know anything about her family when he’d walked out of their home and flown to Africa.
‘A craniopharyngioma tumour. They’re in discussing treatment options with their doctor today.’
He went through the catalogue in his head, searching for the name.
Found it.
Craniopharyngiomas were normally benign. But even though they didn’t typically spread outside the original area, they could still be difficult to reach and treat.
‘Why don’t you get someone to cover you for a few hours, so you can be on hand if they need you? Or maybe you should go to London early.’
That might solve his dilemma about the Christmas party.
‘I need to work. And Mum and Dad are there with Jessica and her husband. At this point there are too many people. Too many opinions.’
Kind of like with Annabelle’s in-vitro procedures. There had always been someone in her family stepping up with an opinion on this or that. It hadn’t bothered him at first, but as things had continued to go downhill Max had come to wish they would just mind their own business. A ridiculous mind-set, considering Max himself had hoped to have a family as large and connected as Annabelle’s had been—and evidently still was.
‘If you’d rather not go to the party—’
‘I want to go. It’ll give me a chance to run by and check in on Nate while I’m in London.’
‘Of course.’
Well, if fate didn’t want to help him, he was stuck. Besides, he didn’t blame her for wanting to go, if it meant making a side trip to see them. It was doubtful her family would want him there, though. Not with everything that had happened. But he could think about that later.
He decided to change the subject. ‘Are you ready to go see Hope?’
‘Yes, just let me check in and make sure there are no other urgent cases I need to attend to.’
Five minutes later, they were in Hope’s room, gowned and gloved to minimise exposure to pathogens that could put the tiny girl in danger. She was still sedated, still intubated. But her colour was good, no more cyanosis. Something inside Max relaxed. Her atrial fibrillation hadn’t returned after the scare yesterday, and her new heart was beating with gusto.
The empty chair next to the baby’s incubator made a few muscles tense all over again. This child would never have a concerned loved one sitting beside her to give her extra love and care. At least not her mum.
As if Annabelle knew what he was thinking, she lowered herself into that seat, her gaze on the baby inside. She murmured something that he couldn’t hear and then slid her hand through one of the openings of the special care cot. She stroked the baby’s hair, cooing to her in a quiet voice. More muscles went on high alert.
Had she done this for each of her nieces and nephews? The fact that she would never hold a child she’d given birth to made him sad. And angry. Sometimes the world was just cruel, when you thought about it. Here was a woman who could give unlimited amounts of love to a child, and she couldn’t have one.
But life wasn’t fair. There were wars and starving children and terrible destructive forces of nature that laid waste to whole communities.
Annabelle glanced up at him. ‘The difference between how she looked thirty-six hours ago and right now are like day and night.’
He remembered. He also remembered how they’d almost lost her an hour after her surgery.
But this tiny tyke was a fighter, just as Anna had said she was. She wanted to live. Her body had fought hard, almost as if she’d known that if she held on long enough, relief would come.
And it had.
Maybe life was sometimes fair after all.
He laid a hand on top of the incubator. ‘And so far she’s handling all of this like a champ.’
‘Where will she go after this?’
The question wasn’t aimed at him. But he felt a need to answer it anyway. ‘I’m sure there are a lot of people who would take Hope in a second. She’ll get a lot of love.’
‘I hope so.’
‘There’s no chance that her mum will come back and want her later?’
‘It’s been over two weeks. She knew that Hope was born with a heart defect. There’s always a chance, but if she’d wanted to find her, surely she would have come back to the hospital by now?’
He nodded. ‘What do social services say?’
‘That if her mum doesn’t return, she’ll be placed in a foster home and then put up for adoption.’
That brought up another point. He took his hand off the cot. ‘You’ve never thought again about adopting?’
That had been another sticky subject towards the end of their marriage. She’d refused to even entertain the idea.
‘My sister’s experience made me afraid of going that route. But after spending so much time with Hope, I’m more open to it than I was in the past. Not every case ends in heartache, like Mallory’s did. I don’t know if I’d be able to adopt Hope, but surely they would let me consider another child with special needs. I love my nieces and nephews, but...’ She stopped as if remembering that she had a very ill nephew.
