Their Marriage Miracle (10 page)

His legs stretched out as his pace increased, taking him further from temptation. He would never be that vulnerable again.

This dashing out of the cottage after dinner was becoming a habit. Fiona stared at the shut door and ran her shaking fingers across her swollen lips. But at least tonight they’d been kissing, not arguing.

But she shouldn’t have kissed him. Instead of easing the situation between them the tension had been racked up. She’d swear he’d been as shaken as she had. She’d felt his body quiver as their kiss lengthened. She’d tasted the heat of his tongue, smelt the increased maleness of his desire. Tom had wanted her as much as she’d wanted him.

She reached for the glass of wine she’d put aside before dinner. What did it matter if she got a little bit cranky now? Tom wasn’t here to notice. Oh, no, he’d dashed off to work.

Just like the good old times. Avoiding the situation. Not stopping to talk about what had happened between them.

Wise up, Fiona. Tom hasn’t changed as much as you’d hoped.

A
FTER
cleaning up the kitchen Fiona went to bed. Burrowed under the blankets, with the pillow tucked down around her neck, she tried to keep warm and hold the world at bay. Twice she nearly clambered out of bed to go and find Tom so she could be with him, to see if there was anything she could help with. Twice she chickened out, not wanting to upset him any further than that kiss seemed to have done.

Finally she dozed off—only to be woken by the phone ringing. If Tom had returned he’d get it. It would be for him anyway. Shivering, she pushed her head out of the cocoon of blankets and listened.

It continued to ring, sounding insistent in the quiet cottage. What if something had happened to one of her patients? Groaning, she crawled out and, grabbing her jersey, ran to the kitchen. Then stopped. The ringing came from inside Tom’s bedroom.

Someone must want him badly. The ringing persisted. Inside Tom’s bedroom door she ran her hand over the wall, searching for the light switch. Yellow light flooded the room, and she blinked. The phone lay on his bed. Pressing ‘talk’ she held it to her ear, only to hear a click and the dial tone. Typical. She tossed the phone down.

Shivering, she tugged her jersey over her head and down her tee shirt. Then she looked around Tom’s room.

Her lips twisted into a small smile as she saw his immaculately made bed. Her fingers reached for his pillow, lingering where his head might have lain the night before. Picking it up, she clutched it to her breast, inhaling Tom.

Over the edge of the pillow she looked around. A collection of black and white photos hung on the wall above his bed. All landscapes. He had a natural eye for balance and a real sense of the dramatic. None of the photos were familiar to her.

‘At least he’s still doing his photography.’

Fiona spoke out loud in an attempt to dispel the guilt she felt at invading his privacy.

‘But all these photos are impersonal. What happened to that wonderful collection of candid shots you took of people at the market, on the beach, everywhere?’

On his bedside table a photo frame lay face down. Automatically she lifted it and turned it over.

A sharp cry stung the night. Her cry.

In the deceptively simple photo Tom had captured her love for their baby as she held him against her breast. Liam. She remembered when the photo had been taken. Three days before he died.

Raw pain sliced her, tearing through her body like a hot knife through butter. Her knees jarred as she fell to the floor, still clutching the photo. She couldn’t take her eyes off the picture. She hadn’t looked at a photo of Liam for five years. Not since the day she’d made up her mind to put the past behind her and try to make a new life. Until then, every time she’d looked at Liam’s picture the guilt had gnawed at her, driving her almost insane.

Rocking on her knees, she stared at her son, willing him alive, knowing that was impossible. She drank him in. He had been gurgling contentedly, his tiny fist waving at Tom behind the camera. Now he should be running around with an
abundance of energy, looking like his dad with that beautiful smile that tore through her.

‘I’m sorry, baby. I loved you so much and I let you die.’

The ache in her throat prevented her swallowing. Her jaw hurt as she fought the pain. Her eyes burned from unshed tears as she folded over her thighs. Her baby.

‘Fiona? Oh, my God. How did you find that? Oh, sweetheart, what are you doing in here?’ Tom had come back, was kneeling before her, scooping her into his arms. ‘You weren’t ever meant to see that photo. I knew it would break your heart. I didn’t leave it lying around deliberately. Believe me.’

She sagged against him. All the energy had poured out of her. ‘It—it’s like starting o-over,’ she stuttered around the ball in her throat.
Tom had called her sweetheart.
‘As though the last six years haven’t m-meant a th-thing.’

‘Shh,’ Tom soothed, gently smoothing her hair away from her face. He wriggled around and leant back against his bed, lifting her onto his thighs.

‘I—’ She hiccupped, swallowed, started again. ‘I shouldn’t have come here. It’s my own fault, but I thought I was strong enough.’

