Bride on the Children's Ward / Marriage Reunited: Baby on the Way (17 page)

‘And that’s it. I can’t father a child, Eden.’ He was a little exasperated, and annoyed with her for playing dumb. ‘Ever.’ He withdrew his hand from hers and clenched his jaw, trying to summon the strength to say the next words. ‘So you see, there’s no future for us. There never can be. It’s over.’

E
DEN
frowned, watching him closely. ‘What’s over?’

‘Haven’t you heard a single word I’ve just said?’ His exasperation with her increased. ‘I can’t be with you, Eden. I can’t give you the happily-ever-after fairytale you’ve wanted all your life. I can’t father a child. The sterilisation is permanent.’

‘So?’

‘So! How can you just sit there and say “So”?’

‘Simple. Listen and I’ll say it again.
So?
’

David was dumbfounded by her reaction. This hadn’t been what he’d expected at all. ‘Don’t you want to have children? Children of your own?’

‘Of course I do.’

‘Then you’re better off without me.’

Eden sat back in her chair for a moment, her drink, the hotel lobby, other guests—everything forgotten as she focused on the man opposite her. ‘Are you honestly sitting there and telling me that even though I don’t care that you can’t father a child we should
still
not be together?’

Her eyes were starting to flash the way they did when she became really mad. David swallowed. He was so attracted to the way she looked, but at the same time wary of her simmering temper. ‘Now, Eden. You have to see sense. You’re obviously in shock.’

‘Don’t tell me what I am. I know my own mind, David.’

‘Then you’ll know that while everything might be fine at the moment, and you might think you can accept this revelation of mine, say it doesn’t matter to you, at some point in the future it
won’t
be all right. I’ve been down this road before. I’ve heard my ex-wife cry herself to sleep because she couldn’t have a child. I’ve signed divorce papers and I’ve vowed that as far as I was concerned I would never have a family. There is no treatment for this. It’s absolute.’

He shifted in his chair, leaning forward, determined to get through to her. ‘I know how deeply you feel, Eden. I know how badly things affect you. And even though you say now that you don’t mind not having children of your own, one day you will, and one day you will look at me with hatred in your eyes.’
And then you’ll leave me.
He didn’t say the last words out loud. He couldn’t bear to.

It was better all round if they ended things here. Tonight. They’d be able to move on, to find what came next in their lives—because being together would never be an option.

‘You’re scared.’ Eden nodded, as though she’d finally hit the nail on the head. The final piece of the puzzle.

‘I’m trying to be rational here, Eden.’

‘You are so scared that if you even
try
something new, if you take a chance, you’ll end up being hurt again. I can understand that. Honestly I can. I took a chance when I was seventeen and dated you. I loved being with you, spending time together. The hectic times, the fun times, the quiet times. In the beginning I was desperate for you to see me as something more than just a friend. After you’d accepted that things were great. And then…you left. But when you left, what you didn’t know was that I was in love with you. Real honest-to-goodness love.’

That stopped his thoughts in their tracks, but he quickly dismissed her words. ‘You were seventeen, Eden. Too young to know what love really is.’

‘Perhaps. But I know the pain I felt. I know it took me a very long time to get over you—long after I’d left Sydney. Helping other people, being there for others, was a way I could hide myself, could lock my heart away whilst still doing some good in the world. If I helped other people, then I didn’t have to look inwards at myself, didn’t have to face the fear that I might be all alone for the rest of my life because the only man I’d ever loved didn’t love me back. There was no way I could ever settle for second best. That’s just not me.

‘I told you that I cried myself to sleep the night I heard of your marriage. I wasn’t teasing. You were gone. You’d been taken from me—by some other older, more sophisticated woman. I’d lost you—lost what was never really mine in the first place. I’d lost you. It was then I fully realised my feelings for you were far more than that of a teenage crush or puppy love. They were serious—because to be lusting after another woman’s husband was definitely wrong. Yet I couldn’t stop myself. You were in me, a part of me, and I’d just locked it all away. If I ignored it, then the pain wasn’t as bad.

‘I wanted more than anything to get home for Sasha’s wedding, because I knew you were divorced. You were free again. I thought that perhaps now…now that I was older, you would finally see me as the woman I’d become. I hoped that you would flirt with me, that you’d take me out into the moonlight, dance with me, kiss me.’

