Ultimate Heroes Collection

by Various Authors

  Her work was done.

  Now she somehow had to get on with her life.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  ONLY it wasn’t that easy.

  As an emergency nurse Annie dealt with death on a daily basis, had even dealt with colleagues’ family members on occasion—but the events that had taken place had shaken her to her very core. To be so close to the man she loved and to be able to do nothing had been unbearable. To see him, to see the other woman, to watch as Iosef held in his arms the woman he had cheated on with her, sickened Annie to the stomach. Yes, she had nursed Ivan well and had helped Millie, but she was angry too. In Iosef’s eyes she had been the best person for the job … but had he never stopped to think …

  At what cost to her?

  It was stupid to take a couple of nights off sick before her off-duty days—stupid because, no doubt, Iosef wouldn’t return to work after the funeral and they could be better utilised to avoid him then. But she simply couldn’t face it.

  For the first time in the longest time Annie picked up the phone and prepared to make her excuses, but so shocked was Beth on the end of the line at Annie’s strangled, weary voice that she all but sent an ambulance. ‘Take as long as you need,’ Annie was told. ‘That flu bug is just dire.’

  Not half as dire as the Kolovsky bug!

  The trouble with loving someone from a famous family was that she couldn’t even turn to her horoscope in the newspaper without seeing some reference to them. Couldn’t turn on the television without some newsreader telling her that Ivan Kolovsky’s will would be read after the funeral—the funeral for which Melbourne was delightedly preparing. Every supermodel and actress who had ever donned a Kolovsky dress seemed to be flying in and with the super-sexy Levander Kolovsky back in town, every supermodel and actress was, no doubt, hoping that same dress would rapidly come undone!

  ‘No chance,’ Annie said to herself a couple of days later, feeling relatively better, sitting in her cheeky monkey pyjamas with a tub of ice cream and a box of tissues and watching the early evening news. Snippets of the funeral showed Levander, his arm wrapped tightly around his wife, against a mass of black suits and dark sunglasses. Again, she was struck that when the camera turned on Aleksi, not for a second did she think it was Iosef, her mind welcoming the temporary distraction of trying to work out what made them different … and utterly unable to define it till Iosef came in to view, comforting Candy as she sobbed in his arms. Annie’s rose-coloured glasses snapped on and she gazed at him through the raw, painful eyes of unrequited love.

  That was what made him different.

  She loved him.

  She had played the most dangerous of games and lost, and Annie knew, as the doorbell rang, that she had no one to blame for her pain except herself.

  She knew it was Iosef.

  Didn’t even need to open the door to know who was on the other side.

  Only, unlike the last few days, now she was actually strong enough to face him—strong enough to hear whatever it was he had to say and confident enough in herself to know that, whatever his request, whether Candy was in his life or not, her answer would be no. She didn’t want to live with the mistress’s curse of never, ever being able to trust him.

  ‘Haemorrhoids!’ It was perhaps the strangest of greetings, but she knew his humour because he knew hers and she actually managed a smile.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Because Mickey came in when I was on nights and told me so himself.’

  ‘I just wanted to clear a few things up.’

  ‘Well, thanks for the wind-up.’

  ‘Again, I couldn’t resist it. In Russia …’his eyes were squinting slightly, his face greyer than it had appeared on television ‘… it is a custom on a day such as today to drink until you drop.’

  ‘Well, you can have a cup of tea, then,’ Annie said tightly, ‘because you’re not dropping here. Come in.’

  ‘I heard you had flu.’

  ‘I did,’ Annie answered as they headed to her lounge room. And it wasn’t that much of a lie because flu made you feel as if you’d been hit by a train, flu made your eyes and nose weep, made you forget about food and just want to curl up and die. ‘But I’m getting over it now—in fact, I’m feeling a whole lot better.’

  ‘That’s good.’ He sat down, let out such a long breath he should really have turned blue, before finally he looked at her. ‘I don’t want to drop because then it really is over. When I wake up tomorrow—’

  ‘It is over, though,’ Annie answered. She could double talk as easily as he. ‘As hard as it is to face, there’s nothing that can be done to change that.’

