‘Because for a long time I knew I wasn’t ready,’ she answered. ‘I didn’t have a lot of confidence. Then about six years ago I thought I was. Had this horrible, needy relationship with a man—another doctor, wouldn’t you know?—for three years where I did all the wrong things, and he was the wrong person anyway, and he was right to break it off in the end, but it hurt, and thank goodness I didn’t slash any tyres or post diatribes on any of those don’t-date-him-honey websites—’
‘That’s the last thing I can imagine you doing!’
‘Me, too, now. But the brain had to exert firm control over the typing fingers for a couple of months there.’
‘You’re laughing at yourself.’
‘Very healthy reaction.’ She gave a dazzling grin. ‘Absolute disaster to take your own broken heart too seriously. Even more of a disaster to go public about it. My advice to any woman is to make sure you surround yourself with merciless female friends who just won’t let you cry and moan and rehash it over and over. Especially with white wine spritzers or margaritas anywhere in the picture. Ooh, yuck, no!’ She wrinkled her nose, and he couldn’t help laughing, which was what she wanted.
‘Anyhow,’ she went on, ‘it was screamingly obvious that I needed some time alone, and a change of scene, so I moved to Darwin and that’s been great. Just great. I learned a heck of a lot from the whole sorry episode.’
She laughed again, and Luke had this absurd flash of thought. Then I should thank the man. He asked instead, ‘So you’re settled there permanently?’
She was right on the ball. She went still and watchful at once. ‘You don’t want Rowdy going to Darwin, do you? So far from here, or from anywhere else you might settle?’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘You want me to leave him here, with you.’ She instantly hated the thought, he could see it.
‘Not that either. Not necessarily. I want to … work something out.’ It sounded inadequate. One of them would have to move, if they both wanted to take an active part in his son’s future. ‘Something that’s best for everyone,’ he finished, and this sounded more inadequate still.
‘I’ve never said to myself that I’m permanently settled in Darwin,’ she said slowly. ‘I haven’t bought a house. I’m renting. But I like the tropical climate there. Don’t have the skin for it, but like it anyway. I love the lushness, and cool fans, and air-conditioning, and spicy food eaten outdoors, the whole complex ethnic mix of Darwin I like. And I like crocs and bird life and red desert just an hour or two away, and swimming pools and ocean, and those sudden sunsets, and the blasts of damp heat.’
‘You want me to settle in Darwin.’
She laughed. ‘No!’
‘Because you’re sure selling the place! Although I could point out that most of coastal north Queensland has the features you’ve mentioned.’
Their waiter dared a timid return, asking if they were ready to order, and by the time they’d chosen a wine and quibbled over whether the vegetarian dumplings should be steamed or fried, the subject of a compromise between Darwin and Queensland had somehow …
Well, he wasn’t sure what else either of them could say at this point.
Start suggesting random cities?
Melbourne?
Both sets of grandparents were still there, but he wasn’t convinced that would be a good thing for Rowdy. Don and Pat Stafford had always treated Alice far too obviously as the favoured child, which hadn’t been good for her, or for Janey. His own parents had done the opposite. They’d been incredibly suspicious of Alice. The Stafford and Bresciano in-laws had not meshed remotely well at family gatherings, and if they fought over their grandson …
No, Rowdy needed the qualities that Luke kept coming back to in Janey.
Her groundedness. Her good sense.
And she liked the tropical climate.
For some reason he couldn’t get that idea out of his mind. As they waited for their meal, he kept getting pictures in his head. Janey sitting on her shady Darwin veranda at the end of a long day …
Did she even have a veranda? He didn’t care about that detail.
She’d pour herself a long, cool drink and have her fans going. There’d be a slight mist of sweat across her collarbone, and she’d roll the side of the cold-drink glass across her forehead and lift her dark hair from the back of her neck. She’d blow out her cheeks, letting her tired breath drop from her lungs, and her limbs would flop all loose and relaxed as she sat on her … what? Veranda swing.
Oh, hell!
This is wrong.
