‘Sex is about a lot more than what goes where and how you move,’ he said softly. ‘Most of it happens in here.’ He touched his head. ‘And, if you’re lucky and you’re with someone you’re in love with, it happens in here.’ This time he touched his chest over his heart.
‘I’ll have to get past the first time to find that out. And that first time will have to be with someone I could really trust.’ Abby’s head moved against his chest as she slid an upward glance at him. ‘Like you.’
Noah had to close his eyes as he felt that sharp tug on his heartstrings. He lifted his hand to stroke her hair. ‘I’ve never even really thought about being with anyone since Ellen died,’ he told her. ‘At first it was grief and then it was because I wasn’t interested in anything other than my work. As I said, it’s been a long time. So long, I couldn’t be sure if I could go through with it. Now that you’ve mentioned it, it could well be a disaster waiting to happen.’
He could feel the tension increasing in Abby’s muscles—as if she was gathering her courage?
‘That makes two of us, then,’ she said. ‘And...don’t you think it would be good to know? For...um...future reference? So that—if we ever wanted to—we wouldn’t need to be nervous about whether or not it’s even possible?’
‘You mean like a trial run?’
‘Exactly. No big deal...just a “friends helping each other out” kind of thing.’
It was a bad idea. A very bad idea. So why was his body trying to tell him something very different? For the first time in so long, things were falling into place, like a jigsaw puzzle. How attractive Abby was. How much he liked her company. How incredibly soft and delicious her mouth was. Oh, yeah...there were parts of his body feeling things that were intense enough to be bordering on pain.
‘It’s a bad idea.’ At least his brain was being sensible. ‘Not only because we have to work together. Your first time should be something special. With someone you’re in love with and who’s in love with you. So that it’s making love and not just sex.’
‘That’s not going to happen.’
‘You might be surprised.’
Abby shook her head. ‘I’d be too nervous to let it happen.’
Noah could see those nerves in her eyes now. More than nerves. There was a hint of real fear there.
‘What happened, Abby?’ His voice was no more than a whisper. ‘Did someone hurt you?’
Those glorious soft, brown eyes were shining as if tears were gathering. ‘They tried to.’ Her voice was as quiet as his. ‘Someone I’d made the mistake of letting into the house after a first date. He was laughing that I couldn’t run away. If Lisa hadn’t come home a minute or two later, he would have...would have...’
Her voice was shaking. Noah put a gentle finger on her lips.
‘I get it.’
He didn’t need to know the details. He’d heard enough to know how scared she’d been and he could understand why she’d never gone there again. Anger towards the stranger who’d done this was strong enough to cause a wave of unpleasant heat but something else was even stronger. That Abby was trusting him to exorcise those ghosts of the past? He had to swallow past a lump in his throat. He already thought enough of Abby to believe she deserved the best things that life had to offer but she was going to miss out on so much if she couldn’t learn that being close to someone didn’t need to be terrifying. It was a gift that she was asking him to provide.
And...as unlikely as it had seemed before he’d met Abby, his body was continuing to wake up. Telling him that he, too, was missing something in his life that was important. He didn’t have to think about falling in love with someone or getting married again but...well...sex was just a part of a normal life, wasn’t it? And he really wanted to kiss Abby again. To touch her. To make her feel special. To...hopefully...take them both over the edge. This was totally different from any sexual experience he would have ever had before.
New ground.
But he shook his head. ‘We can’t. I don’t carry anything these days. Protection, that is.’
‘There are condoms on the top shelf of my bathroom cupboard,’ Abby told him. She even found a hint of smile. An embarrassed but mischievous kind of smile. ‘I know...but Lisa looks in there sometimes. I didn’t want her thinking I didn’t have any kind of sex life, you know?’
Okay...that smile did it. Or maybe it was the humour behind a statement that covered an issue that was huge but that she was dealing with all by herself. The courage of this woman blew him away and Noah was responding to that on both an emotional and physical level as he kissed her yet again. He pushed himself up off the sofa a minute or two later.
‘I’ll be right back,’ he murmured.
* * *
‘So...how did it go?’
‘Sorry...what?’ Abby looked up from the bundle of sleeping baby in her arms to meet her sister’s gaze. Surely Lisa wasn’t reading her mind? How embarrassing would it be if she’d guessed what Abby was thinking about right then—that last night had been so much better than the first time she and Noah had been together.
Not that that first time on the couch had not been good. He’d been so reassuring about how attractive she was and so gentle, letting Abby set the pace and encouraging her to show him how to help position her legs and make it all possible but, if she was really honest, there had been elements of both awkwardness and...yeah...remnants of fear and the kind of momentary flashbacks that had always been enough to make sure she never went that far again.
But not last night. Oh, no... They’d used her bed last night and there’d been laughter involved. Jokes about just needing a bit more practice to make sure that Abby was confident with her new splinter skill. And the balance between caution and passion had changed. They were more comfortable with each other’s bodies. More ready to take risks and...well...they’d paid off.
If Abby had ever wondered—and, of course, she had—whether the amount of sensation she had in her lower body could allow a partner to generate that ultimate release of sexual tension, then she’d certainly found out last night.
