by Amy Andrews
Tess felt goose-bumps prick her skin at the touching story. She watched Jean’s agitated movements settle as she stroked Tabby/Queenie’s head and murmured to her. What else did they need to make up their minds?
‘How did she come to be here?’ Tess asked.
‘The lady’s son brought her in. He travels a lot and doesn’t have the time required to care for an arthritic, deaf dog.’
‘Deaf?’ Fletch shook his head. Of course. Queenie was a walking disaster zone.
‘Yes.’ The attendant smiled. ‘She’s old and fat. She has arthritic hips and is deaf. She’s no pretty young thing, that’s for sure. But that just makes her even more ideal for your mum. She’s used to being a companion to an elderly lady. She’s not young and spritely requiring someone young and spritely to keep up with her. She’s content to sit and just be. And she’s loyal to a fault.’ The woman folded her arms across her chest. ‘You won’t regret it. Mark my words.’
Tess nodded heartily in agreement, also folding her arms. She turned beseeching eyes on Fletch. He gave her an exasperated look. ‘I live on the nineteenth floor.’
‘She’s fully toilet trained,’ the attendant jumped in.
‘And exercise is good for Alzheimer sufferers,’ Tess added. ‘We can go for a few walks a day so Queenie can do her business. It’ll be a good routine for Jean as well.’
Fletch looked down at the dog who looked up at him, flopped her head to the side, thumped her tail twice and whined at him, leading him to suspect that she probably wasn’t all that deaf.
But three women, four if he counted Queenie, were looking at him like he was lower than a snake’s belly, and he knew when he was outgunned.
‘Okay, Mum.’ He sighed, looking down at her. ‘Let’s get Qu—Tabby home.’ He helped Tess get his mother to her feet and met her sparkling amber gaze above Jean’s snowy head. She grinned at him and he growled, ‘Smarty pants,’ at her.
But as they filled out the paperwork and he watched his mother sitting in the waiting area, stroking a contented-looking Tabby, he couldn’t help but smile. Because despite what his lease said, he could already see how the dog had a calming effect on his mother.
And that was most definitely worth it.
* * *
It was midnight when Fletch headed to bed. He’d been working on study paperwork—or at least that was what he’d been telling himself. He hadn’t exactly been very productive. Tess had been out on her feet early this evening and he’d ordered her to bed at seven.
It had been hard to think about anything else since. Other than her, Tess, in his bed.
And how they’d ended up this morning.
And how they might end up tomorrow morning.
But she’d been asleep for a good five hours now. She should be completely immersed in the land of nod. God knew, he was so tired he could barely see straight.
He looked in on his mother as he passed her room and lingered in the doorway for a moment. She was curled on her side, her snowy hair visible in the moonlight streaming through her window. Her hand rested on Tabby’s dozing head. Just then the dog shifted, looked behind her straight at him and again Fletch wondered just how deaf their deaf dog really was.
She gave a quiet whine and Fletch said in a low voice, ‘It’s okay, Tabby, it’s just me. Good girl. You come and let me know if Jean gets out of bed, okay?’
Tabby thumped her tail twice and whined again in what Fletch could only assume, what he hoped, was agreement then laid her head back on the bed. He smiled to himself and continued down the hallway to his bedroom.
Tess was sitting up in bed, reading his detective novel, when he entered. ‘Oh…sorry,’ he said. ‘I thought you were asleep.’
She looked up from the book. ‘I was, but you know how jet-lag is. I woke an hour ago like I’d been asleep for a week and I checked on Jean and I tried to go back to sleep but I couldn’t so…I thought I’d read.’
‘Yeah,’ he murmured, trying not to look at her bare shoulder. ‘Jet-lag can be a real pain like that.’
Tess nodded. ‘It’s awful.’ Every year it took two weeks to recover from her three-day jaunt to the other side of the world.