He didn’t understand it at all. The sensuality of the images, the tightening in his groin. He remembered the early chemistry between himself and Alice, which he hadn’t thought about in years. Their wine arrived and he took refuge in pouring and tasting it. ‘Nice,’ he said. ‘Um …’
‘Why doesn’t he speak, Luke?’ she burst out suddenly. ‘I’m not sure what we can work out about his future until he’ll talk to us. And what if that takes weeks? What if we can’t get him to talk until we understand why he doesn’t? Does he need professional help? How do we handle that? I doubt there’s a qualified child psychologist here in Crocodile Creek, and it can’t just be anyone, it has to be someone really good, whom he trusts and responds to. Meanwhile, we have no idea what he thinks or feels. Or even what he’d like to be called.’
‘He stopped speaking when Alice died?’
‘That’s what they told me at Mundarri. That he’d been very quiet while she was ill. Well, that’s one of their spiritual healing practices. Silence and peace. It’s not wrong exactly, is it? Premature babies really need it. Any ill person does. But as usual, at Mundarri they carried it to extremes. And then they said that after she died he stopped talking completely. And I don’t know if we should push him, or act as if it’s normal, or what.’
‘Charles thinks we should just spend time with him. He suggested we take him out to Charm Island on Friday for a picnic. They had a lot less damage than on Wallaby Island, so most of the place is open. Pushing him doesn’t sound right. You can tell he’s not staying silent out of defiance.’
‘He’s not trying to punish the whole world.’
‘No. It doesn’t feel that way. Do you think?’
‘No.’ They sipped their wine, and their meal arrived. ‘I like the Charm Island idea,’ she went on. ‘But it doesn’t feel like enough. We go out to dinner to talk about the future, and end up reaching the momentous decision to go on a picnic.’
‘I think it’s all we can do.’
She flapped her hands. ‘I know, I know.’
‘On the plus side, we didn’t fight.’
‘Yes, we did!’
‘Not about Rowdy.’
‘No, not about him.’
‘And you have no idea how good that feels, Janey. That we stayed rational. And put his needs first. And didn’t use him like a weapon to hurt each other.’
Alice’s ghost drifted over the table, but they looked at her, didn’t talk about her, let her go.
‘How long have you been in Crocodile Creek?’ Janey asked, after the silence, and Luke picked up the conversational ball and ran with it, just as she’d wanted him to. They kept to light subjects for the rest of the meal, and Janey’s one glass of wine began to create a pleasant softening around the edges of the atmosphere, and it was lovely. Too lovely.
They sat over their meal for nearly two hours, and the glass of wine turned into a glass and a half. Alcohol was the worst excuse in the world. One and a half glasses of wine in two hours wouldn’t have taken her over the legal limit for driving, let alone over the more personal limit for letting her barriers down.
But as they left to walk to his car, parked just around the corner, Luke linked his arm through hers and she laid her head on his shoulder for a moment, and that was all it took. She sighed. Why did he feel so good? Why did the contact feel so necessary? He heard the sigh and tipped his head to look at her. ‘Janey?’
And then time stopped.
‘I’m OK,’ she murmured. ‘I just …’
Have to cling to you, or my legs will give way.
Apparently she didn’t need to actually say it. His arms came around her, and she burrowed her head into the curve of his neck, drinking in the way he smelt. Oh, she wanted to taste his skin. Taste someone’s skin.
No.
His. Just his.
‘Janey …’ he said again, differently this time.
She felt his mouth pressing on her hair, finding her temple and her cheek. This was the moment when she could have turned away.
Should have.
But didn’t.
Instead, she lifted her face to meet his, touching her lips clumsily to the corner of his mouth, wanting him so much she didn’t care if it wasn’t the best kiss in the world. She just wanted to stay here in his arms for hours, and touch and taste and feel.
‘Janey …’
No. Please. No talking.
She anchored his jaw between her hands and kissed him right this time. Right, because he kissed her back, tightened his arms, let out a deep, groaning vibration of sound, parted his lips and drank the taste of her as if he wanted to drown in it.
