Bonkers

by Michelle Holman

  ‘How did you plan to make your getaway?’ he inquired, his eyes fastened to her rising hemline.

  ‘By bus,’ Lisa replied firmly. ‘Nobody would suspect a woman with a broken leg catching a bus to be a robber.’

  ‘Guess not,’ Dan agreed, sounding a bit more like his normal self, willing the skirt to slide into home base. ‘The pantyhose might have been a bit of a giveaway—if you’d had them with you.’

  Lisa rolled her eyes. ‘Well, I wouldn’t have worn them on the bus—I’m not stupid, you know.’

  ‘The thought never crossed my mind.’

  ‘And I had a cunning plan to hide them in my cast instead of chucking them in a rubbish bin.’

  Dan shook his head admiringly. ‘Brilliant. Although I feel duty bound to add that as an orthopaedic surgeon I wouldn’t have advised it.’

  ‘I can respect that.’

  ‘Thank you.’ He paused. ‘Lisa?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Can you please stop kicking me with your damn cast?’

  ‘Oh! Sorry!’ Bolting upright, she frowned down at his trouser-clad leg which was at least a foot away from her cast. ‘Hang on! I never touched you!’

  ‘No,’ he drawled. ‘But every time you swung your leg I got a view straight up your skirt to your tonsils.’

  Lisa let out a squawk, trapping her skirt between her knees with her hands. ‘You could have said something sooner!’

  ‘And spoil the show? I don’t think so.’

  Lisa was thoroughly confused. Was she meant to feel encouraged or rebuffed?

  Dan went to sit on the wooden chair in front of the dressing table. He looked a lot more like his usual self, in control, calm. Leaning forward, he braced his arms along his thighs and pressed the tips of his long fingers together. Lisa loved his hands. Although they were big like the rest of him, she loved the way he handled things, never clumsily and always with great sensitivity.

  ‘I think we have to talk about a few things that have been getting between us,’ Dan said.

  Lisa tore her eyes away from his hands. She didn’t think she liked the sound of that. But she definitely liked the way his shirt pulled taut across his wide shoulders and then tapered to his narrow waist. Beyond that waist was a hard, muscular bum. She did love Dan’s bum. If he was about to explain to her why she turned him off, she wished he’d just keep it to himself. But what Dan said next almost knocked her sideways on the bed.

  ‘Lisa, did you know you were pregnant when you had the accident?’

  She clasped her hands to her belly, her expression incredulous. ‘No!’

  Dan nodded. ‘You had a miscarriage in the Emergency Room.’

  ‘Oh! Oh!’ she gasped softly, looking at him sorrowfully. ‘I’m so sorry, Dan!’

  He gave her a long, contemplative look. ‘Losing a baby is always a tragedy, Lisa.’ He paused. ‘But I wasn’t the father.’

  Lisa didn’t hear him at first. She was remembering the little boy in the waiting room, the child that had made Linda Brogan so agitated. ‘It was a boy!’ she cried. ‘I saw him!’

  Dan frowned and sat back in the chair. ‘What do you mean, you saw him?’

  Her brow furrowed. ‘What do you mean you weren’t the father?’

  ‘Work it out…Li-sa,’ he replied sarcastically, drawing out the two syllables of her name.

  Lisa hugged her arms tightly around her waist. Several pieces of the puzzle fell into place and the picture wasn’t a particularly attractive one. Linda Brogan had been having an affair. Several affairs, for all Lisa knew. No wonder Dan had seemed so distant. No wonder he kept her at arm’s length.

  But I’m not Linda! she wanted to shout. I’m not your slapper of a wife!

  Her shoulders slumped. It was hopeless. Dan wouldn’t kick her out on the street, but he wouldn’t allow himself to care for her either. And, silly cow that she was, she had begun to get emotionally involved with him, imagining a relationship where none could ever exist.

  Suddenly the episode in the kitchen made horrible sense. Lisa was amazed he could even bear to touch her, to have her living in the same house with him. She looked at him sadly, struggling to contain the storm of anguish building inside her. It would be so incredibly easy to fall in love with this man. In fact, she was more than halfway there already.

  ‘Well that explains a lot of things,’ Lisa said quietly when she could finally speak.

