chapter FIVE
FINN WOKE UP at nine on Saturday morning, his head throbbing from one too many hits of his very expensive malt whisky the previous night.
It had been a good while since he’d overdone the top-shelf stuff. For years he’d used it to dull the physical pain from his injuries but since his recovery and his move to Beach Haven he’d only ever indulged in the odd beer or two.
He’d forgotten how it could feel like a mule had kicked you in the head the next day. Which might actually be worth it if it had come with some sort of clarity.
It hadn’t.
Just a thumping headache and the very real feeling that he’d woken up in hell.
He stared at the ceiling as the same three words from last night repeated in his head—Evie is pregnant. Each word pounded like a battering ram against the fortified shell surrounding his heart with a resounding boom.
Evie. Boom! Is. Boom! Pregnant. Boom!
He was going to be a father. Some tiny little defenceless human being with his DNA was going to make its arrival in four short months. He was going to be Daddy.
Whether he liked it or not.
And it scared the hell out of him. Being a parent—a good parent—required things life just hadn’t equipped him with. Like compassion, empathy, love.
There’d been so little love in his life. From the moment his mother had abandoned him and Isaac to a childhood in institutions to his regimented life in the army, ruled by discipline and authority, love had been non-existent. Sure, he’d loved and protected Isaac and Isaac had loved him, but it had been a very lonely island in a vast sea of indifference.
Add to that the slow fossilising of his emotions to deal with the horror and injuries witnessed in far-flung battlefields and the death knell to any errant tendrils of love and tenderness that might still have existed when Isaac had died in his arms and the product was the man he was today.
Ten years since that horrifying day and still he felt numb. Blank. Barren.
Emotionally void.
He hadn’t loved Lydia, his brother’s widow, with whom he’d had a totally messed up affair and who had needed him to love her no matter how screwed up it had been at the time.
He operated with the cold, clinical precision of a robot. Always seeing the part, never seeing the whole. Totally focussed. Never allowing himself to think about the person whose heart he held in his hands or the love that heart was capable of. Just doing the job. And doing it damn well.
He hadn’t felt anything for any of the women he’d slept with. They had just been pleasant distractions. Something different to take to bed instead of a bottle of Scotch. A momentary diversion.
Apart from Evie. Whom he’d pushed and pushed and pushed away and who knew what he was like but refused to give up anyway. Who could look right past his rubbish and see deep inside to the things he kept hidden.
Evie, who was having his baby.
A baby he didn’t know how to love.
A sudden knock at his door stomped through his head like a herd of stampeding elephants and he groaned out loud. He wanted to yell to whoever it was to go away but was afraid he might have a stroke if he did. If he just lay here, maybe Evie would think he’d already gone out.
Because that knock had the exact cadence of a pissed-off woman.
It came again followed by, ‘Finn? Finn!’
Lydia? Wrong pissed-off woman.
‘Finn Kennedy, open this bloody door now. Don’t make me get my key out!’
Finn rolled out of bed. It wasn’t the smoothest exit from his bed he’d ever executed but considering he felt like he was about to die, the fact he could walk at all was a miracle.
‘Coming,’ he called as the knock came again, wincing as it drove nails into his brain.
He wrenched open the door just as he heard a metallic scratching from the other side. His brother’s widow, a petite redhead, stood on the doorstep glowering at him, hands on hips.
‘You look like hell,’ she said.
He grunted. ‘I feel like hell.’
‘Right,’ she said, striding past him into his apartment. ‘Coffee first, I think. Then you can tell me what happened to get you into this state.’
Finn was tempted to throw her out. But he really, really needed coffee.
Fifteen minutes later he was inhaling the aroma of the same Peruvian Arabica beans Lydia had brought him the last time she’d come for a flying visit and he hadn’t touched since. Grinding beans was way too much trouble, no matter how good they were. He took a sip of coffee and shut his eyes as his pulse gave a little kick.
His home phone rang from the direction of his bedroom and he ignored it as he felt the coffee slowly reviving him. Khalid only had his mobile number and everything else could just wait.
Lydia waited until he’d taken a few more sips before pinning him with that direct look of hers. She’d come a long way since the broken woman he’d comforted a decade ago. In his own grief and in the midst of their screwy relationship he had judged her harshly for that, for what he’d perceived as weakness, but she had come out the other side a much stronger person.