Did it show in her face or something?
Lisa was shaking her head at Abby’s apprehensive expression. ‘For heaven’s sake... I’m the one who’s sleep-deprived and has mush for brains. I mean that surgery that is the talk of St John’s at the moment. The toe to thumb thing. How did it go yesterday?’
‘Oh...’ Abby let out a relieved breath. She would no doubt tell her sister about this new development in her personal life very soon but she wasn’t ready to just yet. It was too new. Too...precious?
No, that wasn’t quite the right word. It wasn’t as if she and Noah were in a relationship or anything. This was purely a friendship, albeit with a bit of a crush on her side, and the sex had been only supposed to be a one-off—an experiment to see if either of them was ready or even capable of enjoying it. And then it had been another one-off last night—just to see if improvements in technique could be made.
‘The surgery was amazing. Noah was amazing.’ Abby couldn’t keep the note of pride from her voice. ‘I only got to watch part of it but it was incredible. There was a huge team in Theatre—I’ve never seen so many people involved in one operation but they all worked together seamlessly. And some of what they did was just mind-blowing—joining those tiny nerves and blood vessels together. So delicate and painstaking. Like a form of art, really...’
‘Hmm...’ Lisa coming towards where Abby had positioned her wheelchair. ‘Noah Baxter has certainly impressed you, hasn’t he?’
Abby’s shrug was muted because she had her arms full of baby Amy. ‘He’s very good at what he does,’ she said. ‘Everybody knows that.’
Not everybody knew about everything he was so good at, though. She was the first woman Noah had made love to since he’d lost his wife. That made it special, didn’t it?
Made Abby special?
No...she couldn’t start thinking like that, although it was hard not to. Especially after last night, when her trust in Noah had been taken to a whole new level. When they could make each other laugh, even in the midst of something that felt so significant.
So life-changing.
The baby stirred in Abby’s arms and whimpered. Both women were instantly focused on the infant and Abby knew that Lisa’s interest in Noah Baxter, or even Steve’s much talked about surgery had faded. As she was rocked, Amy settled back to sleep, her tiny mouth pouting and then relaxing again and even curling up at the corners.
‘Look at that...she’s smiling.’
‘It’s too early.’ Lisa shook her head. ‘They don’t smile until they’re about six weeks old. Must be wind.’
But baby Amy seemed to want to prove her mother wrong by repeating her facial twist and, this time, Lisa reached for her phone. ‘Hugh’s not going to believe this,’ she said. ‘Try rocking her again and I’ll take a video.’
But Abby had to pause to drop a soft kiss onto her niece’s head. ‘She’s so adorable,’ she told Lisa. ‘I think I want one.’
‘Be careful what you wish for,’ Lisa warned. ‘I’ve never been so tired in all my life. She’d being an angel right now but it’s a different story at three a.m., believe me.’
Rocking didn’t produce anything like a smile this time. Instead, Amy woke up and let her mother know in no uncertain terms that she needed attention. Her cries got rapidly louder as Lisa took her from Abby’s arms and settled into another chair to feed her.
‘How can something that adorable make a noise like that?’
‘It’s worse at three a.m.’ But Lisa was smiling as she nestled Amy into the crook of her arm and helped her latch on to her breast.
‘I take it back,’ Abby decided. ‘Or at least I’ll postpone it a lot longer. I don’t want one yet.’
‘You can enjoy this one,’ Lisa told her. ‘So much better when you can go home when you’ve had enough. In the meantime, could you get the nappy-changing supplies? She’s going to need some clean pants after this.’
Abby moved towards the bag of nappies and wipes that were being kept downstairs to save a trip up to the nursery on the first floor of this huge, old house. She was quite happy to postpone parenthood. She needed to follow her sister’s example and find the perfect man to father a baby, anyway. At least she was confident that that could happen now. She had, after all, found the perfect first lover in a physical sense, hadn’t she? It was such a shame that Noah was nowhere near ready to consider a “real” relationship but that was simply the way things were and Abby totally respected that. She was envious of a love that was so strong it could continue after death, in fact, and never be replaced. Just the kind of love she would have to hope that she, too, could find one day.
* * *
‘Fantastic.’ Noah could feel his smile stretching enough to light up his face as he observed the small but controlled range of movement in the thumb that had only ever been a big toe before. ‘Exactly what I would be hoping for at this stage of your intensive therapy, Steve, and it’s only been two weeks of stepping up the pace.’
‘A bit over ten weeks since my surgery.’ Steve nodded. ‘I’m even walking without much of a limp now.’
‘Show me?’
Steve was sitting at a table in a treatment room of the hand clinic, with Abby beside him. His wife Pauline was in a corner of the room, the baby on her lap and a toddler playing with some toys at her feet. Noah had seen them through the window in the door as he’d passed so he’d come in, just to offer encouragement to his patient. And, okay, maybe because it was an excuse to spend a little bit of time with Abby at work. He caught her gaze as Steve stood up to walk the length of the room and back, automatically cradling his injured hand with his other arm to protect it as he moved.
Noah could see Abby’s satisfaction in her patient’s progress in her eyes. He could also see the pleasure that his surprise visit was creating and, on a level beneath that, how strong their friendship had become.
