Unlocking the Rebel's Heart

by Alison Roberts

  Yes...she was living her dream. But it was one she would have to wake up from, wasn’t it? Because Ben wasn’t living his? He’d had a taste of what he really wanted to be doing with his life yesterday when he’d been working with the air rescue crew. But, then again, there was the way he’d looked at her only minutes ago. As if there was nothing more in the world he could want. Was she brave enough to try and find out whether he might have changed his mind about his ‘type’? About her?

  ‘Zac offered to sell me this cottage today,’ she told Ben. ‘Doc Donaldson is going to finally retire and he says there’ll be a permanent job for me here if I want it.’

  ‘Don’s retiring?’

  ‘He’s excited about being a full-time grandpa. Liv came home today with baby Hugo and she’s going to need lots of support, with Milly to look after, as well. She popped into the hospital on her way and you should have seen Betty. She was having to dry her eyes with her apron.’

  ‘Do you think you’ll stay?’

  ‘I’m certainly going to give it a lot of thought.’ JJ looked up at where the dramatic colour in the sky was fading into a much fainter pink. ‘I’m happier here than I ever thought I would be. I actually feel like a completely different person than I was when I arrived.’

  ‘I was just thinking that myself not so long ago.’

  Ben’s smile was so tender it almost hurt. JJ had to drop her gaze because it felt as if she might reveal far too much. There was something else she wanted to tell him, though.

  ‘I rang my gran last night. Treating someone like Glenys who’s the same sort of age always makes me think of her, of course, but I was also thinking about what I’d told you—that my parents’ accident didn’t bother me because I was too young to remember it.’

  She could feel Ben’s steady gaze on her. ‘But it did?’

  ‘Not in the way you might think. But I did start to wonder later how different my life might have been if they hadn’t died. How different I might have been. I think my grandparents wrapped me up in cotton wool because they’d been so devastated that they’d lost their only child. I learned to be scared of anything that might hurt me and make them unhappy. In a different life, I might have been a lot braver.’

  ‘You are brave.’ Ben’s voice was little more than a whisper. ‘The woman that followed me down that ladder yesterday and climbed inside the back of a van that was being held up by rocks and a couple of steel cables is one of the bravest people I’ve ever met.’

  There was a lump in JJ’s throat as she finally met Ben’s gaze, which threatened to stop her being able to breathe properly. Oh, dear Lord...she wasn’t in danger of falling in love with this man, was she? The fall had already happened but the landing had been so painless she hadn’t even noticed. She had to look away before Ben saw something that might make him run. Had to change the direction this conversation was going.

  ‘My gran was so horrified when I told her about doing that.’ JJ even managed a chuckle. ‘She didn’t quite say, “You’re as bad as your mother,” but I could hear her thinking it.’

  Ben was smiling as he pulled her into his arms. ‘I’d like to have met your mother,’ he said. ‘And I’m quite sure your dad adored her. But you do realise you might have grown up being called Journey, don’t you?’

  JJ was laughing now as he kissed her. ‘You’d better make sure you don’t break your promise.’

  ‘What promise?’

  ‘That my real name is our secret.’

  ‘Why would I break it?’

  ‘Because my gran has decided to come and see where I’m living. She’s arriving next week. I suspect she wants to persuade me to go home to a place where camper vans don’t drive off cliffs. She was the one who decided I had to be called by my middle name because my first name was so appalling so you’ll have something in common. You just can’t talk about it, that’s all.’

  But Ben was clearly thinking about something else as he kissed her again, his lips soft against hers, issuing an invitation JJ knew she had no hope of resisting any longer.

  ‘Next week?’ he murmured as he finally broke the kiss. ‘That’s only a few days away.’

  ‘Mmm...’

  JJ could still taste that kiss but she wanted more. She ran her tongue slowly over her bottom lip to capture the memory and, because she hadn’t broken the eye contact with Ben, she could see the moment that passion ignited. She wrapped her arms around his neck as he got to his feet with her in his arms.