  Dan eyed her speculatively. ‘Does it? Like what?’

  She hesitated. ‘Like it was fairly obvious there was something very wrong with your marriage to Linda.’

  ‘Is that so, Lisa?’ he replied coolly. ‘And just what gave you that idea?’

  Lisa flinched at the coldness of his tone, but she’d gone too far to back down now. She forced herself to meet his gaze. ‘You never touch me the way a husband touches his wife.’

  Dan grew very still, all except for his eyes which seethed with emotion. ‘What are you trying to say, Lisa?’ he asked silkily, standing up and taking a step closer to the bed. ‘That you’re disappointed you haven’t got laid?’

  ‘No!’ Lisa shrank from him. ‘I’m not just talking about sex! I mean the small things, the casual touches of affection, the caring gestures, the little things I’ve seen my parents do a thousand times over the years!’

  Dan knew exactly what she was talking about because he’d seen his own parents doing the same things, but hearing Lisa mention parents she didn’t have only infuriated him more. Taking another step towards her, he moved right up to the edge of the bed. Lisa fell onto her back and Dan followed her, flattening his palms on either side of her shoulders, his weight braced on his outstretched arms as he gazed down into her shocked face.

  ‘Sorry, I’m all out of tenderness, but if it’s mindless sex you’re after I’m your man,’ he said bitterly.

  Lisa clenched her fists against her breasts and stared up into Dan’s glittering gaze uncomprehendingly.

  ‘Dan?’ she whispered. ‘What are you doing?’

  For several heartbeats he continued to watch her before closing his eyes and swearing softly. When he opened them again, Lisa saw self-loathing and revulsion in them before he tried to jerk away. She grabbed his biceps and hung on.

  Dan jerked upright, pulling Lisa into a sitting position on the bed.

  ‘Shit! Lisa, I’m sorry! Just let me go.’

  His pain made Lisa want to weep. She clutched him tighter. Beneath her hands his muscles were rock hard with tension. ‘Dan. Really, it’s OK. You’ve been badly hurt by somebody you loved and trusted. You’ve every right to be angry and defensive.’

  Taking hold of one of her wrists, Dan carefully removed Lisa’s hand from his upper arm. ‘Let go of me, Lisa,’ he said stonily and reached for her other hand.

  ‘Dan, please listen to me!’ she implored huskily, tucking her hands into her lap to stop herself from touching him again. ‘I am not Linda! Linda is dead! Your wife is dead.’

  He didn’t seem to hear. ‘I’ve never treated a woman the way I just treated you.’

  ‘Dan, please give me a chance,’ Lisa cried.

  ‘I have nothing left to give, Lisa,’ Dan told her flatly. ‘I can take you to bed and we could screw one another’s brains out, but that’s all it will be—sex. If that’s what you want then I’m your man, but just be clear that’s all I have to offer you. I used everything up on Linda. This time round I’d be the one doing the taking.’

  ‘I don’t believe that,’ Lisa said stubbornly.

  Dan shrugged. ‘Then you’re a fool.’

  She dragged herself backwards across the bed, the rough edge of her cast catching the duvet so it rucked up beneath her. ‘Why? Why did you tell me about Linda’s affair and the baby when you’ve never mentioned it before?’

  ‘Because I thought you might get to hear about it from the police or in court,’ he replied quietly.

  Lisa recalled what he had said about the police calling. She had deliberately pushed it out of her mind. ‘Court? I�
��ll have to go to court?’

  He nodded. ‘A woman died, Lisa.’

  She wanted to yell, Yes! Me!

  Instead she nodded wearily and took a shuddering breath, hanging onto her composure with difficulty. ‘Can you get out now, please?’

  She wouldn’t let herself cry until he’d gone.

  Dan hesitated, his expression bleak.

  Lisa concentrated on staring at her cast.

  Dan’s eyes followed the restless movement of her fingers pleating and unpleating the duvet cover. He felt as if he’d just dealt her a mortal blow, an injury almost as bad as those she’d sustained in the car crash. He went to the door.

  ‘Dan?’

  He stopped with his hand on the door handle. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Was Linda unfaithful a lot?’

  His jaw tightened. ‘Not that I know of. Just this one guy…I think.’

