The Trouble With Choices Page 7

  Not likely! He was pretty sure Dan didn’t have bonking his sister in mind when he’d asked him to look after her. But he simply said, ‘I won’t if you won’t.’

  ‘Ha. Don’t worry, nobody’s going to hear it from me.’

  Right. That put a full stop to the affair, right there. He forced a semblance of a smile to his lips and nodded. ‘Then we’re good.’

  He was halfway out the door when he heard, ‘Oh, and Nick?’ This time he didn’t turn around.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Thank you.’

  8

  Beth

  Beth couldn’t rid her nose and mouth of the metallic tang of blood. She slammed her locker door shut in the change rooms, wishing she could as easily slam away the taste. She was used to the blood, more than used to it given her job as a paramedic. What she could never get used to was the fact that sometimes, despite their best attempts, despite fighting tooth and nail, things didn’t always end well. She would never get used to the fact that this very moment, someone was getting a visit from a couple of policemen—from strangers—calling to ask them to sit down and making sure they did, before they told them that their son, or father or husband wouldn’t be coming home tonight.

  She rested her head between her forearms on the locker door and banged her forehead against the metal.

  Bang. Bang. Bang.

  Get over it, she told herself, get a grip, knowing that she should, because this was what she did. This is why she’d dropped teaching to become a paramedic. Except there was no getting over it, no getting a grip, because this was the worst of them all.

  A motorcycle crash and the rider had died at the scene.

  They weren’t supposed to die.

  God, as if yesterday’s wedding hadn’t been reminder enough of what she’d lost. Now, the metallic taste in her mouth mocked her as the memories flooded back: of her mum, knocking on her bedroom door only to tell her, her face bleached of colour, that she had a visitor; of her nan leaning against the kitchen bench staring blankly over the boiling kettle while Joe’s dad stood in the middle of the lounge room looking shattered.

  Her blood had run cold as her mum and Nan had sat her down between them on the sofa, each of them holding one of her hands, while Joe’s dad had explained that his wife was too unwell to come, all the while avoiding her eyes as he stared through his tears at the baby bump that was now so heavy in her lap. He told her she should be the first to know after them, but they couldn’t tell her over the phone.

  And Beth had already worked out what he was going to say before he’d said it, and still she hadn’t been able to make any kind of sense out of the words. All she’d been able to do was wail and wrench her hands from the others’ grip so she could surround her unborn child in her arms and hug her baby bump. Hard.

  She slammed her head into her locker one more time and breathed deep before slumping onto a bench, her head in her hands. Oh God, when would it stop?

  ‘Beth,’ a colleague said, putting a hand on her shoulder as he recognised her distress if not the root cause of it. ‘We did all we could. We can’t save them all.’

  ‘I know,’ she conceded, breathing hard, but that didn’t make it any easier.

  He gave her shoulder a squeeze and she smiled up her thanks, even though he had no idea why it hurt so much.

  But then nobody knew. Nobody understood.

  That Joe’s accident had been all her fault.

  9

  Hannah

  Hannah wiped down the examination table after her final vet consultation of the day, the smell of disinfectant overpowering the myriad other distasteful smells she’d encountered during the long working hours. Already, she was contemplating the joys of walking through the door to the adjoining flat she called home and putting her feet up with a nice glass of sauvignon blanc, a treat she usually reserved for a Friday evening. But then, today felt a hell of a lot more like a Friday than a Monday.

  Then again, yesterday had felt a whole lot like a Friday, too.

  She was tired after the big wedding, she told herself, that was all. Worn out because that long day had been followed by another with several hours spent helping out at a native animal shelter. Yesterday she’d mucked out four kangaroo shelters and laid out new straw before spreading the old muck over the refuge’s front garden for mulch. No wonder she was tired.

  And Nan thought she should be lusting after having babies. Ha! Because she had so much time for looking after babies, of course. And Nan had such a bee in her bonnet about it, poor Lucy wouldn’t hear the end of it now that she was married to Dan. Only Nan was bound for disappointment on that score, too, given that Lucy was so hesitant to try again in case she miscarried once more. Twenty weeks. She could well understand Lucy’s reluctance to want to go through that a second time, to be permanently watching the clock and waiting for something to go wrong.

