vehicle then loped towards her, looking as fresh as if he’d just stepped out of a shower, not driving since before dawn. Her mind whizzed back five years to the memory of him stepping out of the motel bathroom, unashamed and glorious. She forced herself to remember the man he really was.
‘Lea.’
‘Something you forgot to say?’ Some organ you forgot to rip out and pulverise under your boot?
His eyes flicked over her shoulder, looking at the horses grazing in the paddock behind her. Then they slid back to hers. ‘I came to see if you were all right.’ He must have realised how utterly ridiculous that sounded, and he hurried on. ‘And to explain. In case I wasn’t clear.’
She straightened against the cool of the morning; it wouldn’t stay that way for long. It would be forty Celsius by mid-morning. ‘You were perfectly clear. You won’t help Molly. I get it.’
He sighed. ‘Not won’t, Lea. Can’t.’
A sleepless night and complete emotional collapse had left her preciously short of patience. ‘Philosophical objections, I presume?’ she snapped. She’d been prepared for that; stem cells were a touchy subject all round. The only people she’d got absolute acceptance from were her specialist and her sisters.
His jaw flexed. ‘Physiological objections.’
Lea frowned.
‘Saying you took me by surprise yesterday is an understatement,’ he went on. ‘I was completely pole-axed. I wasn’t thinking straight. I should have stopped you when you took off—explained.’
He looked uncomfortable. Critically so. His eyes darkened a shade. ‘I was diagnosed two years ago. It has a long medical name, but the short version is that I sustained a string of groin injuries riding the broncos over the years, and my immune system kicked in to protect itself from the damage. But the antibodies didn’t only battle the infection.’
A cold chill crept through her. Lea knew all about the immune system from studying Molly’s condition.
‘The antibodies attack my sperm as though they’re foreign objects.’ He took an enormous breath. ‘I’m sterile, Lea.’
The dramatic way he paled as the word crossed his lips told Lea it was the first time he’d said it out aloud. Her mind spun. ‘But Molly?’
‘The specialists weren’t able to estimate how long ago it started.’
Not five years ago, evidently.
Sterile. Her first thought should have been for her daughter. Saying no because you couldn’t, or because you wouldn’t, was still a ‘no’. The ‘why’ made little difference to Molly.
But all the difference in the world to Reilly.
She thought about the man with the sexy swagger she’d met in the pub and tried to imagine him sterile. She remembered his potent, muscular body arching, taut, over hers and tried to imagine it barren. She looked at him now, really looked, at the extra lines in his skin, the caution in his manner, the shadow behind his eyes.
Double horror hit her. For Molly and for Reilly. That such a vibrant, virile man should be robbed of the chance to make children, the most fundamental biological right. He’d had tragedy in his life too.
‘I’m sorry, Reilly.’
He pushed past to walk towards the horses. ‘I’m not interested in your pity; I simply wanted you to understand my position.’
As if she could have missed it. Lea closed her eyes. She’d exposed Molly, brought this man back into her life, for nothing. He was powerless to help.
Her voice was as quiet as the morning. ‘I understand.’
‘What will you do?’
She shook her head. ‘We’ll try regular cord blood. Hope. Pray.’ Her voice cracked on that word.
‘That won’t work?’
Lea sighed, tight and small. It hurt her chest. ‘I don’t think so, no. But it’s something.’
Reilly stared hard at her. ‘She’s a great kid.’
It almost killed her to deliver a flat smile. ‘She is. The best.’
She stepped up to the paddock fence as one of her horses walked over. As always, she drew comfort from Goff’s softness and courage from his warmth. She could feel Reilly’s eyes on her through the silence. He stepped closer behind her.
‘Lea, if there was…’ He seemed uncertain; it didn’t suit him. He cleared his throat. ‘If there was a way despite my…’
Lea’s radar began to bleep. But, no, she’d felt like this walking up his stairs, and look how that had worked out. She forced down the little spike of hope, turned to him with a pur-posefully bland expression.
His eyes raked over her, wondering, worrying. ‘I told myself I wanted nothing to do with you. Even for Molly,’ he said. ‘But I lay there last night thinking about this little pixie of a kid and how she looks just like me at her age. And I realised I couldn’t do nothing. She’s my daughter. My blood. I spent most of the night online researching her condition.’
His tanbark eyes burned with intensity and he shook his head with disbelief. ‘I didn’t tell you about my situation so you could feel sorry for me. That’s the last thing I want. But you need to understand this is not a small thing you’re asking. Quite apart from the philosophical considerations, as you so aptly put it, I just don’t have millions of cells to work with. You’re not asking for something minor.’
That made it sound like…Her heart started to thud.
He broke a long silence. ‘When investigations first began, one of my many medicos recommended freezing a sample for later comparison, assuming we’d have something later to compare with. They used most of it up running a fortune’s worth of tests.’
Lea’s breath evaporated. Most.
He turned and looked at her. ‘But there is a freezer in a lab in Perth and it contains one single remaining sample, about the size of one of Molly’s fingernails.’
Lea’s heart lurched to a halt.
‘If it’s like the others, it won’t have a lot in it, but it may just have enough. Enough to help Molly.’ He stared at her in silence while her mouth opened and shut like a baby barramundi.
Words simply would not come, trapped behind a lump the size of a football in her throat. She had a sudden flash of a teenaged Molly—healthy and happy, her whole life ahead of her—cantering a greying Goff around the paddock. And Reilly, the man with only one shot at fatherhood, who was willing to spend it on a daughter he’d only just discovered. A daughter whose parentage he’d not even asked for hard proof of, so strong was his instinctive recognition that she was his.
Lea pushed up onto her toes and threw her arms around Reilly’s surprised neck. For a moment, the very barest of moments, his arms crept around her and a fluttering sense of rightness ghosted through her. But then his hands slid upwards, gripped her shoulders and pushed her firmly away, his eyes locking onto hers. She felt instantly cold.
‘I’m doing this for Molly. Not for you. I have no interest in helping you beyond what it does for my daughter.’
She ignored the hurt snapping at her heels like a cattle dog, accustomed to forcing down personal pain. Her vision blurred with tears. ‘I understand.’
‘And it’s not without a price. There’s something I want in return.’
‘Anything.’
His dark eyes glittered. ‘Careful, you don’t know what I’m asking yet.’
There wasn’t a single possibility she hadn’t thought about before driving to Minamurra, a compromise she wasn’t willing to make. She’d already given him her body,