Her Outback Knight. Melissa James

or so alone.

      “Yeah, Laila loves me. Just like my sister. It’s wonderful.” Though he knew the bitterness would fade as quickly as it came, he still said it, wanting to push Danni away, make her turn and flounce back into the restaurant, safe inside her anger and mistrust of all men.

      Again she surprised him by holding her ground. “It’s more wonderful than you know. You take all the love in your life for granted. I always wanted a sister, a brother—anyone to be there for me the way your family is for you. The way Laila is there for you.”

      The unconscious reminder inside her words cut him all over again. Family.

      “Excuse me, would you?” Without waiting to see what she did—he could count on Danni walking away in stiff-necked pride, rather than be unwanted—he called home.

      A soft, feminine growly voice answered in moments. “Hello?”

      “Mum?” he said, feeling for the first time the utter comfort of that word; for the first time, not accepting it as his right. You take all that love for granted. “It’s me.”

      “Kilaa,” she cried, using his totem Aboriginal name: the galah, a big white bird—the one who’d flown away. “Are you all right? Seeing Laila again, it hurts, huh?”

      Though a dim part of him knew Danni was still listening, the tide of emotion, repressed and held in, spilled over. “I just got a call from a woman named Annie. She claims she’s my real mother.”

      A stifled gasp was his only answer for a few moments…moments that stretched out to almost a minute. “Kilaa…” she finally said, her voice weak. Shaking. “Let me explain…”

      But she didn’t. He could hear the quiet sobs from the other end of the line.

      “It’s…true?” he asked through stiff lips.

      One word came and it shattered his world. “Yes.”

      “Who is she?” The words came without his knowing they were there.

      “She’s my sister—my half sister. My mum had her before she met my dad.”

      He frowned. It felt unbelievable to him—his family was too close. “Then why haven’t I met her before? Why hasn’t she come to any family parties and stuff?”

      “We always invited her, Kilaa. She never came.” His mother—except she’s not my mother—spoke in a slow, teary voice. “She was taken away by the authorities when she was two, because she was half-white. She came back at twenty or twenty-one with you. She said she couldn’t afford a baby—but really, she couldn’t handle it.”

      “Why not?” he asked, but given his knowledge of their people’s history—he’d done a semester of it in second year—he thought he knew.

      “She was raised in an institution. I think being with us only reminded her of what she’d never had in life, poor Annie.” His mum sighed. “Anyway, she gave you to me—I was only nineteen then—and then she left. I was already with your father. He said, ‘So he’ll be our firstborn.’ And you were to us. You were always our firstborn.” Her voice was thick with tears. “Kilaa, come home, let us explain to you. You are still our son.”

      Jim heard the words, but barely took them in. So Dad isn’tmy father, either. My grandfather isn’t my grandfather, my brothers and sisters are—are my cousins….

      Suddenly he wished he was a vegetarian like Danni; the steak he’d eaten for dinner sat like lead in his stomach. His knees were shaking, his head spinning.

      The bottom was falling out of his world. Half an hour ago, his unwanted attraction for Danni was tragic to him.

      What a difference a phone call makes, he thought grimly.

      CHAPTER TWO

      “I DON’T WANT TO HEAR THIS over the phone. Expect me in a couple of days. I’ll arrange a locum for the practice.” He flipped his phone shut and leaned against the tree with a clenched fist. Scraping his knuckles raw hitting the rough bark, over and over.

      As she watched him hurting his bleeding hand far less than the pain in his heart, Danni had absolutely no idea what to do. What can you say, when a man has his entire life stripped from him in the space of five minutes?

      She was useless here. More than anything she wanted to turn tail, run inside the restaurant and send Laila out here. She was Jim’s best friend; she always had something unexpected and wise to say, or at the very least, she’d hold him close and be here for him.

      Which would only be another reminder of something he’s lost.

      It looked like she was it, then, God help her. What did she say? How did she start?

      A moment later, he stopped hitting the tree. “I know you’re still there,” Jim said, his back stiff. “I can hear you breathing. I can feel the indecision jumbling around in your head.”

      That was Jim—the only man she’d ever known who didn’t treat her with wary diffidence because he’d never been frightened by her fighting reflex or sarcastic tongue. He treated her like every other woman he knew, with teasing and truth. With the respect he gave to all women.

      The only man she’d never been able to feel cynical about…at least until he’d ended her most private hopes before they’d truly begun.

      But all that was past. He needed help now, and she was the only one around.

      She stepped forward. “I’m sorry, Jim.” The words sounded stilted, even to her.

      Using only one shoulder, he shrugged. Was he blocking her off, or unable to speak about it? She didn’t know. She didn’t know him well enough to judge.

      What an ironic commentary on my life, considering I’ve known the man, been in the same circle of friends with him ten years.

      “Your real mother called?” She wanted to hit herself for the stupid question, but she had to start somewhere, and she had no idea of how to reach out to him.

      Still leaning against the tree with a balled fist, he nodded.

      What did she say from here? More inane questions to force him to talk—or did she give him the peace and space to think?

      To grieve, you mean.

      Yes, she understood that—from personal experience.

      “Um, do you want me to get Laila?” I’m no good here. I shouldn’t be involved in this.

      He didn’t answer; but in his stillness and silence, his stiff stance, she still felt the waves of need coming from him. He didn’t want to be alone; but being Jim, he didn’t know how to ask for help.

      What could she do?

      Forcing her feet to move, she walked to him, doing what Laila would have done. Reaching out to him, lifting her hand to touch his shoulder, hoping it was enough. That she was enough, because no one else had bothered to come out to see if he was all right, if he needed anything.

      Not one of Jim’s many friends had come to him.

      She frowned. Why hadn’t they come out? Jim would have done so for them—he had done it, whenever any of them needed him. Laila was the only one with a valid excuse—and she was the only one fretting over his welfare, or had even noticed his pain.

      At the touch, he turned his face and looked down at her. His eyes were shattered.

      “Oh, Jim,” she breathed. Though she was wading waist-deep in a stormy ocean of the things she’d always avoided before—vulnerability, emotional attachment to a man—she worked on an instinct she didn’t know she had, tugging him toward her.

      Wanting to comfort him.

      With a muffled sound, the tortured moan of an animal caught in a trap, he grabbed her and hauled her hard against him, dragging in ragged breaths.

      A