Fiona Lowe - Gold Coast Angels - Bundle of Trouble

She sucked in a long, deep breath, trying desperately to banish the delicious buzz of addictive warmth. ‘Everything’s fine here, Mr Stanley. Go and get your daughter.’

His eyes widened at her dismissal of him, and he rubbed his forehead with his fingers and his temple with his thumb as if his head hurt. ‘Goodnight, then.’

She watched him turn and leave without giving an apology and she tried not to let it rankle. After all, it shouldn’t bother her one bit because she was used to working with surgeons who believed all should bow down before them and kiss their feet. She also knew that apologies for bad behaviour were few and far between. Only Luke Stanley had always been an exception to that rule.

His reputation for skill and good humour had always meant that people had fallen over themselves to work with him. The nursing and auxiliary staff, from cleaners to occupational therapists, had loved him, and whenever he’d put together a team to go to Asia or Africa for a six-week stint with the foundation, repairing cleft lips and palates, there had always been more applicants than positions.

That man had utterly disappeared when his wife had died.

She wasn’t a stranger to grief, and she understood the pain of it all too well. She’d been lost in the midst of it once, for a year, floundering in the suffocating darkness that had become both enemy and friend. It had been her beloved brother Nick who’d hauled her unwilling teenage mind out of the black and treacherous morass and pushed her back into the light of life.

At the time it had hurt like nothing she’d ever experienced before or since and the battle not to let grief become a toxic legacy had been beyond hard, but she’d done it. Years later, when Jason had told her he wouldn’t marry her because she couldn’t give him a child, she’d teetered on the edge but she’d survived and learned. Today, she knew that even though her life now wasn’t anything like that she’d imagined for herself as a naïve sixteen-year-old, and neither was it the life she truly wanted, it was a life worth living and living well.

You could show him how to do it .

The thought clanged loudly in her head like the penetrating sound of a fire alarm and she wished she could put noise-cancelling headphones over her brain.

Yes, she was a nurse, a member of a caring profession, and, yes, she had the ability to recognise when someone needed help. Luke Stanley definitely fell into that category—he needed help big-time—but she was also a survivor. Helping a grieving man with a child would be more harmful to her than helpful to him and she wasn’t prepared to risk her hard-won stability.

No, it wasn’t her job to do the ‘hands-on’ helping stuff with Luke Stanley, but she’d talk to Keri and Kate. After all, they knew Luke a hell of a lot better than she did.

‘WANT BUNNY,’ Amber sobbed into Luke’s shoulder, her tears making a damp patch on his cotton shirt.

‘Hello, Amber, I’m Mr Clown,’ Luke said in a voice he thought might sound like a clown’s as he waggled the soft toy near his daughter’s face.

Amber’s hand knocked the clown sideways. ‘Want bunny!’

Luke’s head pounded with fury at himself and despair for Amber, which rumbled through him and reminded him he had so much to learn as a father. How had he forgotten to check that her beloved bunny had been in the backpack when he’d collected Amber from daycare?

Because you were thinking about Chloe Kefes .

His anger at himself was buried deep with sharp roots. How had he forgotten ever meeting her? Unlike most of his colleagues, he didn’t forget names and faces, especially when there was another connection, like her being Nick’s sister. But today he’d needed all her prompting to recall the iodine incident.

He hated that he’d forgotten as much as he hated the fact his mind kept repeating the way her plump lips curved into a smile. A generous, captivating smile, which dimpled her round cheeks and danced in her eyes. A smile that had faded under the onslaught of his bitter words—words generated by his own self-loathing and hurled out to land on the nearest target. It wasn’t Chloe’s fault that Amber was motherless and in full-time daycare. No, that responsibility lay solely at his feet.

Amber’s wails sounded even louder than before.

Damn it, he shouldn’t still be thinking about Chloe. What sort of a pathetic excuse for a father was he?

Poor Amber. She was rarely without her talisman bunny—her security blanket in her ever-changing world. Her one stable item in a confusing place, where her previously mostly at-home father was now absent during the day, and her aunt, uncle and cousins were unexpectedly gone too.

He’d telephoned the director of the daycare centre, who, although sympathetic to his plight, had not been prepared to make the twenty-minute drive to open the building to retrieve the bunny, no matter what Luke had offered. The doctor in him understood. The father with the hysterical child wasn’t quite so reasonable.

He lined up all Amber’s cuddly toys. ‘Look, honey, Teddy’s sad and needs a cuddle,’ he tried, desperate to turn the situation around.

Amber screamed.

Abandoning any attempts to try and settle her into her cot, Luke carried her outside to the deck. The slow and rhythmic roll of the waves hitting the sand boomed around them and the silver rays of moonlight beamed down through the streaks of cloud to sparkle on the Pacific Ocean. He lowered himself onto the sun lounger and settled Amber on his chest, his hand patting her sobbing and shuddering body and matching the beat to the tempo of the waves.

Oh, so very slowly, as the inky darkness cloaked them both, Amber’s frantic sobs turned into occasional, gulping hiccoughs until her breathing steadied and her body relaxed against his. Despair finally turned to sleep. He knew he should probably take her into her room and settle her into her cot, but after the last hour he didn’t dare move in case she woke up, remembered the missing bunny and was again faced with having to go through the same trauma.

He knew all about that. Even now, living in a different house, he still woke occasionally expecting to find Anna there, only to have the realisation she was gone dump all over him. Over and over. Anna was gone because he’d made a critical error that couldn’t be fixed. At least Amber was spared the memory of missing her mother, or at least he hoped she was. She’d only been six months old when Anna had died. Did she miss someone she couldn’t remember?

He pulled a beach towel off the chair next to him and covered both of them with it to ward off the slight chill of the night air. Amber may not have a mother, but she had a loving extended family who smothered her in love. Were aunts, uncles and cousins enough?

The image of clear and honest hazel eyes beamed into his brain and he instantly shut them out. He’d only ever had eyes for one woman, and even though Anna was gone he had no desire to look elsewhere. The idea was abhorrent to him. Closing his eyes, he found himself battling random images of dimples and long, glossy chestnut hair. Desperate, he focused on the sound of the sea and willed sleep to come.