by Jennie Adams
Lally had come to join him on the very thin pretext of helping. Even though she’d been withdrawn and hadn’t wanted to talk about her past any further with him for the last couple of days, she had longed to be close to him, just be with him, in his company. Or something.
‘I took care of the shopping.’ He indicated the bag at his feet, and as he did so placed the bag her mother had handed to him inside it as well. ‘Are you angry, Lally?’ His gaze searched hers. ‘That I interfered? After we talked, I…didn’t feel that I’d fully helped you to let go of all that blame you’d been carrying. I thought maybe your mother could.’
Cam searched Lally’s dear face as he waited for her answer, and he finally understood.
He had fallen in love with Lally. It was so simple, really; he didn’t know how he could have missed it. He couldn’t miss it now because it consumed him. He had a need that was all about her, all about needing to love her, care for her, help her resolve her problems and hurts, be there for her, protect her, encourage her.
Where could he go with these feelings?
‘I’m not upset, not really. You wanted to help me.’ Lally started to turn. In a moment she’d walk back to the property development.
‘Please.’ Cam didn’t want to lose these quiet moments with her, not yet. He didn’t know what he wanted to do, or say… ‘Would you come to the park with me? It’s not far from here, not far out of our way.’
‘I guess that would be okay.’ Lally didn’t understand Cam’s motivation.
She should give him her resignation and leave before this got any more complicated.
The smart, sensible, take-care-of-yourself part of her suggested that would be the thing to do.
But Lally had been running and backing away and not addressing things for long enough. If Cam wanted to go to the park, they would go to the park.
She walked silently at his side until they entered the park. Cam kept walking and Lally wondered if he would ever speak, and if he did what he would want to say. Lally had things to say. ‘You said you’d had a failed relationship—in your past. That sounds as though you feel to blame for that.’
‘I did. I’ll explain.’ Cam took Lally to the makeshift jetty. There was no little boat this morning, just the lake and quietness. He set down the bag. He’d taken the time during their walk here to try to marshal his thoughts into some kind of order; he wasn’t sure if he’d achieved that. ‘I’ll come back to that.’
All he knew was he needed to express these feelings that were inside him. He needed Lally so much that he couldn’t make himself step aside, not if there was any chance that they could find a way.
‘I remember you interviewing me on the water. I was nervous that morning.’
‘I’m nervous now.’ He held her arm while she sat on the edge of the jetty. The jetty stuck out far enough over the water at the end that they could sit without their feet touching the water. Cam sat beside her and turned to face her. So much love welled up inside him. He didn’t know what to do with all the feelings.
‘Why would you be nervous?’ Lally asked and shook her head. ‘I’m the one with the horrible past and six years of going around with my head in the sand not dealing with it. I’m glad Mum knows it all now. Somehow that’s a weight off my mind. I didn’t want to hide it from my family, but I did, and then it felt too hard to try to tell them.’
Lally loved him for his admission of nerves. ‘When I talk to Mum, maybe she might be able to help me work out a…healing process.’ She dipped her head before she forced it up again. ‘You might think it’s silly, but there are spiritual things Mum could help me do.’
‘I think that’s a great idea.’ Cam didn’t even blink, simply gave his support.
Her expression softened as she searched his gaze. ‘Your mother might be still on the face of the earth, but she doesn’t keep contact and closeness with you the way she should. I’m sorry you’ve missed out on that all your life.’
‘You said something a while back about us moving around so much that I must have not known where I’d wake up half the time.’ Cam had pushed the comment aside at the time. Maybe it had been easier to go on blaming his insomnia just being how it was.
‘It’s so long ago, but I developed a fear of sleeping back then. I used to be afraid that I’d wake up and Mum would have abandoned me somewhere and gone on without me.’ He shook his head. ‘It sounds stupid now. I’ve been a grown man and in charge of myself for a long time. I never thought about it until after that night that I…slept with you.’
