by Lilian Darcy
‘Three out of three. That’s it, then?’
‘Yes, fortunately.’
She seemed flustered, or even annoyed…yes, definitely annoyed…and he realised that he was going about this all wrong. They weren’t teenagers, with no histories and no baggage, who could let looks and accidental touches progress effortlessly to the next stage.
Before he even knew for sure that she was interested, he had to let her know, with no ambiguity, that he was free to explore all the places their feelings might take them.
‘Oh! Declan! It’s you!’ Caroline exclaimed at her front door the same evening. She’d changed from her uniform into jeans and a long-sleeved cotton top in a soft orange-pink, and her hair was half out of its clip. He doubted she’d noticed. She looked like a busy mother on a school night—flushed, alert, tired, loving and loved.
‘A welcome fit to warm an Irishman’s heart,’ he said, teasing her with the exaggerated brogue.
‘Well, it’s…’ she cocked her head, listened to the news headlines coming from the television ‘…seven o’clock. All right, no. Not late.’
‘Have you eaten?’
‘Yes, an hour ago. It works best with the boys. Oh, what have you brought?’
He held up the hot plastic bag of containers from the House of Siam. ‘Dinner for two. Tell me you just had fish fingers, and you’re hungry enough to join me.’
She flushed. ‘I did. You’re psychic. They love fish fingers. I’m not going to join you, though. Declan—’
‘Listen, you’re a hard woman to catch alone these days, but I want to talk to you. Apparently you can’t be bribed by the smell of Thai chilli and noodles.’
‘Um…’
He loved how flustered she looked. He loved the particular kind of flustered she looked, and hoped very strenuously that he’d interpreted it in the right way. Her sense of honour was locked in battle with her sense of the pull between them. He was sure he could end that battle pretty fast with the right words.
‘Let me in for five minutes,’ he said. ‘I won’t even unpack the containers. I’ve got something to say, and it’s actually pretty simple.’
‘Um, all right…’ She stepped back, holding the door, and he came inside. They both glanced into the lounge-room and saw that the boys had grabbed the remote control to bring up a sit com on another channel. ‘This once, Josh,’ she warned her son, raising her voice to get his attention. ‘Seven o’clock television is not suddenly an iron-clad tradition in this house, OK?’
‘OK, Mum.’
‘Harder when it gets dark early,’ Declan said.
‘You’re right.’ She gave a short nod. ‘In summer, I’d send them outside.’
He’d only seen her front hall until now, the day she’d phoned needing an emergency lift to Sydney. This time she took him to the back, where an original rear porch had been enclosed to make a small family room, and a wall had been knocked down to connect it with the kitchen.
The renovation wasn’t as ambitious or extensive as the one at her parents’ house, but it created a nice atmosphere all the same, with a colour scheme of soft creamy yellow and smoky blue. He imagined she had a mortgage that would hang over her for a number of years yet.
‘Can I put these in the kitchen?’ he asked.
Watching him do so before she’d told him he could, Caroline wondered what on earth was happening here. He’d given her six weeks of distance and stiffness since shortly after their trip to Sydney. She’d reached the point where his teasing request for an ally in the department, when he’d first started, just seemed like an embarrassing memory. Now he’d shown up on her doorstep with no warning, carrying a load of steaming food.
He was right. Her stomach couldn’t be bought or bribed.
‘You’ve got something to say,’ she reminded him.
He leaned his forearms on the benchtop, beside the plastic bag he’d put there, and pinned her feet to the floor with his steady gaze. ‘Suzy and I have split up,’ he said.
Her legs went wobbly, and the wrong word came out. ‘Why?’
‘Short answer? I discovered that I didn’t love her, and she didn’t seem to care. All for the best.’
‘That’s the short answer all right,’ she agreed. The wobbliness climbed higher, and reached her lungs. Her words came out choppy and in the wrong order. ‘Insultingly short almost. So you’re leaving, that means?’
‘Leaving?’
‘Leaving Glenfallon,’ she said. ‘Going back to England.’
