The Husband She'd Never Met Page 14

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Carrie assured him nervously. ‘I’ve been visiting my mother.’ She nodded towards the cardiac ward.

  ‘Ah, good. I hope she’s doing well?’

  ‘Yes, she is, thanks.’

  The doctor directed a warm smile towards Max. ‘Hello. I don’t think we’ve met...’

  ‘Sorry.’ Carrie jumped in, badly flustered. ‘Dr Bligh, this is my husband, Max.’

  She knew Max was wondering what the heck was going on, but he held out his hand. ‘Pleased to meet you, Doctor.’ Max’s smile was polite, but also a little stiff.

  ‘And I’m very pleased to meet you, Max.’ Dr Bligh bestowed another warm smile upon them, but within a heartbeat his expression became serious. ‘So, tell me, how are you both? Are you coming to terms with everything?’

  Everything.

  The doctor was talking about her infertility, of course.

  Carrie’s mind froze. She couldn’t possibly think of an appropriate answer. She could only think of how messy her attempts to handle ‘everything’ had been. Her heart was thumping hard enough to land her in the cardiac unit right next to her mother.

  ‘We’re fine,’ she managed at last, knowing how inadequate this must sound.

  Concern glimmered in the doctor’s eyes, but with another glance at Max, who remained silent, he nodded. ‘That’s good to hear. All the best, then. I’m running late. As always.’

  With a wave he was off, hurrying down the corridor.

  Oh, dear Lord.

  Carrie was shaking as she slid a glance Max’s way.

  He made no attempt to hide his shock. ‘What the hell was that about?’

  To hide her nerves she kept walking, shooting a reply over her shoulder. ‘I used to be a patient of his.’

  ‘What kind of doctor is he?’

  ‘A gynaecologist.’

  Max frowned and reached for her elbow, forcing her to stop. ‘How long ago was this, Carrie?’ He looked puzzled. ‘Before we met?’

  Carrie wished she could lie, but over the past five months she’d told enough half-truths to last her a lifetime. Besides, she’d heard the doubt in Max’s voice. She knew he’d find it hard to believe that a doctor would bother to stop to speak to a patient after a gap of four years.

  ‘I saw him last year,’ she mumbled, turning and heading down the corridor once more.

  Max quickly caught her up. ‘Last year?’ His expression was fierce. ‘You saw a gynaecologist here in Sydney last year?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, without looking at him.

  ‘Last November?’

  Her heart thumped harder than ever as she kept walking.

  ‘Carrie!’ Once again Max caught her arm, bringing her to a halt. ‘Don’t play games,’ he warned through gritted teeth. ‘We both know what happened after you came home from Sydney last November.’

  They were standing near a nurses’ station and Carrie was sure the nurses had overheard Max’s outburst.

  Max hadn’t noticed, though. He was too worried, too shocked.

  ‘Oh, God,’ he said, taking both Carrie’s arms and gripping her elbows tightly. His face was twisted with pain and fear. ‘That doctor didn’t give you bad news, did he? You’re not—?’ He gulped, and his face paled despite his tan. ‘It—it’s not serious? Terminal?’

  Carrie gasped. The poor man looked terrified. ‘No, Max, no,’ she hastened to assure him. ‘Nothing like that.’

  She saw sliding glass doors indicating an exit.

  ‘Let’s get out of here.’

  ‘OK,’ Max said as he kept pace with her. ‘But you’re going to tell me everything.’

  They found a conveniently empty courtyard, shaded by a large shady maple tree, with seats set around a large square goldfish pond.

  There was no sign of a coffee shop, but Carrie’s stomach was churning so badly she knew coffee would have made her sick.

  ‘Right,’ Max said, almost as soon as they were seated. ‘What’s this all about?’

  His gaze was fierce, his blue eyes dark—the colour of a stormy sea.

  ‘Why would you see a Sydney gynaecologist and not tell your husband a thing about it?’

  ‘I didn’t want to bother you.’

