Waves of Temptation
Waves of Temptation
Marion Lennox
When physician Kelly Eveldene’s son is injured in a surfing accident she finds herself face to face with the one man she prayed never to see again: delectable orthopaedic surgeon Dr Matt Eveldene! Seeing beautiful Kelly again brings back their painful history and sparks new, unacceptable desires in Matt – Kelly’s strictly off-limits!But who can resist the temptation of the forbidden…?
MARION LENNOX is a country girl, born on an Australian dairy farm. She moved on—mostly because the cows just weren’t interested in her stories! Married to a ‘very special doctor', Marion writes Mills & Boon
Medical Romances™, as well as for Mills & Boon
Cherish™. (She used a different name for each category for a while—if you’re looking for her past Romances search for author Trisha David as well.) WAVES OF TEMPTATION is Marion Lennox’s 100
romance novel.
In her non-writing life Marion cares for kids, cats, dogs, chooks and goldfish. She travels, she fights her rampant garden (she’s losing) and her house dust (she’s lost). Having spun in circles for the first part of her life, she’s now stepped back from her ‘other’ career, which was teaching statistics at her local university. Finally she’s reprioritised her life, figured out what’s important and discovered the joys of deep baths, romance and chocolate. Preferably all at the same time!
CAROLINE ANDERSON has the mind of a butterfly. She’s been a nurse, a secretary, a teacher, run her own soft furnishing business, and now she’s settled on writing. She says, ‘I was looking for that elusive something. I finally realised it was variety, and now I have it in abundance. Every book brings new horizons and new friends, and in between books I have learned to be a juggler. My teacher husband, John, and I have two beautiful and talented daughters, Sarah and Hannah, umpteen pets, and several acres of Suffolk that nature tries to reclaim every time we turn our backs!'
Dear Reader
Last year I attended a writing retreat on Australia’s famous Gold Coast. The world surfing championships were taking place five miles down the beach. Then the weather turned wild, so the championships were relocated—right into our sheltered bay, right under our hotel! You can imagine how our retreat ended. We hung out of the windows and watched gorgeous surfers from all over the world, ‘hanging ten’ just beneath us.
But I was there to write … Virtuously I took my laptop out onto the balcony and searched for inspiration. Strangely, it wasn’t very far away.
I had fun on the Gold Coast, and I had fun writing this book. WAVES OF TEMPTATION lets me share that glorious surfing world, the inevitable medical needs of such an event, and the drama and passion that must inevitably lie beneath.
This is also my 100th romance novel. Writing for Mills & Boon
has been a wonderful journey. A huge thank you to all who’ve helped me along the way. And thank you to my writing friends and to my family.
Thank you, too, my readers, for sharing my passion.
Marion Lennox
Praise for Marion Lennox:
‘Marion Lennox’s RESCUE AT CRADLE LAKE is simply magical, eliciting laughter and tears in equal measure. A keeper.’
—RT Book Reviews
‘Best of 2010: a very rewarding read. The characters are believable, the setting is real, and the writing is terrific.’
—Dear Author on CHRISTMAS WITH HER BOSS
Waves of Temptation
Marion Lennox
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
DEDICATION
For Marion
WAVES OF TEMPTATION is Marion Lennox’s 100th Mills & Boon
novel!
Recent titles by Marion Lennox:
Mills & Boon
Medical Romance™
GOLD COAST ANGELS: A DOCTOR’S REDEMPTION* (#ulink_df064b3f-c11f-5662-99e2-c0c3193085af) MIRACLE ON KAIMOTU ISLAND† (#ulink_df064b3f-c11f-5662-99e2-c0c3193085af) THE SURGEON’S DOORSTEP BABY SYDNEY HARBOUR HOSPITAL: LILY’S SCANDAL** (#ulink_df064b3f-c11f-5662-99e2-c0c3193085af) DYNAMITE DOC OR CHRISTMAS DAD? THE DOCTOR AND THE RUNAWAY HEIRESS
* (#ulink_aec7d3ea-219f-556d-83f9-7a8bfbfe27e4)Gold Coast Angels** (#ulink_aec7d3ea-219f-556d-83f9-7a8bfbfe27e4)Sydney Harbour Hospital† (#ulink_aec7d3ea-219f-556d-83f9-7a8bfbfe27e4)Earthquake!
Mills & Boon
Cherish
CHRISTMAS AT THE CASTLE
SPARKS FLY WITH THE BILLIONAIRE
A BRIDE FOR THE MAVERICK MILLIONAIRE* (#ulink_3580e843-5eda-5290-acdd-6ef53ab0bd23) HER OUTBACK RESCUER* (#ulink_3580e843-5eda-5290-acdd-6ef53ab0bd23) NIKKI AND THE LONE WOLF** (#ulink_3580e843-5eda-5290-acdd-6ef53ab0bd23) MARDIE AND THE CITY SURGEON** (#ulink_3580e843-5eda-5290-acdd-6ef53ab0bd23)
* (#ulink_34bc6346-8266-5899-af88-0de0b8689d3b)Journey through the Outback duet ** (#ulink_34bc6346-8266-5899-af88-0de0b8689d3b)Banksia Bay miniseries
These books are also available in eBook format from www.millsandboon.co.uk
Contents
PROLOGUE (#ud5aa7b75-06af-54a2-888d-0d4fcd74e9e6)
CHAPTER ONE (#ub4763324-98eb-5178-abc1-2329902e464d)
CHAPTER TWO (#u5ab4e162-5ecc-5b1c-b349-0b96e5a8eee4)
CHAPTER THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
PROLOGUE
SHE WAS HUDDLED as far from the receptionist in the funeral parlour as she could get. Curled into one of the reception area’s plush chairs, she looked tiny, almost in a foetal position.
Her dirty, surf-blonded hair was matted and in desperate need of a cut. Her cut-off-at-the-thigh jeans were frayed, her too-big windcheater looked like something out of a charity bin and her bare feet were filthy. Her huge grey eyes were ringed with great dark shadows.
In ordinary circumstances, Matt Eveldene would have cast her a glance of sympathy. He might even have tossed her a few coins to get a decent meal.
Not now. Not this girl.
He knew as much about her as he’d ever want to know. Her name was Kelly Myers. No. Kelly Eveldene. She was seventeen years old and she was his brother’s widow.
She rose as she saw him. She must know what he’d been doing—identifying for himself that the body lying in the funeral home’s back room was indeed his brother’s.
‘I...I’m sorry,’ she faltered, but she didn’t approach him. Maybe his face stopped her. It was impossible to conceal his anger. The white-hot rage.
The waste...
He’d just seen Jessie. His beloved big brother. Jess, who’d laughed with him, teased him, protected him from the worst of their father’s bullying.
Jessie, who was now dead, aged all of twenty-four. Jessie, who for some crazy, unfathomable reason had married this girl two weeks before he’d died.
‘How can you be married to him?’ he snapped. It was a dumb thing to ask, maybe even cruel, but it was all he could think of. He knew so little of what Jessie had been doing for the last few years. No one did. ‘You’re only seventeen.’
‘He wanted to marry me,’ she said, almost as a ghost might talk. As if her voice was coming from a long way away. ‘He insisted. He even found my father and made him give permission. I guess...my father’s still my guardian, even if—’ She broke off and sat down again, hard, as if all the strength had gone out of her.
But Matt had no room left in his head for pity. Not now. He’d loved his big brother. Jess had been wild, free, bordering on manic, but he’d lit their lives. Or he’d lit Matt’s. In the big old mansion overlooking Sydney’s famous Bondi Beach, with its air of repressed elegance and propriety, and its walls echoing with his father’s displeasure, it had always been Jess who’d brought in life.
But that life had been more and more out of control. The last time Matt had seen him he’d been in a rehabilitation ward in West Sydney. Jess had been twenty-two. Matt had been eighteen, confused and desperately frightened at the state of his big brother.
‘I can’t go back home, Matt,’ Jess had told him. ‘I know what Dad thinks of me and it always makes it worse. The black dog...depression...well, when you’re older maybe you’ll understand what it is. When I get out of here I’m heading overseas. Following the surf. The surf gets me out of my head like nothing else can. If I’m to stay off the drugs, that’s what I need.’
What had followed then had been two years of intermittent postcards, the occasional press clipping of minor success in surf competitions, and demands that his parents didn’t try and contact him until he’d ‘found’ himself.
Had he found himself now, on a slab in a Hawaiian mortuary? Jess... He thought back to the last time he’d seen his brother, as a recovering addict. Recovery had been for nothing, and now he was facing this girl who was calling herself Jessie’s wife.
His anger was almost uncontrollable. He wanted to haul up her sleeves to expose the tracks of the inevitable drug use, and then hurl her as far as he could throw her.
Somehow he held himself still. He daren’t unleash his fury.
‘He wanted to be cremated,’ the girl whispered. ‘He wants his ashes scattered off Diamond Head, when the surf’s at its best. At sunset. He has friends...’
Matt bet he did. More like this girl. This...
No. He wasn’t going to say it. He wasn’t going to think it.
Married! His father was right—he needed to pay the money and get rid of her, fast. If his mother knew of her existence, she might even want to bring her home, and then the whole sad round would start again. ‘Please go to rehab... Please get help. Please...’
He was too young to face this. He was twenty years old but he felt barely more than a child. His father should be here, to vent his anger, to do what he’d ordered Matt to do. Matt felt sick and weary and helpless.
‘Can you afford cremation?’ he demanded. The girl—Kelly—shook her head. Her grey eyes were direct and honest, surprising him with their candour.
‘No,’ she replied, her voice as bleak as the death that surrounded them. ‘I hoped... I hope you might help me.’
In what universe could he help a woman who’d watched his brother self-destruct? Even if she looked...
No, he told himself. Don’t think about how she looks. Just get this over and get out of here.
‘I’m taking my brother home,’ he told her. ‘My parents will bury him in Sydney.’
‘Please—’
‘No.’ The sight of his brother’s body was so recent and so raw he could barely speak. Dear God, Jess... He needed to be alone. He felt like the world was closing in on him, suffocating. How could his father demand this of him? This was killing him.
Maybe his father was punishing him, too. Punishing him for loving his big brother?
Enough. He had to leave. He hauled a chequebook from his jacket and started writing.
The girl sank back down into her chair, tucking her feet back under her, assuming once again that position of defence. Her eyes became blank.
The cheque written, he handed it to her. Or tried to. She didn’t put out her hand and he was forced to drop it onto her grubby knee.
‘My father had an insurance policy in my brother’s name,’ he said, struggling to hold back his distress. ‘Even though we doubt the validity of your marriage, my father acknowledges that you may have a claim on it. This pre-empts that claim. This is the total value of the insurance policy, given to you on the condition that you make no contact with my parents, that you never attempt to tell my mother that Jess was married, that you keep yourself out of our lives, now and for ever. Is that clear?’
She didn’t pick up the cheque. ‘I would like to write to your mother,’ she whispered.
‘I can think of a hundred reasons why you shouldn’t contact my mother,’ he said grimly. ‘The top one being she has had heartbreak enough and doesn’t need to be lumbered with the mess you’ve made of your life as well. My father has decided not to tell her about the marriage and I understand why.’
She closed her eyes as if he’d struck her, and he found his fury fading.
This was unfair, he conceded. This girl was a mess, but, then, Jessie’s life had been a mess, too. He didn’t need to vent his grief solely on her—but he had to get out of there.
‘Use the cheque,’ he said. ‘Get a life.’
‘I don’t want your cheque.’
‘It’s your cheque,’ he said, anger surging again. ‘It’s nothing to do with me. All I want is for you—his widow—’ and he gave the word his father’s inflection, the inflection it deserved ‘—to sign the release for his body. Let me take him home.’
‘He wouldn’t have wanted—’
‘He’s dead,’ he said flatly. ‘We need to bury him. Surely my mother has rights, too.’
Her fingers had been clenched on her knees. Slowly they unclenched, but then, suddenly, she bent forward, holding her stomach, and her face lost any trace of remaining colour.
Shocked, he stooped, ready to catch her if she slumped, concerned despite himself, but in seconds she had herself under control again. And when she unbent and stared straight at him, she was controlled. Her eyes, barely twelve inches from his, were suddenly icy.
‘Take him home, then. Give him to his mother.’
‘Thank you.’
‘I don’t want your thanks. I want you to go away.’
Which fitted exactly with how he was feeling.
‘Then we never need to see each other again. I wish you luck, Miss Myers,’ he said stiffly. Dear God, he sounded like his father. He no longer felt like a child. He felt a hundred.
‘I’m Kelly Eveldene.’ It was a flash of unexpected fire and venom. ‘I’m Mrs Eveldene to you. I’m Mrs Eveldene to the world.”
‘But not to my parents.’
‘No,’ she said, and she subsided again into misery. ‘Jess wouldn’t have wanted his mother hurt more than she has been. If you don’t want to tell her, then don’t.’ Her face crumpled and he fought a crazy, irrational impulse to take her into his arms, to hold her, to comfort her as one might comfort a wounded child.
But this was no child. This girl was part of the group that had destroyed his brother. Drugs, surf, drugs, surf... It had been that way since Matt could remember.
Get out of here fast, he told himself. This girl has nothing to do with you. The cheque absolves you from all responsibility.
Wasn’t that what his father had said?
‘Sign the papers,’ he told her roughly, rising to his feet with deliberation. ‘And don’t shoot the entire value of that cheque up your arm.’
She met his eyes again at that, and once again he saw fire.
‘Go back to Australia,’ she said flatly. ‘I can see why Jessie ran.’
‘It’s nothing to do—’
‘I’m not listening,’ she snapped. ‘I’ll sign your papers. Go.’
* * *
Kelly sat where she was for a long time after Matt had left. The receptionist would like her gone. She could understand that, but she was the widow of the deceased. The funeral home would be repatriating the body to Australia. It’d be a nice little earner. It behoved the receptionist to be courteous, even if Kelly was messing with the décor.
She needed a wash. She conceded that, too. More, she needed a change of clothes, a feed and a sleep. About a month’s sleep.
She was so tired she could scarcely move.
So tired...
The last few days had been appalling. She’d known Jess’s depression had deepened but not this much, never this much. Still, when he’d disappeared she’d feared the worst, and the confirmation had been a nightmare. And now... She’d sat in this place waiting for so long...
Not for him, though. For his father. She hadn’t expected a man who was scarcely older than she was.
Matt Eveldene. What sort of a name was Eveldene anyway?
A new one. She stared at the bright new ring on her finger, put there by Jess only weeks ago. ‘You’ll be safe now,’ he’d told her. ‘It’s all I can do, but it should protect you.’
She’d known he was ill. She shouldn’t have married him, but she’d been terrified, and he’d held her and she’d clung. But she hadn’t been able to cling hard enough, and here she was, in this nightmare of a place.
