by Cara Colter
As Cilla and Rowdy, obedient as ever to following his dictums on Tim, opened the truck doors to climb in, Noah turned to Joe. “I’m sorry about all this.”
To his shock, Joe was wiping tears from his cheeks. “No, I’m sorry, son. I never realised—anyway, you might want to call Fred and tell him Tim’s safe,” he said gruffly, trying to recover from being caught out.
Noah nodded, and felt his pockets for his phone. Where had he put it after—
A voice said, sounding completely calm and in control, “I’ve called Fred already.”
Jennifer.
The voice had come from inside the junkyard; she must have walked off to make the call.
Already knowing it was far too late, he turned to her. She was holding out his phone to him, with a tiny smile. “You dropped it when Tim came back.”
She seemed unruffled. There was nothing on her face to indicate her emotional state. Nothing to gauge how she felt about his reasons for moving to Hinchliff—damn it, it must have sounded so bad to her, given what he’d said the first night about Belinda presumed dead—or about his kiss.
A one-moment brushing of lips. How did that qualify as a kiss in anyone’s book?
It does when nobody but a kid has touched you in years.
A one-moment brushing of lips meant far more to him than it should, and with a sense of fatality, he knew that wouldn’t change. He’d always been too intense. He’d never known how to play the field; for most of his life, his heart and body had focussed only ever on Belinda—then there’d been the years of nothing, where he’d been in limbo-land, over Belinda but not wanting anything with anyone but his kids.
And now the focus had returned: a tunnel-vision centred on Jennifer.
He’d have loved Belinda until his dying breath, if she was still here with him, loving him—and his fascination with Jennifer wouldn’t change until then, either. He didn’t know what his feelings were yet, but it had all the hallmarks of speeding-down-a-one-way-alley-into-a-wall he’d felt with Belinda all those years ago. He knew every curve and line of Jennifer’s face, what every movement of her mouth meant, how her eyes changed and darkened as her moods moved. He knew how she felt by the way she walked.
And he knew when she was in hiding. This time, her placidity was an act she’d put on to cover her pain—to seem stronger than she was. Why she’d begun this cover, he didn’t know—yet—but he would find out.
He’d know everything about her, and soon.
“Thanks,” he said quietly, allowing her to retreat while they were in company. He took the phone and pocketed it. “Let’s get home.”
He used the word home deliberately, testing her reaction, but she merely nodded. “The kids need their own home, and you need time on your own.”
And though she smiled, she couldn’t have been more distant from him if she’d climbed the crags overhanging the town behind Joe’s house. She might have been talking of the weather, so light was her emotional investment. And somehow he just knew that spelled trouble.
CHAPTER NINE
THEY headed for home as soon as Noah picked up the pizzas he’d ordered.
As they turned into the long driveway leading to her place, Jennifer knew her veneer of serenity was cracking, breaking open to show her vulnerability every time he looked at her, every time he spoke. She was surrendering to the needs of a body and heart too long buried beneath grief—and yes, the anger she couldn’t totally bury, no matter how hard she tried.
And she was hurt … hurt that Noah had kissed her, awakening her body, only to—
Oh, get over yourself. You’ve been into him from first sight. The kiss only made it real.
Don’t think about it! Just bury the memory. You’re good at that.
Thinking about the rage and grief would lead her straight back to the pit she’d lived in too long after she’d buried her son. Acceptance and moving on was the only option.
“I’m sorry, Jennifer,” Noah said, a welcome break into morbid thoughts she didn’t want to indulge in. “I lied to you about why we moved here, and why I’ve been gone through the days. I wasn’t always at work. I took advantage of your friendship to spend time looking for Belinda.”
After a short breath, she turned to him. Barriers in place with a smile. “Don’t apologise to me, Noah. It’s not my place to know where you go or what you do. You did what you did for your family, for Tim. Never apologise to me for putting your kids first. I’d have done the same.” She always had, with Cody.