She knew he’d only taken two years leave of absence from his permanent position in London. He’d burned no boats, like her parents with their Gold Coast experiment. Sensibly, in her parents’ case. They were planning to come back here. Sandie’s illness had made them realise that they didn’t want to be so far from family.
Meanwhile, Declan would return to London.
‘No!’ he said, his mouth making the word into a pout of protest beneath a heavy frown. ‘At least…’ He took a breath. ‘No, that’s not what I wanted to tell you.’
‘Tom will be relieved,’ she said thinly.
‘Make this a bit easier, Caroline.’
‘How? I’m—OK. Thank you for telling me about you and Suzy.’ She couldn’t think straight. Did he want to back out of his lease? Mum and Dad wouldn’t mind that. She gathered her wits and ploughed on. ‘Uh…she was here for the weekend, I suppose. I’m sure it was hard, even though—’
‘It happened six weeks ago.’
‘Six weeks!’
It seemed like such a long time, because so much had happened.
Autumn had turned to winter. Nell Cassidy’s old flame, Bren Forsythe, had come back to town to work at the hospital. Alison Scanlon had been given her miraculous news. Caroline had had that important talk over the phone with Gail. Mum and Dad had made a visit. Sandie had reached the halfway point in her treatment, and was showing signs of the right response, but there was still a long way to go.
Declan had barely spoken to Caroline during all of this, and she’d blamed herself.
Today, thinking back, six weeks felt like forever.
‘I didn’t want to say anything until we’d both had a cushion of time, for a little protection,’ he said.
‘You and Suzy?’
‘You and me, Caroline.’
‘You and me?’
He stayed silent for a moment, straightened carefully from leaning on the bench, watching her. ‘Have I been reading you wrongly all this time, then?’ he finally said.
‘I haven’t angled for you and Suzy to split up. At no point have I done that! Tom’s been…practically praying for it, and if it had ever occurred to him at any point that I might be—’ She stopped.
Apparently she didn’t need wine or hypnotic highways or any external stimulus at all when it came to spilling blunt truths to this man.
‘Might be what?’ Declan said. He hadn’t taken his eyes from her face.
‘Interested,’ she answered, after racking her brains for a better word, a less out there word. She couldn’t find one.
‘And are you?’
‘Ah-h…’ What was that? Sigh? Moan?
He’d left the bench. He was coming closer. She discovered that she’d taken a step in his direction as well. She could touch him if she held out her hands. ‘Are you interested, Caroline?’
‘Yes!’ she answered wildly. ‘Of course I am. You know I am. Isn’t that why you backed off? You knew how I felt.’
‘I hoped,’ he corrected. ‘I didn’t know.’
‘Good! That’s better than I feared!’
‘You wouldn’t let it show, and I wouldn’t let it get important—’
‘I couldn’t help that,’ she cut in. ‘It got important no matter how hard I tried.’
‘Because of the mess with Suzy. You’re right. It got important no matter how hard I tried. Six weeks isn’t long.’
‘It is. It was. It felt long.’
‘I hope it’s long enough for me to have drawn the r
ight conclusions as to how I could have made such a mistake.’
‘With Suzy.’
‘Yes. Definitely the mistake was with Suzy. And six weeks was necessary. Minimal, in fact.’
‘Do you want longer?’ she offered, hardly knowing what she’d said. ‘Because if—’
‘No. I do not want longer.’ He reached her, and wrapped his arms around her waist, looking down into her face with eyes like the sun on the sea. ‘I do not want one second longer, Caroline.’
‘Declan…’
Desire and need slammed into her like a gust of hot north wind, like gravity after weightlessness. She melted inside, and couldn’t say another word. Her mouth felt numb and incredibly sensitised at the same time. Knowing he would kiss her within seconds, she let her lips sigh apart. She felt dizzy with the suddenness of this, and with how right it felt.
‘Well, do you?’ He pulled her closer. So close, from her breasts to her thighs. His body felt hot, hard, expectant, wonderful. ‘After what’s happened, I have to offer you that. Do you want longer?’