She’d been here for almost twenty-four hours, waiting for whoever came as the representative of Jess’s family. She knew they’d have to come here.
She had to ask.
‘If ever something happens, will you scatter my ashes out to sea, babe?’ Jess had asked her. Had that only been a week ago? It seemed like a year.
She’d failed at that, too. Matt had simply overridden her.
Like father, like son? Jess had told her of his bully of a father. She’d been gearing herself up to face Henry Eveldene, but Matt’s arrival in his father’s stead had thrown her.
She’d failed.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said to the closed door behind which Jessie’s body lay. ‘I’m so sorry, Jess.’
There was nothing more she could do.
She rose and took a deep breath, trying to figure how to find the strength to walk outside, catch a bus, get away from this place of death. Nausea swept over her again but she shoved it away. She didn’t have the energy to be sick.
‘Mrs Eveldene?’ The receptionist’s voice made her pause.
‘Yes?’ It was so hard to make her voice work.
‘You’ve dropped your cheque,’ the girl said. She walked out from behind her desk, stooped to retrieve it and handed it to her. As she did, she checked it, and her eyes widened.
‘Wow,’ she said. ‘You wouldn’t want to lose this, would you?’
* * *
Matt stood outside the funeral parlour, dug his hands deep into his pockets and stood absolutely still, waiting for the waves of shock and grief to subside. The image of Jess was burned on his retinas. His beautiful, adored big brother. His Jess, wasted, cold and dead on a mortuary slab.
He felt sick to the core. The anger inside him was building and building, but he knew deep down that it was only a way to deflect grief.
If he let his anger take hold he’d walk right back in there, pick up that piece of flotsam and shake her till her teeth rattled, but it would do no good at all. For that was all she was, a piece of detritus picked up somewhere along Jessie’s useless mess of a life.
What a sickening waste.
But suddenly he found himself thinking of the girl inside, of those huge, desperate eyes. Another life heading for nothing.
But those eyes...that flash of anger...
That was more than waste, he thought. There was something that Jess had loved, even a kind of beauty, and, underneath the anger, part of him could see it.
He could turn around and try and help.
Yeah, like he’d tried to help with Jess. Useless, useless, useless.
He’d given her money to survive. ‘Don’t waste it all,’ he found himself saying out loud, to no one, to the girl inside, to the bright Hawaiian sun. But it was a forlorn hope, as his hopes for Jessie had always been forlorn.
Enough. It was time to move forward. It was time to forget the waif-like beauty of the girl inside this nightmare of a place. It was time to accompany his brother’s body home for burial.
It was time to get on with the rest of his life.
CHAPTER ONE
SHE HAD THE best job in the world—except right now.
Dr Kelly Eveldene was the physician in charge of the International Surf Pro-Tour. For the last four years she’d been head of the medical team that travelled with the world’s top surfers. She was competent, she was popular, she understood the lingo, and she knew so many of the oldtimer surfers that the job suited her exactly.
There were a couple of downsides. This year the pro tournament had moved to Australia for the world championships. She wasn’t happy about coming to Australia, but Australia was big. The other Eveldenes lived in Sydney and the surf championship was to be held on the Gold Coast in Queensland. Her chances of running into...anybody were minuscule.
She’d done the research now. Henry Eveldene—her ex-father-in-law—was a business tycoon, rich beyond belief, and Eveldene was an uncommon name. Still, surely the presence in the country of a couple of inconspicuous people with similar names wouldn’t come to his attention.
Her other quibble was that Jess was competing this year, his first time out of juniors. He was seventeen years old, surf mad and as skilled as his father before him. She couldn’t hold him back and she didn’t want to try. Her son was awesome. But now, at this level, with the surf so big and Jess trying so hard, she had qualms.
She had qualms right now.
She was in the judging tent on the headland, as she always was during competition. There were paramedics on jet skis close to the beach, ready for anything that happened in the surf. In the event of an accident she’d be on the beach in seconds, ready to take charge as soon as casualties were brought in. If it looked like a head or spinal injury—and after long experience with the surf she could pretty much tell from seeing the impact what to expect—she’d be out there with the paramedics, organising spinal boards from the jet ski, binding open wounds so they didn’t bleed out in the water, even doing resuscitation if it was needed.
The job had its grim moments, but at this professional level she was seldom needed for high drama. What she dealt with mostly were cuts, bruises, rashes and sunburn, plus the chance to combine her medicine with the surfing she loved. It was a great job.
But now Jess was competing and her heart was in her mouth.
He had thirty minutes to show the judges what he could do. The first wave he’d caught had shown promise but had failed to deliver. It hadn’t given him a chance to show his skills. He’d be marked down and he knew it. He hit the shallows, flagged down an official jet ski and was towed straight out again.
Then there was an interminable ten minutes when the swell refused to co-operate, when nothing happened, when he lay on his board in the sun while the clock ticked down, down. Then, finally, magically, a long, low swell built from the north-east, building fast, and Kelly saw her son’s body tense in anticipation.
Please...
She should be impartial. She was an official, for heaven’s sake.
But she wasn’t impartial. She wasn’t a judge. For this moment she wasn’t even Dr Eveldene. She was Jessie’s mother and nothing else mattered.
He’d caught it. The wave was building behind him, swelling with a force that promised a long, cresting ride. The perfect wave? He rode to the lip and crested down, swooped, spun, climbed high again.
But...but...
There was another wave cresting in from the south-east. The surfers called this type of wave a rogue, a swell that cut across the magic wave that had seemed perfect for the best of the rides.
Jess wouldn’t be able to see it, Kelly thought in dismay, but maybe it wouldn’t matter. Maybe his wave would peak and subside before it was interfered with. And even the waves crashed together, surely he’d done enough now to progress through to the next stage.
But then...
Someone else was on the rogue wave.
The surf had been cleared for the competition. No one had the right to cut across a competitor’s wave. Only the competitors themselves were in the catching zone—everyone else was excluded. But a pod of enthusiastic juniors had set themselves up south of the exclusion zone, lying far out, hoping to get a better view of the surfer pros. This must be one of those kids, finding a huge swell behind him, unable to resist catching it, too much of a rookie—a grommet—to see that it would take him straight into a competition wave.
Uh-oh. Uh-oh, uh-oh, uh-oh.
The judges were on their feet. ‘Swing off. Get off,’ the judge beside Kelly roared. His voice went straight into the loudspeaker and out over the beach but the surfers were too far out, too intent on their waves...
Jess was in the green room, the perfect turquoise curve of water. He’d be flying, Kelly knew, awed that he’d caught such a perfect wave at such a time, intent on showing every ounce of skill he possessed. He’d be totally unaware that right behind...
No. Not right behind. The waves thumped into each other with a mighty crest of white foam. The grommet’s surfboard flew as high as his leg rope allowed, straight up and then crashing down.
She couldn’t see Jess. She couldn’t see Jess.
That impact, at that speed...
‘Kelly, go,’ the judge beside her yelled, and she went, but not with professional speed. Faster.
This was no doctor heading out into the waves to see what two surfers had done to themselves.
This was Jessie’s mother and she was terrified.
* * *
‘Matt, you’re needed in Emergency, stat. Leg fracture, limited, intermittent blood supply. If we’re to save the leg we need to move fast.’
It was the end of a lazy Tuesday afternoon. Matt Eveldene, Gold Coast Central Hospital’s orthopaedic surgeon, had had an extraordinarily slack day. The weather was fabulous, the sea was glistening and some of the best surfers in the world were surfing their hearts out three blocks from the hospital.
Matt had strolled across to the esplanade at lunchtime. He’d watched for a little while, admiring their skill but wondering how many of these youngsters were putting their futures at risk while they pushed themselves to their limits. No one else seemed to be thinking that. They were all just entranced with the surfers.
Even his patients seemed to have put their ills on hold today. He’d done a full theatre list this morning, but almost half his afternoon’s outpatient list had cancelled. He’d been considering going home early.
Not now. Beth, the admitting officer in Accident and Emergency, didn’t call him unless there was genuine need. She met him as the lift opened.
‘Two boys,’ Beth told him, falling in beside him, walking fast, using this time to get him up to speed. ‘They’re surfers who hit each other mid-ride. The youngest is a local, fourteen years old, concussion and query broken arm. It’s the other I’m worrying about. Seventeen, American, part of the competition. Compound fracture of the femoral shaft, and I suspect a compromised blood supply. I’ve called Caroline—she’s on her way.’
Caroline Isram was their vascular surgeon but Matt knew she was still in Theatre.
‘He’ll need both your skills if we’re going to save the leg,’ Beth said. ‘Oh, and, Matt?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Coincidence or not? His surname’s Eveldene.’
‘Coincidence. I don’t know any seventeen-year-old surfer.’
* * *
Kelly was seated by the bed in Cubicle Five, holding Jess’s hand. It said a lot for how badly he was hurt that he let her.
He had enough painkillers on board to be making him drowsy but he was still hurting. She was holding his hand tightly, willing him to stay still. The colour of his leg was waxing and waning. She’d done everything she could to align his leg but the blood supply was compromised.
Dear God, let there be skilled surgeons in this hospital. Dear God, hurry.
‘They say the orthopaedic surgeon’s on his way,’ she whispered. ‘The emergency doctor, Beth, says he’s the best in Australia. He’ll set your leg and you’ll be good as new.’ Please.
‘But I’ll miss the championships,’ Jess moaned, refusing to be comforted.
The championships were the least of their problems, Kelly thought grimly. There was a real risk he’d lose a lot more. Please, let this guy be good.
And then the curtains opened and her appalling day got even worse.
* * *
The last time Matt had seen his brother alive Jess had been in drug rehab. He’d looked thin, frightened and totally washed out.
The kid on the trolley when Matt hauled back the curtain was...Jess.
For a moment he couldn’t move. He stared down at the bed and Jessie’s eyes gazed back at him. The kid’s damp hair, sun-bleached, blond and tangled, was spreadeagled on the pillow around him. His green eyes were wide with pain. His nose and his lips showed traces of white zinc, but the freckles underneath were all Jessie’s.
It was all Matt could do not to buckle.
Ghosts didn’t exist.
They must. This was Jessie.
‘This is Mr Eveldene, our chief orthopaedic surgeon,’ Beth was telling the kid brightly. The situation was urgent, they all knew it, but Beth was taking a moment to reassure and to settle the teenager. ‘Matt, this is Jessie Eveldene. He has the same surname as yours, isn’t that a coincidence? Jess is from Hawaii, part of the pro-surf circuit, and he’s seventeen. And this is his mum, Kelly. Kelly’s not your normal spectator mum. She was Jessie’s treating doctor on the beach. She’s established circulation, she’s put the leg in a long leg splint and she’s given initial pain relief.’
He was having trouble hearing. His head was reeling. What were the odds of a kid called Jessie Eveldene turning up in his hospital? What were the odds such a kid would look like Jess?
Sure, this kid was a surfer and all surfers had similar characteristics. Bleached hair. Zinc on their faces. But...but...
The kid’s green eyes were Jessie’s eyes, and they were looking at him as Jess’s had looked that last time.
Make the pain go away.
Focus on medicine, he told himself harshly. This wasn’t his older brother. This was a kid with a compromised blood supply. He flipped the sheet over the leg cradle and it was all he could do not to wince. The undamaged foot was colourless. He touched the ankle, searching for a pulse. Intermittent. Dangerously weak.
‘We took X-rays on the way in,’ Beth told him. ‘Comminuted fracture. That means there’s more than one break across the leg,’ she said, for Jessie’s benefit. ‘Matt, he needs your skill.’
He did. The leg was a mess. The compound fracture had been roughly splinted into position but he could see how it had shattered. Splinters of bone were protruding from the broken skin.
‘Blood flow was compromised on impact,’ Beth said softly. ‘Luckily Jess has one awesome mum. It seems Kelly was on duty as surf doctor. She went out on a jet ski and got Jess’s leg aligned almost before they reached the shore. The time completely without blood couldn’t have been more than a few minutes.’
So it was possible he’d keep his leg. Thanks to this woman.
He glanced at her again.
Kelly?
It was impossible to reconcile this woman with the Kelly he’d met so briefly all those years ago. This couldn’t possibly be her.
But then her eyes met his. Behind her eyes he saw pain and distress, but also...a hint of steel.
Kelly. A woman he’d blamed...
‘Well done,’ he said briefly, because that was all he could think of to say. Then he turned back to the boy. If they had a chance of keeping this leg, he had to move fast. ‘Beth, we need an ultrasound, right away. Tell Caroline this is priority. This blood flow seems fragile. Jess...’ He had to force himself to say the name. ‘Jess, you’ve made a dog’s breakfast of this leg.’
‘Dog’s breakfast?’ Jess queried cautiously.
‘Dog’s breakfast,’ Matt repeated, and summoned a grin. ‘Sorry, I forgot you were a foreigner.’ Gruesome humour often helped when treating teens, and he needed it now. The anaesthetist needed Jess settled—and he needed to settle himself. ‘It’s slang. A working dog’s breakfast is usually a mess of leftovers. That’s what this looks like.’
‘Ugh,’ Jess said, and Matt firmed his grin.
‘Exactly. We need to pin it back together and make sure enough blood gets through to your toes. That means surgery, straight away.’
The kid’s sense of humour had been caught despite the pain. ‘Cool...cool description,’ he said bravely. ‘Do you reckon someone could take a picture so I can put it on Facebook? My mates will think “dog’s breakfast” is sick.’
‘Sure,’ Beth said easily. She’d stepped back to snap orders into her phone but she resurfaced to smile. Beth had teenage boys of her own. Priority one, Facebook. Priority two, fixing a leg. She waved her phone. ‘I’ll snap it now if that’s okay with your mum. But then it’s Theatre to make you beautiful again.’
‘If your mother agrees,’ Matt said.
Jess’s mother. Kelly. Doctor in charge at the world surf championships.
Kelly Eveldene. The undernourished waif curled up in a funeral director’s parlour eighteen years ago?
The images didn’t mesh and Matt didn’t have time to get his head around it. The boy’s leg was dreadfully fractured, the blood supply had already been compromised and any minute a sliver of bone could compromise it again. Or shift and slice into an artery.
‘You have my permission,’ Kelly said, her voice not quite steady. ‘If it’s okay with you, Jessie?’
What kind of mother referred to her kid for such a decision? But Kelly really was deferring. She had hold of her son’s hand, waiting for his decision.
Jessie. This was doing his head in.
Maybe he should pull away; haul in a colleague. Could he be impersonal?
Of course he could. He had to be. To refer to another surgeon would mean a two-hour transfer to Brisbane.
No. Once he was in Theatre this would be an intricate jigsaw of shattered bone and nothing else would matter. He could ignore personal confusion. He could be professional.
‘Matt, Jessie’s mother is Dr Kelly Eveldene,’ Beth was saying. ‘She’s an emergency physician trained in Hawaii.’