She withdrew her hand, staring into the special care cot.
‘But it’s not the same. I get it.’ He wanted to make sure she knew that there was nothing wrong with wanting someone of your own to love. He’d once felt that way about Anna. That she made his life complete in a way nothing else could, not even his work in Africa, as worthy as that might be. But in the end, his dream had been right about one thing: she hadn’t wanted him to stay.
‘You’ve probably seen plenty of needy children in Africa.’
‘Yes. There are some incredible needs on that continent. I’ve sometimes wished...’ He’d sometimes wished he could give a couple of kids a stable home without poverty or fear, but with the way his parents had been... Well, it wasn’t something he saw himself tackling on his own.
Then there was the unfinished business with Annabelle. It didn’t lend itself to making a new start. Especially when the previous chapter was still buzzing in the background. It was another thing his dream had got right. Annabelle was out of reach. She had been for a long time. He needed to sign those papers. Only then could he move forward.
He’d been thinking more and more along those lines over the last several days. She was here. His excuse of old was that he wasn’t quite sure where to find her. But that no longer held water.
He couldn’t have hired a solicitor to track her down back then? Or have gone through her parents?
Probably. But he’d believed if she wanted that divorce badly enough, she would find him.
‘You’ve sometimes wished what?’
‘That I could make life better for a child or two.’
She swivelled in her chair, her face turning up to study his. ‘You once told me you no longer wanted children.’
Yes, he had. After her last miscarriage, he’d told her that to protect her health and to save what was evidently unsalvageable: their marriage. So he’d told a lie. Except when he’d said the words, they hadn’t been a lie. He’d just wanted it all to stop.
And it had.
‘I was tired of all the hoops we had to leap through. Of all of the disappointment.’
‘I’m so sorry, Max.’ Her face went from looking up at him as if trying to understand to bending down to stare at the floor.
What the hell?
Realising she might have misunderstood his words, he knelt down beside her in a hurry, taking her chin and forcing her to look at him. ‘I wasn’t disappointed in you, Anna. I was disappointed for you. For both of us. I wanted to be able to snap my fingers and make everything right, and when I couldn’t... It just wore me down, made me feel helpless in a way I’d never felt before.’
‘Like Jessica must feel right now with Nate.’ Her eyes swam with moisture, although none of it spilled over the lower rim of her eyelids.
‘She has a great support network in you and the rest of the family.’ Something Max hadn’t felt as if he’d given to Annabelle. He’d withdrawn more and more of his emotional support, afraid to get attached to a foetus that would never see the light of day. And towards the end, that was what he’d started thinking of them as. Foetuses and not babies. And he’d damned himself each time he’d used that term.
‘She does. Her husband has been her rock as well.’
Unlike him? His jaw tightened, teeth clenching together in an effort to keep from apologising for something that he couldn’t change.
Her eyes focused on him. And then her hand went to his cheek. ‘Don’t. I wasn’t accusing you of not being there, Max. I was the one who pulled away. You did what you could.’
‘It wasn’t enough.’
Her lashes fluttered as her lids closed and her hand fell back to her side. ‘Nothing would have been enough. I was a mess back then. I’m stronger now.’
She was. He saw it in the way she cared for Baby Hope and the rest of her patients. She’d called Jessica’s husband a rock. She could have been describing herself.
‘You were always strong. They were just difficult days.’
Baby Hope stirred in her cot, one of her arms jerking to the side until her fingers were pressed against the clear acrylic of the incubator. Annabelle touched her index finger to the barrier separating her from the baby. ‘This is the strong one. I’m envisioning a bright future for her.’
‘She has a great chance.’
Annabelle sucked down a deep breath and let it out in a rush. ‘Thank you for all you did to help her.’
‘She did most of the work. She stuck around until we could find a donor heart.’
‘Yes, she did.’
Max stood up and held out his hand, the ominous warning of his dream fading slightly. ‘Let’s let her get some rest.’