They just stood there. Nothing else mattered. He tasted of spice and wine and erotic familiarity. He’d shaved for their evening out and he smelt so delicious. She couldn’t put a name to the mingling of scents, but felt them cloaking her like some protective, wonderful garment that belonged to her alone.
She ran her fingers into his hair, felt the press of her breasts against his chest, and the bare length of her legs in Georgie’s dress against the hard warmth of his thighs. Her legs went weak and wobbly and that was wonderful because she could press against him more closely.
They were joined, the whole length of their bodies. Their clothing barely made a barrier. She could feel his increasing arousal and didn’t try to slide away, just felt it, softened and pushed against it, letting her hips rock a little. Which made him groan against her mouth. ‘Oh, Janey …’
His hands—those long-fingered surgeon’s hands—slid over the fabric of her dress and cupped her bottom, anchoring her in place against his hardness. As if she’d had any intention of letting him go! His mouth had too much power. Needing air, she laid her head on his shoulder and just felt their hearts beating together. She stroked his neck and breathed him in, then he found her mouth again and she thought she’d never been kissed so deeply.
She was overwhelmed by how good this was. More than good. Inevitable. Unstoppable.
Except that you had to stop, eventually, when you were kissing each other in a public street. She felt the need building higher and harder in both of them, could see the direction it was heading.
Well, how many directions were there?
Only one, when it was this good.
But then some critical balance point in both their heads shifted at the same moment. The heat of need gave way to a cold shower of good sense. She couldn’t have said which of them pulled back first, but he was the first one to speak. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry. We can’t do this, can we? We can’t possibly! It’s hopeless in so many ways I can’t even count them. Give me a minute, then we’ll drive.’
He walked awkwardly around to the driver’s side of the car, and leaned his forearm on the roof, pressing his lips together and closing his eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said again.
‘No, don’t. It was my fault, too.’
He hadn’t unlocked the car. She stood there, waiting for him to realise, and remembered a hazy, indistinct incident from the past that she hadn’t thought of in years. They’d kissed once before.
A fellow intern had thrown a party at the end of a particularly gruelling week in A and E, when Janey had seen two emergency admissions die, had sent several loudly abusive and ungrateful drug addicts back onto the streets after bringing them back from near fatal overdoses, and had treated a child permanently brain-damaged following a massive seizure.
She’d gone to a friend’s house to get dressed up and they’d borrowed each other’s clothes and started on the champagne before even getting to the party itself. She’d drunk too much, for once in her life, and so had Luke, and she hadn’t eaten all day so the alcohol had poured into an empty stomach. The party had been crowded, a whole lot of wild, gyrating bodies dancing to music in the dark. She’d flirted and danced, cried on a friend’s shoulder, made extravagant claims about never forgetting various casual friends whom she’d now totally forgotten, and she’d kissed two men that night.
One had been a guy she’d never seen before in her life, the brother of another intern. She’d fancied him rotten in her tipsy state, and he’d been ready to race off in a taxi to his place and fall into bed on the spot. He’d gone off in a huff when she’d explained woozily, no, sorry, it was just a kiss, because, sorry, she’d forgotten his name and, sorry, you really couldn’t sleep with someone when you didn’t know their name, right?
Why the hell not, he’d said.
She’d turned her back.
And then … memory extremely hazy here … she’d danced with Luke very late in the evening … And at some point that frantic, artificial energy—the need to forget the stressful week and the sense of failure by whatever means possible—had suddenly ebbed like bath water draining … She’d almost wept with exhaustion and stress …
Had found herself in his arms.
Given him her mouth.
Kiss me, Luke, I just need a kiss. Just one.
He’d kissed her back—for how long? Half a minute? Ten?—then apologised in a woolly, absent-minded way and staggered off. He’d had a rough week in A and E, too. Had worked about ninety hours. Had been thoroughly yelled at by some senior doctor, she knew, because several people had heard. She was pretty sure he’d gone home that night with someone else. Or at least had shared a taxi with the woman and been all over her in the car, receiving a warm welcome for his attentions.