  ‘I don’t want to wake up tomorrow without you.’

  ‘As I said, there’s nothing that can be done to change that,’ Annie said in a voice that wasn’t quite as strong but still very credible. ‘Iosef, did you listen to anything that I said when I ended it?’

  ‘That is why I am here. Now I’m asking that you listen to me.’

  ‘I don’t think there’s anything left to say.’

  ‘One thing …’ Adamant, he faced her. ‘I just want to make one thing very clear, to be honest.’ He closed his eyes at her soft mirthless laugh. ‘It is imperative that you believe this. I would have been proud to have you with me today—I would have given anything to have had you by my side through all of this, and nothing would have made me happier than to take you out for dinner that night. You are without a doubt the most beautiful woman I have ever known.’

  ‘I’m expected to believe that from a Kolovsky.’

  ‘You have to believe that. Whatever has gone on, whatever mistakes have been made, I need you to understand that never, not for a moment, was it about you or your looks—and, given what you told me about your past, it is imperative that you understand that.’

  ‘I’d already worked that one out, thanks.’

  ‘It was me with the problem, not you.’

  ‘I’d worked that one out, too.’ And she sounded so convincing, Annie almost believed herself—almost, but she could still recall the dread she’d felt as she’d stepped back on the hamster wheel of attempting to attain and retain the unattainable. ‘Look, Iosef, I’m not a teenager now. I chose to ignore the warning signs and I take full responsibility for getting involved with someone—’

  ‘Full?’

  ‘I’m fully responsible for my own actions—the same way you are for yours. I just don’t want to be the person I was starting to become—ignoring my conscience, trying to look good enough, trying to keep up with the image you had of me at the wedding. That wasn’t me—’

  ‘Annie,’ he interrupted sharply, ‘you seem to have it in your head that I fell in love with you at the wedding.’ It was like having needles stuck into her, millions of needles that pierced every fragment of her being—the only word she wanted to hear from him the one she had to ignore. ‘It was the Monday before that—at eight minutes to twelve actually. I remember the time because I had some blood gases to do. I was just about to get up and then in you waltzed and the whole room lifted—actually, not just the room …’ He gave a very wry smile. ‘So perhaps it was lust then … Love, however inconvenient it was for me, came rapidly later. I was particularly horrible to you because I didn’t want to get to know you. Hell, they could have spray-tanned you green with purple spots and I’d have been crazy about you. I was particularly angry with you for not eating, because I cared about you …’ He shook his head helplessly. ‘I did not want to come to the wedding. I did not want to get involved with you. I offered to swap with Marshall, but he refused. He had been to the service, he said, and I should go to the reception.’

  ‘Why didn’t you want to go?’

  ‘Because of what I knew might happen.’

  ‘Did happen.’

  ‘Annie, there’s nothing between Candy and I.’

  ‘Don’t.’ She jumped to her feet. ‘Don’t go there, Iosef. I don’t care if you ended it tonight, I don’t care
if it was almost over.’

  ‘We were never together.’ He watched as she shook her head, eyes half-closed, a tired smile on her face at the futility of it all, that still he thought she might believe his lies.

  ‘Do you think I’m weak or stupid? I’ve seen you together!’ Her voice was rising, anger fizzing through her body now. ‘I was there when your own mother—’

  ‘Have you ever heard my mother address me in English?’ He halted her tirade with a meaningless question. ‘The one time she spoke to me in English it was for your benefit.’

  ‘My benefit?’ Annie gave a perplexed frown. ‘I don’t what you’re talking about.’

  ‘So that appearances were kept up, so that when the nurse spoke to her friends, or to the press or to anyone, she would say that Candy was Iosef’s girlfriend.’

  ‘And she is.’ Annie started, then stopped, a tiny glimmer of something appearing in her mind, something so impossible, so improbable she shot it down in a second, didn’t even give it a second glance, just blasted him with the facts.

