‘Just—a—a friend over for dinner.’
Now there was an air of exaggerated nonchalance in Zoe’s voice and Bella’s curiosity skyrocketed. She had to ask. ‘Would this friend be male, by any chance?’
Zoe didn’t answer.
‘Zoe, it’s a guy, isn’t it?’ Bella knew Zoe hadn’t had a boyfriend for ages, so this was big news. Huge.
‘Yes, it’s a guy. But, Bell, I’m sorry. The dinner’s burning, and I’ve got to go. But it’s been fantastic to hear from you and to know you’re okay.’
‘Okay. I can take a hint.’ Even though her own life was a mess, Bella could smile at her friend’s good fortune. ‘If you do hear from Kent, tell him that I rang and I’m fine.’
‘I will, and I’ll tell him you were thinking of him.’
‘Thanks.’
For a fanciful moment, as Bella hung up, she wondered if Zoe’s guest might actually be Kent. It was rather interesting that his mysterious disappearance coincided with Zoe’s mystery male guest, but she wouldn’t be able to find out any more tonight.
At least the phone calls had momentarily distracted her from her own sorry situation.
But as she set the phone down on the nightstand and flopped onto her bed, the reality of her circumstances came back with a vengeance. In one short week, she’d made the mistake of falling in love with Damon Cavello. More deeply than ever.
With every conversation, with each recollection and shared smile he’d been reeling her in. Every time their gazes held for slightly longer than was strictly necessary she’d felt those strings of firecrackers lighting inside her.
Looking back on this past week, she could see that even the tense moments—their trouble with the police and the first night in the shared motel room—had been drawing them closer and relighting her hopes.
And that was before their never-to-be-forgotten night in Cardwell and all those other memories—the sheer fabulousness of total intimacy with Damon at last.
Whenever she closed her eyes, she was in heaven again, remembering the taste of his kisses and the amazing thrill of skin-to-skin contact and of having him inside her. At last.
Oh, help. With a cry of self-pity, Bella flopped back on the bed, flinging her arms so dramatically wide that she knocked something from her nightstand and sent it flying onto the carpet.
She had no idea what it was and she almost didn’t care, but after a while she rolled onto her side, glowered gloomily down, and saw it was a shell.
The shell Damon had found on the beach.
Sighing, she reached down and picked it up. Levering onto one elbow, she held it, running her fingers over the faint, barely-there ridges on its shiny surface.
It reminds me of you, Damon had told her in Cardwell. It looks feminine and fragile, but it’s actually quite tough and brave.
Which was hardly the truth.
Here she was totally unbrave, wanting nothing more than to be back in Damon’s bed. But instead of showing courage, instead of doing something about it, she was hiding in her room like a coward.
Damon couldn’t believe he was still pacing a motel room alone, with only his own messed-up thoughts for company, while the woman he wanted was right next door.
It was a crazy, unheard-of situation. He’d always considered himself a man of action and yet here he was, thinking about Bella, recalling everything he loved about Bella, everything he’d always loved about her, wanting her more than he’d wanted any woman and sure that he could never be at peace without her.
Yet he knew he wouldn’t go to her. Of course he couldn’t go to her tonight. Sensibly, she’d made that clear.
Getting together for one last night was wrong on all sorts of levels. There could be nothing light-hearted about tonight. He and Bella shared too much history, too many memories. He’d promised himself he wouldn’t mess with her emotions again. He couldn’t behave the way he did when he was eighteen, getting in deeper and deeper and then running away.
Bella had her own plans. Her own new horizons—a new job, travel, and, somewhere out there, Mr Right, waiting in the wings.
So there was no question. He had no choice but to endure this night and then, in the morning, to get Bella safely onto the plane to Brisbane.
Unhappily resigned, Damon finally gave up pacing and began to undo his shirt buttons. With the top buttons freed, he was in the process of hauling his shirt over his head when he heard a knock at the door.
Frowning, he let the shirt fall and opened the door. His heart thudded hard. ‘Bella.’
