Taking him to the dolphin sanctuary had been a test, he thought. Helen—and others—wanted proof he was serious about this parenting role.
The problem was that he wasn’t sure that he was serious about parenting himself, especially as he’d been sole carer for two weeks now and made not one dint in the little boy’s misery.
Until this afternoon, when one bear of a dog had made Harry giggle.
‘I’ll find out about Cathy,’ Helen offered, speaking urgently now. ‘I’ll make enquiries. But unless it’s really awful, you should still give the place a chance.’
‘I told you, Helen, I’ve been here half an hour and already there’s a child dead.’
‘There must be a reason.’
‘A brain tumour,’ he conceded.
‘They do palliative care work as well. You’d expect—’
‘I’d expect resuscitation efforts on a four-year-old.’
‘Give it more than half an hour,’ Helen said urgently. ‘It’s taken me all the contacts we have and then some to get him into the place. Believe it or not, there’s a queue months long. Don’t you dare walk away.’
‘And if it’s dangerous?’
‘You stay with him all the time. Bond. This is what you wanted, Jack. Now’s the time to step up to the mark.’
And he knew it was.
Kate did what she could for Amy and for her little son. Amy’s mother and sister had spent the last week here as well. Other arms enfolded the distraught mother, freeing Kate to leave her in their care. In the end she backed out unnoticed, as grandmother, mother and aunt collectively said goodbye to their little boy.
She put herself on autopilot for a while, filling in forms, phoning the coroner, clearing the way for funeral directors to fly Toby and his family directly back to Queensland, where they’d lived. She headed back to her bungalow and showered. Then she stood on her veranda and stared out to sea for a while, trying to get Toby’s death in perspective. Impossible, but she had to try, just like she always did. Other children needed her. Somehow she’d learned to move on.
She’d learned to move on from a lot, she conceded, and part of that was her history. And her history included Jack Kincaid.
It had been such a shock to see him.
Jack. His name echoed over and over in Kate’s head and she felt ill.
She couldn’t be ill. Jack’s nephew was her next client. Jack Kincaid was waiting for her to finish the formalities with Toby and his mother. Jack Kincaid had to be faced.
But maybe he wouldn’t wait. She’d seen his horror when he’d realised Toby was dead; when he’d seen that she wasn’t fighting to prolong his life.
She might have got Toby back, she conceded. If she’d tried CPR, had had oxygen on the beach, had fought with every medical skill she had, Toby might still be alive. He’d be unconscious, though. They all knew the tumour was massive and unresponsive to any more chemotherapy or radiation. If she’d fought he could have had maybe a week, maybe even longer, on oxygen, on life support, but his mother hadn’t wanted that. No one had wanted it.
She hadn’t had to flinch at the condemnation in Jack Kincaid’s eyes. She had not one single regret over her care of Toby.
But what would she tell him? Jack had been a friend at medical school. If he was still here she needed to give him an explanation. What?
The truth? Did she trust him enough for that?
She might have no choice. It seemed Harry was Jack’s nephew, Jack’s sister’s child. If she’d recognised the name she would never have accepted him as a client, but the booking had been done by a woman with a name as unfamiliar as all the names she so carefully vetted. Harry had been supposed to be coming with someone called Helen.
No matter. Chinks of her old life were bound to intrude sooner or later. She’d known that. It was just … she’d hoped it would be later.
She thought back to the Jack she’d known over ten years ago. He’d been acutely intelligent, intuitive and skilled. On top of that he’d been drop-dead gorgeous. Tall with dark hair and strong bone structure, always tanned, almost too good looking for his own good, and his dark eyes had always gleamed with mischief. Maturity had only added to his looks, she conceded, but it was the Jack of years ago she was thinking of now. If there had been pranks to be played, Jack had always been at the centre. If there had been a beautiful woman to be dated, Jack had been right there, too.
Early on they were allocated as partners in the science component of their course. They suited each other as study mates. Her seriousness didn’t distract him, and his intelligence and humour pleased her. But his dating habits were legend. ‘You should have a harem,’ she told him. ‘That way you wouldn’t have to date one by one. You could have them all together.’
‘I’d rather that than be stuck with one person for ever from sixteen,’ he retorted. She finally told him of Simon’s existence when he … When they … Well, late one night things got a little out of hand and she had to tell him the truth. That she had a boyfriend. That she’d had a boyfriend for years so she couldn’t be attracted to Jack.
‘Monogamy for life from sixteen?’ he mocked. ‘You must be out of your mind.’
Later, when his words proved true—for it seemed that she had indeed been out of her mind—she’d lie awake in the small hours and think about how different life could have been if she hadn’t been a good girl. How it could have been if she’d been able to forget family obligations. If she’d given in to the attraction she’d surely felt.
Move on, she told herself harshly. The time for regrets was well and truly past. What she needed to focus on now was calming Jack down, persuading him to either let her treat his little nephew or tear up the contract and leave.
But whatever way he went, she had to gain his silence.
On impulse she headed indoors and hit the internet. Jack Kincaid.
Professor Jack Kincaid. Head of Oncology at Sydney Central. Research qualifications to make an academic’s eyes water. Medical practice extraordinary. His early promise had been met and more; this man was seriously skilled, seriously qualified. More, as she flicked through the site she found links to patients’ opinions of the man who’d treated them.
Seriously good. Seriously kind. Empathic. A workaholic by the look of it.
But he’d booked in here for two weeks. Two weeks of this man’s time looked to be an incredible commitment.
Okay, she was impressed, but she was also scared. This wasn’t a man to be deflected with weak excuses. It’d be the truth or nothing, if he decided to stay.
She headed back to work, and found herself almost hoping he’d decide to leave. That’d make her life a whole lot less complicated.
They had to wait for over an hour, and every minute brought fresh doubts.
He took Harry for a walk around the resort. There were a dozen bungalows built on the beachfront, with dolphins painted on their front doors. Wind chimes hung from their verandas and brightly coloured hammocks hung from the veranda rails.
Sand spits covered with stunted eucalypts reached out from both sides of the resort, the spits forming a secluded bay. A great sweep of netting enclosed half the cove. That’d be a pool for what the information sheet told him were the captive dolphins. These, according to his sheet, were either dolphins who’d been injured in some way or who’d been raised in some form of captivity and brought here in an attempt to rehabilitate them to the wild.
Some dolphins could never be rehabilitated, the sheet said, and these were the dolphins trained to interact