One Baby Step at a Time

The words were lightly spoken but pain pierced her heart as she remembered it had been that same ‘Great God’ who’d ordered her to have an abortion a month before their wedding because he didn’t want people thinking they’d got married because she was pregnant. She breathed deeply, aware that too much bitterness still leaked into her veins when she thought of that disastrous time.

The realisation that the man she’d loved had been nothing more than a shallow, social-climbing pretender had rocked her self-confidence and made her question her judgement about people, particularly men. The miscarriage two months later had exacerbated her loss of self-worth and it had taken years, back here in Willowby with her family and friends, to rebuild it.

Although now she’d grown a thicker skin and heavier armour to shield her fragile heart …

Nick heard the change in her voice and wondered how much damage her broken engagement had done to her trust—to Bill herself, given she was the most trusting person he had ever known. It worried him that he didn’t know the background to the break-up—didn’t know a lot of things about his friend.

His best friend!

What did the kids call it these days? BFF? Best friends for ever?

‘Anyway,’ she was saying, while his mind had drifted back to the past, ‘if we’re going to talk of what might have happened in our lives, you could have married Seraphina or whatever she called herself when she fell pregnant, and gone swanning off to New York to live off her earnings as a top supermodel.’

That was better, more like old times, Bill taking the fight to him!

‘Serena,’ Nick corrected. ‘You’re muddling her up with Delphina, who was the one before, and, anyway, I did offer to marry Serena but she wanted none of it, not me, not a child and definitely not marriage.’

Silence fell, the ghosts of dead children lying between them among the empty packaging and blood.

Bill reacted first, pushing herself up off the floor, stripping off her soiled apron and flinging it into a bin, then bending to begin collecting the rubbish off the floor.

‘I’ll do that.’

The young wardsman who appeared, mop and bucket in hand, waved her away and although she picked up a few more bits of rubbish, she was happy to leave him to it, following Nick out of the trauma room to find the big open area of the ER eerily quiet at six on a Monday morning.

‘Everyone’s sleeping in,’ Andy, the duty ER manager, told them. Newly arrived on shift, he was spic and span, his face alert, his smile bright. ‘Go home, both of you.’

‘Got to dictate some notes on that last case,’ Nick said.

‘And I’m having a shower then heading for beach,’ Bill told them. ‘I need some sea air to clear my head before I can think about sleeping.’

Would she go to Woodchoppers? Nick wondered, not wanting to ask in front of Andy but aware he’d like to join Bill at the beach. Weird name for a beach, but it had been their favourite swimming beach growing up, Bill and her six brothers declaring it their personal fiefdom, keeping it free of any less desirable elements, particularly those pushing drugs to impressionable teenagers.

Whillimina de Groote and her brothers! They’d become the family he’d never had. Bill dragging him to her home after his first day at school, insisting her brothers teach the five-year-old Nick how to defend himself.

They’d taught him a lot after that …

Bill stood under the shower, the water so hot that steam was fogging the cubicle, but no amount of heat or water could wash away the uneasiness that lingered over her reaction to Nick.

To Nick as a man!

How pathetic!

She’d known him for close to thirty years, considered him her best friend in all the world, so why, now, would she be reacting to him as a man?

Maybe it was nothing more than the stress and tiredness engendered by their battle to save the teenager’s life.

She could only hope …

Accepting that the hot water wasn’t helping, she turned off the taps, dried herself hurriedly, rubbed at the tangled mess of red curls that topped her head and fell down past her shoulders, then pulled on an old bikini she kept in her locker, covered it with a voluminous T-shirt, grabbed her handbag and hurried out the staff exit, not wanting to bump into Nick before she’d had a good run on the beach and a swim in the limpid, tropical waters to clear her head.

Not before she happened to be on duty with him again, in fact, and if she spoke to the ER secretary who drew up the rosters, total avoidance might be possible.

Well, not total. He was back to see his gran, so they’d undoubtedly run into each other at Gran’s house …

But at least he’d come home.