  Carrie winced, wondering why the excuse sounded so weak now, when it had made good sense at the time.

  ‘As you know, we’d been trying for a baby without any luck, and I was worried—I had this feeling that something wasn’t quite right. But I was so fit and well I thought it had to be a little thing...easily fixed. I thought I wouldn’t worry you. Just get it sorted.’

  ‘But it wasn’t just a little thing?’ Max guessed.

  ‘No.’

  Carrie could feel the tears burning in her throat and behind her eyes. For so long she’d kept this to herself, and now she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to get it out without breaking down.

  Taking a deep breath, she forced herself to go on. ‘Dr Bligh told me that I can’t have a baby. Not ever. There’s a problem with my uterus—a malformation—and it’s not something that can be corrected by surgery.’

  ‘Oh, Carrie...’

  The flash of pain in Max’s eyes was heartbreaking, but then he switched his gaze to the pond, staring hard at it as his white-knuckled hands gripped the edge of the bench seat.

  If he’d turned back to her then—if he’d shown her even a glimmer of the sympathy he’d always shown in the past—she would have succumbed almost certainly. She would have fallen into his arms and cried her heart out. She might have asked for his forgiveness. She might even have received it.

  But Max didn’t move, and Carrie was too worried about what he was thinking to give in to her tears.

  ‘You came home with important and life-changing news—something relevant to our marriage at a deeply personal level—and you saw fit not to tell me.’ His face was stony, his voice hard, as he continued to stare at the pond, where fish darted in gold and silver shimmers between the slender green reeds.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Carrie said. ‘I thought it was for the best.’

  She’d known how it would be if she’d gone home and told Max about her infertility. He would have been disappointed. He would have grieved for the children they would never have. But he would also have hugged her close, murmured soothing words and told her that it didn’t matter. He loved her. They loved each other. That was enough.

  He would have nobly accepted that he was the last of the Kincaids at Riverslea.

  But she hadn’t wanted him to make that sacrifice. It was her fault, her problem—not his.

  She’d known he would never understand, so she’d found her own solution.

  Now, however, he was glaring at her.

  ‘Instead of telling me the truth you came home and lost interest in me. What was that about, Carrie? Was it because we couldn’t have a family? Were children all you wanted from our marriage?’

  ‘No!’ she cried, aghast. ‘You’ve got it wrong, Max. It wasn’t about what I wanted. I did it for you. I—I knew how important is was for you to have children. You’ve had five generations of Kincaids on Riverslea. Your family’s property is an important inheritance. There’s such a long tradition, and I didn’t want you to be the end of the line.’

  ‘You’ve got to be joking.’

  Max’s eyes were wild now, his voice so angry it was almost unrecognisable. He leapt to his feet and turned to her, his hands raised in clenched fists. But then, with a groan, he let them fall to his sides.

  ‘I can’t believe you thought so little of me. Did you really believe I would cast you out if you couldn’t produce a child?’

  ‘No,’ Carrie protested. ‘I knew you wouldn’t do that. That was the problem. I knew you’d tell me that it didn’t matter. I knew you’d try to be noble about
it.’

  ‘Noble?’ He looked at her as if she’d lost her mind. ‘So your solution was to spend the months afterwards making out that you were tired of me and of Riverslea?’ He lifted his hands in a gesture of helplessness. ‘That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard.’

  The terrible thing was that it did sound crazy, coming from him. But what choice had she had back then? If she’d tried to leave Max straight after her return from Sydney he would have been suspicious. He would have pushed for answers till he got to the truth.

  As it was, she’d found it relatively easy to build up her criticisms of the Outback and sound convincing. After all, she’d had a lifetime of listening to her mother’s objections to cattlemen and their way of life. She’d had a host of complaints at her fingertips.

  She tried to explain. ‘It was the only way I could think of to set you free.’

  ‘Set me free?’

  Once again Max looked incredulous, and Carrie knew she was digging a deeper hole for herself. Then, with a groan of frustration, Max whirled on his heel and strode away.