  Lisa’s eyes remained on her cast. Despite her deep despair, she still wanted to lessen his pain. ‘She didn’t want to go. She was meant to come back,’ she said quietly. ‘Only there was a bit of a mix-up. You got the wrong woman back.’

  The hairs rose on the back of Dan’s neck. He hated it when she talked like this. Looking over his shoulder, he found her watching him. Her blue eyes suddenly seemed old and indescribably sad. Dan had the feeling she’d seen things he couldn’t begin to imagine.

  Quietly he let himself out of the room.

  Dan was waiting for the telltale sound of Lisa walking in her sleep. He found her on the patio at the back of the house. She’d managed to open one of the doors and was wandering towards the fence at the bottom of the garden. The cliff edge was only a few metres away, bordered by a wooden fence and native manuka and pohutukawa trees. A sliver of moon provided a faint light. The sea was an inky, black expanse of nothingness beyond the cliff, the distant sound of the surf falling onto the nearby beach loud in the quiet, still night air. Dan had to run to catch her. He grabbed her so roughly that Lisa jerked awake and screamed.

  ‘You’re sleepwalking again, Lisa!’ he cried, holding her loosely against his chest as she struggled against him, frightened and disorientated. ‘Sssh! Sssh! It’s OK! It’s Dan.’

  His heart thudded with shock. This was his fault. If he hadn’t decided to argue with her that night she would never have sleepwalked. He’d come to realize there was a pattern to Lisa’s nocturnal wanderings. If she was upset or stressed, she walked in her sleep. On the days he returned home and found her looking the most relaxed, she didn’t get out of bed in the night. In fact, the night after he’d almost made love to her on the kitchen counter she had slept the whole night through, which made his decision to keep his hands and the rest of himself away from her damned hard to stick to when he knew she was every bit as hungry for him.

  Even without the added worry of Lisa sleepwalking over the cliff or off down the street and being hit by a car, Dan doubted he’d have managed more than a few hours’ sleep due to the dreams he kept having about her: naked, hot, sweaty dreams where they wrapped around each other like a pair of eels.

  Naked on the beach.

  Naked on the rug in front of the fire in the lounge.

  That particular one would have made sitting in the lounge at night with her an exercise in self-control, so it was almost a relief when she went to her room straight after she’d tidied the kitchen each night.

  Naked in his car.

  It had certainly livened up the tedium of sitting in the traffic on the drive over the Harbour Bridge to and from the hospital. She’d even turned up in one dream as his scrub nurse. When he’d held out his hand for the bone drill, there she was, buck naked except for a mask and surgical cap, her long-lashed blue eyes half-lidded and sultry. ‘One screw or two, Mr Brogan?’ she’d asked huskily in her cute Kiwi accent. Dan looked about frantically at the rest of the surgical team, but nobody else seemed to notice anything was wrong.

  He woke up with his cock making a tent pole in the middle of the covers and his eyes gritty from lack of sleep. That day he was uncharacteristically grumpy in the OR, or theatre as it was called in New Zealand, earning himself several surprised looks from the nursing staff with whom he was usually a favourite.

  When Lisa hadn’t sleepwalked in over a week, Dan began to hope she had stopped. Lisa said she thought it was because she was so worn out hopping around on crutches all day that she didn’t have the energy to climb out of bed in the middle of the night. Dan hoped it was because they’d settled into a pattern of sorts, but he’d blown that to hell and back that night with his uncharacteristic outburst, although he’d meant every word he’d said.

  Lisa stopped struggling in his arms and began to shiver. She still preferred to wear his old cotton T-shirts as nightdresses, which Dan found oddly sweet. He was wearing a pair of pale-blue pyjama pants he had been forced to buy so he didn’t leap out of bed naked on his nightly rescue missions. Clumsily, Lisa attempted to push him away. Dan loosened his grip but refused to let her go. ‘I’ll take you back to bed.’

  ‘No!’ She shoved against his bare chest, her fingers lingering on his pectoral muscles before snatching her hands away as if she’d been burnt. Dan wasn’t sure if he imagined it but for a moment her touch gentled to a caress before she curled her hands into fists against her breasts. He tried not to imagine how they looked beneath the cotton fabric softly cupping their fullness.