She pulled up in the small parking area at Woodchoppers Beach and slogged across the sand dunes, glad the effort of crossing them made the beach the least used of the beaches around Willowby. Pulling off her T-shirt and dropping it on the sand, she began to run, slowly at first then, as her muscles warmed, sprinting faster and faster—short sprints then slow jogs, alternating the two, feeling the blood surge through her body, bringing it to life in a most satisfactory manner.

Two more lengths of the beach and then she’d swim.

‘You shouldn’t come here on your own—you never know who might be around.’

Nick’s appearance startled her.

‘Obviously!’ she snapped at him.

But as he ignored her comment and fell into stride beside her, she knew all the good of her run had vanished, and with it her peace of mind.

It’s only Nick, she told herself, but that didn’t seem to stop the awareness that prickled in her skin all down one side—the side closest to her jogging companion.

Veering away from him, she headed for the water and dived from ankle depth into the clear, green-blue sea, surfacing to breathe then diving again to porpoise along parallel to the beach, relishing the silken kiss of the water against her skin.

Had she always been this gorgeous?

Long, lean, and tanned in a way redheads weren’t supposed to tan?

Nick watched as she dived and surfaced in the water, only to dive again, her limbs flashing in the sunlight, her hair trailing behind her—a mermaid at play.

Was it because she’d always been a friend that he’d never seen her as a woman? Not that he could afford to see her that way now—they were friends! There’d be plenty of interesting and intelligent, even beautiful, women here in Willowby. It was only a matter of connecting up with some of them, and the thoughts he found himself having about Bill would disappear.

For all she joked about having escaped a fate worse than death when she’d dumped Nigel, she was the kind of woman who should be married—married with a tribe of red-headed kids clustered around her—because she’d always been a mother hen, adopting not only him but any fellow pupil in danger of being bullied or excluded from one of the childhood gangs.

He stripped down to his jocks and dived into the water, surfacing a little distance from her, uncertain enough about the strange reactions of the night to not want to be too close.

‘Race you to the rocks,’ she challenged, and started immediately, but his longer strokes and stronger kick soon had him catching up, so they swam together towards the smooth, rounded rocks that jutted into the water at the end of the bay until they were close enough for him to swim away, beating her by a body length.

Strange reactions or not, he wasn’t going to let her beat him!

‘Oh, that was good,’ she said, coming up out of the water, her hair streaming down her back. ‘I find it’s so much easier to sleep during the day if I have a run and a swim before I go home.’

She looked at him for a moment, her golden-brown eyes assessing.

‘And a hearty breakfast at the surf club back at the main beach. You up for that, or has your body become a temple so you can’t eat delicious crispy bacon, and beef sausages, and fried tomatoes, and all the other things that are loaded with cholesterol and fat?’

Nick shook his head in disbelief.

‘So you still eat like a navvy and stay as slim as a whip. Some metabolism you de Grootes inherited.’

‘Not all of us,’ Bill told him, smiling as she waded in front of him back to the beach. ‘Bob’s developed a most unsightly paunch, and Joel’s heading in the same direction. Too many business lunches and not enough exercise, that’s the problem with those two.’

Nick watched the way her butt moved as she walked in front of him and tried to think of Bill’s brothers rather than how those twin globes would fit into his hands.

‘Have you already moved into the apartment?’

She threw the question over her shoulder but it brushed right past him, his attention snaffled by the way the woman in front of him moved, and how her breasts hung low as she bent to retrieve her T-shirt from the sand, the bikini she wore barely covering her nipples.

‘Nick?’

Had she caught him watching her as she turned, her eyebrows raised as she waited for a reply?

What had she asked?

Had he moved in …?

‘If you call dumping a couple of suitcases in the bedroom and unpacking my wash bag as moving in, then yes,’ he responded, hoping the gap between the question and the answer hadn’t been too long. ‘It’s fully furnished so all I had to bring were clothes and personal stuff. I’d hardly begun to unpack when the hospital phoned to ask if I could work last night.’

Bill didn’t respond, so disturbed was she by the sight of Nick’s lean, toned body that casual conversation was beyond her. He’d shrugged as he’d mentioned unpacking, an unfortunate movement as it had drawn her attention back to his chest, with its flat wedges of pectoral muscles and clearly defined six-pack.

