His features...
His heart seemed to sag in his chest as certainty hit. ‘My brother? Ian? He’s his?’ How had he made his voice work?
‘Yes,’ she said, because there was no answer to give other than the truth. ‘Sefina is... Sefina was a Fijian islander. As far as I can gather, Ian stayed there for a while. He got her pregnant and she was kicked out of home. In what was a surprising bout of conscience for Ian, he brought her here. He paid Louis to marry her and he gave her a monthly allowance, which Louis promptly drank. But a few weeks ago the money stopped and Louis took his anger out on Sefina. The day before the cyclone things reached a crisis point. They were living out on Atangi. We flew her across to Wildfire, to hospital, but then the storm hit...and I didn’t have that moment...’
‘I’m sure you did your best.’ It was a trite thing to say and he saw a flash of anger in response.
‘She needed more.’
‘She had no one else?’
‘You need to understand. She was an outsider. She was pregnant by... And I’m sorry about this—but she was pregnant by a man the islanders have cause to hate. She married an oaf. Her mother-in-law wouldn’t have anything to do with her, and vilified anyone who did. And the only person responsible—your brother—is now missing.’
‘He’s dead,’ he said, and her gaze jerked to his.
‘Dead?’
‘That’s another reason I couldn’t get back here until now. Ian’s been gambling—heavily. Unknown to me he racked up debts that’d make your eyes water. That’s why he’s bled the island dry. And that’s why...well, his body was found two weeks ago, in Monaco. Who knows the whys or wherefores? The police are interested. I’m...not.’
There was a long, long silence.
She was restful, this woman, Max thought. Where others might have exclaimed, demanded details, expressed shock, disgust or horror, Hettie simply hugged the child in her arms a little tighter.
She was...beautiful, he thought suddenly.
Until now, despite the lacy knickers and bra, despite the attempt at humour, she’d seemed a colleague. A part of the trauma and the tragedy. Now, suddenly, she seemed more.
She was slight, five feet four or five. Her body was tanned and trim, and the lacy lingerie showed it off to perfection.
Her dark hair was still sodden. Her curls were forming wet spirals to frame her face.
Thirty-five, she’d said, and he might have guessed younger, apart from the life lines around her shadowed green eyes.
Life lines? Care lines? She’d cared about Sefina, he thought. She was caring about Joni.
Her body was curved around him now, protective, a lioness protective of her cub. Everything about her said, You mess with this little one, you mess with me.
His...nephew?
‘You realise he’s yours now,’ she whispered at last into the stillness, and the words were like a knife, stabbing across the silence.
‘What...?’
‘This little boy is a Lockhart,’ she said, deeply and evenly. ‘The M’Langi islanders look after their own. Joni’s not their own. He never has been. He was the child of two outsiders, and the fact that an oaf of an islander was paid to marry his mother doesn’t make him belong. The islanders have one rule, which is inviolate. Family lines cross and intercross through the islands, but, no matter how distant, family is everything. Children can never be orphaned. The word “orphan” can’t be translated into the M’Langi language.’
‘What are you saying?’ There was an abyss suddenly yawning before him, an abyss so huge he could hardly take it in.
She shrugged. ‘It’s simple,’ she said softly. ‘According to the M’Langi tradition, this little one isn’t an orphan, Dr Lockhart. This little boy is yours.’
* * *
He had complications crowding in from all sides but suddenly they were nothing compared to this one.
Ian had had a son.
The boy didn’t look like Ian, he thought. He had the beautiful skin colour of the Fijians but lighter. His dark hair wasn’t as tightly curled.
He was still sleeping, his face nestled against Hettie’s breast. Max could only see his profile, but suddenly...
It was a hint, a shade, a fleeting impression, but suddenly Max saw his mother in Joni.
And a hint of his own children. Caroline, twenty-six years old, due to be married next week to the man she loved.
Christopher, buried three weeks ago.
Christopher, his son.
This little boy is yours...
How could he begin to get his head around it? He couldn’t. Every sense was recoiling.
He’d loathed Ian. Born of gentle parents, raised on this island with love and tenderness... There’d never been a reason why Ian should have turned out as he had, but he’d been the sort of kid who’d pulled wings off flies. He’d been expelled from three schools. He’d bummed around the world until his parents’ money had dried up.
Max thought back to the time, a few years back, when Ian had come to see him in Sydney.
‘I’m broke,’ he’d said, honestly and humbly. ‘I’ve spent the money Mum and Dad left me and I can’t take the lifestyle I’ve been living anymore. I need to go back to Wildfire. Let me manage the place for you, bro. I swear I’ll do a good job. We both know it’s getting run-down and you don’t have time to be there yourself.’
It was hope rather than trust that had made him agree, Max thought grimly. That and desperation. It had been true; the island had needed a manager. But Max had needed to be in Sydney. Christopher had been born with cerebral palsy and he’d lurched from one health crisis to another. Max had been trying to hold down a job as head of surgery at Sydney Central, feeding as much money as he could back into the island’s medical services. Caroline, too... Well, his daughter had always received less attention than she’d needed or deserved.
If Ian could indeed take some of the responsibility...
Okay, he’d been naive, gullible, stupid to trust. That trust was coming home to roost now, and then some. He was having to face Ian’s appalling dishonesty.
But facing this...
This little boy is yours...
His son was dead. How could he face this?
‘You don’t need to think about it now,’ Hettie was saying gently, as if she guessed the body blow she’d dealt him. ‘We’ll work something out.’
‘We?’
‘I love Joni,’ she said simply. ‘I’m not going to hand him over until I’m sure you want him.’
‘How can you love him?’
Her eyes suddenly turned troubled, even a little confused, as if she wasn’t quite sure of what she was feeling herself. ‘He has no one,’ she said, tentatively now. ‘His mother trusted me and depended on me. I was there at his birth.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Maybe...until you’re ready to accept your responsibilities, I can take care of him for you.’
‘My responsibility...’
‘Whatever,’ she said hastily. ‘Until there’s another alternative, I seem to be all he has. He needs someone. He has me.’
‘You’re not saying you’ll take him on?’
‘I’m not saying anything,’ she whispered, and once again her lips touched the little