Pregnant With His Child Read online

  Let’s just do it, Joe, slake our needs and move on, if that’s all you’ve ever wanted from me.

  She grabbed his hips and rolled them both onto the bed so that he was on top of her, his weight threatening to flatten her breasts and challenge her lungs. Then she wrapped her legs around him and guided him into her with rough haste, lifting her body to meet his first instinctive thrust.

  ‘Hey…’ he growled.

  She didn’t answer, just held him tighter with her legs, lifted herself harder against him, straining to feel that exquisite sensation of total fullness. Then she began to rock, knowing what it would do to his control, wanting to punish him and give to him and prove how wrong he was, all at the same time.

  He swore, and groaned.

  Then he gave in.

  No turning back now.

  Sensations dovetailed and began to spin like water diving into the hollow centre of a whirlpool. Christina closed her eyes. She didn’t need sight. She had all the information she needed about Joe’s state of mind from other sources—the whip-like motions of his body, the sounds wrenched from deep inside him, the grip of his hands.

  And then she stopped caring even about those things, stopped knowing where his body began and hers ended. They clawed their way higher and higher towards release, and it was wonderful, long and hard and intensely satisfying, but seconds after it had finished, her spirits had plunged again and she wondered what on earth she’d just done.

  Made everything even harder?

  Given him a send-off he’d never forget?

  Lost even the illusion of having taken the assertive approach?

  They lay together for a few minutes, breathless and still, but she couldn’t bear it and eased her body out from beneath his arm, needing the bleak safety of her own bed. ‘Stay,’ he growled, clamping a hand to her hip.

  ‘I can’t, Joe.’

  ‘OK. OK.’ His hand went slack and he let her go.

  For the second time that night, he wasn’t going to fight for her.

  CHAPTER THREE

  MORNING CAME way too quickly.

  Christina heard evidence that Joe was already up as soon as she’d turned off her alarm. She hid in bed for several minutes, but couldn’t postpone the inevitable, so she scrambled into the bathroom and succeeded in keeping clear of him until a five-minute overlap in the kitchen, when she managed to down a glass of juice. The idea of anything more substantial made her feel ill, and yet her empty stomach scarcely felt better.

  ‘So I’m dropping you at the base?’ he said.

  ‘Yes. We can go now, if you want.’

  ‘OK. Then I’ll have time to look at the room.’

  They were tense with each other this morning. The care for each other’s state of mind had gone, and of course so had the comfortable teamwork between them that had been so apparent last night when they’d dealt with the joey, the flat tyre and the hitchhiker.

  The emotional nakedness had gone, too—the willingness to say, I love you.

  Joe was angry that this wasn’t fun any more, that Christina had rocked the boat and changed the rules. She was angry that fun was all he wanted, that he would go to such lengths to stay inside his comfort zone, even when she’d shown him so clearly that she wanted more. That hurt so much that it had to be someone’s fault.

  And it’s not mine, Christina thought. She felt totally drained.

  She looks as wiped as I feel, Joe decided as he drove.

  When he’d taken her phone number off a hospital staff notice-board two years ago and had called her about the boarder she was looking for—‘reasonable rent, shift worker OK, own room, share bathroom’—he hadn’t thought about the possibility of something like this.

  He’d started out at the doctors’ house, but had known pretty fast that it wasn’t what he wanted. He didn’t need the potential for clashing personalities, compulsory partying when he wasn’t in the mood, minimal privacy. He was there to work, to make money and get a bit of breathing space. Christina Farrelly’s place fitted the bill perfectly.

  Roughly fifteen minutes after first setting eyes on it, and on her, he’d known that he wanted both the room and the woman. She was just the kind he always went for. Attractive in a natural kind of way, with a supple figure, some nice curves, bright brown eyes that knew how to laugh and dance, dark hair in a swinging ponytail and a smile that was more urchin grin than Mona Lisa mystique. She had a healthy energy, a bright mind and a depth of kindness that you couldn’t fake.