  ‘We’d better make the most of having this place to ourselves, then, hadn’t we?’

  * * *

  It wasn’t that Ben was deliberately avoiding meeting JJ’s grandmother when she came to Cutler’s Creek the following week.

  He was just busy, that was all.

  As always, if he wasn’t already up because of an emergency callout, he was out of bed the moment his alarm sounded, and he started several days a week with a workout that had evolved over the last year or two to become a fitness session for quite a few locals because there was no gym or instructors in town. He would meet Bruce and Mike and others in the local rugby field for a vigorous warmup and then a run, and by the time he’d showered and had his breakfast it was time to start work.

  Normally, some days were very quiet compared to others but Ben preferred to be cruising around if that was the case, rather than sitting on station and twiddling his thumbs. He had a few regulars in town that he could check on, like Albert Flewellan, who was still getting used to having a home oxygen supply and monitoring his lung function, and Bert, who was almost as old as Albie and had angina that had been stable for years but he still needed reminding to use his GTN spray before he started mowing his lawns or digging the vegetable garden to avoid a frightening episode of chest pain that required an emergency ambulance call. If Mike or some of the other guys were at the fire station, it was good to call in there as well to have a yarn and plan some new training sessions.

  This week, however, Ben didn’t have to employ his usual strategies to stave off the slightest hint of boredom because there seemed to be a sudden spike in callouts. An eight-year-old boy had fallen out of a tree in the school playground and given himself concussion. Two girls came off their ponies when they were out for a ride and one of them had broken her wrist. He had a hypoglycaemic episode of a young diabetic man and a long trip to a farm on the edge of the area he covered to a nasty accident where a farm bike had rolled on a hill. The helicopter had had to be called in for that job and Ben had been away from town for the whole afternoon.

  He’d almost forgotten that JJ’s mother was in town, in fact, when he spotted an elderly woman on the other side of the road from the ambulance station when he drove in after a cruising session on Friday afternoon. He knew she wasn’t local, of course, but Cutler’s Creek was a picturesque enough country town to persuade tourists to stop for a while. They liked to take pictures of the old, stone church, read the names on the war memorial in the main street or have lunch in the beer garden at the pub. Not many of them wandered as far as the ambulance station, though, or stopped to sit on the bench seat that happened to be there because it had once been a bus stop.

  Ben parked the ambulance in the garage and wandered across the road. ‘Are you all right, love?’ he asked. ‘Not lost, are you?’

  ‘No... I’m just out for a walk. I thought I’d go and have a look at that gift shop I went past the other day.’

  ‘The Crafty Corner?’ Ben smiled. ‘It’s well worth a visit. People around these parts still knit tea cosies.’

  ‘It’s a bit further than I thought it would be.’ The woman sighed. ‘I just stopped to give my feet a bit of a rest.’

  ‘How far have you come?’

  ‘From the hospital.’

  ‘That’s quite a walk.’ Ben was looking at the woman more carefully now. ‘You weren’t there because you were sick, were you?’

&
nbsp; ‘Oh, no... I went out to lunch with Dr Donaldson and I was just filling in time until my granddaughter finished her work and we could go home.’

  Finally, Ben clicked. ‘You’re JJ’s grandmother, aren’t you? Pleased to meet you. I’m Ben.’ Would JJ have said anything to her grandmother about him? About them? No. Ben brushed the thought away. Why would she? It wasn’t as if they were in the kind of relationship where you got introduced to family members.

  ‘I’m Shona Hamilton.’ The look Ben was getting made him feel as if he’d misbehaved in some way. ‘Why on earth does everyone here call her “JJ”? What’s wrong with being called “Joy”?’

  ‘Nothing at all.’ Ben couldn’t help his grin as he lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. ‘It’s a lot better than being called “Journey”, though, isn’t it?’

  Shona Hamilton’s eyes widened and then narrowed into a sharp gaze.

  ‘Joy never tells anybody her real name. How did you find out?’

  ‘Can’t say,’ Ben said. ‘I’m sworn to secrecy and I’m an extremely trustworthy person.’

