LITMIR.BIZ

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had been inspiring with her belief in natural birth and her quiet acceptance of what her body required her to do.

      ‘Here comes your baby,’ Scott said quietly, and his heart constricted as the newborn eased into his hands as if the infant had finally decided it was time to arrive. Scott glanced at the clock as he gently lifted Abbey’s baby up onto her stomach. ‘Ten past three born. Wonderful, Abbey.’

      A birth never failed to uplift him but when he looked at Bella and the joy in her face from this moment, it was as if the dam broke and his own loss overwhelmed him. He acknowledged the two things he’d most wished for in life would never be his. The woman he loved and the son he’d never met.

      Scott heard Rohan let out a heartfelt sigh of relief that echoed around the room and it snapped him back into focus. As his medical partner and friend, Rohan had delivered hundreds of babies himself, but Scott could see that none had drained his friend like this.

      ‘We have a son, Abbey.’ Rohan’s voice was thick with tears. His fingers stroked Abbey’s cheek as if he still couldn’t believe he’d been so blessed, and Abbey smiled up with a love and maternal joy that, despite its intimacy, shone to the darkest corners of the room.

      Excluded, Scott had to look away as she decreed, ‘We’ll call him Lachlan.’

      Bella smiled at the name Abbey had always fancied. There was something about that private glance shared between husband and wife that made Bella look at Scott, and for once the usually enigmatic Dr Rainford couldn’t hide his bleakness.

      Bella’s heart squeezed at the look of raw pain in Scott’s face, but then it was gone. He leaned forward to congratulate the parents and Bella was left with unanswered questions.

      Questions for later, Bella thought as she kissed her sister, brother-in-law and precious dark-haired nephew, and returned to what she should be doing as the new midwife in charge. Euphoria at the safe arrival of Lachlan lightened her step as she bustled around and cleared the room of unneeded equipment. Abbey and Rohan deserved private time to share those precious early moments with their son and she would make sure it happened.

      A fragment of her concentration tussled with possible reasons for Scott’s depression as she pushed the green-draped trolley into the sluice room. Then she heard the sound of the doctor’s footsteps as he followed her out of the delivery suite, and her fingers stilled.

      ‘So you’re the new unit manager now that Abbey has given birth earlier than anticipated?’ Scott acknowledged the change in management but he didn’t like it. He hadn’t thought it through when he’d been told that Abbey’s just-as-well-qualified sister would replace his midwife colleague during her maternity leave.

      This last month he’d erected a wall between himself and Bella but now she was going to be in his face a lot more than he’d realised. Scott couldn’t prevent the mocking note in his voice that he’d found was his only defence against this woman.

      She turned to stare at him and shrugged delicately, and Scott could see the last glimmer of happy tears in her glorious lilac eyes. His heart contracted.

      After yesterday’s discovery of his full-grown son, today’s birth was even more poignant. Perhaps if he hadn’t pushed Bella away all those years ago he too would have had the opportunity to watch a son grow to a man. But having been proved a bad husband once, he’d chosen to let the young Bella go.

      Bella had been eighteen and a virgin, to his thirty and divorced, and he’d felt a hundred. Freshly qualified in obstetrics, and new to town, he’d been so much under her spell he’d had to take drastic steps to protect her. He’d grown to love and respect Bella too much to risk her suffering the same pain he’d endured by marrying someone so much older than himself.

      And today, to see Rohan and Abbey with everything that he desired, their happiness made the bleakness inside him crystallise into shards of pain that hardened on the outside. He felt old, which was the reason he’d never pursued the vibrant and beautiful Bella in the first place. Bella in his life, even a small amount, was a concept he needed to think about, something he couldn’t do when faced with her.

      She’d be hard to avoid now.

      Bella’s voice brought him back to the present and he’d missed the first part of her sentence.

      ‘It was only a matter of days before Abbey was going on maternity leave anyway,’ Bella said. ‘Do you have a problem with me as Unit Manager, Scott?’

      Her voice had always been gentle but lately he realised there was an underlying vein of inner strength that he’d never associated with Bella. He looked at her, slim and straight, and the top of her flame-red bun only came up to his throat—right where her presence caught him. He swallowed to clear away the tightness.

      He’d no idea how he was going to cope seeing her every week day on the ward when all he wanted to do was carry her off to his house and lock her away from the big bad world that had tried to crush her.

      Today’s feelings, along with the hurt of realising his ex-wife had kept his son from him all these years, promised some painful hours of reflection in the coming weeks.

      Too easily, he fell into his old defence mechanism of superiority until he could sort out this new relationship he’d have to deal with. ‘I think you’ve taken on too much this time, Bella,’ he said. ‘Five days a week running the clinical and administrative side of the ward is different to working part time as the floating midwife.’

      ‘Abbey managed it!’ Bella sounded less confident than she should have but her older sister had always seemed to take responsibility in her stride.

      ‘Abbey’s an experienced manager,’ he said, and made his escape before the emotion on her face and the emotions of the afternoon made him say something else he’d regret.

      Bella stared after him and bit her lip. The man was insufferable, always had been, and she didn’t know how Abbey had put up with him all these years.

      Scott had been giving her, Bella, a difficult time since she’d started part-time orientation on the ward the previous month but it had never been as blatant as today. He’d almost vibrated with some inner rage and Bella hoped she was out of range when the eruption occurred.

      He must be at least forty-two now, she supposed, though he looked much younger and as annoyingly handsome as he’d always been. Bella winced at the memory of the teenage infatuation she’d had for the gorgeous young doctor and, more painfully, his disclosure of her crush to Abbey after their mother had died. Even now, when she saw him, he flustered her just being there.

      She really had been useless at love. There had been Scott, when she’d been eighteen. He’d seemed to return her feelings for an idyllic few months until she’d been mortified by his sudden change of heart.

      Nursing had carried her through that rejection until she’d completed her midwifery.

      Then she’d been pursued and won by the obstetrician she’d worked with in the birthing centre in Sydney. After three years of vague promises by Jason, he’d eventually admitted he’d been unfaithful from the start of their relationship and she’d run home. She certainly could pick them.

      Finally, last year, she’d been drugged and the victim of a loathsome sexual attack by a vengeful old flame of Abbey’s, which had almost destroyed the last vestiges of her self-worth. She’d wished the drug he’d slipped her had erased her memory of the attack and not just the strength to fight him off. That attack had been hard to come to terms with but out of the ashes of that experience had come her rebirth.

      Somehow she’d conquered her fear and helped extricate them all when her attacker had returned to destroy Abbey. Dropping a plant pot on someone’s head from upstairs didn’t make Bella a heroine but it had had the desired effect! When the police had taken the man, Harrows, away, she’d felt the balance of power swing back her way.

      She’d felt cleansed of the irrational but sapping guilt the attack had left her with. Instead of the usual scenario of big sister Abbey saving Bella—something Abbey had always

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