by Fiona Lowe
Suddenly, his hand was gripping her hose hand and he tugged hard. She lost her balance and collapsed onto him.
‘Oof,’ he groaned as she winded him.
‘Ouch. You’re too bony,’ she said, struggling to move her hip bone off his, but his arms circled her, pinning her against him.
He rolled, taking her with him until she was tucked under him, just like the time he’d kept her safe from the car. Only this time, with his barely dressed body pressing against her, she didn’t feel safe at all. This time the enemy wasn’t a car but her own body. Rafts of heat and lust rippled along her skin, shimmering in her veins and clenching her muscles in joyful anticipation of sex.
Why not? He wants you and you want him.
You tried that once before and it ended in heartache.
This time I’m all grown up and wiser. This time, just like Charlie, I’m taking what I want.
Shivering with a combination of desire and cold, she looked up into his laughing eyes. ‘Having fun? Finally relaxing?’
He grinned down at her. ‘I think I am.’
‘You play dirty.’
‘Well, I am covered in mud. But you’ve got your own bag of dirty tricks. You totally stole my concentration.’ He removed a twig from her hair and whispered in her ear, ‘You look totally amazing in a wet dress.’
Silver lights exploded behind her eyes and she was about to kiss him when an arctic blast of cold air tore across her and she couldn’t stop her teeth from chattering. She opened her eyes to see Charlie standing above her with an outstretched hand. All signs of playfulness had vanished.
‘Come on. You’re blue around the lips,’ he said, sounding one hundred percent like a doctor and nothing at all like a lover. ‘You take the first shower.’
Sadly, she was shivering too much to object.
* * *
Later, when Charlie walked into the kitchen wearing Jeremy’s plush white bathrobe, Lauren’s fingers loosened, almost dropping her mug of hot tea. Before she could say anything, he was fingering the satin piping on the lapel and asking, ‘Is it okay to wear this?’
No! Take it off right now! Suppressing a shudder and forcing down her surprise, she somehow managed to say, ‘Sure,’ in a calm and even voice.
There was something inherently wrong about seeing her ex-lover wearing her ex-husband’s clothes. Especially something as intimate as that bloody robe. A bathrobe she hadn’t thought existed in her cottage, which had always been a distinctly Jeremy-free zone.
When she’d packed up their apartment in Perth in preparation for her move to Horseshoe Bay, she’d sold or given away all the things Jeremy had left behind when he’d left her. The robe, which should have been on the top of the ‘go’ pile, must have got tangled up with the towels without her realising. Her mother had unpacked the bathroom boxes and she either hadn’t noticed the robe or had erroneously thought Lauren wanted to keep it.
‘I thought wearing it would be a lot less dangerous for both of us.’ Charlie shot her a wink. ‘Just a towel could be risky.’
Her mind froze. Her mouth dried. The image of a bare-chested Charlie standing with a towel slung low on his hips—a towel slipping off those narrow hips—socked her hard. She cleared her throat. ‘Your running gear’s in the machine, along with your shoes. Although I can’t guarantee any of it will ever be the same.’
‘Thanks for trying.’ As he accepted a mug of tea, he scrutinised her hoodie and tracksuit pants. ‘Good. You’ve lost that tinge of blue. Feeling warmer?’
‘Getting there. Tea and chocolate helps.’ She carried plates and cake into the lounge room and Charlie followed with the teapot and milk.
She’d just got comfortable on the couch and filled her mouth with a big bite of the moist, rich cake when Charlie said, ‘Thank God you were there today. From the pumps to the pipe, you were all over it. Well done.’
The compliment was so unexpected, the cake lodged in her throat. Praise wasn’t something she trusted any more—it had an awful way of coming back to bite her. She gulped some tea, taking the time to carefully consider her answer. ‘It was a team effort.’
‘Sure. But every team needs a leader and today that was you.’ He raised his mug to her, the gold monogram on the robe catching the light and glinting.