  Shona’s face softened into the kind of creases only a woman in their eighties can collect and her smile was slow and genuine.

  ‘I think I like you, Ben Marshall,’ she said. ‘We’ll keep this our little secret, too, shall we?’

  ‘No worries. Now, would you like me to get you a glass of water? Or take you into town in my ambulance to save your feet?’

  ‘No, no... I’ll just sit here for a moment longer and I’ll be absolutely fine. It’s not exactly a hardship, is it, with that amazing view of the mountains? I’m starting to understand why Joy loves this place so much. Did you know she’s thinking of staying here for ever?’

  ‘I did hear that she was thinking about it.’

  ‘That charming Dr Donaldson told me at lunch that they’re very much hoping to persuade her to stay. He even suggested me moving here myself. Can you imagine that?’

  Actually, Ben could imagine that. Shona Hamilton would fit right in amongst the older characters in this community and it would be the perfect place to spend the last years of one’s life. He would probably drift back here to live himself, sometime in the future, when he’d had his fill of adventures. Who wouldn’t want to sit on a bench like this, on a quiet street, soaking up the sheer pleasure of looking at mountain peaks like theirs?

  He and his nan used to sit like this, at the top of the steps on the edge of their veranda, and they’d gaze at a very similar mountain view. His earliest memories were of being cuddled in her lap as she’d sat and watched a sunset but, as he’d got older, they would sit side by side. They wouldn’t say much, if anything at all. He’d lean his head on her shoulder, even when he’d got to be a teenager and would have died of embarrassment if any of his mates had seen him, because that had been his happy place. His refuge. The place where he’d known he was loved the most by the person he loved the most. His nan. The one person who had ever really wanted him.

  He’d missed sitting with her, so, so much. He’d only been fifteen when she’d died suddenly but his mother had been living in Australia for years by then. She’d sold his nan’s house and used the money to pack him off to a boarding school and then university so that she could finally abdicate a responsibility she’d never wanted in the first place.

  And here he was, with someone who was about the same age as his nan would have been, and she wasn’t someone familiar enough to have been slotted somewhere safe, like into the compartment of a patient he could focus on treating or someone who had a clearly defined role, like Betty at the hospital. To him, Shona was JJ’s grandma. Someone who’d raised a child of her child.

  Just like his nan.

  And...and Ben could feel a lump in his throat that he’d never sat still long enough to feel since...for ever ago. Since he’d been about fifteen, in fact. He couldn’t sit still any longer, either. He was on his feet before he’d even processed the thought.

  ‘I’ll have to go,’ he said. ‘There’s a patient I forgot to check on when I was out and about before. Are you sure I can’t drop you into town? Or back at the hospital, maybe?’

  ‘No, thanks, love. I can manage the rest of the walk into town and Joy will come and pick me up when she’s finished work.’ She got to her feet, picking up an old-fashioned handbag from the seat beside her and Ben realised she was just about as short as his nan had been. The white curls on Shona’s head barely reached above his elbow. She was smiling up at him. ‘Don’t forget...’ she warned.

  ‘Forget what?’ Ben was already moving—the need to find something to distract himself almost overwhelming.

  ‘Our little secret.’ Shona tapped her nose. ‘About Joy...?’ Her smile widened as Ben turned back. ‘Or perhaps I should remember to say JJ? I get the feeling she likes her new name as much as this place and all her new friends.’ Already faded blue eyes were looking distinctly misty now. ‘I worry about her. I always have and always will. But she’s happy and that’s all you ever want for someone you love, isn’t it?’

  * * *

  ‘So... I hear you met my gran the other day?’

  ‘It was supposed to be our little secret.’ Ben put the newspaper wrapped parcel of fish and chips he had picked up from Cutler’s Creek’s only takeaway on the kitchen bench of JJ’s cottage. ‘It’s a thing I have with Hamilton women.’

  JJ laughed. ‘You certainly made an impression. She only told me about meeting you when we were on our way to Queenstown this afternoon so she could get her flight home. She said you were a very “charming young man”.’