  She didn’t play games.

  He didn’t either, so it hadn’t taken him long to get across to her how he felt and what he wanted. It had been easy, not planned. One morning they’d been in the kitchen together, making silly little apologies to each other every twenty seconds as they’d crossed paths, preparing their separate breakfasts. She’d been standing by the toaster, waiting for it to pop up, with her hand leaning on the benchtop, and he’d just come up to her and laid his own hand on top.

  She hadn’t taken hers away—he hadn’t seriously feared that she would—and it was all the communication either of them had needed. Their arms had gone around each other, their lips had met, they’d pressed their bodies together, they’d whispered a few things.

  Oh, that feels so good. You knew I wanted this, didn’t you? I think your toast is burning.

  Two years later…

  He might have been way too slow over the past couple of months to pick up on the fact that she wasn’t happy with the state of their relationship anymore, but the blue shadows beneath her brown eyes and the tight muscles in her face this morning were concrete details impossible to overlook.

  Her body language said a lot, too—the way she was hugging up against the passenger door, her legs angled away from him and her shoulder in a tight, protective curve.

  Yeah, he felt angry about it.

  Angry with her, angry with himself.

  And anger was what he dealt with at home so much of the time. It was exactly what he loved about coming here, about the time he spent with Christina—that he could relax and laugh and get out and have fun, revel in that whole side of himself, bring it out in her, and just not have to feel angry and responsible and overwhelmed.

  Well, the illusory sense that Crocodile Creek was a different, safer, happier, easier and more benign universe had been stripped away now. When he glanced across at her, he didn’t see safety and peace any more, he saw only a whole new set of problems. He wanted to grab her by the shoulders and yell, Why did you have to rock the boat, when it was all so good?

  But it wouldn’t be fair.

  When they reached the Remote Rescue base, nurse Grace O’Riordan was just zipping into a parking place out front in her battered little car. Tink made a little sound and sat up straighter when she saw her. A spark of relief, Joe realised. She and Grace were friends. They’d talk.

  In fact, everyone would talk. It was that kind of hospital, that kind of town.

  His heart sank. He got enough of this at home, especially when he was out anywhere with Amber. It was an anonymous kind of attention then, way less personal than this, but still it brought the same neck-crawling awareness that you were being talked about behind your back. Amber was fantastic, the way she dealt with it. Joe was the one with issues.

  He said tightly to Tink now, ‘We can talk about keys and things later in the week, can’t we?’ He’d be flying home on Sunday. It seemed like a long time away, and he had no idea if the time would drag or rocket by.

  She nodded in reply, tried to smile, gave up on the attempt and just climbed out of the car. He watched her walk over to Grace, then wheeled the car around and sped towards the hospital, his whole being in rebellion against the way everything had changed.

  The doctors’ house was a hive of early morning activity. Cal was still in residence with his rediscovered love, Dr Gina Lopez, and their little boy, CJ, although they were looking for a place together in town. Hamish McGregor was mooching around, complaining about the weather, which
was a bit rich coming from a Scotsman. His contract would be coming to an end very soon, and he’d be going home. Charles Wetherby, the hospital’s almost legendary medical administrator, had a few staffing problems on his hands at the moment.

  ‘So you shouldn’t all be bloody looking at me,’ Joe muttered under his breath as he opened the noisy back veranda screen door and stepped into the kitchen.

  He fielded the chorus of greetings, managed a couple of jokey, blokey lines, ignored the undercurrents and asked, ‘Which room’s for me, does anyone know?’

  Emily Morgan hopped up from the table. ‘I’ll show you, Joe.’

  Chatting about plumbing quirks and shopping rosters, she led him along to a cool, dark space that opened onto the side veranda about halfway along. Those French doors in each room were what saved this place, he considered. You could actually come and go through them without the whole world being aware of the fact. Provided you learned where the creaking boards were, he revised, stepping onto the veranda and hearing an agonised groan from the wood beneath one foot.

