I can’t think why I do now, but I do.’
They’d parted friends. She was already eyeing off the new paediatric consultant, a young widower. A guy with a child already.
A ready-made family …
Once more his gaze drifted to the water. Jess and Dusty.
Dr Jessica McPherson. He’d looked her up last night. English qualifications. Based in London. Accompanied by her son, Dustin.
Obviously here to combine work and holiday.
If she didn’t have a child he could spend some time with her, he thought. She fitted his date description. Smart, attractive, funny. Returning to the other side of the world in ten days.
Smart, attractive, funny …
He watched her a while longer. Add gorgeous to that description, he decided. The way she laughed … The way she rolled in the sand with her son, totally unselfconscious. Her peal of delicious chuckles.
She had a child, he told himself harshly. He didn’t do children.
And suddenly Nate was there, front and centre.
Nate.
He was in the most beautiful place in the world, in the most comfortable bed with the best view and suddenly the tension inside him was almost to breaking point.
His family was dysfunctional to say the least, but Nate had been his one true thing. Nate, eight years old to his eleven. His adoring little brother. During childhood they’d hardly seen their parents, they’d been raised by nannies, but they’d had each other.
And then something had finally cracked in the social façade that had been his parents’ marriage. They’d woken one morning and it had been over.
‘Ben, darling, you’re coming with me. There’s a lovely school in Australia—I believe it’s even been used by royalty. And Arthur, the nice man I introduced you to last week, is based in Melbourne. We’ll be able to explore together. Your father’s decided he wishes to hold onto Nathaniel. Your bags are being packed now. Say goodbye to your brother. Your father’s gone out for the day—I don’t think he intends to say goodbye to anyone.’
After that … He hadn’t seen Nate for years, and when he had Nate had turned into his father. Blamed him. Vibrated vitriol.
To feel like that again …
No. He didn’t do family.
Outside Jess and Dusty were whooping up the beach, rolling in the soft sand, then lurching about like sand-covered monsters trying to scare each other.
How would she feel if anything happened to her son? How would her little boy feel if he lost his mother?
Don’t go there.
He always did. He always had. Families instilled an automatic dread.
So …
So there was two hours to go before he’d promised to go to the wildlife shelter. He still wasn’t sure how he’d been coerced into the visit but he’d get it over with fast. Meanwhile he could have breakfast and head to the beach. A swim would be great.
That’s what he would have done if they weren’t there.
They were there. A family.
He had work to do. A quick breakfast, a few laps of the hotel pool, then an hour or so on the computer.
He’d meant this time to be a rest. Beach time. Not if it meant getting involved. No way.
Dusty swam, splashed, dug, then reluctantly returned to their bungalow for breakfast, and when Sally and a rough-looking beach buggy arrived to collect them he was so wide-eyed he was practically speechless. For a child brought up in the heart of London, this was heaven.
He’d almost forgotten that flash of intuition he’d had about Ben on the boat, so when Sally stopped the buggy in front of Ben’s bungalow and Ben emerged, Jess saw her son react with something akin to confusion. He had warring priorities. Beach and wildlife—or a guy who might or might not be his uncle.
Should she have said something? Admitted that she thought she’d recognised him? It was too late now. Jess could only hold her breath and hope.
‘Hi, people,’ Sally said cheerfully. ‘You’ll have to put up with me driving this morning. Marge is our usual driver. I only got my licence when my husband died and that was when I was sixty so I’m not exactly skilled. But Marge isn’t well this morning so it’s me, me or me. Don’t talk to me. I need to concentrate. Hold onto your hats.’
There wasn’t a lot else to hold onto. There were two bench seats facing each other in the back of the buggy.
Jess and Dusty sat on one. Ben on the other. Facing each other.
‘Did they give you a spade?’ Dusty demanded of Ben.
‘No.’ Ben was looking … bemused. He was wearing light chinos, a short-sleeved linen shirt, open at the throat, canvas boat shoes. His hair was already rumpled by the soft sea breeze.
He looked far too much like his brother, Jess thought grimly. And like her son.
‘They gave me one,’ Dusty was saying. ‘It’s humungous. I built the best ever sandcastle and moat. We built it just past the high-tide mark and when the tide comes in the water will reach the moat and fill it. Do you want to look when we get back?’
‘The doctor will have work to do when we get back,’ Jess said, with gentle reproof, and Ben flashed her an appreciative glance.
‘I do. I’m presenting first thing tomorrow.’
‘I don’t know how you find the courage to take on public speaking,’ she ventured, trying to think of what a real colleague would say. ‘It’d scare me witless.’
‘Having a son would scare me witless,’ he said.
‘You don’t have children?’ That’s also what a normal colleague would ask, she thought. That’s also what Dusty would like to know. If he had cousins.
‘No family,’ Ben said, and it was almost a snap.
‘What, no one at all?’
‘The wildlife lodge’s just over this hill,’ Sally yelled cheerfully from the front. ‘I think … uh-oh … Hold on!’
A hump. The buggy lurched sideways. Jess grabbed Dusty, Ben grabbed her, Sally hit the brakes and suddenly they were sliding onto the floor.
Sally pulled to a stop. Looked back at her passengers, appalled. ‘Oh, my … Marge said not to hit that crest too hard. I forgot. Are you okay?’
‘I …’ Ben was still holding Jess. She could hardly breathe. ‘I think so.’
Dusty was underneath her. Ben was holding him, too.
Dusty giggled.
There wasn’t much alternative. She should giggle.
It was just that … she was underneath an Oaklander.
Ben.
She was starting to separate him from Nate in her head, but she still remembered how Nate had made her feel.
Separate or not, he was an Oaklander. But she couldn’t pull away.
‘I think we’re better staying down,’ Ben said. ‘We can’t fall any further.’ There was a rubber mat on the floor of the tray. Ben’s advice made sense.
He tugged her sideways so she was free to breathe and she tugged Dusty close so they were spooned into each other.
Dusty giggled some more.
And suddenly Jess was chuckling as well—because there was nothing else to do. She was so disconcerted.
Ben’s arms were around her waist. An Oaklander, holding