  ‘Your own mother sent for her, your own mother said that you needed to be with her. She rings you all the time, turns up at work crying and begging to see you. You left me the morning after the wedding and went to lunch with her—I saw the photo in the paper—and you lied to me and said that it was old!’ She was shouting at him now, hurling the facts that at the time she’d tried so hard not to see! Hurled them at him so the truth might hurt him as much as it had hurt her.

  ‘I took her to see my father.’

  And the vision she’d glimpsed was taking shape now—taking impossible shape, before he even said the words.

  ‘Candy is my father’s mistress … was my father’s mistress.’ And Annie’s world stopped for a few moments while everyone got off and she was left standing there, her mouth opening, eyes widening as she stepped in the impossible place Iosef inhabited. ‘My father has always kept a mistress.’ He just stood there and said it as she just stood there and tried to take it in. ‘My mother turned a blind eye.’

  ‘But, surely, I mean, how did your mother put up with it?’

  ‘We don’t have those sorts of conversations in our family. We don’t talk about our failings or our fears— we just deny, deny, deny. We just cover our tracks and bury whoever is in our way.’

  ‘Not you,’ Annie whispered.

  ‘Yes, me.’ He nodded. ‘Because I put you through hell all those weeks.’

  It was too much to take in, her mind too muddled to even feel relief at the fact that he and Candy had never been involved with each other. ‘Why on earth couldn’t you tell me?’

  ‘How “on earth” could I?’ His eyes held hers. He let the question sink in for a moment before he elaborated. ‘I kept telling myself to ignore her, not to go there, just to wait until …’ He swallowed hard. ‘It was not my secret to tell—and one secret revealed leads to another. At what point do you land someone with all your baggage, Annie? At what point do you trust someone enough to tell them secrets that are also other people’s secrets? I trust you now, but then … That night, when the baby was abandoned, I came so close to telling you, I actually thought you might even understand, but when you said it didn’t matter anyway, that I made things worse for you, I just couldn’t go through with it.’

  ‘I wasn’t just talking about my body, or keeping up appearances …’ Annie shook her head in disbelief that he couldn’t see it. ‘Iosef, I thought you were seeing Candy.’

  ‘I should have told you.’

  ‘Yes!’ She blinked back at him but her certainty changed to a frown as she saw things from his perspective. How could he? Their relationship had hit like a thunderbolt without warning, ripped into their lives with no time to prepare and she recalled the first time they’d made love, the slightly desperate note in his usually strong voice as he’d stared up at her. ‘Why now Annie? Why do you do this to me now?’

  Love had come along when they’d least expected it.

  ‘So did you always know about the other women? Did your mum not mind?’ She closed her mouth on a stupid statement—could still see Nina in her mind’s eye on the night her husband had died, a woman who had refused to leave her husband’s side, taking a breath of fresh air to allow the man she loved time with the other woman he had loved, too. Of course she’d minded … of course she had. And yet somehow, deep in grief and anger, she’d put her husband first.

  It really wasn’t for her to judge.

  ‘I remember rows when I was a child, knew my father had upset my mother at times.’ Iosef filled in the silence, explanations coming that now weren’t really needed. ‘But when I came back for Levander and Millie’s wedding it was clear my father did not have much longer to live and when he started to get sicker, we were talking one night and I asked him if there was anything I could do for him.’ He gave a wry smile. ‘I wasn’t really prepared for what he asked. It turned out that Candy wanted to see him and he wanted to see her. Reputation is everything to my family—the last thing they wanted was the press exposing the affair. What the world sees and what actually happens are two entirely different things with my family. My father was too ill to drive one night, so I did—that was how it started really. There was a small piece in the paper that I had come back from Russia and was dating her, and it sort of blew up from there. We never actually sat down and discussed it, but from that day on sometimes my mother would suggest I bring Candy over, or Candy would come and see me and ask if I would mind taking her for lunch …’

  ‘I wish you’d been able to tell me,’ Annie said, ‘but I understand why you couldn’t.’ Like a reflex gesture, just a bodily reaction that happened whether you wanted it to or not, she reached for his hands. ‘No more secrets.’ She frowned at his wry expression …

  ‘I said the same to Levander this morning.’ Grey eyes that had enthralled her from the start were moist. ‘He told me that, yes, there were things I would never know, things I really didn’t need to, and finally I can accept that. If he can accept the past, then so can I, so long as from now on.’