Fletch stood for a few more moments as the silence grew between them. ‘Anyway, I just came to have a shower and then get back to it.’ He resigned himself to another night of little sleep—there was no way he could crawl into bed with her while she was still awake. It was too…happy families.
And they hadn’t been that in a very long time.
She nodded. ‘Sure.’ And dropped her eyes back to the page she was reading.
Tess was aware of him disappearing into the en suite in her peripheral vision and breathed a sigh of relief when he was gone.
It was going to be a long couple of months.
She steadfastly ignored the sound of the shower as she read the same page three times. It was bound to be awkward for a while. Especially being back in bed together. It wasn’t easy pushing the memories away as she always did when he was right there beside her, a very painful reminder.
And not just the memories of Ryan, but of them.
Especially after this morning.
But she’d committed to help with Jean. And it wasn’t for ever—it would get easier.
* * *
Fletch made sure he had a shirt on as well as his boxers before stepping back into the bedroom. Tess, still reading, looked up from the book. He stayed in the doorframe, leaning his shoulder against the jamb, and smiled at her. ‘Since when do you read detective novels?’
Tess shrugged. ‘It was that or one of those very scintillating medical journals on your desk.’
Fletch chuckled. ‘They may have been more conducive to sleep.’
She smiled. ‘Actually, I personally find articles on the latest mitochondrial studies and or DNA sequencing real page-turners.’
Fletch threw his head back and gave a deep belly laugh and for a moment Tess couldn’t breathe. How long had it been since she’d heard that sexy laugh?
Ten years? Since just before Ryan had died?
The long tanned column of his throat, sprinkled with dark whiskers, drew her gaze. Her nipples tightened as an image of her rising from the bed, crossing the room and kissing it took her by surprise.
What the hell?
She blinked rapidly to dispel it.
‘Mum seems very settled tonight with Tabby curled up beside her.’
His calm observation dragged her out of a quagmire of confusion. She nodded absently whilst she sorted through appropriate responses.
‘I think we’re onto a winner there,’ she said as her faculties returned. ‘Tabby’s stuck really close to Jean. It was great to see them sitting on the couch earlier, watching television together, Tabby’s head resting on Jean’s knee.’
Fletch nodded. ‘It was a little confusing for Trish, though, when Mum rang her to tell her we’d found Tabby and she really needed to take better care of her dog.’
They laughed together this time. Listening to the one-sided telephone call had been comical. Tess was just pleased that Trish had caught on fast and knew enough to go along with her mother’s false reality.
‘Sorry,’ she apologised after her laughter had died away. ‘It’s awful to laugh at something like this.’
Fletch shrugged. What could they do? This thing was happening to them whether they liked it or not. There was a long row to hoe and they needed some relief from the grim reality of it all.
He knew that better than anyone.
‘Gotta laugh or you cry, right?’ he said philosophically.
Tess didn’t respond. What could she say? She’d made a decision when she’d moved to England to lock her grief away and try and get on with things. And it had worked for her. But there wasn’t a whole lot of laughter in her life.
‘Anyway, I hope it’s a sign of things to come,’ Fletch continued. ‘Mum being this settled.’
Tess shook herself out of her reverie. ‘I’m sure it will be. Studies show there is much
less nocturnal wandering where pets are present. And even if the person does wander, the theory is that the pet will wake also and either stay with the person or raise the alarm.’
Fletch snorted. ‘Except we got ourselves a deaf dog.’
Tess smiled. ‘Dogs sense these things intuitively. I think Tabby’s already bonded with your mother. I think she already knows, somehow, that Jean needs looking after.’
Fetch didn’t answer and Tess wondered if his thoughts had turned to another dog in another time, as hers had.
Memories of Patch, the little Jack Russell terrier that Ryan had been given for his first birthday, arose unbidden. How he’d tried to alert them to what was happening to Ryan that dreadful day.
How he’d tried to save Ryan.
It still hurt to think about her son’s faithful companion, about that day, and how she’d blamed Patch for so long for not doing enough. Not barking earlier. Not trying hard enough. But Ryan had adored his puppy dog and suddenly she needed to know what had happened to him.