David nodded. ‘It wasn’t to be.’

‘No.’ Eden sighed. ‘And then Sasha had her accident. My poor, darling Sasha, whom I love like a sister. I came home, unsure of how it would be to see you for the very first time in twelve years, and I have to say it’s been the roller-coaster I’d always imagined it would be.’ She smiled at him then, and David wasn’t sure whether he should relax or stay on alert. ‘You are the only man who can make me go weak at the knees with one simple look. You make me smoulder when you touch me. You fill me with fire when you hold me close, when you kiss me, when you look at me with love in your eyes.’

She leaned forward, placing her hands on the table in front of her. ‘Only you, David. Only you have ever affected me like this, and only you will continue to affect me like this.’ She shook her head. ‘If we can’t be together then you’re sentencing us both to a life alone, a life of living with regrets, when it doesn’t need to be that way at all. I don’t
care
if you can’t have children, and I don’t know how to make you believe that.’ Her words were spoken in earnest.

‘You say that now, but it won’t last, Eden. One day you
will
care, and if I can prevent you from experiencing that pain then I will.’

Eden snorted with derision, her eyes flashing fire. ‘Oh, how magnanimous of you. Protecting me? How sweet!’

David glanced around them, aware of other patrons. ‘You might want to lower your voice.’

‘Might I? I might want you to believe me when I say it doesn’t matter, but that isn’t going to happen either.’

‘But you
want
children.’ His words were ground out from between his teeth, and she realised that he too was trying to control his temper.

‘Yes. Don’t you?’

‘It doesn’t matter what I want. I can’t—’

‘Be honest, David. It’s obvious you
do
want a family of your own, so at least admit it. If not to me, then at least to yourself.’

He shook his head and looked away, wishing they’d risked going up to her room to have this discussion. But he’d thought himself more able to control his undeniable attraction to her in a public place. Besides, he hadn’t expected her to react in this manner at all. Then again, this was Eden, and he should have known to expect the unexpected.

‘Why do you think I became a paediatrician?’

‘Probably the same reasons I did. You love children and you want to help them, to protect them, to guide them. That said, it doesn’t change the fact that you’re too scared to take the step before you. You’re not willing to enter into a relationship with me because one day I might hurt you. You’re not willing to believe that the two of us can be happy together—the
two
of us, David. Let’s just focus on that for now. I love you, and I know you love me.’ Her words had become more insistent and a little louder. ‘So
why
can’t we move forward?
Why
can’t we take that to the next level?’

‘You’re starting to disturb the other guests.’

‘I’m hardly yelling, David, and besides, when you’re in love with someone it should make you feel so free, so uninhibited, that you can shout from the rooftops—not knowing who hears, not caring who knows.’

His eyes widened for a moment, and he wondered if she was about to stand up and declare to all and sundry just how she felt about him.

Eden stood, and he held his breath. She walked around to stand beside him before leaning down to kiss him. It was a kiss of desire, of hope and of promise. Then she turned, picked up her coat and bag, and walked calmly to the lifts. He watched as she disappeared from view, the lift taking her away from him.

He wasn’t sure how long he sat there, ignoring the people around him as he pondered her words. Did she
really
not care about his secret? Could he believe that she accepted him as he was? That she truly loved him? That she wouldn’t leave him in years to come? Could he take a chance on love? True love? Was Eden worth it?

‘Yes.’

Two days later, David walked into his sister’s hospital room and glanced around. ‘Where is she?’

Sasha put down the book she was reading. ‘Who?’

‘Eden. Who else?’

‘I haven’t seen her.’

‘Sasha,’ he warned.

‘What? She came to my physio session earlier this morning, but I haven’t seen her since. Why? Is there something wrong with a patient?’

‘You know darn well what’s going on.’

‘Ah. Personal, not business. Yes, I do. Eden is more than my best friend, David. She’s like a sister to me.’

‘Well, if you want to have any hope of making her your real sister, then you’ll tell me where she is.’ He stalked around the room, agitated and tired. ‘I’ve been trying to call her for the past two days. First of all the hotel took my messages, saying she didn’t want to be disturbed. And now I’ve just called and they’ve informed me that Dr Caplan isn’t staying there any more.’

Sasha nodded. ‘Have you tried her cellphone?’