  Hannah stopped wiping, checking her bench to make sure she hadn’t missed anything. No, with both Lucy and her out of the running, and Beth so insistent that she’d done her bit with Siena, it was all down to Sophie to supply additional Faraday progeny. Not that that was going to happen anytime soon, given she’d just been dumped.

  Just try telling Nan that, though, with her ‘It’s what women were put on God’s green earth for’ manifesto. When Hannah knew for a fact that it wasn’t. There had to be more than that and she was going to prove it.

  She heard a knock on her door before it opened a crack. ‘Sorry, Doc,’ said the vet nurse, ‘I know I told you we were done, only we’ve got an orphaned joey, just brought in.’

  ‘Another one?’ Hannah said, because there’d been three orphans last week, but native animal emergencies were never turned away, whatever time of day or night. ‘Show them right in. Oh, and Verity, you better grab us a pouch and liner.’

  By the time Hannah finished washing her hands, the nurse was back. ‘This is Declan Cummins,’ she said, ushering in a tall man bearing a jumble of towel in his arms, before handing Hannah the soft cloths and pulling the door shut behind her.

  ‘Nice to meet you,’ she said automatically, her eyes firmly fixed on the bundle he was carrying. Judging by the size of the towel, it wasn’t a very big joey inside. ‘Let’s take a look at what you’ve got, then.’ She peeled back a corner and peered into the folds to see a set of frightened eyes looking up at her, the joey’s hind legs bucking in protest at the sight of yet another stranger. ‘It’s okay, sweetie,’ she crooned to the animal, covering it up again to make it feel more secure.

  ‘Will it be all right, do you think?’

  ‘Well, it’s got fur,’ she said, encouraged by the discovery, because the younger and furless ‘pinkies’ were always a lot more work. ‘That’s a good start. Here, put it down on the table and I’ll have a closer look.’

  He did as she asked, his movements surprisingly gentle. Big hands, she noticed absently, that looked like they’d be more at home wielding a chainsaw, and yet here they were treating the bundled-up infant with immense tenderness. She asked him to keep one of those hands to steady it in case it startled and tried to jump, as bit by bit she peeled away the towel, being as gentle as she could. It was important not to stress the tiny orphan any more than necessary, though she knew by the way its heart was frantically beating that it was terrified, and little wonder. It had already suffered what must have been a shocking collision before being thrown to the road, only to then be plucked from its mother’s pouch, and now to suffer the indignity of being poked and prodded by a stranger. She kept her eyes on her patient while she asked the question, ‘You’re quite sure the mother’s dead?’

  ‘One hundred per cent,’ he said, as Hannah methodically examined the tiny creature, all long legs and tail, with big eyes and the softest grey fur. ‘There were two of them and they sprang from nowhere, thinking they could cross in front of the car. I slammed on the brakes and the first one made it. The second one …’ He shook his head. ‘I stopped and checked. I was about to drag it clear of
the road when I saw something move, and I found the lil’ tacker still tucked inside, though its mam was well gone.’

  Her eyes flicked up at the music in his voice, for the first time curious about the man who’d brought in the animal. He was taller than she’d realised, with sandy hair and a whiskered jaw peppered with white, and a nose that looked like it might have been broken at some time in the past between a pair of dark eyes. Eyes that were watching her just as intently as she was assessing him. She blinked and returned her attention to the joey. So, the man was Irish, that was hardly reason to gawk. ‘It wasn’t attached to the teat?’ she asked, delicately checking the animal’s mouth, back to business. ‘You didn’t have to pull it off?’ Because this man probably had no idea how wrong that would be.

  ‘No. It was like getting hold of a handful of spaghetti, to be sure, but it came out easy enough once I had hold.’

  She smiled at that, imagining the trouble his big hand must have had to make head or tail on the joey. And because she found no damage to its mouth, she believed him. Good man.

