‘Gran gave me those. At the airport. She said she thought I might need some family stuff around if I’m wondering whether to stay here for ever.’
‘May I look?’
JJ’s eyebrows rose. ‘You’re asking permission?’
‘It’s a private sort of thing.’
‘Oh...yeah...like a passport?’
So he wasn’t the only one to get flashbacks of the first time they’d met? Interesting... There was no reprimand in JJ’s tone, however. It was more like a private joke about what had led to a pact to keep a secret. That first baby step they’d taken towards a connection, and a friendship that might not be ‘serious’ but it was certainly more significant than anything Ben had ever experienced before in his life.
Because...yes...trust was the word he’d been searching for.
They trusted each other. They were on the same page about enjoying what they had together with no expectations of anything permanent. Quite the opposite, in fact, and maybe that was why it was always so good to be together, because they were both making the most of every moment while it lasted.
It was a rare night off for both of them at the same time so they opened a bottle of wine. Ben flattened chunky pieces of fried potato between his slices of buttered bread and they broke off generous servings of delicious fish fillets in crispy batter to eat with their fingers. They had to wipe their hands as they spread the photographs from the envelope over the table in front of them.
‘Most of these I’ve never seen,’ JJ told Ben. ‘They were part of the only belongings that got packed up and taken back to New Zealand when my grandparents came to get me—and my father’s body. Gran said she was sorry. She should have given them to me long ago.’
‘What happened to your mother’s body?’
‘She’s buried somewhere in the south of France. I got the impression that her family blamed my father for the accident as much as my family blamed her.’
‘So you’ve never met your mother’s family?’
JJ shook her head. ‘I’ve always wanted to go but...well, I knew how much it would upset my grandparents. Even falling off my pony when I was seven frightened Gran so much I stopped my riding lessons and that was my favourite thing to be doing.’ She shook her head. ‘And, yeah... I know it’s a bit pathetic but I was so focused on med school and then life just got so busy and... I just haven’t made it to the other side of the world yet. One day...’
Ben stilled for a moment, his heart giving a peculiar squeeze. The words were on the tip of his tongue but something stopped him from saying them aloud.
We could do that one day... I’ll come with you... It’d be fun, wouldn’t it?
Maybe it was that squeeze tightening a notch or two that squashed the words so they didn’t emerge. He couldn’t make a promise he might not be able to keep because he would hate himself if he hurt someone who was such a genuinely nice person. He could imagine JJ as a small girl, taking on the responsibility of trying to keep her grandmother happy because she cared that much. Enough to make sure she followed all the rules and kept herself and the people she loved as safe as she possibly could.
But there was another part of the real JJ, wasn’t there? And maybe Ben was the first person to have seen the brave, adventurous side of her. Looking at these old snapshots of a young couple making the most of life—plastered with tomatoes in La Tomitina festival in Spain, dancing in the rain at Glastonbury, walking in a lavender field in Provence—he could see who she’d probably inherited her adventurous streak from. She was definitely her mother’s daughter.
‘Your gran would have said your mum was a “bit wild”, too, I guess?’
‘Oh, absolutely. It was the biggest reprimand I could get as a kid. Nobody had to say it. They’d just look at me—sort of surprised and disappointed at the same time—and I’d know they were thinking that I was just like my mother and that it wasn’t a good thing to be.’
‘You look so like her.’ Ben wiped his fingers again and then picked up the photograph of her parents dancing in the rain. With drooping flowers in her waist-length dark hair that was loose and totally soaked, wearing denim dungarees with nothing but a bra beneath them, she must have been frozen but he’d never seen such a look of joy on someone’s face as she looked up at the tall, young man whose hands she was holding. And he was looking just as happy. Just as utterly in love with life and the person he’d found to share it with.
‘I probably was conceived at that festival.’ JJ was grinning. ‘You were spot on when you guessed but I didn’t want to give you the satisfaction of being right.’
‘Is that where they met?’
‘Yes. My father had gone to a conference in London. He’d just finished his double degree with honours—in law and accountancy—and my grandfather had already changed the letterhead for his legal firm to be Hamilton and Hamilton but some people he met at the conference were going to the festival for the weekend and he got invited to tag along. My mum, Celine, was singing there and they somehow met each other and that was that. My dad...never came back. I’m sure he meant to. Eventually.’
‘I’m not surprised they wanted time to just be together,’ Ben said softly. ‘They look so much in love.’
‘They do, don’t they? I like to think that they were that happy. It’s not something everyone finds in life, is it?’
There was an odd note in JJ’s voice. Something so poignant it brought a lump to Ben’s throat and made him want to offer comfort. To tell her that she would find that kind of love one day herself. Why wouldn’t she? Who wouldn’t want to be with someone as beautiful and intelligent and courageous as JJ?
She was gathering up the photographs now. Stuffing them back into that old envelope. And then she started clearing the table and Ben could recognise that need to be busy to stop thinking about something that caused some kind of pain and he knew he could help.