‘Spill,’ she said.
Finn thought about playing dumb but the truth was that Lydia was one of the few people who really understood how he ticked. She’d been the one who’d moved on from their half-hearted affair when she’d seen it had been perpetuating an unhealthy co-dependence. The strange mix of relief and regret at its ending had confused him but she’d never left him completely and as his one tangible link to Isaac he’d been grateful for her watchful eye and bossy persona.
‘Evie’s pregnant.’
Lydia blinked. ‘Oh.’
Finn took another sip of his coffee. ‘Indeed.’
‘It’s yours?’
Finn nodded. It wasn’t something he’d questioned for a moment. ‘A little boy.’
‘Oh,’ Lydia said again, hiding a smile as she sipped at her coffee.
Finn frowned. ‘Are you smiling?’
Lydia shook her head, feigning a serious expression. ‘Absolutely not.’
‘This is not funny.’
Her shaking became more vigorous. ‘Not funny at all.’
Finn plonked his mug on the coffee table and raked his hands through his hair; his chest felt tight and his heart raced. He blamed the coffee rather than what he suspected it actually was—sheer panic.
Lydia didn’t understand.
Except she did.
His hands trembled as he looked at her with bleak eyes that had seen too much hate. ‘I’m too damaged for a baby, Lyd.’
Lydia’s smile disappeared in an instant and she reached out her hand to cover his. ‘Maybe this is just what you need to help you heal?’ she murmured.
He shook her hand away—how could he gamble that on the life of an innocent child? ‘I never wanted a baby. This wasn’t my choice.’
‘Well, we don’t always get what we want in life, do we, Finn? You know that better than anyone. So you didn’t get a say? Too bad—it’s here, it’s happening. And guess what, you do get a choice about what you do now.’
Finn stared at her incredulously. ‘What? Be a father?’
‘Yes,’ she nodded. ‘Be a father.’
Finn shook his head as his chest grew tighter, practically constricting his chest. ‘No.’
‘Be the father you always wanted.’
Finn shook his head. ‘I never wanted a father.’
Lydia gave him a stern look. ‘Isaac told me, Finn. He told me how you wished every night for a father to come and take you both away from it all. That you’d tell him stories about him picking you up and taking you to Luna Park for the day and a ferry on the harbour and then back to his house by the sea. You can’t go back and fix that, but you do get a chance to start over.’
Lydia stood, swooping his empty mug off the table. ‘You want your son to not have a father either? To miss out on such a vital ingredient in his childhood? To dream every night of you coming and taking him out to Luna Park and for a ride on the ferry and to live by the sea? A boy needs a father, Finn.’
‘He needs a mother more.’
She shook her head. ‘No, he needs a mother as well.’
Finn chewed on his lip. Why did Lydia always make so much sense? But the nagging, gnawing worry that spewed stomach acid and bile like a river of hot lava inside his gut just wouldn’t let up.
He looked at Lydia. A woman who had needed him to love her. A love he’d been incapable of giving. ‘What if I …?’ He could barely even bring himself to say the words. ‘What if I don’t love him?’
Lydia gave him a sad smile. ‘You already do, Finn. Why else are we having this conversation? Just be a father. The rest will follow.’
By the time Lydia had ordered him to take a couple of headache pills and have a shower then dragged him to Pete’s for brunch, Finn was feeling more human again. She’d nattered away about the weather and her job and the football scores and other inane topics, for which he was grateful, and by midday he was back at his apartment alone, with Lydia’s wise words turning over and over in his head.
He wasn’t utterly convinced by any of them but he had started to think that being part of his child’s life was a responsibility he shouldn’t shirk.
How many times as a boy had he vowed to do it different when he became a father? Back in the days before all hope for his future had been quashed. When he’d believed that his life could still be normal.
Lydia was right. A boy needed a father.
A stable, committed presence.
God knew, he and Isaac could have done with one instead of the bunch of losers that had drifted in and out of their mother’s life until one had stuck and they’d been pushed out of the nest.
He could do stable and committed.
The light was flashing on the answering-machine from the call earlier and he hit the button to listen to the message.
