Was Miranda here, then? She must be. He hadn’t had time to think about it. So this was the day, then, that he…or they…had managed to put off for so long.

And there she was, right in front of him, almost exactly the way Nick remembered her—the way he’d glimpsed her two years ago, before making that very fast and very firm decision to pull back. There she was, stepping into the breach with her cheerful, elfin and slightly mischievous face, her calm, sweet voice, her practical attitude, her slim, almost tomboy build and her heart worn carelessly and innocently on her sleeve.

‘Hello, Nick,’ she said.

Bestselling romance author Lilian Darcy has written over seventy-five novels for Mills & Boon® Medical™ Romance, Special Edition and more. She currently lives in Australia’s capital city, Canberra, with her historian husband and their four children. When she is not writing or supporting her children’s varied interests, Lilian likes to quilt, garden or cook. She also loves winter sports and travel.

Lilian’s career highlights include numerous appearances on romance bestseller lists, three nominations for the Romance Writers of America’s prestigious RITA® Award, and translation into twenty different languages. Find out more about Lilian and her books or contact her at www.liliandarcy.com

Recent titles by the same author:

THE CHILDREN’S DOCTOR AND THE SINGLE MUM

LONG-LOST SON: BRAND-NEW FAMILY*

PREGNANT WITH HIS CHILD*

*Crocodile Creek

A PROPOSAL WORTH WAITING FOR

BY

LILIAN DARCY

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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PROLOGUE

HE SAW her through the open doorway of Josh’s hospital room and stopped, his body dropping instantly into a silent, wary freeze, half-masked by the door itself, while he prayed she hadn’t seen him.

Miranda Carlisle.

The name shouldn’t mean so much to him after so long. It had been eight years since they’d last seen each other. And if the intervening time since he and Miranda had studied medicine together provided a protective cushion, then surely his marriage to Anna should do so even more.

But my marriage is in so much trouble…

Nick shut his eyes for a moment, not willing to face the thought. He could hear Anna’s murmuring voice as she sat in the chair beside Josh’s bed, just out of his line of sight. She had her usual barrage of almost obsessive questions and concerns. Miranda’s replies sounded patient and cheerful and clear, but he doubted whether they would quieten Anna’s fears for long.

When he opened his eyes again, he saw Miranda scribbling some lines in Josh’s notes, her head bent a little to reveal the delicate shape of her neck and her elfin ears showing pale pink through her silky dark hair. She still wore it in that swinging ponytail he remembered, and it made her look young and vibrantly energetic, like a jazz dancer or the leader of a troop of Guides.

She was Josh’s doctor now. His new respiratory specialist, because the previous one, Dr McCubbin, had just retired. Anna was thrilled with Dr Carlisle, after Josh’s emergency admission yesterday, and had said so in her usual over-detailed, stress-filled way.

But Nick hadn’t admitted to their past association, other than to say to Anna in passing, ‘We went through medicine together. She worked bloody hard every step of the way. I’m not surprised you think she’s good.’

Good, and dangerous.

Dangerous?

He was shocked to recognise the fact, but he was in no doubt of it. If their brief, passionate past relationship was going to flare in his memory in such vivid colours every time he saw her, then he should steer clear of her in the future as much as he could. For the sake of his very shaky marriage. For the sake of politeness and professionalism. For the sake of…yeah…a few things inside himself that it wouldn’t be productive or relevant or safe at this point to confront, when there was so much else of more importance going on.

On paper, you’d think that avoiding Miranda Carlisle wouldn’t be possible at all. Nick’s own son. His son’s doctor. The scarily unstable nature of Josh’s asthma attacks. The relationship between Miranda and little Josh would definitely be ongoing.

But when Nick thought of the way Anna had been reacting to Josh’s illness since it had been diagnosed eleven months ago, he knew with his usual frustration and sinking heart that his wife would be only too happy if he kept out of the way and left all the questions, the emotions and the sacrifice to her.

Now, for example. She wouldn’t be pleased to see him, wouldn’t appreciate how much he’d shoved his schedule around at Royal Victoria Hospital in order to get here at this time of day.

He saw Miranda tuck Josh’s notes into the plastic pocket at the end of the bed. It looked as if she was leaving. He ducked quickly back against the corridor wall before heading into the nearest visitor’s toilet.

She hadn’t seen him. Good. He would wait until she was certain to be gone—as a reconstructive surgeon who made these kinds of hospital rounds himself on a daily basis, he knew how to time these things—and then he’d go in to greet his wife and son.

Nick was wrong. Miranda had seen him, although she guessed he didn’t know it. When he’d first appeared and then ducked back, the movement had caught her eye at once. She’d been steeling herself for the encounter, so she had been on the alert.

Her focus had been on Josh and his mother, but she’d glimpsed the figure in the doorway and managed to catch a couple more angled, hidden glances as she’d written in Josh’s notes.

Handy things, those notes.

As soon as she’d seen the name Devlin, Nicholas, listed as the patient’s father, she’d wondered. Her former colleague, James McCubbin, had mentioned in passing a young patient named Devlin with a surgeon for a father. Now James had retired, and his patients would be parcelled out to the other three doctors in the practice.

By virtue of being the one on call when Josh had come into the emergency department with his mother yesterday afternoon, she’d inherited him, and a quick check of the contact details had confirmed that his father was that Nick, her Nick, the one who had sneaked up on her heart without her knowing it during the course of six years of shared medical studies and had then shattered it to pieces in one single night.

Or maybe she’d broken her own heart by giving it away too eagerly. She’d never really been sure how those things went. Her fault, or his? She could see, now, how much her failed six-year relationship with Ian Mackenzie had been the result of the lessons she’d learned…or had thought she’d learned…from what had happened with Nick.

And now she was Nick’s son’s doctor, and he’d disappeared from the doorway, and she wondered if the reason had anything to do with her. Maybe it was only that his pager had gone off. But if he was trying to avoid her…

Well, he couldn’t do that forever. At some point, they’d have to connect.

CHAPTER ONE

INCREDIBLY, it took two years.

Having taken on Josh Devlin as a patient when he was three years old, Miranda didn’t see his father again until the little boy was five…

‘I can’t come, Miranda. I have to pull out of the whole first week. Maybe even the whole trip.’ Anna Devlin looked white with stress and half-blind to anything else going on around her. She grabbed Miranda’s arm in the middle of the check-in concourse at Melbourne’s Tullamarine Airport and made the announcement before Miranda even had time to greet her properly.

‘Hey…’

‘My mother’s broken her leg. She’s not going to manage. It just happened today. She slipped on her front steps. I’ve been in six places at once, on the phone, at the hospital. And, of course, it all falls to me. My sisters are saying they can’t possibly come down. I’m so sorry, Miranda. I’m a complete mess.’

‘It’s OK. Slow down a bit, Anna.’ Miranda took a couple of controlled breaths herself in an attempt to encourage her patient’s mother to find some calm. ‘First, is Josh upset that you won’t be going with him? Where is he?’