‘Good idea. I need to get to work and then check in with my sister.’ She took his hand, their gloves preventing them from feeling each other’s skin, but it was still intimate, her grip returning his. He found himself continuing to hold her hand for several seconds longer than necessary. ‘You’ll let me know if there’s any change in her condition, won’t you?’
‘You know I will.’ He paused, not sure how she would feel about what he was about to say. ‘You’ll let me know about Nate, won’t you? I know I’ve never met him, but I care about your family.’
He had loved her parents and siblings, had liked seeing what it was like to be part of a large and caring family. It had had its downsides as well, the births of her nieces and nephews seeming to increase Annabelle’s anguish over her own lack of having babies, but that hadn’t been anyone’s fault. As upset as he’d been at times over what he’d seen as meddling, he was grateful her family had been there to give her the support he’d never had as a child and couldn’t seem to manage as an adult.
‘I will. And thank you.’
With that, Annabelle peeled off her gloves, threw them in the rubbish bin, and went out of the door.
* * *
‘You go to the party, honey.’
Annabelle clenched her phone just a little tighter. ‘Are you sure, Mum? I can spend the night there with you instead.’
‘Don’t do that. Nate is fine. He’s resting comfortably right now.’
‘And Jessie and Walter?’ Her sister had to be frantic with worry. With a husband who travelled five days a week, it couldn’t be easy to deal with a child’s health crisis while his father worked to make a decent living.
‘Walter is staying home this week. They’re setting up timetables with their team of doctors. It looks like Nate’s prognosis is better than it could have been. The tumour is not malignant, and they’re hopeful they can get all of it with surgery.’
Even though it wasn’t malignant, meaning it wouldn’t spread wildly through Nate’s body, it could still regrow, if they didn’t get absolutely every piece of it when they operated. But resecting a tumour and differentiating between tumour cells and healthy tissue was one of the hardest jobs a surgeon had. At least with Baby Hope’s surgery, once the transplant was done, there was no growth of foreign tissue to contend with. There were other problems that could arise, yes, like her a-fib, but cells of the old heart wouldn’t hang around and cause trouble later. Once it was out of the body, it was gone for good.
She hadn’t told her mum yet that Max was working at her hospital or that he was the one she was going to the party with. Somehow she needed to break the news to her. But she wasn’t sure if she should do it now, with the worry of Nate hanging over her head. The last thing her mother needed was to lose sleep over another of her children. Her family had been shocked—and horrified—when they’d heard that she and Max had separated. So she had no idea how her mum would react. She’d probably be thrilled...and hopeful. Something else Annabelle didn’t want her family being. She and Max were not getting back together.
‘Who are you going with? Ella?’
Oh, great. Here it came.
‘No. Not Ella.’ She’d better just get it over with. ‘I’m actually going with Max.’
There was a pause. A long one. Annabelle could practically hear the air between their two phones vibrating.
‘Mum? Are you there?’
‘I’m here.’ Another hesitation. ‘I didn’t know he was back in England.’
‘He came back a week ago.’ She bit her lip. This was turning out to be harder than she’d expected.
‘Okay, then. I didn’t know you’d been in contact with him.’
Oh, yes. Much harder.
‘By coincidence, he’s come to work at the same hospital as I am, here in Cheltenham.’ Before her mother could jump to conclusions, she hurried to finish. ‘He wound up here quite by accident. He’s taking another surgeon’s place while she goes on maternity leave.’
‘You’re positive he didn’t know you were there?’
And there was that note of hopefulness she’d been hoping to avoid.
‘Yes, I’m absolutely positive.’
‘I wonder...’ Her mother let whatever she was going to say trail off into nothing. Then she came back. ‘Why don’t you and Max come to London a little earlier? We’re just getting ready to put up the tree and decorate it. You didn’t help us put on the ornaments last year, and you know everyone would love to have you there. And Max, of course. Nate... Well, he would love it.’
Oh, Lord, how was she going to get out of this? She’d had no idea her mother would suggest she come over and help decorate the tree. Especially not with her ex in tow.
