His Runaway Nurse Page 13

  She pressed her cheek to Grace’s curly head and silently answered her own question, admitting the truth to herself.

  Because to her Flynn was, and had been for a long time, more than just a friend. True, her love for him had been first love—a teenage adoration—but now they’d met again, she knew it was a love that hadn’t ever gone away. Not completely! Neither had it been wiped out by her and Jeff’s gentle, loving marriage. Apparently, it had been tucked out of sight, mostly forgotten, in a bottom corner of her heart, only reappearing—blossoming—slowly, shyly and uncertainly, now she and Flynn had met again.

  Which was all the more reason not to take advantage of his offer, an offer made from kindness, or duty, or pity, or guilt.

  Not love.

  ‘A million dollars,’ she repeated, so he’d think her mind had been considering the money all along, not floating off into dreams of love and marriage.

  ‘More,’ Flynn reiterated. ‘Of course, there might be someone else in your life you’d prefer to marry in the next few weeks,’ he added, although they’d gone way past the marriage part of the conversation, and even saying the words ‘someone else’ made him feel slightly ill.

  Ignoring the side issues of his own internal feelings, he ploughed on.

  ‘And if you don’t want your grandfather’s money for yourself, think about Grace. There’s another million to be held in trust for her until she’s twenty-five and more set aside for future children. Will you deny her that inheritance because you’re too darned stubborn to bend a little?’

  Majella lifted her head, opened her eyes and stared at him, her arms tightening around her child’s small body at the same time.

  ‘A million dollars for Grace when she turns twenty-five?’ she whispered, and he realised she wasn’t worrying about or listening to his ‘getting married’ suggestions.

  ‘With whatever interest that’s accrued,’ he explained.

  ‘But that’s terrible!’ Majella said, losing Flynn completely.

  ‘Terrible?’

  ‘That much money given, just like that, to someone so young,’ she muttered at him, awe and uncertainty colouring the words. ‘It’s—it’s—irresponsible! She might get on drugs, go wild, anything could happen.’

  ‘You’re not that much older,’ Flynn pointed out. ‘If you were to get your grandfather’s money, would you take to drugs? Go wild?’

  ‘I’d use it for the rescue service,’ Majella snapped at him. ‘And for other charities. I have enough to live on, enough for both of us.’

  ‘Then why assume Grace won’t be as sensible and generous as you are? She’s your child, Majella, and she’ll have whatever beliefs and values you instil in her.’

  Majella stared at him as if trying to take in what he was saying.

  ‘But the temptation would be there,’ she whispered, and he could hear her fear for the young woman she was picturing in her head.

  ‘And you’d be there to guide her,’ Flynn said gently, reaching out to take the leaves Grace was offering him. ‘You, and Helen, and Sophie, and all the other people who come into her life in the next twenty-two years.’

  Me?

  He squelched the thought, knowing he, as both a friend and executor of the will, somehow had to help Majella make the decision that would be right for her and Grace.

  She looked at him, her eyes pleading for something he wasn’t sure he could supply.

  ‘The house I want—money for the service—Grace’s inheritance, all stacked up against a stupid desire on my part to stand on my own two feet!’A faint bitterness tinged the tired words, and strain showed around Majella’s pale lips. ‘Should I deny Grace that money for my own selfish reasons? Or because I fear for her stability when she’s twenty-five? Of course I shouldn’t!’

  She half smiled, an expression so sad Flynn didn’t want to look at it.

  ‘You’ve even offered me a solution to the condition of the will. All I have to do is marry you, which would be the fulfilment of my girlhood dreams, and it’s all mine. So why do I feel so unhappy?’

  Flynn couldn’t answer, his mind stilled by the ‘fulfilment of my girlhood dreams’ phrase.

  But apparently she didn’t need an answer, for she sighed and stood up, leaning down to tuck a corner of the blanket over Grace, who was lying down with the koala in her arms.

  ‘I hope that’s all you have to tell me,’ Majella said, and he could hear the tiredness in her voice. ‘I don’t think I could absorb any more bizarre news right now.’