“Thank you.” But the words held a wryness that told her he wasn’t buying it. He’d seen inside her soul, and the emotion she’d tried to hide.
She shrugged and twisted around to the kids. “Almost home.”
“Are we going to your house, Jenny?” Rowdy asked, smiling through a mouth full of Hawaiian pizza.
She shook her head. “Not tonight, sweetie, but I’ll see you tomorrow, okay? Daddy needs to get home for Tim.”
Rowdy nodded, with his gift of accepting life as it was, and returned to making a mess of his clothes and the car seat with dripping mozzarella.
Cilla was trying to feed pizza to her new dolly: the gift Noah had probably bought to soften the blow that the woman he’d moved seven hundred kilometres to find wasn’t their mother.
Jennifer frowned and turned back to Noah. “What was Tim’s present?”
“A bike,” he said quietly.
Of course it was a bike, she thought. Her life had become rich in irony since the Brannigans had moved in next door. It was as if she and Uncle Joe were here for the exclusive purpose of wrecking Noah’s relationship with Tim.
“I’ll keep it until his new bike breaks,” he said with a casualness that really seemed genuine. “I’ll offer him a trip to Coffs Harbour or Lismore, and he can pick whatever he wants. Within limits,” he added with a laugh that again surprised her.
“You don’t need to act with me,” she said, taking the unspoken bull by the horns. “Surely you must feel some kind of grief or anger over the news about your wife?”
Noah’s wife. That’s it, Jennifer, keep reminding yourself. Then the kiss will mean nothing to you but helping a scared dad who took comfort where it had been offered. Then you’ll stop these ridiculous dreams of being Noah’s love … Noah’s wife.
Yeah, right—in about fifty years.
He pulled up the truck at the side of her house, and turned to her, taking her hands in his. His eyes were dark, filled with emotion. “It’s been over a week since I found out. I can’t pretend there wasn’t some kind of pain, Jennifer—but it wasn’t the kind you’re thinking. I—”
“Jen? Jen, is that you?”
The familiar voice wrenched her from the dreaming spell of Noah’s sincerity, and his touch. She gasped; her eyes widened as the tall, strong figure came to the passenger side. She wrenched her hands from Noah’s, and, as if in a dream, watched him opening the door. In the light of the new moon and the automatic spotlights on her verandah, she saw the features she’d once loved, dark, mysterious, romantic.
More irony, or was her life spinning out of control? “Mark?” Dazed, she stared up at the man who’d been her life and soul from the age of seventeen until the day he’d walked out on her when she’d needed him most. “Mark, what are you doing here?”
The Irish rogue’s face—so like Cody’s—lit up with a smile; those blue, blue eyes creased in the grin she could never resist, once upon a time. “Where else would I be on our tenth anniversary, but with my beautiful wife?”
He lifted her right up out of the passenger seat and pulled her into his arms, tipping her face up for his kiss.
Noah drove away from Jennifer’s house, refusing to watch in the rearview mirror as she embraced the man who hadn’t even noticed she’d been with another guy …
Was this Nature’s joke on him? The day he realised there was no going back, the day he began to realise just how much Jennifer meant to him, her ex-husband shows up.
No wonder she’d been
acting strangely today. It’s her wedding anniversary.
So ended the belief that it was something he’d said or done that forced the change in her. She hadn’t been thinking of him at all. So what if she liked his kiss? Any woman who hadn’t seen her husband in a long time would be open to temptation.
Ex-husband, Brannigan. And she asked why he was here. She didn’t ask him to come.
She hadn’t known Mark was coming.
Did that mean—?
There were lights on in the house when he pulled up—and there was another car parked in the open garage.
A utility truck big enough to pull a caravan. The truck Peter and Jan had used the past three years to take a caravan to every place where there was a possible sighting of Belinda.
It seemed Tim had turned on his phone this afternoon, and made one call, at least. But wait—Tim hadn’t had enough time to come home on his bike, call them and Peter and Jan to be here ahead of him. And that meant Tim either had their number on his phone, or he knew it off by heart.