‘Mr Eveldene and I have met before,’ the woman said, and Matt’s world grew even more confused.
‘So it’s not a coincidence?’ Beth said. ‘Matt...’
Enough. Talking had to stop. History had to take a back seat. These toes were too cool.
‘Jess, we need to get you to surgery now,’ he told the boy. There was no way to sugar-coat this. ‘Your leg’s kinking at an angle that’s threatening to cut off blood supply. Caroline Isram is our vascular surgeon and she’s on her way. Together we have every chance of fixing this. Do we have your permission to operate? And your mother’s?’
Finally, he turned to face her.
Kelly Eveldene had been a half-starved drug addict who’d been with his brother when he’d died. This was not Kelly Eveldene. This was a competent-looking woman, five feet six or seven tall, clear, grey eyes, clear skin, shiny chestnut curls caught back in a casual wispy knot, quality jeans, crisp white T-shirt and an official surf tour lanyard on a cord round her neck saying, ‘Dr Kelly Eveldene. Pro Surf Medical Director.’
Mr Eveldene and I have met before.
‘Are you a long-lost relative?’ Jess asked, almost shyly. ‘I mean, Eveldene’s not that common a name.’
‘I think I must be,’ Matt said, purposely not meeting Kelly’s eyes. ‘But we can figure that out after the operation. If you agree to the procedure.’
‘Dr Beth says you’re good.’
‘I’m good.’ No place here for false modesty.
‘And you’ll fix my leg so I can keep surfing?’
Something wrenched in him at that. Suddenly he heard Jess, long ago, yelling at his father over the breakfast table. ‘All I want to do is surf. Don’t you understand?’ And then saw Jessie arriving home from school that night, and finding his board in the backyard, hacked into a thousand pieces.
But now wasn’t the time for remembering. Now wasn’t the time to be even a fraction as judgmental as his father had been.
‘I’ll do my best,’ he said, holding Jessie’s gaze even though it felt like it was tearing him apart to do so. ‘Jess, I won’t lie to you—this is a really bad break, but if you let us operate now I think you’ll have every chance of hanging ten or whatever you do for as long as you want.’
‘Thank you,’ Jess said simply, and squeezed his mother’s hand. ‘Go for it. But take a picture for Facebook first.’
* * *
She’d been a doctor now for nine years, but she’d never sat on this side of the theatre doors. She’d never known how hard the waiting would be. Her Jess was on the operating table, his future in the hands of one Matt Eveldene.
Kelly had trained in emergency medicine but surfing had been her childhood, so when she’d qualified, she’d returned. Her surfing friends were those who’d supported her when she’d needed them most, so it was natural that she be drawn back to their world. She’d seen enough wipe-outs to know how much a doctor at the scene could help. Even before she’d qualified she’d been pushing to have a permanent doctor at the professional championships, and aiming for that position after qualification had seemed a natural fit.
But she’d spent time in hospitals in training, and she’d assisted time and time again when bad things had happened to surfers. She knew first-hand that doctors weren’t miracle workers.
So now she was staring at the doors, willing them to open. It had been more than three hours. Surely soon...
How would Jess cope if he was left with residual weakness? Or with losing his leg entirely? It didn’t bear thinking about. Surfing wasn’t his whole life but it was enough. It’d break his heart.
And Matt Eveldene was operating. What bad fairy was responsible for him being orthopaedic surgeon at the very place Jess had had his accident? Wasn’t he supposed to still be in Sydney with his appalling family? If she’d known he was here she would never have come.
Had she broken her promise by being here?
You keep yourself out of our lives, now and for ever.
She’d cashed the cheque and that had meant acceptance of his terms. The cheque had been Jessie’s insurance, though. Her husband’s insurance. Surely a promise couldn’t negate that.
The cheque had saved her life. No, she thought savagely. Her Jess had saved her life. Her husband. Her lovely, sun-bleached surfer who’d picked her up when she’d been at rock bottom, who’d held her, who’d made her feel safe for the first time. Who’d had demons of his own but who’d faced them with courage and with honour.
‘We’ll get through this together, babe,’ he’d told her. ‘The crap hand you’ve been dealt...my black dog... We’ll face them both down.’
But the black dog had been too big, too savage, and in the end she hadn’t been able to love him enough to keep it at bay. The night he’d died...
Enough. Don’t go there. In a few minutes she’d have to face his brother, and maybe she would have to go there again, but only briefly, only as long as it took to explain that she hadn’t broken her promise deliberately. She and Jess would move out of his life as soon as possible, and they’d never return.
* * *
It took the combined skill of Matt Eveldene, a vascular surgeon, an anaesthetist and a team of four skilled nurses to save Jessie’s leg.
‘Whoever treated it on the beach knew what they were doing,’ Caroline muttered. Gold Coast Central’s vascular surgeon was in her late fifties, grim and dour at the best of times. Praise was not lightly given. ‘This artery’s been so badly damaged I have no idea how blood was getting through.’
She went back to doing what she was doing, arterial grafting, slow, meticulous work that meant all the difference between the leg functioning again or not. Matt was working as her assistant right now, removing shattered slivers of bone, waiting until the blood supply was fully established before he moved in to restore the leg’s strength and function.
If Caroline got it right, if he could managed to fuse the leg to give it the right length, if there’d not been too much tissue damage, then the kid might...
Not the kid. Jessie.
The thought did his head in.
‘I think we’re fine here,’ Caroline growled. ‘Decent colour. Decent pulse. He’s all yours, Matt.’
But as Matt moved in to take control he knew it was no such thing.
This kid wasn’t his at all.
* * *
The doors swung open and Matt Eveldene was in front of her. He looked professional, a surgeon in theatre scrubs, hauling down his mask, pushing his cap wearily from his thatch of thick, black hair. How did he have black hair when Jessie’s had been almost blond? Kelly wondered absent-mindedly. He was bigger than Jess, too. Stronger boned, somehow...harsher, but she could still see the resemblance. As she could see the resemblance to her son.
This man was Jessie’s uncle. Family?
No. Her family was her son. No one else in the world qualified.
‘It went well,’ he said curtly from the door, and she felt her blood rush away from her face. She’d half risen but now she sat again, hard. He looked at her for a moment and then came across to sit beside her. Doctor deciding to treat her as a mother? Okay, she thought. She could deal with this, and surely it was better than last time. Better than brother treating her as a drug-addicted whore.
The operation had gone well. She should ask more. She couldn’t.
There was only silence.
There was no one else in the small theatre waiting room. Only this man and her.
There were so many emotions running rampant in her mind that she didn’t have a clue what to do with them.
‘Define...define “well”,’ she managed, and was inordinately proud of herself that she’d managed that.
‘Caroline had to graft to repair the artery,’ he told her. ‘But she’s happy with the result. We have steady pulse, normal flow. Then I’ve used a titanium rod. You know about intramedullary nailing? There wasn’t enough bone structure left to repair any other way. But the breaks were above the knee and below the hip—well clear—so we’ve been able to use just the one rod and no plates. He has a couple of nasty gashes—well, you saw them. Because the bone fragments broke the skin we need to be extra-cautious about infection. Also Caroline’s wary of clotting. He’ll spend maybe a week in hospital until we’re sure the blood flow stays steady. After that, rest and rehabilitation in a controlled environment where we know he can’t do further damage. You know this’ll be a long haul.’
‘It’ll break his heart,’ Kelly whispered. ‘It’s going to be six months before he’s back on a surfboard.’
‘Six months is hardly a lifetime,’ Matt said, maybe more harshly than he should have. ‘He’ll have some interesting scars but long term nothing a surfer won’t brag about. Depending on his growth—at seventeen there may or may not be growth to come—we may need to organise an extension down the track but the rod itself can be extended. Unless he grows a foot he should be fine.’
So he’d still be able to surf. She hadn’t realised quite how frightened she’d been. She felt her body sag. Matt made a move as if to put a hand on her shoulder—and then he pulled away.
He would have touched her if she’d been a normal parent, she thought. He would have offered comfort.
Not to her.
It didn’t matter. He’d done what she’d most needed him to do and that was enough.
She made to rise, but his hand did come out then, did touch her shoulder, but it wasn’t comfort he was giving. He was pressing her down. Insisting she stay.
‘We need to talk,’ he said. ‘I believe I deserve an explanation.’
She stilled. Deserve. Deserve!
‘In what universe could you possibly deserve anything from me?’ she managed.
‘Jessie has a son!’
‘So?’
‘So my brother has fathered a child. My parents are grandparents. Don’t you think we deserved to know?’
‘I’m remembering a conversation,’ she snapped, and the lethargy and shock of the last few hours were suddenly on the back burner. Words thrown at her over eighteen years ago were still vividly remembered. ‘How could I not remember? Make no contact with your parents. Do not write. Never tell your mother Jess and I were married. Keep myself out of your lives, now and for ever. You said there were a hundred reasons why I should never contact you. You didn’t give me one exception.’
‘If you’d told me you were pregnant—’
‘As I recall,’ she managed, and it hurt to get the words out, ‘you didn’t want to know one single thing about me. Everything about me repelled you—I could see it on your face.’
‘You were a drug addict.’
She took a deep breath, fighting for control. ‘Really?’ she asked, managing to keep her voice steady. ‘Is that right? A drug addict? You figured that out all by yourself. On what evidence?’
He paused, raking his long, surgeon’s fingers through his thatch of wavy, black hair. The gesture bought him some time and it made Kelly pause. Her anger faded, just a little.
The present flooded back. This man had saved her son’s leg. Maybe she needed to cut him some slack.
But it seemed slack wasn’t necessary. He’d gone past some personal boundary and was drawing back.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I made...I made assumptions when Jess died. I know now that at least some of them were wrong.’
Her anger had faded to bitterness. ‘You got the autopsy report, huh?’
‘You need to realise the last time I saw Jessie alive he was in drug rehab.’
‘That was years before he died.’
‘He told you about it?’
‘Jess was my husband,’ she snapped. ‘Of course he told me.’
‘You were seventeen!’
‘And needy. Jess was twenty-four and needy. We clung to each other.’ She shook her head. ‘Sorry, but I don’t have to listen to this. You never wanted to know about me before, and you don’t now. Thank you very much for saving my son’s leg. I guess I’ll see you over the next few days while he’s in hospital but I’ll steer clear as much as I can. I need to go back to our hotel and get Jess’s things, but I want to see him first. Is he awake?’
‘Give him a while. We put him pretty deeply under.’ He raked his hair again, looking as if he was searching for something to say. Anything. And finally it came.
‘You weren’t on drugs?’
‘You know,’ she said, quite mildly, ‘years ago I wanted to hit you. I was too exhausted to hit you then, too emotionally overwrought, too wrecked. Now I’m finding I want to hit you all over again. If it wasn’t for what you’ve just done for Jess, I would.’
‘You looked—’
‘I looked like my husband had just died.’ Her voice grew softer, dangerously so. ‘I was seventeen. I was twelve weeks pregnant and I’d sat by Jess’s bedside for twenty-four hours while he lost his fight to live. Then I’d sat in the waiting room at the funeral home, waiting for you, hour upon endless hour, because I thought that it’d be his father who’d come to get him and I didn’t think a message to contact me would work. I couldn’t risk missing him. And then you walked in instead, and I thought, yes, Matt’s come in his father’s stead and it’ll be okay, because Jess had told me how much he loved you. All I asked was for what Jess wanted, but you walked all over me, as if I was a piece of pond scum. And now...now you’re still telling me I looked like a drug addict?’
There was a long silence. She didn’t know where to go with this. She’d bottled up these emotions for years and she’d never thought she’d get a chance to say them.
Somewhere in Sydney, in a family vault, lay Jess’s ashes. She’d failed the only thing Jess had ever asked of her. She hadn’t stood up to his family.
She should hate this man. Maybe she did, but he was looking shocked and sick, and she felt...she felt...
Like she couldn’t afford to feel.
‘I’ll grab Jess’s things and bring them back,’ she said, deciding brisk and efficient was the way to go. ‘It’s only ten minutes’ walk to the hotel. I should be back before he’s properly awake. The rest of the surfers will be worried, too. There are a lot of people who love my Jess—practically family. Thank you for your help this afternoon, Matt Eveldene, but goodbye. I don’t think there’s single thing left that we need to talk about.’
* * *
There was. She knew there was. She walked down the hill from the hospital to the string of beachside hotels where most of the surfers were staying and she knew this wouldn’t end here.
Why did Jess look so much like his father? Why had she called him Jess?
Why had she kept her husband’s name?
‘Because it was all I had of him,’ she said out loud, and in truth she loved it that her son was called Jessie, she loved that he loved surfing, she loved that when she looked at him she could see his father.
But not if it meant...loss?
Her husband had told her about his family, his father in particular. ‘He controls everything, Kelly. It’s his way or no way. He loathed my surfing. He loathed everything that gave me pleasure, and when I got sick he labelled me a weakling. Depression? Snap out of it, he told me, over and over. Pull yourself together. I couldn’t cope. That’s why I hit the drugs that first time.’
She knew as much as she ever wanted to know about Jessie’s father—but he’d also told her about his brother, Matt.
‘He’s the only good thing about my family, Kell. If anything ever happens to me, go to him. He’ll help you.’
Well, he had helped her, Kelly thought grimly. She thought of the insurance cheque. It had been tossed at her in anger but she owed everything to it.
‘So Jess might have been wrong about him being a nice guy, but he’s had his uses,’ she told herself. ‘Now forget about him. You have enough to worry about without past history. For instance, the surf tour’s moving on. You’ll need to take leave. You’ll need a place to stay, and you’ll need to figure a way to stop Jess’s heart from breaking when he learns that he’s no longer part of the surf circuit.’
* * *
He felt like he’d been hit with a sledgehammer.
Matt walked up to the hospital rooftop, to the cafeteria area that looked out over the ocean. He leant on the rail overlooking the amazing view, trying to let the enormity of what had just happened sink in.
Jessie had a son. Somehow, his brother wasn’t dead.
Okay, that was a crazy thing to think but right now that was how it seemed. He knew if he phoned his mother—‘You have a grandson. He’s named Jess and he looks just like our Jessie’—his mother would be on the next plane. She’d broken her heart when Jess had died, and she’d never got over it. Always a doormat to her bully of a husband, she’d faded into silent misery. Matt worried about her, but not enough to stay in Sydney, not enough to stay near his father.
Should he tell his mother? He must. But if he told his mother, his father would know, too. There was the rub. Could you fight for custody of a seventeen-year-old boy? No, Matt thought, but knowing his father, he’d try. Or, worse, he’d let loose the anger he still carried toward his older son and unleash it on Kelly and his grandson.
The thought of his father bullying Kelly...
As he’d bullied her...
He thought back to the appalling funeral parlour scene and he felt ill.
