Long-Lost Son Read online

  ‘Janey…’

  No. Please. No talking.

  She anchored his jaw between her hands and kissed him right this time. Right, because he kissed her back, tightened his arms, let out a deep, groaning vibration of sound, parted his lips and drank the taste of her as if he wanted to drown in it.

  They just stood there. Nothing else mattered. He tasted of spice and wine and erotic familiarity. He’d shaved for their evening out and he smelt so delicious. She couldn’t put a name to the mingling of scents, but felt them cloaking her like some protective, wonderful garment that belonged to her alone.

  She ran her fingers into his hair, felt the press of her breasts against his chest, and the bare length of her legs in Georgie’s dress against the hard warmth of his thighs. Her legs went weak and wobbly and that was wonderful because she could press against him more closely.

  They were joined, the whole length of their bodies. Their clothing barely made a barrier. She could feel his increasing arousal and didn’t try to slide away, just felt it, softened and pushed against it, letting her hips rock a little. Which made him groan against her mouth. ‘Oh, Janey…’

  His hands—those long-fingered surgeon’s hands—slid over the fabric of her dress and cupped her bottom, anchoring her in place against his hardness. As if she’d had any intention of letting him go! His mouth had too much power. Needing air, she laid her head on his shoulder and just felt their hearts beating together. She stroked his neck and breathed him in, then he found her mouth again and she thought she’d never been kissed so deeply.

  She was overwhelmed by how good this was. More than good. Inevitable. Unstoppable.

  Except that you had to stop, eventually, when you were kissing each other in a public street. She felt the need building higher and harder in both of them, could see the direction it was heading.

  Well, how many directions were there?

  Only one, when it was this good.

  But then some critical balance point in both their heads shifted at the same moment. The heat of need gave way to a cold shower of good sense. She couldn’t have said which of them pulled back first, but he was the first one to speak. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry. We can’t do this, can we? We can’t possibly! It’s hopeless in so many ways I can’t even count them. Give me a minute, then we’ll drive.’

  He walked awkwardly around to the driver’s side of the car, and leaned his forearm on the roof, pressing his lips together and closing his eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said again.

  ‘No, don’t. It was my fault, too.’

  He hadn’t unlocked the car. She stood there, waiting for him to realise, and remembered a hazy, indistinct incident from the past that she hadn’t thought of in years. They’d kissed once before.

  A fellow intern had thrown a party at the end of a particularly gruelling week in A and E, when Janey had seen two emergency admissions die, had sent several loudly abusive and ungrateful drug addicts back onto the streets after bringing them back from near fatal overdoses, and had treated a child permanently brain-damaged following a massive seizure.

  She’d gone to a friend’s house to get dressed up and they’d borrowed each other’s clothes and started on the champagne before even getting to the party itself. She’d drunk too much, for once in her life, and so had Luke, and she hadn’t eaten all day so the alcohol had poured into an empty stomach. The party had been crowded, a whole lot of wild, gyrating bodies dancing to music in the dark. She’d flirted and danced, cried on a friend’s shoulder, made extravagant claims about never forgetting various casual friends whom she’d now totally forgotten, and she’d kissed two men that night.

  One had been a guy she’d never seen before in her life, the brother of another intern. She’d fancied him rotten in her tipsy state, and he’d been ready to race off in a taxi to his place and fall into bed on the spot. He’d gone off in a huff when she’d explained woozily, no, sorry, it was just a kiss, because, sorry, she’d forgotten his name and, sorry, you really couldn’t sleep with someone when you didn’t know their name, right?

  Why the hell not, he’d said.

  She’d turned her back.

  And then…memory extremely hazy here…she’d danced with Luke very late in the evening…And at some point that frantic, artificial energy—the need to forget the stressful week and the sense of failure by whatever means possible—had suddenly ebbed like bath water draining…She’d almost wept with exhaustion and stress…

  Had found herself in his arms.

  Given him her mouth.

  Kiss me, Luke, I just need a kiss. Just one.