Tom slid his arms around her. ‘There’s no avoiding the fact we had a son between us. He’s going to be there, in our hearts, in our very souls, for ever. It hurts and always will.’ His words almost a whisper, his light breaths lifting strands of her hair.

Now that they’d started, her tears continued in a flood, streaming down her cheeks, splashing onto Tom’s arms around her middle. ‘You know, you never admitted as much back then.’

‘Just looking at you reminds me of Liam.’

Fiona gasped as pain again lanced her, stabbing her stomach, her lungs, her heart. Liam. Their baby. She blurted, ‘He had your curls, your generous mouth.’

‘Your blue eyes, your fair hair.’ Tom’s chin dropped on to the top of her head, and his hands caught together around her midriff. ‘He was so tiny.’

‘He was five months old.’ Of course he was tiny. And beautiful. And perfect. And she still missed him as though it had happened yesterday.

‘Have you moved on at all?’ Tom asked.

‘No one forgets their child, Tom. I carry him in my heart everywhere I go. I think of him dozens of times a day.’

Tom’s head lifted. ‘You seem whole.’

Oh, Tom.
‘I don’t often feel it.’

‘But you do feel it sometimes?’

Did he blame her for Liam’s death? It had been horrendous when Liam died, but years had gone by—Tom had to have made peace with himself.

She tried explaining. ‘Sometimes, when I’m helping people, especially children, I know a sense of peace for a little while. Those times have helped me get through some of the bad hours.’ She reached out a hand to his, her touch light against his fingers. Under her palm his heart thundered, and a yearning to embrace him, to soothe away the pain in his face, uncurled deep inside her.

Under her bottom she felt his thighs tense and his arms tighten their hold, then he relaxed. Was that a kiss on the top of her head? Heaven knew, she needed one. A real one, soft on the lips, big on comfort. Did Tom need one, too?

She raised her head, her mouth reaching for his. His lips were warm over hers. Their mouths blended together. Joining their pain, sharing their loss, seeking and giving solace. Not the kind of kiss that friends exchanged, but not one of passionate lovers either. Nothing like their earlier one.

It
was
what they needed.

She leaned into him, seeking shelter from her life as it had become. And her tongue slipped between his lips, tasted
him. Again her head swam with memories. Tender memories. Hot memories. Her spine tingled. And then Tom’s mouth was no longer gentle but demanding. Her spirits soared as she returned his kisses.

This was what she remembered. The meltdown. The sheer delight in kissing Tom, in being kissed by him. She was floating, getting warmer by the second. Her body responded like a drought-stricken plain—hot sensations flooding over her, washing away the long, lonely nights.

A groan escaped Tom’s lips.

She blinked. Paused mid-kiss. What was she doing? Setting herself up for more heartbreak? There could be no future in this. One stolen kiss, or more, wouldn’t solve a thing. For either of them. She leaned backwards, slowly pulling her lips from Tom’s beautiful mouth.

‘Fi?’ Slowly Tom opened his eyes, looking startled to find her watching him. ‘Oh, hell, I’m sorry. So much for the talk I gave myself half an hour ago.’

He lifted her off his thighs and scrambled upright. Leaning down, he offered her a hand, tugged her up onto her feet. ‘I don’t know what to say,’ he added softly, shaking his head in a bemused fashion.

Fiona reached a hand to his face, touched him lightly. ‘It takes two, Tom.’

His answering smile was brief and filled with guilt. ‘Sure.’

Fiona bent down to retrieve the photo that had started this. She studied it, her heart squeezing. ‘I guess all mothers think their baby is gorgeous, but Liam really was.’

‘I think all mothers say exactly that. Of course he was gorgeous. We wouldn’t have been normal parents if we hadn’t been blinded to any imperfections.’

She swung around. ‘Imperfections? What do you mean?’

Tom lifted his hands and shrugged, a warm smile teasing
his lips. ‘See? You defend him instantly. That’s great. And anyway, he
was
perfect. Apart from the sleepless nights he gave us.’

Relaxing again, she placed a kiss on Liam’s head and placed the photo upright on Tom’s dressing table. ‘I miss you so much. Every day.’

‘You’re talking to Liam, right?’

Fiona blinked. Gazed at her son. Yes. She was. But had she been talking to Tom as well? Not intentionally. But truthfully? The breath she hadn’t realised she held oozed past her lips, lips now swollen from Tom’s kisses. Yes, she’d missed Tom every single day and night since the moment she’d left him. Even during the years she’d spent fully focused on medicine and helping others there had been a feeling of loss that she couldn’t entirely pin on Liam.

Turning to Tom, she murmured, ‘Of course.’

