Читать книгу Perfect Proposals Collection - Lynne Marshall - Страница 27

LATER that day, Gavin Hastings stirred in his hospital bed, where he’d been air-lifted by helicopter, and examined his disinclination to allow the sedative he’d been given to take effect.

He’d undergone a minor operation to have the bullet removed from his arm and received the good news that the bone hadn’t been splintered. He’d been visited by his mother, who’d then flown on to Kin Can to take charge. She might have a memory like a sieve these days, but when she was in control mode she was highly effective.

Which was not to say she hadn’t wept a couple of tears over him to think how close he’d come to dying, but she’d recovered swiftly, and had left him saying, ‘All’s well that ends well, darling!’

But had it ended?

He moved again, trying to get comfortable without disturbing the drip in his arm.

You can’t ask someone to marry you, and mean it, only to black out before she’s had a chance to answer, and say it’s ended, he told himself.

When he’d come to, it had been to find himself in a chopper on the way to hospital with no sign of Jo, who’d been left behind at the station.

But why was he so sure he’d meant it? he pondered.

Why not say, for example—I think it would be a damn good idea if you came to bed with me, Jo Lucas, because I’ve wanted you since you got rid of your anorak and your strides and revealed those lovely clean lines as well as an awful wrath at being importuned like that….

Not the time and place, of course, he reasoned, but perhaps more accurate than telling her he wanted to marry her?

No.

The negative stood out starkly in his mind. For whatever reason, and there were plenty—she was brave, proud, dignified, quietly humorous at times—it was marriage he wanted. But were any of those the right reasons?

They were certainly not the reasons he’d married Rosie’s mother. Not the earth-shattering joy of knowing, for whatever reason, you were wildly, madly in love.

He rubbed his jaw. He’d been a lot younger then—when they’d first met at least, he and Sasha. Maybe maturity and the middle-thirties made you see things differently?

Maybe looking for love, as he’d done at times after Sasha’s death, had produced a certain cynicism in him—of course it had!—with himself as much as anything.

So why—he gritted his teeth—did he have this firm conviction he needed to marry Jo Lucas? Especially after telling her he never intended to marry again as no other woman could ever match up to his dead wife.

Rosie, he thought suddenly, and his mother, Adele. Did the seeds of this lie with them?

It was true that, for the last couple of years, Rosie had been unable to understand why she didn’t have a mother like all her friends and her cousins. It was true Adele had been a godsend, but how fair was it to her to keep her tied to Kin Can for Rosie for ever?

Especially, now he came to think of it, after she’d established her own life in Brisbane several years after his father had died, and seemed to thrive on it.

It was that life, after all, that called her back to Brisbane so often, and it had been no problem to take Rosie with her. But Rosie started school next year, so hopping off with her grandmother frequently was not going to be possible, unless she moved to Brisbane with Adele for the school term and spent the holidays on Kin Can.

How did he feel about that?

And—why the hell hadn’t he thought of this before?—did Adele feel she’d done her stint at Kin Can and deserved to retire gracefully? Was that why her time on the station was spent—he gritted his teeth again—redecorating until there was no corner of the house that hadn’t been remodelled, repainted, re-upholstered or re-carpeted? Because otherwise the life bored her now? She wasn’t a born country woman, he recalled.

‘I see,’ he said to himself. ‘All this has been lurking at the back of your mind but you’ve been too damned arrogant to let it see the light of day or—too bloody something to admit you need a wife! You need a mother for Rosie, you need to allow your own mother her freedom, and who better than a girl who likes, admires and sounds as if she understands kids?

‘At the same time, a girl you want as you haven’t wanted anyone for a long time?’