  ‘You make it right.’

  ‘We all make it right.’

  ‘We will.’ She managed a tiny laugh. ‘So I’m not your mistress.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So my moral character is intact!’

  ‘Technically,’ Iosef said, and Annie gave a wobbly smile.

  ‘And your moral character?’

  ‘Don’t go there.’ He smiled mischievously.

  ‘Don’t you ever go there,’ Annie countered, ‘because I swear I’d never be so forgiving again.’

  ‘I love you.’

  It wasn’t a revelation, more an acknowledgement and one she accepted—love an impeccable excuse for irrationality, be it his or hers. Love the wobbly barometer that fluctuated at will, that blurred every line and always had you coming back for more.

  ‘I really didn’t want to love you.’ He held her hand as he insulted her, that glint of mischief back in his eyes. ‘I really did not want to like you—there could not have been a worse time for you to appear in my life. You walked into that staffroom and walked out with my heart.’

  ‘I didn’t.’ Annie giggled.

  ‘You did,’ Iosef countered. ‘And I loathed you for it.’

  ‘I loathed you, too.’ She kissed his proud face.

  ‘There is something else I need to tell you.’ Like a ride on a roller-coaster, her heart soared and then sank. ‘I told Jackie about us.’

  And duly soared again.

  ‘You told Jackie!’

  ‘I did not intend to—but when my father was brought in I was just …’He gave a hopeless shrug. ‘I think I needed to talk to someone.’ And, Annie realised, what came as naturally as breathing to her was completely alien to him. ‘I offered her my resignation. I honestly thought I’d messed up your life—was worried you were about to leave—and it didn’t seem fair when you were there first. When, until I came along, you were happy there.’

  ‘And what d
id she say?’

  ‘That I should wait till well after the funeral to make any big decisions. I know it sounds crazy but it was the first time I really understood that there would soon be a funeral.’

  ‘Not crazy.’ Annie shook her head.

  ‘I told Jackie that I wanted you looking after my father and she said no. She thought, given the little I had told her, that it would be too much for you.’

  ‘So how come I ended up looking after him?’

  Iosef closed his eyes. ‘I told her I loved you.’

  ‘You told Jackie that?’ And she sounded angry, only she wasn’t—just stunned, so stunned that he would actually say that, not to her but to Jackie. That this remote, proud man had left himself so completely open. ‘And what did she say?’

  ‘That she’d think about it. I’m not sure if she discussed it with Melanie, but later she came and said that she was sure, if you knew that I loved you, that you’d want to do it for me.’

  ‘So who else knows?’ Annie asked. ‘I mean, is there a notice up in the staffroom?’

  ‘Maybe George …’ Iosef reluctantly relented. ‘I didn’t tell him, but he took me out for a drink yesterday and tried to cheer me up.’ He caught her eye and they managed a tiny giggle. ‘I know I give him a hard time, but he really is the most self-doubting person I have ever come in to contact with. He spent most of the time apologising for wasting my time!’

  And whoever said friends weren’t important had never had one—this little army of people who cheered you loudly from the sidelines or quietly from behind the scenes when it was needed.

  ‘Did you know I collect foreign coins?’ Annie asked, smiling.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I have a little jar on my dressing-table and every time I get one in my change I pop it in.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I did think about leaving, Iosef, for a while there. Yes, I did consider it, but you need to know this—I’m dizzy and I’m emotional and I absolutely love you, but I’m also tough. I can live without you. I might go off to lick my wounds now and then, but I will always come back fighting.’