‘You trained yourself into a habit of not sleeping, and until you figured that out about yourself…’
‘I had no hope at all of sleeping and feeling relaxed unless I felt deeply happy and secure.’ As he had felt the night he’d held Lally in his arms and had drifted to sleep to the kittenlike sounds she’d made while she slept. Was it any wonder he’d woken and needed to express all his feelings to her the way he had? ‘You gave me that feeling, and so much more.’
The sleep didn’t even matter, and Cam needed to tell her that. ‘I’m not doing a very good job of expressing myself. I don’t need to get some instant or fabulous fix for my sleep issues. If I can go back for some further professional guidance about that, get in a better place with that now that I’ve realised that childhood fears have most likely contributed to the problem, that will be great—but if not…’
He drew a breath. ‘I don’t think I have to let that issue, or the hours that I work, or the way I was raised and my lack of closeness with my mother, stop me from trying to make a success of a relationship that matters to me.’ He swallowed. ‘Where there’s a deep enough love, can’t most things be figured out?’
He searched her eyes, and he wasn’t sure what he saw there. Was it kindness that made her eyes shine in that way? Cam wanted her to let him in to her heart.
He took Lally’s hands in his and gently squeezed her fingers. ‘I thought I couldn’t be in a relationship. I blamed that on the insomnia, my workaholic tendencies. What would I have to offer a woman? That’s what I asked myself. I failed once, but I’ve realised now that I didn’t love Gillian.’ He drew a breath. ‘I doubt she really loved me.’ That didn’t matter anyway, now.
‘I’ve fallen in love with you, Lally. You’re so deep in my heart and I can’t bear the thought of you leaving me. I’d been wracking my brains for ways to keep you with me. I thought of asking you to be my travelling housekeeper, to go every where with me. But I don’t want only that. I want all of you.’ That was Cam’s admission, and what he needed to say.
‘I don’t understand.’ Lally wanted to comprehend this—her heart begged for that—but how? ‘You know about my past.’
‘And you know about mine. I want a chance for both of us to reach out and be happy. Past histories—they are in the past, Lally. They can make us stronger and better. They don’t have to hold us down or hold us back.’
Cam had realised this; he needed Lally to see it too.
Lally looked at Cam. He wanted her to be happy with him? He’d said he loved her? Lally took the wondrous thought deep inside herself. Could it be true? It could, because Cam wouldn’t say that if he didn’t mean it.
The knowledge finally penetrated all the way to Lally’s heart. Hope rose there. She looked into Cam’s eyes and knew she had to fully open her heart. ‘I’m in love with you too. It happened the night we made love. I didn’t understand then, but I realised later, and I didn’t know how to deal with my feelings. I was certain you wouldn’t be able to feel the same way towards me.’
‘You love me?’ Cam uttered, and his hands tightened, one around her hand, the other over her shoulder. The next moment she was snatched against his chest and his arms were against her back, his hands pressing into her shoulder blades before he reached very, very gently and raised her face so he could look into her eyes. ‘Say that again.’
‘I love you.’ Lally did, and it felt so good to admit it and to realise that he loved her too.
> ‘Do you truly believe we can have a future?’ Dared she ask?
But, yes, Lally did dare ask because she longed for, wanted and needed a future with Cam. If there was any chance ofthat, she wanted to grasp it. For the first time in six years, she felt hope.
‘Yes. Yes, Lally,’ he uttered in the deepest, most sincere voice Lally had ever heard. ‘I want for ever with you, and we can have it if we both try.’
Lally slowly nodded. ‘If we love and accept. I would understand about your wakefulness, Cam, even if it never got any better. And your need to focus on your writing while your muse is willing to talk.’
Cam laughed and shook his head. ‘I still have a deadline, but I must admit writing hasn’t been my first priority since the night we made love. I’ve kept working, but all I’ve really wanted to think about is you.’
He drew a breath. ‘Because that old relationship fell apart, and Gillian said she couldn’t cope with my work focus and sleeplessness, I thought I didn’t have enough to give. And I’m not close to Mum. You have a big family. I don’t know if I could fit in.’