‘Did you take Patch to Canada with you?’ she asked into the silence.
Fletch shook his head. ‘Trish took him for me. He died from a snake bite a few years ago.’
‘Oh.’ Tess’s guilt at how she’d shunned Patch flared to life again. But the little dog had just been one more painful reminder she hadn’t been able to bear to look at.
Fletch watched a series of emotions chase shadows across her face. ‘He did his best, Tess,’ he murmured gently. ‘The bucket was wedged into the corner of the sandpit and weighted in the bottom with sand. It was heavy and he was a little dog.’
Fletch remembered it as if it was yesterday. Patch’s incessant barking, something different about the tone of it waking him even before he’d heard Tess’s frantic ‘Fletch!’. Tearing out of the house just behind her into the back yard as a blur of brown and white hurled itself at the bucket over and over, toppling it as they reached him, disgorging water and sand and a pale, blue-lipped Ryan.
Tess shut her eyes, shutting down the images of her shaking Ryan, of the rag-doll feel of him against her chest. ‘I know.’ She
nodded. ‘I know.’
Fletch wanted to go to her. But, like at the cemetery for the last nine years, he held himself back. She didn’t look any more open to his comfort now than she had all those years ago and he’d been rejected too many times to travel down that road again. So he gripped the jamb and waited for her to regain her composure.
She opened her eyes and grimaced at him. ‘Sorry.’
Fletch shook his head. ‘Don’t be. This is hard for both of us but…thank you. Thank you so much for doing this for me. I know it’s not easy being here with us again, reminding you of things you don’t want to be reminded of.’
He’d hated it that Tess had shut him out in that year after Ryan’s death. She’d decided the only way to cope had been avoidance and it hadn’t mattered that he’d wanted to talk about it.
Had needed to talk about it.
To talk about Ryan.
She hadn’t been able to even bear having his name mentioned so he’d stopped trying and internalised everything and they’d grown further and further apart.
So he knew that being here, being confronted by him every day, had to be challenging for her. He just hadn’t realised how challenging it was going to be for him as well.
‘It’s fine, Fletch.’
Dredging up the past was something she’d avoided at all costs and even a small foray into it had left her suddenly weary again. She shut the book. ‘Think I might try and get back to sleep again.’
Fletch nodded as she climbed back into her shell. ‘Sure.’ He pushed off the doorjamb. ‘I’ve got some paperwork to get back to. I’ll be in later.’
Just like old times.
* * *
Fletch waited another couple of hours and got into bed when she was asleep and that was pretty much the pattern for the following couple of weeks.
They went to bed at separate times, Tess first, he crawling in with her at some time after midnight, turning his back to her lest he do something crazy and reach for her because lying with her again, night after night, had been much harder than he’d ever suspected it would be.
Sure, there’d been other women since their divorce. Not many, but a few. They’d been brief episodes, a handful of dates, a slaking of a thirst more than anything, where he’d given in to the dictates of his body but had kept his heart well and truly out of the equation.
But he couldn’t do that with Tess.
Lying in bed with her was a painful reminder of how good it had been between them back at a time where they’d been emotionally free to love each other. And in that strange twilight zone between sleep and waking it was easy to believe that nothing had changed between them.
His heart certainly thought so. After years of keeping it heavily guarded, it refused to buy into the happy-families façade. In those sleeping hours, when he had no conscious control, it knew her.
Knew Tess on a primal level.
Recognised the woman beside him as his mate.
It was only the slow dawning as he became more conscious that things got back under control. As each new day loomed ahead he remembered his place on the page. Days of her constant companionship, of smiling and laughing and pretending that things were fine. Of playing happy families.
No respite from her or the fears and failures of the past. No escape for his poor confused heart.
No escape from the fact that things weren’t fine.
The embarrassing mornings didn’t help. No matter how scrupulously they maintained distance as they drifted off to sleep, by morning their bodies had subconsciously sought the warmth and comfort neither of them would ask for consciously.