He knew exactly how to distract JJ. And, as a bonus, it was exactly what he wanted most in the world himself right now. He got to his feet and went to where she was standing in front of the sink. He turned off the tap and took the dish brush out of her hands. Without saying anything, he smoothed tiny, stray tresses of hair away from her face and then held her head between his hands as he bent to kiss her.
And, this time, the gentle teasing with his lips and tongue swiftly morphed into something that both offered and demanded complete focus. He meant business, and, when he slid his hands down the length of JJ’s body a minute or two later to pull her hips closer to his own, she would be in no doubt what that business was all about. It seemed like she more than welcomed the distraction and the task of tidying up and washing plates was abandoned without a second thought for either of them. It could wait. Until the morning, even, because Ben couldn’t imagine wanting to leave JJ’s bed any time soon.
There was only so long that even the most passionate lovemaking could last, mind you, and at some point considerably later Ben found himself with JJ in his arms, feeling her heart rate slowly decrease and hearing her breathing return to a resting soft sigh. Her skin was warm against his. His lips were being tickled by her hair as he pressed a kiss to her head and the scent of her was filling his nostrils. She was so quiet that Ben wondered if she was falling asleep but her muscle tone told him that she was still awake. She was just...being with him...
Slowly—so slowly that Ben hardly noticed it happening—he could feel himself slipping into a space that he’d been reminded of very recently thanks to that encounter with JJ’s grandmother.
That space of just being with someone that you loved and that you were loved by. A sense that all was right with the world. That pure joy could be as simple as just sitting still with that person. Being with them...body and soul...
It was why Ben had never let himself sit still ever since his nan had died, wasn’t it? Because, if he did, he would remember how it felt to love and be loved like t
hat. And he would have to remember the devastation of losing that kind of love. He’d never let himself get close enough to anyone to be in danger of facing that kind of loss ever again but...
But he was in very real danger of falling in love with JJ Hamilton.
He could feel it hovering. A force that had the power to push him over that particular cliff and create the fall. And he couldn’t let it happen because he would lose before he’d even attempted to win. This had never been meant to happen. Part of that trust he had with JJ was because he’d felt safe. Had that feeling of safety meant that he’d let down his guard and that closeness had grown without him even noticing it?
But neither of them were anything like each other’s ‘type’ and they’d both agreed they were incompatible and it could never work long term. JJ had made it crystal clear that this connection was only temporary and he’d been totally on board. He just had to live up to his end of the bargain, now. For both their sakes. And, for the sake of a friendship that they might be able to keep for ever, if he didn’t ruin it by suggesting it could be something more.
So much more, it felt like it could be everything—more than he’d ever had before, and that was a terrifying thought because he already knew what it was like to lose something huge. How hard it had been to build a new life and to find something that he could be passionate about but still keep himself safe. He’d found that in his work. Never in a person because he knew when he was stepping into dangerous territory and he knew so well how to retreat or change direction, it had become automatic. How had he ventured further than ever before into that forbidden space without an alarm sounding?
It was sounding now, however, loudly enough to scare Ben into action despite it feeling oddly hard to breathe suddenly and that it was taking an astonishing amount of effort to force his body to move.
He pressed another kiss to JJ’s hair. Took another breath just to drink in what he knew was going to be the last intimate scent of this amazing woman.
‘Gotta go,’ he whispered. ‘Early start tomorrow.’
‘Okay...’
He knew JJ was watching him as he pulled his clothes back on but he didn’t turn back. Not until he was at her bedroom door and even then it was only for a heartbeat.
‘’Night, JJ... Sleep well...’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
IT HAD BEEN the most perfect night of JJ’s life.
She had woken up the next morning knowing that something had changed. Something amazing. Something that had the promise of making the rest of her life as perfect as it could possibly be?
She was still thinking about it when she went to give Shaun his container full of sheep nuts for breakfast, just as the sun was rising and the first light was kissing the mountaintops in the distance with a promise of it becoming a glorious spring morning. How could it not be a gorgeous day when it felt like JJ was floating an inch or two off the ground? Happier than she’d ever felt in her life?
That moment, when Ben had tried to protect her from dealing with the camper van crash and she’d felt that touch on her soul that had warned her that she was falling in love with him had been one-sided. Last night had made her feel as if there was more to it than simply a touch. That there was a kind of filament attached to that place that had been touched and it was being held on the other end by Ben. She could believe that what she was feeling wasn’t one-sided any longer. He might not be ready to accept it, but it was there.
Maybe it had been something in his eyes when she’d told him that her grandmother was suspicious there was something more than friendship going on between them—as if he wanted that to be true but was afraid of admitting it? It had been her turn to feel protective then, and it had been no hardship to respond to that... oh, so distracting kiss.
Or perhaps it had happened when he’d been looking at that photo. That note in his voice when he’d commented on how much in love her parents looked had almost brought her to tears. She could hear a poignancy that suggested he was looking at perfection in a relationship that he never expected to find for himself.
