Page 8 of The Daddy She Needed

Smiling, he rolled over, switched the light back on, fished the photo out and looked at it, tracing the contours of her face with his fingers. Wishing he could touch her for real. She was so young there, just twenty years old. So full of life, hope and happiness had danced in her eyes. It had been taken two months before she’d moved away.

Looking at the photo now, he remembered the way the sunlight had sparkled in her golden hair, the wind lifting it gently, as she rode. He remembered the way they’d walked hand in hand, his long strides automatically shortening to match hers.

Why had she contacted him now? She needed him, he could tell that much. She needed him to steady her, to comfort her, to be her rock, just as he’d used to be. He remembered all the times she’d come to the stables upset, crying against his chest before she saddled up her horse. He didn’t know much about it, she never said a lot, but he knew her childhood had not been a happy one. The stables had been her escape. And now, by the sounds of things, she’d been through the wringer again.

He sighed deeply, wishing he’d contacted her years ago. He could have saved her so much heartache and pain. He’d certainly thought about her enough, off and on, but he’d never reached out. Partly because he figured she’d be married with a family by now; she’d made no secret of the fact she wanted kids. But partly, he’d been afraid. The Olympics had been the most important thing to him and she’d had to take second place. He’d known that if he’d gotten in touch, she would have had to come first. And he would’ve had to give up on his dream. So he’d tried to forget her, tried to move on, but he’d never been able to. There were just too many shared memories for him to erase her from his mind completely. How did you ever forget the first woman you gave your heart to?

So now she was back in his life and there was no way he could let her go again. He didn’t know if he could be what she needed, but he wanted to try. And he knew, if he ever met the bastard who had caused her so much pain, he would kill him.

CHAPTER2

“Catherine!”

The desperation in the mournful tone jolted Catherine awake and she looked around urgently, blinking in the darkness to see who was calling her. She reached out to turn on the bedside lamp, the single bulb casting a golden glow over the bed, chasing the shadows from the corners.

There was nobody there.

“It’s just a dream,” she whispered, trying to calm her racing pulse. “A dream. It’s happened before.” And that was true; it had. But that fact didn’t make it any less disconcerting. No matter how many times it happened, being woken up out of a deep sleep by an imaginary being calling her name never failed to terrify her.

Sitting up in bed, she took a few deep breaths, shaking away the sleep-induced confusion. “I haven’t had that dream in months!” she mumbled. “And now it’s back. What’s going on?”

She’d dreamed about the little stone hut in the middle of nowhere forever. It had a tin roof and was surrounded by mountains. It was incredibly vivid and realistic, yet she couldn’t remember ever going there. Even as a child, she’d seen the hut in her dreams. Sometimes a man with a big bushy beard would be standing in the doorway of the hut, but in her dreams she only ever saw him from a distance, and she didn’t know who he was. He wasn’t familiar to her; he wasn’t someone she knew. So why was he calling her name? Why was he calling her so loudly, in that desperate, searching tone, so loud that he woke her up? Who was he and what did he want with her?

Throwing back the covers, Catherine got out of bed and padded to the kitchen to make a hot drink. She’d never be able to sleep now.

As she flicked the kettle on to make a coffee to try to ease the throbbing fuzziness in her head, the mournful tone still echoed in her brain, haunting her.

The dream had shaken her, more than she wanted to admit. And it had come out of the blue, after months without it. When she’d still been with Steve, it had been an almost nightly occurrence, and it had driven Steve wild. He’d thought she was crazy because of it, and wanted to have her committed.Normal people don’t wake up every single night from a dream, he told her repeatedly.They don’t wake up adamant some imaginary person that they could only see in their dreams was calling them. It was stress, he’d insisted. Stress that she didn’t know how to manage. A little holiday away would be good for her. He hadn’t meant going away on a holiday, though. No tropical island vacations or Caribbean cruises for her. He’d meant a lengthy stay inside the walls of a mental institution. He’d meant having her committed.Just as well I wasn’t born a hundred years ago, she thought bitterly.Because that’s exactly where I would be.

And the more he’d said those words, the more she had started to believe they might be true, and the more frequently she’d had the dream until she couldn’t have a full night’s sleep without it.