  ‘So where did it happen?’ she asked, reaching for her small digital scales.

  ‘Over at Norton Summit, up near Moores Road. I’ve got a few acres over that way.’

  Not just a visitor passing through, then. She let that surprise drift quickly by and nodded, satisfied, as she weighed the joey. She then rolled it into the soft fleece liner and the pouch the surgery volunteers sewed up for just such a purpose, and held it to her chest to keep it warm. After an initial struggle the joey settled, but she was too experienced to be fooled into thinking it would all be plain sailing from here. ‘I’ll get someone out to mark the body, so people know it’s been checked.’

  His brows tugged together, bringing her focus back to his eyes, which she realised were more than dark, they were the deepest shade of blue. ‘I didn’t know to do that, but I’m happy to. Save anyone else the trouble, seeing I’m out that way already.’

  ‘Would you? Even better. Use spray paint to mark it with a cross, in case anyone else is wondering. I’m sorry for the mother, but apart from the shock, this little one looks to be fine. Thanks for bringing it in. I’ll see that it’s well looked after.’ As soon as she found someone who could fit in another infant joey to care for. She’d reach out to the network, even if she had to go a little further afield.

  ‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘You don’t understand. I don’t want you to take it. I just came in to make sure it was okay. I want to look after it.’

  ‘You?’ She blinked, before shock gave way to good sense. ‘No, it’s okay, that won’t be necessary. We have carers in the community trained to look after orphaned wildlife.’ She’d find someone, though it might take a day or two. ‘It’ll be in good hands, I promise.’

  ‘But I don’t want that,’ he said again, and this time there was a note of steel in his sing-song voice. ‘I mean, her mam might have been daft for thinking she could win a race with a car, but I still feel responsible for leaving this little tacker alone in the world.’

  ‘But you’ve taken care of it by bringing it in, and while I applaud your intentions, you’ve clearly got no idea what’s involved.’

  ‘Like what?’

  She cuddled the pouch closer to her chest. It was a common misconception that looking after an infant kangaroo must be as easy as looking after a kitten or a puppy. So often people came upon orphaned joeys on the side of the road and thought they’d be doing the right thing by taking them home to raise them, and treating their kids to a special kind of pet at the same time, but then they’d mistakenly feed them cow’s milk or bread and the joeys would weaken and become ill or just be stressed from too much handling. The lucky ones would be brought into the surgery before that happened, but plenty enough didn’t make it. ‘Joeys are just like human infants,’ she explained, ‘they need special care twenty-four hours a day. A joey like this has to be kept warm and quiet and has to be fed three-to-four-hourly with a special formula, and it’ll need bottle-feeding until it’s around eighteen months of age, and that’s probably an entire year from now. It’s a huge commitment, not to mention expensive for all the formula and bottles. Plus, you’ll need to get a licence to care for native animals. They don’t just let anyone take them.’

  He shrugged. ‘I can manage all that, sure enough.’

  She frowned. ‘It’s not that easy. The joey also has to be toileted after feeding,’ she went on, hitting him with the big guns because he was clearly mad, ‘which involves stimulating its vent to ensure it urinates and defecates—otherwise it can end up with kidney disease or worse.’

  ‘All right.’

  She frowned. ‘That wouldn’t bother you?’

  ‘If it’s got to be fed, I figured the other end might take some looking after, too.’

  Was this guy for real? Most men would run for the hills after being told they had to do that. ‘And it’s not going to work if you have dogs, of course. Or children who might treat it as a plaything and tire it or make too much noise.’

  A spark lit up those midnight-blue eyes as he grinned, revealing long dimples that bracketed his mouth. A seriously good-looking mouth. ‘Sounds like I’m just the man for the job.’

  She shook her head. ‘Look, Mr Cummins—’

  ‘Declan,’ he said. ‘If you’re going to be teaching me what I have to do to look after the little tacker, we should be on a first-name basis.’

  She held up one hand. ‘Hey, I never said—’

  ‘Teach me, and if it doesn’t flourish under my watch, you can find it another carer.’

