in case someone became lost or panicked. So he waited with her. As he should have waited before.
Six years! She’d been so young, beautiful, excited and as attracted to him as he’d been to her—the two of them like two silly moths mesmerised by the moment—grounded in an airport cocoon of wild weather and overwhelming fascination increased by the improbability of any future. Once he’d finished his business in Sydney he’d be flying home to Italy, her back to her seaside town and her beloved midwifery. She’d been barely twenty and he eight years senior and should have known better.
But they’d talked until their mouths were dry. Been amazed by the rapport that had sprung between them as if reunited friends from childhood. How could that be? From opposite sides of the world?
From a past life, Faith had said, and he’d hugged her to him for the endearing ridiculousness of that statement.
Though, once she’d laid her head against his chest, it was then that everything had spun out of control. For two full days until his brother had grounded him with familial duty, then he knew their love castles were built on dreams he couldn’t follow. Could never follow. A truth he’d left her with. But was that all he’d left her with?
FAITH WATCHED THE headlamp lights disappear one by one. Damn, she’d missed her chance to send him first.
She tried telepathy.
Go!
She urged the man beside her to move off with the others but he obviously wasn’t picking up the vibe. She couldn’t go until he had, it was her way, and she broke the silence between them as the last lamp disappeared under the curtain of rock.
‘I need you to go now, please.’
He didn’t say anything, just moved forward and crawled away from her.
Faith took a moment to breathe deeply and centre herself, and here in the arms of the earth on the soft sand of millennia was a good place to do it.
Okay. She’d get them all back to the safety of the walking path and then they could talk. She didn’t have to pick up Chloe until two p.m., just before work, when preschool finished. So she had a couple of hours to discover why Raimondo had returned to rattle her composure and her world.
She wondered what her aunt would say when she told her Chloe’s father had arrived, far too many years too late.
Twenty minutes later she left the group at the boardwalk and her job was done.
Except one of the participants didn’t stay behind and she could feel the heat from Raimondo’s body as he walked beside her to the exit of the cave. His arm swung beside her arm and she tucked her fingers in close to her body so she didn’t accidentally knock his hand.
Out in the bright sunshine Faith stopped on the path and the man beside her stopped too. She lifted her head and met his gaze steadily. ‘So why are you here?’ She’d done nothing wrong.
His eyes were that deep espresso brown of unfiltered coffee, dark and difficult to see to the bottom of the cup or, more to the point, to the bottom of his heart.
‘I have come because I heard you had a child.’ His cadence was old-fashioned, she remembered that, formally stiff, but it was a way of speaking she’d found incredibly sexy when she’d been young and silly, in its translated whimsy of sentence structure.
Then his words settled over her like the damp leaves had settled over the forest floor. Thick and stealing the light. He had heard?
She blinked. Pushed back his heaviness. ‘I wrote you that. At the beginning and at the end of my pregnancy. Five years ago.’
‘No. I did not see this.’ He shook his head emphatically, but his face stilled and suddenly expression fled to leave an inscrutable mask of blank shock. ‘Madonna.’ A quiet explosive hiss.
‘Chloe, not Madonna,’ she offered with just a little tartness in her voice. She frowned at him. Trying to understand. ‘I wrote twice.’
Again he said, ‘No.’
He shook his head but he must have seen the truth in her eyes because his face softened slightly as he looked at her. The silence stretched between them until he said softly, ‘Then it is as I suspected? You had a child that is mine?’
Unfortunate words if he wanted her to continue this conversation. ‘No.’ She watched him blink. Good.
He’d relinquished that role by his disinterest. ‘You fathered a child who is mine.’ She amazed herself with the steadiness and calmness of the answer while her heart bounced in agitation in her chest. ‘Her name is Chloe and she is almost five. Chloe Fetherstone.’ She needed time to think and her feet moved her forward. He reached out and caught her hand, not tight but with an implacable hold she couldn’t shake off without an undignified tug.
She stopped and glanced pointedly at his big fingers on her wrist. ‘Let go. I need a minute.’ She wasn’t the timid junior midwife who’d fallen for him years ago. She was a single mother, a senior midwife, a responsible niece to a woman she admired and who had been the rock this man should have been.
She held his gaze with her eyebrows raised.
His fingers released her.
Faith began to walk again and he fell into step beside her.
He hadn’t known?
Had she addressed the envelope correctly?
She’d addressed it so many times until at last she hadn’t torn up the letter. He’d told her his home town and she had based her identity search assuming he hadn’t lied about that or his true name.
‘Where did you send these letters?’ His mind must be running along the same lines as hers.
‘I looked you up. In the town you’d mentioned. Sent it to your house.’ She recited the address. Funny how she could still remember it. She glanced at him. ‘Two letters eight months apart. Don’t get the wrong idea. I knew where I stood. I wasn’t asking for anything. Just giving you information I felt you should have.’
His face had gone back to inscrutable. ‘Did you not think it strange when no answer returned?’
‘Of course. Though “strange” was not the word I would have chosen. Thoughtless. Uncaring. Bitterly disappointing.’ She shrugged.
It was a long time ago now and she was over it. Over him. ‘You said you would never return. I expected little. I did my part and it was not my fault if you defaulted on yours.’
‘I did not…’ His voice had grown harsher, risen just a little. ‘Default.’ Then the last word more quietly. He looked at her. ‘My apologies. This is…difficult.’
She laughed with little amusement. So was meeting a transient lover from years ago when she’d been young and silly enough to fall pregnant. ‘Take your time.’
Faith looked ahead to the tourist shop they’d almost reached. ‘Give me your helmet and headlamp. I’ll get my things and we can go for a coffee somewhere.’
She surprised herself with the stability in her voice when inside she was panicking and fretting. She wished her heart would settle into a cold calm. What did this mean for the world she had created for Chloe and herself? She hated not being in control—even if it didn’t show.
No. He would not cast her into turmoil again. She had this. She had to have it. She was comfortable in her shoes as the one who had done the right thing and as a single mother who loved her child more than life itself. He was the one who had had the shock and would have to change the way he thought.
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