The chilly room caused her to shiver. Gathering up the quilt folded over a chair, she wrapped herself in it and curled up on the end of the bed. She really should move out into the kitchen or the lounge, but she couldn’t bring herself to leave that photo just yet.

Her voice wobbled when she said, ‘Tell me about what you did, where you went, after I left town. I mean, how did you get from working in the paediatric department at Auckland Hospital to opening your own hospital in the South Island?’

The bed dipped as Tom sat at the opposite end and shuffled his backside up onto the pillows. Leaning against the headboard, he clasped his hands behind his head and gazed at the ceiling. ‘I think the idea began bubbling away at the back of my mind as I worked with children at Auckland. I saw so many of them needing to get together with other kids coping with similar problems. Their parents needed that sort
of contact too. But after we split up I first took a position at Christchurch Hospital.’

‘The one city you always said you’d never live in.’

‘I needed to get out of Auckland for a while. Quite frankly, I didn’t care where I went, so when a job came up in Christchurch I applied.’ He looked wistful. ‘I loved working in Auckland, but I couldn’t focus any more. I figured a change would do the trick.’

‘Did it?’ It hadn’t for her. Not initially, anyway.

He lowered his eyes to look at her. ‘Yes and no. I immersed myself in work, but that wasn’t enough to fill in the long, empty hours when I returned to my flat at night. So I began toying with my dream of setting up a specialist hospital. Almost overnight the dream grew into reality. Sometimes I thought it had become a monster, but it did keep me busy and the images of Liam and you at bay.’

‘Are you happy, Tom?’

‘There are degrees of happiness. Considering what happened to me…us…yes, I think I am content.’ A shadow crossed his eyes.

‘You don’t sound convinced.’ What was missing from his life? A woman? Family? Of course that had to be the answer. He came from a good family, and he’d always wanted to emulate that with her and Liam. The void in his heart would be huge.

‘Let’s drop this, Fiona.’

‘No, let’s not. We’ve dropped too many hard issues in the past when if we’d worked our way through them instead we might never have separated.’
Steady,
she warned herself.
Don’t get uptight.
Drawing a rough breath, she squeezed out the words she’d needed to say for a long time. ‘Tom, I’m sorry for leaving that day, for the way I just up and went. Driving through that red light and crashing the car was the last straw. Suddenly it seemed imperative I get away and try to straighten
my head out. At the time I wasn’t going for good, just for however long it took to sort myself out. Unfortunately it took a lot longer than I’d ever imagined.’ Years longer.

He reached for her hand, gripped it between his, his warmth seeping into her. ‘I should’ve tried harder to hear what you were really telling me. I couldn’t understand you at the time. It seemed that everything I tried to do for you was wrong. The paediatric unit became the one place where I did get things right, and so I spent more and more time there. When you left I knew I’d failed you by not being able to help you through your grief.’

‘Tom, all I wanted from you was for you to tell me your feelings. Now, after hearing about Billy, I understand why you couldn’t talk. You’d been brought up to hold everything in.’

He dropped her hand as though it was poisonous. ‘My son gone and you wanted to know how I
felt
?’ Pain deepened his voice, darkened his grey eyes to coal. His hands were clenched on his thighs.

‘Of course I knew.’ She took both fists in her hands. ‘But I needed you to share those feelings. I told you about my pain and I got nothing back. We created Liam together, through our love. We were together when he came into the world. But we mourned him separately.’

His fists opened, clasped both her hands. ‘I thought I was helping you by being outwardly strong. I wanted to be your anchor, carry your grief as well as mine.’

‘Was I truly so selfish that you thought I wouldn’t help you?’

With one hand he brushed an errant strand of hair off her face. ‘No. You have to understand that’s the only way I knew how to cope. By focusing on your grief I avoided my own.’

‘You seemed so remote. I’d lost not only my son but the only man I’d ever loved. So I left you to think things through.’

‘Fi, I waited for you to come back.’

He had no idea how often she’d nearly returned, only she’d been afraid to face him and see the hurt she’d caused written in his eyes. And then there had been her guilt…

He continued, ‘I rang your father daily, asking if you were with him, but he always fobbed me off by saying you wanted time to yourself. No one at the hospital knew where you’d gone, only that you’d resigned abruptly.’

‘I did want time to myself. That’s why I left in the first place.’

‘I couldn’t believe you’d disappear from my life so completely. At first I was angry with you, then as the days passed I blamed myself, felt I’d failed you in some way and that was why you’d left. As the years went by and I got really busy with this place I figured I’d only be raking up old wounds if I tracked you down. They were best left alone by then.’ He stared at his hands, recalling the anguish of those weeks. ‘Where did you go when you left me?’