  ‘No. Thanks. I’m OK now. I’m awake. I can manage by myself,’ Lisa said in a breathless, shaky voice.

  Reluctantly dropping his arms, Dan stepped away from her, wishing he could carry her back to the big bed, strip her naked and spend the rest of the night investigating every inch of her beautiful body. She had been so incredibly responsive in the kitchen the first night he had returned home from work. Dan had been bemused ever since by the tentative, endearing way she had touched him, as if he was a present she wasn’t quite certain she was allowed to unwrap. Her touch had not been the touch of a woman who had made love to the same man for the past eight years and knew his body as well as her own.

  He followed along behind Lisa, keeping close enough to catch her if she tripped. She was always groggy and disorientated if she woke up while she was sleepwalking. She hopped inside, stumbling twice before reaching her bedroom. Dan watched from the shadows of the doorway as she climbed beneath the covers, her back towards him.

  ‘Can you shut the door, please?’ she asked quietly.

  They had an agreement to leave both their bedroom doors open so he could hear her. Feeling as if he had lost something he might never get back, he slowly closed the door.

  18

  Lisa rang Sherry the next morning and asked if she could move in with her.

  ‘What’s happened?’ Sherry demanded.

  ‘Nothing. I just…want to be with you.’

  There was a long pause.

  ‘I can’t do that.’

  Her tone put Lisa on the alert. ‘What’s wrong?’

  Sherry sighed. ‘It’s Mum. She tried to go back to work but she keeps losing it.’

  Lisa struggled to keep her voice steady. ‘Now isn’t a good time.’

  ‘You know you can come any time! If you want to come over here, then pack your bags and I’ll come and get you right now.’

  ‘But I’d have to hide, Sherry, and I don’t think I could stand it,’ Lisa replied, fighting back tears.

  ‘What’s happened, Lisa?’ Sherry asked tensely. ‘Has he hurt you? Something’s wrong, isn’t it?’

  Lisa gave a strangled laugh. ‘Of course something’s wrong! I’m living in another woman’s body!’

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Lisa swiped her eyes with a tissue and blotted the end of her nose. ‘Nothing new. Dan’s very kind to me. If I had to live with a stranger, I couldn’t have found anybody more decent. I’ll be OK.’

  ‘You don’t sound OK.’

  ‘I am. Really, I am. I’m just…missing you all.’

  Lisa’s contact with Sherry and her
visits to see her father at the garden centre were all that was keeping her sane. Her dad smiled whenever Lisa arrived, bringing him yet another distressed plant in a plastic bag for him to doctor.

  ‘Another one?’ he would ask, shaking his head. ‘Are these all your plants?’

  Lisa told him her name was Lisa and finally admitted she was rescuing her neighbours’ plants. She refused to call him Brian and several times just stopped herself before she said Dad. His gentle, kind presence soothed her. ‘You’re a regular Red Cross for plants aren’t you, love?’ he told her.

  Sherry’s voice jerked Lisa back to the present. ‘I hate this!’ she cried angrily. ‘It’s all wrong!’

  Lisa gave a hiccuping laugh. ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘Lees?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Dillon Taylor has been trying to contact you. He needs to take your statement about the accident.’

  Lisa nodded at the opposite wall. ‘Dan told me about it last night when I got home. God, Sherry! What do I say to him?’

  ‘I don’t know, Lisa. I really don’t know.’

  Dan insisted on being present at the interview. Despite the coolness between them since the night Dan told her about Linda’s miscarriage, Lisa was glad he was there.

  It was a bizarre experience. First she totally freaked Officer Dillon Taylor out by opening the door to him and unthinkingly smiling and saying, ‘Hi, Dilly!’

  Dillon’s face froze beneath his police cap. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  Dan had managed to hand over an out-patients’ clinic to his registrar so he could make it home. He came up behind Lisa where she stood at the front door and gently moved her out of the way so Dillon could come in.

  ‘Officer?’ He reached out and shook Dillon’s hand. ‘I’m Dan Brogan. This is…Linda, my wife. Please come inside.’

  Lisa was shaken. She’d never heard Dan introduce her as his wife before. It made her feel uneasy, but at the same time it made her belly flip with excitement.

  Dillon followed Dan into the house, giving Lisa a long, puzzled look as he went by.