He got the kids out of their seats, and took them inside.
It was after eleven when Noah finally saw Jennifer walking to him.
How he knew she’d come, he wasn’t sure; they hadn’t met here since that first night. Maybe it was his frantic hope that made it seem like belief. He only knew that, by God, he needed her, and she’d come.
He’d been waiting forty-five minutes, since Peter and Jan finally left—only the lights on in her house fed his hope she’d be here.
If her ex-husband wasn’t staying the night …
Then she was coming to him, like the miracle she’d always been.
Like the purple star-flowers, the white dress of summer was gone; in its place were jeans and a thick windcheater, since the nights had turned nippy in the past two weeks. Her feet crunched dried grass. As she drew closer, he turned the two-bar halogen lantern down to one bar, giving a soft half-light.
She looked as exhausted as he felt.
He held out a glass. “I was hoping you’d come.”
“I wasn’t sure,” she said softly as she sank to the blanket. “I’ve been arguing with myself the past half hour.”
His heart began pounding hard. Was she thinking of Mark? “Was it so hard?”
“I didn’t want to make things worse for you and Tim,” she said quietly.
“Belinda’s parents were here tonight.” Why he was telling her, he didn’t know.
What a crock. Denial was useless when every pore and cell of him was beating in time to his heart, aching to touch her. He was taking her into his life. He was making her his woman.
“How did they take the news?”
He shrugged. “Badly, of course, but it wasn’t as hard as I’d expected. Maybe because I had to confront them about them calling Tim, feeding him and Cilla, too, with their belief that she’s alive and coming home soon … and that it was my fault she left. They told the kids I scared their mummy into running away.” He blew out a frustrated sigh. “They’ve been damaging my kids in an effort to keep Belinda’s memory alive.”
“Oh, Noah.” Her hand slipped into his, a natural gesture of comfort he cherished after thinking all night that he’d blown it with her. “No wonder Tim has been punishing you for trying to help him heal.”
“And no wonder Cilla’s been scared of me. I couldn’t work it out.” His head filled with her soft scent, the empathy brimming in her eyes, the feel of her work-roughened hand in his. The pretty, shimmering lips so close. “They picked a fight tonight in front of the kids. Tim told them about the private detective, and they wanted to know why I hadn’t done it earlier. I had to tell them—” He stopped abruptly. There was a line between confidence and betrayal, and he’d been about to cross it. Not even to Jennifer could he say: Belinda left me in so much damned debt I couldn’t afford to pay a detective until a year ago.
But Tim had heard it, and Noah knew he’d pay for that particular piece of impulsive anger for a long time to come.
And it had done no good. Peter and Jan refused to believe it. They clung to their picture of Belinda’s perfection, and their bitter blaming of Noah, like it was their only lifeline.
Maybe it was.
“People believe what they want to, no matter how you show them the truth,” she said softly. “Or maybe everyone’s truth is different.”
“They asked to take the kids away to the theme parks at the Gold Coast for a week,” he said abruptly. Peter and Jan had demanded it, but they were the kids’ grandparents, and God knew he needed a break right now. “They were devastated that the Langtry woman wasn’t Belinda—and so is Tim. They all need time out, some fun. I’m sorry for the short notice.”
A short silence. “It’s all right.”
“No, it isn’t,” he replied, his voice rough. “It’s never damned fair the way they operate on guilt, but there isn’t a bloody thing I can do to change it. They never listen to me anyway.”
“As I said, people believe what they want to.” Jennifer walked into his thoughts as if she belonged in his head. “Look at my ex—a classic example. He’s been gone three years, and he’s been with several other women since he left me, but he was sure I’d take him back. Because I haven’t been with another man, he thought it meant I still loved him.”
She hadn’t asked him to tell his secrets, but it didn’t stop him asking. He had to know. “And you don’t?”
Jennifer looked at him, and away. Her hand pulled from his before she spoke. “If you don’t know the answer to that, you’re blind.”