  Flynn thought about the items on his mantelpiece at home and decided any mention of the letter and the little chest could wait. Majella looked exhausted—so pale he silently berated himself for not handling the situation more carefully.

  He got up and put his arm around her shoulders.

  ‘We’ll work it out,’ he promised her.

  ‘Will we?’ she asked, her voice so pitiful he turned her into his arms and held her in a comforting embrace.

  A comforting embrace, that’s all, he reminded himself, as excitement stirred, his senses remembering where another comforting embrace had led.

  Majella leaned into him, finding comfort and something more in his arms, disturbed that her body wanted to remain there—that it was tempted by the warmth of the embrace. Sensations she shouldn’t be feeling stirred in her breasts and tingled between her thighs.

  Thoughts she shouldn’t think—would a marriage of convenience be so bad when the man was Flynn? sneaked beneath her guard.

  Would it hurt to say yes? To marry him? To find oblivion from the chaos in her mind in the pleasure she knew Flynn’s body could provide?

  ‘Of course it would,’ she muttered, tearing her body out of that warm haven, no doubt startling Flynn with her cross words.

  Although the way he was smiling, maybe he’d been following her thoughts.

  ‘We’d be good together,’ he said, then he kissed her gently on the lips, but not so gently the stirring didn’t quicken and the tingling grow more intense.

  ‘That’s not the point,’ she told him, stepping away before he could kiss her again.

  Or she could kiss him!

  ‘You’ve got to pack up the picnic things,’ she reminded him, then walked away, taking Grace towards the creek, kneeling beside her while she splashed her hands in the water, showing her how small sticks floated on the water, playing with her daughter, her mind blocking out thoughts of money—thoughts of Flynn.

  But as she drove back to the showground, she couldn’t not think of the things he’d said—about them being good together, an innocent enough phrase but it had made her shiver with desire.

  ‘I need to think,’ she said, when she pulled up outside the cabin. ‘About it all.’

  ‘Including my offer of marriage?’ he asked.

  She looked at him, trying to read something in his eyes, but couldn’t fathom just what lay behind this prompt.

  Shook her head.

  ‘I don’t think that’s an option, really,’ she said sadly. ‘A nice offer—a nice thought—but…’

  ‘You’d marry someone else?’

  His voice betrayed his disbelief. Or was it displeasure?

  She shrugged.

  ‘Surely it wouldn’t be hard to find someone willing to marry me for a share of a million dollars.’

  ‘Now you’re being ridiculous!’ he said crossly. ‘You can’t go marrying someone you don’t know—he could take you for every cent of your inheritance, and what about Grace, have you thought of her? About the kind of influence some man you marry might have on her young life?’

  ‘What kind of influence would you have, Flynn?’ Majella shot back at him. ‘Coming into her life on a temporary basis then leaving it again?’

  Leaving it again? The idea filled Flynn with bleak despair. It was what he’d suggested but didn’t Majella and her daughter deserve better than that?

  ‘Let’s talk tomorrow,’ he said, touching her shoulder then opening the car door. ‘Think it through, ma
ybe talk to Helen. There’s still time to decide which way you want to go. You could even get some legal advice about the conditions, although I’ve tried a number of solicitors and even asked for a barrister’s ruling, and all agree the conditions can’t be broken.’

  He slid out of the car then leaned back in to touch a dozing Grace on the cheek, feeling a not entirely welcome delight when her eyes opened and she whispered, ‘Man!’ and smiled a sleepy smile.

  CHAPTER NINE

  BUT no amount of thinking seemed to help, Majella realised as she packed up some lunch for Grace and they made their way through the marquees to the Sherwoods’ stall. Not that she could stop thinking about the things that Flynn had told her—and suggested—even while explaining a balm or telling someone about the rescue service. In the end, Helen suggested she take Grace for a walk, and though she enjoyed wandering down the main street of the town, pushing Grace in her stroller, stopping to let people admire her little girl, no solution to her problems magically appeared.

  Although if she forgot about the will altogether, there was no problem. She could buy a house in some other small town, have runs built, and start a new sanctuary.