‘I—ah—we forgot the coffee,’ she said, shyly holding up a jar. ‘I promised to make you some earlier.’
‘So you did.’ Damon was pleased he managed to speak calmly, given the sudden, savage pounding of his heart. ‘Would you like to come in?’ ‘Thanks.’
He stepped back to allow her entry, and she slipped past him. Slim hipped, long legged, and as graceful as a willow. A faint hint of her wildflower perfume drifted to him. The overhead light turned her hair to shiny gold. It took every ounce of his self-restraint to refrain from hauling her into his arms.
Bella crossed straight to the kettle in the corner of his room and switched it on.
‘I presume the mugs are in here?’ She turned to him, eyes wide, cheeks flushed, lips softly parted. Her hair was no longer in her habitual scraped-off-her-face ponytail, but falling softly to her shoulders.
For a moment she looked uncertain and shy, but then, as if she’d made a quick decision, her expression changed. ‘Actually, we could leave the coffee till later, couldn’t we?’
‘Later?’ he repeated, his voice gruff with surprise.
With a subtle but provocative swing of her hips, she began to walk towards him. ‘You weren’t planning to send me away, were you, Damon?’
‘But you—you—we agreed—’
She came closer, close enough to cause a hitch in his breathing and a throb in his loins. Touching close. He could smell the clean, lingering scent of shampoo in her hair.
‘I know what I said, but I’m exercising my feminine right to change my mind.’
There was a sparkle in her eyes, now, the game-for-anything look of the young, seventeen-year-old Bella, the girl who’d asked him for a kiss before she’d agreed to drive to Meandarra with him.
Cheeks flushed, but with a brave little smile, she undid the next of his shirt buttons. ‘I’ve decided that I want this, Damon. I know you’re bad for me, but it’s okay. You’re not going to be around long enough to become a bad habit.’
Her eyes were enormous as she skimmed her fingers over his chest, sending shivers of lust arrowing low.
‘I ask only one thing.’ She lifted her chin, and met his gaze bravely. ‘We can’t keep going on like this. If we meet up in the future, we can’t start up another temporary relationship.’
Her lovely green eyes were suddenly too bright and shiny. ‘This last night will have to be the end. Do you agree?’
No. He didn’t want to agree to stay away from her forever.
But of course her request was reasonable.
The words I love you lined up in Damon’s head and he imagined saying them out loud. They could make such a difference.
A lifetime of difference.
But Bella wasn’t asking for a lifetime. She was playing it safe, just as he was, offering him the same terms he’d offered her a few days earlier. One night.
Wise girl. She was right. She couldn’t risk having him become a bad habit. But he was walking on a razor’s edge between the danger of ‘I love you’ and the safety of farewell sex.
The choice would be easy if he could trust himself to love and be loved in return. But how could a man as restless as the ocean offer a girl like Bella the stability and happy ever after she deserved?
Unhappily, he said at last, ‘You’re right. But I think—’
Bella began to trail kisses over his chest, blasting the final words of caution from his thoughts.
‘You think too much,’ she
whispered against his lips, and then she wound her arms around his neck, pressed her parted, needy lips against his.
After that, he couldn’t even remember what he’d been going to say. All else was lost as they moved together in a lazy, lip-locked two-step dance, and Damon set about fulfilling every one of Bella’s bad-boy fantasies.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THAT night, Bella felt a kinship with lovers about to be separated by war, or impending disaster—two people sharing emotionally charged tenderness and passion before saying goodbye.
But like a song without words there was so much implied, but too much that they’d dared not say.
So many times she ached to tell Damon that she loved him, but she was afraid he would think she was trying to stop him from leaving.
And didn’t every girl know there was no point in trying to hold on to a man who needed to be set free?
In the darkness, Damon left the bed where Bella slept and went to the window. Staring outside, he felt as dark inside as the starless night. How could anyone imagine that farewell sex was a great idea?