Anna shook her head distractedly. ‘N-no, he’s all right. Sort of. He’s here, minding his suitcase. A bit overwhelmed. Am I doing the right thing? I can’t see any other option. I’m the one who’s really panicking. I’m trying not to let it show.’

Trying, and failing dismally.

Anna was often emotional and tunnel-visioned, verging on obsessive, although Miranda had tried in various ways to get her to see that it wasn’t good for her son. Anna said all the right things, but couldn’t put her resolutions into practice.

‘Do you want to look at cancelling? Rescheduling for another time?’ Over Anna’s shoulder, Miranda saw two more families arrive, but there was still plenty of time. The flight to Queensland wasn’t due to board for another half-hour.

Anna shook her head at Miranda’s questions. ‘No, Josh would be so disappointed. We’ve been talking about it for weeks. No, he definitely has to go. It would take months to schedule him another stay, wouldn’t it?’

‘Probably,’ Miranda had to admit.

Places at the Crocodile Creek Kids’ Camp on Wallaby Island off the coast of northern Queensland were in high demand. Miranda had a zing in her spirits this afternoon, herself, even though she was going there not on a private holiday but in her professional capacity.

Anna let go of her arm at last and she spotted five-year-old Josh just a few metres away, sitting obediently on his suitcase near the check-in counter. He looked far more calm than his mother. Too calm, maybe. A little subdued. He was still essentially the same kid Miranda had first met two years ago—small for his age, endearingly gap-toothed and urchin-like, a real sweetheart with a healthy capacity for mischief and numerous hospital admissions under his belt. Anna was totally and single-mindedly devoted to him, and he was her only child.

There wouldn’t be any more now.

Anna and Nick were divorced.

‘He’ll be fine,’ she promised Anna. ‘We’ll take care of him. We have a couple of other kids coming without parents.’

She gestured towards awkward, unconfident Stella Vavunis, aged thirteen, whom she’d already ticked off on her list. Stella’s dad was supposed to be coming later in the week. As one of the major donors to the new medical centre on Wallaby Island, he would be a guest of honour at Saturday’s official opening. For the first few days, however, Stella would be on her own.

In remission from bone cancer, Stella wasn’t one of Miranda’s own patients, but her heart went out to the girl anyway. Her dark hair was growing back wispy and thin after her chemo, and she’d lost the lower half of her right leg. Adept on her elbow crutches, she was intensely self-conscious about her lost limb and had her new prosthesis covered in a pair of heavy jeans that would be way too hot for the climate of North Queensland.

‘He’s not coming without a parent,’ Anna announced, her stress level visibly rising again. She had an exotic, compelling kind of beauty, with huge eyes, high cheekbones and full lips, and the combination of her good looks and high emotion had begun to draw some attention.

Miranda frowned, a little slow. Too slow, considering how long she’d been waiting for something like this to happen. ‘But…?’

‘That’s the whole thing, Miranda.’ Miranda’s arm was once again captured in a tight grip. ‘That’s the whole reason—well, abig part of it—why I’m so stressed.’ She added in a tone that was half wail, half whisper, ‘He’s coming with Nick.’

Right. With Nick.

She must have looked shocked—and shouldn’t have let it show—because Anna said in a tight voice, ‘Please. Don’t make me dread this any more than I am already. Don’t make Josh dread it, especially.’

‘I didn’t mean—’

‘Nick should be here within the next ten minutes. He promised me he wouldn’t muck me around on this.’

‘So he’s coming for the whole two weeks? At such short notice?’

Anna rolled her eyes and drawled, ‘I know. It’s a miracle. Actually making a sacrifice for his son for once.’

‘Well, I meant—’ Miranda meant that it was a miracle, just as Anna had said, but without the other woman’s edge of sarcasm and bitterness. It was great that the persistently absent surgeon could step in to fill the breach, just hours in advance of the flight. Her initial shocked gut reaction was her own problem, not Anna’s.

‘I’m hoping it’ll only be for the first week,’ Anna was saying. ‘I’m going to find a way to get up there for the second week if it kills me! Two weeks with Nick will ruin Josh’s stay.’

Had the little boy heard? Miranda wondered. Anna wasn’t sufficiently careful in what she said around her son.

Whether it was one week or two, Nick must have called in some favours, Miranda realised. He would have made a lot of phone calls that morning to get everything organised and taken care of. His willingness to make the effort did surprise her somewhat, when she thought about it. She’d been forced, by his persistent non-appearance, to the conclusion that he was a very uninvolved parent, and the fact bothered her more than it should.

Anna and Nick had been divorced for months, now, but even before that, Anna was always the parent who brought Josh in for appointments, always the one who phoned with questions, and whose signature appeared on admission and consent forms when Josh was in hospital.

Miranda knew that Nick had made the odd appearance since that first time when she’d seen him pause and stand half- hidden by the open door. She’d seen his name in Josh’s patient notes a couple of times—‘7 p.m. Dad visited.’ But they’d never come face to face. To be honest, for reasons that she didn’t want to examine too closely, she’d been relieved about that. Maybe she’d even contributed to it, in how she timed her hospital visits and routine check-ups.

Their failure to connect with each other gave a nagging, unfinished quality to her memories of their past, however. Everything she knew about Nick Devlin’s attitudes and behaviour as a father over the past couple of years she’d heard from Anna. Very little of it was good. Nick was apparently cool, distant and uncaring, and Josh shrank from him whenever father and son were together.

Funny how things happened.

Years ago, younger and more naive about men in general and about Nick Devlin in particular, Miranda would have predicted he’d make a great father. She was so sure that in their one night together she had suddenly seen—had been allowed to see—beyond the arrogant, unapproachable exterior to the person he really was. But apparently she hadn’t understood him anywhere near as accurately and deeply as she’d thought back then.

Ships that passed in the night, and all that. Women were sometimes way too good at kidding themselves about that stuff. Was that the problem? Her own poor judgement? Had she learned enough since then to avoid similar mistakes in future? The memories were still strong, but Miranda didn’t trust them any more. She must have read him wrong when they’d been medical students together. A wife—even an ex- wife—would know him better.

How am I going to feel about seeing him?

For better or for worse, she was about to find out.

Nick paid off the cab driver, grabbed his duffel bag from beside the kerb and headed for the terminal. He’d promised Anna that he wouldn’t be late and he wasn’t.

Or almost wasn’t.

He’d had a sick-making fifteen minutes of panic at home about what he should be bringing for his son, and as usual he couldn’t deal with the strength of the emotion because it brought so much other stuff with it.

He had some snacks and a drink for the flight, a couple of picture books and the kind of cheap toy that a five-year-old kid could play with on an aircraft tray table, and Anna would have Josh’s asthma gear, of course, as well as his clothing, but…

Should he be bringing a proper gift? A camera, or snorkelling equipment? He already had Josh’s Christmas present, a substantial addition to his Lego collection. Should he bring that, make it a going-away treat, and get him something else for Christmas, which was still two months away? Or did that smack far too much of an attempt to bribe his son for love?

The decision paralysed him.