He’d been a kid himself, a student. The call had come late at night; Jess had had a fall and died. Yes, it seemed to be suicide. His body was at a Hawaiian funeral home and a woman calling herself his wife was making the arrangements.
His father had exploded with grief and rage. ‘Stupid, idiotic, surfer hop-head. You needn’t think I’m heading off to that place to see him. You do it, boy. Go and get him, bring him home so his mother can bury him and there’s an end to it.’
‘They say he’s married?’
‘He’s been off his head for years. If there’s a marriage get it annulled. We have more than enough evidence to say he was mentally incapable. And don’t tell your mother. Just fix it.’
But Jess had never been mentally incapable. The depression that had dogged him since adolescence had been an illness, the same way cancer was an illness. Underneath the depression and, yes, the drugs when he’d been using, he’d still been Jess, the gentle, soft-spoken big brother Matt had loved.
He might have known he’d have married a woman of spirit.
But a seventeen-year-old?
He’d judged her back then because of her appearance and obvious desperation, but things were making horrible sense now.
All apart from the age. Surely seventeen was underage for marriage in Hawaii? They’d have needed special permission.
Had they done it because Kelly had been pregnant?
These were questions Matt should have asked years ago, not now.
The questions had been there, though. He’d flown home with Jessie’s body and the questions had rested unanswered in the back of his mind. The image of a girl curled in utter misery, of a cheque floating to the floor, of a desperation he’d done nothing to assuage, these images had stayed with him. The questions had nagged while he’d qualified as a doctor, while he’d got himself away from his domineering father, while he’d attempted his own marriage... While he’d come to terms with life, as Jessie never had. Just as Kelly had obviously come to terms with her life.
He remembered his relief when he’d found the cheque had been cashed. Now I don’t need to feel guilty, he’d told himself. But the questions had stayed.
They had been answered now—almost. She’d used the cheque, but to what purpose?
To train herself in medicine?
To raise another surfer like Jess?
If his father found out... To have a grandson addicted to surfing...
Better not to tell him. Better to leave things as they were, just get this kid well and on his way.
But he looked so much like Jess...
So? He’d be in hospital for a week or so and then an outpatient for longer with rehab. He’d see him a lot. He had to get used to it.
And his mother?
Her image haunted him. In truth, her image had haunted him for years and now there was this new image juxtapositioned on the old.
Should the new image make the haunting go away?
A surf doctor. What sort of doctor was that?
What sort of woman was that?
A woman with spirit.
How could he know that?
He just...knew. There was that about her, an indefinable strength. A beauty that was far more than skin deep.
Beauty? He raked his hair again, thinking he wasn’t making sense. He was too tired, too shocked to take it in. He needed to go home.
At the thought of his home he felt his tension ease. Home, the place he’d built with effort and with love. Home with his dogs and his books.
His house was the only place where he was at peace. His home mattered. He’d learned early and learned hard; people only complicated that peace.
He needed to go home now and put this woman and her son out of his head.
He needed to be alone.
CHAPTER TWO
THE SURF CHAMPIONSHIPS lasted for two more days and Kelly worked for both of them. There were gaps in the day when she could visit Jess, but she had to work for as long as she could. She needed the money.
The surfing community looked after its own, but there wasn’t a lot they could do to help. They’d need to employ another doctor for the next round of the championships in New Zealand. As soon as Jess was well enough for Kelly to rejoin the tour, the position was hers again, but pro-surfing ran on the smell of a surf-waxed rag, and they couldn’t afford to pay her for time off.
And she would not use the trust fund.
She needed to move from the hotel. One of the locals offered her a basic surfer’s squat and she accepted with relief. She’d find a decent apartment when Jess was released from hospital but until then she’d live in her surf squat and focus on Jess’s recovery.
From Jessie’s charts and from information she drew from junior doctors, she could track Jessie’s progress. There was therefore no need to talk to Matt Eveldene. The advantage of Matt being head of the orthopaedic ward was that where Matt went, students followed. She could always hear him coming so she could give Jess a quick hug and disappear.
‘Here come the medical cavalry. It’s time to make myself scarce.’
‘He looks at me funny,’ Jess said sleepily on the second day, and she hugged him again, feeling defensive about leaving him.
‘Surgeons are a law unto themselves,’ she said. ‘If he only looks at you funny, you’re getting off lightly. These guys spend their days looking inside people, not practising social skills.’
The surf tour moved on. She spent a couple of hours of her first free day moving into her dreary little apartment. Back at the hospital she found Jess awake and bored, so she spent an hour going over the results of the championship he’d missed out on, talking future tactics, as if those tactics might be useful next week instead of in six months.
Finally he went to sleep. What to do now? She knew how long rehabilitation would take. She had weeks and weeks of wondering what to do.
Okay, do what came next. Lunch. She slipped out to find some—and Matt was at the nurses’ station.
Was he waiting for her? It looked like it. His hands were deep in the pockets of his gorgeous suit, he was talking to a nurse but he was watching Jess’s door. As soon as he saw her, he broke off the conversation.
‘Sorry, Jan,’ he said to the nurse, ‘but I need to speak to Mrs Eveldene.’
‘That’s Dr Eveldene,’ she said as he approached, because her professional title suddenly seemed important. She needed a barrier between them, any barrier at all, and putting things on a professional level seemed the sensible way to achieve it. ‘Do you need to discuss Jessie’s treatment?’
‘I want lunch,’ he growled. ‘There’s a quiet place on the roof. We can buy sandwiches at the cafeteria. Come with me.’
‘Say “please”,’ she said, weirdly belligerent, and he stared at her as if she was something from outer space.
But: ‘Please,’ he said at last, and she gave him a courteous nod. This man was in charge of her son’s treatment. She did need to be...spoken to.
They bought their lunches, paid for separately at her insistence. He offered but she was brusque in her refusal. She followed him to a secluded corner of the rooftop, with chairs, tables and umbrellas for shade. She spent time unwrapping her sandwich—why was she so nervous?—but finally there was nothing left to do but face the conversation.
He spoke first, and it was nothing to do with her son’s treatment. It was as if the words had to be dragged out of him.
‘First, I need to apologise,’ he said. As she frowned and made to speak, he held up his hands as if to ward off her words. ‘Hear me out. Heaven knows, this needs to be said. Kelly, eighteen years ago I treated you as no human should ever treat another, especially, unforgivably, as you were my brother’s wife. I accused you of all sorts of things that day. My only defence was that I was a kid myself. I was devastated by my brother’s death but my assumptions about him—and about you—were not only cruel, they were wrong.’
‘As in you assumed Jess was back using drugs,’ she whispered. ‘As you assumed I was the same. An addict.’
‘I figured it out almost as soon as I got back to Australia,’ he said, even more heavily. ‘The autopsy results revealed not so much as an aspirin. I should have contacted you again, but by then I was back at university and it felt...’ He shook his head. ‘No. I don’t know how it felt. I was stuck in a vortex of grief I didn’t know how to deal with. Somehow it was easier to shove the autopsy results away as wrong. Somehow it seemed easier to blame drugs rather than—’
‘Unhappiness?’
‘Yes.’
‘Jess was clinically depressed,’ she said. ‘You’re a doctor. You know it’s different. He wasn’t just unhappy; he was ill.’
‘No antidepressants showed up either.’
‘He wouldn’t touch antidepressants,’ she said, not sure where this was going, not sure that she wanted to go with him. ‘He’d fallen into addiction once and it terrified him. In all the time I knew him, he took nothing.’
‘How long did you know him?’
She shouldn’t say. She didn’t owe this man an explanation, and her story hurt. But it was also Jessie’s story. It hadn’t been told and maybe...maybe Jess would want his brother to know.
‘Get in touch with Matt if anything happens to me,’ he’d said to her, more than once. ‘He’ll look after you.’
If anything happens to me... He’d obviously been thinking suicide. It still played in her mind, and it was still unbearable. So many questions... The questions surrounded her, nightmares still.
But maybe she had to expose a little of that pain. Matt was waiting for her to speak, and after all these years his gaze was non-judgmental. He wanted to know.
Eighteen years ago he hadn’t asked, and she’d hated him. But then he’d been young and shocked and grieving, she conceded, and shock could be forgiven.
Almost. There was still a part of her that was that cringing seventeen-year-old, remembering this man’s fury.
‘I met Jess when I was sixteen,’ she said, forcing herself to sound like the grown-up that she was. ‘And I was a mess. But not because of drugs. I was just...neglected. My father was interested in surf and booze and nothing else. My mother disappeared when I was four—at least, I think it was my mother; my father never seemed sure. It didn’t matter. It was just the way things were. I was dragged up in the surfing community. There were good people who looked out for me, but they were itinerant and there were lots who weren’t so good. But all of them came and went. I stayed.’
‘It must have been a tough upbringing,’ he said quietly, and she nodded.
‘You could say that. And then, of course, I reached my teenage years. I matured late, thanks be, but finally at sixteen I became...female, instead of just a kid. Then things got harder. Unprotected and often homeless, camping as we often did, I became a target and my father was little use. I was a little wildcat, doing my best to defend myself, but it couldn’t last. Then Jess arrived. He set up on the outskirts of the camp, seemingly intent on surfing and nothing else. I didn’t think he’d even noticed us but there was an ugly scene one night when someone offered my father money. I remember someone grabbing me as if he owned me.’
‘You were so alone.’
‘I... Yes.’
‘With no one?’
‘No one who cared.’
‘Kelly—’
‘It was a long time ago,’ she said, and she even smiled a little. ‘You know, when you spoke then, you sounded just like Jess. Just as angry on my behalf. That night he appeared out of the dark, out of nowhere, and he was furious. I hit out—and Jess moved in before the guy could retaliate. He just...took over.’
‘Jess was always bringing home strays,’ Matt said. His instinctive anger seemed to have settled and his tone gentled. Strays. The word drifted in her mind. She knew no offence had been meant and none had been taken, because that’s exactly what she’d been. A stray. Living in temporary surf camps. Going to school when the surf camp had been close enough or when her father had been capable of taking her. Living hand to mouth, the only constant being the surf.
But then there’d been Jess.
‘He was the best surfer,’ she said, pain fading as she remembered the way he’d transformed her life. ‘He’d only just arrived but everyone there respected him. He was also...large.’ She eyed Matt’s strongly built frame, his height—six three or so—his instinctive anger on her behalf—and she remembered Jess. For some reason it made her want to reach out and touch this man, comfort him, take away the pain behind his eyes.
She could do no such thing.
‘He told me he hadn’t seen his family for years,’ she went on, trying to ignore the urge to comfort Matt. ‘By the time you saw his body the depression had left its mark. He hadn’t been eating for weeks. But imagine him as I first saw him. He lived and breathed surfing. He was beautiful. He was built like a tank. No one stood up to him—and yet he stood up for me.’
‘You became his lover?’
There was a moment’s pause. She really didn’t want to go there, but she needed to tell it like it was. For Jessie’s sake. He’d been her hero, not some low-life who’d picked up teenage girls.
‘No,’ she said at last. ‘Believe it or not, I was sixteen and that was how Jess treated me. Dad and I were living in a rough beach shanty, but Dad left soon after Jess arrived, looking for better surf on the other side of the island. He came back every so often, but Jess built a lean-to on the side of our hut and we stayed put. Jess said it was to protect me and that’s what he did. He surfed with me, but it wasn’t all fun. He pushed me to go to school. I’d been going intermittently but Jess insisted I go every day. He gave me money for clothes. He stopped Dad...well, he kept me safe. He was my gorgeous big brother. But then the black dog got too much for him.’
‘The depression.’
‘He called it his black dog. He said that’s what Winston Churchill called it and that’s what it felt like. A great black dog, always shadowing him. He said it’d been shadowing him since he was a kid, something he was born with. He told me how his dad hated it, thought he was weak because of it. He told me about how’d he’d tried to escape with drugs when he was in his late teens, and what a mess that had been. I think that was a way of warning me, because drugs were everywhere in our scene. But Jess wouldn’t touch them. Never again, he said, even near the end when the depression was so bad and I pleaded with him to get help. “They’ll only give me pills,” he said, “and I’m not going down that road again.”’
‘If I’d known...’
‘Jess said you didn’t want to know,’ Kelly said gently. ‘Jess said you and he were close, but after rehab... He knew that shocked you. After he got his life together and the surfing was helping, he said he sent you the airfare to come and have a holiday together during your university holidays, but you wouldn’t come.’
Matt closed his eyes and she saw the pain wash over him. No. It was more than pain. Self-loathing.
‘He’d come out of rehab and gone straight back to surfing,’ Matt managed. ‘I thought—’
‘You know, surfing and drugs don’t really mix,’ she said gently. ‘There are always the fringe dwellers, people like my dad who surf a bit but who love the sun-bleached lifestyle more than the skill itself. But to be a real surfer you’re up at dawn, day after day. The sea demands absolute attention, absolute fitness. You need to work as Jess did—he did casual bricklaying to pay bills—but he surfed at dawn and then he was back at dusk to surf every night, falling into bed with every single part of him exhausted. Jess used the surf to drive away his demons and it mostly worked. He had no time for drugs. I swear he wasn’t taking them. I swear.’
‘I believe you,’ Matt said heavily. ‘Now. But back then...I’d just found out my brother had killed himself and, what’s more, that he’d married a seventeen-year-old just before he’d died. What was I to think? And then...pregnant?’
‘That was my fault,’ she said evenly, but he shook his head.
‘Seventeen was hardly old enough to consent.’
‘In those last months Jess wasn’t fit enough to think of age differences,’ she said evenly. ‘The depression was so bad he just...went away. Physically he left for a couple of weeks and when he returned to camp he looked gutted. I was terrified. He was limp, unable to make any decisions. He didn’t want to surf. He didn’t want to do anything. If I told you all he’d done for me... Well, I was so grateful, I loved him so much, and the state he was in, I was terrified. Anyway, I did everything, anything I could think of to pull him out of it, and in the end I just lay down and held him. I held him all I could, every way I could, and when he finally took me I was happy because I thought he was coming out of it. I thought...he must be.’
‘Oh, Kelly...’
‘And I’d bought condoms—of course I had—and we used them, but that first time, well, I had the experience of a newt and I guess I was doing the seducing and I didn’t do it right and then I was pregnant.’
‘You told him?’
‘He guessed. And for a while that woke him up. We had this first morning when we knew... I’d woken up sick and he waited until I was better and we took the boards out beyond the surf break to watch the dawn. And we lay there talking about our baby like it might really exist, about this new life that was so exciting. Life for both of us had been crap but this new life...we planned for it. And Jess told me I’d be an awesome mother and he’d try, he’d really try. But that was the last time...’