‘I’m not sure Max will want to—’
‘It certainly can’t hurt to ask. And if he doesn’t want to join us, he can just pick you up at the house later and off you’ll go to the party.’ Another pause, quicker this time. ‘What kind of party did you say it was?’
‘A Doctors Without Borders fundraiser.’
‘Isn’t that who Max left—I mean worked with?’
Her mum was right. Annabelle might have been the one to ask him to leave, but Doctors Without Borders had been Max’s escape route. They had used to talk about going and working together. But in the end, Max had gone alone.
‘Yes.’
‘Is he going back with them once he’s finished his contract at the hospital?’
Something in Annabelle’s stomach twisted until it hurt. No, that had been her, clenching her abs until they shook. She’d asked him that same question at the pub. ‘I don’t know what his plans are after that, Mum.’
‘So this might be our last chance to see him for a while?’ Her mum called something to her father, but she couldn’t hear what it was. Great. She could only hope that she wasn’t telling him that Max was back and that it would be good to have the family together again.
Her mum knew that Max had left, but she’d never told her that she’d served him with divorce papers soon afterwards. It had been a painful time in her life and she’d kept most of it to herself. And then as time had gone on and Max hadn’t sent his portion of the paperwork back, it was as if Annabelle had put it to the back of her mind like a bad dream that had happened once and was then forgotten.
This probably wasn’t a good time to bring up the fact that a reconciliation was highly unlikely. Max had given no indication that he wanted to get back together with her. In fact, even when he’d towed her from the restaurant and kissed her in the park, he’d referred to what was going on between them as ‘the spark’. Physical attraction. People could be attracted to each other without it going any deeper than that.
‘I’ll ask him. But don’t be disappointed if he’d rather not come, Mum.’
‘I won’t. But you’ll come, even if he chooses not to, won’t you?’
There was no way she was going to be able to get out of it. And actually she didn’t want to. This was a family tradition that she’d participated in every year except for the last one, when she’d just been getting situated at Teddy’s and had been too busy with all the changes to be able to take a train home to London. With Nate’s diagnosis, though, she had to go. ‘I’ll be there, Mum, but I probably won’t be able to stay for dinner.’
‘Of course not. Tell Max I’m looking forward to seeing him.’
Okay. Hadn’t she just explained that he might not want to come?
She would invite him. And then let him decide what he wanted to do. And if he agreed to go? Well, she’d have to decide how to tell him that her family wasn’t privy to one small detail of their relationship: that not only had she asked him to leave, but she’d also asked him for a divorce. And the only thing lacking to make that happen...was Max’s signature on a piece of paper.
* * *
‘You what?’
Sitting in front of Annabelle’s mum and dad’s house, Max wasn’t sure what on earth had possessed him to say yes to this crazy side trip. Because he was suddenly having second thoughts.
Especially now.
‘You didn’t tell them we’re divorcing?’ The words tasted bitter as he said them, but how could she have neglected to tell her parents that their marriage was over, and that it had been her choice?
Surely they’d realised, when he’d never come home...
‘There just never seemed to be a good time to mention it. Someone was always being born. And then my aunt Meredith passed away a year and a half ago. My dad retired six months after that. It’s just been—’
‘Life as usual in the Brookes’ household.’ He remembered well how frenetic and chaotic things got, with lots of laughter and some tears. It had taken him a while to get used to the noise—and there was a lot of it—but the love they had for each other had won him over. Especially when they had drawn him into the fold as if he’d always been a part of their close-knit group. It was what he’d always wanted, but never had. He’d been in heaven. While it lasted.
‘Please don’t be angry. I’ll tell them eventually. Probably not tonight, since it’s Christmas time, and with Nate’s illness...’
‘It’s okay. Maybe it’s easier this way. They did know we weren’t living together any more.’
‘They knew we’d separated, yes, of course. I left our flat and came home before moving to the Cotswolds.’