  He’d kissed her back—for how long? Half a minute? Ten?—then apologised in a woolly, absent-minded way and staggered off. He’d had a rough week in A and E, too. Had worked about ninety hours. Had been thoroughly yelled at by some senior doctor, she knew, because several people had heard. She was pretty sure he’d gone home that night with someone else. Or at least had shared a taxi with the woman and been all over her in the car, receiving a warm welcome for his attentions.

  He and Janey had both been as awkward as fourteen-year-olds the next day when they’d met up at work. Or maybe it had just been her, projecting her awkwardness onto him. A mumbled greeting. Palpable regret. Kissing someone you didn’t even like! You shouldn’t still be doing that at twenty-six, even when you were a stressed-out intern.

  It must only have been a week or two later that Alice had come to the hospital to meet Janey for coffee, along with a whole group of other interns, including Luke, and had fallen for him on the spot.

  Neither he nor Janey had ever talked about that kiss.

  She devoutly hoped he didn’t remember it, she told herself.

  And she’d never been anywhere near that drunk before or since.

  She heard an electronic whoop as he pressed the button on his keyring to unlock the car doors, and ducked thankfully into her seat. The town looked eerie as they drove home. Far too quiet. Undamaged buildings gave the illusion of normality in the moonlight, and then a sudden swathe of destruction came into sight down a side street—crumpled roofing lying on the ground, tangles of debris washed against the light poles near the river. The air smelt of rotting vegetation, and worse.

  Apparently, her instinctive response to an overdose of death and destruction, whether in a hospital or the open air, was to dive straight into Luke Bresciano’s arms. ‘Got that out of our systems, thank goodness,’ she said lightly.

  ‘Yep. Our systems seem to have a few problems tonight.’

  ‘There can’t be that much left undealt with.’

  ‘You wouldn’t think.’

  ‘I’m not going to…you know…turn it into a big issue. I like you. A lot more than I used to. We have too much to think about. And I think I had too much to drink.’

  ‘It’s all good, Janey,’ he said gently.

  But it wasn’t.

  Luke couldn’t sleep.

  A little embarrassed at having kept Janey out so late, he ushered her to her room in the doctors’ house via the veranda instead of through the kitchen, which most people used for coming and going. He told her, ‘I’m going to duck over to the hospital to get a report on Rowdy.’

  ‘Can’t I come, too?’ Her eyes looked so huge and shimmery in the dark, with only the blue light of the moon spilling beneath the veranda’s wide eaves. The pull between them scared him. Where was it coming from? He didn’t know. But he did know that he had to resist it. They both did. There was too much history, too many responsibilities.

  This was Alice’s sister, for heck’s sake!

  ‘I’ll let you know if there’ve been any developments,’ he told her, silently telegraphing, Don’t argue, with every cell in her body. ‘You need to rest.’

  She nodded and disappeared obediently inside, and as he walked over to the hospital he thought about her getting ready for bed, images of her pulling Georgie’s little sheath dress up over her head meshing with his sense memory of how she had felt in his arms, all passionate
and unthinking and warm.

  She’d initiated that kiss…sort of…but she hadn’t been responsible for it.

  Well, neither had he. Churned-up emotions could do funny things.

  In the paediatric ward, Rowdy was fine. Sleeping. Shown a healthy appetite earlier in the evening. He should definitely be out of here tomorrow. But he still hadn’t spoken, and Luke wasn’t surprised. He’d begun to suspect there would have to be a trigger. They’d have to stumble onto the right emotion, the right moment, and it would probably be dramatic when it happened, and any more drama was surely the last thing his little guy needed in his life right now.

  So what did you hope for in that situation? That he’d stay silent for weeks or months longer?

  Back at the house…

  Yeah.

  Really couldn’t sleep.

  Lay there for two hours, rumpling up the bed and making it hotter and hotter with the friction of his restless body. Got up and went to the kitchen for some iced water, knowing that a part of him hoped he’d see Janey on a similar errand and they’d…

  Talk.

  Just talk.

  It was all they could afford to do.

  She was Alice’s sister, and Rowdy’s aunt.