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Marion Lennox
When physician Kelly Eveldene’s son is injured in a surfing accident she finds herself face to face with the one man she prayed never to see again: delectable orthopaedic surgeon Dr Matt Eveldene! Seeing beautiful Kelly again brings back their painful history and sparks new, unacceptable desires in Matt – Kelly’s strictly off-limits!But who can resist the temptation of the forbidden…?
MARION LENNOX is a country girl, born on an Australian dairy farm. She moved on—mostly because the cows just weren’t interested in her stories! Married to a ‘very special doctor', Marion writes Mills & Boon
Medical Romances™, as well as for Mills & Boon
Cherish™. (She used a different name for each category for a while—if you’re looking for her past Romances search for author Trisha David as well.) WAVES OF TEMPTATION is Marion Lennox’s 100
romance novel.
In her non-writing life Marion cares for kids, cats, dogs, chooks and goldfish. She travels, she fights her rampant garden (she’s losing) and her house dust (she’s lost). Having spun in circles for the first part of her life, she’s now stepped back from her ‘other’ career, which was teaching statistics at her local university. Finally she’s reprioritised her life, figured out what’s important and discovered the joys of deep baths, romance and chocolate. Preferably all at the same time!
CAROLINE ANDERSON has the mind of a butterfly. She’s been a nurse, a secretary, a teacher, run her own soft furnishing business, and now she’s settled on writing. She says, ‘I was looking for that elusive something. I finally realised it was variety, and now I have it in abundance. Every book brings new horizons and new friends, and in between books I have learned to be a juggler. My teacher husband, John, and I have two beautiful and talented daughters, Sarah and Hannah, umpteen pets, and several acres of Suffolk that nature tries to reclaim every time we turn our backs!'
Dear Reader
Last year I attended a writing retreat on Australia’s famous Gold Coast. The world surfing championships were taking place five miles down the beach. Then the weather turned wild, so the championships were relocated—right into our sheltered bay, right under our hotel! You can imagine how our retreat ended. We hung out of the windows and watched gorgeous surfers from all over the world, ‘hanging ten’ just beneath us.
But I was there to write … Virtuously I took my laptop out onto the balcony and searched for inspiration. Strangely, it wasn’t very far away.
I had fun on the Gold Coast, and I had fun writing this book. WAVES OF TEMPTATION lets me share that glorious surfing world, the inevitable medical needs of such an event, and the drama and passion that must inevitably lie beneath.
This is also my 100th romance novel. Writing for Mills & Boon
has been a wonderful journey. A huge thank you to all who’ve helped me along the way. And thank you to my writing friends and to my family.
Thank you, too, my readers, for sharing my passion.
Marion Lennox
Praise for Marion Lennox:
‘Marion Lennox’s RESCUE AT CRADLE LAKE is simply magical, eliciting laughter and tears in equal measure. A keeper.’
—RT Book Reviews
‘Best of 2010: a very rewarding read. The characters are believable, the setting is real, and the writing is terrific.’
—Dear Author on CHRISTMAS WITH HER BOSS
Waves of Temptation
Marion Lennox
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
DEDICATION
For Marion
WAVES OF TEMPTATION is Marion Lennox’s 100th Mills & Boon
novel!
Recent titles by Marion Lennox:
Mills & Boon
Medical Romance™
GOLD COAST ANGELS: A DOCTOR’S REDEMPTION* (#ulink_df064b3f-c11f-5662-99e2-c0c3193085af) MIRACLE ON KAIMOTU ISLAND† (#ulink_df064b3f-c11f-5662-99e2-c0c3193085af) THE SURGEON’S DOORSTEP BABY SYDNEY HARBOUR HOSPITAL: LILY’S SCANDAL** (#ulink_df064b3f-c11f-5662-99e2-c0c3193085af) DYNAMITE DOC OR CHRISTMAS DAD? THE DOCTOR AND THE RUNAWAY HEIRESS
* (#ulink_aec7d3ea-219f-556d-83f9-7a8bfbfe27e4)Gold Coast Angels** (#ulink_aec7d3ea-219f-556d-83f9-7a8bfbfe27e4)Sydney Harbour Hospital† (#ulink_aec7d3ea-219f-556d-83f9-7a8bfbfe27e4)Earthquake!
Mills & Boon
Cherish
CHRISTMAS AT THE CASTLE
SPARKS FLY WITH THE BILLIONAIRE
A BRIDE FOR THE MAVERICK MILLIONAIRE* (#ulink_3580e843-5eda-5290-acdd-6ef53ab0bd23) HER OUTBACK RESCUER* (#ulink_3580e843-5eda-5290-acdd-6ef53ab0bd23) NIKKI AND THE LONE WOLF** (#ulink_3580e843-5eda-5290-acdd-6ef53ab0bd23) MARDIE AND THE CITY SURGEON** (#ulink_3580e843-5eda-5290-acdd-6ef53ab0bd23)
* (#ulink_34bc6346-8266-5899-af88-0de0b8689d3b)Journey through the Outback duet ** (#ulink_34bc6346-8266-5899-af88-0de0b8689d3b)Banksia Bay miniseries
These books are also available in eBook format from www.millsandboon.co.uk
Contents
PROLOGUE (#ud5aa7b75-06af-54a2-888d-0d4fcd74e9e6)
CHAPTER ONE (#ub4763324-98eb-5178-abc1-2329902e464d)
CHAPTER TWO (#u5ab4e162-5ecc-5b1c-b349-0b96e5a8eee4)
CHAPTER THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
PROLOGUE
SHE WAS HUDDLED as far from the receptionist in the funeral parlour as she could get. Curled into one of the reception area’s plush chairs, she looked tiny, almost in a foetal position.
Her dirty, surf-blonded hair was matted and in desperate need of a cut. Her cut-off-at-the-thigh jeans were frayed, her too-big windcheater looked like something out of a charity bin and her bare feet were filthy. Her huge grey eyes were ringed with great dark shadows.
In ordinary circumstances, Matt Eveldene would have cast her a glance of sympathy. He might even have tossed her a few coins to get a decent meal.
Not now. Not this girl.
He knew as much about her as he’d ever want to know. Her name was Kelly Myers. No. Kelly Eveldene. She was seventeen years old and she was his brother’s widow.
She rose as she saw him. She must know what he’d been doing—identifying for himself that the body lying in the funeral home’s back room was indeed his brother’s.
‘I...I’m sorry,’ she faltered, but she didn’t approach him. Maybe his face stopped her. It was impossible to conceal his anger. The white-hot rage.
The waste...
He’d just seen Jessie. His beloved big brother. Jess, who’d laughed with him, teased him, protected him from the worst of their father’s bullying.
Jessie, who was now dead, aged all of twenty-four. Jessie, who for some crazy, unfathomable reason had married this girl two weeks before he’d died.
‘How can you be married to him?’ he snapped. It was a dumb thing to ask, maybe even cruel, but it was all he could think of. He knew so little of what Jessie had been doing for the last few years. No one did. ‘You’re only seventeen.’
‘He wanted to marry me,’ she said, almost as a ghost might talk. As if her voice was coming from a long way away. ‘He insisted. He even found my father and made him give permission. I guess...my father’s still my guardian, even if—’ She broke off and sat down again, hard, as if all the strength had gone out of her.
But Matt had no room left in his head for pity. Not now. He’d loved his big brother. Jess had been wild, free, bordering on manic, but he’d lit their lives. Or he’d lit Matt’s. In the big old mansion overlooking Sydney’s famous Bondi Beach, with its air of repressed elegance and propriety, and its walls echoing with his father’s displeasure, it had always been Jess who’d brought in life.
But that life had been more and more out of control. The last time Matt had seen him he’d been in a rehabilitation ward in West Sydney. Jess had been twenty-two. Matt had been eighteen, confused and desperately frightened at the state of his big brother.
‘I can’t go back home, Matt,’ Jess had told him. ‘I know what Dad thinks of me and it always makes it worse. The black dog...depression...well, when you’re older maybe you’ll understand what it is. When I get out of here I’m heading overseas. Following the surf. The surf gets me out of my head like nothing else can. If I’m to stay off the drugs, that’s what I need.’
What had followed then had been two years of intermittent postcards, the occasional press clipping of minor success in surf competitions, and demands that his parents didn’t try and contact him until he’d ‘found’ himself.
Had he found himself now, on a slab in a Hawaiian mortuary? Jess... He thought back to the last time he’d seen his brother, as a recovering addict. Recovery had been for nothing, and now he was facing this girl who was calling herself Jessie’s wife.
His anger was almost uncontrollable. He wanted to haul up her sleeves to expose the tracks of the inevitable drug use, and then hurl her as far as he could throw her.
Somehow he held himself still. He daren’t unleash his fury.
‘He wanted to be cremated,’ the girl whispered. ‘He wants his ashes scattered off Diamond Head, when the surf’s at its best. At sunset. He has friends...’
Matt bet he did. More like this girl. This...
No. He wasn’t going to say it. He wasn’t going to think it.
Married! His father was right—he needed to pay the money and get rid of her, fast. If his mother knew of her existence, she might even want to bring her home, and then the whole sad round would start again. ‘Please go to rehab... Please get help. Please...’
He was too young to face this. He was twenty years old but he felt barely more than a child. His father should be here, to vent his anger, to do what he’d ordered Matt to do. Matt felt sick and weary and helpless.
‘Can you afford cremation?’ he demanded. The girl—Kelly—shook her head. Her grey eyes were direct and honest, surprising him with their candour.
‘No,’ she replied, her voice as bleak as the death that surrounded them. ‘I hoped... I hope you might help me.’
In what universe could he help a woman who’d watched his brother self-destruct? Even if she looked...
No, he told himself. Don’t think about how she looks. Just get this over and get out of here.
‘I’m taking my brother home,’ he told her. ‘My parents will bury him in Sydney.’
‘Please—’
‘No.’ The sight of his brother’s body was so recent and so raw he could barely speak. Dear God, Jess... He needed to be alone. He felt like the world was closing in on him, suffocating. How could his father demand this of him? This was killing him.
Maybe his father was punishing him, too. Punishing him for loving his big brother?
Enough. He had to leave. He hauled a chequebook from his jacket and started writing.
The girl sank back down into her chair, tucking her feet back under her, assuming once again that position of defence. Her eyes became blank.
The cheque written, he handed it to her. Or tried to. She didn’t put out her hand and he was forced to drop it onto her grubby knee.
‘My father had an insurance policy in my brother’s name,’ he said, struggling to hold back his distress. ‘Even though we doubt the validity of your marriage, my father acknowledges that you may have a claim on it. This pre-empts that claim. This is the total value of the insurance policy, given to you on the condition that you make no contact with my parents, that you never attempt to tell my mother that Jess was married, that you keep yourself out of our lives, now and for ever. Is that clear?’
She didn’t pick up the cheque. ‘I would like to write to your mother,’ she whispered.
‘I can think of a hundred reasons why you shouldn’t contact my mother,’ he said grimly. ‘The top one being she has had heartbreak enough and doesn’t need to be lumbered with the mess you’ve made of your life as well. My father has decided not to tell her about the marriage and I understand why.’
She closed her eyes as if he’d struck her, and he found his fury fading.
This was unfair, he conceded. This girl was a mess, but, then, Jessie’s life had been a mess, too. He didn’t need to vent his grief solely on her—but he had to get out of there.
‘Use the cheque,’ he said. ‘Get a life.’
‘I don’t want your cheque.’
‘It’s your cheque,’ he said, anger surging again. ‘It’s nothing to do with me. All I want is for you—his widow—’ and he gave the word his father’s inflection, the inflection it deserved ‘—to sign the release for his body. Let me take him home.’
‘He wouldn’t have wanted—’
‘He’s dead,’ he said flatly. ‘We need to bury him. Surely my mother has rights, too.’
Her fingers had been clenched on her knees. Slowly they unclenched, but then, suddenly, she bent forward, holding her stomach, and her face lost any trace of remaining colour.
Shocked, he stooped, ready to catch her if she slumped, concerned despite himself, but in seconds she had herself under control again. And when she unbent and stared straight at him, she was controlled. Her eyes, barely twelve inches from his, were suddenly icy.
‘Take him home, then. Give him to his mother.’
‘Thank you.’
‘I don’t want your thanks. I want you to go away.’
Which fitted exactly with how he was feeling.
‘Then we never need to see each other again. I wish you luck, Miss Myers,’ he said stiffly. Dear God, he sounded like his father. He no longer felt like a child. He felt a hundred.
‘I’m Kelly Eveldene.’ It was a flash of unexpected fire and venom. ‘I’m Mrs Eveldene to you. I’m Mrs Eveldene to the world.”
‘But not to my parents.’
‘No,’ she said, and she subsided again into misery. ‘Jess wouldn’t have wanted his mother hurt more than she has been. If you don’t want to tell her, then don’t.’ Her face crumpled and he fought a crazy, irrational impulse to take her into his arms, to hold her, to comfort her as one might comfort a wounded child.
But this was no child. This girl was part of the group that had destroyed his brother. Drugs, surf, drugs, surf... It had been that way since Matt could remember.
Get out of here fast, he told himself. This girl has nothing to do with you. The cheque absolves you from all responsibility.
Wasn’t that what his father had said?
‘Sign the papers,’ he told her roughly, rising to his feet with deliberation. ‘And don’t shoot the entire value of that cheque up your arm.’
She met his eyes again at that, and once again he saw fire.
‘Go back to Australia,’ she said flatly. ‘I can see why Jessie ran.’
‘It’s nothing to do—’
‘I’m not listening,’ she snapped. ‘I’ll sign your papers. Go.’
* * *
Kelly sat where she was for a long time after Matt had left. The receptionist would like her gone. She could understand that, but she was the widow of the deceased. The funeral home would be repatriating the body to Australia. It’d be a nice little earner. It behoved the receptionist to be courteous, even if Kelly was messing with the décor.
She needed a wash. She conceded that, too. More, she needed a change of clothes, a feed and a sleep. About a month’s sleep.
She was so tired she could scarcely move.
So tired...
The last few days had been appalling. She’d known Jess’s depression had deepened but not this much, never this much. Still, when he’d disappeared she’d feared the worst, and the confirmation had been a nightmare. And now... She’d sat in this place waiting for so long...
Not for him, though. For his father. She hadn’t expected a man who was scarcely older than she was.
Matt Eveldene. What sort of a name was Eveldene anyway?
A new one. She stared at the bright new ring on her finger, put there by Jess only weeks ago. ‘You’ll be safe now,’ he’d told her. ‘It’s all I can do, but it should protect you.’
She’d known he was ill. She shouldn’t have married him, but she’d been terrified, and he’d held her and she’d clung. But she hadn’t been able to cling hard enough, and here she was, in this nightmare of a place.
She’d been here for almost twenty-four hours, waiting for whoever came as the representative of Jess’s family. She knew they’d have to come here.
She had to ask.
‘If ever something happens, will you scatter my ashes out to sea, babe?’ Jess had asked her. Had that only been a week ago? It seemed like a year.