  ‘You’re not going to leave me?’ Carrie called, but almost immediately wondered why she’d asked that. It was exactly what she deserved, after all.

  ‘Why not?’ Max was scowling as he turned back. ‘Isn’t that what you want?’

  No!

  She couldn’t give voice to the protest, but he stopped and half turned to her, every muscle in his body tense, and pinned her with a cold, hard glare.

  ‘OK, Carrie. Just so you’re clear about my side of this. If you had told me that you couldn’t have a child I would have told you that it didn’t matter. Not because I’m noble. This has nothing to do with nobility. This is about the fact that I loved you.’

  Loved. Past tense.

  His mouth tightened formidably. ‘Why couldn’t you have trusted me? Why couldn’t you have trusted that our love was strong enough to cope with whatever life threw at us—for better or for worse?’ His blue eyes shimmered damply. ‘I felt as if my life had ended the day you walked out.’

  Then he turned and kept going, striding away.

  It was the worst possible moment for Carrie to run slap-bang into the truth—that she couldn’t bear to face the future without him.

  But it was too late. Max was so angry he wouldn’t listen to her. And even if she did try to explain he wouldn’t believe her.

  ‘Can you at least tell me where you’re going?’ she called, running after him.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he snapped. ‘I guess I’ll find another hotel.’

  ‘You don’t need to, Max. Mum’s given me her key. I’ll go to her place.’

  He stopped, apparently caught out by this sudden intrusion of practicality.

  ‘OK. I don’t care,’ he said with an angry shrug. ‘Whatever suits.’

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  THE MUSTER AT Riverslea Downs, with long days in the saddle and nights sleeping rough, was over. The cattle had been rounded up, yarded and sorted, and now the huge road trains that would take the stock to the sale yards were ready to leave.

  A loud wheezy hiss broke the morning stillness as the compression brakes were released. Then came the roaring rev of the motors, and slowly the massive vehicles rolled forward, each pulling three trailers loaded with Riverslea Downs cattle.

  Max stood with Barney, watching as the trains slowly disappeared down the track, sending clouds of red dust in their wake.

  ‘That’s over for another year,’ Barney said, shoving his Akubra hat back from his forehead with a weary hand. ‘I can tell you, I’m bushed.’

  ‘You’ve worked hard, old fellow,’ Max told him. ‘You need to take it easy for a few days.’

  ‘Won’t argue with that.’

  The men enjoyed a cuppa together on the homestead veranda, yarning as cattlemen did about the muster, about the weather, the condition of the cattle and of the country they’d travelled over and the prospect of a decent price at the markets.

  They didn’t talk about Carrie. She’d become a taboo subject since Max had returned from Sydney.

  Barney had learned the hard way, having tried twice to ask Max where she was and whether she was coming home, but he’d nearly had his head bitten off both times and hadn’t asked again. For which Max was grateful. Not that Max didn’t think about Carrie every minute of every day and night.

  Her absence was a huge gaping hole inside him. The busy days in the saddle and the nights spent swapping yarns with the stockmen around the camp fire had served as a partial distraction, but Carrie had always been there—a permanent ache in his heart.

  Max knew he had to shoulder the blame for their separation. It was hard to believe he’d actually been so angry he’d walked out on Carrie after she’d finally told him the real reason for her bewildering behaviour. He should have rejoiced that her motives had not been driven by a lack of interest or love but by the very opposite.

  He’d been so blindsided by the raw fact that she’d kept her condition a secret. He’d been hurt that she hadn’t wanted to share such a deeply important problem. Surely couples survived such tragedies by pulling together? But instead of turning to him for support Carrie had chosen to isolate herself in her own private world of misery.

  The discovery of this in Sydney had hurt him so deeply that he hadn’t bothered to offer her sympathy or comfort. He hadn’t even given her a chance to explain her reasoning properly. He’d marched off in a cloud of self-righteous anger. And now he’d virtually been out of contact with her for nearly a month.