‘Yes, the flat...’ He almost laughed. Well, he guessed they were even, then, because there was something he hadn’t told her either. That he hadn’t sold the flat once she’d moved out of it, even though his monthly cleaning lady had called him to let him know Annabelle was moving home and that she’d said he could do what he wished to with the flat. Those words had hit him right in the gut. Somehow he’d never been able to picture her moving out of the place they’d turned into a home. He’d assumed he would sign the place over to her once the paperwork was finalised. But then she’d moved out. And the paperwork had never been signed.
Why was that?
‘What about it?’ Annabelle turned to him, her discomfiture turning to curiosity.
‘We still have it, actually.’
Her head cocked. ‘Still have it?’
‘I never got around to selling it.’
Her indrawn breath was sharp inside the space of his small sports car. ‘But why?’
That was a question he wasn’t going to examine too closely right now. ‘I was overseas on and off and it got pushed to a back burner. As time went on, well, it just never happened.’
‘Who’s living there?’
‘No one. I never sublet it. Suzanne cleans it once a month, just like always. When repairs are needed, her husband comes over and does them.’ He shrugged. ‘I halfway thought maybe I’d return to London at some point.’
Except every time he’d got close to thinking about his home city, he somehow hadn’t been able to bring himself to come back and visit. Instead, he’d landed in several different cities in between his stints with Doctors Without Borders.
Annabelle smiled and it lit up the inside of the car. ‘I’m glad. I loved that place.’
‘So did I.’ Well, they were going to look awfully out of place at a tree-decorating party with their fancy clothes on. But she’d seemed so uncomfortable when she’d relayed her mother’s request that he hadn’t wanted to make her feel even worse—or have to go back to her mum and tell her that he’d refused to take part. That would have been churlish of him. At least now he knew why the invitation had been extended. If they’d been divorced, Max was pretty sure he’d have been persona non grata in this particular family, even if he hadn’t been the one to initiate it.
Climbing out of the car, he went around to Annabelle’s side and opened it for her. Out she stepped, a vision in red. Until she tried to move to the side so he could close the door and tripped over the hem of her gown, careening sideways. He grabbed her around the waist, his fingers sliding across the bare skin of her back as he did so.
Her momentum kept her moving and her arms went around his neck in an effort to regain her footing. ‘Oh! Max, I’m so sorry...’
Just then the front door to the house opened, and people poured out of the opening, catching them tangled together.
Not good.
Because it didn’t look as if he’d just been saving her from a fall. It looked as if they were having a private moment.
Not hardly.
Annabelle saw them at the same time as he did and quickly pulled back. So fast that she almost flung herself off balance all over again. He kept hold of her for a second or two longer to make sure she had her footing. Then they were surrounded by her family, and Annabelle was hugging various adults and squatting down to squeeze little ones of all sizes. He couldn’t prevent a smile. This was the Annabelle he remembered, uncaring of whether or not her dress got dusty. The people she loved always came first.
Just as he once had.
He’d forgotten that in all of the unhappy moments that had passed between them. These had been good times. Happy times. And...he missed them.
George Brookes came around and extended his hand. ‘Good to see you, Maxwell.’ His booming voice and formal use of his name was just like old times as well. There wasn’t a hint of recrimination on the man’s face. Or in his attitude. Just a father welcoming his son-in-law for a typical visit.
Max squeezed his hand, reaching over to give him a man’s quick embrace, then gave himself over to greeting the family he’d once been a part of.
Bittersweet. He shouldn’t have come. And yet he was very glad he had.
Jessica came up to hug him. He held her shoulders and looked into her face. ‘How are you and Walter holding up?’
Her chin wobbled precariously, but she didn’t start crying. ‘We’re doing better now that you and Annie are home.’
Home.
Yes, he’d once considered this the home his childhood abode never was. And the Brookeses had been the family he no longer had. Despite his own parents’ faults, he suddenly missed them. Regretted never once visiting their graves.
Once he’d lost the right to be a part of Annabelle’s family, the children of Africa had become his family. And they had loved more freely and with more joy than anything he’d ever seen. They’d taught him a lot about unconditional love.