  ‘And did you agree with her?’ Ben was smiling down at JJ, loving the way she held his glance, her eyes dancing with amusement—or perhaps just the pleasure of seeing him again.

  ‘I didn’t dare say anything. I think she guessed that there was something going on between us. I don’t think she would have believed me if I’d told her we were just good friends, so it was safer not to say anything.’

  The shaft of disappointment that JJ would describe their connection as simply a friendship came from nowhere. Or maybe it went deeper than that and it was a fear that he might be missing out on something important in life but, whatever it was, it had no right to appear at all. It wasn’t as if Ben wanted anything more than a good friendship with JJ. Heaven forbid...he had always run a mile when any woman had got ‘serious’. The beat of silence between them made him think he was expected to say something himself but JJ was still smiling up at him and she was the one who broke the silence.

  ‘She liked you a lot. Which is possibly why she warned me off.’

  ‘What?’ Ben’s eyebrows shot up. ‘And there I was thinking we’d bonded for life, your gran and me.’

  JJ was laughing. ‘She said she suspected you were a “bit wild”.’

  ‘A bit wild, huh?’ Ben pulled JJ closer.

  It had been too long since he’d kissed this woman, what with her having a visitor in the cottage all week. And what better way to dismiss that odd feeling that he might be missing out on anything. This was everything that any man could possibly want—a gorgeous woman and the best sex ever with no strings attached.

  An almost desperate desire to sink into that delicious distraction didn’t mean he couldn’t take his time, though, with a gentle, teasing touch of his lips on hers. A tiny flick of his tongue on her lower lip as she pressed closer, her body melting against his as she wrapped her arms around his neck. He loved the way she did that. And the way her eyes drifted shut as she tilted her head back, as though all she wanted to focus on was this moment.

  This kiss...

  If he turned up the heat, they would be in her bed in no time flat. How was it that he’d completely lost track of how many times they’d made love over the last weeks but it still felt just as thrilling as that very first time in that mountain hut? No, that wasn’t quite true, was it? It felt better. Just as
exciting but there was a different dimension to it that he couldn’t quite name. Safety, perhaps? Because they knew each other’s bodies so intimately now but, instead of creating boundaries, it provided a foundation that was safe enough to keep exploring. To find a new touch or rhythm or level of closeness that seemed to suggest being with JJ could never, ever get boring.

  Maybe trust was the word he was looking for?

  Not that an accurate analysis was needed. Ben just knew how to play the heat level like a well-tuned instrument now and a crescendo would be all the more satisfying if they waited a while to enjoy the anticipation. Besides, he’d missed lunch today.

  ‘I’m starving,’ he confessed, breaking the kiss before desire could obliterate anything other physical need. ‘And I’d hate for Cutler’s Creek’s best battered cod and chips to go soggy.’

  JJ’s hand slid from his neck to the front of his chest and pushed gently as if she needed a boost to move away from him. ‘Make some space on the table,’ she told him. ‘I’ll get the bread and butter so you can have your chippie sandwiches.’

  The pile of stuff on the table suggested that JJ had had trouble finding something in her shoulder bag. It reminded Ben of that first day he’d met her and how he’d known how rattled she’d been because she was a neat freak but she’d just emptied the contents of her bag onto the table. He’d also known that he had been the one to help push her well out of any comfort zone by arriving with that lamb in the box.

  He would have taken it away again if he’d thought she couldn’t cope—he’d just wanted to tease her a bit. In retrospect, however, he knew that he’d liked being the reason she’d been rattled. He’d teased her because it had been a safe way to play with what was a totally inappropriate attraction. He might have believed he didn’t want anything to do with the new locum doctor on a personal level but, deep down, his body—or soul—had recognised something very different.

  There was an old, lumpy envelope amongst the collection of things like hand cream and tissue packs and a lipstick or two. It wasn’t sealed so he could see that it was stuffed full of photographs as he picked it up. JJ reached past him to put down the board with a mound of freshly sliced bread.