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He kind of snort laughed and she couldn’t help smiling back.
‘I’m serious. Grace did a great job babysitting when they were small. It meant I could finish school and do my training.’
‘I still feel … I don’t know. Angry? Guilty? We’ll never know what might have happened if I’d known about the children first up. I’ve missed a decade and more of their lives. Yet looking back, I don’t know if I would have coped with the responsibility. Once I was considered cured, I still had times when stress affected my capacity to cope. For most of the time, I kept my head down, tail up, focusing on my job. Just getting by.’
‘Did you enjoy your time in Africa?’
He shifted, bringing his other leg onto the bed and moving to lean on the pillows beside her. He kept his gaze on the far side of the room but his hand sought hers, twining their fingers together and resting them on his bare thigh.
‘I don’t know if I could say I enjoyed it. Dealing with the local people taught me a lot. When I arrived I was still in the middle of a giant pity party. Seeing the conditions they had to live with, woke me up quick smart.’
‘Your mother told us you were usually based in some of the poorest areas.’
‘I’d seen documentaries and we did some basic training to prepare us for the local conditions. All the same, I was shocked at the level of poverty. I always thought your family had it rough, and I still think it was tough by Australian standards, yet this was something else again.’
‘Will you go back?’
‘I’ve been advised not to. There are other things I can do to help.’
‘Does that mean you’ll stay permanently?’
He met her gaze, his thigh shifting to press against her leg under the fleecy robe. ‘I want to stay. I’d like to marry and raise a family. Do you think it’s a crazy dream?’
She’d like to think he was asking her specifically, but she’d read him wrong too many times. ‘Not crazy if you work for it.’
‘If I want the family to be you and Edward and Gabby, do you think that’s a possibility?’
‘They’d love it.’
‘How about you? Would you love it?’
Her courage failed her. ‘I don’t know. Will there be the real kind of love involved?’
His grip on her hand tightened. ‘I’ve loved you since forever, Becca. I suspect it’s a chronic condition.’
She couldn’t mistake the sincerity in the simple statement. It was there in the strain of his voice and the melting warmth of his eyes, the corners creased with anxiety.
‘Morgan …’ She swallowed the emotion and cleared her throat. ‘I feel the same. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t love you.’
There was pain in the drawn lines of his face. ‘What about when I accused you of all those things and then abandoned you?’
She placed her free hand on his chest, over his heart. ‘I won’t deny it hurt. At times the loneliness made me want to roll over and die. At first it was anger keeping me going, getting up in the morning, going to school. Facing the gossips. Your mother played her part, once she got involved, though a negative one. I was determined to prove myself to her. I wouldn’t let myself give up. No way was she going to sneer at me for not graduating or getting my certificate or holding a job.’
The words hardly left her mouth when he was hauling her into his arms, wrapping himself around her, absorbing her into his heat.
The warmth touched her heart, triggering that long-ago sensation of safety.
The scent of his freshly washed body invaded her senses, sparking a reaction in her gut, a burning of her skin where they touched. She stayed quiescent in his hold, enjoying the moment, conscious of not pressuring him with intimations of desire.
‘I don’t deserve you, Rebecca Walters.’
‘It’s not about what we deserve.’
He lifted his head to look into her eyes. ‘No. You’re right. For which I’m profoundly grateful.’
His hand guided her head against his throat, fingers splayed over her hair. They stayed wrapped together for what seemed like hours, her head tucked under his chin, their bodies intertwined loosely. It was deliciously comfortable. Encroaching sleep relaxed her limbs, closing her eyes and slackening the tension in her body.
Chapter 17