  She looked up at him, this man who seemed so sure of himself and so determined to look after the joey he’d left orphaned. Could she trust him to do the right thing? He certainly sounded confident enough, and right now, after a sudden influx of animals and a shortage of carers, what choice did she really have?

  ‘All right,’ she conceded. ‘But I’m keeping it for a couple of nights for observation, and if it’s doing well, I’ll bring it by after work with everything you’ll need to start, along with some more detailed instructions you can refer to and some phone numbers you can call if you’re worried.’

  ‘That’d be grand,’ he said, reeling off his address. ‘I’ll be waiting.’

  ‘It’s a trial,’ she stressed. ‘Purely a trial. If the joey doesn’t thrive or you find you can’t take care of it, I’ll have to place it elsewhere.’

  He put out his hand. ‘Deal,’ he said, his dark eyes twinkling while his long dimples played around his mouth. ‘Thank you, Doctor.’

  She placed her hand in his, felt his long fingers wrap around hers and gently squeeze, and experienced a simultaneous rush of heat up her arm that swirled uncomfortably in her breasts and down further, to lodge heavy and warm in the pit of her belly.

  Ridiculous, she thought, though she left her hand right where it was, encompassed by his inexplicable heat, for just a few seconds longer. ‘Hannah,’ she told him, resisting the urge to smile back at him, because first-name basis or not, this was still business. ‘If I’m going to be teaching you how to care for an orphaned joey, you can call me Hannah.’

  Two days later, she passed the roo’s body on the side of the road, clearly marked with a giant X, and Hannah felt the sadness she always did when she encountered native animal road kill. She reached a hand over to the pouch she’d slung over the headrest as if to console the joey, when it was she who was looking for reassurance. It wasn’t all bad. With any luck, this little one would now get to grow to full adulthood, instead of dying in the pouch, where it could have if Mr Cummins—Declan—hadn’t noticed it wriggling.

  The gravel road crunched under her tyres, the candlebark gums standing tall and proud in the bush either side of the road, their white bark reminiscent of wax flowing down a lit candle. The bush was thick here, the houses few and far between, settled on hilly acreage that bordered the dramatic cliffs and waterfalls of the Morialta Gorge. Beautiful country, and a long way from home for an Irishman, a
nd in spite of herself, she couldn’t help but be curious as she turned into his driveway. What was he doing here, on the other side of the world?

  The track followed a creek bed before winding around the back of a grass-covered hill, the driveway ending near a wall of stone and windows, which is when she realised it wasn’t a hill after all, but the roof of the house burrowed beneath the earth. On one side of the house, straight rows of vines marched up the hill while on the other, beyond the creek, was a stand of gums and bush between which a flock of black cockatoos screeched across the sky. Pretty much idyllic, she figured, negating the question she’d asked herself earlier. Who wouldn’t want to live here?

  ‘How are you?’ she heard, and she turned to see him emerge from an arched door in the middle of the house, smiling as he approached the car with an easy denim-clad stride that was hard to ignore.

  ‘Hi,’ she said, nodding towards the house as she pulled open the passenger-side door to retrieve the joey. ‘I like your house. Very Lord of the Rings.’

  He grinned, and those brackets either side of his mouth deepened. ‘Welcome to Hobbitville.’

  Not to mention sensible-ville given the fire load in the national park nearby, she thought, trying to think rational thoughts, rather than how she was rapidly becoming a fan girl of long dimples of the masculine kind.

  ‘How’s the wee joey?’

  ‘Doing well,’ she replied, as she slung the pouch across her body, happy to be on firmer territory. Animals were her business. All she had to do was think about the joey and not get herself sidetracked by an Irish lilt and easy smiles. ‘She’s taking a bottle and we had a good night last night. She only woke for a feed at two and five.’

  ‘Through the night?’

  She raised an eyebrow at him. ‘Having second thoughts, Mr Cummins?’

  ‘Not a one. It’ll be no trouble at all.’ He grinned. ‘And I thought I told you to call me Declan.’