‘Well done, Lauren.’ Jeremy, his hair still wet from the shower, raised his coffee cup in a mocking gesture. ‘You’ve stuffed up again. Surely by now you’ve realised some people lead and some follow. We both know which category you fall into.’
Her breath sped up. She could see and hear Jeremy as clearly as if he were standing in front of her. She had to be careful. She had to tread carefully.
‘It wasn’t skill, Lauren. You just got lucky.’
‘I was flying by the seat of my pants,’ she said, deliberately sounding grateful. ‘Like you always say, it was more luck than good management.’
‘I don’t always say that.’ Jeremy sounded uncharacteristically confused. ‘I will concede there’s often an element of luck involved...’
Startled, Lauren blinked and Jeremy’s visage faded. She realised it was Charlie who was sitting at the end of the couch, Charlie who was talking to her.
‘Most of today’s success,’ Charlie continued, ‘came down to your clear thinking and good medicine.’
She licked her lips as agitation lingered. Habit made her say, ‘I’m sure it pales into insignificance compared with the all things you’ve done in far-flung places.’
‘For heaven’s sake, Lauren. I’m trying to give you a compliment.’
He sat forward so fast she automatically shrank back into the couch, pulling the sleeves of her hoodie over her hands. ‘Right. Sorry. Thank you.’
Charlie leaned back and set down his mug, but the whole time his gaze never left her, flicking across her face with serious scrutiny. She wished she could vanish in a puff of smoke. ‘What’s going on, Lauren?’
No way was she doing this. ‘Nothing,’ she said airily.
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘That’s okay.’ She reached for more cake. She needed cake to get Jeremy out of her head. She needed the washing machine to finish so Charlie got out of the damn robe. Then she was binning it and all the memories that went with it, and reclaiming the cottage as her safe haven.
‘It’s not okay, Lauren. If I’d run an emergency like you did today, I’d be basking in the accolades.’
‘Some of us are just a bit more humble,’ she quipped, desperate for him to drop the topic.
But he didn’t laugh. Instead, his face fell and sadness pulled at the corners of his mouth. She had a ridiculous urge to reach out and comfort him.
‘Back in the day, during that summer, you were always so full of confidence.’ Bewilderment laced his words.
‘I wasn’t. Your memory’s faulty.’ She jumped to her feet. ‘I need wine. Would you like a glass?’ She was halfway across the room before he replied and when he did, it wasn’t about wine.
‘Who’s Jeremy?’
The question stopped her short. How on earth did Charlie know her ex-husband’s name? ‘No idea.’ She had no intention of ever re-entering that dark tunnel.
‘Whoever he is, I think you know him pretty well.’
Her heart beat so fast it threatened to lift out of her chest. ‘You’re wrong.’
‘If I’m wrong, why have you gone as pale as a sheet and why is his name on this robe?’
CHAPTER SIX
CHARLIE WATCHED IN stunned surprise as Lauren stomped down the hall before reappearing and holding a pair of bright orange SES coveralls. She promptly threw them at him and he thrust out an arm to catch them but not before a bright orange trouser leg slapped him in the face.
‘Get out of that robe.’
‘But I’m comf—’
‘Get. Out. Of. That. Robe,’ she groun
d out, before disappearing into the kitchen.
As he shoved his legs into the pants and carefully zipped them up over his bare skin, he heard the fridge door squeak, the clunk of glass on the bench and the crack of a seal.
‘Are you decent?’ she called out.
‘Yep.’
‘Good.’ She reappeared and set down two glasses of wine on the coffee table then scooped up the robe. Jerking open one of the French doors, she hurled the bathrobe into the garden. Lauren closed the door, picked up her glass of wine and took a large gulp.
He hated seeing her like this. He’d unwittingly played a role in the pinched expression that now pulled her lovely features into a grimace. The part of him that hoped to build on their shared fun in the garden and cosy up with Lauren on the couch berated him for asking the damn question about the owner of the robe. But the rest of him wanted to find out what had happened to dent the confidence of this previously self-possessed young woman. She should have been high-fiving him but instead he got the distinct impression she’d been carefully choosing her words and underplaying her achievement. He had a gut feeling that this Jeremy was somehow involved.