  And if her heart ached at the thought, and the friendly faces and welcoming smiles in Parragulla’s main street tempted her, well that was just too bad.

  Back at the cabin, she fed Grace her dinner, bathed the little girl and put her to bed.

  ‘We’re all going to the Chinese restaurant for dinner,’ Sophie informed her, whirling into the cabin for a wrap then disappearing almost as quickly.

  ‘I’m for an early night,’ Majella told Helen, who’d followed more sedately. ‘I’m bushed.’

  Helen nodded, and departed, leaving Majella with her thoughts for company. Although, much to her surprise, once showered and tucked into bed, she didn’t ponder on the pros and cons of money or marriage, but slept.

  Slept well, and deeply until Grace woke in the early hours of the morning, fretful and grizzling quietly, so Majella took the little girl into her bed and sang soft nursery rhymes until she drifted off to sleep. But sleeping with the child was like sleeping with a—windmill?—as little arms and legs flailed around, and the small body tossed and turned.

  By morning Grace was definitely feverish, her cheeks pink and her eyes glazed.

  ‘She can’t be teething,’ the ever practical Helen told Majella, ‘so it’s probably just some bug she’s picked up at the festival. Try some baby paracetamol and you stay here with her—you look as if you need a rest as well.’

  Grace went back to sleep, but sleep evaded Majella, kept at bay by the echoes of Flynn’s conversation and the things she hadn’t thought about last night.

  Flynn explaining there was money, Flynn suggesting she would be selfish to deny Grace a legacy, Flynn offering to marry her…

  Her heartbeats accelerated just thinking of that moment, then sadness swamped the joy. He had offered out of kindness—in part to make up for her grandfather’s behaviour, in part as the friend he’d always been. But how could she go into a pretend marriage with Flynn, feeling as she did about him?

  It would be like living a lie…

  Grace gave a cry then vomited, and Majella, lifting the wailing child into her arms, felt the heat in the little body and knew the paracetamol hadn’t reduced her fever.

  She bathed her gently, talking all the time, soothing the little one with words, but Grace’s lack of response to the chatter was even more concerning than her temperature. Dressing her in nothing but a nappy, Majella held her on her knee, trying to persuade her to drink some water, wondering if she should phone the hospital—phone Flynn…

  Flynn made his way towards the Sherwoods’ stall for the fourth day in a row. He should probably have given Majella time to consider his solution to her problems, but impatience wouldn’t let him stay away. He wouldn’t pester her, he told himself, just check she was OK. Maybe take Grace to see the miniature animals that were always the main attraction on the Tuesday of the festival.

  ‘She’s not here.’ Sophie stated the obvious as Flynn appeared. ‘Grace was a bit upset this morning and Majella’s stayed at the cabin with her.’

  ‘Just a bit upset or sick?’ Flynn demanded, then realised, from Sophie’s startled look, that he’d been far too abrupt with his question.

  Sophie shrugged.

  ‘Mum would know but she’s gone over to the fresh vegie market to get some stuff to take home. The cabin’s down near the wood-chopping arena. Number seven—it’s got a dark blue door. Oh, but you know that. Anyway, you could go and see them for yourself.’

  Flynn thanked her and strode away, anxious to see Majella but a little anxious about Grace as well, although he knew full well that children could pick up an infection very easily then throw it off with equal ease.

  He knocked on the blue door, and Majella called to him to come in, walking towards the door as he opened it. His eyes took in the worry in her expression, then Grace’s hectically flushed cheeks.

  ‘I was just considering whether to phone you or take her to the hospital. I know little ones can get sick very quickly and then better just as swiftly, but—’

  ‘You should have phoned me straight away,’ he said, smiling at Grace who offered him a weak effort in return but whimpered when he tried to take her from her mother’s arms.

  ‘Just rest her on the bed so I can look at her,’ he said, but as Majella shifted the child in her arms he saw the purpura—red spots in the red flush on her left cheek.

  ‘Better yet,’ he said, ‘let’s get her to the hospital. I can examine her more closely there—take some blood.’

