Miracle Twins to Heal Them, page 11
The clock was ticking quite loudly, in fact.
And that was a bit of a shock, to be honest.
Grace must have seen how disconcerted Jenni suddenly was.
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to stress you out.’ Grace made a face. ‘Hey... I’ve got lists that we give to first time mums on their initial antenatal visit. I’ll print you a copy.’
‘Thanks. Are you coming in tomorrow?’
‘Yes. I’d like to come with you for the home visits you’ve got scheduled and see how well I do with different houses and steps and so on.’
‘Good plan. But you need to be honest if it gets too much for your ankle and I’ll drop you home. Overdoing it at this stage would be silly.’
Grace made a face but nodded her agreement and then smiled. ‘And you’re coming to dinner, remember? Jock and Dan have a day off and they’re fixing the last bit of the jetty and then they’re going to go and get Lassie and bring her home. If the weather stays this nice, we might have a picnic on the beach.’ She was watching Jenni carefully. ‘That’s not a problem, is it? Having an evening with Dan?’
‘Um...no...’ Jenni cleared her throat. ‘We’ve actually been getting on quite well recently...’
Perhaps it was the tone of her voice. Or the certain type of smile she couldn’t suppress. Or maybe her friend just knew her too well, because Grace’s eyebrows rose sharply.
‘How well?’ She was still staring at Jenni. ‘Oh, my God...are you blushing, Jenni McKay?’
‘I never blush.’
‘You blush all the time. You’re a redhead.’
‘So’s Jock. I’ve never seen him blush.’
‘He’s a boy.’ Grace was still smiling. ‘I wonder if Dan’s going to tell him what’s been going on?’
‘I doubt it. It’s not as though it’s anything significant. We’re just...friends, I guess.’
Grace’s smile faded. ‘You’re a bit more than friends.’
Jenni broke the eye contact. ‘Aye, well...we’ve got a bond that’s going to be there for the rest of our lives. It will be better if our relationship is amicable.’
Amicable...? That was a bit of a joke, given how close they’d been—again—only last night.
But Grace didn’t pick her up on her word choice. Her brow was furrowed now, as though she was worried about something.
‘Maybe that’s the best reason of all to have your babies here,’ she said quietly. ‘To let their father bond with them.’
Oh, help...
Jenni could feel a prickle of sensation on her skin right now—as if Dan’s hands were on her belly again, the way they had been last night. She could feel his pleasure in feeling the ripples and bulges of the movement of the tiny bodies beneath her skin. How much more intense would it be for him to be actually touching—and holding—his babies in their first moments of life?
She would be denying him that experience.
And that was definitely something she could start feeling guilty about.
* * *
This was like old times.
Before life had been tipped upside down.
To one side, Daniel Walker could see the white-tipped ripples of the wake Jock’s boat was making as they left the marina behind and gained some speed. If he turned his head, he could see Jock at Lassie’s wheel, focused on the route he was taking to get his boat home to tie up at his own jetty.
They’d spent all day working on the jetty. They’d removed some decking boards to replace the last rotten beam and rafters beneath, replaced the decking boards and then finished with a coat of timber stain. They’d carried the portable barbecue and a chilly bin full of beers down the steps to the small private beach and then set off to collect Lassie. The jetty would be dry and the beers still cold by the time they got back to enjoy the picnic dinner planned for later.
‘Have we got time to stop and catch a snapper to go on that barbecue?’
Jock threw a look over his shoulder. ‘Sadly, no. But Grace has got some fancy sausages from that gourmet butcher in town for us tonight.’ Jock grinned. ‘It’s one of our favourite dinners. I reckon she started falling in love with me when I fed her their traditional British bangers.’ He was looking straight ahead of the boat again now but Dan could still hear him clearly. ‘Jenni’s coming over. She’ll be there by now...’
Something tightened in Dan’s gut with an extremely pleasurably twinge. Okay, maybe this wasn’t really like old times, when he and Jock would spend a day out fishing and then share a dinner at the old villa that was the hospital accommodation for temporary or new staff members. Jock was engaged to the love of his life and Dan was helping him sail his beloved boat to the property of his dreams, where he was going to live happily ever after.
And Dan was having a fling with Jock’s sister, for heaven’s sake. Getting steadily closer to a woman who was pregnant with twins that she believed were his own children.
He was being offered the opportunity of getting as close as he’d ever dreamed of getting to living happily ever after himself. And the time together last night, when he’d felt the movement of the babies as clearly as if the barrier of Jenni’s skin had evaporated, had stayed with him today. He could still feel the tingle of it in his hands.
So life couldn’t be any more different really, could it?
Not that he was committing to anything yet. He was taking one day at a time. One magic night with Jenni at a time, because that was all that he could allow himself to do. What would make it perfect, of course, would be if they fell in love with each other, but how likely was that to happen? Jenni had told him she was quite prepared to be a single parent—that she would, in fact, prefer it. And for himself, well...the kind of trust you needed to fall in love had been so broken for him, it could never be the same. It might not even be a possibility.