  Of course over the weeks since then he’d nursed his share of regrets. At the time he’d been shocked. Shocked by her sad news, shocked for Carrie, for himself and for his own dreams of a family.

  But the one factor that lingered and saddened Max beyond bearing was that Carrie had convinced herself she must leave him simply because she couldn’t bear his child.

  It hadn’t made sense then and it still didn’t make sense. But at least he now understood the pain that had led to his wife’s irrational thinking. It was the same deep pain that had sent him storming off, abandoning the woman he loved with every fibre of his being. The woman he’d vowed to love and protect.

  If the plans for the muster hadn’t been so firmly in place he would have tried to delay it while he paid attention to his marriage. But all the stockmen, including a camp cook, had already been hired, the supplies and the freight had been ordered, and Max had promised to help Doug with the Whitehorse Creek muster as well.

  He would have let too many people down if he’d shifted the dates. His personal disaster had been put on hold.

  But the whole time he’d been away he’d been foolishly hoping against hope for a miracle—that Carrie might have tried to contact him. Last night, when he’d finally arrived back at the homestead, he’d driven straight down to the mailbox. Standing at the edge of the track, checking the envelopes by the light of a torch, he’d found plenty of bills but no letter from Carrie.

  Clover hadn’t even been there to greet him, as he’d taken her to Whitehorse Creek to be minded by Meredith for the duration of the muster. Inside the house, he’d headed to the phone to check for messages. There had been nothing from his wife. In the office, he’d booted up his computer, but Carrie hadn’t sent him an email either. In almost a month there’d been no contact at all, and Max felt like a dead man walking.

  But now, at last, all his business commitments were behind him, and in the clear light of day Max knew that if he wanted any chance of winning Carrie back there was only one thing to do.

  * * *

  The waiting room at the fertility clinic held its usual contingent of pregnant women. Carrie kept her gaze averted from their rounded tummies. After the nightmares that had haunted her over the past few months she tried not to think about her last visit here, or the
tests in the hospital that had preceded it.

  She sat in a corner, paying assiduous attention to a fashion magazine. The clothes were beautiful. Carrie had mostly lived in jeans for the past three years and she’d lost touch with the latest trends, so there was a great deal to catch up on.

  She wished she felt more interested in hemlines and fabrics. Wished her mind wouldn’t keep wandering, thinking about all the action she’d been missing at the Riverslea Downs muster.

  The big muster was always so exciting—the highlight of the year. She’d been thrilled the first time she’d joined in, riding off over the vast plains, helping to coax straying cattle out of gullies or scrub, then steering the thundering herd towards the stockyards. Best of all, at the end of a long hard day there’d been crisp, clear Outback nights beneath a canopy of dazzling stars...and Max...

  ‘Mrs Kincaid?’

  Carrie started when her name was called. She was instantly angry with herself for letting her mind drift to Riverslea Downs. She should have been collecting her thoughts and composing her response for when the counsellor asked her why she’d come. Now it was too late.

  She was flustered and nervous as she was shown into the counsellor’s office. But she soon realised it was less like an office than a comfortable living room, with brightly coloured sofas and prints on the walls. Instead of a desk, a medical examination table and filing cabinets there was a coffee table and a tall pottery urn filled with autumn leaves.

  Rising from one of the sofas, a woman aged around fifty, with short dark hair and warm dark eyes, smiled at Carrie. She was wearing a green turtleneck sweater and white jeans. Gold hoops in her ears matched the bangles at her wrists, and as she walked towards Carrie there was a kindly light in her eyes, a friendly warmth to her smile.

  ‘Hi, Carrie,’ she said, deepening her smile. Her bangles made a pleasant tinkling sound as she held out her hand. ‘I’m Margaret.’

  Carrie returned her smile. ‘Hello, Margaret. Pleased to meet you.’

  She sensed immediately that this was someone she could talk to, and she felt the tension roll from her shoulders.