She wanted to ask if he’d been working out, but that would give away the fact she’d noticed and the way she was feeling it was better if the question went unasked.

She climbed the first dune and raced down the other side then up the next, aware he was pacing himself to stay beside her—aware of him!

It was bad enough that he was living in the same building, so now she’d have to avoid seeing him out of work hours as well as at work, without him suspecting she might see him as other than a friend.

A passing fancy, surely?

But her reactions to him were forgotten as she topped the last dune.

‘What is that?’

The words burst from her lips as she saw the racing-green sports car, hood down, cream leather seats, sleek lines shouting speed and, yes, seduction.

‘My car?’ His voice was quiet but she heard the pride in it.

‘Well, that will get you noticed in Willowby,’ she muttered, aware of just who would notice it first—the constant stream of beautiful women who used Willowby as a jumping-off place for reef adventures. True, they worked, if you could call hostessing on luxury yachts or on the six-star island resorts working, but since the mining boom had led to the town becoming one of the wealthiest per capita in the country, the place had been swamped by women, and men if she was honest, looking to separate some of that money from those who had it.

‘Gets me noticed most places,’ Nick replied, and the smile on his face made her stomach clench.

That’s why he’d bought it! She knew that much immediately, remembering the email he’d sent her many years ago when he’d returned from his first stint with the army reserve, serving overseas. He’d helped to put back together young men blown apart by bombs in wars that ordinary people didn’t understand.

He’d come home, he’d said, with one aim—to live for the day. He’d promised himself a beautiful car, the best of clothes and as many beautiful women as cared to play with him. ‘I’m honest with them, Bill,’ he’d said in the email. ‘I tell them all it’s not for ever, that marriage isn’t in my long-term plans. You’d be surprised how many women are happy with that—even agreeing that it’s not for them either. Things are different now.’

Were they? Bill hadn’t been able to answer that question then and couldn’t now. For herself, she knew she wanted marriage, and children too, but not without love and so far, apart from that one disastrous experience, love hadn’t come along.

‘Ride with me,’ Nick suggested. ‘I’ll drop you back at your old bomb after breakfast.’

‘Ride in that thing? The town might have grown, Nick, but at heart it’s still the same old Willowby. I only need to be spotted by one of the local gossips and my reputation would be ruined. Did you see the de Groote girl, they’d be saying, running around in a fast car with a fast man? You, of course, will be forgiven. About you they’ll say, hasn’t he done well for himself, that grandson of old Mrs Grant? And such a kind boy, coming home to be with his gran now she’s getting on.’

Nick laughed and headed for his car.

‘Okay, but I won’t offer to race you to the surf club,’ he teased. ‘Too unfair.’

Bill climbed into her battered old four-wheel drive, the vehicle her father had bought her new when she’d passed her driving test. She patted the dash to reassure the car she wasn’t put off by its shabby appearance, or influenced by the shining beauty of Nick’s vehicle, but it was she who needed reassurance as her folly in suggesting he breakfast with her finally struck home. Even with her sea-drenched curls, and the tatty old T-shirt, she’d always felt quite at home at the surf club, but these days many of the beautiful people breakfasted there as well—

Whoa! Surely she wasn’t concerned that Nick would compare her to some of the other women and find her wanting?

Of course she wasn’t!

Then why was she wondering if there might not be a long shift somewhere in the mess of clothes, books and papers in the back seat of the car—wondering if there might be a slightly melted tube of lip gloss in the glove box?

Hopeless, that’s what she was.

He’d selected a table that looked out from a covered deck over the town’s main beach and the placid tropical waters. Bill slipped into a chair beside him, so she, too, could look out to sea. Far out on the horizon they could see the shapes of the islands that dotted the coastline—tourist havens on Australia’s biggest natural wonder, the Great Barrier Reef.

‘I’ve ordered the big breakfast for both of us,’ Nick informed her. ‘Anything you don’t want, I’ll eat. And coffee—double-shot latte still your drug of choice?’

‘It is, and thanks,’ Bill replied, telling herself at the same time that a nice normal breakfast with Nick should banish all the silly stuff that had been going on in her head.