‘Finn … its Evie. I didn’t really want to tell this to your machine but … what the hell … it might just be easier all round. I just wanted you to know that I know it’s a lot for you to comprehend and I didn’t want to tell you to … get something out of you. I’m not after money or any kind of … support. It’s okay … you don’t have to have anything to do with him … the baby … I just think you deserved to know, that’s all. I’m happy to do it all. I’m fine with you never being a part of his life. I don’t need that from you. So … that’s all really. I just wanted you to know that you’re off the hook … if that’s what you want. Okay … bye.’
Beep …
Finn stared at the machine. He was off the hook? If that’s what he wanted?
It should have been what he wanted. He wasn’t capable of anything else—he’d just been telling Lydia the same thing. But a surge of anger welled up in his chest, washing over him with all the rage and power of a tsunami.
I’m fine with you never being a part of his life.
You don’t have to have anything to do with him.
Like his own father.
Evie was going to raise his son by herself. Without his money. His input. His support.
Without him.
It was what he should want. It made sense. She’d love him and nurture him and provide all the things he needed.
Physically and emotionally.
Comfort and security. A real childhood. Aunties, uncles, grandparents. Birthday parties, trips to the beach, photos with Santa.
It should make him happy but it didn’t. The anger dissipated quickly, replaced by something that felt very much like … craving. It slid like a serpent through his gut and whispered.
Be a father.
Damn Evie and her independence. Her grand plans. Her happy to do it all. Lydia was right—he did have a choice. And he’d be damned if his son would grow up without a father.
Stable and committed trumped absent any day.
An hour later Evie was examining a patient’s foot in cubicle two when the curtain snapped back with a harsh screech. She blinked as Finn stood there, glaring at her with his laser gaze, looking all scruffy and shaggy and very, very determined.
‘I need to talk to you Dr Lockheart,’ he said. ‘Now, thank you.’
His imperious tone ticked her off even as her hormones demanded she swoon at his feet in a puddle of lust. Luckily the baby gave her a hefty kick, as if to remind her she had a backbone and to use it.
‘I’m busy,’ she said, smiling sweetly for the benefit of the elderly lady, who looked startled at his intrusion.
But not as startled as she was!
Finn smiled at the patient as he strode into the cubicle and put his hand under Evie’s elbow. ‘Important cardiac consult,’ he said to the grey-haired woman. ‘It won’t take a minute.’
‘Oh, of course, dear,’ the lady said. ‘Off you go. Hearts are more important than my silly broken toe.’
Finn smiled at her as he firmed his grip on Evie. ‘Let’s go,’ he said, pulling insistently against her resistance.
Once outside he dropped his hand and stalked down the corridor, naturally assuming she’d just follow him. Evie had a good mind to walk in the opposite direction and force him to come looking for her again but they did need to talk. In fact, she was a little surprised he was willing to do so this early. She’d assumed he’d be thinking about her little bombshell for a while longer.
Which meant he’d probably got her phone message.
So she followed him, glaring at his broad shoulders and the way his hair curled against his collar until both of them disappeared into the on-call room. She steeled herself, taking a moment before she entered. It had taken all her guts to make that phone call this morning when every cell in her body had been urging her to say the opposite.
But she’d meant it. She’d cope if he didn’t want a bar of them. It would hurt, but she’d cope.
She took a deep breath and pushed through the door. He was standing waiting for her on the opposite side, his arms folded impatiently across his chest.
‘You look awful,’ she said.
She’d seen Finn in varying states of disarray. Angry, inebriated, in pain, high on pain pills, in denial, unkempt and hungover.
This was about as hungover as she’d ever seen him.
‘Trust me, this is an improvement on a few hours ago.’
‘Did it help?’ she asked, trying to keep the bitterness out of her voice but not really succeeding.
Finn shook his head. ‘Nope.’
Evie folded her hands across her chest. ‘I left a message on your machine this morning.’
Finn gave a curt nod. ‘I got it.’
‘Oh.’ Evie’s hand dropped automatically to her belly, feeling the hard round ball of her expanding uterus. A nurse that morning had joked that she was ‘looking preggers’ and Evie knew that her baggy scrubs weren’t going to help for much longer. ‘I mean it, Finn. I don’t need you to be part of this.’ I want you to, though, with every fibre of my being. ‘Plenty of kids grow up in single-parent families and they do just fine.’
