RYAN DENNISON wasn’t trying to avoid the inevitable confrontation, just delaying it. He circled the car park looking for an inconspicuous space from where he’d still have full view of the entrance to the clinic.

How long had it been since he’d seen Tara? He did a quick mental calculation. It was nearly eight years. Back then, he’d told her he was prepared to be there for her all the way, no matter the sacrifices. He’d had a workable plan for their future. But she’d insisted she wanted a divorce. He thought he’d found a way to overcome all their problems but he’d had no answer to her simple statement: I don’t love you any more. And she’d been right; they couldn’t stay together in a marriage without mutual love.

After several weeks of agonising self-doubt, guilt and pleading with Tara, she’d held her ground and become more distant as time went on. He knew her grief had been as gut-wrenching as his, but she hadn’t seemed to understand the anguish he’d suffered at being pushed away, at having to endure years of remorse.

Yes, he’d agreed to end their marriage, but his heart still bore the scars of being rejected by the woman he’d loved with his whole being. His attempts to contact her by e-mails and phone calls in the first few years had been ignored, as if she’d been frightened of having any communication with him. His phone calls to her home phone had always been coldly blocked by her parents, who’d told him their daughter didn’t want to talk to him, and she must have recognised his mobile number as his texts and calls went unanswered. In the end he’d stopped trying.

No one was to blame.

Well, that was what he’d kept telling himself—until the words almost lost their meaning.

But Tara’s parents didn’t believe it and he suspected Tara nursed doubts as well.

He parked the car and then glanced at his watch—four twenty-five. He’d done his homework. She finished at four-thirty but he’d come prepared for a wait. She would be busy, popular and almost certainly run overtime. Scanning the cars in the disabled section, he came to the conclusion hers would be the people-mover—the only vehicle big enough to take an electric wheelchair and be fitted with the gadgetry for a paraplegic driver.

Paraplegic … Oh, God, if only things had been different. Despite his outward calm he still had nightmares, replaying the horrors of that terrible evening. In the past week he’d woken nearly every night in a lather of torment, grief and with a vivid image of twisted metal. It was a painful reminder of how he was feeling about seeing his ex-wife again.

He took a sip of bottled water to cool the burning dryness in his throat.

He couldn’t change the past. Now he was going to be working in the same building with her he hoped she’d at least talk to him. But unless she’d had a turnaround in her personality she’d be stubborn and cling fiercely to her independence. The fact she’d finished her training and found a job was testament to her determination. She didn’t need—or want—him any more. She’d made that clear when they parted.

The guilt stabbed painfully again.

He closed his eyes for a moment and when he opened them he saw her, just as beautiful as she’d been the day he’d met her. The years had been kind to her. Her strawberry-blonde hair, streaked with gold, was cut shorter, so it fell in tapered wisps to her shoulders. He could see her arms were muscular and her shoulders a little broader than he remembered, but it didn’t detract from her femininity. Grimacing with concentration, she skilfully manoeuvred to the driver’s side of the vehicle, opened the door and positioned the wheelchair so she could haul herself into the driver’s seat. Then she smiled and said something to the young woman accompanying her, who opened the rear door and put the chair on a hoist which lifted it into the luggage space. The woman waved as she returned to the building and Tara reversed and drove slowly away.

What now?

He’d seen her. That had been pleasure, not pain. But he still had to speak to her. Tell her he was soon starting sessional work in the specialist rooms attached to her practice. What a strange turn of fate that the position of visiting orthopaedic surgeon had come up in Keysdale, of all places. As the most junior partner in his practice, without any country attachments, he’d been offered the job and been expected to take it. Initially he’d had doubts, as it would mean bringing up traumas of the past he’d thought he’d laid to rest, but after thinking long and hard he’d realised it might be a way of achieving closure to confirm Tara had no feelings for him.

And now he was back, and he didn’t want to present her with any nasty surprises like approaching her in the car park. It would have to be at her home—her parents’ home. He cringed at the thought of a reunion with the two people he’d believed had liked him and approved of his marriage to their only daughter. But after the accident they’d not bothered to hide their abhorrence of him. They’d blamed him and then callously ignored him. Or at least her father had.

If there was any other way …

He decided to have a coffee in one of the cafés in the main street, go through in his mind what he would say, and then drive the ten kilometres out of town to the Fielding farm. He couldn’t put it off any longer.

‘Is Dad still working?’ Tara asked as her mother helped her into her wheelchair.

‘Yep, but he should be here any minute. He’s been fixing fences down near the creek and said he’d finish the job after milking.’ Jane Fielding closed the back of the car and followed her daughter towards the homestead.

‘How was your day, love?’ her mother asked, as she did every afternoon when Tara came home from work. Tara loved her mother dearly, but sometimes felt smothered by her protectiveness and yearned for a home of her own.

But Tara was realistic; leaving the family home wasn’t practical. She’d need a purpose-built unit and help from an able-bodied person for things that most people took for granted—like transferring to her chair, shopping in a supermarket, hanging out washing or gaining access to immediate help in an emergency. Of course there were ways around these difficulties, but even the most basic tasks took longer when you were confined to a wheelchair. She’d have to rethink her schedule to incorporate cooking, housework, washing and ironing—all the things her mother did without complaint. Her life wasn’t perfect, but it was a better option than moving out on her own. She was used to the routine. And her parents had made sacrifices, including nearly losing the farm, to cater for her needs and extra expenses in the early years. She would probably never be able to repay them.

‘Oh, you know—the same as usual; nothing out of the ordinary.’ She parked next to the kitchen bench where her mother began preparing a late afternoon tea.

A moment later she heard the sound of her father’s boots being flung into the corner of the veranda near the back door.

‘I’m home,’ he shouted unnecessarily. You’d have to be deaf as a farm gate not to notice his comings and goings. Her mother always said it was a man thing—slamming doors, throwing things like a ball to a hoop and stomping around like an army major.

‘We’re in the kitchen. Tara’s just come home and I’m making tea.’

‘Rightio.’

Tara laughed. The word was so old-fashioned but suited her father perfectly.

Jane put fresh-brewed tea and a plate of orange cake on the bench as Graham Fielding entered the room.

‘Have you washed your hands?’ Tara’s mother was quick to ask—as she always did when Graham came in from working on the farm.

‘Yes, I’ve washed my hands,’ he said as he held them up for inspection, before kissing Tara on her forehead. ‘How’s my best girl?’

Tara frowned. She hated the way her father often treated her as if she was still his little girl.