She’d failed at that, too. Matt had simply overridden her.
Like father, like son? Jess had told her of his bully of a father. She’d been gearing herself up to face Henry Eveldene, but Matt’s arrival in his father’s stead had thrown her.
She’d failed.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said to the closed door behind which Jessie’s body lay. ‘I’m so sorry, Jess.’
There was nothing more she could do.
She rose and took a deep breath, trying to figure how to find the strength to walk outside, catch a bus, get away from this place of death. Nausea swept over her again but she shoved it away. She didn’t have the energy to be sick.
‘Mrs Eveldene?’ The receptionist’s voice made her pause.
‘Yes?’ It was so hard to make her voice work.
‘You’ve dropped your cheque,’ the girl said. She walked out from behind her desk, stooped to retrieve it and handed it to her. As she did, she checked it, and her eyes widened.
‘Wow,’ she said. ‘You wouldn’t want to lose this, would you?’
* * *
Matt stood outside the funeral parlour, dug his hands deep into his pockets and stood absolutely still, waiting for the waves of shock and grief to subside. The image of Jess was burned on his retinas. His beautiful, adored big brother. His Jess, wasted, cold and dead on a mortuary slab.
He felt sick to the core. The anger inside him was building and building, but he knew deep down that it was only a way to deflect grief.
If he let his anger take hold he’d walk right back in there, pick up that piece of flotsam and shake her till her teeth rattled, but it would do no good at all. For that was all she was, a piece of detritus picked up somewhere along Jessie’s useless mess of a life.
What a sickening waste.
But suddenly he found himself thinking of the girl inside, of those huge, desperate eyes. Another life heading for nothing.
But those eyes...that flash of anger...
That was more than waste, he thought. There was something that Jess had loved, even a kind of beauty, and, underneath the anger, part of him could see it.
He could turn around and try and help.
Yeah, like he’d tried to help with Jess. Useless, useless, useless.
He’d given her money to survive. ‘Don’t waste it all,’ he found himself saying out loud, to no one, to the girl inside, to the bright Hawaiian sun. But it was a forlorn hope, as his hopes for Jessie had always been forlorn.
Enough. It was time to move forward. It was time to forget the waif-like beauty of the girl inside this nightmare of a place. It was time to accompany his brother’s body home for burial.
It was time to get on with the rest of his life.
CHAPTER ONE
SHE HAD THE best job in the world—except right now.
Dr Kelly Eveldene was the physician in charge of the International Surf Pro-Tour. For the last four years she’d been head of the medical team that travelled with the world’s top surfers. She was competent, she was popular, she understood the lingo, and she knew so many of the oldtimer surfers that the job suited her exactly.
There were a couple of downsides. This year the pro tournament had moved to Australia for the world championships. She wasn’t happy about coming to Australia, but Australia was big. The other Eveldenes lived in Sydney and the surf championship was to be held on the Gold Coast in Queensland. Her chances of running into...anybody were minuscule.
She’d done the research now. Henry Eveldene—her ex-father-in-law—was a business tycoon, rich beyond belief, and Eveldene was an uncommon name. Still, surely the presence in the country of a couple of inconspicuous people with similar names wouldn’t come to his attention.
Her other quibble was that Jess was competing this year, his first time out of juniors. He was seventeen years old, surf mad and as skilled as his father before him. She couldn’t hold him back and she didn’t want to try. Her son was awesome. But now, at this level, with the surf so big and Jess trying so hard, she had qualms.
She had qualms right now.
She was in the judging tent on the headland, as she always was during competition. There were paramedics on jet skis close to the beach, ready for anything that happened in the surf. In the event of an accident she’d be on the beach in seconds, ready to take charge as soon as casualties were brought in. If it looked like a head or spinal injury—and after long experience with the surf she could pretty much tell from seeing the impact what to expect—she’d be out there with the paramedics, organising spinal boards from the jet ski, binding open wounds so they didn’t bleed out in the water, even doing resuscitation if it was needed.
The job had its grim moments, but at this professional level she was seldom needed for high drama. What she dealt with mostly were cuts, bruises, rashes and sunburn, plus the chance to combine her medicine with the surfing she loved. It was a great job.
But now Jess was competing and her heart was in her mouth.
He had thirty minutes to show the judges what he could do. The first wave he’d caught had shown promise but had failed to deliver. It hadn’t given him a chance to show his skills. He’d be marked down and he knew it. He hit the shallows, flagged down an official jet ski and was towed straight out again.
Then there was an interminable ten minutes when the swell refused to co-operate, when nothing happened, when he lay on his board in the sun while the clock ticked down, down. Then, finally, magically, a long, low swell built from the north-east, building fast, and Kelly saw her son’s body tense in anticipation.
Please...
She should be impartial. She was an official, for heaven’s sake.
But she wasn’t impartial. She wasn’t a judge. For this moment she wasn’t even Dr Eveldene. She was Jessie’s mother and nothing else mattered.
He’d caught it. The wave was building behind him, swelling with a force that promised a long, cresting ride. The perfect wave? He rode to the lip and crested down, swooped, spun, climbed high again.
But...but...
There was another wave cresting in from the south-east. The surfers called this type of wave a rogue, a swell that cut across the magic wave that had seemed perfect for the best of the rides.
Jess wouldn’t be able to see it, Kelly thought in dismay, but maybe it wouldn’t matter. Maybe his wave would peak and subside before it was interfered with. And even the waves crashed together, surely he’d done enough now to progress through to the next stage.
But then...
Someone else was on the rogue wave.
The surf had been cleared for the competition. No one had the right to cut across a competitor’s wave. Only the competitors themselves were in the catching zone—everyone else was excluded. But a pod of enthusiastic juniors had set themselves up south of the exclusion zone, lying far out, hoping to get a better view of the surfer pros. This must be one of those kids, finding a huge swell behind him, unable to resist catching it, too much of a rookie—a grommet—to see that it would take him straight into a competition wave.
Uh-oh. Uh-oh, uh-oh, uh-oh.
The judges were on their feet. ‘Swing off. Get off,’ the judge beside Kelly roared. His voice went straight into the loudspeaker and out over the beach but the surfers were too far out, too intent on their waves...
Jess was in the green room, the perfect turquoise curve of water. He’d be flying, Kelly knew, awed that he’d caught such a perfect wave at such a time, intent on showing every ounce of skill he possessed. He’d be totally unaware that right behind...
No. Not right behind. The waves thumped into each other with a mighty crest of white foam. The grommet’s surfboard flew as high as his leg rope allowed, straight up and then crashing down.
She couldn’t see Jess. She couldn’t see Jess.
That impact, at that speed...
‘Kelly, go,’ the judge beside her yelled, and she went, but not with professional speed. Faster.
This was no doctor heading out into the waves to see what two surfers had done to themselves.
This was Jessie’s mother and she was terrified.
* * *
‘Matt, you’re needed in Emergency, stat. Leg fracture, limited, intermittent blood supply. If we’re to save the leg we need to move fast.’
It was the end of a lazy Tuesday afternoon. Matt Eveldene, Gold Coast Central Hospital’s orthopaedic surgeon, had had an extraordinarily slack day. The weather was fabulous, the sea was glistening and some of the best surfers in the world were surfing their hearts out three blocks from the hospital.
Matt had strolled across to the esplanade at lunchtime. He’d watched for a little while, admiring their skill but wondering how many of these youngsters were putting their futures at risk while they pushed themselves to their limits. No one else seemed to be thinking that. They were all just entranced with the surfers.
Even his patients seemed to have put their ills on hold today. He’d done a full theatre list this morning, but almost half his afternoon’s outpatient list had cancelled. He’d been considering going home early.
Not now. Beth, the admitting officer in Accident and Emergency, didn’t call him unless there was genuine need. She met him as the lift opened.
‘Two boys,’ Beth told him, falling in beside him, walking fast, using this time to get him up to speed. ‘They’re surfers who hit each other mid-ride. The youngest is a local, fourteen years old, concussion and query broken arm. It’s the other I’m worrying about. Seventeen, American, part of the competition. Compound fracture of the femoral shaft, and I suspect a compromised blood supply. I’ve called Caroline—she’s on her way.’
Caroline Isram was their vascular surgeon but Matt knew she was still in Theatre.
‘He’ll need both your skills if we’re going to save the leg,’ Beth said. ‘Oh, and, Matt?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Coincidence or not? His surname’s Eveldene.’
‘Coincidence. I don’t know any seventeen-year-old surfer.’
* * *
Kelly was seated by the bed in Cubicle Five, holding Jess’s hand. It said a lot for how badly he was hurt that he let her.
He had enough painkillers on board to be making him drowsy but he was still hurting. She was holding his hand tightly, willing him to stay still. The colour of his leg was waxing and waning. She’d done everything she could to align his leg but the blood supply was compromised.
Dear God, let there be skilled surgeons in this hospital. Dear God, hurry.
‘They say the orthopaedic surgeon’s on his way,’ she whispered. ‘The emergency doctor, Beth, says he’s the best in Australia. He’ll set your leg and you’ll be good as new.’ Please.
‘But I’ll miss the championships,’ Jess moaned, refusing to be comforted.
The championships were the least of their problems, Kelly thought grimly. There was a real risk he’d lose a lot more. Please, let this guy be good.
And then the curtains opened and her appalling day got even worse.
* * *
The last time Matt had seen his brother alive Jess had been in drug rehab. He’d looked thin, frightened and totally washed out.
The kid on the trolley when Matt hauled back the curtain was...Jess.
For a moment he couldn’t move. He stared down at the bed and Jessie’s eyes gazed back at him. The kid’s damp hair, sun-bleached, blond and tangled, was spreadeagled on the pillow around him. His green eyes were wide with pain. His nose and his lips showed traces of white zinc, but the freckles underneath were all Jessie’s.
It was all Matt could do not to buckle.
Ghosts didn’t exist.
They must. This was Jessie.
‘This is Mr Eveldene, our chief orthopaedic surgeon,’ Beth was telling the kid brightly. The situation was urgent, they all knew it, but Beth was taking a moment to reassure and to settle the teenager. ‘Matt, this is Jessie Eveldene. He has the same surname as yours, isn’t that a coincidence? Jess is from Hawaii, part of the pro-surf circuit, and he’s seventeen. And this is his mum, Kelly. Kelly’s not your normal spectator mum. She was Jessie’s treating doctor on the beach. She’s established circulation, she’s put the leg in a long leg splint and she’s given initial pain relief.’
He was having trouble hearing. His head was reeling. What were the odds of a kid called Jessie Eveldene turning up in his hospital? What were the odds such a kid would look like Jess?
Sure, this kid was a surfer and all surfers had similar characteristics. Bleached hair. Zinc on their faces. But...but...
The kid’s green eyes were Jessie’s eyes, and they were looking at him as Jess’s had looked that last time.
Make the pain go away.
Focus on medicine, he told himself harshly. This wasn’t his older brother. This was a kid with a compromised blood supply. He flipped the sheet over the leg cradle and it was all he could do not to wince. The undamaged foot was colourless. He touched the ankle, searching for a pulse. Intermittent. Dangerously weak.
‘We took X-rays on the way in,’ Beth told him. ‘Comminuted fracture. That means there’s more than one break across the leg,’ she said, for Jessie’s benefit. ‘Matt, he needs your skill.’
He did. The leg was a mess. The compound fracture had been roughly splinted into position but he could see how it had shattered. Splinters of bone were protruding from the broken skin.
‘Blood flow was compromised on impact,’ Beth said softly. ‘Luckily Jess has one awesome mum. It seems Kelly was on duty as surf doctor. She went out on a jet ski and got Jess’s leg aligned almost before they reached the shore. The time completely without blood couldn’t have been more than a few minutes.’
So it was possible he’d keep his leg. Thanks to this woman.
He glanced at her again.
Kelly?
It was impossible to reconcile this woman with the Kelly he’d met so briefly all those years ago. This couldn’t possibly be her.
But then her eyes met his. Behind her eyes he saw pain and distress, but also...a hint of steel.
Kelly. A woman he’d blamed...
‘Well done,’ he said briefly, because that was all he could think of to say. Then he turned back to the boy. If they had a chance of keeping this leg, he had to move fast. ‘Beth, we need an ultrasound, right away. Tell Caroline this is priority. This blood flow seems fragile. Jess...’ He had to force himself to say the name. ‘Jess, you’ve made a dog’s breakfast of this leg.’
‘Dog’s breakfast?’ Jess queried cautiously.
‘Dog’s breakfast,’ Matt repeated, and summoned a grin. ‘Sorry, I forgot you were a foreigner.’ Gruesome humour often helped when treating teens, and he needed it now. The anaesthetist needed Jess settled—and he needed to settle himself. ‘It’s slang. A working dog’s breakfast is usually a mess of leftovers. That’s what this looks like.’
‘Ugh,’ Jess said, and Matt firmed his grin.
‘Exactly. We need to pin it back together and make sure enough blood gets through to your toes. That means surgery, straight away.’
The kid’s sense of humour had been caught despite the pain. ‘Cool...cool description,’ he said bravely. ‘Do you reckon someone could take a picture so I can put it on Facebook? My mates will think “dog’s breakfast” is sick.’
‘Sure,’ Beth said easily. She’d stepped back to snap orders into her phone but she resurfaced to smile. Beth had teenage boys of her own. Priority one, Facebook. Priority two, fixing a leg. She waved her phone. ‘I’ll snap it now if that’s okay with your mum. But then it’s Theatre to make you beautiful again.’
‘If your mother agrees,’ Matt said.
Jess’s mother. Kelly. Doctor in charge at the world surf championships.
Kelly Eveldene. The undernourished waif curled up in a funeral director’s parlour eighteen years ago?
The images didn’t mesh and Matt didn’t have time to get his head around it. The boy’s leg was dreadfully fractured, the blood supply had already been compromised and any minute a sliver of bone could compromise it again. Or shift and slice into an artery.
‘You have my permission,’ Kelly said, her voice not quite steady. ‘If it’s okay with you, Jessie?’
What kind of mother referred to her kid for such a decision? But Kelly really was deferring. She had hold of her son’s hand, waiting for his decision.
Jessie. This was doing his head in.
Maybe he should pull away; haul in a colleague. Could he be impersonal?
Of course he could. He had to be. To refer to another surgeon would mean a two-hour transfer to Brisbane.
No. Once he was in Theatre this would be an intricate jigsaw of shattered bone and nothing else would matter. He could ignore personal confusion. He could be professional.
‘Matt, Jessie’s mother is Dr Kelly Eveldene,’ Beth was saying. ‘She’s an emergency physician trained in Hawaii.’
‘Mr Eveldene and I have met before,’ the woman said, and Matt’s world grew even more confused.
‘So it’s not a coincidence?’ Beth said. ‘Matt...’
