Australia: Handsome Heroes: His Secret Love-Child. Lilian Darcy
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‘You really were.’
‘Yeah, but I’m not any more.’ The girl’s voice sounded exhausted. Defeated.
‘What…what happened?’
‘It was dead,’ Megan whispered, still in that awful, inhuman voice. ‘It came early and it was dead. A miscarriage. I miscarried a baby and now it’s over. So you don’t have to worry. I’m fine.’
‘Oh, my dear…’ Honey reached out to hug her daughter but Megan flinched away.
‘Leave me alone,’she said dully. ‘Go back to Dad. Tell him there’s no need to worry. I’ll go on being his good little girl and he doesn’t have to have a heart attack.’
‘Megan, that’s not fair.’
‘My baby’s dead,’ Megan flashed at her. ‘Is that fair?’ Then she crumpled back onto the bed, sinking her face into her hands. ‘Nothing’s fair. The whole world isn’t fair.’
‘I’ll take you to the hospital,’ Honey said uncertainly, and Megan’s hands dropped from her face so she could stare at her mother in fury.
‘You think I shut up for all these months for you to tell Dad now?’she snapped. ‘Protect Dad at all costs? Well, I have and there’s nothing to do now but go to bed and forget about it.’
‘You’ll need to be checked.’
‘I’m fine.’
‘Love…’
‘I’m not going anywhere,’Megan whispered. ‘I’m not doing anything. You tell anyone and I’ll deny it absolutely. The whole thing is over, Mum. Go back to bed.’
She sat, rigid and unmoving, waiting for Honey to leave. Waiting to be alone again. Waiting.
Honey was left with nothing to do. With nowhere to go.
She stared down at her daughter for a long, long minute and Megan glared back, unflinching.
‘The baby’s dead and it’s over,’she whispered. ‘There’s an end to it. An end to everything.’
‘Oh, my love…’
‘There’s no love about it, ’Megan said bleakly. ‘Leave me be. ’
‘Honey?’
It was Jim’s voice calling from down the hall, and with a last desperate glance at her daughter Honey turned away.
Megan flinched again.
But she sat unmoving. Then, as the door finally closed behind her mother, the girl hauled herself under the covers—and she started to shake.
CHAPTER SIX
IT WAS almost noon when Gina woke and for a moment she didn’t have a clue where she was or what was happening.
Then remembrance flooded back and with it horror.
The events of the day before were a jumbled kaleidoscope of surging emotion. A desperately ill baby. Dead children. Appalling injuries. Cal…
CJ. She reached out and his warm little body wasn’t beside her. Of course. He was with the Grubbs.
Still?
She checked her watch and gasped. What was she thinking of, sleeping this late? The baby, CJ—she’d have been needed and no one had called. She threw back her covers and then gasped again as a man’s silhouette blocked the sun.
‘You might like to reconsider getting out of bed,’ Cal drawled. ‘Unless you’re wearing more than it looks like you’re wearing from out here.’
He was on the veranda. She’d left the door open last night to let in the sea breeze, and he was blocking the doorway. And as for what she was wearing…Last night—or early this morning—she’d simply stripped off her sea-soaked clothes, stood under a cold shower until her burning body had cooled and then fallen straight into bed.
And now here was Cal, right in the doorway.
‘Go away,’she snapped, and hauled her sheet up to her chin.
‘I brought you your luggage,’ he told her, not going away at all but walking into her room and dumping her gear at the foot of the bed. ‘You could at least sound grateful.’
‘I’m grateful,’ she told him, glaring enough to give the lie to her words. But then she looked at the single red bag he was carrying and was distracted enough to be deflected. ‘I had two bags. A red and a green one.’
‘The red one’s heavy enough.’
‘I had a small green one.’
‘It didn’t come back, then,’ he told her. ‘The coach-line people delivered one red bag this morning but that was all there was. Problem?’
She caught herself. ‘Um…no.’ No problem. She was staying next door to a hospital after all.
Right. Where was she? Glaring.
‘There’s no problem if you go away,’ she told him, and he had the temerity to smile.
‘OK. But I’ve also brought you your son.’
CJ. She sat up, cautiously, still holding her sheet. ‘What have you done with CJ?’
‘You sound as if you expect that I’ve corrupted him by just existing.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she told him, still trying to hold her glower. Drat the man, why did he have to smile like that? ‘Where is he?’
‘He was right behind me but his puppy escaped into the garden. I can see them from here. The puppy seems to be investigating the lorikeets in the grevillea and CJ is supervising.’
She tried to sort this information but found it even more confusing. ‘His puppy?’
‘The Grubbs have given your son…our son…a puppy.’
There was a lot in that statement to consider—so she stuck to the easiest bit. ‘CJ can’t have a puppy,’ she said blankly.
‘I would have thought that.’ Cal stood at the end of her bed and looked at her, speculation and amusement lurking in those deep eyes. ‘But you did leave him with the Grubbs for the night.’
‘I didn’t mean to.’
‘No, but you did, and the Grubbs are warm-hearted people who maybe lack a little in the grey-matter department. They have a puppy they don’t want—their bitch has a habit of finding all sorts of unsuitable partners and the Grubb puppies are legion in this place—and they’ve seen a little boy who falls in love. So they’ve done the obvious thing.’
Still too much information. She couldn’t figure it all out. And why was he standing there, just…smiling?
‘We’re going back to the States,’ she told him.
‘I guess the puppy is, too, then.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake.’ She went to toss back the covers, remembered and grabbed them back again. ‘Go away so I can dress.’
‘I’ll wait on the veranda.’
‘Wait anywhere you like. Just not here.’
‘I’ll watch CJ, shall I?’
‘Watch him all you want.’
‘Gina…’
‘Yes?’
‘You’re