Fletch often woke spooned around her, an erection pressing into the soft cheeks of her bottom. Or on his stomach, one arm flung out, his hand spread possessively on her belly. Or on his side, snuggled up to her, his leg bent at the knee pinning her to the bed.
And then there were the times when he woke and she was spooning him. Or had her hand on his belly. Or her leg entwined in his.
The only way to cope with their intimate postures had been to get up before her. Untangle himself and get out of the bedroom under the guise of taking Tabby outside for her morning toilet.
Do not stop. Do not look back.
And pretend it hadn’t happened.
It certainly hadn’t made for easy days despite outward appearances. The trepidation with which he greeted each day was tempered by Tess’s academy-award-winning performance as chief organiser, but was there, nonetheless.
He knew it was difficult for her too yet she soldiered on, planning an activity every day to keep his mother, whose night-time wandering had settled dramatically, stimulated. Some days they cooked. Some days they rented classic movies that Jean knew well or visited some of Jean’s old friends. Other times they went out to a museum or lunch in the city at a teahouse that had been around for a century.
His mother particularly enjoyed the morning and afternoon walks they took for Tabby’s sake. Whether it was just Jean and Tess or he and his mother or the three of them, Jean chatted away happily as they trod the riverside boardwalk.
He knew his mother loved it when they were all together but frankly he preferred it when it was just the two of them. It felt forced with Tess there. Like they were trying too hard to be something that they weren’t, that they hadn’t been in a long time, that they could never be again, no matter how much their bodies betrayed them in their sleep.
And it felt…dishonest. Even if it was for a good cause.
And he knew she felt it too.
* * *
At the beginning of the third week there was a knock on the door as Fletch stacked the dishwasher after lunch. He’d not long got back from the hospital where the first patient in their study, a twenty-six-year-old motorbike accident victim, had been enrolled. ‘I’ll get it,’ he said, waving off Tess who had put her sandwi
ch down and risen from the table.
It was Trish. She was leaning against the door, looking huge and glowing at thirty weeks. Doug stood behind her, holding an excitable Christopher. Fletch’s heart contracted at the sight of his nephew, at the features so familiar to him.
Trish kissed her brother’s cheek. ‘Okay,’ she said, advancing into the apartment, ‘I’m going stir crazy at home. The doc said I could have a little foray and your apartment was the only place that Doug would agree to take me to. Before you ask, all I’ve done is sit in a car and walk from my house to the car and from the car to your apartment.’
Fletch’s lips twitched as Doug rolled his eyes. ‘Okay, then.’
‘Unc, unc, unc,’ Christopher chanted, squirming in his father’s arms, leaning forward and reaching out for Fletch. Just as Ryan had done when he’d come home from being at work for long hours. It was only natural for Fletch to take him and to plant a kiss on the baby-soft cheek.
‘I’d kill for a cup of tea, which, by the way,’ Trish said, smiling at him sweetly, ‘you have to make because I’m not allowed to do anything.’
Fletch laughed. ‘Well, come on in, then, and I’ll make you one.’
Christopher still in tow, he entered the open lounge area, laughing at something Doug had said. It wasn’t until he’d made it to the kitchen and heard an audible gasp that he realised the fuller implications.
He turned. Tess was frozen at the sink, her hands in sudsy water, staring at him. Or more correctly at Christopher.
He took a step towards her. ‘Tessa.’
Tess held up her hands to stop him, suds sliding off them into the sink. The ache in her chest, the one that was always there, just smothered under years of pushing all the pain away, intensified.
The little boy in her ex-husband’s arms smiled at her. A green-eyed little boy with blond hair that stuck up in the middle from his double cowlick.
A buzzing in her ears became so loud that for a moment she thought she was going to faint.
Ryan?
CHAPTER SIX
FLETCH handed Christopher back to his father. ‘Tessa,’ he said again, stepping towards her.