Enough. Talking had to stop. History had to take a back seat. These toes were too cool.
‘Jess, we need to get you to surgery now,’ he told the boy. There was no way to sugar-coat this. ‘Your leg’s kinking at an angle that’s threatening to cut off blood supply. Caroline Isram is our vascular surgeon and she’s on her way. Together we have every chance of fixing this. Do we have your permission to operate? And your mother’s?’
Finally, he turned to face her.
Kelly Eveldene had been a half-starved drug addict who’d been with his brother when he’d died. This was not Kelly Eveldene. This was a competent-looking woman, five feet six or seven tall, clear, grey eyes, clear skin, shiny chestnut curls caught back in a casual wispy knot, quality jeans, crisp white T-shirt and an official surf tour lanyard on a cord round her neck saying, ‘Dr Kelly Eveldene. Pro Surf Medical Director.’
Mr Eveldene and I have met before.
‘Are you a long-lost relative?’ Jess asked, almost shyly. ‘I mean, Eveldene’s not that common a name.’
‘I think I must be,’ Matt said, purposely not meeting Kelly’s eyes. ‘But we can figure that out after the operation. If you agree to the procedure.’
‘Dr Beth says you’re good.’
‘I’m good.’ No place here for false modesty.
‘And you’ll fix my leg so I can keep surfing?’
Something wrenched in him at that. Suddenly he heard Jess, long ago, yelling at his father over the breakfast table. ‘All I want to do is surf. Don’t you understand?’ And then saw Jessie arriving home from school that night, and finding his board in the backyard, hacked into a thousand pieces.
But now wasn’t the time for remembering. Now wasn’t the time to be even a fraction as judgmental as his father had been.
‘I’ll do my best,’ he said, holding Jessie’s gaze even though it felt like it was tearing him apart to do so. ‘Jess, I won’t lie to you—this is a really bad break, but if you let us operate now I think you’ll have every chance of hanging ten or whatever you do for as long as you want.’
‘Thank you,’ Jess said simply, and squeezed his mother’s hand. ‘Go for it. But take a picture for Facebook first.’
* * *
She’d been a doctor now for nine years, but she’d never sat on this side of the theatre doors. She’d never known how hard the waiting would be. Her Jess was on the operating table, his future in the hands of one Matt Eveldene.
Kelly had trained in emergency medicine but surfing had been her childhood, so when she’d qualified, she’d returned. Her surfing friends were those who’d supported her when she’d needed them most, so it was natural that she be drawn back to their world. She’d seen enough wipe-outs to know how much a doctor at the scene could help. Even before she’d qualified she’d been pushing to have a permanent doctor at the professional championships, and aiming for that position after qualification had seemed a natural fit.
But she’d spent time in hospitals in training, and she’d assisted time and time again when bad things had happened to surfers. She knew first-hand that doctors weren’t miracle workers.
So now she was staring at the doors, willing them to open. It had been more than three hours. Surely soon...
How would Jess cope if he was left with residual weakness? Or with losing his leg entirely? It didn’t bear thinking about. Surfing wasn’t his whole life but it was enough. It’d break his heart.
And Matt Eveldene was operating. What bad fairy was responsible for him being orthopaedic surgeon at the very place Jess had had his accident? Wasn’t he supposed to still be in Sydney with his appalling family? If she’d known he was here she would never have come.
Had she broken her promise by being here?
You keep yourself out of our lives, now and for ever.
She’d cashed the cheque and that had meant acceptance of his terms. The cheque had been Jessie’s insurance, though. Her husband’s insurance. Surely a promise couldn’t negate that.
The cheque had saved her life. No, she thought savagely. Her Jess had saved her life. Her husband. Her lovely, sun-bleached surfer who’d picked her up when she’d been at rock bottom, who’d held her, who’d made her feel safe for the first time. Who’d had demons of his own but who’d faced them with courage and with honour.
‘We’ll get through this together, babe,’ he’d told her. ‘The crap hand you’ve been dealt...my black dog... We’ll face them both down.’
But the black dog had been too big, too savage, and in the end she hadn’t been able to love him enough to keep it at bay. The night he’d died...
Enough. Don’t go there. In a few minutes she’d have to face his brother, and maybe she would have to go there again, but only briefly, only as long as it took to explain that she hadn’t broken her promise deliberately. She and Jess would move out of his life as soon as possible, and they’d never return.
* * *
It took the combined skill of Matt Eveldene, a vascular surgeon, an anaesthetist and a team of four skilled nurses to save Jessie’s leg.
‘Whoever treated it on the beach knew what they were doing,’ Caroline muttered. Gold Coast Central’s vascular surgeon was in her late fifties, grim and dour at the best of times. Praise was not lightly given. ‘This artery’s been so badly damaged I have no idea how blood was getting through.’
She went back to doing what she was doing, arterial grafting, slow, meticulous work that meant all the difference between the leg functioning again or not. Matt was working as her assistant right now, removing shattered slivers of bone, waiting until the blood supply was fully established before he moved in to restore the leg’s strength and function.
If Caroline got it right, if he could managed to fuse the leg to give it the right length, if there’d not been too much tissue damage, then the kid might...
Not the kid. Jessie.
The thought did his head in.
‘I think we’re fine here,’ Caroline growled. ‘Decent colour. Decent pulse. He’s all yours, Matt.’
But as Matt moved in to take control he knew it was no such thing.
This kid wasn’t his at all.
* * *
The doors swung open and Matt Eveldene was in front of her. He looked professional, a surgeon in theatre scrubs, hauling down his mask, pushing his cap wearily from his thatch of thick, black hair. How did he have black hair when Jessie’s had been almost blond? Kelly wondered absent-mindedly. He was bigger than Jess, too. Stronger boned, somehow...harsher, but she could still see the resemblance. As she could see the resemblance to her son.
This man was Jessie’s uncle. Family?
No. Her family was her son. No one else in the world qualified.
‘It went well,’ he said curtly from the door, and she felt her blood rush away from her face. She’d half risen but now she sat again, hard. He looked at her for a moment and then came across to sit beside her. Doctor deciding to treat her as a mother? Okay, she thought. She could deal with this, and surely it was better than last time. Better than brother treating her as a drug-addicted whore.
The operation had gone well. She should ask more. She couldn’t.
There was only silence.
There was no one else in the small theatre waiting room. Only this man and her.
There were so many emotions running rampant in her mind that she didn’t have a clue what to do with them.
‘Define...define “well”,’ she managed, and was inordinately proud of herself that she’d managed that.
‘Caroline had to graft to repair the artery,’ he told her. ‘But she’s happy with the result. We have steady pulse, normal flow. Then I’ve used a titanium rod. You know about intramedullary nailing? There wasn’t enough bone structure left to repair any other way. But the breaks were above the knee and below the hip—well clear—so we’ve been able to use just the one rod and no plates. He has a couple of nasty gashes—well, you saw them. Because the bone fragments broke the skin we need to be extra-cautious about infection. Also Caroline’s wary of clotting. He’ll spend maybe a week in hospital until we’re sure the blood flow stays steady. After that, rest and rehabilitation in a controlled environment where we know he can’t do further damage. You know this’ll be a long haul.’
‘It’ll break his heart,’ Kelly whispered. ‘It’s going to be six months before he’s back on a surfboard.’
‘Six months is hardly a lifetime,’ Matt said, maybe more harshly than he should have. ‘He’ll have some interesting scars but long term nothing a surfer won’t brag about. Depending on his growth—at seventeen there may or may not be growth to come—we may need to organise an extension down the track but the rod itself can be extended. Unless he grows a foot he should be fine.’
So he’d still be able to surf. She hadn’t realised quite how frightened she’d been. She felt her body sag. Matt made a move as if to put a hand on her shoulder—and then he pulled away.
He would have touched her if she’d been a normal parent, she thought. He would have offered comfort.
Not to her.
It didn’t matter. He’d done what she’d most needed him to do and that was enough.
She made to rise, but his hand did come out then, did touch her shoulder, but it wasn’t comfort he was giving. He was pressing her down. Insisting she stay.
‘We need to talk,’ he said. ‘I believe I deserve an explanation.’
She stilled. Deserve. Deserve!
‘In what universe could you possibly deserve anything from me?’ she managed.
‘Jessie has a son!’
‘So?’
‘So my brother has fathered a child. My parents are grandparents. Don’t you think we deserved to know?’
‘I’m remembering a conversation,’ she snapped, and the lethargy and shock of the last few hours were suddenly on the back burner. Words thrown at her over eighteen years ago were still vividly remembered. ‘How could I not remember? Make no contact with your parents. Do not write. Never tell your mother Jess and I were married. Keep myself out of your lives, now and for ever. You said there were a hundred reasons why I should never contact you. You didn’t give me one exception.’
‘If you’d told me you were pregnant—’
‘As I recall,’ she managed, and it hurt to get the words out, ‘you didn’t want to know one single thing about me. Everything about me repelled you—I could see it on your face.’
‘You were a drug addict.’
She took a deep breath, fighting for control. ‘Really?’ she asked, managing to keep her voice steady. ‘Is that right? A drug addict? You figured that out all by yourself. On what evidence?’
He paused, raking his long, surgeon’s fingers through his thatch of wavy, black hair. The gesture bought him some time and it made Kelly pause. Her anger faded, just a little.
The present flooded back. This man had saved her son’s leg. Maybe she needed to cut him some slack.
But it seemed slack wasn’t necessary. He’d gone past some personal boundary and was drawing back.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I made...I made assumptions when Jess died. I know now that at least some of them were wrong.’
Her anger had faded to bitterness. ‘You got the autopsy report, huh?’
‘You need to realise the last time I saw Jessie alive he was in drug rehab.’
‘That was years before he died.’
‘He told you about it?’
‘Jess was my husband,’ she snapped. ‘Of course he told me.’
‘You were seventeen!’
‘And needy. Jess was twenty-four and needy. We clung to each other.’ She shook her head. ‘Sorry, but I don’t have to listen to this. You never wanted to know about me before, and you don’t now. Thank you very much for saving my son’s leg. I guess I’ll see you over the next few days while he’s in hospital but I’ll steer clear as much as I can. I need to go back to our hotel and get Jess’s things, but I want to see him first. Is he awake?’
‘Give him a while. We put him pretty deeply under.’ He raked his hair again, looking as if he was searching for something to say. Anything. And finally it came.
‘You weren’t on drugs?’
‘You know,’ she said, quite mildly, ‘years ago I wanted to hit you. I was too exhausted to hit you then, too emotionally overwrought, too wrecked. Now I’m finding I want to hit you all over again. If it wasn’t for what you’ve just done for Jess, I would.’
‘You looked—’
‘I looked like my husband had just died.’ Her voice grew softer, dangerously so. ‘I was seventeen. I was twelve weeks pregnant and I’d sat by Jess’s bedside for twenty-four hours while he lost his fight to live. Then I’d sat in the waiting room at the funeral home, waiting for you, hour upon endless hour, because I thought that it’d be his father who’d come to get him and I didn’t think a message to contact me would work. I couldn’t risk missing him. And then you walked in instead, and I thought, yes, Matt’s come in his father’s stead and it’ll be okay, because Jess had told me how much he loved you. All I asked was for what Jess wanted, but you walked all over me, as if I was a piece of pond scum. And now...now you’re still telling me I looked like a drug addict?’
There was a long silence. She didn’t know where to go with this. She’d bottled up these emotions for years and she’d never thought she’d get a chance to say them.
Somewhere in Sydney, in a family vault, lay Jess’s ashes. She’d failed the only thing Jess had ever asked of her. She hadn’t stood up to his family.
She should hate this man. Maybe she did, but he was looking shocked and sick, and she felt...she felt...
Like she couldn’t afford to feel.
‘I’ll grab Jess’s things and bring them back,’ she said, deciding brisk and efficient was the way to go. ‘It’s only ten minutes’ walk to the hotel. I should be back before he’s properly awake. The rest of the surfers will be worried, too. There are a lot of people who love my Jess—practically family. Thank you for your help this afternoon, Matt Eveldene, but goodbye. I don’t think there’s single thing left that we need to talk about.’
* * *
There was. She knew there was. She walked down the hill from the hospital to the string of beachside hotels where most of the surfers were staying and she knew this wouldn’t end here.
Why did Jess look so much like his father? Why had she called him Jess?
Why had she kept her husband’s name?
‘Because it was all I had of him,’ she said out loud, and in truth she loved it that her son was called Jessie, she loved that he loved surfing, she loved that when she looked at him she could see his father.
But not if it meant...loss?
Her husband had told her about his family, his father in particular. ‘He controls everything, Kelly. It’s his way or no way. He loathed my surfing. He loathed everything that gave me pleasure, and when I got sick he labelled me a weakling. Depression? Snap out of it, he told me, over and over. Pull yourself together. I couldn’t cope. That’s why I hit the drugs that first time.’
She knew as much as she ever wanted to know about Jessie’s father—but he’d also told her about his brother, Matt.
‘He’s the only good thing about my family, Kell. If anything ever happens to me, go to him. He’ll help you.’
Well, he had helped her, Kelly thought grimly. She thought of the insurance cheque. It had been tossed at her in anger but she owed everything to it.
‘So Jess might have been wrong about him being a nice guy, but he’s had his uses,’ she told herself. ‘Now forget about him. You have enough to worry about without past history. For instance, the surf tour’s moving on. You’ll need to take leave. You’ll need a place to stay, and you’ll need to figure a way to stop Jess’s heart from breaking when he learns that he’s no longer part of the surf circuit.’
* * *
He felt like he’d been hit with a sledgehammer.
Matt walked up to the hospital rooftop, to the cafeteria area that looked out over the ocean. He leant on the rail overlooking the amazing view, trying to let the enormity of what had just happened sink in.
Jessie had a son. Somehow, his brother wasn’t dead.
Okay, that was a crazy thing to think but right now that was how it seemed. He knew if he phoned his mother—‘You have a grandson. He’s named Jess and he looks just like our Jessie’—his mother would be on the next plane. She’d broken her heart when Jess had died, and she’d never got over it. Always a doormat to her bully of a husband, she’d faded into silent misery. Matt worried about her, but not enough to stay in Sydney, not enough to stay near his father.
Should he tell his mother? He must. But if he told his mother, his father would know, too. There was the rub. Could you fight for custody of a seventeen-year-old boy? No, Matt thought, but knowing his father, he’d try. Or, worse, he’d let loose the anger he still carried toward his older son and unleash it on Kelly and his grandson.
The thought of his father bullying Kelly...
As he’d bullied her...
He thought back to the appalling funeral parlour scene and he felt ill.
He’d been a kid himself, a student. The call had come late at night; Jess had had a fall and died. Yes, it seemed to be suicide. His body was at a Hawaiian funeral home and a woman calling herself his wife was making the arrangements.