  ‘No one minds if you put a chair or two out here,’ Emily said. ‘It’s peaceful when no one else is around.’

  ‘Does that ever happen?’

  She laughed. ‘It’s been known. There’s even a degree of tact involved, occasionally.’

  Hamish appeared out of the next door along at that moment, wearing scrubs and in a hurry. ‘Lucky,’ he flung back at both of them.

  Emily made an anxious sound and watched him go.

  ‘It’s OK,’ Joe said. ‘I can do without tact. You’re right, I don’t feel particularly lucky right now. I thought Christina was happy to—Yeah. Anyhow.’ He stopped suddenly as he saw the stricken, embarrassed look in Emily’s grey-blue eyes.

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Joe. Gosh. He was talking about the baby. Not you and—I’m sorry, did Christina fill you in?’

  ‘Fill me in?’ he echoed.

  Fill me in? Oh, by the way, Joe, I’m ending our relationship and you’re moving into the doctors’ house. Of course she filled me in!

  ‘That’s why I’m here, isn’t it?’ he said bleakly. ‘Looking at the room.’

  This whole thing was awkward enough, without him and Emily talking at cross-purposes. Who was being slow here?

  Me, probably, he thought. My head’s a mess.

  ‘Th-the baby from the rodeo,’ Emily said, stammering with remorse. She was quite shy at times. ‘We didn’t have a name for him at first, so we called him Lucky and it stuck, even though he’s officially Jackson Cooper now. And I’m just a bit worried, seeing Hamish go haring off like that.’

  ‘It’s unexpected?’

  ‘Yes, and we all have so much invested in the little guy now. Megan and the baby have both been doing so well, adjusting to each other nicely. They’ll be discharged once we can sort out the family situation a little better, and the feeding. At the moment, her parents don’t even know she has him, and she’s refusing to go back home. She’s only nineteen. If something’s gone wrong…’

  ‘Right.’ That was all he could say. ‘That wouldn’t be good.’

  Emily touched his arm. ‘Listen, about you and Christina. I’m sorry I misunderstood. People are going to talk, of course, and not be tactful, but it’s only because we care about both of you. It’s none of our business, I know.’

  ‘That’s OK. It was my fault.’

  She nodded, looked as if she was about to say something more, then decided against it. ‘I’ll let you settle in. You’re working today, aren’t you?’

  ‘Should get across there in a couple of minutes,’ he told her, so that she would go away. They both knew he didn’t have to be in that much of a hurry.

  When she left, he took a proper look at the room.

  Ah, hell, this was so typical!

  Christina had made up the bed. He recognised sheets she sometimes used at home. She’d stacked some books on the bookshelf. He knew she must be the one who had done it and that these weren’t simply the discards of a previous resident, because he recognised the names of authors he liked. No one else here in Crocodile Creek knew him that well.

  No one else knew what brand of toothpaste he used, and that he was finicky about not getting a thick, dried-up collar of minty green stuff around the top of the tube. No one else knew the music he listened to on a lazy Sunday morning. No one else knew the silly voice he put on when he talked to friendly cats.

  Because it was rubbish what Christina had said about her not being a part of his life! Even if he never talked about home, they knew each other. And what they had together was important, even if it was part time and focused purely on the present. How could she accuse him of not being a part of her life?

  She’d even put flowers on the bedside table to relieve the slightly spartan atmosphere—some bright, trailing things that came from her own garden. He knew that because she always made the effort to have flowers around her own house, too.

  His heart twisted and he hated himself because of how much he’d hurt her, because of the way this had hit him out of the blue, and because he still didn’t believe that he had it in him to offer her more. It wouldn’t be fair on either of them.

  It was impossible to talk in the plane. Without earphones, the noise level was too high, and with them…well, who wanted to bare their soul into a plastic headset? On the ground during their pre-flight routine, Grace had given her a pat on the shoulder and a sympathetic smile, which had told Christina that word had begun to spread about her break-up with Joe.