‘No,’ she said, and lifted her face to meet his mouth. ‘Not one second longer.’
They tasted each other, taking it slowly, sharing a sense of wonder and delight that this was actually happening, and real. All sorts of things clicked into place. All those times when their eyes had met, sharing an unspoken joke. The sensation she always had when they were alone together that she’d just drunk a glass of wine on an empty stomach, even when she hadn’t. The way they’d talked in the car on the journey back from Sydney.
Caroline closed her eyes and put all of it, everything she’d felt and felt now and could feel so much deeper, into the press of her mouth on his. She let her tongue tease him and her breath sigh over his face. She ran her hands up his muscular back, up the warm, lightly tanned curve of his neck that she’d wanted to touch for so long, and into the soft prickle of his hair.
And she didn’t let herself think for one second about his very temporary commitment to her home town.
‘You kiss so sweetly,’ he murmured.
‘You taste good. The way you talk…tastes good.’
‘The way I talk?’ He pulled back a little, brushed the tips of his fingers across her mouth and smiled. ‘That has a taste?’
‘Irish whiskey.’ She tried to imitate him, but couldn’t. She laughed. ‘Even that first day on the phone…do you remember, when I thought you’d be Josh…your voice curled out of the phone into my ear and made me feel that we knew each other.’
‘Mmm, I know. I kept thinking I could make that feeling between us go away if Suzy would just spend more time—But I don’t want to talk about her. She’s gone. She’s happy.’
‘Is she?’
‘Jumped into bed with someone else. Was more than halfway there, it turned out, while I was still whipping myself for looking at you in the wrong way.’
‘I would never have responded to—’
‘No, neither would I. Neither would I, Caroline.’
Her name got lost in their kiss. She held his hips, and felt so soft and full with need that she almost thought she might fall if she let him go. She could have clawed his clothes from his body, branded every inch of his skin with her mouth, clung to him all night.
‘What’re we going to do about this, sweetheart?’ he said. ‘The boys are in the other room.’
‘The weekend. Sandie and Chris want to have Josh out at the farm. My calendar is…pretty open.’
So is my heart. After all these weeks, I’m not exactly playing hard to get, and you’d be pretty unaware, Declan, if you didn’t notice.
Did it matter?
She couldn’t even consider the question. After blaming herself, these past six weeks, for his distance—She’d scared him off, hadn’t she? She’d been obvious, pitiable. Or so her thoughts had run—she couldn’t pretend, now, to a coolness she didn’t possess. Especially when he didn’t seem to want her to be cool at all.
‘Like the sound of that,’ he said, brushing her mouth with the words. ‘Shall I turn up here after work?’
‘Chris is coming in to pick up the boys straight after school. Yes, that’d be fine.’ She’d cook something nice. She’d have wine chilled. That was plenty to plan. The rest could stay open-ended. ‘I’m collecting Josh Sunday afternoon.’
‘I’ll share the driving with you, if you want. Is there a place we could stop for a picnic on the way?’
‘A few places.’
‘If we don’t sleep in too late.’
‘Uh, yes, that could be a problem.’ She felt the colour rise in her cheeks, and heat seep into her bones.
‘Auntie Caroline?’ came an urgent, indignant voice from the other room.
‘Yes, love?’ she answered Sam.
Declan let her go, trailing his fingers down her arms, bringing every hair to attention.
‘Mattie’s sitting on me, and he won’t get off,’ Sam yelled.
‘Sounds like an emergency,’ Declan murmured.
‘Are you staying to eat that Thai chilli?’
‘Am I invited?’
‘You brought the food.’ She laughed, stopped fighting her losing battle, flung her caution into the air like a handful of sand in the wind. She couldn’t think about Declan’s future plans yet, or she’d ruin what they had so suddenly and wonderfully found in the present. ‘Yes, Declan,’ she said. ‘You’re invited. Even though you don’t need an invitation.’
‘What time do they go to bed?’
‘Too late tonight,’ she whispered, ‘for what we’re both thinking of.’