Finn thought about his own dismal childhood. Plenty of kids didn’t do just fine as well. And although he’d always thought being a father was the last thing on earth he wanted, he suddenly realised that was wrong.
His child being fatherless was the last thing he wanted.
Didn’t his son deserve the very, very best? Everything that he hadn’t had and more? A happy, settled, normal family life? Two people who loved him living and working together to ensure that his life was perfect?
A father. And a mother.
And a puppy!
‘I think we should get married,’ he said.
Every molecule inside Evie froze for long seconds as his startling sentence filtered through into suddenly sluggish brain cells. ‘What?’ she asked faintly when she finally found her voice.
Finn wondered if he looked as shocked as she did at the words that had come from nowhere. They hadn’t been what he’d been planning to say when he’d practically dragged her into the on-call room but he knew in his bones they were the right words.
His child was growing inside her and, no matter what, he was going to be present. He was going to be a father. Conviction and purpose rose in him like an avenging angel.
‘You can move in with me. No, wait, I’ll buy a house. Somewhere by the harbour, or the northern beaches. Bondi or Coogee. He can join the Nippers or learn to surf.’
Evie’s head spun, trying to keep up with Finn’s rapid-fire thinking. ‘A house?’
‘I think kids should grow up near a beach.’
Having been dragged from one hot suburban shoebox to the next, he wanted his son to have the freedom of space and a sea breeze and the rhythm of the ocean in his head when he went to sleep instead of rock music from the bikie neighbours or the blare of the television in the next room.
Finn’s thoughts raced in time with his pulse. He was going to be a father.
‘I’ll look into celebrants when I get home.’
Evie stared at him incredulously. He had them married and living at the beach with their surfing son all without a single mention of love.
‘We’ll do it just after the baby’s born. No need to inconvenience ourselves until necessary.’
Evie felt as if she’d entered the twilight zone and waited for eerie music to begin. He didn’t even want to get married until the baby had arrived—to inconvenience himself. Could he make it any clearer that this sudden crazy scheme had no basis in human emotion? That it wasn’t a love match?
Evie had grown up in a house where her parents had been strangers and she was never, ever going to subject herself or her child to a cold marriage of convenience.
‘No,’ she said quietly.
Finn shrugged. ‘Well, maybe just before then?’
Evie blinked. Oh, when she was as big as a house and needed to get married in a tent? Was he for real? Did he not know how important a wedding was to a woman? Even one who wasn’t into sappy ceremonies or big flouncy affairs? Didn’t he know that most women wanted declarations of love and commitment when they were proposed to?
If that’s what this was …
No, of course he didn’t. Because, as with everything in his life, Finn just assumed that she’d jump to do his bidding when he asked.
Wrong.
‘I’m not marrying you, Finn.’
Finn dragged his attention back to Evie and her softly spoken rebuttal. He snorted. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Evie. This is what you wanted, isn’t it?’
More than anything. But not like this. ‘No. I told you, I can raise this baby without your help.’
Finn shoved a hand on his hip. ‘Evie … come on … I know how you feel about me …’
She gave a half-laugh at his gall. ‘I always forget how capable you are of breathtaking arrogance. Silly of me, really.’
‘Evie,’ he sighed, desperate to get on with plans now he’d made up his mind, ‘let’s not play games.’
Evie felt his impatience rolling off him in waves. ‘Okay, fine, let’s lay our cards on the table. How do you feel about me?’
Finn felt the question slug him right between the eyes, which were only just recovering from their brush with the whisky. How he felt about Evie was complicated. But he knew it wasn’t what she wanted to hear.
‘You want me to tell you that I’m in love with you and we’re going to ride off into the sunset and it’s all going to be hunky-dory? Because I don’t and it isn’t. Not in a white-picket-fence way anyway.’
Evie moved to the nearby table and sank into a chair. She’d known he didn’t love her but it was still hard to hear.
Finn shut his eyes briefly then opened them and joined her, taking the seat opposite. ‘I’m sorry, Evie. It’s not you. It’s me. There’s a lot of … stuff in my life … that’s happened. I’m just not capable of loving someone.’
Evie nodded even as the admission tore through all the soft tissue around her heart. Had Isaac’s death and the other stuff that Ethan had hinted at really destroyed Finn’s ability to love?