  But the kitchen was silent, as was the entire house, so he crept back to bed and tried again. Must have dozed a bit, but still felt restless and edgy and unrefreshed when dawn began to filter in through the curtains he hadn’t bothered to close. He got up, put on shorts and a T-shirt and went out to finish cleaning the pool.

  ‘You’ve done an incredible job with the pool, Luke!’ Georgie exclaimed over breakfast. ‘Is it swimmable yet?’

  ‘Probably need to give it another few hours for the chemicals to settle.’

  ‘Did you see it, Janey?’ Georgie asked.

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘She helped yesterday,’ Luke said, although he was giving her too much credit.

  ‘You wouldn’t let me help, Luke!’ she protested. ‘I wiped down a couple of chairs.’

  Half of Crocodile Creek’s medical personnel seemed to have converged on the kitchen for breakfast this morning. Janey’s head began to spin from the overlapping conversations, the belated introductions, the new, curious faces, and she couldn’t eat. The whole-grain cereal went gluggy in her bowl and the coffee tasted too bitter and strong. She hadn’t slept well last night, and Luke didn’t look as if he had either.

  She’d begun to regret their kiss as soon as it had ended but in the bright light of day it seemed like not just a minor glitch, like that other kiss they’d shared eight years ago, but a huge, glaring misjudgement. He’d once been her sister’s husband. Nobody needed this kind of complication, not Rowdy, not Luke, not she herself.

  Cal Jamieson came in, following an overnight stint in A and E. ‘Who did the pool? It’s sparkling.’

  ‘Luke,’ said Georgie. ‘Doesn’t it look great?’

  Cal clapped him on the back. ‘Good on you! The kids can swim after school. Now, if you want to help the clean-up team with the mess on the beach…’

  ‘Give him a break!’ Georgie protested. ‘He must have been out there before dawn.’

  They all seemed unreasonably impressed by Luke’s hard work, and made a big deal of it the way a parent might if a surly and unhelpful teen suddenly turned around and washed the dinner dishes without being asked. Janey wondered about it. He surely couldn’t have acquired a reputation as a shirker. However shallow and ego-driven she might have thought him eight years ago, she would never have accused him of slacking off where work was concerned. It was something else that had impressed them.

  ‘How’s Rowdy?’ someone asked.

  ‘You know, that’s going to be his name for ever, unless he protests,’ said someone else. Janey was losing track of who was who.

  ‘Is that OK, Luke?’ Georgie frowned. ‘We kind of…saddled him with it in a fit of frustration, because we had to call him something, but it’s up to you.’

  Luke gave a slow, reluctant smile. ‘I’m good with Rowdy. If he is. He responds to it, at least.’

  ‘I think he responds mainly to the sound of someone opening the fridge door.’

  They all laughed, but then the atmosphere went a little cautious and quiet. Not Alice’s ghost this time, but an awareness in all of them that for Rowdy/Felixx/Frankie Jay there was still a long way to go.

  Three doctors OK’d his discharge later that morning. Hospital caretaker and handyman Walter Grubb came and inspected Luke’s work with the pool. He tested the water and pronounced it safe for human immersion, someone rustled up a pair of boy’s swim shorts that more or less fitted, and Janey and Rowdy went swimming.

  They had the loveliest, laziest day, while Luke did a long shift at the hospital. Between swims, they lolled by the pool in the shade, sucking on icy poles or drinking fresh fruit smoothies that were thick with crushed ice, yoghurt and full-cream milk, and tasted of the very expensive peaches and strawberries and bananas that were now being trucked in to the stricken region on the damaged roads.

  Rowdy could swim like a frog, and he was a joy to behold, wriggling down to the bottom of the pool and back up again, doing cannonballs and twists off the side. He tired himself out by two o’clock and Janey insisted on a nap, giving him the double bed she was using because it had a ceiling fan above it, which made the room cooler.

  He went out like a light and she sat on the side of the bed and watched him, then felt so sleepy herself that she lay down beside him, thinking she’d just close her eyes for a minute or two…or five…and enjoy the precious, peaceful sound of him breathing.

  So much for that plan. She fell asleep herself, and neither of them stirred for two hours.