Yes, he, Dr Nicholas Devlin, MB BS FRACS, Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeon at Melbourne’s renowned Royal Victoria Hospital, who was normally able to make life- altering decisions in seconds if he had to, could not for the life of him decide how to handle the issue of his son’s gift.

He knew what Anna would say. ‘Oh, no, Nick, you didn’t!’

Inevitably, whatever decision he made, it would be drastically and utterly the wrong one as far as she was concerned. It was a pathological condition in their impossible relationship, and a basic tenet of her maternal faith, that everything he did with, or to, or for their asthma-stricken son, everything he felt, everything he planned and almost every word he said, was and always had been wrong.

Although this was probably not the major reason for their divorce, it hadn’t helped, and things hadn’t improved since.

OK, so since he couldn’t win no matter what he did, he’d go with his own convictions and not try to second-guess what she would want. Unless she asked directly, he wouldn’t tell her about what he had and hadn’t brought for Josh. The Lego could stay at home, and if Josh wanted to take photos or try snorkelling, they’d pick up what they needed on the spot.

Decision made.

Jaw squared.

Emotion pushed safely below the surface where it couldn’t get in the way.

Sorted.

By the time he’d thrown off the panic and the bitterness, remembered how to act like a surgeon instead of a powerless and frustrated non-custodial parent, and realised he hadn’t yet called for a taxi, a vital fifteen minutes had passed and he was running late.

He saw Anna’s pale, accusing face as he approached the check-in concourse. She must have been looking for him, scanning for his figure above the heads of the crowd.

And she wanted him to be late. He knew it. Later than this. Really, unforgivably, flagrantly, uncaringly late, so that she could tell people about it— ‘Can you believe he missed the flight? Josh had to go up on his own!’—and it would count as yet another black mark against his name.

‘What happened?’ she asked with angry accusation as soon as he came up to her, as if she expected at minimum a six-car pile-up on the freeway.

‘Taxi.’ He’d stopped making lengthy excuses long ago. Had stopped arguing, stopped appealing to her common sense and her notion of justice, stopped trying to get her to see how obsessively over-protective she was, and how much she shut him out of their son’s life. Maybe she was right to consider that he didn’t belong there, he sometimes felt.

Before he could get past her to greet Josh, Anna delivered a stinging, rapid-fire round of instructions about their son’s care and finished, ‘Nick, if you stuff this up, Josh has a miserable time, I will kill you!’

Ignoring the threat to his life, which his ex-wife found a reason to hit him with almost every time they spoke, he said through a tight jaw, ‘I’m not going to stuff this up. Why do you think I would?’

‘Because you never take his health seriously enough. Because you hardly know him, and he hardly knows you. He doesn’t trust you.’

‘And that’s my fault, is it?’ he added quickly, almost growling the words, ‘Forget it, forget it.’ They’d been through that one a thousand times. ‘Look, I know you’re not happy about this. But Josh and I will be fine.’ He took a deep breath and prepared himself to say the L-word. ‘I love my son, Anna, and don’t you ever, ever dare to suggest otherwise!’

‘Love isn’t enough,’ she muttered, turning away from him so that her face was screened by her well-cut fall of light brown hair. ‘Nowhere near enough.’

For her, it was a pretty generous concession, so he left the subject alone, said a stilted goodbye, and looked over at Josh, his stomach already sinking at the thought of what he might see in his son’s face.

Indifference. Dislike. Fear…

Anna reached their little boy first, of course. While Nick was still three paces away, she bent down and engulfed Josh in a huge, constricting hug as she prepared to say goodbye. She was actually shaking, Nick saw, as she let forth an intense stream of words close to his ear. Nick only caught a few words. ‘Don’t want…terrified…every single minute.’

Josh nodded. Was he wheezing? What the hell was Anna saying? That she was terrified?

‘And you’ll phone if there are any problems,’ she finished, beginning to stand so that Nick could hear her better. ‘Anything that’s making you unhappy.’

If Dad is making you unhappy, Nick heard in her tone. At least she managed not to say it out loud for once. He stepped forward. ‘Go, Anna,’ he said, more calmly than he felt. ‘Josh and I will be fine, won’t we, little guy?’

‘Don’t call him that,’ Anna snarled through the side of her mouth, and tore herself away, disappearing behind a noisy tour group before he could reply.

Hell.

He’d meant it as an endearment. If Josh was sensitive about being small for his age, Nick hadn’t known. But, then, how would he? Anna made it so difficult for them to spend any real time together, and she never willingly shared her insights about their son. If Josh was wary and distant, it was her doing, wasn’t it?

Or was it his own lack of perception that was the problem? His tendency to pull back when emotions grew risky and ran high? His reluctance to show his deepest feelings?

A wave of self-doubt washed over him and he stepped away, didn’t drop into a Josh-level squat as he’d intended and wanted to, didn’t pick up the colourful backpack with the inhalers and spacer and written asthma action plan inside, even though he could definitely hear that Josh was wheezing. And he didn’t put his arm around his son’s little shoulder in case Josh pushed him away.

This kind of self-doubt had been such a rare thing in his life until Josh’s birth that he still didn’t know how to handle it. He’d been taught to believe in himself, to act as if he was in the right even when he wasn’t, to keep the façade of strength and ego and self-control in place at all times, no matter what he might be feeling inside. He’d doubted himself at times, of course, but he’d always mastered it, never let it hold him back.

The slow, horrible breakdown of his marriage to Anna and the gulf in their attitudes to Josh had thrown a new light on everything he’d thought he knew about himself, and it was still doing so. Did he listen to the doubts, ignore them, or shoot them down?

In a stark moment of anguish, he decided that Anna was right. He and Josh didn’t know each other or trust each other well enough to be doing this—going away together, going to camp, father and son. He blamed her for it, but however it had happened…perhaps he was more at fault than he’d ever admitted…it was a reality. He felt ill-equipped and at sea, daunted at the prospect of fulfilling all Anna’s dire predictions and fears, and messing this up.

Hurting Josh.

Scaring him off.

Saying and doing all the wrong things.

Sabotaging the holiday’s hopes and promises the way he’d sabotaged his personal life in so many other ways.

‘Dr Carlisle?’ Josh’s voice sounded small and scared.

Dr Carlisle…

‘Dr Carlisle, I think I need to use my inhaler.’ The name jolted Nick out of his negative thoughts. Was Miranda here, then? Was she—hell!—coming on this camp? She must be. Of course there would be medical people accompanying the group. He hadn’t had time to think about it. So this was the day, then, that he…or they…had managed to put off for so long.

‘Hey, are you wheezing?’

And there she was, right in front of him, almost exactly the way Nick remembered her, the way he’d glimpsed her two years ago, before making that very fast and very firm decision to pull back. There she was, stepping into the breach with her cheerful, elfin and slightly mischievous face, her calm, sweet voice, her practical attitude, her slim, almost boyish build and her heart worn carelessly and innocently on her sleeve.

‘Hello, Nick,’ she said.

Ten years. Miranda wasn’t going to count the near-miss from two years ago. Of course he remembered her and knew exactly who she was, exactly where she fitted into his past. She saw it in his face, when he reached out a hand for her to shake. ‘We haven’t…uh…managed to connect since you started treating Josh,’ he said.