‘Well, that’s what I want,’ she said quietly. ‘What I need. Love and sunsets and white picket fences. And I won’t marry for anything less.’
Finn’s lips tightened. This had seemed so easy in theory when the marriage suggestion had slipped from his mouth. She’d say yes and the rest would fall into place. It hadn’t occurred to him that Evie would be difficult.
In fact, if anything, he’d counted on those feelings she always wore on her sleeve to work in his favour.
‘Not when there’s a perfectly good alternative,’ she continued. ‘I’m happy … really, really happy … that you want to be involved, Finn. But we’re going to have to work out a way to co-parent separately because I’m not marrying a man who doesn’t love me.’
Her words were quiet but the delivery was deadly and Finn knew that she meant every single one. ‘Contrary to what you might think, growing up without two parents kind of sucks, Evie. Trust me on that.’
Evie shivered at the bitterness in his words. ‘Is that what happened to you?’ she murmured. Had Ethan been right about Finn’s emotional issues extending further back than Isaac’s death?
She watched his face slowly shut down, his eyes become chilly. ‘We’re not talking about me.’
Evie snorted. ‘You tell me to trust you, demand that I marry you, but you clam up when I try to get close? Well trust me, Finn, growing up with two parents who hate each other kind of sucks too.’
‘At least you had a stable home life,’ he snapped.
So he hadn’t? ‘It wasn’t stable,’ she said through gritted teeth. ‘My father just had enough money to buy the illusion of stability. Ultimately my mother was a drunk who came and went in our lives while my father put nannies in the house and mistresses in his bed.’
Finn’s mouth twisted. ‘Poor little rich girl.’ So Evie’s life hadn’t been perfect—it had still been a thousand per cent better than his had ever been.
Evie shook her head. He really could be an insensitive jerk when he put his mind to it. ‘I won’t be with a man who doesn’t love me.’
She reiterated each word very carefully.
‘You seemed to be with Stuart long enough,’ Finn jibed, ‘and Blind Freddie could have seen he didn’t love you.’
Evie gasped at his cruel taunt, the humiliation from that time revisiting with a vengeance. ‘At least he’d pretended to care. I doubt you’re even capable of that!’
‘You want me to pretend? You want me to lie to you? Okay, fine, Evie I love you. Let’s get married.’
She stood, ridiculously close to tears and tired of his haranguing. If he thought this was the way to win her over, he was crazy. ‘Go to hell, Finn,’ she snapped, and stormed out of the room.
Finn’s brain was racing as he took the fire stairs up to his penthouse apartment half an hour later. The lifts were being temperamental again and, frankly, after missing his daily ocean swims he could do with the exercise and the extended thinking time. He was breathing hard by the time he got to the fifth floor and stopped by the landing window to catch his breath and absently admire a large slice of the harbour.
Kirribilli Views apartments had certainly been blessed by the location gods.
The door opened and he turned to find Ava Carmichael entering the fire escape. She looked momentarily surprised and then grinned at him. ‘We really must stop meeting like this.’
Finn grunted, remembering their last meeting in this stairwell when he’d come upon Ava crying over her broken marriage. Actually, they’d been through a lot together, with him helping her the day she’d miscarried in the lift and then she and Gladys finding him collapsed from a major infection after his first operation.
Not that they’d ever talked about those things. Ava was like that. For a therapist, she was very non-intrusive. Mostly anyway. There had been an occasion or two where she’d spoken her mind but even then she’d given it to him straight. Hadn’t couched anything in vague psychological terms.
He liked that about her.
It was good to know that things had improved for both of them since. He had fully recovered from his injury and she and James had reconciled, having had their first baby just before his second operation and his desertion to Beach Haven.
‘It’s not too late,’ Finn said, forcing himself to keep things light. ‘We can still make out in the stairwell and no one would know.’
Ava laughed at the rumour she’d threatened to start to blackmail him into seeing her the day after he’d scared the daylights out of all of them with his infection. He’d been in an absolutely foul mood but she’d served him up some home truths anyway.
Not that he’d taken them on board.
He was a stubborn, stubborn man. But she had a soft spot for him because he’d never tried to offer any advice or interfere or make things better when things with James had been going to hell in a hand basket. Unlike others. And she’d appreciated that.
