Christmas at Jimmie's Children's Unit: Bachelor of the Baby Ward / Fairytale on the Children's Ward. Meredith Webber
forbearing to point out America had thousands of miles of coastline on two oceans. He was jumping the waves as they washed towards him, shrieking with glee, and Kate’s heart ached with wanting. To have a child, her own child—any child, she was beginning to think.
Although it was a baby her arms ached for…
‘Want to go out deeper?’
Angus scooped up his son and strode towards the curling waves.
Presumably Angus could swim.
Kate watched them go, the ache still there—stronger if anything. It was all to do with family. Were Angus and Hamish a family? Was the base of family solid beneath the little boy? Had it not been solid in her case, even before Susie drowned? Had her family been doomed to disintegrate like so many families did these days, even before Susie died?
She could see the pair in the deeper water, ducking under waves, and remembered times, after her mother died, when she and her father had come to the beach. He would take her out into deep water and throw her over the waves. He’d loved her, Kate had no doubt of that, but it had been a detached, distracted kind of love, the kind one might give to a specially favoured pet, the concept of family perhaps as unfamiliar to him, another only child, as it was to Kate.
Enough! She dived beneath the next wave, surfaced for a breath, then dived again, coming up beyond the breakers, feeling the water wrap around her body, cooling and soothing her, reminding her of all the wonderful things in her life, counterbalancing the aches.
A good wave was coming, rising up above the others, curling early. Swimming hard she caught it and rode it to the beach, aware of passing Angus and Hamish on her way. She lay where the wave had left her on the sand until an excited little boy joined her.
‘Will you teach me to do that, will you, Kate, will you?’
Kate rolled over and smiled up at him.
‘I surely will, champ,’ she said. ‘Next time I’m at the shops I’ll get you a little boogie board. It’s easiest to practise on that in the shallows, then I can take you out in front of me on my bigger board. One day when you’re older, if your Dad decides to stay in Sydney, you might learn to surf. See the people at the far end of the beach, standing up on their surfboards?’
‘Can you do that? Can you teach me that?’
His excitement had him hopping up and down, splashing her with water.
‘There are better teachers than me, for board surfing,’ she told him, sitting up and looking around for Angus. Perhaps she should have asked if he could swim! Then his body, sleek as a seal’s, slipped onto the beach beside her.
Angus sat up and shook the water from his hair.
‘I didn’t catch it way out where you did,’ he said to the woman he’d been watching since she was deposited on the sand, a slim white mermaid in a green bathing suit. ‘I just surfed the broken bit. It’s been a long time since I caught a wave—student days at St Ives in England, an annual summer pilgrimage.’
He’d flopped onto the tail end of the wave to stop thinking about her, but now, this close, not thinking of her was impossible. The beautiful skin, so fine and pale he could see the blue veins in her temples, and in the slender lines of her neck, then the fiery red hair, darker now, wet and bedraggled, framing her face like a pre-Raphaelite painting.
‘Kate is going to teach me how to ride on the waves,’ Hamish announced, and now colour swept into her cheeks.
‘I wasn’t sure if you knew how. He asked me, but of course, you’re a surfer, you can teach him.’
‘Maybe we could both teach him.’
Angus heard the words come out and wished there was some way he could unsay them. How could he include someone else in his family before he’d made sure it was a family? It had obviously embarrassed her, as well, for the colour in her cheeks had darkened, and she stood and headed back into the water.
‘I’ll just catch another wave.’ The words floated back over her shoulder before she dived beneath the breakers.
‘Can I do that? Can I?’ Hamish demanded, so Angus put thoughts of pale-skinned mermaids right out of his mind and concentrated on teaching his son to dive beneath the waves.
‘Time for a shower and something to eat?’
Angus and Hamish, the diving lessons over, were sitting on the beach, making sandcastles, when the mermaid surfed right to their feet, lifting her head to ask the question.
‘We can shower up on the esplanade,’ she added, pointing towards the road, then, as if that was all the information he would need to realise the swim was over, she stood and walked back to where they’d left their towels and clothes. Angus hoisted Hamish onto his back and followed, thanking Kate as she picked up their clothes and handed them to him.
‘There are changing rooms if you don’t want to put your clothes on over your swimmers,’ she said, ‘but I find it’s cooler to stay wet underneath, and as we can eat our fish and chips in the park, it doesn’t really matter.’
Very matter-of-fact, yet that was what this outing was, a neighbourly gesture.
So why did he feel disappointed?
Feel as if something had changed between them?
For the worse!
She held their clothes while he showered with Hamish, then dried the little boy with her towel while Angus dried himself.
Being busy with Hamish meant Kate didn’t have to look at Angus’s sleek, wet body. She’d always considered herself immune to hormonal surges of attraction but the man next door was definitely setting her hormones in a twitch. What to do about it was the problem.
Keeping her distance from him would be one answer, but that was impossible when she not only worked with the man on a daily basis but also lived next door to him.
So she’d have to fake it—pretend to a platonic neigh-bourliness she was far from feeling.
‘The Frisky Fish is the best for fish and chips, or it was last time I bought any.’ She finished dressing Hamish and straightened up as Angus, his body now suitably covered, came to join them.
‘That one just across the road?’
Such a simple question but his accent really was to die for! She was thinking accents when she should have been answering but now it was too late, for he was speaking again.
‘I’ll buy our dinner,’ he announced. ‘I know what Hamish eats, what about you—a serve of fish and chips?’
The dark eyes were fixed on her face and Kate found it hard to pretend when just this casual regard made her feel warm inside.
‘I’m more a calamari person—not into fish at all—and could I have a battered sav, as well?’
‘Battered sav?’ Again man and boy made a chorus of the question, though Hamish added, ‘Oh, I want one of those, as well.’
‘Just ask for it, you’ll see,’ Kate told Angus, smiling at his bewildered frown. ‘Hamish and I will bag us a table.’
She took the excited little boy by the hand and they walked through the park until they found a vacant table.
‘I’m going to kindy tomorrow—Dad’s taking me,’ Hamish told her, and though he sounded excited there was a hint of anxiety in his blue eyes.
‘That will be such fun for you,’ Kate said. ‘Meeting lots of new friends, finding people to play with at the weekends. Maybe we can bring some of your friends to the beach one day.’
‘When I can ride the waves so I can show them,’ Hamish told her, and Kate wondered at what age children developed a competitive streak.
She asked about his friends back in America and laughed