And yet the crazy thing was that for most of his life goodbye had been his favourite word. Goodbye, Willara. Goodbye, Australia. Goodbye, Dad …
Goodbyes had been his ticket of leave. Goodbyes meant freedom and moving on, shrugging off the past and starting a new chapter.
Even when it came to the women in his life, he’d always planned an escape route from the first meeting.
Not so with Bella, of course. None of this applied to Bella. Saying goodbye to her now was even more difficult than it had been in his angst-ridden teens.
Last time he’d left her, she’d begged and pleaded. This time she’d calmly seduced him.
You ‘re not going to be around long enough to become a bad habit.
In ten years, Bella Shaw had become a wise woman, while Damon Cavello hadn’t learned a damn thing.
‘What time’s your flight?’ Damon asked as Bella handed him a steaming mug of coffee the next morning.
‘Ten-thirty.’
He frowned as he glanced at the clock. ‘We don’t have much time, then. It’s at least forty-five minutes to Cairns airport.’
Bella sighed as she picked up her mug. ‘I guess I’d better take this through to my room and shower and pack.’
Damon’s response was an unsmiling nod.
‘See you in about twenty minutes,’ she said, heading for the door.
Businesslike efficiency was the only way to get through this morning. It was too late now for heart-searching confidences, too late to tell Damon how she really felt about leaving him. This morning Bella couldn’t allow herself to feel. She had to keep her thoughts focused on what lay ahead of her—the flight to Brisbane and going home to her little flat, then hunting for a new job, and talking to a travel agent, and catching up with Zoe …
She shampooed her hair, hastily painted her fingernails emerald green, threw her clothes into her bag and was ready by the car inside twenty minutes.
Her heart stood still when Damon emerged, freshly showered, with his dark hair still damp and strangely smooth, and wearing a white T-shirt that gleamed against his dark skin. Blue jeans.
She adored everything about the way he looked. This week he’d been such good company, and he’d been so nice to Jessie and so incredibly, all-round helpful. As for the nights she’d spent with him.
How on earth was she going to find the strength to get on the plane?
The forty-five-minute journey to the airport felt excruciatingly long. Bella was too aware of the smell of soap on Damon’s skin. Fresh and clean with a hint of something spicy, like sandalwood or ginger. She wanted to close her eyes and to lean in to him.
Stop thinking about last night.
The journey wasn’t made any easier by the fact that neither she nor Damon was in the mood for light conversation. Damon made one or two stiff comments about the weather, but for much of the time they sat in tense silence.
Bella stared out at the palm-tree-fringed sea, sparkling in the tropical sun. A corner of her mind registered its beauty, but mostly she was dangerously, foolishly, lost in the past. Their past.
She remembered the day they drove all the way to Meandarra. Lazy winter afternoons curled up on sofas in front of the fire in the lounge room at her parents’ homestead, reading history books together, or quizzing each other before a chemistry test. Conversations about everything under the sun. Popcorn-flavoured kisses in the back of Willara’s one and only movie theatre.
In this last week they’d created so many more memories, bittersweet memories that would haunt her forever.
She was grateful when they reached Cairns at last and she could pretend an interest in houses and shops and streams of traffic.
‘Don’t worry about coming in with me,’ she told Damon when they reached the airport. ‘You can just drop me off. I’ll be fine.’
‘Don’t be silly.’
Her eyes widened, but he didn’t clarify his reprimand and she didn’t ask him to. Tension reigned supreme.
After parking the car, Damon insisted on carrying her bag even though it was only a small overnight bag and quite light. Bella checked in and they went through security. In the departure lounge they were surrounded by a sea of travellers—happy tourists in brightly coloured tropical clothes, happy family groups, businessmen, couples.
Couples arm in arm, couples chatting and sharing loving smiles, or couples simply sitting reading, yet still looking entirely comfortable together.
Standing with Damon near the departures display board, Bella hoped she looked as relaxed as everyone else, but it was unlikely given that she felt as tense as a guerrilla fighter stalking in a jungle. She was remembering the last time she’d said goodbye to him. When she was seventeen.