Especially as Nick was wasting no time checking out the talent, with his eyes on a group of three long-haired blondes, laughing and joking on the other side of the wide deck.

‘The town’s scenery’s improved,’ he joked.

‘It’s the money that’s being splashed around,’ Bill reminded him, deciding to take his comment seriously. ‘Money attracts money but it also attracts the kind of people who like to have it—like to spend it. The problem is that while the miners and the people who work in mining support services are all earning big money, the price of housing goes up, rents go up, and the ordinary people of the town, especially those who don’t own their own houses, are stuck with costs they can’t afford.’

Nick smiled.

‘Still a worry-wart,’ he teased.

‘Well, someone has to worry about it. Nurses at the hospital don’t get paid more than their counterparts in other places in the state, yet accommodation costs in town are enormous. Fortunately the hospital has realised it has a problem and has built some small rental apartments in the grounds, but you spread that problem out across the town—the check-out staff at supermarkets, the workers in government offices, the council truck drivers—all the locals suffer.’

She stopped, partly because she was aware she’d mounted her soap-box and really shouldn’t be boring Nick with the problem but also because the blondes appeared to have noticed him—new talent in town?—and were sending welcoming smiles his way.

‘Maybe they saw the car when you drove in,’ Bill muttered.

‘Ouch! And anyway the car park’s out the back. No, it’s my good looks that have got their attention—see, one of them is coming over.’

One of them was coming over. The leggiest one, with the longest, shiniest, blondest, dead-straight hair!

‘Aren’t you Nick Grant?’ she asked, and as Nick nodded, she held out her hand.

‘I told the girls it was you. You used to go out with Serena Snow, didn’t you?’

Again Nick had to agree, and the leggy blonde introduced herself.

‘I’m Amy Wentworth. I met you a couple of times at parties back then. What are you doing up in this neck of the woods? Holidaying? Off to the reef for a few days’ R and R?’

So far she’d totally ignored Bill—not that it mattered, Bill told herself.

She studied the woman while Nick explained he was working here, living in the new apartment building at the marina but with no elaboration on why. Amy raised her eyebrows.

‘Can’t imagine you in a hick town like this. Oh, I know there’s a lot of money around, but what do you do when you’re not working?’

Nick grinned at her.

‘I’ll be doing pretty much what I did when I wasn’t working in Sydney.’

Amy drifted away but Bill wasn’t going to let him get away with that tantalising reply.

‘Which was?’ she asked.

‘What which was?’

‘The “pretty much what you did in Sydney” bit of that conversation.’

‘Ah, but I told you years ago,’ he reminded her. ‘I had a good time and I intend to do just that up here. You don’t need nightclubs and friends with yachts on the harbour to have a good time.’

‘We’ve got a nightclub and a two of my brothers have yachts, or big motor launches,’ Bill said defensively, and Nick laughed.

‘Exactly, although I think the nightclub crowd are a bit young for me, but you can have a good time wherever you are. In fact, I’m off for three days next week and think I might pop across to one of the island resorts—do a bit of diving and fishing and …’

‘Meeting beautiful women,’ Bill finished for him.

Again Nick smiled, although this time it was a little forced because in the back of his mind he’d had another reason for returning to Willowby, one that was becoming important to him.

‘That too, of course,’ he answered glibly. ‘Want to come?’

CHAPTER THREE

SHE DIDN’T REPLY, studying him intently for a moment instead, and he knew that look. Undoubtedly she’d picked up something from his tone.

‘Did it hurt you?’ she asked.

Yep, he’d been right about the look and although he knew full well what she meant by the question, he wasn’t going to cede ground to her by admitting it.

‘Did what hurt me?’

‘You know full well what I mean,’ she said crossly. ‘Serena saying no to your proposal.’

His turn to study her. The problem with friendship—a strong and enduring friendship like the one they shared—was that you couldn’t lie to the other party. Oh, you could fudge around a bit and dodge answering, but you couldn’t right out lie.

He turned his gaze from Bill’s too-perceptive eyes and looked out over the beach and island-strewn sea.

The truth!