  Another long swim soon freshened them up and then the house started filling again towards the end of the day. Georgie brought Max and CJ home from school. CJ belonged to Gina and Cal, Janey had discovered. Charles dropped in to see how Rowdy was doing. Someone suggested a sausage sizzle beside the pool to celebrate its return to active service.

  Janey was amazed and impressed at the way everyone took up the idea and got into action. Mrs Grubb answered the appeal for salad ingredients, and promised her potato salad, still warm, with mustard dressing, in less than an hour, but the medical staff did most of the preparation themselves.

  The division of labour fell along gender lines. The women rushed around the kitchen, slicing onions, grating carrot, cooking tortellini, their conversation pitched at a level of urgency Janey would have expected during emergency surgery.

  ‘Wait! Don’t put the tortellini in until I find the jar of pesto sauce, because maybe there isn’t any!’

  ‘I don’t think we need watermelon salad as well, if we’ve got the tortellini and pesto…’

  ‘Where are the cherry tomatoes?’

  ‘And the carrot and raisin salad, too. It’s too much.’

  ‘It’s fine. There’s a ton of fresh mint growing around the bottom of the steps, we should use it. And how many are we, anyway? Has anyone counted?’

  Janey just kept her head down and did what she was told with a knife and a chopping board. She liked the lively atmosphere, but was content to be more of a spectator than a participant. What would it be like to live and work here? she wondered.

  Someone exclaimed again about Luke cleaning the pool. ‘It’s the first time he’s really got involved in something outside the hospital.’

  ‘Your influence, Janey?’ someone else suggested.

  ‘No,’ she said at once. ‘It’s because he’s found his son.’ And the women all nodded and murmured, conceding that she was right.

  Meanwhile, the men performed primal male rituals with the barbecue grill, about ten kilos of sausages and some lethal-looking stainless-steel forks and tongs. There was a brief panic over tomato ketchup, but somebody found it. Several kids, dripping with pool water, announced that they were starving. It was dark by this time, but the air was still steamy and warm, and someone had set up outdoor lights and mosquit
o coils to keep the bugs away.

  Everything smelt fabulous. The salads and cups and dishes and cutlery were ferried out to the poolside to the big picnic table that had been brought out from under the veranda. The sausages were pronounced ready. The kids ate them slathered with fried onion and ketchup, wrapped in bread slices, and flavoured slightly with chlorine from their wet fingers.

  The adults piled their paper plates with salads as well as the sausages and onions, and ate while watching the kids when they went back in the pool. Somebody set up the CD player on the veranda and put on some rock and roll.

  Sitting at the foot of her favourite lounging chair, Janey watched Luke finish loading his plate and come over to sit beside her.

  ‘The best get-togethers at Crocodile Creek are always the ones with no preparation,’ he said.

  ‘You can take most of the credit for this one, Luke,’ she answered. ‘If you hadn’t cleaned the pool, this wouldn’t be happening.’

  He shrugged. ‘It’s Grubby’s job, but I knew he wouldn’t get to it for days because there’s so much else that has a higher priority at the moment.’

  ‘You’ve impressed everyone, I think.’

  ‘I’ve kept to myself a bit around here. Maybe they didn’t think I had that much community spirit.’

  She sensed that he was playing down the change in his own outlook, so she didn’t push the subject, saying instead, ‘Look at Rowdy.’

  ‘I know.’

  They watched him as they ate. Max and CJ were having a jumping-into-the-pool competition, with Alistair and Cal acting as judges. They gave points for style and splash.

  Rowdy had shaken his head when asked if he wanted to compete, but he took part on the sidelines, waiting until the other two boys had completed each jump then trying ambitious imitations of his own. Cal and Alistair were both great about it, issuing the right wow sounds at regular intervals and applauding his most impressives splashes.

  ‘He’s a good swimmer,’ Janey said.

  ‘He seems to love it.’

  ‘I just can’t think of Mundarri as paradise, but he must have had some wonderful times up there. They had a waterfall with a natural pool at the base of it. Pristine and deep and clear, with a bed of pebbles. He learned to swim in that, they told me. He made dams and channels and pebble castles.’