‘I heard you were back and fully recovered. Although …’ she squinted and inspected his face a little closer ‘… you don’t look so good at the moment.’
Finn almost groaned. Did every woman find it their duty today to tell him he looked like hell? ‘What are you doing here? Didn’t you move to your white-picket-fence house in the burbs?’
‘Just visiting the old stomping ground,’ she said.
Finn turned to look back out the window and Ava knew she had been dismissed, that it was her job to walk on down the stairs and leave him to his obvious brooding, but there was something achingly lonely about Finn and they’d been pretty frank with each other in the past.
Still, she hesitated. She knew that Finn was an intensely private man. But then Finn turned his gaze towards her. It was so incredibly turbulent, almost too painful to look at.
‘You’re a therapist, right?’
Ava laughed. ‘I’m a sex therapist, Finn.’
He shrugged. ‘But you do have a psychology degree?’
Ava nodded. ‘Is there something you want to talk about?’
Finn shook his head. He wanted to talk to Ava Carmichael about as much as he wanted to become a father but … she’d always given it to him straight and he could do with some insight into the female psyche right now.
‘Evie’s pregnant. I suggested we get married. She said no. I need her to say yes.’
Ava blinked at the three startling pieces of information. She and Evie were friends, not bosom buddies and they certainly hadn’t seen much of each other since her own baby had been born, but she knew more about Finn and Evie’s relationship than Finn probably realised.
People told her stuff—it was an occupational hazard.
She knew Evie loved Finn. She knew Finn was a hard man to know and an impossible one to love. She knew that if Evie had turned him down it had been for a pretty good reason.
‘Okay …’ she wandered closer to him, propping her hip against the window sill. ‘So when you say you suggested? What did that entail exactly?’
‘I said I thought we should get married.’
Ava nodded. ‘So, let me guess … you didn’t get down on one knee and do the whole big proposal thing? You kind of … presented it as a fait accompli?’ Finn looked away from her probing gaze. ‘Am I warm?’
He looked back again, glaring. ‘It was more of a … spontaneous thing. Us getting married isn’t about any of the hoopla. It’s about being practical. About giving our child a normal family with a mother and father living under the same roof. And Evie isn’t the kind of woman that goes for all that romantic rubbish.’
Ava arched an eyebrow. ‘And how do you know that, Finn? Have you ever really even tried to get to know her?’
He looked away again at the view. ‘I know she loves me, Ava. Why be coy about it? Why pretend this isn’t what she wants?’ He looked back at her. ‘This way she gets what she wants and I get what I want.’
‘What? A man who doesn’t love her?’
Finn wanted to smash the window at her gentle insight. ‘Look, Ava … it’s complicated. I grew up in a single-parent household and then …’ He shook his head. He couldn’t tell Ava, no matter what degree she had. He didn’t talk about his issues—he just left them behind in the past, where they belonged. Where they couldn’t touch him any more. ‘I don’t want that for my kid.’
Ava pitied him. Finn was a man on the edge and he was the only one who didn’t know it. ‘Tell her, Finn. Not me.’
He shook his head. He was so used to burying it inside he doubted he even knew how to access the words. ‘I can’t.’
Ava’s heart squeezed at the bleakness in his eyes. ‘I do recall telling you that this would happen one day, Finn. That by pushing Evie away and not letting her in that one day something would happen and you’d find yourself locked out of Evie’s life.’
Finn nodded miserably. She’d said exactly that. Yelled it at him, actually, when he was being rude and stubborn and difficult, refusing to see Evie after he’d been hospitalised with the infection.
‘Seriously?’ he said. ‘You’re going with an I told you so now? Where’d you get that degree?’ he grouched. ‘In a cornflakes packet?’
Ava smiled. ‘Coco Pops, actually.’
Finn gave a half-smile before turning back to the window. ‘Fine. How do I fix it?’
‘Maybe it’s time to stop pushing her away. To open yourself up.’
Finn pressed his forehead against the glass. She may as well have told him to stand in the middle of the hospital naked. ‘What? No pill?’
Ava shook her head. ‘I’m afraid not.’
‘You’re a lousy therapist,’ he muttered.
She laughed. ‘What do you expect for free?’