CHAPTER NINE
‘SHE’S Indian, trained partially there and partially in Britain, but her husband’s Australian,’ Tom said, sounding excited.
He’d arrived back from his conference in Sydney that afternoon, and had dropped in to check on things before the weekend. Declan was ready to leave for the day, but Tom had cornered him and he couldn’t be rude to a man he liked and respected, even though Tom’s ways irked him at times.
‘Like you,’ the older man went on, ‘she has another year or more before she can take our local exams. They’re definitely committed to this country, though, and they’re prepared to look widely for the best place to settle. Her husband’s looking for an accountancy practice to buy into. He’s apparently pretty flexible.’
‘It sounds very promising, Tom,’ Declan answered.
‘You’d head up the department, since you’ve been here longer. That’s if…’ Tom stopped and scratched his head, looking as if he suspected he’d put his foot in his mouth. ‘Is there any…?’ He stopped once more.
‘Tom, if you’re asking how my future’s shaping up,’ Declan said reluctantly, ‘I’m sorry, I don’t have an answer on that for you. Not right now.’
‘Suzy may find her novel takes longer to finish than she thought it would.’
‘Suzy and I have split up.’ He hadn’t planned a general announcement yet, but he couldn’t hedge or lie to Tom.
‘Oh. Sorry to hear it.’
‘It was mutual. Amicable.’ More or less. ‘And for the best. Don’t be sorry.’
‘It…uh…leaves your future a little more open-ended.’
‘But not something you should count on, from your own perspective, Tom,’ he said firmly.
He couldn’t afford to let himself get backed into any corners by a rash promise made to someone he’d hate to disappoint. If there was any possibility of him staying on in Glenfallon, he should play it down to Tom, not build it up. And what about Caroline? Should he play it down to her, too? Or should he hint at a commitment he was by no means sure of yet? Neither choice seemed like the right one.
‘London makes the most sense for me,’ he told Tom slowly. ‘My job will still be waiting for me there eighteen months from now.’
And Caroline would be waiting for him right now. If Tom kept him much longer, he’d be later than he’d promised.
‘Of course,’ the senior pathologist said. He couldn’t hide hi
s crestfallen face. ‘Well, we’ll be grateful for you for as long as we have you,’ he added, his tone too hearty.
‘Yes. But I mustn’t keep you, Tom. You’ll want to check your messages, and I need to get away.’
He left the building five minutes later, in the chilly winter dusk, with their conversation still hanging behind him like a dark cloud. It sounded warning bells, but the anticipation he felt about seeing Caroline had drowned out the bells by the time he reached her house.
She met him at the door, and in her expectant, slightly on edge mood and manner he saw his own state of mind reflected. She’d changed into stretch black trousers and a clingy sweater made of dark blue angora, and if she wore anything beneath the sweater but a bra, it didn’t show.
He should have changed too, he realised, stopped at home rather than coming straight here, even if it meant being a little late. He should have brought wine, and definitely flowers. He usually had more finesse but, admit it, he’d been so impatient to see her, so distracted by his visions of their evening.
The first of how many?
He didn’t yet know.
This was new, the way his relationship with Suzy had once been.
‘Sorry I’m a bit late,’ he said, shifting his weight on the front step. They didn’t kiss or touch. Not yet. It would happen soon.
‘That’s fine,’ she answered. ‘Chris was a bit late getting the boys out of here. I’m still cooking.’
‘Mmm, I can tell.’ She had a tiny fragment of green on her cheek, just near her mouth. It looked like an eighteenth-century beauty spot, and arrowed his attention to her glossy lips. He stepped closer, brushed the herb fragment off with the tip of his finger, showed it to her and asked, ‘What’s on the menu?’
‘Pumpkin soup.’ She touched the place where he’d brushed her skin, as if reliving the moment. ‘Pasta with a ham, cream and mushroom sauce. Salad. Chocolate mousse. Wine and coffee.’
‘Sounds fabulous. Smells fabulous. My stomach’s aching.’ Other bits of him ached, too, and he thought she probably knew that. He didn’t try to hide it. ‘Where do the chopped herbs come in?’