‘It just goes through to voicemail. Where
is
she?’ He felt so dejected, and slumped into a chair. ‘I’ve stuffed up, Sash. She won’t talk to me. She’s avoiding me.’

‘Haven’t you seen her on the ward? I thought she was a visiting medical officer.’

‘She is, but whilst she’s been in to see the patients she does it when she
knows
I won’t be on the ward. She knows my schedule inside out—when I have clinic, when I have meetings—and she uses it to her advantage. This morning Dart was jumping around, all happy and cheery because Dr Eden had just done a magic trick and pulled some money from his ear. Then I go to see Chelsea and she tells me that she and Eden shared a hot chocolate this morning as they talked about Paris.’

‘Isn’t she the young girl who wasn’t eating?’

‘Yes.’ David raked a hand through his hair and stood to start pacing again. ‘Yesterday I spent a lot of time trying to track her down, narrowly missing her. “She was just here.” “Oh, David, you just missed her.” Everyone likes her. Everyone thinks the world of her—’

‘It’s you that she loves,’ Sasha pointed out.

‘She has a funny way of showing it.’

‘How do you feel about
her
, David? Eden’s sure you love her, but that you’re too scared to do anything about it.’

‘I am. I was.’

‘In love with her or scared?’

‘I
am
in love with her and I
was
scared.’ He’d been such a fool—a fool in love. And love could be blind, couldn’t it? He just hadn’t known what he was doing, fumbling around like a…well, like a fool.

‘So what are you going to do about it?’

‘A lot. But first I need to find her.’ He came and gently sat on the bed next to his sister. ‘Help me, Sash.’

‘I’ll call her.’ Sasha picked up the phone by her bed and dialled an outside line before entering Eden’s number. ‘Hi, there,’ she said a moment later. ‘Where are you?’ A pause. David looked hopefully at his sister. ‘Uh-huh.’ Sasha’s gaze met his. ‘Oh? Really?’Another pause. ‘Eden, I’m sorry. No. No. I quite understand. Yes, yes, he is here with me. Do you want to—’

David eagerly held his hand out for the receiver, but Sasha didn’t relinquish it.

‘No?’ she continued. ‘All right, then. Yes. OK. Call me if you want to talk.’ Sasha hung up the phone and glared at her brother. ‘You had better fix that.’

‘What? What just happened?’

‘She doesn’t want to talk to you.’

‘What? Why not?’ Panic gripped him and he found it difficult to swallow. ‘Where is she, Sasha?’

‘I promised her I wouldn’t tell you.’

‘What? This isn’t primary school. We aren’t playing kid games. This is my
life
.’

‘Eden’s too.’

David began to pace around the room. What was Eden doing? Playing hard to get?

‘She just needs to sort herself out, that’s all.’

‘And what if she leaves? What if she runs away again?’

‘What if she does?’ Sasha countered. ‘What would you do, David?’

‘Go after her.’ He didn’t even need to think of his answer. He needed Eden, was desperate for Eden, and now that he’d realised that he wanted to go to her, apologise and beg her to take him back. ‘Come on, Sash. Tell me where she is. We need to talk. We need to sort this out. She doesn’t understand how much I need her in my life. I have to tell her.’

‘Well, you’re going to have to wait a few more days, at least. Unless…’ Sasha smiled widely at her brother, wanting the two people she’d loved for most of her life to get their act together.

‘Unless?’

‘Unless you’re smart and you figure out where she might have gone. Let’s see if I can’t help you narrow down the parameters. Who does Eden know in Sydney? You. Me. Well, she isn’t staying with either of us. Hmm…Who else does she know here? Who else would she go and visit with to reconcile the past?’

David hit his forehead and shook his head, before kissing his sister’s cheek.

‘You’d better tell her you love her, David,’ Sasha called as he bolted for the door.

‘I’ll shout it from the rooftops,’ he returned with a bright grin.

David knocked on his tennis partner’s front door with complete impatience. He hadn’t bothered waiting for someone to open the large front gates, instead had quickly scaled the front brick wall. Hal answered, surprised to see a dishevelled David standing there.

‘Is Eden here?’ he asked eagerly.

‘I’m sorry. You’ve just missed her. She’s gone shopping with her mother.’

He couldn’t believe he’d just missed her!
Again!

‘Come in, son.’ Hal invited him, and they went into the living room. ‘You’ve obviously heard that Eden’s staying with us?’