was down at the water’s edge. The shoreline was two hundred yards from where she was standing but his figure was unmistakable.
He was just…standing.
So what? she demanded of herself. She should leave him be.
But he was Cal. She stared down the beach at his still figure and she felt the same wrenching of her heart that she’d felt all those years before. It was as if this man was a part of her and to walk away from him would be tantamount to taking away a limb.
She’d had to walk away before, she thought dully, for all sorts of reasons. And she’d survived.
But CJ was safely asleep and there was nothing standing between herself and Cal.
Nothing but five years of pain, and a desolate childhood that had destroyed his trust in everyone.
He’d never get over it, she told herself. He was damaged goods. Dangerous.
But still she couldn’t walk away. Not now. There was only so much resolve one woman was capable of, and she’d run right out of it.
She opened her door and she walked down to the beach to meet him.
He sensed rather that saw her approach. What was it about this woman that gave him a sixth sense—that made him feel different, strange, just because she was on the same continent as he was? he wondered. She was walking along the beach to reach him and he braced himself as if expecting to be hit.
She’d hurt him.
No, he’d hurt her, he thought savagely. She’d been pregnant and he hadn’t been there for her.
He would have been there if she’d said…
Liar. He would have run.
‘I’m sorry, Cal,’ she said gently behind him, and he flinched. But he didn’t turn.
‘What do you want?’ It was a low growl. He sounded angry, which was grossly unfair but he was past being fair tonight.
Maybe she sensed it. She sounded softly sympathetic—not responding with her own anger.
‘It’s been a dreadful day, Cal. To have CJ thrown at you, and then copping such deaths…’
‘I couldn’t save her,’ he said savagely into the night. He’d left his shoes back on the dry sand and rolled up his jeans before he’d come down the water’s edge. The water was now washing over his feet, taking out some of the heat but not enough. Still he didn’t turn and Gina came and stood beside him and stared out at the same sea he was seeing. She was wearing jeans and T-shirt and sandals, but she didn’t seem to notice that she was wading into the shallows regardless. Neither did he. ‘I worked so damned hard and I couldn’t save her. Of all the useless…’
‘You can only do so much, Cal. You’re a doctor. Not a magician.’
‘The pressure was too much,’ he said, picking up a ribbon of kelp that had washed against his legs and hurling it into an oncoming breaker. It didn’t go far. He walked further into the waves to retrieve it and then hurled it again. ‘Did you know we actually split her skull, trying to save her?’ he demanded. ‘We drilled a burrhole, but the whole brain was so bruised we realised the pressure was killing her. So we split…’
Gina was beside him—but not too close. They were up to their knees in the surf and the rolling breakers were reaching their thighs. She didn’t touch him. They were standing three feet apart, and she was staring out to sea, and he knew that she was seeing what he was seeing. A dying child.
‘That’s heroic surgery, Cal,’ she said softly. ‘Performed as a last-ditch stand in a hopeless case. But it was hopeless. You can’t blame yourself when something like that doesn’t work. Medicine has limits.’
‘Yeah.’
She took a step closer and laid a hand on his arm. He flinched.
‘Don’t.’
‘Don’t touch you, do you mean?’ she asked. ‘Cal, that’s what you’ve been saying for years. You’re so afraid of people being close.’
‘What do you know about what I’m like now?’
‘Hamish says your friendship with Emily is platonic,’ she murmured softly, and her hand stayed on his arm, whether he willed it or not. ‘He says you’re still driving people away.’
‘I didn’t drive you away.’
‘No?’
‘Gina—’
‘OK, let’s leave it,’ she told him, her voice softening in sympathy. But instead of removing her hand from his arm, she linked her fingers through his and tugged him sideways. Cal had such shadows but he’d earned them the hard way. For him to move past them must be a near-impossible task. ‘Let’s leave the lid on it.’
‘What are…?’ She was tugging him through the shallows. ‘Where—?’
‘Cal, there’s one thing I have learned in the last few years,’ she told him, still tugging so he had no option but to follow. ‘Reinforced by stuff like tonight. And that’s the reality that you can’t spend your life dwelling in the shadows of what’s gone. If you do that, then you might as well finish it off when you lose the ones you love. But I only have one life, Cal. I intend to make the most of it.’
‘So what’s that—?’
‘It means I’m going for a walk in the moonlight,’ she told him, refusing to let him interrupt. ‘CJ’s safe with Mrs Grubb and the new Grubb puppy. This water is delicious. It’s a full moon and it’s low tide. We have miles of beach all to ourselves and there’s no way either of us is going to sleep after today’s events. So let’s walk.’
He stopped. Firm. Planting his feet in the shallows. Holding himself still against the insistent tug of her hand.
‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’
‘I think it’s a splendid idea,’ she told him, sounding exasperated.
‘I don’t want to get close to you, Gina.’
‘You know, I have news for you,’ she told him, linking her arm through his and keeping on tugging. ‘You’re the father of my son. You’re here now. You don’t want to get close? Cal Jamieson, you already are.’
He was walking. Gina started down the beach through the shallows, and Cal let himself be tugged beside her, and as he relaxed and started to walk without being tugged she knew she’d achieved a significant victory.
He’d always taken deaths personally, she thought. It was one of the things she loved about him. Most doctors developed personal detachment from patients, but she’d never seen that in Cal, no matter how hard he fought to find it.
He’d never succeeded in personal detachment. Except in his personal relationships.
Except with her.
But for now he was walking beside her, fighting the way he was feeling about her and about CJ, and at least that meant that he wasn’t internalising Karen’s death, she thought. The hours after such a death were always dreadful. Going over and over things in your mind, wondering what else could you have done, what you’d missed…
She could distract him for a little while, she thought, and if by doing so she could distract herself from…things, great.
Or at least good.
Given the staffing in the hospital, they both knew they couldn’t venture far, so they confined their walk to the end of the cove. But as they reached the headland, Gina decided it was not far enough. So they walked to the opposite headland. Then they turned again—and again. Walking in silence.
So many things unsaid.
‘We’ll wear the beach out,’ Cal told her, breaking the silence on their third turn, and