But it hadn’t always been that way. The early years of her marriage had been completely dream-free. That particular dream, anyway. She hadn’t dreamt of the hut in so long that it was easy for her to forget she’d ever been plagued by it.

And then she’d had the miscarriage. The dreams had started again that very night, and that was when everything had started to fall apart.

“The bastard blamed me!” she snarled angrily, slamming the cutlery drawer shut with a bang. She slammed the teaspoon onto the benchtop equally as hard, rage running through her as she remembered her ex-husband’s vile words.You’re so bloody useless you can’t even stay pregnant.

He’d hidden his blame well, at first. But by the second miscarriage, the strain was starting to show. And after the third one, that was when he really got nasty. For some reason, he seemed to be convinced that it was all her fault. And when they stopped trying, because she couldn’t take the heartbreak of losing much-wanted babies anymore, he blamed her for that, too. Of course he showed a different persona out in public. In their restaurant kitchen, working with the other chefs, chatting to customers, he was a completely different person.

“They all thought he was so lovely,” she complained bitterly to the kettle as she poured freshly boiled water into her mug. “But he wasn’t, he was an asshole.” Even now, all this time later, she still got worked up thinking about it.

Tears of sadness and frustration streamed down her face as she remembered how hard it had been to hide her pain behind a false smile, as she’d carried plates and poured drinks all night long. None of the customers, even the regular ones, had any idea of how badly she’d been hurting. But the huge effort she’d made in hiding her emotions had taken a toll, exhausting her from the inside out.

Her sister knew, though. The darling woman had been her rock, as much as she could from the other side of the Tasman, anyway. Emma had been living in Sydney for years, married with children, but they’d always remained close. They were twins; Emma had been the eldest by three minutes and she’d taken her responsibilities as eldest sister very seriously.

Just after the second miscarriage, hoping to distract her, Emma had sent Catherine copies of their family tree that she had been researching. She’d managed to trace one line of their family all the way back to three generations before their ancestors first arrived in New Zealand—way back to England in the early 1700s. One particular branch of the tree had been highlighted in hot pink ink—Emma’s favourite colour.Look at this!had been scrawled down the side in pink glitter pen in Emma’s messy cursive hand. Twin girls—Catherine and Emma Craig—had been born in England in 1860. Emma Craig was their great-great-great-grandmother—Emma had traced the lineage all the way through. Catherine Craig had left England’s shores in 1884 and had seemingly disappeared off the face of the earth. Emma hadn’t been able to find any more information about her at all. No recorded children. No marriage certificate, no death certificate. Nothing.Wonder what happened to Catherine?Emma had scrawled down the other side, the writing going the wrong way, reading from the bottom of the page to the top. Catherine remembered having to tilt the paper to read it properly, smiling at the large, untidy letters. Neatness had never been one of Emma’s priorities, and the erratic, rounded handwriting fit Emma’s flamboyant personality perfectly.

They’d searched together, in their quest to discover what had happened to Catherine Craig, but kept coming up blank. Hours spent poring through various genealogy and old newspaper websites had been a welcome distraction from the heartbreak of the miscarriages, but it had also signalled the demise of her marriage.What are you bothering with that shit for?Steve had snarled every time he’d walked past her, when she’d been scrolling through her laptop, searching for clues.It’s ancient history, it doesn’t matter.And it probably didn’t, to Steve. But it did to her. For some reason she didn’t fully understand, she had an almost obsessive need to find out what had happened to Catherine Craig.

It was at that time—immediately after reading the family tree—that the man had started calling to her in her dream, startling her out of a deep sleep, leaving her frightened and shaking. Being woken nearly every night by a dream had, of course, made Steve worse.You’re a lunatic, he’d told her.A useless lunatic. Worthless. There’s something wrong with you.His cruel words rang in her ears as she carried her coffee back to bed.

She picked up her phone, intending to email Jason and tell him about the dream. But fear held her back. He’d think she was crazy, too. She’d had the same dream when she was a child, but without the man calling her name. Back then, she’d only dreamed of the hut, and although it had been recurring, she’d never woken up terrified, drenched in sweat, her heart pounding, convinced someone was in the room, like she had when she’d been married to Steve.

“Oh, what the hell,” she muttered, as she brought up the email app.

To: Jason Oliver

From: Catherine Richardson

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