‘More than I could have imagined,’ he admitted, and turned back so, now it was out, he could meet the gold-brown eyes fastened so steadfastly on his face. ‘I don’t think it was Serena’s rejection so much. I liked her well enough. For all her self-focus she was fun to be with and happy that we more or less lived separate lives—both of us working long hours at different times—so I can’t see why it wouldn’t have worked.’

Bill’s small, rather shocked ‘Oh’ broke into his thoughts but now he’d started he wanted to finish what he’d been saying.

‘You know how I feel about the “l” word, Bill, so I can’t say I loved her, but what had … not excited but certainly intrigued me was the idea of having a family—a wife and child—people who belonged, not to me but with me, if you know what I mean.’

The disbelief on Bill’s face was so easy to read he had to laugh.

‘Yes, yes, I know I said it would never happen, but finding out Serena was pregnant, well, it kind of changed something inside me, as if a wire that had been shorted out was suddenly reconnected and family stopped being in front of going down mines, abduction by aliens and the bogeyman in my fears.’

He paused, marshalling his thoughts.

‘In part, it’s why I came home—came back to the only family I’ve ever known: Gran and you de Grootes.’

‘Looking for a family of your own?’ Bill asked.

Again he paused, but honesty won out.

‘Yes, I think so—I think it’s what I need, Bill. What I really want.’

‘Oh, Nick,’ Bill said softly, and she covered his hand with hers as she had so often in the past. Though he’d reciprocated often enough, when some fool of a youth had hurt her in some way or when her pet hamster had died.

The strange thing was that this time it felt different. Nice, but different.

‘I also need to sleep,’ he said, regaining control over some erratic emotions and reclaiming his hand at the same time. ‘Then this afternoon I must go over and see Gran. You want to come?’

Fool! Wasn’t he going for distance here until he’d sorted out his reactions to his old friend?

‘No, I saw her yesterday—well, the day before now—although,’ Bill said firmly, ‘that brings me to another issue. I had an email from you only last week—you answered the one I sent to say she was looking a whole lot better—and there wasn’t a word about coming here to work. And if you were talking to Bob and pinching the best apartment in his building then you must have been fairly certain then.’

Nick laughed again—the disjointed sentence was sheer Bill, words tumbling over each other to get said, especially when she was angry with him.

‘One,’ he said, holding up his hand and pointing to his first finger, ‘I wanted to surprise Gran and if I told you …’

He let the sentence hang but had the satisfaction of seeing a faint blush colour her cheeks. As honest as the day was long, Bill would be the first to admit she found it almost impossible to keep a secret.

‘And two …’ he pointed to his next finger ‘… I wasn’t sure you were even here. In that email you’d said you had time off and were going to Townsville to talk to someone about some course.’

She nodded.

‘The mine rescue people, about a new course. It was to be this week and next, but was cancelled. Pity really because it was going to be on flooded underground rescues and I haven’t done that yet.’

‘Mine rescue—flooded underground mines?’ He could hear his voice rising but couldn’t stop it. ‘What do you mean, you haven’t done that yet? What on earth are you doing, getting involved with mine rescue, and what are your brothers doing, letting you do it?’

Her laugh made the sun seem brighter.

‘Oh, Nick, you sound just like Bob, but Danny and Pete are already in the elite mine rescue squad and they’ve encouraged me to get involved. I’m not up to their standard yet—not flying off to foreign parts to help out—but I can hold my own as part of the local team when the experts are away, especially with my nursing and paramedic experience.’

Nick didn’t know why he was surprised, but just the thought of mine rescue made him shudder. Danny, the second of the de Groote boys, had taken him and Bill down a mine when they’d been in their early teens, and though Bill had revelled in the darkness and gloom, he had hated every minute of the musty smell and the idea of being over a mile beneath the mountain.

Had been afraid every minute of it, to be honest, but he hadn’t mentioned that part to his fearless friend.

Though Bill was terrified of snakes, so—

‘I’m heading home to bed,’ she said, cutting into his thoughts and sounding so casually at ease she obviously wasn’t feeling any of the strangeness he was. ‘I guess I’ll be seeing you around.’