He wore the same aura of cool and rather distant confidence that she recognised, and that she’d only once seen truly and seriously slip. He used his body the same way, too. He never paraded his height or the strength in his shoulders, but, then, a man didn’t need to when he was as tall and strong as Nick. He was imposing without even trying.

‘No, we haven’t.’

On the surface, their words took care of the subject, but she strongly suspected it would come up again.

Physically, he’d barely changed. His lightly tanned skin had done a little more living, and it showed in the fine creases beginning to form around his eyes and mouth. His body had hardened. She could imagine him running several kilometres a day, or going for gym sessions at six in the morning before starting surgery or hospital rounds.

‘Anna has a lot of confidence in you,’ he added, ‘which is great.’

‘I’m glad you were able to come at such short notice,’ she told him. And meant it, because ten years was a long time, and this man was a patient’s father now, nothing more. She had to remember that. Had to. Hell, what was the alternative? ‘It’ll be great for Josh to have his dad there.’

‘You think?’

‘Well, yes.’

Didn’t he agree? Was that a cynical drawl, or something else? Anna had been very nervous and wound up about the whole thing, which was typical, but her fears did have some basis in reality—at least as far as Josh’s health was concerned. Maybe the man seriously didn’t want to be in for this assignment, and his reluctance and lack of interest would ruin Josh’s whole camp experience.

But Miranda couldn’t think about that abstract possibility right now. In fact, she couldn’t think about Nick Devlin at all. She had to deal with the concrete reality that Josh’s asthma attack was getting more severe by the second. With a sinking heart, she saw the Allandales arriving with their thirteen-year-old daughter—verging on late, heavily laden with luggage, instantly wanting and expecting her full attention, as they always did.

Pretending she hadn’t seen them, she bent down to take Josh’s backpack, wanting to pull out his inhaler and spacer. His breathing was getting worse and he looked increasingly distressed as the seconds passed. He was scrabbling at his backpack now, trying to get it open, but the zip seemed to be stuck and he hadn’t considered his father as a possible source of help.

‘Give the backpack to me, sweetheart,’ Miranda urged him. ‘Don’t try to do it yourself. You just keep breathing, OK?’

‘Dr Carlisle!’ Rick Allandale reached her, his knees roughly at her eye level.

Cutting off what would probably be a lengthy list of questions, explanations or complaints, none of which she needed now, she told him, ‘Let me tick Lauren’s name off on my list in a minute, Mr Allandale. We’re waiting until everyone’s here before we check in.’

‘Do you know his action plan off the top of your head?’ Nick asked in her ear.

Miranda felt rather than saw him. He’d squatted down to Josh’s level, just as she had done, and his well-muscled upper arm bumped her shoulder while his backside rested on his heels. She caught the faint waft of some very pleasant male grooming product. Aftershave or shampoo, or maybe just plain old soap.

He didn’t wait for her answer. ‘Because I do. You have other people to take care of. Let me handle this.’

‘Everyone else can wait,’ she answered, not sure if he understood the urgency. He must surely realise that the attack was being exacerbated by Josh’s mix of anxiety and over-excitement.

Too aware that he hadn’t moved further away, Miranda uncapped the Ventolin inhaler and attached it to the spacer, helped Josh get the other end of the spacer ready at his lips. ‘OK, ready to breathe out? Now…’

But Josh couldn’t concentrate and, even with the spacer, he mistimed the dose and took the spacer from his lips too soon. Miranda saw a puff like smoke as most of the drug escaped into the air.

Lauren Allandale was watching Josh’s struggle for breath and his clumsiness with the inhaler, as were a couple of other kids and a parent or two. The atmosphere was chaotic and claustrophobic. Another big group of tourists had just arrived, ready to check in for their flight, and the tour leader was yelling instructions to them in a language Miranda couldn’t identify. Korean? More stares arrowed in Josh’s direction.

‘Please, let me deal with this,’ Nick repeated, needing to lean close to keep a shred of privacy for his son. Miranda felt the warmth of his body, let herself meet his brown gaze for a moment and found it far too familiar. He wasn’t smiling. His expression was motionless, almost forbidding, and yet it stirred her and filled her with memories. Suddenly, as she’d feared all along, ten years wasn’t very much time at all. ‘You have other things to attend to. And he’s my son.’

‘You’re confident that you know what to do?’ She felt their fingers touch briefly as he took the inhaler and spacer out of her hands. Should she grab the equipment back?

‘For heck’s sake, I’m a doctor!’

‘I mean, the exact dosage. The frequency.’

‘Yes, I do,’ he told her shortly, shoving the equipment into Josh’s backpack. ‘The very first thing I’m going to do is take him somewhere quiet. We can’t get him focused and relaxed here. I saw signs for a parents’ room.’ He spoke to his son, turning a shoulder to shut Miranda out, whether through hostility or because she just wasn’t important at the moment she didn’t know. ‘Josh, come with me and we’ll get you breathing again, shall we?’ His voice sounded stiff and almost formal. ‘We don’t want you having to go to bed as soon as we get there. We want to get out exploring, right?’

Josh nodded, but his eyes were still wide with effort and fear. Fear of not being able to breathe? Or of something else?

‘When’s the latest we can get back here for check-in?’ Nick asked Miranda. ‘Twelve-forty? Don’t hold the group up, will you?’

‘Your baggage…’ she recalled. You couldn’t check in someone else’s bags, neither did Security take an innocent view of luggage left unattended.

‘I’ll wait with it,’ said Benita Green, the nurse who had come with the cancer kids’ group.

Miranda and Nick both nodded at the same time. ‘Thanks.’

Then Nick scooped up Josh and carried him off, the little backpack with its bright colours and cartoon motif swinging incongruously from one big male shoulder as he strode at a rapid pace through the terminal. Josh looked so light and small and vulnerable in his arms, his little body stiff and his shoulders lifting with his effort to breathe.

Nick found the parents’ room with no difficulty.

It was like most such places, a small, bland room whose main virtue was its quietness and lack of crowds. Josh’s breathing had continued to worsen as Nick carried him and he had to fight his own sense of growing panic.

What if he couldn’t get an effective dose? What if Josh’s habitual wariness around him made him unable to relax enough to throw off the attack? What medical equipment did the airport medical centre have? It was close by. They’d just passed it. Should Nick have gone directly there instead of attempting to deal with this attack on his own?

Was he in some kind of denial, as Anna had so often accused? Or was this trip to the parents’ room a piece of misplaced heroism on his part? Anna had accused him of that in the past, too. What if this whole precious, scary, miraculously out-of-the-blue week or more with his son was derailed at the very start by another hospital stay?

I want this. I want time with my son.

Even though it challenged his self-confidence on almost every level.

I want the two of us to defeat this asthma monster together, in the next ten minutes, to prove to both of us that we can. I want him to love me, and to know that I love him.

‘OK, this is better, isn’t it?’ he said to Josh. ‘Nobody watching.’