‘Feeling better?’ he asked carefully.
‘Not really.’ She took another drink and sat down hard. ‘But before you think I’ve completely lost my marbles, Jeremy is my very ex-husband. I thought I’d got rid of everything of his so seeing the robe again was...’
‘A surprise?’
‘More like a nightmare.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be sorry,’ she said tightly, her eyes suddenly flashing. ‘I don’t want sympathy for my own stupidity.’
He raised his hands in surrender but added, ‘You’re not stupid.’
She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes for a moment and when she lowered them she gave him a sideways glance. The fire had gone out of her eyes, leaving behind a gaze as doleful as a chocolate Labrador’s. It took all his self-control not to close the space between them and hug her tight. But if he hugged her, he’d want to kiss her. If he kissed her he wouldn’t want to stop until they were both naked and sated. And then, high on endorphins, neither of them would want to talk about anything other than nonsense and her story would be lost to him.
Despite the lust that burned hot in his veins, he wanted to know exactly what she’d endured at the hands of a man he’d never met but already hated.
‘You want to know about Jeremy? Okay. Here goes.’ A long sigh rolled out of her and she took another sip of her wine. ‘I met him when we were both registrars. Work was frantic and I barely had enough time to eat and sleep, let alone find time for a boyfriend, but Jeremy was both charming and persistent.’
‘He wore you down?’
‘Looking back, it was more like being bulldozed. I’d grown up in a household where I learned to put other people first at all times. Don’t get me wrong, I knew I was loved but no one had ever made me the centre of their world like Jeremy did. Sadly, I was like putty in his hands.’
‘We’re all guilty of loving being the centre of attention.’
‘Right up until the attention swings from positive to negative.’
She said the words so matter-of-factly it took a moment for them to sink in. Charlie realised his fists were clenched. ‘Is he a short man?’ he asked, knowing the type of bloke who often put others down to build themselves up.
She laughed but it held no humour; only the vestiges of anger and regret. ‘Metaphorically speaking, I suppose he is, but we were already married before I realised that. Jeremy was desperate to get an ENT fellowship. He’d come to the VRH from Queensland, saying the board at Central couldn’t organise themselves out of a brown paper bag. He mentioned he’d been overlooked for a position there because he didn’t have the old boys’ pedigree. I had no reason not to believe him or even think he had a chip on his shoulder, especially after the scandal broke about all the backroom deals.
‘I both admired and envied Jeremy’s clear and uncomplicated career goal. I was floundering with my decision and feeling torn in different directions. I lurched between paediatrics and respiratory when, out of the blue, the intensive care consultant asked me to apply for the fellowship. She was a brilliant doctor and fabulous to work with so I seized the opportunity and threw my hat into the ring. I was up against some stellar people, but to my shock and delight I was offered the job. I was almost paralytic with excitement and by then Jeremy and I were a couple, so he was the first person I rang. If his congratulations seemed muted compared with my parents’, I put it down to me catching him during a busy theatre schedule. He made up for it that night with dinner at our favourite restaurant.’
Charlie swallowed a preconceived humph.
‘Two months later, while I was flying high, working with a fantastic team and learning heaps, the VRH told Jeremy he’d been passed over for the ENT fellowship. He was gutted. It was an awful couple of weeks and then, thankfully, he got a job at The Girton as an unaccredited registrar with a view to being accepted into the training programme within the year. He insisted I move hospitals too. When I refused, saying there was no need because we were both in Melbourne, we had our first big argument. There was a very tense standoff for two days but when he finally came around, instead of make-up sex, he proposed.’
The guy’s an idiot. Charlie drank more wine.
