He’d stolen kisses in one of these empty rooms with Simon’s mother twenty years ago. His father had been right to say that a kiss led to a lot more. He glanced at the boy beside him and thought again of all he’d missed.
‘Did you want to see your room?’ Mia spoke from his shoulder and he snapped back to the present day.
‘Thank you, yes.’
He left Simon and followed her. Actually, he spent the two seconds observing the way her little backside wriggled delightfully, and his body just came along for the ride. Good grief. He was having an adolescent crisis. No doubt because of the memories that were crowding in from the time years ago when he’d been a raging mass of testosterone. He had to snap out of it.
Suddenly he realised the back of her lovely neck was pinker than it had been and a slow smile tugged at his lips. So she’d noticed him too. She was really going to be cross with him now.
‘This is it.’ She stopped, but didn’t turn around, and again his mouth twitched. He had an idea she didn’t want him to see her blush and he was determined he would.
‘Thanks, Mia.’ He didn’t move to open the door and though she turned back she averted her face as she looked at a point over his left shoulder. Her cheeks were delightfully dusted with pink.
He waited, but she didn’t say anything so he let her off the hook. ‘I’ll put the bags in and have a wander, then.’
‘You do that,’ she said to the wall behind him.
CHAPTER TWO
WHEN she heard the front door close Mia’s shoulders slumped and she fanned her face. Whew.
Unable to stop herself she slipped into one of the empty front rooms to watch his progress through the front curtains.
Angus crossed the lawn towards the road like a man on a mission, tall and aloof with his dark hair cut in a severe military style, a man not used to being close to others. Yet she had the feeling he was able to appreciate the differences in Simon from himself, and might even be proud of his son’s social ease.
As Angus turned to walk along the lake shore Ned limped out of the hospital across the road and Mia leant on the windowsill and watched—she couldn’t not watch—though she didn’t know why she held her breath.
Angus hesitated, then turned toward the older man, and when they were face to face Ned stepped forward and reached up to put his arms around his much taller son.
Angus’s hands were slower to rise, but just as fierce when they got there. He bent and hugged his father in return and almost lifted him off the ground.
Mia felt the tears prickle her eyes and she blinked them away. This was ridiculous. Neither man was anything to her. She’d only known Ned since she’d moved here after Misty’s wedding three weeks ago, and he was a sweetie, but she’d met Angus barely ten minutes ago. It was a family reunion. There was nothing to cry about.
She turned to go back down the hallway and Simon stood in his own doorway and watched her.
‘What?’
Simon held up both palms in surrender then lifted one hand and physically wiped the smile from his face. ‘Nothing. Nothing.’ But she could see the twinkle in the eyes he’d inherited from his father and she shook her head. The teenage girls in Lyrebird Lake had better watch out for this one or there would be broken hearts everywhere.
‘Go to your room.’ Mia pretended to shoo him, and he laughed.
‘Yes, Mum.’
Well, at least they had that pecking order sorted, she thought with a rueful smile. She doubted it would be so easy to deal with Angus.
Thank goodness she needed to get ready for work.
All was quiet at the Lyrebird Lake Birth Centre, a small midwifery-run wing of the tiny hospital that had grown to catch around two hundred babies a year.
‘So Ned’s son arrived.’ Mia hadn’t meant to blurt it out. She should have at least waited until Misty had finished handover report for the evening shift.
Misty Buchanan, Mia’s friend from her training days in Sydney and one of the three full-time midwives at the unit, looked up and raised her brows. ‘What’s he like? I can’t help feeling sorry for Ned. He’s been that nervous, waiting for him to arrive.’
Mia avoided her eyes. ‘I saw them hug outside the hospital so I think all’s fine.’ Actually, she’d sniffed at the window because a man she didn’t know had hugged another she barely knew. What on earth had got into her? ‘He’s brought his own son, so Ned’s a grandfather. The boy looks about nineteen.’ Mia couldn’t help smiling at the thought of Simon. ‘He’s a card.’
Misty smiled. ‘And what’s Angus like? Is he short and round like his dad?’
Mia remembered Angus’s height and shoulder width and that moment she’d first seen him so large in the hallway. Not to mention the strong jaw that seemed to tug at smiling but didn’t quite make it. ‘Nothing like Ned.’
Misty tilted her head. ‘Really? Like what, then?’
‘Just a man.’ Mia tried, but she’d said it far too nonchalantly to fool Misty.
‘Mia?’
Misty tapped her pen and Mia shook her head. ‘I am not going there.’ She’d waited a lifetime to find the right man to trust her heart to, and look where that had got her.
‘Well, I admit you’ve been burnt the one time you did.’ Misty paused and glanced around to check no one was listening before she lowered her voice even further. ‘But what’s he like?’
Mia knew she was trapped. ‘What do you want me to say, Misty? That he’s tall and dark and handsome and when he looks at me I want to put my head down, hug myself and blush?’
Misty did a double-take and Mia felt like grabbing the words from the air and putting them back in her mouth. What was wrong with her?
Thank goodness she’d run off at the mouth like that with someone she could trust. Misty, and Montana, who had been the first to come to work at Lyrebird Lake, had been her friends for years and they understood each other.
They understood that Mia was still bruised from the last tall, dark and handsome man that had stirred her, promised her the world for life, and then brushed her and her pregnancy off like dust on his sleeve.
‘I’ll look forward to meeting him, then,’ Misty said, and glanced down at the notes in her hand.
Mia felt the next glance, but she didn’t meet it and her friend did what she’d hoped she would do.
‘The ward’s very quiet. Josephine Perry is coming in at three to talk to you about arranging private relaxation lessons and maybe a home birth. She’d better hurry because they’ve only a few weeks to go. Josephine and Paul are friends of Andy’s. You’ve met them, the flying people from the aero club.’
Mia remembered them. A great couple. ‘Yep. It’s their first baby. They were at the antenatal class last week.’
‘Otherwise Tammy and my step-grandchild…’ Misty grinned at the thought ‘…are coming home with me when I leave and the ward will be empty. Staff in Emergency will be glad to see you because the morning girls have left them with a full house.’
‘No problem. I’ll go over there as soon as I clean up here.’
‘Ben’s picking us up.’ Misty’s voice warmed again when she said her new husband’s name and Mia wondered how things would be for them, sharing early married life with Ben’s teenage daughter, Tammy, and her new baby.
‘Tammy’s still managing well?’ At ten years younger than herself, Mia had marvelled at the