Something he’d never really given to anyone. Even Anna. He’d always held something back, afraid of being hurt. And in the end, he’d demanded she give up something she dearly wanted.
He’d been wrong in that. Even though he’d told himself time and time again that it had been to save Annabelle the pain of future miscarriages, maybe he’d been more interested in saving himself.
He didn’t have time to think about it for long, though, because he was soon whisked back into the bosom of a family he’d dearly missed, sitting on the arm of the sofa while Annabelle and her sisters held up ornament after ornament, reminiscing about where each had come from. Some were home-made. Some were fancy and expensive. But each held some kind of special meaning to this family.
Anna was gorgeous in her flowing red gown. Off the shoulder, but with some loose straps that draped over her upper arms, it fitted her perfectly, the snug top giving way to a full loose skirt that swished with every twitch of her hips. And they twitched a lot. Every once in a while she threw him a smile that was more carefree than any he’d seen from her in a long, long time. He knew that smile. She’d once worn it almost constantly. When he’d come home from work. When they’d gazed at each other across the dinner table. When they’d made love deep into the night...
His throat tightened, and he dipped a finger beneath his bow tie in an effort to give himself a little more room to breathe, even though he knew that wasn’t the problem. In his hands, Max held the long white gloves Anna planned on wearing to the party, but had taken off so she wouldn’t drop and break any ornaments. In the back of all their minds was Nate and his diagnosis, but when Max looked at the little blond boy, he was smiling and laughing on the floor as he played with his siblings and cousins. Suddenly Max wished he could commit this scene to memory so that he would never forget this moment.
When Nate got up from his place on the floor and came to stand in front of him, looking at him with curious eyes, the tightness in his throat increased.
‘Where’s my ball?’
He blinked. Max wasn’t sure why the boy was asking him, but he was not about to refuse him. ‘I don’t know.’
‘You help find?’
‘Sure.’ Getting to his feet, he tucked Anna’s gloves into his pocket and held out a hand to the little boy. As he did, his doctor’s mind took in the subtle signs of illness. Nate’s small stature, the frailness of his fingers beneath Max’s. Jessica sent him a look with raised brows.
‘He’s looking for his ball?’ Max had to raise his voice to be heard.
‘It’s in the basket by the far wall in the dining room.’ Jessica glanced at her son, the raw emotion in her eyes unmistakable. ‘Thanks, Max.’
‘Not a problem.’
Together he and the boy made their way into the dining room. It looked the same as it always had, polished cherry table laid with glistening china and silver for the meal they would be having later. Gloria had never been worried about breakage, even with such a large and active family. His own mum had rarely set out the good china.
‘There’s the basket, Nate. Let’s see if Mum was right.’
A white wicker chest was pushed against a wall, a large contingent of photographs flowing up and around it until they filled the space with black and white images.
Above the pictures ornate black letters gave a message to all who dined there.
In Stormy Seas,
Family Is A Sheltered Cove.
And it was. This family represented safety. Too many faces to count, but there must have been thirty frames, each telling a story. The birth of a child. The winning of trophies. The weddings of each of the girls. Jessica and Walter, Paula and Mark, Mallory and Stewart...
No. His heart caught on a stuttered beat, and he couldn’t stop himself from moving closer. Annabelle and Max.
That day was pinned in his memory, superseding even his most recent ones. Anna, fresh from his kiss, was staring up at him with eyes filled with love. And he was... He had his arm wrapped around her waist as if he was afraid she might wander away from him if he didn’t keep her close.
And she had. They’d both wandered.
Annabelle said she hadn’t told her parents about the divorce. He wasn’t sure if Gloria just hadn’t had a picture to replace this one with, or if she’d left it up in hopes that one day he and her daughter might mend their fences and get back together.
Little did she know that those fences had been irrevocably broken. His gaze moved over the rest of the pictures. There were no others of them. Maybe because they hadn’t had all that much to celebrate during their marriage.
Part of that was his fault. They’d been fixated on having a baby for so long, they’d never made time to look at the other things they’d shared.
A small hand tugged on his. ‘My ball? In basket.’
