‘Mmm …’ It really was time to change the subject. ‘Has Jack called to say the chopper’s ready yet? We should get going soon. And if Luke’s not here on time, we’ll have to go without him.
‘I’ll find out.’
It was a relief to be left alone to finish her packing. Anahera really needed a few minutes to herself. A few deep breaths should do it, along with bringing her focus back to the task at hand so that she didn’t find herself staring at something on a shelf that she couldn’t see.
But the deep breathing didn’t do what it was supposed to do. It didn’t even melt the edges off that hard knot that seemed to be lodged in her belly.
Guilt, that was what it was.
She’d told Sam she hadn’t slept that well last night but the truth was she’d tossed and turned so much that she’d barely slept at all.
It didn’t matter how many times she went over and over that incident at the hospital when Hana had been brought in because she couldn’t change the impressions she’d been left with. If anything, they only became crisper.
For a start, there’d been that unexpected and shocking reaction to seeing them together. A flash of imagining what it could have been like if they had become a family. A slicing pain of loss so deep that it was fortunate it had vanished as instantly as it had attacked.
Luke’s face had been as easy to read as a large-print book. She’d seen the shock of discovering that she was a mother. Had seen the moment when it had occurred to him that he could possibly be Hana’s father. And then she’d seen something that was shocking to her. Disappointment?
Did he want a child?
Even if he didn’t, he had the right to know he had one, didn’t he?
Oh, God … the guilt stone was getting steadily bigger and it had sharp edges that were giving her shafts of pain like colic.
Maybe reasoning would soften the edges, seeing that deep breathing hadn’t done the trick.
She was deceiving him for everybody’s sake.
His, Hana’s, her mother’s and her own.
She’d been over this ground so many times it was a familiar route. It was ironic how that casual conversation Luke had had with Sam yesterday was always her starting point.
Because one of those French sailors, intrigued by the history of the island, had been her father.
He’d come here, fallen in love with both the islands and her mother, and they had married and built a house on Atangi—the main island of this group. Her father, Stefan, had planned to create a premium tourist destination where people could come and sail and dive. It would bring money in to the islands and allow him to do what he loved most for the rest of his life.
He’d missed his homeland, though, and he’d taken Vailea and baby Anahera back to France for an extended visit to meet his family. They’d lived on the outskirts of Paris for three months.
‘It was so cold,’ her mother always said. ‘And I couldn’t speak the language. Even with you and Stefan there, it was the loneliest time. I wanted to be with him but part of me was slowly dying.’
They’d come back to the islands but things had changed. The islands were a place for a holiday for Stefan now and they couldn’t be real life. Heartbroken, her parents had finally agreed they had to live apart. Vailea would visit Paris once a year in summer and Stefan would come to Atangi during the French winters. He’d never made it, even once, however, because he’d died after a diving mishap that had given him a fatal dose of the bends.
The first-hand knowledge of the heartbreak that trying to live in different worlds could produce was a sound starting point, wasn’t it? Anahera had lived in Brisbane where the climate was far more like her homeland than London could ever be, but she’d ended up miserable and homesick. When she thought of London, it was always grey and people had to wear thick clothing and carry umbrellas all the time. Had she really thought—in those heady weeks of being so utterly in love—that she could have gone to live in London with Luke?
It could never have worked.
Hana would have to go there, though, if he knew he was her father. He would, quite rightfully, expect to be able to spend extended time with his daughter and, with his career, it wasn’t likely that he could take time off to visit a remote part of the Pacific at regular intervals.
It was too easy to imagine the worst-case scenario. Arguments about schooling that might lead to a battle not to have Hana sent to an English boarding school. A taste of a different life that might lead to her teenage daughter deciding she would rather live full time with her father in a place that offered so much more in terms of social life and excitement.
Maybe it was the fear of loss that was the real driving force in this deception.
And, if she was completely honest, Anahera didn’t want to share her precious daughter with the man who had broken her heart. He didn’t deserve to have the unconditional love that this amazing little girl with the biggest heart in the world gave so freely.
Did that make her a bad person?
If it did, Anahera had decided long ago that she would live with the guilt of being one.
How much easier had that burden been to carry when Luke had been just a memory? Having him here in person was so much worse.
Unbearable even.
And now she had to spend a whole day in his company?
She had to press a hand to her belly as another knife-like cramp took hold.
‘Ana?’ Sam’s voice floated through the doorway. ‘Jack’s all set and Luke’s already at the helipad.’ He came through the door just as Anahera straightened her back and summoned all her willpower to ignore the pain. ‘Let me carry that bin for you.’
Getting a bird’s-eye view of the islands from the cockpit of a helicopter was so much more spectacular than the limited scope of a small plane’s window.
Luke was sitting in the front beside Jack and he had a grin on his face. ‘Look at that … the sea’s so clear you can just about see the coral in the reef. And the fish …’
‘Gorgeous, isn’t it? I never get sick of my office.’ Jack’s voice came through the headphones Luke was wearing. ‘That’s Atangi, there. The biggest island by land mass and the one that’s been settled the longest. That’s where the main schools are. It’s where you grew up, isn’t it, Ana?’
‘Yes.’ Anahera was sitting in the cabin of the helicopter, behind Luke so he couldn’t see her. ‘Until Mum started working at the hospital. We moved to the village on Wildfire after that and I took the boat to school.’
Luke hadn’t known that. What had they talked about all those years ago? Maybe he’d done too much talking and not enough listening but it was too late to start now. Anahera had barely glanced at him when she’d arrived at the helipad and he hadn’t been able to think of anything to say after a simple ‘Good morning’ because there’d been too many questions zipping through his head, starting with who looked after her daughter when she was at work and what did her husband do? And then he’d taken notice of her hands as she’d helped Jack load supplies into the chopper and he’d seen the absence of a wedding ring and that only led to more questions that he’d probably never get the chance to ask because it seemed like Anahera didn’t even want to talk to him.
He shouldn’t have let Harry and Sam talk him into extending his visit but that had been before he’d known about Anahera’s daughter. When he’d still had that vague hope that maybe he and Anahera could clear the air between them. That he would be able to finally explain …
The chance of that happening had evaporated in the shock of finding out how conclusively Anahera had already