He dropped the backpack from his shoulder, grabbed the inhaler and spacer from where he’d flung them inside. ‘Now, show me how you do this. Show me your very best breath out and then a huge breath in, after you press.’

Josh pressed the inhaler, breathed in and out while Nick counted the breaths and kept a gentle grip on the spacer. His son still hadn’t spoken a word.

‘Good. That was great,’ he said, pushing encouragement into his voice. ‘Is that feeling any better?’

Josh nodded but still didn’t speak. Nick thought he detected a mild improvement but second-guessed the impression at once, as usual. Maybe it was only that the panicky look had softened a bit in a quieter atmosphere.

He had a powerful, gut-dropping need for Miranda to be there, remembering six years of her common sense and sweetness and warmth and diligence and brains, during lectures and tutorial groups and anatomy lab sessions, followed by that one intense night of her body in bed and hours and hours of talking. Remembering it all as if it were yesterday that they’d finished medicine together. Just those few minutes of talking with her near the check-in desk had brought it all back, as he’d somehow known for the past two years that it would.

But she wasn’t there, so he and Josh just had to wait, find some patience and some trust on their own.

And administer a second dose of Ventolin, Nick decided, as the first one wasn’t working the miracle cure he’d hoped for. Time was getting on, but if he pushed Josh to go back to the check-in desk too soon…

So how did they pass the time until the next dose? There were no toys in here, no windows, nothing. Just him and Josh, on their own together for the first time in how long…probably three months…waiting to see if he could breathe.

‘How about a story?’ Nick suggested, and heard his voice come out too hearty.

With a wheezy effort, not looking at him, Josh answered, ‘We have to…go back and…meet the others…and get on the…plane.’

His heart sinking, Nick checked his watch so he’d know when to give the next dose. ‘Not yet, little guy,’ he said, then mentally cursed himself for repeating the phrase Anna had frowned at.

It was a term of endearment, damn it!

Find another one, he decided. Whether she’s right or wrong, play it safe, take the line of least resistance, for Josh’s sake. And for his own?

It was what he’d been doing for far too long.

CHAPTER TWO

‘THEY’LL be closing the flight in twenty minutes, Miranda,’ Benita said. ‘What do you think has happened to Josh and his dad? They wouldn’t have just wandered into a shop to buy postcards?’

‘I’m getting worried,’ Miranda admitted. Nick and his son had been absent for fifteen minutes—enough time to administer the first dose of Ventolin and assess its effect. If it wasn’t working…

It often didn’t. Despite long-term treatment to develop Josh’s lungs, on top of a regimen of preventative action which Anna stuck to like a monk’s ritual, Josh’s sudden attacks had progressed three times in the past year to the point where hospital admission had been the only option.

If that happened now…

She felt a surge of disappointment on Josh’s behalf. He’d been looking forward to this trip so much. Possibly too much. Miranda had privately wondered if any place in the whole world could match the paradise of Crocodile Creek Kids’ Camp and Wallaby Island as they existed in little Josh’s energetic imagination.

He’d said to her at his last check-up, ‘There’ll be waterfalls and birds and lakes teeming with crocodiles, and rides and surf and the best food, and toys and campfires and singalongs, and I’m going to swim all day, except when I’m feeding the crocodiles. I’m not going in the water with them! They’re in a lake, they’re not in the ocean or the pool. And I think the lake is going to be purple. And fireworks. There has to be fireworks.’

And Miranda had smiled at him and nodded, ‘Purple, huh?’ And, of course, it was good that he was looking forward to it so much, but kids could make themselves sick with excitement, and then Nick had had to come on the holiday instead of Anna, which added a level of stress and uncertainty to the excitement, and—

‘I’m going to go and hunt them up,’ Miranda told Benita. ‘Can you handle things here, and guard Nick and Josh’s luggage? If I can’t get them to the check-in in the next twenty- five minutes at the outside, bad luck. We can’t have the whole group miss the flight because of two people.’

Even if one of them was one of her favourite patients, and the other one was…

Well, was Nick Devlin.

A very memorable ship passing in the night, practically scraping her all down the starboard side like the Titanic and its famous iceberg, and pushing her off course for far too long.

She hurried through the terminal, found the parents’ room and knocked on the door. ‘Nick? Josh? Are you still in there?’

Nick opened the door. He looked anxious, jittery and too light on his feet. He wanted action and control and to get on that plane now. Miranda was shocked at the way she could read his emotional state. No, not just read it, feel it as if it was happening inside her own body. As soon as he saw her, he gave a frowning glance at his watch and she knew what he must be thinking.

Can we do this?

Behind him Josh sat on a bland vinyl chair. Still wheezing. Not noticeably better, but not worse. Could they do this, with time squeezing them as tight as Josh’s lungs?

Miranda felt steely determination set in.

Could they? Just try showing her any other option!

‘Time for a second dose,’ she said. ‘Let’s not have you two miss the flight. There isn’t another connecting hop out to the island until tomorrow afternoon.’

‘We’ve just done a second lot,’ Nick muttered, blocking the conversation from Josh’s ears with the bulk of his body in the half-open doorway. His open-necked shirt showed a fine mist of perspiration across his collar-bone. He was literally sweating this—the tight timing, Josh’s breathing, the potential disappointment. ‘What do you think? Is there any point hanging on here for a third, or should I give up now and cancel our flight? Give up on the whole thing?’

She couldn’t keep back a stricken sound. Cancel Josh’s trip?

‘I’m asking you as a doctor, Miranda,’ he added, as if he knew that she was operating far too much on emotion right now. ‘Not as someone who wants my little boy to have his holiday. Should we really push this? Is it a sign that I’m not the right person to be…? No, hell, I can’t think straight about any of this. You need to be the one to make the decision.’

He met her gaze, jaw tight, expression rigid, fighting himself. She wasn’t imagining the appeal reflecting from deep within his brown eyes. It was there, even though he’d never been the kind of man to show any weakness easily or willingly.

Somehow, his look cut to the heart of her just as the whole of him had cut to the heart of her ten years ago, during their one night together, without him apparently even knowing it. Or if he had known, back then, he hadn’t cared.

At some level he trusted her on this, she decided—trusted Anna’s assessment of her as a professional, or his own more personal memories. The fact warmed her too much and she had to push the feeling away. She should remember that after their night of talking and making love, which she’d believed in so much, he’d never phoned…

‘Has he improved at all?’ she asked quickly.

‘A little. More after the dose I gave him a couple of minutes ago. I—I don’t think he trusts me. Is he psyching himself out because I’m here, not his mother? Maybe at some level this is happening because he doesn’t want to go to camp with me.’

He was being incredibly careful not to let Josh hear. Miranda had to step closer and keep her eyes fixed on that barely moving mouth but still she strained to hear him. At this distance, she could see more clearly the lines on his face that hadn’t been there ten years ago, and she had a totally unacceptable urge to soothe them with her fingers.

‘Let’s not think that way. Let me take a look at him,’ she suggested.

‘He knows you almost better than he knows me, I guess.’ The words, barely more than a mutter, cut Miranda to the heart.