That was right. He’d forgotten about Nate and his ball. Forcing the lump in his throat to shift to the side, he gave the child a smile. ‘Let’s see if it’s where Mum said it was.’
He opened the basket to find children’s toys of every shape and size. Gloria must keep them for all of the grandkids to play with while they visited. And all of Annabelle’s sisters now had children. Except for her.
He glanced through the doorway to see her still helping to decorate the tree, laughing at something someone had said. She was truly beautiful. Inside and out.
She seemed to have made her peace with not having kids. At least from what he could tell. So maybe it was time for him to accept that as well and start finding the joy in life. Turning back to his task, he found Nate trying to lean over the basket to get a green spongy ball the size of a football. ‘Is that it, buddy?’
Grabbing the object from the chest, he handed it to Nate, who let go of his hand and gripped the item to his chest. ‘Ball!’
‘I guess we got the right one. Watch your fingers.’ He carefully lowered the lid and latched it to keep small hands from getting pinched. They made their way back to the room and Nate went straight to Jessica, showing her his prize.
‘Wonderful. You’ve found it!’ She glanced up at Max with a mouthed, ‘Thank you.’
He gave her a nod in return. Annabelle handed an ornament to her dad, who still stood ramrod straight and tall, probably from his days in the military. He gave her a quick hug and took the item, stretching up to put it on the very top of the tree. The man then turned towards the rest of the people assembled. ‘Shall we light it before Annie and Max have to leave?’
A roared ‘Yes!’ went up from all the kids, making the adults smile. He glanced at his watch. Seven-thirty. The gala started in half an hour, so they did need to leave soon, since the party was on the other side of the city.
Annabelle came over to stand beside him.
With the flick of a switch all the lights in the living room went off, leaving them in darkness. An affected ‘oooooh’ went up from the people gathered there.
Max stood there, the urge to put his arm around Anna’s waist almost irresistible. The way he’d done in years past. He fought it for a moment or two, then gave up. His contract wasn’t for ever. Once Sienna came back from maternity leave, he would be on his way again. So why not do this while he still could?
He slid his hand across the small of her back, the warm bare skin just above the edge of the fabric brushing against his thumb. Curving his fingers around the side of her waist, he was surprised when she reciprocated, her arm gliding around his back, leaning into him slightly as she smiled at something else her father was saying.
Then, just as suddenly as the overhead lights had been turned off, another set of lights flicked on. Swathed in layers of tiny glowing bulbs, the Christmas tree lit up the whole room like magic.
Not ‘like’ magic. It was magic. The tree. The night. The family. It was as if he’d never left three years ago. He didn’t know whether to be glad or horrified. Had he not moved forward even a little?
No, he’d done nothing to forge a life without Anna. But he needed to either do just that, or...
Or try to do something to make things right between them.
Only, Max wasn’t sure that was a good idea. They’d wounded each other without even trying. Wouldn’t they just take up where they’d left off and do it all over again, if given half a chance? Wouldn’t she ask him to leave once again?
He didn’t know. All he knew was that he wanted to live here in this moment. Surrounded by Annabelle’s family and the life and love they shared between them.
Except they needed to leave, if they were going to make it to the gala in time.
As if reading his thoughts, Annabelle looked up at him, her eyes shining with a strange glow that was probably due to the lights on the tree. ‘We should go.’
‘Are you sure you don’t want to stay here and eat with your family?’
She lifted a handful of the fabric of her dress. ‘We got all dressed up, so let’s just enjoy the night. Okay? No expectations. No preconceived ideas.’
That shocked him. Annabelle was by nature a rigid planner. The attempts to get pregnant had been accomplished with clinical precision—the spontaneity wiped out more and more with each new wave of treatment.
If she hadn’t just said those last words, he would have assumed she was following through with what they’d planned to do. But something about the way she said it...
Well, if that was what she wanted, who was Max to disagree? And maybe it was the twinkle lights messing with some rational part of his brain, or the fact that her dress clung in all the right places, but he suddenly wanted to have Annabelle all to himself.