But that didn’t necessarily mean it was impossible to find something you could trust enough to rest a future on, though.
Did it?
It felt like that question was being answered only a short time later, when Jock slowed Lassie’s engine and Dan got ready with the ropes to tie the boat up as they came into the jetty and he could see Jenni and Grace waiting for them.
When the smile on Jenni’s face gave him that spear of sensation in his gut again, and this time it spread its warmth right through his body.
Yeah...it felt like he could trust someone who smiled at him like that.
Life was different all right.
Better...
So much better...
The small beach was framed by Pohutukawa trees that had low horizontal branches that, along with some big boulders, made natural seating so that they could admire the jetty and how it looked with Jock’s pretty boat tied up to it and the stunning backdrop of the water view and islands not too far away.
It was a perfect evening for a picnic too—a simple meal of sausages, grilled until their skins were crispy, wrapped in soft white bread with a liberal garnish of tomato sauce and a token lettuce leaf or two so that they could pretend it wasn’t such an unhealthy meal. There was ginger beer for Jenni and lager with wedges of lime stuffed into the bottles for everyone else and there was the sound of animated conversation and frequent laughter and the feeling of...well, it felt more like family than friendship.
Dan hadn’t felt like this in a group of people for so many years. Not since he’d walked away from the ruins of his marriage and members of his extended family, quite a few of whom had simply shaken their heads.
What did you expect, man? Get over it... She wanted kids and you weren’t up to the job, were you?
The echo of the past was so faint it was more than easy to ignore—it was just a part of some life baggage that no longer seemed nearly as important. He had moved on and life was so much better.
He raised the bottle of lager he was holding. ‘Here’s to Lassie,’ he said. ‘She’s found her new home and I hope she remains here for many years to come.’
Jock and Grace exchanged a glance. And a look so full of love that Dan’s breath caught in his chest.
‘Like us...’ Grace smiled.
‘Just like us,’ Jock agreed. His smile became his trademark cheeky grin. ‘We’ve decided to get married,’ he announced.
‘That’s old news,’ Jenni said. ‘You’ve been engaged for months.’
‘No...we want to get married,’ Grace said. ‘Soon. Before you go home, Jen, so that you can be my bridesmaid. Will you...?’
Jenni had her hand pressed against her mouth. She looked as if she could start crying at any moment.
‘Of course I will,’ she said. ‘I’d love to.’
Jock caught Dan’s gaze and his grin faded to make his face unusually serious. ‘I’m hoping you might be my best man,’ he said.
Dan got why Jenni had looked so misty. He had a lump in his own throat now.
‘Sure...’ was the only response he managed, but Jock didn’t seem to mind. He was smiling again and he reached out to clink his bottle against Dan’s.
‘We only need two witnesses,’ Grace added. ‘And an approved celebrant. And we can get married anywhere we want to as long as we specify the place on our application.’
‘What about here?’ Jock suggested. ‘On our own beach?’
‘That would be perfect...’ Grace leaned her head against Jock’s shoulder. They were sharing that look again. The one that gave Dan the kind of poignant sensation that he recognised because he’d experienced it quite recently. When he’d been with Jenni at that ultrasound scan and he’d seen the baby’s hand on the screen.
Yearning, that was what it was.
For things he’d believed he could never have.
Children.
Love.
A family of his own...
He had to make an effort to tune back into the conversation around him.
‘So we submit the application and see a registrar to sign a statutory declaration that we’re not already married, et cetera, pay a fee and have to wait three days and that’s it. We could do late next week?’
Dan’s jaw dropped. ‘Next week?’
‘It’ll have to be soon.’ Grace nodded. ‘Jenni’s planning to go back to Scotland and the cut-off point for flying when you’re pregnant is a lot sooner when you’re carrying twins. She’s only got a few weeks to play with here.’
Okay... Dan had known that his time with Jenni was only temporary. That she had every intention of returning to Scotland to have her babies, but...a couple of weeks? It felt like a ripple of sensation had just run down his spine and was now sending out tendrils of something cold and unpleasant. Had he really thought he had the chance of a future that included being a parent and a partner—to have a family of his own? How was that supposed to work when he would be living eighteen thousand kilometres away in an opposite time zone?
‘Unless...’
Dan’s voice sounded oddly raw. ‘Unless what...?’
Grace glanced at Jenni, who shook her head firmly but it didn’t stop her. ‘I’ve been trying to persuade Jen that it might be a good idea for her to have the babies here in New Zealand,’ she said. ‘So that we could help out for the first few months, at least. She’s got a year’s maternity leave to play with, after all.’
This felt like a reprieve.
‘Sounds like a good idea to me,’ he said.
Grace and Jenni exchanged another glance that was very brief but seemed oddly significant. As if he’d said more than he realised? And then she looked back at Jock with her eyebrows raised as if she was encouraging him to say something.