‘Don’t ever play poker, Charlie.’ Lauren gave him a wry smile. ‘To this day, I hate that I missed the huge neon warning sign. In typical Jeremy style, he applied for a notice of intention to marry and thirty-one days later in a romantic whirlwind of Jeremy’s making, we got married at the Treasury building.’
Charlie felt his blood pressure rising. ‘You didn’t hold out for a big wedding?’
She shrugged. ‘We didn’t have the money and my parents deserve a retirement. As it turned out, I’m glad we didn’t have a big wedding. I would have hated Mum and Dad to have forked out a lot of money when two years later it was over. Romance and grand gestures are not what they’re cracked up to be.’
‘I’m with you there.’
She shot him a grateful look. ‘Anyway, after a year at The Girton, they offered the fellowship to someone else. Jeremy was incandescent with rage. It was everyone’s fault from the condescending consultant to the bitchy nurses, the tight hospital administrator, the boys’ club of surgeons and me.’
‘You? Why you?’
‘To quote Jeremy, I’d been given my fellowship on a plate. I hadn’t even known which area of medicine to pursue, whereas he had known for years what he wanted. I didn’t deserve it—he did.’
Suddenly, her earlier behaviour of pushing all his compliments back onto him fell into place. ‘Oh, God, you started to believe him.’
She dropped his gaze. ‘Not consciously, but he did have a point. I only had to look at the foster children who passed through our house when I was growing up to know how lucky and privileged my life is.’
‘But your luck comes off the back of your hard work, Lauren,’ he growled, wanting to hammer the point home. ‘It wasn’t your fault this guy couldn’t nail a fellowship.’
‘Logically, all that’s true, but emotion clouds everything. I was married and I’ve been taught marriage is a team event. My husband was miserable and I wanted to help. I became his cheerleading squad. I gave him the stats for fellowships, told him hardly anyone gets what they want straight off the bat and I encouraged him to widen his search. I talked to everyone I knew. A job came up in Perth.’
Out of the snippets of information, a picture of control was slowly emerging and Charlie didn’t like where it was heading. He didn’t want to believe it—didn’t want to believe that Lauren would make so many compromises. ‘You gave up your fellowship?’
‘Not intentionally.’ Her old fire was back and he wanted to cheer. ‘Jeremy told me there was also a position there for me too. Although I was
disappointed to leave the VRH, I rationalised that no one completes their fellowship in one place. Moving would broaden my experience. When we arrived in Perth, the hospital told me they were sorry but the position wasn’t available for at least eight months.’
‘And your husband knew this when he asked you to quit and move?’
‘If you’d asked me then I would have said no. Now I’d give you an unequivocal yes. I was clueless about his jealousy or his plan to completely dismantle my professional life. The thing about the West is, unless you have job, it’s very isolating. I made enquiries at all the other hospitals but there was nothing for me except enthusiastic promises. I got some general clinic work and kept up my studies but I was frustrated and miserable. I missed my parents and my friends. Jeremy, on the other hand, was thriving. If I complained, as he’d often done in Melbourne, he was unsympathetic. His standard reply was, “Now you know how I’ve felt for the last two years.”
‘Two months after we arrived, he suggested I use the waiting time to have a baby. I jumped at the chance. I never anticipated I’d have any problems getting pregnant because...’ She jerkily raised her wine glass and drained the contents, her eyes suddenly wide and frantic. ‘Anyway, a year later I still didn’t have an intensive care job and I wasn’t pregnant either. The tests were inconclusive. There was no apparent reason on either side for our failure to conceive. Jeremy blamed me. Told me if I worried less I’d get pregnant.’
‘Useful,’ Charlie grunted, unable to stop himself.
Lauren didn’t comment. It was as if she needed to block out everything just to get the story told. ‘Whenever I voiced my concerns about anything, Jeremy swooped, reinforcing my worst fears. He was working long hours, which became a blessing because almost every conversation we had degenerated into an argument. He’d sit on the end of our bed in that damn robe, twist my words about marriage and commitment, give and take, and dismantle my sense of self. What I hate the most is that I somehow let him.’