The sudden acerbity in her tone didn’t bother him. His heart beat even harder. “Feelings can come back when you see the person you once loved.”
She wet her lips, breathing fast and shallow. “Is that what you believe of me, or yourself? If you moved here to be near her …”
“To find her,” he corrected through a throat so damn tight with desire, it was choking him. “It was a last-ditch thing, mixed with desperation to get out of Sydney, the house we’d built together. My in-laws were making life a misery, but I had to let them see the kids. All they had left of her was the kids, and their unshakable faith that she’s alive.” He dragged in a breath before he made the confession, took the biggest personal risk of his life. “Then I saw you, and even from a distance, I knew I was in trouble.”
The soft, glowing eyes turned back to him at last. She took in his face, slowly, every part of it. Her lips were already parted; her chest heaved with every breath. “I’ve never been the ‘in trouble’ kind of woman.”
He smiled, a little. “Who’s playing games now?” He moved closer to her, until the warm current of wanting grew to heat, fuelling their bodies.
She bit her lip over a grin: the kind of warm, sensuous curving of lips that told a man exactly what he needed to know. “This kind of game is …” Her tongue ran over her lips again, her gaze glued to his mouth. Her hand half-lifted, waiting in the middle of that hot, swirling current.
“Yeah,” he breathed, lifting his hand, twining his fingers through hers. “It is.”
“I can’t do this if you’re still married in your heart,” she whispered.
He’d expected that. For answer he reached back with his free hand, and passed her the papers he’d signed. “I had to tell you before I sent them. It’s for me, not you,” he said quietly. “Meeting you made me see the truth. I can’t hang onto something that’s no more than a memory. Part of me will always love her … but she’s gone. I can’t keep living a half-life for Tim’s sake, for my in-laws. Living a lie doesn’t help anyone. It doesn’t keep her alive, except in their minds.”
She read the divorce papers, and closed her eyes as she let them fall. “This is why you bought the kids the presents.”
He nodded.
She gave a little sigh. “Everything about us seems to have irony in there somehow. Is there a message in that?”
He leaned closer to her, and captured her other hand. “There’s no timetable, Jennifer. There�
��s no right time or way. It’s happening, no matter what we do. We either ignore it and regret it later, or we take what we both want, and accept the consequences.”
She looked at him, her eyes shimmering, uncertain. She wet her lips as she gazed at his face. He’d never felt so strong, so glad to be a man in his life as now, when Jennifer looked at him with all that longing.
“I want the consequences, Jennifer,” he murmured huskily. “I want you. I want you.”
“Noah.” Her voice cracked; her eyes drifted closed, and she fell into him. “Don’t make me wait anymore.”
Jennifer had waited for him. Though he’d known it from the first night, he’d treasure the words until his dying breath.
Tender and a touch clumsy in first-kiss anxiety, they bumped each other’s noses. He opened his eyes, drew back a little and smiled at her. Jennifer laughed, low and soft and throaty: a rich, sensuous laugh, and he knew she’d laugh just like that when they made love.
He unlaced their hands and twined his fingers through her loose plait. “Come here,” he said huskily, drawing her against him.
For the first time in half a lifetime, the sense of fatality filling him was beautiful. He knew this would be the kiss of his life.
Holding her flush against him, he hovered just over her mouth, waiting, teasing, loving the impatient little moan coming from her, the way her hands threaded through his hair and drew him down to the blanket so he was half-lying on her.
She moaned again and moved against him. “Noah,” she whispered, aching with wanting. She wanted him so badly she was shivering.
Then her mouth covered his, tender and hungry; and rightness filled his soul at the same moment his body’s insistent beat took over everything and shut down every other sense.
The responses of her warm, generous body filled him with her sweetness and urgency. She kissed him gently, but when he took it deeper, she went with him; her hands were threading through his hair, fingers trailing down to his neck. The tiny, whisper-soft sighs between each kiss held a half-plea. “More, Noah … more …”