Jock cleared his throat. ‘We discovered something else when we were online finding out about the requirements for getting married in New Zealand,’ he said. ‘You don’t have to be residents to get married here but we wanted to know how to go about applying for permanent residency and citizenship and we stumbled on something that we thought you should know about, Jen.’
‘But I’m not going to emigrate,’ Jenni said firmly. ‘Scotland’s home for me. You both know that.’
‘Yes, but this isn’t about you,’ Jock said. ‘Your children might want to live here one day. They’re half Kiwis, after all.’
Dan closed his eyes for a heartbeat. Jock and Grace both believed he was the father of these babies.
Oh, man...he should have got on with it and had the repeat fertility test done long ago, shouldn’t he? Jock was a medic. He’d be able to see those results and know just how likely it was that Jenni had to have made a mistake.
Why hadn’t he got on with it?
He could have just excused himself by how busy he had been. Or how he might not want such a personal test being done in his place of work. But Dan knew it went a lot deeper than that. Maybe, on some level, he didn’t want Jenni to know he wasn’t the biological father of her babies because then she might not want to share the kinds of magic that Dan had never thought he could be part of. A scan to see the images of an unborn child. Permission to rest his hands on Jenni’s belly to feel those babies moving with nothing more than a layer of skin between them.
And maybe...just maybe...there was that tiny hope that he could be wrong. That something might have changed. That perhaps, by some miracle, he really was the twins’ father.
He didn’t want to have to wake up from the dream just yet, that was what it was.
But he could hear the alarm sounding now. Loud and clear.
‘We’ll all be visiting as they grow up—especially if you and Jock are going to be here for ever,’ Jenni added quietly. ‘They can make their own choices about where to live when they’re old enough.’
She looked disconcerted, Dan thought. Maybe she didn’t want to think that far into the future. Or maybe she was regretting coming here to tell him that he was going to be a father and involving other people in decisions about her children’s future.
It had been a brave thing to do, hadn’t it?
But she had believed she was doing the right thing.
He felt proud of her for having that strength.
‘But what we found out,’ Jock said, ‘was that if you have your babies in New Zealand and can prove that the father is a New Zealander, that makes them automatically citizens. They could hold two passports.’
Dan swallowed hard. Taking that fertility test had just become a priority. Along with a DNA test. They all had to know the truth. To see it there, in black and white on an official document.
‘Does that not happen if they’re not born in New Zealand?’
‘They can apply but who knows? The rules might change by then.’
There was a moment’s silence, broken by a sigh from Grace. ‘Sorry... I didn’t mean to spoil our picnic.’ She looked as though she was pasting a smile onto her face. ‘Where you have your babies is your decision, Jen. If you change your mind and stay for longer that will be fabulous, but we want to get married soon anyway. Don’t we, Jock?’
‘The sooner the better,’ Jock agreed softly. He bent his head to plant a tender kiss on Grace’s lips.
Dan found his own gaze seeking Jenni’s and there it was, as if she’d already been looking at him. For a heartbeat, and then another, they held that gaze and it felt as if they were kissing each other with as much of a tender connection as Jock and Grace were enjoying.
He wanted, more than anything, to be alone with Jenni right now.
But that wasn’t a good idea...because that would lead to physical intimacy, which made it so easy to ignore other things.
Important things, like the future.
And being completely honest with each other.
The moment was gone, in any case. Jock was getting to his feet.
‘I’d better check Lassie’s moorings and get her secure for her first night in her new home.’ He looked over his shoulder. ‘Want to give me a hand, Dan?’
‘Sure...’
Behind him, Grace and Jenni were starting to clear up the picnic leftovers and he could hear them talking about wedding plans.
Dan was making plans of his own. At the top of that list was to get a copy of his medical records and then to get on with repeating that test. But something else came a close second.
He wanted to talk to Jenni. To see if he might be able to persuade her to stay here to have the babies.
To give them more time to build the kind of trust that could provide a foundation for a future that Jenni might not have considered yet.
A future with him...
CHAPTER EIGHT
JENNI AND GRACE were both watching—and listening to—the drop in the baby’s heart rate on the CTG machine.
As the contraction faded, the baby’s heart rate increased again rapidly and then settled to a normal baseline rate. Jenni shared a glance with Grace, who was taking the lead in her first delivery since she’d started back at work part-time.
Both midwives had been in agreement that continuous CTG monitoring was a good idea when they’d noticed the variation of the baby’s heart rate from intermittent monitoring as the first stage of labour progressed and it was reassuring that the baby was not showing any warning signs of distress, but Jules was getting tired. She’d been labouring for many hours overnight before Jenni and Grace had taken over her care when they came on duty at the hospital this morning. She was coping less well with the pain too, with only gas and air to help after a dose of intravenous analgesia had worn off some time ago. She reached for the mask Nathan was holding and jammed it against her face as each new contraction started.
Nathan was looking anxious. ‘Is it normal for it to be taking this long?’
‘Absolutely. Especially with a first baby.’
‘I feel like I want to push,’ Jules said.
‘Let me check,’ Grace told her. ‘We don’t want you to start pushing unless you’re ready.’