She came fully into the parents’ room and dropped to Josh-level. He was sitting in the room’s one chair. ‘Can you talk, Josh?’

‘A bit.’

‘You said the second dose helped?’ She could feel Nick behind her, a ball of strong and very male tension and distress. He really didn’t want to cancel this trip.

‘Yes.’

‘So we’ll just sit here, shall we, and then we’ll give a third dose and that’ll do the trick.’ She spoke as if there was no other possibility, and Josh smiled at last.

While Nick let out a sigh that she didn’t dare to think came from relief.

Not yet, Nick, please.

Josh wasn’t out of the woods yet.

Ten minutes later, they both helped him with the third dose, then Nick put his asthma equipment back in the colouful backpack and they listened to the wonderful sound of Josh breathing better and talking again. ‘Did we miss the plane?’

‘No, sweetheart. We have time.’

Not much of it, though.

Nick took her aside again, holding her arm, bending his head towards hers so that the dark hair spilling across his forehead almost brushed her face. ‘Can we really do this? What if he crashes again during the flight?’ His touch felt impossibly familiar, even after so long. She couldn’t believe how quickly they’d reconnected in such a personal way.

Maybe because she’d been expecting something like this— half dreading and half wanting it—for two years? It was harder than if he’d simply shown up in her life again, out of the blue.

‘They have oxygen on board,’ Miranda answered, ‘and the fact that he’s responded to these first few doses is a good sign. In the past, when he’s crashed badly, it’s been downhill all the way.’

‘True,’ Nick said. ‘Ambulance ride to the hospital. The full works.’

‘He’s been very excited about this trip.’

‘Don’t I know it!’

‘I so-o-o don’t want to pull the plug on it for him now.’

‘Neither do I,’ Nick said.

‘Is it the excitement, do you think?’ Miranda asked him quietly.

‘That and…’ He stopped, took a breath and readied himself to choose his words carefully. ‘Anna can’t…uh…always hide when she’s stressed. He picks up on it far too much. As far as she’s concerned, the timing of her mother’s accident couldn’t have been worse, and maybe she’s right…’

Anna’s emotions sometimes made Josh sicker. Nick and Miranda were in agreement on that. But then he added, ‘And maybe she’s right to think it’ll be disastrous to have me with him on the trip. He and I haven’t spent as much time together as I’d like.’

He hated saying those outwardly bland words, Miranda could tell. Hated saying them because they were true? Or because they weren’t? Had he genuinely wanted a better relationship with his son all along? Or was Anna right in saying, as she frequently did, that Nick was the one to withdraw?

His smile was forced. ‘We looked at pictures of a Very Greedy Frog.’

‘As much time as you’d like with him?’ she echoed, before she could stop herself. It had sounded a little too much like a challenge— Yeah, really? That’s not what Anna says. Why had she felt the need to plumb the level of his honesty now, when they were in such a rush?

He looked at her and she could almost see him mentally prioritising his battles. Most important, get himself and Josh onto the flight. Way down the list, argue with his son’s respiratory physician about which divorced parent most deserved the prize for honesty and clear thinking and sacrifice.

‘Look, is there still time?’ he asked. ‘That’s what’s important now.’

‘You’re right. I’m sorry. Benita has been waiting with your luggage. Everyone else will have gone through by now. We have to get to that check-in desk now, if you’re going to make the flight.’

He nodded for the third time. Wasn’t going to waste words when he didn’t have that luxury. Once again, he scooped Josh into his arms and slung the backpack over one shoulder. ‘Let’s do it. Josh, can you breathe?’

No answer.

‘Josh, can you? You have to talk to me!’

‘Yes. I’m breathing.’

‘I’ll put you down later, so you can walk onto the plane on your own, OK? For now I’m carrying you, because we need to hurry.’

‘So are we still going?’ came a thin little voice.

‘Well, do you want to?’ Wooden tone.

‘Yes!’

‘With me?’

‘Y-yes.’ A lot less emphatic.

‘Good,’ Nick said, and suddenly hugged him fiercely. ‘Because I think we’re going to have a great time.’ His voice was thick with sudden emotion that almost brought tears to Miranda’s eyes.

He cared. Whatever else she might doubt about him now, she couldn’t doubt that.

They almost ran through the terminal.

A sympathetic desk clerk, who’d been told about the situation, waved them through to the first-class check-in desk and despatched their luggage along the conveyor with practised speed. Waiting in a queue to go through Security, they heard the announcement for final boarding for the flight, but Nick said stoically, ‘They’ve let our baggage through, and the desk clerk knows we’re on our way. They should hold the flight a few minutes for us, now. I hope,’ he added.

Their departure gate seemed miles away, at the far end of the concourse. Nick loped ahead, seeming untroubled by Josh’s light weight. Miranda struggled to keep up. Last night’s sleepless mental list-checking of today’s travel details was taking its toll. Finally she saw the gate lounge and the open door leading to the access tunnel. The area was bare of passengers and a member of the ground crew was speaking into a telephone.

‘Boarding pass?’ Nick barked at Miranda.

‘Right here. You’ve got yours and Josh’s?’

‘Yes.’ To the ground crew he said, ‘Nick Devlin, Josh Devlin, Miranda Carlisle.’

‘Good. You’re the three we’ve been waiting for.’

Breathless, Miranda followed Nick down the tunnel, the blood beating in her ears and her limbs weak with relief. They’d made it. Just. Josh was smiling. Everything was going to be OK.

Just inside the plane, they caught up with the final members of the Crocodile Creek group. Benita mimed fanning herself with relief and said, ‘I’d almost given up on you.’

‘So had I. But I couldn’t let them miss the flight.’ Miranda lowered her voice. ‘Not these two. Not little Josh.’

‘Be careful of that,’ Benita warned. She meant the favouritism.

‘I know.’

Miranda saw the Allandales blocking the aisle further down as they sorted through their cabin luggage. Stella Vavunis stood just ahead, handing over her crutches to an attendant, to be stowed in one of their special hidey-holes for the duration of the flight because they were too long for the overhead carrier bins.

The teenager’s head hung with embarrassment, and her body was stiff and hunched, as if she just wanted to disappear. She felt humiliated and angry at the whole world about being singled out this way, and having to hop and hobble to her seat. Miranda thought she heard some very rude words muttered under Stella’s breath.

‘She isn’t handling that prosthesis very well yet, is she?’ Miranda murmured to Benita. ‘It says in her notes it was fitted a week ago.’

‘She won’t even try, according to her physio,’ the nurse answered. ‘She hates it, still insists on using the crutches because then she can get away with looking as if she has a broken leg.’

‘There’s a physiotherapist visiting the camp every day. I’ve had a couple of phone conversations with her. Susie Jackson. She sounds nice.’

‘We’re all nice, Miranda!’ Benita said.

‘True. You’re saying nice isn’t enough, in a case like this.’

Nice. The word dovetailed with some of Miranda’s questions about Nick, too, and about why she hadn’t yet been able to give her heart to a man who truly wanted it. Was being nice the problem? Too nice. Nothing but nice. Nice wasn’t enough, and sometimes it was boring…

‘Stella has to be motivated,’ Benita was saying. ‘She has to believe what we tell her, she has to find someone she’ll really listen to and trust. The prosthesis is too much reality for her right now. The crutches are what she knows, and she’s sticking to them.’