Maybe JJ hadn’t expected it, either. She most certainly hadn’t expected to find it with someone like Ben Marshall—the kind of rule-bending, charismatic, maverick bad boy that she’d been brought up to believe that getting too close to would only lead to trouble. Or worse...
But wasn’t that exactly how she’d found what she’d been searching for?
This chapter of JJ’s life had all begun because her relationship with Ian had died a natural death. Because he’d let her know that she was possibly the most boring person on earth. Because she’d been left wondering if was doing something wrong in the way she was living her life and that she might be missing out on something that was very, very important. As crucial as the real meaning of life, even?
Coming to Cutler’s Creek had indeed changed her life. Changed her. Or, rather, meeting Ben Marshall had.
He’d given her a new name right from the start which, with the benefit of hindsight, JJ could see as pretty much an invitation to discover who she really was. Joy, the good girl? Or JJ, who might actually be a bit wild and adventurous, just like her mother had been?
He’d challenged her, physically and emotionally, to get fitter and to learn new things that she’d never considered relevant before. To become at least a more interesting person, if not a markedly better version of herself.
And he’d shown her what passion was all about. More than ever before in her life, JJ was missing having a mother. No, not ‘a’ mother. Her mother. So that she could have talked about how she was feeling right now with someone who had, apparently, lived life in a way that gave her the kind of joy—and love—that was precisely what JJ had feared she’d was never going to experience.
Talking to Shaun the sheep wasn’t going to be helpful in any way at all but JJ found herself doing it anyway. Perhaps it made how she was feeling more real by hearing the words spoken aloud?
‘I’m in love with him,’ she told Shaun, as she moved his post so that he could enjoy fresh grass for the day. ‘Yeah... I know he’s a bad boy but, you know what?’
Shaun nudged her hand, looking for more food, but JJ pretended it was because he wanted the answer to that question. She was smiling as she leaned closer, checking that his collar was comfortable.
‘I reckon I’ve got a bit of bad girl in me. Deep down and you know what that means?’
Shaun had started eating grass. He wasn’t interested, but JJ was going to tell him anyway. Because she had to tell someone.
‘It means we’re soul mates. And I think that Ben knows that, too. He just needs a bit of time to get used to the idea.’
Yes...it had been the most perfect night. Or almost the most perfect night because it would have been even better if she’d fallen asleep in Ben’s arms and they’d woken up together this morning. That didn’t really bother her because he’d never stayed a whole night. Yet. He probably thought he was protecting her reputation in Cutler’s Creek or that he didn’t want to disturb her sleep with the kind of pre-dawn start that let him have a workout with his fitness group before starting a shift at the ambulance station at seven a.m.
Maybe that was why JJ didn’t see it coming. And why what happened only a couple of days later was so shocking.
* * *
He hadn’t intended to tell her like this, in front of a whole bunch of people.
It just happened.
Because he’d only had the phone call the evening before and all the people who needed to know what was about to happen were all in the same place at the same time.
Cutler’s Creek Hospital’s kitchen.
Betty had outdone herself making a morning tea to welcome Zac Cameron back to work full time and to celebrate his family being together again. His gorgeous wife, Liv, had baby Hugo in her arms and the adorable two-year-old Milly was being held up by her grandfather so that she could ch
oose a treat from the laden table.
‘What about a lamington, Milly? Or a sausage roll?’
‘No. That one...’ A small finger was pointing to a platter right in front of Ben.
‘A girl after my own heart.’ Ben picked up two warm triangles of cheese toastie. ‘Here you go, sweetheart. One for you and one for me.’
The staff on duty, including nurses, cleaners and the receptionist, were balancing cups of tea and paper serviettes laden with food but there were lots of other people as well, like Bruce and Mike and many of the volunteers that gave their time to both the ambulance and fire services. Don Donaldson, the man who’d followed in his father’s footsteps as the local doctor and who’d kept Cutler’s Creek Hospital going despite threats of closure, had just given a speech to welcome Zac back and to express his profound relief that their family was reunited.
‘I never dreamed my life could be this wonderful,’ he told everyone. ‘All those years ago I thought I’d hit the jackpot, just getting a locum to come to Cutler’s Creek for a while, when Zac arrived here. I never thought he’d bring my daughter back into my life, let alone start a whole new chapter of the Donaldson family’s story. I nearly didn’t get to live to see it, mind you, with that bit of drama that put me out of action for a while but that only makes it all the more precious. All I need now is to find my replacement so that the next party we have will be to celebrate a real retirement. None of this part-time nonsense, no matter how much I enjoy working with you all.’
He was looking at JJ as he spoke, his smile teasing, but everybody knew there was a genuine plea there. They all knew that the offer had been made and that JJ had promised to think about it and they were all hoping she would choose to stay. Ben agreed with the consensus. JJ was perfect for Cutler’s Creek. Dedicated, clever and courageous. A brilliant doctor who would only become more and more of a vital part of this community in general and the emergency services branch of it in particular. It was just a damn shame he wouldn’t be here to watch that happen.
Unlocking the Rebel's Heart Page 13