He and Janey had both been as awkward as fourteen-year-olds the next day when they’d met up at work. Or maybe it had just been her, projecting her awkwardness onto him. A mumbled greeting. Palpable regret. Kissing someone you didn’t even like! You shouldn’t still be doing that at twenty-six, even when you were a stressed-out intern.
It must only have been a week or two later that Alice had come to the hospital to meet Janey for coffee, along with a whole group of other interns, including Luke, and had fallen for him on the spot.
Neither he nor Janey had ever talked about that kiss.
She devoutly hoped he didn’t remember it, she told herself.
And she’d never been anywhere near that drunk before or since.
She heard an electronic whoop as he pressed the button on his keyring to unlock the car doors, and ducked thankfully into her seat. The town looked eerie as they drove home. Far too quiet. Undamaged buildings gave the illusion of normality in the moonlight, and then a sudden swathe of destruction came into sight down a side street—crumpled roofing lying on the ground, tangles of debris washed against the light poles near the river. The air smelt of rotting vegetation, and worse.
Apparently, her instinctive response to an overdose of death and destruction, whether in a hospital or the open air, was to dive straight into Luke Bresciano’s arms. ‘Got that out of our systems, thank goodness,’ she said lightly.
‘Yep. Our systems seem to have a few problems tonight.’
‘There can’t be that much left undealt with.’
‘You wouldn’t think.’
‘I’m not going to … you know … turn it into a big issue. I like you. A lot more than I used to. We have too much to think about. And I think I had too much to drink.’
‘It’s all good, Janey,’ he said gently.
But it wasn’t.
Luke couldn’t sleep.
A little embarrassed at having kept Janey out so late, he ushered her to her room in the doctors’ house via the veranda instead of through the kitchen, which most people used for coming and going. He told her, �
��I’m going to duck over to the hospital to get a report on Rowdy.’
‘Can’t I come, too?’ Her eyes looked so huge and shimmery in the dark, with only the blue light of the moon spilling beneath the veranda’s wide eaves. The pull between them scared him. Where was it coming from? He didn’t know. But he did know that he had to resist it. They both did. There was too much history, too many responsibilities.
This was Alice’s sister, for heck’s sake!
‘I’ll let you know if there’ve been any developments,’ he told her, silently telegraphing, Don’t argue, with every cell in her body. ‘You need to rest.’
She nodded and disappeared obediently inside, and as he walked over to the hospital he thought about her getting ready for bed, images of her pulling Georgie’s little sheath dress up over her head meshing with his sense memory of how she had felt in his arms, all passionate and unthinking and warm.
She’d initiated that kiss … sort of … but she hadn’t been responsible for it.
Well, neither had he. Churned-up emotions could do funny things.
In the paediatric ward, Rowdy was fine. Sleeping. Shown a healthy appetite earlier in the evening. He should definitely be out of here tomorrow. But he still hadn’t spoken, and Luke wasn’t surprised. He’d begun to suspect there would have to be a trigger. They’d have to stumble onto the right emotion, the right moment, and it would probably be dramatic when it happened, and any more drama was surely the last thing his little guy needed in his life right now.
So what did you hope for in that situation? That he’d stay silent for weeks or months longer?
Back at the house …
Yeah.
couldn’t sleep.
Lay there for two hours, rumpling up the bed and making it hotter and hotter with the friction of his restless body. Got up and went to the kitchen for some iced water, knowing that a part of him hoped he’d see Janey on a similar errand and they’d …
Talk.
Just talk.
It was all they could afford to do.
She was Alice’s sister, and Rowdy’s aunt.
But the kitchen was silent, as was the entire house, so he crept back to bed and tried again. Must have dozed a bit, but still felt restless and edgy and unrefreshed when dawn began to filter in through the curtains he hadn’t bothered to close. He got up, put on shorts and a T-shirt and went out to finish cleaning the pool.
The Australian's Desire (Mills & Boon By Request) Page 26