‘Tough for a thirteen-year-old, when body-image issues are so huge at that age already.’

‘I know, but she’s so darned prickly and negative and ungrateful I want to shake her, sometimes.’ Benita gave a rueful shrug. ‘We rub each other up the wrong way, I’m afraid, she and I. I’m not as patient as I should be.’

‘That’s a pity.’

‘I shouldn’t admit to it, should I, but you know how it is,’ Benita said. ‘Some you love, some you don’t, often without even knowing why.’

‘True,’ Miranda replied, watching Nick and Josh.

Benita was right. Again. When it came to love, you often didn’t know why.

‘I have to fight to hide it, to be honest,’ she was saying. ‘Her dad’s supposed to be coming later in the week.’

‘Yes, that’s in our notes. He’s a major donor to the rebuilt camp and medical centre.’

‘And very driven. As well as very rich! I won’t be surprised if something gets in the way of him making it. I don’t think Stella will be surprised either, and I really, really wish I could step in and fill the breach, but we just don’t get on, she and I. I get more glares from her than words. Hope she finds a friend or two this week. Someone she can talk to.’

‘Someone better than just the usual nice, you mean?’

Benita smiled ruefully. ‘That’s right.’

The passengers blocking the aisles took their seats one by one, and Miranda found her own group of patients towards the back of the plane. There were three empty seats left, all in a row. Just ahead of her, Josh was walking on his own, as his dad had promised, with Nick directly behind him.

‘There’s your seat, mate,’ he said to his son, the ‘mate’ part sounding a little forced and unnatural. ‘Right by the window.’ Josh climbed eagerly towards it, sneakers treading squarely in the middle of the two seats adjacent. ‘Oh, hell, Josh, don’t tread on the seat with those shoes!’

Too late. The deed was done.

Josh looked scared when he understood the reason for his dad’s disapproval, even though Nick was telegraphing only a second or two of mild anger. The little boy’s sneaker soles looked clean…sort of…but they had that deeply grooved tread that harboured every piece of grit and every grass clipping until just the wrong moment.

‘Hope your neighbour isn’t wearing a white silk dress,’ Miranda said to him, smiling. She wanted to diffuse the difficult moment between father and son. Nick could see the expression on his son’s face and didn’t like it, she could tell.

But Nick didn’t smile at her teasing comment. Once again, was she being too nice? ‘Actually, it looks to me as if my neighbour is going to be you.’

‘Lucky for you, then,’ she persisted. ‘I don’t even own a white silk dress.’

Why had she bothered? Once again, he didn’t smile back. She sat down beside him and felt his tightly coiled body like a piece of humming machinery just inches away.

Miranda was in demand for most of the flight.

The aisle seat was either a deliberate choice on her part or a lucky bonus, because she had to hop up and down every five minutes to answer the summons of a hand waved over someone’s head and the call of her name.

Somebody needed their in-flight snack to be delivered early. Someone else had forgotten to pack painkillers and had a headache. Did Miranda happen to have some on her?

She dealt with it all cheerfully, and Nick was torn between regret that they didn’t get the smallest opportunity for a proper conversation and relief because he didn’t know what on earth they would find to say, with so much past and so much distance in between.

They’d studied medicine in the same programme and graduated as doctors at the same time. He’d been incredibly focused on his studies back then, knowing that nothing less than a cream-of-the-crop performance would satisfy his father.

And his father was right about so many things.

You did have to work hard to get where you wanted to go in life. You did have to keep a clear head and a strong focus and not step back to let others through first. With a whole lot of life’s biggest challenges, you only got one chance. Mess things up, and that chance was gone forever. Blow off your work with drugs or alcohol, fast cars, garage rock bands or loose women, and you could so easily fail.

Some of his father’s tenets of faith Nick was no longer so sure about, but those ones he still basically believed.

So he’d worked and he’d focused, hadn’t married or fallen seriously in love or gone out with endless strings of girls during his university years the way some people had. He’d kept his distance from Miranda the way he’d kept his distance from almost everyone. His fellow medical students hadn’t been friends but future professional rivals. But he’d noticed her, during the classes they’d taken together—noticed her more than either of them had realised at the time—and she’d told him that the same was true for her.

He’d admired the way she managed to win the approval of various crusty or supercilious professors without playing teacher’s pet. He’d heard the clever, perceptive, diligently researched answers she gave to knotty medical problems posed in class or during their earnest stints of hospital observation. He’d seen the way she worked and focused, just the way he did. He’d liked the way she smiled and the way she danced, the few times they’d gone out in the same group.

She’d liked his laugh, and the way he would say something funny sometimes when nobody was expecting it. She’d liked the way his questions always pinpointed exactly the areas that other students were unsure about. She’d liked the fact that he never featured in lurid, gossipy stories of drunkenness or womanising.

And then, one critical night ten years ago, after they’d already known each other for six years, casually, as fellow students, he’d let his guard down and they’d spent fourteen uninterrupted hours together at someone’s party and beyond —couldn’t remember the guy’s name any more—and had fallen for each other the way the moon had fallen into orbit around the earth.

Thinking about it, he discovered that it still scared him.

The suddenness of it. The strength. The things he’d told her. The vulnerability he’d shown. The power he’d given her over his emotions, just in one short night. It was as if a lifetime of well-schooled stoicism had broken down all at once. When a dam broke, it didn’t simply spring a leak, it flooded. Everything pent up inside him had broken that night, because of her, and had come flooding out.

With her. To her. For her.

‘I love you, Miranda.’

Unstoppable. Crystal clear. Terrifying.

They’d been drinking, of course, but not that much. He hadn’t been hungover the next day. At the point when he’d really begun talking to her, he had downed maybe three beers in three hours. The words had exhilarated him as he spoke them, like jumping out of a plane with a parachute on his back—terror and freedom mixed like a potent cocktail, making him dizzy and wild. How many times had he said them that night? He couldn’t remember. Three? Five? More?

They’d started in the kitchen. What had she said to him? Something that made him think instantly, She knows who I really am, she knows what I really feel, she’s fabulous. Why didn’t I see any of this before? Within ten minutes they lost all awareness of what was happening around them—the music, the laughter, the people coming and going in search of ice or chips or more beer.

The emotional nakedness and physical hunger between them was wonderful and crippling at the same time. He ached for her, wanted to kiss her and take her to bed so badly, and yet he wanted to listen to her, too. He wasn’t simply possessed by a young man’s hormonal imperatives, his whole heart was melting and singing. He had no idea it was possible to feel this way. Had no idea how thoroughly they’d already come to know each other after six years as fellow students. Had no idea how he’d failed to see it coming.