His father had exploded with grief and rage. ‘Stupid, idiotic, surfer hop-head. You needn’t think I’m heading off to that place to see him. You do it, boy. Go and get him, bring him home so his mother can bury him and there’s an end to it.’
‘They say he’s married?’
‘He’s been off his head for years. If there’s a marriage get it annulled. We have more than enough evidence to say he was mentally incapable. And don’t tell your mother. Just fix it.’
But Jess had never been mentally incapable. The depression that had dogged him since adolescence had been an illness, the same way cancer was an illness. Underneath the depression and, yes, the drugs when he’d been using, he’d still been Jess, the gentle, soft-spoken big brother Matt had loved.
He might have known he’d have married a woman of spirit.
But a seventeen-year-old?
He’d judged her back then because of her appearance and obvious desperation, but things were making horrible sense now.
All apart from the age. Surely seventeen was underage for marriage in Hawaii? They’d have needed special permission.
Had they done it because Kelly had been pregnant?
These were questions Matt should have asked years ago, not now.
The questions had been there, though. He’d flown home with Jessie’s body and the questions had rested unanswered in the back of his mind. The image of a girl curled in utter misery, of a cheque floating to the floor, of a desperation he’d done nothing to assuage, these images had stayed with him. The questions had nagged while he’d qualified as a doctor, while he’d got himself away from his domineering father, while he’d attempted his own marriage... While he’d come to terms with life, as Jessie never had. Just as Kelly had obviously come to terms with her life.
He remembered his relief when he’d found the cheque had been cashed. Now I don’t need to feel guilty, he’d told himself. But the questions had stayed.
They had been answered now—almost. She’d used the cheque, but to what purpose?
To train herself in medicine?
To raise another surfer like Jess?
If his father found out... To have a grandson addicted to surfing...
Better not to tell him. Better to leave things as they were, just get this kid well and on his way.
But he looked so much like Jess...
So? He’d be in hospital for a week or so and then an outpatient for longer with rehab. He’d see him a lot. He had to get used to it.
And his mother?
Her image haunted him. In truth, her image had haunted him for years and now there was this new image juxtapositioned on the old.
Should the new image make the haunting go away?
A surf doctor. What sort of doctor was that?
What sort of woman was that?
A woman with spirit.
How could he know that?
He just...knew. There was that about her, an indefinable strength. A beauty that was far more than skin deep.
Beauty? He raked his hair again, thinking he wasn’t making sense. He was too tired, too shocked to take it in. He needed to go home.
At the thought of his home he felt his tension ease. Home, the place he’d built with effort and with love. Home with his dogs and his books.
His house was the only place where he was at peace. His home mattered. He’d learned early and learned hard; people only complicated that peace.
He needed to go home now and put this woman and her son out of his head.
He needed to be alone.
CHAPTER TWO
THE SURF CHAMPIONSHIPS lasted for two more days and Kelly worked for both of them. There were gaps in the day when she could visit Jess, but she had to work for as long as she could. She needed the money.
The surfing community looked after its own, but there wasn’t a lot they could do to help. They’d need to employ another doctor for the next round of the championships in New Zealand. As soon as Jess was well enough for Kelly to rejoin the tour, the position was hers again, but pro-surfing ran on the smell of a surf-waxed rag, and they couldn’t afford to pay her for time off.
And she would not use the trust fund.
She needed to move from the hotel. One of the locals offered her a basic surfer’s squat and she accepted with relief. She’d find a decent apartment when Jess was released from hospital but until then she’d live in her surf squat and focus on Jess’s recovery.
From Jessie’s charts and from information she drew from junior doctors, she could track Jessie’s progress. There was therefore no need to talk to Matt Eveldene. The advantage of Matt being head of the orthopaedic ward was that where Matt went, students followed. She could always hear him coming so she could give Jess a quick hug and disappear.
‘Here come the medical cavalry. It’s time to make myself scarce.’
‘He looks at me funny,’ Jess said sleepily on the second day, and she hugged him again, feeling defensive about leaving him.
‘Surgeons are a law unto themselves,’ she said. ‘If he only looks at you funny, you’re getting off lightly. These guys spend their days looking inside people, not practising social skills.’
The surf tour moved on. She spent a couple of hours of her first free day moving into her dreary little apartment. Back at the hospital she found Jess awake and bored, so she spent an hour going over the results of the championship he’d missed out on, talking future tactics, as if those tactics might be useful next week instead of in six months.
Finally he went to sleep. What to do now? She knew how long rehabilitation would take. She had weeks and weeks of wondering what to do.
Okay, do what came next. Lunch. She slipped out to find some—and Matt was at the nurses’ station.
Was he waiting for her? It looked like it. His hands were deep in the pockets of his gorgeous suit, he was talking to a nurse but he was watching Jess’s door. As soon as he saw her, he broke off the conversation.
‘Sorry, Jan,’ he said to the nurse, ‘but I need to speak to Mrs Eveldene.’
‘That’s Dr Eveldene,’ she said as he approached, because her professional title suddenly seemed important. She needed a barrier between them, any barrier at all, and putting things on a professional level seemed the sensible way to achieve it. ‘Do you need to discuss Jessie’s treatment?’
‘I want lunch,’ he growled. ‘There’s a quiet place on the roof. We can buy sandwiches at the cafeteria. Come with me.’
‘Say “please”,’ she said, weirdly belligerent, and he stared at her as if she was something from outer space.
But: ‘Please,’ he said at last, and she gave him a courteous nod. This man was in charge of her son’s treatment. She did need to be...spoken to.
They bought their lunches, paid for separately at her insistence. He offered but she was brusque in her refusal. She followed him to a secluded corner of the rooftop, with chairs, tables and umbrellas for shade. She spent time unwrapping her sandwich—why was she so nervous?—but finally there was nothing left to do but face the conversation.
He spoke first, and it was nothing to do with her son’s treatment. It was as if the words had to be dragged out of him.
‘First, I need to apologise,’ he said. As she frowned and made to speak, he held up his hands as if to ward off her words. ‘Hear me out. Heaven knows, this needs to be said. Kelly, eighteen years ago I treated you as no human should ever treat another, especially, unforgivably, as you were my brother’s wife. I accused you of all sorts of things that day. My only defence was that I was a kid myself. I was devastated by my brother’s death but my assumptions about him—and about you—were not only cruel, they were wrong.’
‘As in you assumed Jess was back using drugs,’ she whispered. ‘As you assumed I was the same. An addict.’
‘I figured it out almost as soon as I got back to Australia,’ he said, even more heavily. ‘The autopsy results revealed not so much as an aspirin. I should have contacted you again, but by then I was back at university and it felt...’ He shook his head. ‘No. I don’t know how it felt. I was stuck in a vortex of grief I didn’t know how to deal with. Somehow it was easier to shove the autopsy results away as wrong. Somehow it seemed easier to blame drugs rather than—’
‘Unhappiness?’
‘Yes.’
‘Jess was clinically depressed,’ she said. ‘You’re a doctor. You know it’s different. He wasn’t just unhappy; he was ill.’
‘No antidepressants showed up either.’
‘He wouldn’t touch antidepressants,’ she said, not sure where this was going, not sure that she wanted to go with him. ‘He’d fallen into addiction once and it terrified him. In all the time I knew him, he took nothing.’
‘How long did you know him?’
She shouldn’t say. She didn’t owe this man an explanation, and her story hurt. But it was also Jessie’s story. It hadn’t been told and maybe...maybe Jess would want his brother to know.
‘Get in touch with Matt if anything happens to me,’ he’d said to her, more than once. ‘He’ll look after you.’
If anything happens to me... He’d obviously been thinking suicide. It still played in her mind, and it was still unbearable. So many questions... The questions surrounded her, nightmares still.
But maybe she had to expose a little of that pain. Matt was waiting for her to speak, and after all these years his gaze was non-judgmental. He wanted to know.
Eighteen years ago he hadn’t asked, and she’d hated him. But then he’d been young and shocked and grieving, she conceded, and shock could be forgiven.
Almost. There was still a part of her that was that cringing seventeen-year-old, remembering this man’s fury.
‘I met Jess when I was sixteen,’ she said, forcing herself to sound like the grown-up that she was. ‘And I was a mess. But not because of drugs. I was just...neglected. My father was interested in surf and booze and nothing else. My mother disappeared when I was four—at least, I think it was my mother; my father never seemed sure. It didn’t matter. It was just the way things were. I was dragged up in the surfing community. There were good people who looked out for me, but they were itinerant and there were lots who weren’t so good. But all of them came and went. I stayed.’
‘It must have been a tough upbringing,’ he said quietly, and she nodded.
‘You could say that. And then, of course, I reached my teenage years. I matured late, thanks be, but finally at sixteen I became...female, instead of just a kid. Then things got harder. Unprotected and often homeless, camping as we often did, I became a target and my father was little use. I was a little wildcat, doing my best to defend myself, but it couldn’t last. Then Jess arrived. He set up on the outskirts of the camp, seemingly intent on surfing and nothing else. I didn’t think he’d even noticed us but there was an ugly scene one night when someone offered my father money. I remember someone grabbing me as if he owned me.’
‘You were so alone.’
‘I... Yes.’
‘With no one?’
‘No one who cared.’
‘Kelly—’
‘It was a long time ago,’ she said, and she even smiled a little. ‘You know, when you spoke then, you sounded just like Jess. Just as angry on my behalf. That night he appeared out of the dark, out of nowhere, and he was furious. I hit out—and Jess moved in before the guy could retaliate. He just...took over.’
‘Jess was always bringing home strays,’ Matt said. His instinctive anger seemed to have settled and his tone gentled. Strays. The word drifted in her mind. She knew no offence had been meant and none had been taken, because that’s exactly what she’d been. A stray. Living in temporary surf camps. Going to school when the surf camp had been close enough or when her father had been capable of taking her. Living hand to mouth, the only constant being the surf.
But then there’d been Jess.
‘He was the best surfer,’ she said, pain fading as she remembered the way he’d transformed her life. ‘He’d only just arrived but everyone there respected him. He was also...large.’ She eyed Matt’s strongly built frame, his height—six three or so—his instinctive anger on her behalf—and she remembered Jess. For some reason it made her want to reach out and touch this man, comfort him, take away the pain behind his eyes.
She could do no such thing.
‘He told me he hadn’t seen his family for years,’ she went on, trying to ignore the urge to comfort Matt. ‘By the time you saw his body the depression had left its mark. He hadn’t been eating for weeks. But imagine him as I first saw him. He lived and breathed surfing. He was beautiful. He was built like a tank. No one stood up to him—and yet he stood up for me.’
‘You became his lover?’
There was a moment’s pause. She really didn’t want to go there, but she needed to tell it like it was. For Jessie’s sake. He’d been her hero, not some low-life who’d picked up teenage girls.
‘No,’ she said at last. ‘Believe it or not, I was sixteen and that was how Jess treated me. Dad and I were living in a rough beach shanty, but Dad left soon after Jess arrived, looking for better surf on the other side of the island. He came back every so often, but Jess built a lean-to on the side of our hut and we stayed put. Jess said it was to protect me and that’s what he did. He surfed with me, but it wasn’t all fun. He pushed me to go to school. I’d been going intermittently but Jess insisted I go every day. He gave me money for clothes. He stopped Dad...well, he kept me safe. He was my gorgeous big brother. But then the black dog got too much for him.’
‘The depression.’
‘He called it his black dog. He said that’s what Winston Churchill called it and that’s what it felt like. A great black dog, always shadowing him. He said it’d been shadowing him since he was a kid, something he was born with. He told me how his dad hated it, thought he was weak because of it. He told me about how’d he’d tried to escape with drugs when he was in his late teens, and what a mess that had been. I think that was a way of warning me, because drugs were everywhere in our scene. But Jess wouldn’t touch them. Never again, he said, even near the end when the depression was so bad and I pleaded with him to get help. “They’ll only give me pills,” he said, “and I’m not going down that road again.”’
‘If I’d known...’
‘Jess said you didn’t want to know,’ Kelly said gently. ‘Jess said you and he were close, but after rehab... He knew that shocked you. After he got his life together and the surfing was helping, he said he sent you the airfare to come and have a holiday together during your university holidays, but you wouldn’t come.’
Matt closed his eyes and she saw the pain wash over him. No. It was more than pain. Self-loathing.
‘He’d come out of rehab and gone straight back to surfing,’ Matt managed. ‘I thought—’
‘You know, surfing and drugs don’t really mix,’ she said gently. ‘There are always the fringe dwellers, people like my dad who surf a bit but who love the sun-bleached lifestyle more than the skill itself. But to be a real surfer you’re up at dawn, day after day. The sea demands absolute attention, absolute fitness. You need to work as Jess did—he did casual bricklaying to pay bills—but he surfed at dawn and then he was back at dusk to surf every night, falling into bed with every single part of him exhausted. Jess used the surf to drive away his demons and it mostly worked. He had no time for drugs. I swear he wasn’t taking them. I swear.’
‘I believe you,’ Matt said heavily. ‘Now. But back then...I’d just found out my brother had killed himself and, what’s more, that he’d married a seventeen-year-old just before he’d died. What was I to think? And then...pregnant?’
‘That was my fault,’ she said evenly, but he shook his head.
‘Seventeen was hardly old enough to consent.’
‘In those last months Jess wasn’t fit enough to think of age differences,’ she said evenly. ‘The depression was so bad he just...went away. Physically he left for a couple of weeks and when he returned to camp he looked gutted. I was terrified. He was limp, unable to make any decisions. He didn’t want to surf. He didn’t want to do anything. If I told you all he’d done for me... Well, I was so grateful, I loved him so much, and the state he was in, I was terrified. Anyway, I did everything, anything I could think of to pull him out of it, and in the end I just lay down and held him. I held him all I could, every way I could, and when he finally took me I was happy because I thought he was coming out of it. I thought...he must be.’
‘Oh, Kelly...’
‘And I’d bought condoms—of course I had—and we used them, but that first time, well, I had the experience of a newt and I guess I was doing the seducing and I didn’t do it right and then I was pregnant.’
‘You told him?’
‘He guessed. And for a while that woke him up. We had this first morning when we knew... I’d woken up sick and he waited until I was better and we took the boards out beyond the surf break to watch the dawn. And we lay there talking about our baby like it might really exist, about this new life that was so exciting. Life for both of us had been crap but this new life...we planned for it. And Jess told me I’d be an awesome mother and he’d try, he’d really try. But that was the last time...’
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Marion Lennox
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: When physician Kelly Eveldene’s son is injured in a surfing accident she finds herself face to face with the one man she prayed never to see again: delectable orthopaedic surgeon Dr Matt Eveldene! Seeing beautiful Kelly again brings back their painful history and sparks new, unacceptable desires in Matt – Kelly’s strictly off-limits!But who can resist the temptation of the forbidden…?