There’d been tears then. Copious tears. She’d pleaded and Damon had been stubbornly determined that she was better off without him.
Today she was determined to retain her dignity. But when Damon touched her on the shoulder she almost jumped out of her skin.
‘Hey, I didn’t mean to startle you.’
She let out her breath with a soft huff. ‘Sorry. I’ve never been great at goodbyes.’ She swallowed the enormous lump in her throat. ‘What do you say at a time like this? It’s been nice to catch up with you again?’
His mouth tilted in a smile that came nowhere near his eyes. ‘It’s the truth, bellissima. It’s been fabulous to catch up with you again.’
He reached for her hands and looked down at them as he rubbed the pads of his thumbs over the emerald nail polish. ‘Every morning I’m going to wake up and wonder what colour they are.’
‘Don’t say things like that.’ Tears stung her eyes and she snatched her hands out of his grasp. ‘No nostalgia, Damon. It’s not fair.’
She saw an answering quicksilver flash in his eyes. Saw the rapid movement of his throat as he swallowed.
‘And stop looking so sad,’ she ordered him, sounding a thousand times tougher than she felt. ‘I need you to be cool. I need you to not care.’
‘That’s not possible.’
Bella might have burst into tears if there hadn’t been a sudden blaring announcement that her flight was boarding.
She pasted on a stiff little smile as the passengers for her flight began to line up. She took her boarding pass out of her bag, hitched the bag over her shoulder. Any minute now, her bravado would collapse. She had to hold herself together for just a little longer.
‘Where are you off to next?’ she asked Damon, needing to talk about anything except goodbye.
He shrugged. ‘Looks like it might be Hong Kong.’
‘That should be nice. I hope you get lots of great stories.’ She would probably see him on TV, sauntering past stalls in a crowded market in Kowloon, or interviewing a highprofile Chinese businessman.
She set her gaze at middle distance, not daring to catch his eye. ‘I’d better be going.’
‘Yeah.’ He released the word o
n a sigh.
Quickly she kissed his cheek, then stepped back, out of harm’s way. ‘Thanks for taking care of Paddy and Violet.’
‘My pleasure.’
‘I hope you have a safe journey.’ ‘You, too, Bella.’
The line of passengers was moving quickly and there was absolutely no point in prolonging this agony.
‘I’ll be off, then.’ She turned quickly so he couldn’t see her tears.
Without looking back, she joined the line of passengers having their boarding passes checked. She thought, if this was a movie, Damon would come running after her now, and he’d tell her he loved her and he’d beg her to stay, and she’d happily run away with him and be with him forever.
It didn’t happen, of course. Already she was entering the tunnel that led to the plane, and she didn’t look back, couldn’t bear to see him still standing in the same spot, or worse, already walking away.
‘Welcome aboard,’ said the friendly stewardess and Bella was proud that she managed to return her smile.
‘This has been quite an adventure,’ Violet said as she sat beside Damon, looking out to sea.
They were staying overnight at Sarina, a tiny beachside town about halfway down the Queensland coast. Paddy was taking an afternoon nap, but Violet had opted to join Damon on the beach.
‘A little sea air will blow the cobwebs away,’ she’d told him, but she’d needed his help to lower her aging bones onto the beach towel that he’d spread on the sand.
‘Are you sure you’re comfortable?’
‘I’m fine now I’m down.’ Violet laughed. ‘But you’ll have to help me up again.’
Dressed in slim Capri pants and a loose cotton shirt, she looked like an elderly, but still beautiful film star as she sat on the sand with her elegant hands linked around her knees. Her arms were thin and brown and blotched with age spots, but girlish clusters of silver bracelets twinkled at her fragile wrists.
Her long hair, white as a seagull’s breast, had been loosened from its knot by the wind, and wispy strands blew about her face. She didn’t seem to care. At eighty-three, she was having an adventure …
‘I hope you’re not planning to run away again,’ Damon told her fondly. ‘When I get you back to Willara, I expect you to stay put.’
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