  He spoke casually, trying not to frighten Majella, although his own lungs had tightened and he felt as if a giant hand was squeezing at his heart.

  ‘I’ll put her in the car right now,’ Majella said, and he saw the fear he’d tried to keep at bay, right there in her eyes.

  ‘My car’s way over near the entrance so I’ll come with you,’ he said, following her out and climbing into the back seat so he could be close to Grace. If it was meningitis, or its derivative meningococcal meningitis, she might convulse and if he were close…

  Majella drove carefully, although Flynn guessed she’d have knocked aside anyone who strayed into her path.

  ‘Meningococcal?’

  She spoke the word he’d hoped she wouldn’t guess as she pulled up at the hospital.

  ‘There’s a slight rash—it might be, or it might not,’ he said, releasing Grace from the safety restraints of her booster seat and lifting her into his arms. ‘I’ll do tests right now and start treatment. I’ll need to do a lumbar puncture for some spinal fluid. It’s not a nice procedure but it’s the only way we’ll know for sure.’

  Majella was following up the steps into the hospital—into A and E where they seemed to have spent an inordinate amount of time in the last few days.

  ‘Treatment? You can treat it?’

  ‘Of course,’ he said, and turned to see two tears of relief trickle from her eyes.

  A nurse appeared and he asked her to prepare a tray, explaining what he had to do.

  He rested Grace on the examination table in the room where he’d treated Majella, talking reassuringly to the little girl all the time, although she was unresponsive, then he washed his hands and pulled on a coat and gloves, asking Majella to do the same.

  ‘Mask as well, when we’re ready,’ he warned her. ‘The danger of infection at the site is low, but we daren’t risk it.

  ‘We need her on her side with her knees curled up,’ he explained to Majella, positioning Grace then asking Majella to hold her.

  ‘There’s a space between the fourth and fifth lumbar vertebrae,’ he said, thinking an explanation of the procedure might distract Majella, even just a little. ‘You slide the needle in, parallel to the table, angling it towards her belly button, then feel for the pop as the needle penetrates the protective sheath.’

  Majella watched, anxiety for Grace making her
feel detached from reality, although the fine needle penetrating Grace’s skin had made her wince, and now she felt quite ill, as Flynn drew off three tubes of fluid.

  ‘One for protein and glucose studies, one for cytologic and bacterial studies and one for cell count and serology,’ Flynn explained, and Majella, although understanding the terms, worried only that so much fluid had been taken from her child’s spine.

  He taped a dressing in place, and lifted Grace so gently Majella thought her heart would break. Little girls should know the feel of a father’s arms, she thought, then wondered fleetingly, as she sometimes did, about her own father.

  ‘I’ll settle her in a cot before I start a drip. I want to give her a dose of benzylpenicillin. If the test comes back negative for meningococcal it won’t matter, and if it’s positive at least we’ve been able to start treatment early.’

  Once again, Majella followed him through the hospital and into a small room furnished with a single bed. A nurse had followed them, carrying a tray with more paraphernalia on it, the covered needles making Majella shiver.

  ‘There’s a cot on the way,’ Flynn said, as a rattling in the corridor suggested it was very close. ‘I hate seeing little ones in a full-size bed—they look so small and lost it’s frightening.’

  A porter and a nurse entered the room and wheeled the bed away, replacing it with a small, blue-painted cot with sides that slid right down to allow the medical personnel easy access to the patient.

  ‘Her cot at home is blue,’ Majella said, and though she’d tried to sound matter-of-fact and, oh, so together, she’d heard the tremor in her voice and suspected Flynn had heard it, too.

  But all he said was, ‘That’s good,’ as he concentrated on getting a catheter into one of the tiny veins on the back of Grace’s hand and taping it in place. He connected the fluid line, then spoke to the nurse who disappeared, returning with the small vial of the drug Flynn would introduce into the fluid flowing into Grace’s blood.

  The fact that the little girl remained so quiet throughout all this fussing told Majella just how ill she must be, and her knees grew weak as she considered, just momentarily, how serious the situation was.