He’d never met anyone with whom so much communication could happen with a glance that lasted only a heartbeat or two, and it still surprised him even though he’d had more than a couple of months to get used to it. Kind of like the way that sex with Abby still surprised him every single time—because there was always something a little different about it? A new note of discovery or depth or maybe just...delight. Something new, anyway.
Something different enough to have made flashbacks almost a thing of the past and to make it feel like Noah was genuinely moving forward with his life in some way. And, whatever it was, neither of them had quite had enough even though the “one-off” joke had worn off so long ago that neither of them bothered bringing it up now. It wasn’t as if they saw each other that often. Once a week at the most—usually after a training session for wheelchair basketball at the gym—and nobody would guess there was anything more than friendship between them if they saw them together at work.
Although Noah found himself turning his head, aware of Pauline’s steady gaze, and there was a look on her face that made him wonder if she might have guessed there was more than something strictly professional in his relationship with Abby. Steve certainly wasn’t aware of anything other than showing the two main medical professionals still involved with his case how well he was now walking. He had supportive strapping and a shoe insert on the foot where the toe had been removed but his work with a physiotherapist was adjusting his gait enough to make any change almost indiscernible.
‘That’s brilliant,’ Noah told him. ‘I can see how much effort you’re putting into your rehabilitation.’
‘It’s my job,’ Steve said. ‘Until I can get back to my real job, that is. And I need to do that as soon as I can. The benefits aren’t enough, you know?’
‘We’re managing.’ Pauline spoke up. ‘I’m not going to say it’s easy but we’ll get there.’
Steve nodded. ‘It’s helping being at home again. I’m not about to lose my motivation when I’ve got the kids in front of me all the time.’
‘How’s the sensory rehab going?’
Steve and Abby shared a glance. ‘Not so great,’ he said. ‘I can’t tell the difference between sandpaper and cotton wool if I’ve got my eyes closed.’
‘We’re putting a bag together,’ Abby added. She waved her hand at a tray of small objects on one side of the table that included a marble, coin, strip of the hooked side of Velcro and some soft fabric. ‘For homework. It can be a game with one of your older children, Steve—where they let you feel something with your eyes open and then again with your eyes closed when you try and guess what it is.’ She smiled at the toddler sitting by Pauline’s feet. ‘You could play that game with Daddy, Lucy, couldn’t you?’
Pauline ruffled her daughter’s curls. ‘She could. And her big brother, Mack, would just love it, too.’
Her smile at Abby made Noah realise that bonds were being formed that were wider than simply between a patient and his therapist. There was gratitude there as well. Because the whole family was being included in the therapy for a beloved husband and father? He’d always known that Abby was good at her job but this was a reminder of just how special she was—in so many ways.
Steve’s smile was wry. ‘Mack will love that. Something he can beat me in until we can play footie again.’
‘You can also try and get them out of the bag yourself,’ Abby told him. ‘It’ll be good exercise for your whole hand. Let’s give it a try now, shall we?’
Pauline looked up to catch Noah’s gaze as Abby gathered the objects to put them into the bag and she was still smiling. In fact, there was a hint of a gleam in her eyes that suggested that if he’d been right in his suspicion that she thought there was possibly something going on between himself and Abby, Pauline approved of it.
He needed to dispel any notion that had the pot
ential to turn into an unwelcome rumour. This clearly needed a more definitively professional note.
‘I’ll leave you to it,’ Noah told them, a little more abruptly than he’d intended, as he turned to leave. ‘But I’m glad I saw you today, Steve. I’ll look forward to the next progress report when you come into Outpatients. Keep up the great work.’
* * *
‘What’s up, Abby?’ Lisa had a concerned frown on her face. ‘You don’t look so great.’
‘I dunno. Maybe I overdid it at training last night. Or maybe I’ve just gone off mushy peas. How did I ever like something that looks like it’s been pre-chewed?’
‘Is everything else okay? Like with...you know who?’ Lisa lowered her voice as she looked over her shoulder to where Hugh was peering into the fridge in the hope of finding a beer to go with his takeout curry.
Abby frowned. She had confessed a while back to her “friendship with benefits”, but had made her sister swear that she wouldn’t breathe a word, even to her husband. It was for that reason she’d been relieved that Hugh hadn’t invited Noah again to share their weekly family takeout night. It had been a one-off. Like the sex had been supposed to be?
Abby sighed as she stared her pot of mushy peas. Even if Hugh was also sworn to secrecy it might only take a meaningful glance at the wrong time to start some gossip at the hospital and that was the last thing Abby wanted. Because she knew it would be the last thing that Noah would want. Look at the way he’d rushed out of the room when Pauline had been watching them a little too closely that time he’d come in to see how Steve’s therapy was going.
Or maybe it was because she still wasn’t ready to stop their intimate time together. At some point in the last few weeks, even though she had been quite determined to keep that crush under control, the dreams had started to creep back and the idea that she might have actually started to fall in love with Noah Baxter on the day she’d met him was also refusing to be entirely shut down. It was a worry and that was probably adding to whatever it was that was upsetting Abby’s normal approach to life.
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