  And my face must be a front-page headline all on its own, she realised.

  They only had two clinic stops today. The first one would be the shortest, at a cattle station to the north-west owned by a huge pastoral company. At around eleven-thirty, they’d make the hop from there to Gunyamurra, the tiny town not far from the rodeo ground where baby Jackson Cooper had been found eleven days ago.

  ‘It was like one of those earthquake miracles, Christina, don’t you think?’Grace said into the headphones as they flew. ‘You know, when newborns are found alive after days buried under rubble?’

  ‘I guess it was,’ she answered, obedient to the need to respond to Grace’s happiness about it. Grace was a great nurse.

  The clinic at Amity Downs was uneventful, a textbook extract on the kinds of problems they encountered in these isolated regions. Stress-related illnesses exacerbated by the drought, minor injuries that hadn’t been taken care of so that they’d become infected, routine check-ups, including prenatal care for women who faced the prospect of a long journey to hospital when their babies were due.

  Arriving at Gunyamurra, they set up some equipment in the tiny Country Women’s Association hall that doubled as a clinic during the visit they made here every second week. The air in the building was rather musty. The CWA ran a mini lending library, and as well as a handful of current paperbacks there was a larger selection of old Australian classics—Mary Grant Bruce’s ‘Billabong’ series, and lots of Ethel Turner. They were lovely books, but rarely borrowed these days and probably filled with mould spores. As usual, Christina opened all the windows.

  Then it was time for a break for lunch before the first patients were due. Since the dusty town didn’t run to a café or sandwich shop, everyone had brought their own.

  ‘And I’ve got a flask of hot water for tea,’ Grace confided to Christina.

  She betrayed her Irish heritage in her fondness for it—strong and milky and sweet. The same heritage was clear from her freckled skin, blue eyes and amazing laugh. You had to be in a pretty bad way if you didn’t find Grace O’Riordan’s laugh contagious. It burst beyond the confines of her slightly too plump torso and cascaded like a musical scale, and Grace could find a reason to laugh at almost anything.

  ‘Let’s not sit in this stuffy clinic building, drinking the urn water out of mugs that predate the invention of radio,’ she said.

  ‘And probably haven’t had a proper wash since.’

  ‘Exactly. We can fin
d a tree to sit under. And I thought, you know, you might—’

  ‘Yes, Grace, I do want to talk!’

  ‘That’s the spirit.’ Grace’s eyes were twinkling and sympathetic at the same time. ‘Bring it all up, like a dodgy meat pie.’

  Christina laughed. The sound ended on a half-sob. ‘Oh, bloody hell, Grace, this just feels so bad! I knew it would. But it feels even worse than I thought it would.’

  ‘Well, you know, when you ditch a perfectly good boyfriend, who doesn’t want to be ditched, for no valid reason that the grapevine’s managed to work out yet…’ She wagged her finger, but then recognised that Christina wasn’t quite up to tough love yet, even in a teasing way. ‘Come and tell Auntie Grace all about it.’

  Which was absurd, because Grace had to be the younger by at least five years.

  They sat in the only nearby shade they could find, beneath the rainwater tank stand at the back of the little CWA building, where several pepper trees clustered. Christina fiddled with a sprig of pinkish corns, breaking them off and letting them trickle through her fingers, bringing a hot scent to her nostrils.

  Normally she loved crossing the Dividing Range into this dry outback country. It was such a contrast to the steamy heat of the coast. Most people who lived in Crocodile Creek looked to the ocean—for employment, for recreation. Out here, you had the same wide horizon and yawning sky, but there was a quality of silence and stillness that brought you face to face with yourself like nowhere else.

  Christina launched into the whole story—everything she loved about Joe, everything he blocked off, her decision, the thing about the room, and how she’d wanted to do this properly, make it as easy as possible on both of them, but the room had felt like a mistake, because he’d been angry about it.

  ‘And the fact that it took us over two hours to get home from the airport didn’t help.’