LITMIR.BIZ

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mother had gone on to three or four more relationships, all disastrous. He’d never worked out the concept of family. Now …

      He listened on to Miriam and he watched the sleeping baby. Would he and Miriam ever have babies? Family?

      Now wasn’t the time to ask, he thought, and he grimaced as he realised he hadn’t heard a word she’d said for the last few minutes.

      Focus, he told himself. Do what the lady says. Concentrate on medicine and not baby. Tomorrow give the baby back to Maggie or get rid of it some other way. Do whatever it takes. This was an aberration from the past.

      One baby, with twisted feet and no one to care for her. An aberration?

      He carried on listening to Miriam and he thought, Maggie’s just through the wall. She might even be listening to half this conversation.

      The thought was unnerving.

      Forget it, he thought. Forget Maggie. And the baby?

      Do whatever it takes.

      If only she wasn’t sucking her knuckles. If only she wasn’t twisting his heart in a way that made him realise a pain he’d felt when he’d been six years old had never been resolved.

      She was his father’s grandchild. She was the child of his half-sister.

      Family?

      It was his health that was making him think like this, he told himself. He’d had his appendix out barely a week before, and it had been messy. He was tired and weaker than he cared to admit, and he was staying in a house that held nothing but bad memories.

      He had a sudden, overwhelming urge to thump a hole in the wall in the sitting room. Let his father’s dogs through.

      See Maggie.

      Heaven knew what Miriam was saying. He’d given up trying to listen. It had been an important paper she’d presented. Normally he’d listen and be impressed. Tonight, though, he looked at one tiny baby, sleeping cocooned in Maggie’s cashmere blanket, and suddenly he felt tired and weak—and faintly jealous of the deep sleep, the total oblivion.

      And he also felt … alone.

      If the bridge was safe, maybe he’d suggest Miriam come down.

      Don’t be nuts, he told himself. She’d never come, and even if she did there’d be nothing for her to do.

      She wouldn’t care for a baby.

      He had to.

      Baby. Floods. Maggie. The images were drifting around his head in a swirl of exhausted confusion.

      Baby. Floods. Maggie.

      ‘I need to go,’ he told Miriam, cutting her off in mid-sentence. ‘Sorry, love, but I’ll ring you back tomorrow. The baby needs me.’

      ‘The midwife—’

      ‘She’s gone to sleep,’ he said. ‘That’s where I’m heading, too. Hours and hours of sleep. I just have to get one baby called Ruby to agree.’

      CHAPTER THREE

      MAGGIE fed the hens at six the next morning and she heard Ruby crying.

      She sorted feed, cut and chopped a bit of green stuff and threw it into the chookpen—there’d been a fox sniffing around and she wasn’t game to let them out. She collected the eggs.

      Ruby was still crying.

      It wasn’t her business, she told herself. Not yet. What district nurse dropped in at this hour? She’d make a professional visit a little later. Meanwhile, she should make breakfast and head to the makeshift clinic she’d set up in the back of the local hall, to do last-minute preparations and sort equipment.

      That could wait, though, she conceded. The authorities had only put the roadblock up yesterday. Everyone who’d needed anything medical had had two days’ warning. The weather forecast had been implacable. The water’s coming. Get your stock to high ground. Evacuate or get in any supplies you need because it may be a week or more before the river goes down.

      The pharmacy over the river and the doctors at the Valley Hospital had worked tirelessly over the last few days, checking every small complaint, filling prescriptions to last a month. The Valley people had seen floods before. There’d be no last-minute panic.

      There would, however, be no doctor on this side of the river for a while.

      Except Blake. The thought was strangely comforting.

      Floods often meant trauma as people did stupid things trying to save stock, trying to fix roof leaks, heaving sandbags. Knowing she had a doctor on this side of the river, even one recovering from an appendectomy, was a blessing. If he’d help.

      And if she expected him to help … maybe she could help him with his baby?

      She’d made it clear she wasn’t taking responsibility. That was what he wanted her to do, but even if she agreed, she couldn’t care for a newborn as well as for the medical needs of everyone on this side of the river.

      So she’d been firm, which wasn’t actually like her. But firmness was her new resolve.

      Right now, though, she was figuring that firm didn’t mean cruel. The guy really didn’t know anything about babies. If she had a teenage mum floundering, she’d move in to help.

      Hold that thought, she decided, and she almost grinned at the thought of one hunky Blake Samford in the role of teen mum.

      She’d help—even at six a.m.

      So she knocked on his back door and waited. No answer. The wailing got louder.

      She pushed the door tentatively inwards and went to investigate.

      Blake was standing in the living room, in front of the vast, stone fireplace that was the centre of this huge, old homestead. The room was as it always was when she did her weekly check on the whole house, huge and faded and comfortable. A vast Persian rug lay on the worn, timber floor. The room was furnished with squishy leather settees, faded cushions and once opulent drapes, now badly in need of repair. The fire in the vast fireplace made it warm and homelike. The house was a grand old lady, past her prime but still graciously decorous.

      Not so the guy in front of the fire. He was wearing boxer shorts and nothing else. He looked big, tanned, ripped—and not decorous at all.

      Maggie was a nurse. She was used to seeing human bodies in all shapes and sizes.

      She wasn’t used to seeing this one.

      Tall, dark and dangerous. Where had that phrase come from? She wasn’t sure, but she knew where it was now. It was flashing in her head. Danger, danger, danger. A girl should turn round and walk right out of there.

      Except he was holding a baby—all the wrong way—and his look spoke of desperation.

      She put down her bucket of eggs, headed wordlessly to the kitchen to wash her hands, then came back and took the little one into her arms.

      Blake practically sagged with relief.

      ‘You need to wrap her,’ she said, brisk and efficient because brisk and efficient seemed the way to go. ‘She’s exhausted.’

      She cradled the little one tightly against her and felt an almost imperceptible relaxation. Babies seemed to respond instinctively to those who knew the ropes. To their mothers, who learned from birth how to handle them. To midwives, who’d delivered too many babies to count.

      ‘She’s been safely in utero for nine months,’ she told him. ‘She’s been totally confined, and now her legs and arms are all over the place. It feels weird and frightening. She can handle it if she’s relaxed, but not if she’s tired and hungry.’

      ‘But she won’t feed,’ he said helplessly, motioning to the bottle on the table. ‘I can’t—’

      ‘She’s

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