Lally searched Cam’s face once more and knew his concerns were genuine. She smiled gently. ‘You seem to get along okay with Mum.’
He nodded. ‘Your mother is a kind, giving, lovely person…just like you.’
Oh, his words went straight to Lally’s heart and found their way deep inside it. She let a teasing edge touch her smile as she responded, ‘So just multiply Mum by about a hundred and you have my family. Since you’re a rather great person to get along with yourself, I think you would be fine fitting in.’
It hit her then just how deep this conversation had gone. They were talking about ‘for ever’ kinds of things. Did Cam want…?
‘I’d like to be part of your big family.’ Cam’s expression sobered into a deep, open love, into hope and need. ‘And I would like to have babies with you, make our own special family, when we’re ready for that step.’
In that moment, Lally gave herself utterly to this man who had been her boss, her lover, a friend and would now become everything to her. The thought of having his child over whelmed her, filled her heart with a love she couldn’t begin to comprehend.
Lally buried her face against Cam’s chest and let her fingers rest over his heart. The brush of his mouth against her forehead made her lift her face, and he kissed her lips softly and drew back to look into her eyes.
‘Will you marry me, Lally? Let me hold you in my arms at night, love you, be with you whether I sleep at your side or stay awake, and be happy because I’m with you?’ He hesitated. ‘I don’t know if I can settle in one place. It’s not something I’ve tried, but this property development—I thought from the day I met you that it would make a good family home, so maybe we could try…’
‘Yes.’ Yes to all of it, including trying. ‘We can work those things out. We’ll both need to adapt and understand what we want out of life together.’ Lally would go anywhere with him. In her heart, she knew that, though it would be nice to be close to her family when possible.
‘I won’t take you from them, Lally.’ He said it gently and she knew he’d read her emotions on her face.
Lally was just fine with Cam knowing her feelings so well. ‘If we travel, we can still come home here to the family, if you don’t need to be based in Sydney for your business.’
‘I’ve become quite adroit at running that business from afar. There’s no reason why I can’t continue to do so.’ Cam smiled and hugged her. ‘I will love your family, but I’ll love you most of all. We can have this, Lally. We can go forward.’
She nodded. ‘Let our pasts be what have formed us to this point, but we’ll form our futures with each other.’
‘Yes.’ Cam’s voice deepened. ‘Yes, Lally.’
And there, on a make shift jetty at the edge of a small lake in a suburban park, Cam proceeded to tell Lally about all the hope that was in his heart for their ‘for ever.’
And Lally soaked up every word while the sun rose over the lake and sent vibrant sparkles of colour shining through the mist.
After a long moment, Cam said, ‘I can’t wait to marry you, to see you walk towards me on that special day and know you’re going to be truly and completely mine to love and care for always.’
‘Oh, I can’t wait for that either.’ Lally’s heart filled with love for him.
His arms closed about her, and he turned her face up and kissed her mouth gently. ‘Our future starts right now. I want you in all of my life, Lally. Everything. I want you to learn to paint from your mother, or whoever else in your family will teach you. And I want to encourage you with more mosaic work.’
Lally’s heart filled all over again with love for this wonderful man. ‘We can travel all over Australia for a while leaving a trail of property developments with pebble mosaics in their courtyards if we want to.’
Cam’s gaze met hers, with all his heart right there for her to see. ‘So long as we keep coming home to this property, and settle here eventually. There’ll be room for visits from all your relatives, and my mum, if I can ever convince her to stop by.’
‘Maybe one day we will convince her.’ In this moment, Lally believed that anything might be possible.
Home, happiness, family and a future. And, though they did travel, that was exactly how it turned out to be.
ISBN: 978-1-4592-0206-1
WHAT’S A HOUSEKEEPER TO DO?
First North American Publication 2011
Copyright © 2010 by Jennie Adams
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