It was a warm night, summer just started, air fresh and a little salty because they were near the ocean. ‘Want to find somewhere outside?’ he asked her, and she nodded. They sat on some brick steps, knees hunched up, bodies touching. He remembered the sweet smell of flowers. Jasmine, or something. All tangled and lush around the posts and lintel of some wooden white-painted garden arch. It gave them privacy. He kissed her for minutes on end and when he finally pulled away, she smiled into his face and stroked his jaw with her hands, looking at him with a helpless frown on her face as well as the smile, as if, like him, she couldn’t understand how something could simultaneously be so strange and so right.

‘Dad?’ Josh said tentatively, bringing Nick’s focus crashing back to the present.

‘Yes, lit—? Yes, mate?’ Again, he’d almost said little guy.

He didn’t like mate. It didn’t feel right. What else was there? Love. Sweetheart. Darling. Not those either. He hated it that his son was five years old and he didn’t know how to find the right affectionate nickname.

‘Can I please have a snack?’

‘Sure.’ There should be a snack cart coming along soon, but Nick wasn’t going to rely on Josh liking airline food. He was absurdly grateful at the mere fact that his son had spoken to him. ‘You want the muesli bar or the cheese dipper?’

‘Muesli bar.’

‘And something to drink?’

‘Just water.’ He sounded good now, no wheeze left at all.

Miranda appeared. ‘If you need the bathroom, now would be a good time, Joshie. Before the aisle gets blocked by the food service.’

Joshie, Nick thought. That worked. That he could say, without feeling that he was somehow faking his way through it.

Thank you, Miranda Carlisle. Again…

They must have talked and kissed and sat on those steps until two or three in the morning, learning about each other, by which time the party had been sagging and ebbing into the usual late night dark kind of feeling, people leaving in twos and threes, warm bodies slumped together on the couch, a touch-and-go moment when an irritable neighbour might have called the police, only someone shut down the pounding music just in time.

‘Where could we go?’ he asked. ‘I want to be with you. I don’t think I ever want to let you go.’ He meant it, at the time, more than he’d ever meant anything in his life. Lord, in hindsight the nakedness of it still brought hints of blind panic.

‘My place,’ she offered at once. It was a shared house. Fellow med students, but they’d gone north to the Gold Coast, she said, for their version of this end-of-exams party night.

Miranda made it clear that the two of them would be alone—a typical gesture of giving, he thought. No one to overhear, no one to hide from, no one to ever know, no matter how late they slept in.

You’re safe, Nick.

He knew he never would have made himself that vulnerable, offering ‘my place’ as if it was the easiest thing in the world. He protected his own space like it was some kind of dark secret, even though it was nothing out of the ordinary, just a ground-level studio flat next to the garage, beneath his landlord’s suburban home.

The way he’d protected his heart until that night, with her.

When a dam broke, it flooded…

They made love.

He still remembered odd details. They stood out in his mind like bits of coloured glass catching the sun. Miranda’s dark hair sweeping across his chest—it had been longer back then. Her laugh, all creamy and secret and just for him. The confessions he’d made afterwards, while they’d lain in each other’s arms until morning, not sleeping at all.

Those confessions had felt liberating at the time, a huge weight off his mind, gateway to a new freedom he hadn’t imagined before. ‘I’m not sure if I care enough about people to be a good doctor. I have the medicine down, but how do you care the right amount?’ ‘I don’t think I really love my parents the way I should. My father is so…so rigid, and my mother gives in to everyone.’ ‘Stupidity makes me angry. And weakness. And sneakiness. All those things. I pull back. I just don’t deal with it. Is that showing strength, to pull back? Or am I being weak, too?’

He wondered now, as Miranda jumped up once more from the narrow aircraft seat beside him, if she was still as calmly trusting, if she still wore her heart on her sleeve, if she ever said I love you the very first night.

He didn’t.

He never had since.

Where was the sense in making yourself that vulnerable? he’d decided. And yet holding back, the way he had in his marriage to Anna, hadn’t brought him happiness. With any luck, she wouldn’t be seated beside him on the next flight— the final hop out to Wallaby Island, on a propeller-driven plane.

As the larger jet flight began its descent into Cairns, the ‘Fasten Seat Belt’ sign confined Miranda in place and she felt so aware of Nick—the forbidding silence broken only by occasional rather wooden comments to Josh, the strong shoulder that encroached a little into her own space. Hadn’t these airline seats grown even smaller and more cramped since the last time she’d flown?

It was so stupid. She really wanted to say to him, So why did you never phone me, when you promised that you would? After ten years, you just didn’t ask that. After ten years, you already knew.

There were basically only two possibilities.

Either he had only wanted to get her into bed, and hadn’t minded lying to her for the sake of that goal. ‘I love you, Miranda.’

Or in the cold light of day, he hadn’t found her nearly as captivating as the party in the moonlight had led him to think.

At the time, she’d believed his sincerity absolutely, hadn’t even thought to take his phone number as insurance. He had said he would phone, he had said he loved her, which meant he would and did, so she hadn’t needed his number. When a day went by, then two, then a week, the pain and questions started to slow-burn inside her and lasted for months.

Had she completely misread that sense of rightness and promise? Why had she trusted him so easily?

Because, despite her stellar performance in her studies, she had been as dumb as a rock in some areas, and one of those areas was men. There was a causal link to the apparent contradiction. She had been clueless when it had come to men because she’d done so well in her studies.

Success in medicine took hard work. Hard work left little time for other activities. Other activities included hanging out with female friends, meeting men and talking about the men in great detail with the female friends.

She’d been the beloved only child of older parents. She’d grown up too sheltered and too eager to give her heart. She honestly hadn’t known that some men were love rats, and that you couldn’t always tell who the love rats were at first—or even second or third—glance. Shutting herself away to study, she hadn’t had enough opportunity to experience the bruising reality of the real world. She’d stayed far too innocent for far too long. Was probably too innocent still. Too innocent and too nice. How did you get tougher? Did she want to? She hadn’t realised that matters of the heart required as much prior study as an anatomy exam.

Oh, and there was another reason why she’d believed the I love you thing.

Because she’d said the same words back to him, all night, and had meant them from the bottom of her heart.

‘Joshie, we need to put the cars away now, so we can put your tray table up,’ Nick said to his son.

No reply.

‘Josh, are you listening?’

‘Is this the kids’ camp?’ He twisted around for a moment, and might have been talking to Miranda, not to his dad. She felt Nick stiffen beside her, and stayed silent, leaving the conversation to unfold between father and son, the way it should. ‘I can see buildings. They’re tiny!’

‘No, this isn’t the camp,’ Nick answered, ‘because we have to go on the other plane first, remember? That’s Cairns you can see.’

‘And I can see ocean and sand, and shapes in the water.’

‘Let me look…’ Nick leaned past Josh. ‘Wow!’

The aircraft banked to line up its approach and Miranda caught a glimpse of tropical yellow and blue, sun glinting on water, and lush rainforest greenery. The promise of the water, the warmth and the reef washed over her like a delectable scent in the air and for a moment she had absolute faith that they were all going to have a great time.

She was too adept at faith, though, too nice for her own good.

Hold back, Miranda. Keep your heart safe. Haven’t you learned that yet?

Well, if she hadn’t, she had Nick Devlin on hand to remind her.

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